[Footnote 98: Strange vicissitudes of kitchens—in 1667 this Glastonbury Abbey kitchen was hired by the Quakers as a meeting-house; in the fulness of time, where monasticism cooked its mutton Quakerdom sat in triumph.]
Attached to the kitchen was the almonry, or eleemosynarium, where on Wednesdays and Fridays the poor people of Glastonbury and its neighborhood were liberally relieved. This duty was committed to a grave monk, who [{672}] was called the almoner, or eleemosynarius, and who had to inquire after the poor and sick. No abbots in the kingdom were more liberal in the discharge of these two duties of their office, hospitality and almsgiving, than the abbots of Glastonbury. It was not an unusual thing for them to entertain 500 guests at a sitting, some of whom were of the first rank in the country, and the loose charge of riotous feasting which has been thoughtlessly made against the monastic life by hostile historians becomes modified when we recollect that in that age there were scarcely any wayside inns in the country, and all men, when travelling, halted at the monastery and looked for refreshment and shelter as a matter of right; neither had that glorious system of union work-houses been thought of, and therefore the sick and the poor fell at once to the care of the monastery, where they were cheerfully relieved and tenderly treated. Last, but not least, was the department for boys—another little detached community, with its own school-room, dormitory, refectory, hall, etc. One of the monks presided over them. They were taught Christian doctrine, music, grammar, and, if any showed capacity, the subjects necessary for the university. They were maintained free, and had to officiate in the church as choristers; a system maintained almost to the letter up to the very present moment. William of Malmesbury records that in the churchyard of Glastonbury Abbey stood some very ancient pyramids close to the sarcophagus of King Arthur. The tallest was nearest the church, twenty-six feet in height, consisting of five stories, or courses; in the upper course was the figure of a bishop, in the second of a king, with this inscription—HER. SEXI. and BLISVVERH. In the third the names WEMCRESTE, BANTOMP, WENETHEGN. In the fourth—HATE, WVLFREDE, and EANFLEDE. In the fifth, and last, the figure of an abbot, with the following inscription—LOGVVOR, WESLIELAS and BREGDENE, SVVELVVES HVVINGENDES, and BERNE. The other pyramid was eighteen feet in height, and consisted of four stories, whereon were inscribed in large letters HEDDE Episcopus BREGORRED and BEORVVALDE. William of Malmesbury could give no satisfactory solution to the meaning of these inscriptions beyond the suggestion that the word BREGDENE must have meant a place then called "Brentacnolle," which now exists under the name of Brent Knowle, and that BEORWALDE was Beorwald, the abbot after Hemigselus. He concludes his speculation, however, with the sentence—"Quid haec significent non temere diffinio sed ex suspicione colligo eorum interius in cavatis lapidibus contineri ossa quorum exterius leguntur nomina." [Footnote 99]
[Footnote 99: Guliel. Malms. Hist. Glaston.]
The man who ruled over this miniature world, with a state little short of royalty, was endowed with proportionate dignities; being a member of the upper house of convocation and a parliamentary baron, he sat robed and mitred amongst the peers of the country; in addition to his residence at the abbey he had four or five rural retreats at easy distances from it, with parks, gardens, fisheries, and every luxury; his household was a sort of court, where the sons of noblemen and gentlemen were sent to be trained and educated. When at home he royally entertained his 300 guests, and when he went abroad he was attended by a guard of 100 men. The rent-roll of the monastery has been computed to amount to more than £300,000 per annum, which in these days would be equal to nearly half a million. Up to the year 1154 he ranked also as First Abbot of England, and took precedence of all others; but Adrian the Fourth, the only Englishman who ever ascended the papal chair, bestowed that honor upon the Abbot of St. Albans, where he had received his education. The church, and different offices which clustered round it, formed a kingdom, [{673}] over which he ruled with absolute power. This description of the buildings and adjuncts of the abbey may not be inaptly closed by giving a sketch of the outline of a monastic day, which will assist the reader to form a clearer idea of the monastic life. At two in the morning the bell tolled for matins, when every monk arose, and after performing his private devotions hastened to the church, and took his seat. When all were assembled fifteen psalms were sung, then came the nocturn, and more psalms; a short interval ensued, during which the chanter choir and those who needed it had permission to retire for a short time if they wished; then followed lauds, which were generally finished by six A.M., when the bell rang for prime; when this was finished the monks continued reading till seven o'clock, when the bell was rung and they returned to put on their day clothes. Afterward, the whole convent having performed their ablutions and broken their fast, proceeded again to the church, and the bell was rung for tierce at nine o'clock. After tierce came the morning mass, and as soon as that was over they marched in procession to the chapter-house for business and correction of faults. This ceremony over, the monks worked or read till sext, twelve A.M., which service concluded, they dined; then followed the hour's sleep in their clothes in the dormitory, unless any of them preferred reading. Nones commenced at three P.M., first vespers at four, then work or reading till second vespers at seven, afterward reading till collation; then came the service of complin, confession of sins, evening prayers, and retirement to rest about nine P.M.
That was the life pursued at Glastonbury Abbey, according to the Benedictine rule, from the time of its establishment there until the dissolution of the monastery, nearly ten centuries. With our modern training and predilections, it is a marvel to us that men could be found willing to submit to such a monotonous career—ten hours a day spent in the church, beginning in the middle of the night, winter and summer. And yet the monastery was always full. We read of no breaking up of institutions for want of devotees, and we are driven to the conclusion that in the age when the monastic life was in its power and purity these men could have been actuated by none other than the motive of strong religious fervor—a fervor of which we in modern times have neither conception nor example. The operation of the influence of that life upon the history of these islands can only be contemplated by watching it in the various phases of its action upon the politics, literature, and art by which it was surrounded, and for that purpose we have selected this oldest and grandest specimen of English monasticism, so faintly described, the mother Church of our country, in whose career so brilliant, so varied, and so tragically ended, we hope to be able to show wherein was the glory, the weakness, and the ruin of the system, as it rose, flourished, and fell in England.
We have endeavored to conjure up from the shadowy realms of the past some faint representation of what Glastonbury Abbey was in the days of its glory; let us now transfer ourselves from the age of towered abbeys, wandering pilgrims, monks, cloisters, and convent bells to this noisy, riotous, busy time in the year of grace 1865—from the Glastonbury Abbey of the sixteenth century to the Glastonbury Abbey of to-day.
It is only within the last ten years that the deep slumber of that quiet neighborhood has been disturbed by the noise and bustle of this busy life—that a railroad has gone out of its way to upset the sedate propriety of ecclesiastical Wells, or the peaceful repose of monasterial Glastonbury; hitherto the stillness and quiet of that lovely country was the same as when mass was sung in the superb cathedral of the one place, and the palmer or the [{674}] penitent bent his steps to the holy well of the other. But alas! the life of the nineteenth century has broken in upon it; the railway has dashed through that beautiful valley with its sacrilegious march; and at Wells, the cathedral of Ina, with its matchless front, studded with apostles and martyrs, kings, bishops, knights, and mystic emblems, vocal as it were with history, now frowns upon