CHAPTER XLI
CROYLAND
St. Guthlac—Abbot Joffrid—Boundary Crosses—The Triangular Bridge—Figure with Sceptre and Ball—Lincolnshire swan-marks.
As you pass in the train along the line from Peterborough to Spalding, and have got a mile or two north of Deeping St. James station, you can see to the east in a cluster of trees a broad tower with a short, thick spire standing out as the only feature in a wide, flat landscape. This, for all who know it, has a mysterious attraction, for it is the sorrowful ruin of a once magnificent building, a far-famed centre of light and learning from whence came the brains, the piety, and the wealth which, issuing over the fens of south-east Lincolnshire, not only supplied the first lecturers to Cambridge, but planted those splendid churches for which the “parts of Holland” are famous to this day. For this is the great Abbey of Crowland, or Croyland, the home of the good St. Guthlac, to whose memory this and many another church was dedicated, and to whose shrine pilgrimage was made for several centuries. It stands alone on a once desolate and still sparsely inhabited and seemingly endless fen, and past it the Welland flows down to the long serpentine lake beloved of skaters, which is spelt Cowbit, but called by all Lincolnshire folk “Cubbit Wash.”
Croyland is an older name than Crowland, and the fine church and monastery to which it owes its fame was set up in the eighth century, by King Æthelbald, in grateful memory of St. Guthlac. Now St. Guthlac is no legendary saint; he was a member of the Mercian royal house, who, tired of soldiering, sought a retirement from the world; and certainly few better places could be found than what was then a desolate, reedy waste of waters at the point where Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire meet by the edge of Deeping Fen. No road led to it, and the fenmen’s boats were the only means of passage.
Cowbit Church.
ST. GUTHLAC
Guthlac was, we are told, the son of Penwald, a Mercian nobleman, and he was very likely born not far from Croyland. After nine years’ military service he entered the monastery of Hrypadon, or Repton, and after two years’ study resolved to take up the life of an Anchorite. So, in defiance of the evil spirits who were reputed to have their abode there, and who were probably nothing but the shrieking sea-gulls and the melancholy cries of the bittern and curlew, he landed on a bit of dry ground two miles to the north-east of Croyland, now called Anchor-Church-Hill, just east of the Spalding road. Here were some British or Saxon burial mounds, on one of which he set up his hut and chapel, while his sister Pega established herself a few miles to the south-west, at Peakirk. He had landed on his island on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 699, a young man of twenty-six, and here he was visited by Bishop Hædda, who ordained him in 705. In 709 Æthelbald being outlawed by his cousin King Coelred, took sanctuary with St. Guthlac, who prophesied to him that he would one day be king, and without bloodshed. St. Guthlac died in 713 or 714, but Æthelbald, who had vowed to build a monastery for Guthlac if ever he could, did become king in 716, and in gratitude built the first stone church and endowed a monastery for Benedictines at Croyland. Naturally St. Guthlac was the patron saint, and to him was joined St. Bartholomew, on whose day he had first come to Croyland.
FOUNDATIONS OF THE ABBEY
ABBOTS OF CROYLAND