“Then walk they forth in the eventide,
In the cool and dusky hour;
And the abbess goes up the stair of stone
High on the belfry tower,
“Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye,
For on the roof-tree there,
Like as in blessed trance y-rapt,
She sees the sisters fair.
“Whence come ye, daughters? long astray:
’Tis but an hour, they tell,
Since we did chant the vesper hymn,
And list the vesper bell.
“Nay, daughters, nay! ’tis months agone:
Sweet mother, an hour we ween;
But we have been in heaven each one,
And holy angels seen.”
A miracle! cries the rhymer; and he goes on to tell how that the nuns repair to the chapel and chant a hymn of praise, after which the two sisters, kneeling, entreat the abbess for her blessing, and no sooner has she pronounced Vade in pace, than drooping like two fair lilies, two pale corpses sink to the floor. Then the bells break into a chime wondrously sweet, rung by no earthly hand; and when the sisters are laid in the tomb, they suffer no decay. Years passed away, and still no change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:
“And pilgrims came from all the land,
And eke from oversea,
To pray at the shrine of the sisters twain,
And St. John of Beverley.”
Another noteworthy object is King Athelstan’s Fridstool, or chair of peace; the centre of a sanctuary which extended a mile from the minster in all directions. Any fugitive who could once sit therein was safe, whatever his crime. When Richard II. encamped at Beverley, on his way to Scotland, his half-brother, Sir John Holland, having aided in the atrocious murder of Lord Ralph Stafford, fled to the Fridstool, nor would he leave it until assured of the king’s pardon. “The Countess of Warwick is now out of Beverley sanctuary,” says Sir John Paston, writing to his brother in June, 1473—the days of Edward IV. The chair, hewn from a single block of stone, is very primitive in form and appearance; and as devoid of beauty as some of the seats in the Soulages collection. Athelstan was a great benefactor to the church. You may see his effigy, and that of St. John, at the entrance to the choir and over a door in the south transept, where he is represented as handing a charter to the holy man, of which one of the privileges is recorded in old English characters:
Als Fre make I The
As hert may thynke or Egh may see.
Such a generous giver deserved to be held in honour, especially if the eye were to see from the height of the tower, to the top of which I now mounted by the narrow winding-stair. While stopping to take breath in the belfry, you will perhaps be amused by a table of ringer’s laws, and a record of marvellous peals, the same in purport as those exhibited at Hull. You can take your time in the ascent, for sextons eschew climbing, at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.