the contentions of two rival companies; whilst at Glastonbury there is a railway station erected almost over the very bones of the saints. Alighting from this, we make our way to the ruins; but as we go, will just view their past history. After the dissolution of the abbey there was an effort made to restore it in the time of Mary, but unavailingly; from that period it was allowed to fall into decay. It is difficult to estimate whether the hand of man or the hand of time has been busier about its spoliation. At the period of Cromwell, who loved to worship God in the "ugliness of holiness," it must have been nearly entire, but that hero could not pass the town without putting a shot through those unoffending ruins in the name of the Lord, which act, however appropriate as an expression of Puritan feeling, was sadly detrimental to the architecture of Glastonbury Abbey. Then in 1667, as we have already alluded to, the Quakers got possession of the kitchen, hired at a nominal rent, paid in hard Quaker money—that glorious kitchen, sanctified by so much saintly cookery—for their grim assemblies. There is a great deal of what is aptly called the "romance" of history in this fact if we only had time to think about it—that it should come to this, monasticism with its princely head, its grand religions life and ceremonies, its painting and staining, its chanting and intoning, itself in all its glory, driven from the face of the country, and modern Quakerdom sitting silent in its ruined kitchen waiting to be "moved." It has suffered much, also, from the gross vandalism of the people themselves. Naturally a simple people, they of course knew nothing of antiquarianism, although that science is irreverently said to master many simples among its votaries. For years then it was their practice to use the materials of the abbey for building purposes, and it is not difficult to find scattered for miles around the country, in farmhouses and even in hovels, portions of sculpture over doorways and fireplaces which speak of mediaeval workmanship. But a worse degradation still befel the place, and the walls which at one time would have been regarded as invested with the odor of sanctity, and even now are sacred to us as a priceless historical monument, were actually sold as materials for mending the roads, to the lasting shame of overseerdom and the powers that were at Glastonbury. But the day for building huts or mending roads with ecclesiastical sculpture is gone, and the little that remains of Glastonbury Abbey has found its way into the hands of those who appear to know how to preserve it, and have the intention to do so. After all this decay and vandalism very little is left of the old abbey—some portions of St. Joseph's church with the crypt—some walls of the choir of the great church; the two east pillars of the tower, forming a grand broken arch, a lasting memento of the original splendor; there are portions, also, of some of the chapels and the abbot's kitchen, the most complete of all. The eye is at once arrested by the portals of St. Joseph's church, which still remain in a tolerable state of preservation, sufficient to enable one to form an idea of what a triumph of decorative art they were. Nothing could be more profusely ornamented than the northern portal; it was composed of semi-circular arches, receding in succession and diminishing in size as they recede into the body of the building; the exterior arch being about twelve feet by eleven, and the interior nine feet by six. The four fasciae are covered with sculptured representations supposed to be [{675}] commemorations of royal and noble people connected with the monastery—saints, pilgrims, and knights. The forms graven on these fasciae are interpreted in Warner's History of Glastonbury to represent the following subjects. The uppermost fascia is almost obliterated, though still showing a running pattern of tendrils and leaves interspersed with figures of men and animals; toward the centre the sculpture is much mutilated, though something can be traced like the effigy of a person in long robes seized on the shoulder by a furious animal. Beyond him are indistinct remains of three or four upright figures, and the rest is filled up by foliage. The second fascia is made up of eighteen separate ovals, each of which contained a distinct subject; the two first are defaced; the third contains a person apparently kneeling; the fourth, a female with a head-dress sitting on a conch; the fifth, a female on horseback; the sixth, a man on horseback; the seventh, a crowned personage on horseback; the eighth, the body of a deceased person stretched on a couch, with a canopy over it, the corpse covered, and the head resting on a pillow; nine and ten the same; eleven, a knight in a coat of chain armor, with a pointed shield charged with the cross, indicative of a crusader; twelve, a regal personage with a flowing beard and in long robes, crowned, and sitting on a throne; thirteen, a knight in chain armor falling from his horse as if wounded; fourteen, a figure like the former, the right arm stretched out and holding a sword which impales an infant; fifteen, the upright figure of a female with a veil, apparently in male costume; sixteenth, another body stretched out on a couch; seventeen, unintelligible; eighteen, a figure of a pilgrim. The intervals between all these ovals are sculptured into