Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

"No record Art keeps
Of her travails and woes:
There is toil on the steeps,
On the summit repose."

The tourist has one further duty to perform; for he must not leave Ely without walking round the cathedral outside. He will then be perplexed by the anachronisms before him; he will see Perpendicular windows inserted in Norman aisles, Decorated tracery in Early English masonry; he will observe this from without more plainly than from within, and he will realise how the monks who designed and built it all had a firm belief in themselves, and in their own age, so that they did not shrink from what we should now count as acts of Vandalism. They no more hesitated to displace the work of their forefathers by their own, than we hesitate to light our houses and churches with electricity, instead of being content with the gas that was good enough for our grandparents.

As we turn to the north, on leaving the cathedral by the western door, we shall be puzzled by the strange appearance of the steeple on its northern side. For Ely Minster, we cannot deny it, is lop-sided; it has no north-western transept to correspond with the south-western. On the north side of the tower there is masonry proving that once it had the support of such a transept; but there is no record of its fall or demolition, so we are left to surmise that perchance it shared the fate of the adjoining church of St. Cross, described as a "lean-to," dark and "uncomley, very unholdsome for want of thorrowe ayre" which we know to have been pulled down during the reign of Elizabeth.

We must now go eastward, and, keeping close to the cathedral as we follow the path that surrounds it, we shall be able to drink in the view, described earlier, of the Minster as seen from the east. From this point we can grasp it all, and we can feel ourselves in close touch with the builders of yore, with Simeon, and Richard, and Hugh, and Alan, and John; for the work of each is here before our eyes at once. They now rest from their labours, leaving them as a priceless legacy to benefit ourselves and others. Look at Richard's transepts resting on old Simeon's foundations; look at Hugh's lancet windows, at Alan's incomparable lantern, at the Lady Chapel which John was able to build through his finding of that brazen urn. The space that lies between us and these men of mark seems bridged by a span as we contemplate their work and try to understand it.

As we complete our circuit of the East end, and stand at that of the south transept, we shall be struck with a conspicuous range of ruined arches built into the Canons' residences to the south-east. These are the remains of the Infirmary; which we have seen to play such an important part in the life of the Abbey. It had its own chapel, hall and kitchen, and stood on the site of the original Saxon church. The space between it and the Minster was called the Slype, and served as a kind of market, whither travelling merchants brought their wares for the inspection of the Prior, Sacrist, and other chief officers of the Abbey. These officers, we may mention, did not share the common life of the monks, but had houses of their own, fragments of which still dot the "College,"—mostly, like the Infirmary, now built into the residences of the various Canons.

Not a stone's throw from the Galilee Porch, just across the street towards the west, stands the episcopal palace. At one time this palace was actually connected with the cathedral by a covered gallery crossing the street. We can see from an old print how seriously this erection must have blocked the traffic, and on this account it was finally removed; yet its name adheres to the thoroughfare over which it once passed, and which is still called "the Gallery." The Bishop of Ely is fortunate in having his house close to his cathedral, unlike too many of the episcopal residences, which are at an inconvenient distance from the central city of the See. Moreover, his palace is of reasonable size; not too large nor yet too small for the hospitality to which a bishop must be given if he is to live up to the Scriptural standard; and it has another great practical advantage in being near to a station where several lines converge, and where all trains stop.

The Palace was built in the main by Bishop Alcock toward the end of the fifteenth century. It is of chequered red brick with stone facings; his own arms, three heads of the barn-door cock, and the arms of the See, three crowns, are worked in stone on the face of the front wing looking north; there project, moreover, three niches (now empty) with the canopies he loved so well. Thirty years later Bishop Goodrich (who robbed these niches of their statuary) added the western gallery, a hundred feet long, with its beautiful oriel window, on whose outer panels he caused to be engraved his original version of our Duty toward God and our neighbour, which we may still read for ourselves if we can contrive to see through certain bushes that hide it. These inscriptions are on two slabs of freestone beneath the two side-lights of the oriel window in the gallery of the palace. Unhappily they are rapidly perishing under the action of the weather, and will soon be altogether lost. This is unfortunate, as they are of no small interest, representing, as it would seem, Goodrich's original draft for the "Duties," which were afterwards expanded into the form so familiar to us in the Catechism. Nor does any one seem to have been at the pains to record them verbatim while they remained legible; so that now many conjectural words have to be supplied, by considering the number of letters in the spaces worn away. In the following reproduction these conjectural words are placed within brackets and italicised. The duty towards God, which is on the eastern side, is in Roman capitals, and probably had eleven lines, the first three of which are wholly gone. It runs thus:—

[The . duty . toward . god . is . to .
believe . in . him . to . love . him .
with . all . our . hert . & . soul .
and] . all . our . power . to . wors
hippe . god . to . give . him . tha
nkes . to . put . our . whole . trust
in . him . and . to . cal . on . him . to
honoure . his . holy . name [and
his] . worde . and . to . serve . god
[truly] . all . the . days . of . our
lyfe.

The duty towards our neighbour, on the western side, is in Old English letters, in fourteen lines, as follows:—

The . duety . [towards . our . neigh]boure . is
to . love . him . a[s . we . do . ourself . an]d . to
do . to . all . men . as . I . wo[uld . they . do . ]to . me
to . honour . and . obay . [the . King . and . all . set] under . him ? ? ?
beme ? ? [and . to . order . ourselves]
lowly . to . all . [our . betters] . to . hurt . no
body . by . word . nor . d[eed . to . be . jus]te . in . all
our . delyng . to . bear . no . [malice] . in . our . hert
to . kep . our . handes . from . stelyng . & . our
tong . from . evil . speaking . to . kep . our . bo
dys . in . temperance . not . to . covet . other . mens .
goods . but . laboure . truly . for . our . lyvyng . in . y^e
state . of . lyfe . it . plese . God . to . call . us . on . to .