Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

And now we end our tour round these sepulchres and monuments by contemplating all that remains of what was once the rallying centre for those countless pilgrims who travelled hither in search of spiritual and physical benefit—the shrine of St. Etheldreda. It was once enriched with gems and costly hangings. It has been told how Queen Emma, in 1016, gave it a "purple cloth worked with gold and set with jewels."[228] Sixty years later the shrine is described as "made in part of silver, as adorned with pearls, emeralds, onyxes, alamandine stones, embossed with images in relief, among which were two lions carved in crystal, also four figures of angels carved in ivory." Such it was made by Theodwin, who was Abbot for three years under William the Conqueror, and such he left it. After another sixty years it was robbed by Bishop Nigel, who took away much of its gold and silver and used it for his own purposes.

But if it was despoiled in one century it was enriched in the next. From 1252 it stood behind the High Altar in Bishop Northwold's Presbytery, erected purposely for its reception; with the figure of the Foundress of the Abbey gazing down upon it from the central boss of the vaulting overhead. The shrine was thus held in honour till the reign of Henry the Eighth; when the Royal greed swooped down upon it, the dust of Etheldreda was thrown we know not where (though the chapel in Holborn bearing her name, and the church of the Dominicans at Stone in Staffordshire claim to possess relics of her hand), her coffin was broken up and destroyed, the treasures that adorned her shrine were dispersed. Love of loot was the great motive for this spoliation; hatred of abuses, some real, some imaginary, was the hypocritical excuse. Whatever may have been the pretext for its demolition, the shrine was robbed and left empty.

The existing monument is a vaulted canopy of the fourteenth century, and is held to be due to Alan of Walsingham. Much of the ancient colouring survives on its northern side, but the southern has been completely refaced with new stone-work. Let no one leave without stooping down to pass beneath it, where it is easy to stand upright. It was here that pilgrims congregated, happy in the sense that they were in close proximity to the bones of the sainted Abbess. Here once was sheltered the sarcophagus of marble that held the body of the Foundress of the Abbey. Sturdy blows must have been needed to annihilate it; but destroyed it was, and no tradition gives any record of its fate, nor has any remnant of it ever been recovered. Stripped as we see the shrine, now set aside in the northern aisle of the presbytery, it seems left to prove that dignity may linger on for ages, long after the word has been spoken "Thy glory is departed."

Before leaving the cathedral we must pass into the Lady Chapel adjoining the north-eastern transept, connected with it by a passage. We have already told when and by whom it was built, and when and by whom it was desecrated. At the Reformation it was rededicated to the Holy Trinity, and became a parish church, replacing the church of St. Cross, which once stood close to the cathedral, but was pulled down during the sixteenth century. Our visit must have its painful side, as we remember how one form of faith built this chapel and another defaced it. We could envy those who saw it fresh from the hand of gifted sculptors and masons, its windows, now so bare, all aglow with colour of a richness to which the few poor fragments that remain bear eloquent testimony.

This chapel measures a hundred feet in length and is about half that width, the roof is of a single span, with no pillars to support it. Around it runs a stone bench, divided up by canopied niches still bearing traces of the old colouring—red, blue, green and gold. The canopied work over these niches is in almost perfect preservation, rich and free in design, but the statuary which once abounded under and above it has been ruthlessly and deliberately broken. Only one head half hidden by sculptured foliage escaped the iconoclasts as they went round the hallowed walls to "break down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers."

We look up and see some relics of stained glass, accidentally spared when the rest was smashed, in colour most harmonious, the greens and reds incomparably mellow in tone; while certain small outlined figures strangely traversing it, stiff yet vigorous, recall the painting on Egyptian monuments. A few square feet of this precious glass, a multitude of headless yet graceful statuettes canopied by unblemished stone-work, are still left to show us how beautiful the whole must have been when in its glory. We leave with a sigh the chapel, designed by Alan of Walsingham, and built by his faithful subsacrist John of Wisbech.

Those who desire it can, before they quit the Minster, climb to the top of the western tower, and if the day is clear they will be well rewarded by a superb view over the "boundless plain" below; towns and hamlets, steeples and spires, spread there beneath us, nor must we forget the railways, with their kindly evidence of modern life at its fullest. To the east the horizon is bounded by those East Anglian uplands which nurtured Etheldreda for her great work here. But, beyond almost any other, this is essentially a man-made landscape; its salient features are not hills, but buildings, not rivers but lodes. Peterborough, the sister Abbey-Cathedral, is in view twenty miles away to the north-west, and many a church of note and beauty is prominent within nearer range, including the towers and spires of Cambridge fifteen miles to the south. The very cornfields and pastures beneath us have been reclaimed from the marsh by man; while, far on the north-east, is "Denvers Sluice" protecting the rich fenland from inundation. The view from the top of the tower is well worth a climb, if we have time and strength for the venture.

Those who wish to be acquainted with the structural secrets of the cathedral should make an effort to gain admittance to one of the spiral staircases to the upper passages that lead from triforium to triforium, from clerestory to clerestory. In these higher regions we shall still come upon deeply wrought crocketing, such as that in the upper eastern lancet windows—crocketing seen only by the stray visitor, yet worked with ungrudged labour and skill. Here we may step along the plank that takes us from beam to beam for a hundred feet over the vaulting of the Choir, through the spacious chamber that separates this vaulting from the outer roof. On every beam stands a pail of water ready in case of fire.

Through a low doorway at the end we pass to the circle of the lantern. Here a shutter-like panel can be opened and we can look downwards if we will, but we shall probably elect rather to spend these rare minutes in gazing upwards, on the figure of Christ in the key boss of the vaulting, now that for once in our lives we find ourselves near enough to John of Burwell's carving to see how bold and yet how reverent it is.[229]

One question forces itself upon us, how was it placed here? How was Mr. Gambier Parry able to paint the glowing angels on these panels? We see in imagination the scaffolding, the ropes, the pulleys, that have been in use here, where now all is calm and rest, and we feel that William Watson might have had this very scene before him when he wrote the lines: