Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Besides embellishing this chapel with this motto, he adorned it further with exquisite statuary. Here delicate canopies, upwards of two hundred in number, still overhang corresponding pedestals, on which there stood once, for a few short years, statuettes of workmanship equally delicate; but of these nothing is left beyond a few traces of their feet, which being carved out of the solid stone did not give way when the tiny statue of which they formed a part was broken off by the mandate of Bishop Goodrich. When the quarrel arose between Henry the Eighth and the Pope as to his repudiating Catharine of Aragon, Bishop West was true throughout to the cause of the injured Queen; but he died in 1533, just before the bursting of the storm in which his friends, More and Fisher, laid down their lives, and was buried in the chapel that bears his name.

Here, too, lie the bones of the great Earl Brithnoth, who, as we remember, was brought back hither headless, from the battle of Maldon, by the monks of Ely to be buried amongst them according to their promise. We connect this warrior's character with the dying words attributed to him in Anglo-Saxon poetry, "God, I thank Thee for all the joy that I have had of Thee in life."[227] Other Anglo-Saxon worthies of the ninth and tenth centuries rest also in this chapel: an Archbishop of York, a Swedish Bishop, and several Bishops of Elmham, in Suffolk, and Dorchester, in Oxfordshire—Sees which were in later years transferred to Norwich and Lincoln respectively. It is held that these were retired prelates, who had come to end their days at Ely; where they were welcome guests, as they were licensed by the Diocesan to perform the often-needed episcopal functions of the Abbey, without calling in the distant and over-busied Bishop of Dorchester, to whose See Ely belonged. This was a convenience both to the Brotherhood and to the Diocesan himself. The names of Earl Brithnoth and of these contemporaries are inscribed on tablets let into the wall of this chantry.

Touching it on the northern side, behind the screen of the High Altar, we see a fine tomb, Perpendicular in style, where lies buried the Cardinal de Luxembourg, a foreign prelate presented to the See of Ely in 1438 by King Henry the Sixth, but never (it seems) canonically confirmed as Bishop. In order to gain space for his chapel, Bishop West did not scruple to take a slice off the tabernacled work of unrivalled beauty that adorned this adjoining tomb, but the northern side he left in its perfection. Notice, too, close at hand, a bronze monument to Dr. Mills, professor of Hebrew, who died about the middle of the nineteenth century. The recumbent figure is of great beauty.

Next we come to Bishop Alcock's chapel, occupying the northern corner of the ambulatory, as Bishop West's does the southern. It was built, a generation earlier, by Bishop Alcock only a few years after his reconstitution of St. Radegund's Priory at Cambridge as Jesus College, recorded in our sixth chapter, and is marked as his by the frequent recurrence of his "canting" armorial bearings, a shield and crest all cocks, or, rather, black cocks' heads. He was a great builder, a great worker, and, like many another ecclesiastic of his day, a great politician, being Lord President of Wales, and Comptroller of the Royal Works to Henry the Seventh; yet withal he was a man of marked sanctity. His chapel is rich in Perpendicular ornament. A wreath of grapes and vine-leaves in stone runs round it in all directions, as if verily clambering. The undercutting of this wreath is wondrous, but perhaps the marvel of it culminates in a pendant boss of vine-leaves on the northern side so deeply wrought that we can see right through it, yet perfect to-day as when first carved.

The masons who worked here liked their joke; and one of them made a boss of foliage, graceful enough when seen from above,—but stoop down to look at it from below, and behold a grinning imp. This stonework was chiselled in situ, the rough blocks were placed where they were to stay, and there they were cut into the shape required, several being even yet unfinished. Canopied niches abound here, but of the statuary that once filled them one figure alone has escaped destruction, and still indicates how beautiful its companions must have been. To Bishop Alcock Jesus College, Cambridge, owes its existence, and Peterhouse many benefactions; and here is his tomb. In 1900 Bishop Alwyne Compton filled the window of this chapel with stained glass, depicting four of his most noted predecessors.

Leaving this chantry behind we see on our right, under his own Early English bays, the monument to our old friend, Hugh de Northwold, who lies buried not in this spot but in the middle of his presbytery. Before he became Bishop of Ely he had been Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, for which place he ever retained a warm affection. His feet touch a block of marble, on which is sculptured the martyrdom of St. Edmund, whom we see tied to a tree and shot to death by Danish arrows, while his beheading is also represented. Here, too, is a wolf guarding the Saint's head, according to the legend. The story ran that, after the Saint's martyrdom and decapitation, his surviving subjects, to whom his "universal graciousness which yet suffered no unbecoming familiarity" had deeply endeared him, sought, so soon as the Danes had marched away, to take up his remains for fitting burial. The body they soon found, but the head had been cast into a thicket, and was not discovered till the searchers heard a voice crying, "Here! Here! Here!" which guided them to the spot where it lay. A huge wolf was standing, as it were, on guard over the sacred relic, but did not offer to attack the finders, who, on their part, suffered it to remain unhurt. The faithful beast followed them like a dog till it saw the head laid together with the body, and then quietly departed into the forest, no man doing aught against it.

Close at hand, leaning against the northern wall of the aisle, is a detached fragment of stonework, once the arm of Northwold's abbatial chair which he brought with him from Bury St. Edmund's. This, too, is made in the form of a beast of prey (somewhat distantly resembling a wolf), holding between its paws a human head. The Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's, it may be mentioned, was, in some sort, a daughter House of Ely. When King Edgar, "the Peacemaker," founded that monastery in honour of the Royal Martyr he populated it, in the first instance, by drafting forty monks from Etheldreda's earlier royal foundation.

We will next look at the impressive monument of William of Kilkenny, Bishop of Ely for three years under Henry the Third. He gave great offence through being consecrated bishop by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Italy, instead of in England, where it was felt that both prelates ought to have been attending to their duties at home; he, moreover, died abroad on a journey to Spain, whither he was going on the King's business. A traveller and statesman, he was also a generous promoter of education, as is shown by his founding scholarships at Barnwell Priory. A recumbent figure holding a crozier, he rests on a pillow as if asleep.

Next we reach the tomb of Bishop Redman, who held the See for a very short time in the opening years of the sixteenth century. The tomb is of fine Perpendicular work, and the Bishop lies under a canopy rich in armorial bearings; but the figure is strangely truncated at the foot, which derogates not a little from its beauty.

Retracing our steps for a few yards, we find beneath our feet a brass which records one of the tragedies that the Minster has witnessed; here lies buried Basevi, the gifted architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, who met with his death in 1845 while accompanying Dean Peacock over the work of repair going on in the western tower. The Dean had just a moment before given the architect a caution to take care how he walked. Basevi, familiar with scaffolding, smiled at the advice, and going on with his hands in his pockets, came to a hole he had not perceived, and fell through in a way that would have been well-nigh impossible had his hands been free; his feet struck the pavement below with a jar so intense that death was almost instantaneous.