"Now when the aforesaid chapel was in beginning, this Brother John had but little money in hand, or laid by, for the prosecution of so great a work. He betook himself therefore to prayer, and thereafter called his mates together, some being monks, some, likewise, seculars. And them he besought to meet at a certain hour, and help him in digging out a square trench which might serve for the foundation of the whole fabric.
"At the appointed time, accordingly, they met one night, and began to dig, each separately by himself in the place assigned to him. Thus it chanced that the aforesaid Brother John was digging, all alone by himself, in the place allotted to him. And, by the special will, as we verily believe, of God, he found there, not one of his mates wotting thereof, a brazen pot full of money, as if placed there on purpose to relieve his need.
"And when the whole night was well nigh spent, in the earliest dawn, a small rain came on, to the annoyance of those digging. Calling then his mates from their work, he said: 'Brethren mine, and fellow labourers, yea, most heartily do I thank you for all your long and well-wrought task. And good it is now to pause a little after your work. Therefore I commend you to God. And may He pay you a full worthy wage for your labour.' But when they drew off, he himself remained on the spot all alone, and bare off that urn, as secretly as he might, and hid it in the dormitory under his own bed. And he took that money, all befouled with rust as it was, and cleansed off the rust by rubbing it with chalk and water, and paid therefrom, while it lasted, the wages of his workmen."
From this account it would seem that this money was not gold, as that never tarnishes, but silver; probably old Saxon coins hidden at the time of the Danish sack of Ely. Even in the fourteenth century money was still largely estimated by weight, without much regard to the particular coinage; so that these old pennies would still be good currency.
The chapel is surrounded by seats of stone, each with its canopy of the same material, a veritable dream of artistic design and workmanship. With its completion, at the close of the year 1348, John of Wisbech ended his work on earth; a few months later, on June 18th, 1349, he, like many another priest of these eastern counties, fell a victim to the Black Death, which in some districts slew nine priests out of ten. He left as his monument this church, a wonderful example of the latest Decorated work, in its detailed sculpture and all but Perpendicular windows. It is built of clunch, a local stone that lasts well for interior use, but perishes somewhat when exposed to the weather. This was brought by water from Reach, where the great quarries from which it was hewn may still be seen.
This chapel was built, as its name denotes, in honour of the Virgin; above and below its canopies stood figures of exquisite grace, representing, for the most part, scenes from her life as related in the Apocryphal Gospels and later legends then current. For two hundred years these sculptures remained intact, till Thomas Goodrich became Bishop in 1533. He held the See for twenty-one years, and he made it his business deliberately to deface all this statuary. We may attribute his action either to his zeal for the extirpation of Mariolatry, or to his fear lest sacred legend should be confounded with sacred history. Whatever may have been the actuating motive, his deeds as an iconoclast remain before our eyes. In October, 1541, he issued a mandate to the clergy of his diocese, ordering the utter abolition and destruction of all shrines, images, and relics; and we find it hard to forgive him for such indiscriminating breakage, even when we remember how much we owe to him for his admirable setting forth of our duty to God and to our neighbour preserved to us in the Catechism of the Church of England. He was also the translator of St. John's Gospel in the version known as the "Bishop's Bible."
Ely Lantern.
With the close of the fourteenth century the development and beautifying of Ely Minster almost comes to a standstill. She is rich in Norman, in Early English, in Decorated work; but when Perpendicular architecture arose, that type peculiar to England, there came a pause at Ely; and the instances of the Perpendicular style to be met with here are comparatively unimportant insertions. In Bishop Alcock's Chapel, built by 1500, we meet with late Perpendicular work; while in Bishop West's, built about 1525, are traces of the Renaissance decoration that came in with the revival of classical literature and art. Such decoration gained hardly any foothold in England, and is extremely rare within our shores, but on the Continent it swept away before its inrush many a shrine of earlier date, sparing nothing for the sake of its associations or antiquity. With Bishop West's Chapel, the story of growth and development closes. Then came the Reformation under Henry the Eighth, and we come face to face with the work of iconoclasts rather than of builders.