Weddings, Funerals, the monuments, and the architecture. Are they not written in the book of the Dean? Some of us, when we read of these great Functions, fall into the reflection that in that time, as in this, the place of the scholar, the poet, or the storyteller would have been outside among the crowd; the man of letters would have been distinguished beyond expectation had he been invited to stand somewhere far back in the nave—if he had secured a point of vantage near the North Porch, or anywhere in the Abbey Precinct where he could stand and see the Procession sweep past, the Procession of Heralds, Trumpets, Knights and Barons, and rich Lords, Bishops, and Mitered Abbots, Pursuivants and more Trumpets, splendid banners and canopies and shields borne by Nobles, Esquires, and the King’s Valets: lastly, their Highnesses the King and the Queen themselves. If he should happily stand near the Porch, he would hear the rolling of the organ and the voices of those who sing. When the soldiers rushed out of the church at William’s crowning to hack and cut down the people in suspicion of a tumult, the poet was among them and was glad to escape with a broken head; when King Richard’s men-at-arms slew the Jews, the poet who was then outside among them thought himself happy that he was not mistaken for one of those unfortunates; the poet was standing outside the Abbey Church—in a very good place too—when, with Pageant, songs, and flowers, the whole world turned out to welcome Good Queen Bess. At every Coronation before and since that festival he has formed part of the outside throng. When the Rejoicing and the Thanksgiving for the happy closing of Fifty Years were solemnly celebrated, seven years ago, the poets and the men of letters occupied their old, old place: it was the curb. All that was really noble and great and worthy of honor in the nation was invited within the walls. For literature was left, according to immemorial custom, the usual struggle for a place upon the curb. The proper place for the man of letters in this country has always been, and is still, the curb.
Here let us stand, then, happy at least in hearing the discourse of the people. When the Procession has been reformed and has swept past us again, we will betake ourselves to coffee-house or tavern, there to talk about it, while the great folk—the Quality—sit down to their banquet in Westminster Hall. If we take from Westminster Abbey its Kings and Princes, its Abbots, its Coronations, its Funerals, what remains? Exactly that which remains when you have taken out of history the Kings, Barons, and great Lords. There remain the people—in this case the monks, with the servants of the Abbey. If we consider the daily life of one monk, we shall understand pretty well the daily life of all; and we shall presently realize that our old friend Barnaby Googe is not an authority to be altogether trusted; that the monks of Thorney were not all gross sensualists, wallowing in their animalism; and that on the other hand most of them were not, and in the nature of things could not be, followers of the austere and saintly life, great scholars, or great divines. The unremembered life of Hugh de
PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER.
(By kind permission of Professor Henry Middleton.)
Steyninge, in Religion Brother Ambrosius, sometime monk in this Benedictine House, may be chosen to illustrate the Rule, as it was practiced in the fifteenth century, just before the Dissolution.
Hugh de Steyninge was the younger son of a knightly house; the family originally, as the name shows, held lands in Steyninge, east of Chichester; at the time of his father’s death—he was killed fighting for the Red Rose at Tewkesbury—there was still a small estate in Sussex, to which the eldest son succeeded; the second son was sent to London, where he was articled to Sir Ralph Jocelyne, Draper, Lord Mayor in the year 1476. (This son afterward rose to be Sheriff, and would have been Mayor, but that he died of the sweating sickness.) A third son went abroad and entered the service of the Duke of Tuscany. What became of him is not known. Hugh, the youngest, for whom there seemed nothing but the poor lot of becoming bailiff or steward to his brother, was so fortunate as to receive admission to the most wealthy Monastery in the kingdom. He was thus assured of an easy life, with the chance of rising, should he show ability, to a position of very considerable dignity and authority.
It was now extremely difficult to enter one of the richer Abbeys; a lad of humble origin had no chance of admission. Sometimes Founders’ or Benefactors’ kin possessed the right of nomination; sometimes admission was bought by money or the gift of land; sometimes it was obtained by the private interest of some great man.