St. Guthlac is represented in his statue as bearing the scourge of St. Bartholomew, on whose feast day each year little knives were given away emblematic of his martyrdom by flaying. The custom was not abolished till 1476. Pictures of the scourge and knives are found in the stained glass of old windows; for instance, at Bag-Enderby, near Somersby. In 866 the Danes burnt the monastery. Eighty years later the chancellor of King Edred, whose name is variously given as Turketyl, or Thurcytel, restored the church and monastery, and became the first abbot in 946, about which time he founded the Croyland library. The first church was built on a peat bog; oak piles five and a half feet long being driven through the peat on to gravel, and above the piles recent digging has shown alternate layers of loose stone and quarry-dust, above which the stone foundations of the tower were found to go down fifteen inches below the surface, and to rest on a mixture of rubble and stiff soil which was brought in boats a distance of nine miles. Thurcytel’s church, which was cruciform and of considerable size and held one large bell, has almost, if not entirely, disappeared. The monastery was finished after his death by his successor, Egelric, who added six other bells in 976. The Danes, by cruel and repeated exactions, ruined the abbey which Thurcytel had left so richly endowed, in the time of Egelric’s successor, Godric, about 1010. This Egelric must not be confused with the Peterborough abbot of the same name, who became Bishop of Durham and made the great causeway from Deeping to Spalding in 1052, probably to give work to the peasantry in the year of the dreadful famine, 1051.
On so treacherous a foundation the monks wisely built in wood rather than stone when possible, but they had no preservatives for wood in those days, hence, in 1061, Abbot Ulfcytel had to rebuild the wooden erections which were attached to the monastery. He was greatly helped by the famous Waltheof, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, and when, on the false accusation of his infamous wife Judith, sister of William I., Waltheof was beheaded at Winchester, the monks got leave from the Conqueror to have his body buried at Croyland. In 1076 Ingulphus became abbot, and, owing to the carelessness of some plumbers—an old and ever-recurring story—the whole of the buildings were again burnt down and the library of 700 MSS. destroyed. It is to the Chronicle of Ingulphus that we owe most of our knowledge of the early history of Croyland, and even if the Chronicle were written three centuries after his death, it still contains much sound and reliable information. Certainly after the fire his building was patched up for a generation, and the Abbot Joffrid, a man of extraordinary learning, zeal, and skill, built in 1109 what may well be called the third abbey. Most of Thurcytel’s work which had escaped the fire was taken down, and the foundations carried down to the gravel bed below the peat. Of this building, which was carried out by Arnold, a lay monk and a very skilful mason, the two western piers and arch of the central tower remain, but an earthquake in 1113 damaged the nave, and when in 1143 it was partly burnt down again, for the third time, Abbot Edward restored it. King Henry had sent for Joffrid (or Geoffrey) from Normandy. Among other remarkable deeds he sent four learned monks to give a course of lectures on grammar, logic, rhetoric and philosophy in a barn which they hired in Cambridge, or Grantbridge as it was then called. Sermons were also preached there in French and Latin, both by the monk Gilbert and by the abbot himself, of whom we are told that, though his numerous hearers understood neither language, the force of his subject and his comely person excited them to give amply towards his building fund. The account of the laying of the first stones of his new abbey is very remarkable. Five thousand persons were assembled and feasted on the spot, and many distinguished people took part, each laying one stone and placing on it a handsome offering of money, or titles to property, or patronage, or land, or possession of yearly tithes of sheep, gifts of corn or malt or stone, or the service for so many years of quarriers at the stone pits, with carriage of stone in boats.
Croyland lost a good friend by the death of Queen Maud, wife of Henry I., in 1118. She had been the especial patroness of the abbot Joffrid, and had founded the first Austin priory in England in 1108. Twenty years later King Stephen gave a fresh charter to the abbey, in the time of Abbot Edward, who commenced to re-build the abbey in 1145. The beautiful west front of the nave, some of which remains, was possibly planned by Henry de Longchamp in 1190, but was not finished till the time of Richard de Upton, 1417-1427. His predecessor, Thomas de Overton, had rebuilt the nave in 1405, and it was during his abbacy that Croyland became a mitred abbey.
THE MASTER MASON
The architect and master mason under Richard de Upton was one William de Wernington, or William de Croyland, whose monument is in the tower now. The effigy wears a monk’s cowl and long robe, and holds a builder’s square and compasses and has this inscription: “ICI : GIST : MESTRE : WILLM : DE : WERMIGTON : LE : MASON : A : LALME : DE : KY : DEVY : P″SA : GRACE : DOVNEZ : ABSOLVTION.”
The noble west window, which has lost all its mullions and tracery, must have been one of the very finest in England.
In the days of Henry II. a dispute arose between the Abbot of Croyland and the Prior of Spalding, the prior going so far as to claim Croyland as a cell to Spalding. This quarrel continued through the reigns of Richard I. and John, when the Abbot of Peterborough joined the fray with a fresh dispute about the rights of common and pasture, and the payment of tolls at Croyland bridge. In these controversies Croyland generally was worsted.
Croyland Abbey.
THE RUINS