Yet as we walk round this glorious Minster, surveying it whether from within or from without, the feeling uppermost in our minds is rather one of thankfulness that so much has been spared than of indignation that so much has been destroyed. We can understand what the poet-philosopher Coleridge meant when he spoke of Gothic architecture as "Infinity made imaginable"; and we may enter into the feelings of the peasant woman who, in simpler language, expressed the same idea, when after her visit to Ely Minster she remarked, "That Cathedral is like a little Heaven below; everybody should see it, both rich and poor."
We have now come to the end of the story of the building of Ely Minster; her Bishops and Deans have since then had enough to do in keeping her stonework in repair without adding to it; and this work of restoration has been carried on from century to century with real, if sometimes misguided, devotion. Originators have had their day; the repairer is now in possession.
Great as were the architectural achievements of the seventy monks of Ely, we must not suppose that all their time went in superintending such work. We do not know, indeed, whether they did much of it with their own hands at all. We have, it is true, seen John of Wisbech, the builder of the glorious Lady Chapel, himself digging out the foundations with his mates; but on the other hand we are told how skilled artisans from a distance were hired to undertake the more delicate work in completing the lantern. That the Brethren spent much time in writing we have abundant proof. Our own familiar word ink is a standing testimony to their industry in this respect, being derived from inc., the abbreviation universally used in the Abbey account books for incaustum, the Latin word for their writing fluid.
In the reign of William Rufus, that monarch's Commissioners came to Ely, and carried off 300 volumes from the Abbey library, besides all the Service books; and we need hardly doubt that most of these books, if not all, had been copied on the spot. One beautifully written Breviary from Ely is still to be seen in the University Library at Cambridge. It is of the fourteenth century.
The monks and Bishops were, moreover, constructors of bridges, of roads, and of causeways; they made new ones, they restored the old; and they were licensed to exact tolls for the upkeep of their work. In 1480 Bishop Morton led the way towards the draining of the Fens, by cutting the great drain, forty feet across, extending twelve miles, from Peterborough to Guyhirn, and still known as Morton's Leam. The Bishops also built numerous episcopal residences. Among others, Ely Place in Holborn, a castle at Wisbech, palaces at Somersham and Downham, manor houses at Doddington, at Fen Ditton, at Hatfield, were erected as the centuries slipped by; and seeing that the Bishops were also Abbots of Ely, we may believe that the monks did their part in carrying out episcopal work.
Ely possesses a unique record of her early days in her celebrated Liber Eliensis, a folio volume of 189 leaves of vellum, ten and a-half inches by seven and a-half, begun by Thomas, a monk of the convent, who lived about the close of the twelfth century, and professing to give the history of the monastery from its foundation up to his own day. Two copies of this manuscript are known to exist, bearing witness to the industry of the monks as scribes, while others have doubtless perished. The monks of Ely, moreover, wrote the Episcopal Rolls and Registers with the utmost care; these are still preserved with their entries as to the expenditure of money, as to ordinations, as to the granting of indulgences, as to appeals to the Pope, all kept with scrupulous exactitude.
Ely is rich, moreover, beyond most foundations, in other written records of her past; and these are preserved, some in the Cathedral library, some in the muniment room of the dean and chapter forming part of the restored "Steeple" or "Sextry" gateway, some in the library of Lambeth Palace, some in the British Museum. The existing rolls, or account books, kept by the chief officers of the monastery, number 288 in all, and give us full and clear detail as to what was spent not only on the building, the alms, and the services of the Abbey Church, but also on the food, the wine, the clothing, and the medicine of the monks. One item of medicine is "dragon's blood," one of food is "blankmang, a mixture of rice and almonds."
The following summary from the Chamberlain's Roll, recounting what was the cost of clothing a monk, will show us that he was expected to dress with dignity and comfort. The clothing of an Ely monk was really a very serious item of expenditure. A monk, like the parson of a church, was in England ex officio a gentleman; and his maintenance cost his convent the equivalent of £200 per annum (in the present value of money).[214] Of this sum at least a fourth went in clothing, which, as compared with food, was much dearer then than now. The account books still preserved at Ely give us the items. Each monk received annually the following garments (for which we give the value at the present rate of money):
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| 1 | Cowl | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | Monk's Frock | 5 | 10 | 0 |
| 1 | Pellice[215] | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | Winter coat | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| 1 | Summer ditto | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| 1 | Shirt (?) | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| 1 | Pair of linen drawers | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | Pair boots[216] | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| 1 | Pair Gaiters and Slippers | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| 1 | "Wilkok"[217] | 10 | 0 | |
| 1 | Counterpane | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| 1 | Coverlet | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | Blanket[218] | 12 | 6 | |
This was in the year 1334,[219] and is a fair average specimen of the cost, which varied very little from year to year. Readers of Chaucer will remember how comfortably, and even luxuriously, he represents his monk in the Canterbury Tales as being dressed. The old garments of the monks were, at the end of the year, returned to the Camerarius for distribution amongst the poor.