We may visit his tomb ourselves. His dust lies in the cathedral at the entrance to the choir, beyond that ugly inverted arch that was set up for safety’s sake in the fourteenth century; but in later days his tomb has been treated less reverently than of yore. Its carved and painted canopy stands broken and empty in the chapel of St. Calixtus, and in the south aisle of the choir is the rather ghastly tomb—bishop above and skeleton below—which the burgesses visited so gratefully. It is a rare and delightful custom here that allows one to walk alone through the choir and exquisite lady-chapel; to linger at will by the throne where William Laud and Thomas Ken have sat; to picture Lord Grey standing with drawn sword before this altar, to defend it from the rabble that followed Monmouth; to seek out Bishop Button’s tomb, which cured so many mediæval toothaches; to mount the long flight of footworn steps to the chapter-house, and rest beneath its lovely vault in silence. These same steps lead also to the gallery that was built by Beckington for the use of the priest-vicars, whose peaceful close is reached by a gateway of its own, outside the Chain Gate.
THE BISHOP’S EYE, WELLS.
Beyond the cloisters is the palace: the fortified gatehouse, the towers and drawbridge that Ralph of Shrewsbury found it wise to set between himself and the citizens; the moat that is filled every day from St. Andrew’s Well; the shattered banquet-hall where Edward III. once ate his Christmas dinner; the great red dwelling-house that has passed for nearly seven centuries from hand to hand. “Many bisshops hath bene the makers of it, as it is now,” says Leland. It has had Wolsey for its master though not its inmate; it has been stolen by Somerset the Protector; it has been the home of Bishop Laud. Saintly Thomas Ken went from its seclusion for a little time to join the rest of the Seven Bishops in the wild uproar of their trial and acquittal, and later on was driven from its doors by William of Orange. Here is Ken’s summer-house, at the upper corner of the garden that he loved. Local tradition, whose wish is usually father to its thought, declares that he wrote his Evening Hymn in this little summer-house at the end of the terrace; but history, I believe, says otherwise. It is tradition, too, that accuses Bishop Barlow of stripping the lead from the roof of the banquet-hall, whose great windows we see so plainly from this terrace. Barlow’s misdeeds at St. David’s have given him a well-deserved bad name; but, on this occasion only, he was more sinned against than sinning, for the palace and many other things were wrung from him by Protector Somerset, from whom they passed to one Sir John Gates. This vandal was the destroyer of the banquet-hall, and would probably have done more mischief than he did, if he had not been most justifiably beheaded.
It is behind the palace that we find the loveliest spot in Wells. Here, overlooked by sixteenth-century oriels, are the springs that long ago gave the city its name—the wells of St. Andrew, whose still surface has reflected for hundreds of years the beautiful east end of the cathedral. For hundreds of years, too, its waters have fed the moat. It is only at certain hours, of course, that strangers may walk in the palace garden; but the moat that circles it and the towers that guard it are visible to everyone. So is the swan who rings for his dinner when it is late, with all the jerky impatience of a man in the same plight.
WELLS CATHEDRAL.
There is something that takes a hold on the imagination in the very dulness of the country that lies between Wells and Glastonbury. For the reason that this road with the rough surface is so level, and has such uninteresting surroundings, is that all this country was once the swampy land that lay round the Isle of Avalon. There is Glastonbury Tor before us, conspicuous for many a mile with its steep sides and crowning tower; and here on our left is the orchard-clad slope of Avalon itself, where “golden apples smile in every wood.”
We drive slowly down the long High Street of Glastonbury.