Percy, brother of the famous Earl of Northumberland,
was another who wore the mitre of the see; he lies buried before the roodloft door. Henry de Spencer, the warrior bishop, is another, who raised and headed an army of three thousand men, and conducted it in person to Flanders, where he figured prominently in the wars between Richard and the French king, as well as in the struggles of Urban and Clement for the papacy. His military fame was rivalled by his notorious zeal in the cause of his church, evidenced by unmitigated persecution of the Lollards, whose adherence to the doctrines of Wickliffe was rewarded by every variety of penance or punishment that could be devised to exterminate the heresy. A splendid monument of this spirit of the man and age is left us in the magnificent gateway opposite the West entrance to the cathedral, erected by Sir Thomas Erpingham, at the bidding of De Spencer, as a penance for his sympathy with these heretical doctrines. Above the doorway is an effigy of himself in armour, kneeling and asking pardon for his offence. Rugg—an instrument of Henry’s, in obtaining the divorce of Catherine of Arragon; Hopkin—a notorious persecutor of the Protestants in Mary’s reign; Parkhurst—a literary celebrity; Wren—the victim of Puritanism, which placed him a prisoner in the tower for eighteen years without a trial; Butts—a friend of Cranmer; Horne, whose letters on infidelity have given him a fame; and
Bathurst, respected in the memory of many yet living; are names conspicuous in the catalogue; not yet complete without two others, Stanley and Hinde. Of Hinde we can but say his work is yet in hand, he is earning his place in history, for some future pen to chronicle; but may be, no fitter subject could be offered for a closing scene to this chapter on the bishops and cathedral of this see, than memory can recal of that day, when beneath the lofty nave of the one, a grave was opened to receive the mortal remains of the loved and honoured Stanley. Who, among the thousands that then gathered themselves together, wearing not alone the outer symbols of mourning and grief, but carrying in their hearts deep sorrow, and in their eyes unbidden tears—who will forget the solemn stillness of the thronged multitude as the simple pall was borne, unmocked by plumes or other idle trappings of fictitious woe, through the avenues of unhired mutes, whose heads were bowed in heartfelt reverence, and lines of infant mourners, clad in the livery of their benefactor’s bounty, and watering the pathway to his tomb with honest tears of childhood’s love—the attitudes of grief and saddened faces that filled the crowded aisles, and no less crowded walks above—the hushed breathing that left the air free to echo the tones of the wailing dirge, as it rose upon the voices of the surpliced choir, who mourned
a child of harmony, and wafted their strains of lamentation through all the heights of the vaulted roof, while beneath its centre the grave was receiving the earthly tabernacle of the good, the noble-hearted, and the great in deeds of love and charity? Who does not remember the measured tread of the dispersing thousands, as each took his last look of the simple coffin in its last resting-place, and as the dead march sent forth its full low notes from the organ’s peal, and the rich closing bursts of harmony proclaimed like a rush of mighty wind the soul’s release and triumph? and who has not often since lingered around the simple marble slab that marks the spot, and felt that it had been consecrated as a shrine, by a baptism of tears from the fountain of loving hearts on that memorable day?
CHAPTER III.
the castle.
The Castle.—Present aspect.—Grave of the Murderer.—Historical Associations.—View from the Battlements.—Thorpe.—Kett’s Castle.—Lollard’s Pit.—Mousehold.—Plan of Military Structure of Feudal Times.—Marriage of Ralph Guader.—Roger Bigod.—Feudal Ranks.—Social Life.—Field Sports.—Hawking.—Legend of Lothbroc.—Laws of Chivalry.—Tournaments.—Feminine Occupations.—Tapestry.
In the centre of the Old City rises one of those huge mounds, heaped up by our ancient warrior forefathers, which here and there, over the surface of our island, yet stand out in bold relief against the blue back-ground of the sky, like giant models for some modern monster twelfth-cake, only, however, occasionally crowned by the original structures, of which they were the ground-works, and in no other case, perhaps by one whose outward coating of modern date more thoroughly might carry out the suggested idea of a frosted moulding, designed to grace the summit of a supper-table fortification.
How involuntary is the longing to peel off the
pasty composition and find the substance hidden beneath, be it as crumbly and mottled as the most luscious monument ever reared in honour of the feast of the Epiphany, from the era of the Magi downwards. But so it may not be; the flinty roughnesses of the past are hidden from our eyes by the soft covering of refined stucco, and we must be content with the attempt of ingenious modern masonry to give us an impress of what the castle called Blanchflower was, in lieu of beholding it unspoiled save by the hand of time. It is, however, something to know that there really does exist beneath that outer casing, a bonâ fide mass of flint and stone, some portions of which at least have stood, even from the days of the sea-king Canute; by him raised on the site of the royal residence of East Anglian princes, and yet earlier dwelling place of Gurguntus and other British kings, and by him suffered to retain the name of “Blanchflower,” first given, so legends say, by one of its royal owners in honour of his mother, Blanche, a kinswoman of the mighty Cæsar. There it yet stands, its very roots planted high above the topmost stories of all meaner habitations, its battlements towering to the sky, as though climbing from their earthen base through the turrets and towers, reared as a stronghold for human pride and ambition, to heights that would rival the lofty spire in the valley beneath, that blends itself with
the heaven to which it points in the solemn attitude of silent devotion, as if to ask, “Which can do the greatest works, man serving man, or man serving God?”