Lincoln, however, saw John Wesley, for he preached in the Castle yard in 1780, as his father had done seventy-five years earlier, when he was spitefully imprisoned for debt. He was preaching at Lincoln again in 1788, and again in July, 1790, in the new Wesleyan Chapel. Eight months later he died. His last sermon was preached at Leatherhead, February 23, 1791, and his last letter was written on the following day to Dr. John Whitehead. He died on March 2, aged 88, having, as he said, during the whole of his life “never once lost a night’s sleep.” A memorial tablet to John and his brother Charles was placed in 1876 in Westminster Abbey. But there is also a fine statue of him as a preacher in gown and bands, showing a strong, rugged and kindly face, and at the base an inscription: “The world is my parish.” This is in front of the City Road Chapel, which he had built in Moorfields, and where he was buried, but not till 10,000 people had filed past to take their last look at the well-known face as he lay in the chapel.
Dean Stanley visiting this once, said that he would give a great deal to preach in the pulpit there, and when, to his query whether the ground was consecrated and by whom, the attendant answered, “Yes; by holding the body of John Wesley,” he rejoined, “A very good answer.”
John Wesley himself had been denied access to Church of England pulpits for fifty years, 1738-1788. Even when he preached at Epworth in 1742, it was from his father’s tombstone; and in most cases his congregations, which were often very large, were gathered together in the open air. We hear of him preaching to a large assemblage in the rain at North Elkington, on April 6, 1759; and also at Scawby, Tealby, Louth, Brigg and Cleethorpes; but in June, 1788, he notes in his diary: “Preached in church at Grimsby, the Vicar reading prayers (a notable change this), not so crowded in the memory of man.” Each president of the Wesleyan Conference sits in Wesley’s chair on his inauguration, and has Wesley’s Bible handed to him to hold, as John Wesley himself holds it in his left hand in the statue.
WARPING
We have alluded to the process of warping which is practised in the isle. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Weorpan (= to turn aside); it indicates the method by which the tide-water from the river, when nearly at its highest, is turned in through sluices upon the flat, low lands, and there retained by artificial banks until a sufficient deposit has been secured, when the more or less clarified water is turned back into the river at low tide, and the process may be continuously repeated for one, two, or three years. The water coming up with the tide is heavily charged with mud washed from the Humber banks, and this silt is deposited to the depth of some feet in places, and has always proved to be of the utmost fertility. The process is a rather difficult and expensive one, costing £10 an acre, but it needs doing only once in fourteen years or so. A wet season is bad for warping, and 1912 was as bad as 1913 was good.
At Crowle is a church of some importance, for in it is a bit of very early Anglian carving, probably of the seventh century. It is part of the stem of a cross, and has been used by the builders of the Norman church as a lintel for their tower arch. On it are represented a man on horseback (such as we see on the Gosforth cross, and on others in Northumbria), some interlacing work and a serpent with its tail in its mouth. Also two figures which I have nowhere seen accurately explained, but explanation is easy, for if you go and examine the great Anglian cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, you will find just such a pair of figures with their names written over them thus: “S. Paulus et S. Antonius panem fregerunt in Deserto.” The figures are so similar that they would seem to have been carved by the same hand, and the cross at Ruthwell can be dated on good evidence as but a year or two later than that at Bewcastle, whose undoubted date is 670.
ST. OSWALD
The church is dedicated to St. Oswald, not the archbishop of York who died in 992 and was buried at Worcester, but the sainted king of Northumbria who died in battle, slain by Penda, King of Mercia, at Maserfield, A.D. 642. His head, arms and hands were cut off, and set up as trophies, but were afterwards kept as holy relics, the hands at Bamborough, while one arm was for a time at Peterborough. The head was at Bamborough, and later at Lindisfarne in St. Cuthbert’s Cathedral, where the monks placed it in St. Cuthbert’s coffin. He had died in 687, and this coffin, when the Danes pillaged the cathedral, was taken away by the monks to Cumberland and carried by them from place to place in their flight, according to St. Cuthbert’s dying wish; and from 690 to 998, when it finally rested in the cathedral, it was kept in the coffin which is now in Durham Library. For 100 years, 783 to 893, it rested at Chester, and then passed to Ripon, and so to Durham, where it was enshrined and visited by hundreds of pilgrims. The marks of their feet are plain to see still. In 1104 the coffin was opened, and St. Oswald’s head seen in it. In 1542 the shrine being defaced, the body was buried beneath the pavement. In 1826 it was again opened, and some relics then taken out are now in the Cathedral Library—a ring, a cup and patten, the latter about six inches square, of oak with a thin plate of silver over it, and a stole. This was beautifully worked by the nuns at Winchester 1,000 years ago, and intended for Wulfstan, but on his death given by them to King Athelstan, and by him to St. Cuthbert’s followers.
ST. CUTHBERT’S TOMB
The late Dean Kitchin described to me how, in company with a Roman Catholic bishop and a medical man, he had opened what was supposed to be St. Cuthbert’s tomb about the beginning of this century. The old chronicler had related how he was slain in battle, how the body was hastily covered with sand and afterwards taken up, and for fear of desecration was carried about by the monks whithersoever they went, until at last it was laid in a tomb, and a shrine built over it in Durham Cathedral. He also said that the saint suffered from a tumour in the breast, the result of the plague in 661, which latterly had got better. It was known where the shrine was and the reputed tomb was close by. The tomb slab was removed; beneath it were bones enough to form the greater part of one skeleton, and there were two skulls. “What do you think of that?” asked the dean; the bishop at once replied “St. Oswald’s head.” The doctor then said, “This body has never been buried.” “How do you make that out?” “Because the skin has not decayed but dried on to the limbs as you see, as if it had been dried in sand,” just as tradition said. “Also,” he said, “there is a hole in the breast here which has partly filled up, evidence probably of a tumour or abscess which was healing,” again just what the chronicler stated. One of the skulls showed a cut right through the bone, like the cut of axe or sword, again corroborating the story of the death of St. Oswald in battle. The whole account seemed to me to be most interesting, and certainly it would be difficult to obtain more conclusive proof of the veracity in every detail of the old chronicler.