foliage. There can be very little doubt that the subjects contained in these ovals were the representations of monarchs, knights, persons, and events connected with the history of the abbey. The fourth fascia is much mutilated; but Warner thinks it referred to some act of munificence, from the canopied couch it displays, with a figure recumbent upon it and representations of angels guarding it. The portal toward the south was on a similar plan to the northern, but with five instead of four fasciae. One, two, and five are covered with finely chiseled foliage; the third is plain; the fourth only partially worked. According to the authority already mentioned, the only two ovals which are complete represent in the first the creation of man, and in the second the eating of the fruit. In the former is to be seen an upright figure with a nimbus or glory round its head, designating the Almighty in the act of calling man into being, and at his feet is man himself. In the latter there is the tree with Satan behind it, and Adam and Eve sitting with the apples. The appearance of these two portals, independent of the interest lent them by Warner's speculations as to their import, is very striking. In their perfection they must have been masterpieces of that exquisite taste and minute labor which the men of that age devoted to the embellishment of the church. Taking the ruins in a mass, it would be difficult to find anywhere such a specimen of broken grandeur. Standing upon the spot at the extreme east, where was the high altar of the church, the eye wanders down a grand vista of some five hundred feet, relieved in the midst by that solitary, magnificent, broken arch towering up high in the air, with rich festoons of ivy hanging about it in lavish luxuriance like the tresses of some gigantic beauty, and far down in the distance are the crumbling remains of St. Joseph's chapel, the gem of the whole, with its arched windows and profuse decoration, the tops of its walls covered over with straggling parasites, which curl over its brow like the scanty locks of sere old age. And as we reflect that this sacred spot was the cradle of our [{676}] Christianity; that this building was the mother of our Church; that far back in the bygone ages of barbarism vagrant missionaries wandered foot-sore and worn to this very spot; planted with their own hands the cross of Christ; built up with those hands the rude rush-covered shed which served as the first temple raised to God in these islands; spent their lives here in preaching that good tidings to a benighted pagan people, laid their bones down by the side of the work of their hands, and left their mission to their successors; that in process of time this little community became a mighty power, and that rush-covered shed a splendid temple, whose history is collateral with that of the country for nearly twelve centuries, and now it lies all battered and broken, crumbling away and wasting like human life itself—the mind shrinks appalled at the thought of the vicissitude which brought about so complete a ruin.
"O who thy ruine sees, whom wonder doth not fill
With our great father's pompe, devotion, and their skill?
Thou more than mortall power (this judgment rightly waid)
Then present to assist at that foundation laid;
On whom for this sad waste, should justice lay the crime?
Is there a power in fate? or doth it yield to time?
Or was this error such that thou could'st not protect
Those buildings which thy hands did with their zeal erect?
To whom did'st thou commit that monument to keepe?
That suffereth with the dead their memory to sleepe.
When not great Arthur's tombe, nor Holy Joseph's grave,
From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save;
He who that God-in-Man to his sepulchre brought,
Or he which for the faith twelve famous battles fought;
What? did so many Kings do honour to that place
For avarice at last so vilely to deface?" [Footnote 100]
[Footnote 100: Drayton's Polyolbion]
In the neighborhood of the town is a hill known all over the world by the name of Wearyall Hill, so called (according to the chronicles) because St. Joseph and his companions sat down here to rest themselves, weary with their journey. As the legend goes St. Joseph is said to have stuck his staff in the earth and left it there, when lo! it took root, grew, and constantly budded on Christmas Day! This was the legendary origin of the far-famed holy thorn. Up to the time of Queen Elizabeth it had two trunks or bodies, and so continued until some nasal psalm-spoiler of Cromwell's "crew" exterminated one, leaving the other to become the wonder of all strangers, who even then began to flock to the place. The blossoms of this remaining branch of the holy thorn became such a curiosity that there was a general demand for them from all parts of the world, and the Bristol merchants, then very great people in their "line," turned this relic of the saint into a matter of commercial speculation, and made goodly sums of money by exporting the blossoms to foreign countries. There are trees from the branches of this thorn growing at the present moment in many of the gardens and nurseries round about Glastonbury, nay, all over England, and in various parts of the Continent. The probability is, as suggested by Collinson in his "History of Somerset," that the monks procured the tree from Palestine, where many of the same sort flourish.