“Pleasant it was, in those old days,” he went on, “to overlook the quiet nuns from the Wall. There were no whispers against those holy Sisters, and no scandals. We loved to look upon them in their gardens quiet and peaceful. They prayed for the City, the nuns of St. Clare, of St. Helen’s, and of Holywell. Now every man prays for himself. There were also the monks in their cloisters, walking and reading and meditating. Some there were who called the monks devourers and drones. I know not. Their prayers were asked for the dead and for the living. No one prays now for the dead, and no one asks where they lie or how they fare. Drones and devourers! They were gentlemen all by birth,—why should they work?”
It was, indeed, surprising to see the ruins of the Houses, nor had I understood, until I walked round the Wall and observed the ruins, how many there were, or how great was the destruction when the masterful King turned out the monks and nuns and gave their houses to his favourites and his courtiers. “They have taken” said Stow, “all they wanted of the stones. What are left will vanish little by little.”
“But the memory will continue.”
“Nay, in the minds of scholars, not of the people. Things of the past are soon forgotten. No one will teach the children about the Houses of monks and friars. If they teach them anything at all, it will be as Barnabe Googe taught his generation when he gathered into one volume all that could be alleged or invented against those holy men, if they were holy,” he added, correcting himself. “Indeed a man must pay heed unto his words. I have been, myself, charged with Romish leanings because I remember things that are past and gone. What do the young folk now understand of what they have lost, because they never saw it? I am now old, and in age the mind flies back willingly to the days of youth.”
Within the Wall we saw the ruins of the Crutched Friars, of St. Helen’s, of the Holy Priory, of the Austin Friars, of the Papey, of Elsing Spital, of St. James’s in the Wall, of the Grey Friars and of the Black Friars; without the Wall there were the ruins of Eastminster, of the Clares, of St. Mary Spital, of Holywell, of the Church House, of the Knights Hospitallers, of Clerkenwell Nunnery, of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, and of the White Friars.
“The poets, doubtless,” I said, “and with them the divines, meditate among these ruins.”
“Alas! No. The poets write songs of love and sing them; or they go forth to the wars and sing of them. The times are brisk. It is as if the world was waking up from sleep: there are new things everywhere; we live in the present; our ships go forth to distant lands; there is a new world, a Terra Incognita, to be explored and conquered; it is no time for meditation. When the cloister was broken down meditation fled beyond the seas. We live to fight and to get rich, and to watch against the wiles of Pope and Spaniard.”
EAST VIEW OF CLOISTERS OF COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE
Taken down in July 1755.
“Do these ruins then inspire no regret?”