Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

"Then on the fourth day the Host drew together, with spoil beyond tale from all the country round, and set off towards Huntingdon. The two Sidroc Earls, at the crossing of the rivers, ever came last, to guard the rear of the whole army. Now all their host had passed over the river Nene safely; but, as they were themselves crossing, they had the bad luck to lose two carts, laden with untold wealth and plenishing, which sank in a deep eddy of the stream to the left of the stone bridge, so that horses and all were drowned before they could be got out. And while the whole household of Earl Sidroc the younger was busied in drawing out these same carts, and in transferring the spoil to other waggons and carriages, Brother Turgar slipped away and fled to the neighbouring forest. All night did he walk, and with the earliest dawn came into Crowland. There he found his fellow monks, who had got back from Thorney the day before, and were hard at work putting out the fires, which still had the mastery in many of the ruins of the Monastery.

"And when they saw him safe and sound they were somewhat comforted; but on hearing from him where their Abbot and the other Superiors and Brethren lay slain, and how all the sepulchres of the Saints were broken down, and all the monuments, and all the holy books and all the sacred bodies burnt up, all were stricken with grief unspeakable; and long was the lamentation and mourning that was made. Satiated at length with weeping, they turned again to putting out the conflagration. And when they raised the ruins of the church roof about the High Altar, they found the body of their venerable father and abbot, Theodore, beheaded, stripped, half burnt, and bruised, and crushed into the earth by the fallen timbers. This was on the eighth day after his murder, and a little away from the spot where he was slaughtered. And the other ministers, who fell with him, found they in like manner crushed into the ground by the weight of the beams—all save Wulfric the taper-bearer.

"But not all at once. For the bodies of some of the Brethren were not found till half a year after their martyrdom, and not in the places where they were slain. For Dom Paulinus and Dom Herbert, very old men, and decrepit, whose hands were cut off and themselves tortured to death in the Choir, were found, after a diligent search, not there but in the Chapterhouse. In like manner Dom Grimketyl and Dom Egmund, both some hundred years old, who had been thrust through with swords in the Cloister, were found in the Parlour. And the rest too, both children and old men, were sought for in divers places, even as Brother Turgar told just how each had been slain; and at last were all found, with many a doleful plaint and many a tear, save Wulfric only. And Dom Brickstan, once the Precentor of the monastery, a most skilful musician and poet, who was amongst the survivors, wrote on the ashes of Crowland that Lament which is so well known and begins thus:

'Desolate how dost thou sit, who late wast Queen among Houses
Church so noble of old; erst so beloved of God.'

(Quomodo sola sedes, dudum regina domorum,
Nobilis ecclesia, et nuper amica Dei).

"Now when the Monastery, after long and hard work, was cleared, so far as was then possible, from filth and ashes, they took counsel on choosing them a Pastor; and when the election was held, the venerable Father Godric, though much against his will, was made Abbot. To him came that venerable old man Toretus, the Prior of Thorney, and his Sub-prior, Dom Tissa, both anchorites of the utmost sanctity. And devoutly they prayed him that he would deign to take with him certain Brethren and come to Peterborough, and give, of his charity, Christian burial to the bodies of their Abbot and the other Brethren, which yet remained unburied and exposed to beasts and birds. The Abbot gave heed unto their prayer, and with many of the brethren (amongst them Brother Turgar) came unto Peterborough, where all the Brethren of Thorney met him. And with much labour the bodies of all the monks of that Monastery were got together, 84 by tale, and buried in one wide grave in the midst of the Abbey cemetery, over against what was once the East End of the Church. This was on St. Cecilia's day (November 22).

"And over the body of the Abbot, as he lay amid his children, he placed a three-sided stone, three feet high and three long and one broad, bearing carved likenesses of the Abbot, and his monks standing around him. And this stone, in memory of the ruined Abbey, bade he thenceforward to be called Medehampstead. And once in every year, while he lived, did he visit it; and, pitching his tent above the stone, said Mass for two days with instant devotion for the souls of those there buried.

"Through the midst of that cemetery there ran the King's highway (Via Regia); and this stone was on the right thereof, as one comes up from the aforesaid stone bridge towards Holland (S.E. Lincolnshire); and on the left stood a stone cross bearing a carven image of the Saviour; which our Abbot Godric then set there, to the intent that travellers who passed by might be mindful of that holy Abbey, and pray to the Lord for the souls of the Faithful who lay in that cemetery."

The Abbot of Thorney was also "mitred," and the House ranked as second only to Ely in the county. William of Malmesbury (A.D. 1135) describes it as "a little paradise, delightsome as heaven itself may be deemed, fen-circled, yet rich in loftiest trees, where water-meadows delight the eye with rich green, where streamlets glide unchecked through each field. Scarce a spot of ground lies there waste; here are orchards, there vineyards. Nature vies with culture, and what is unknown to the one is produced by the other. And what of the glorious buildings, whose very size it is a wonder that the ground can support amid such marshes? A vast solitude is here the monks' lot, that they may the more closely cling to things above. If a woman is there seen, she is counted a monster, but strangers, if men, are greeted as angels unawares. Yet there none speaketh, save for the moment; all is holy silence.... Truly I may call that island a hostel of chastity, a tavern of honesty, a gymnasium of divine philosophy. From its dense thickets it is called Thorney."

At the draining of the Fens, in the seventeenth century, Thorney was assigned to the Earls (now Dukes) of Bedford, who, during the nineteenth century alone, have expended on their Thorney estates nearly £2,000,000. Yet the Thorney property does not even pay its way. The noble owners have, however, their reward in the genuine success which has crowned the experiment from a philanthropic point of view. Thanks to their efforts, Thorney is again, as in the old days of the Benedictines, a smiling, well-wooded oasis amid the dreary Fenland; where the welfare of the tenantry is, as of old, the chief object of the landlord, and where, in consequence, pauperism, drunkenness, and crime are alike practically unknown. The remains of the Abbey Church are still used for parochial worship, but only 117 of its original 290 feet of length have survived Henry the Eighth's demolitions.