ABBOT’S PEW (SHOWING THE MEDALLION OF CONGREVE BELOW).
he was a man checked in his growth, stunted in mind, ignorant, incapable of the finer emotions because he was thus stunted; an imperfect man because he was cut off from the things which made the real man in the Palace Yard beyond the wall: viz., the dangers and perils and chances of life; the struggle for life; the natural affections; the madness of battle, victory or defeat. What compensation could there be for a life so stunted? Alas! poor Hugh! One of his brothers, I believe, was killed in battle, and another was hanged for alleged conspiracy; he was quite safe all his life, his eternal future even was assured. And yet—yet—— Besides, there are sins in the cloister as well as without. No man, even among the Trappists, can escape from himself, from the wanderings of his thoughts, from his instincts and his heredities. He has buried the half of himself—is it the nobler part? For the other half, besetting devils still contend.
Some of us can remember how under the old system at Cambridge the Senior Fellows remained in College all their lives, their interests centered in the Society, dining in hall every day, sitting over the College port in Combination Room every day. Few among the Seniors, as one remembers them, were any longer capable of intellectual work; they had never had any ambitions; they played bowls in the garden; they walked every day the customary round; they were in Orders; they were regular at chapel, and they led decorous lives; when they grew very old they fell into the hands of their bedmaker. Of other women they knew little. Such as were these aged dons, so were, I believe, the monks of Westminster,—dull and respectable, decorous, obedient to so much of the Rule as they could not escape, and stupid and ignorant,—since they had been locked up within those walls from childhood. Just as those old dons had long since lost any enthusiasm for learning which might once have possessed them, so our friend Hugh de Steyninge, plodding through the monotonous days, with the iteration of the same services till he knew every line by heart, had long ceased to connect their words with any meaning.
A. SQUARE WINDOW (NOW WALLED UP), USED BY THE ABBOT TO MAINTAIN SURVEILLANCE OF THE MONKS AT NIGHT.
There is one exception to the general charge of worldliness and luxury. It is an officer—rather a resident—of the Abbey concerning whom historians are mostly silent. Of him alone it can be said that he was most certainly neither luxurious nor sensual nor a hypocrite. This man was the Solitary, the Recluse, the Anchorite or Ankret, of the Abbey.
The Ankret must not be confused with the Hermit, who was another variety of the Recluse. The latter chose his own place of residence: sometimes it was a cave, sometimes a hollow tree, sometimes a cell on or near a bridge, sometimes a wood; he was a law to himself; he owed obedience to no one; all he had to do was to impress the people with the belief that he was a real hermit in order to live by their charity. The Ankret, on the other hand, was set apart and consecrated by a solemn service; there was generally one at least attached to every great religious House, there was an Ankret or an Ankress belonging to many parish churches. On the other hand, no church was allowed the distinction of a Recluse without the special permission of the Bishop. Thus in 1361 the Bishop granted permission to the parish church of Whalley to maintain two Ankresses in the churchyard, with two women as their servants, on an endowment provided by Henry, Duke of Lancaster. These two Ankresses were apparently immured in their cells, the attendants bringing them their food. In many cases the Ankress slept in the church, which she swept and kept clean. This office might appear desirable for many a poor woman, and probably such an Ankress was never wanting. But to be actually immured; to sit for the rest of life in a narrow cell with a narrow grating for light and air and conversation; without fire or candle; alone day and night, in good or bad weather, without hearing a voice or speaking with anyone; unwashed, uncombed, in rags and cold and misery—this could never come to be regarded as a trade or calling by which to make one’s livelihood. Of the Ankret’s sincerity we can scarcely entertain a doubt.