made at this period for the pilgrims, that they might complete their devotions at the Mount by sitting in this St. Michael’s Chair, as denominated, and by showing themselves as pilgrims to the country round. Hence, in an author[6] who alludes to customs without feeling the force of his allusion, we read this intimation:
Who knowes not Michael’s Mount and Chaire,
The pilgrim’s holy vaunt?
We thus find a reason for the construction of such a chair, that comports with all the purposes of the church on the tower of which it is constructed, and that shows it ministered equally with this to the uses of religion then predominant; making it not, as Carew most extravagantly makes it, “somewhat dangerous for access, and therefore holy for the adventure,” but holy in itself, as on the church-tower, holy in its purposes, as the seat of the pilgrims, and doubly holy as the seat of accomplishment to all their vows, as the seat of invitation to all the country. And the whole church remains to this day, beaten by the rains and buffeted by the winds, yet a venerable monument of Saxon architecture.
This Mount appears decisively, from the charter of the Confessor, to have been in his time not surrounded with the sea during all the flood tide, and not accessible by land only during some hours of the ebb-tide, as it is at present. It was then not surrounded at all. It was only near the sea then. Thus the Confessor describes it expressly, as “Sanctum Michaelem qui est juxta mare.” But as Worcestre adds, with a range back into the past that is very striking, yet is in general confirmed by the charter above, “the space of ground upon Mount St. Michael is two hundred cubits, surrounded with the ocean,” at flood tide; “the place aforesaid was originally inclosed with a very thick wood, distant from the ocean six miles, affording the finest shelter for wild beasts.”
THE EDITOR.
Nothing is known with any certainty respecting the ancient state of St. Michael’s Mount.
It may have been the seat of a Celtic superstition somewhat similar to that imagined and described by Dr. William Borlase. Sir Christopher Hawkins has adduced many arguments for proving this semi-island to have been the Ictis of Diodorus Siculus; and its situation, united to its sea-port, may well have recommended such a place for a factory to the merchants of any civilized nation engaged in commercial transactions with people so rude as were the Britons of those remote times. The universal practice in our days, is to establish fortified stations under similar circumstances, since neither person or property can be effectually protected in any other way.
The earliest definite tradition of a Christian establishment dates with the pilgrimage of St. Kenna, in consequence of the appearance of the Arch-angel at that place. No particular circumstances are ever related of this extraordinary vision, neither as to the occasion nor as to the persons so eminently favoured as to behold the celestial glory, nor as to the time, nor of the exact spot, since it could not have taken place on the top of the tower, that building having been constructed in honour of the vision itself.