Concerning St. John of Beverley, not having “Fuller’s Worthies” at hand to refer to, a few brief particulars are collected from other sources. If the curious reader desires more, he may consult my authorities, and “old Fuller,” as recommended by T. C.
St. John of Beverley.
On his return from pupilage under St. Theodorus, in Kent, St. John of Beverley settled at Whitby, in the monastery of St. Hilda, till, in the reign of Alfred, he was made bishop of Hexham, which see he vacated in favour of St. Wilfrid, and sometime afterwards was seated in the archi-episcopal chair of York. He occasionally retreated to a monastery he had built at Beverley, which was then a forest, called Endeirwood, or Wood of the Deiri. In 717 he resigned the see of York to his chaplain, St. Wilfrid the younger, and finally retired to Beverley, where he died on the 7th of May, 721.[406]
According to Bede, St. John of Beverley being at a village near Hexham, there was brought to him a youth wholly dumb, and with a disorder in the head, “which entirely hindred the grouth of haires, except a few which, like bristles, stood in a thinn circle about the lower part of his head.” He desired the child “to putt forth his tongue, which the holy man took hold of, and made the sign of the crosse upon it. And having done this, he bid him speak: Pronounce, said he to him, gea, gea, (that is, yea, yea.) This the child pronounced distinctly, and presently after other words of more syllables; and, in conclusion, whole sentences: so that, before night, by frequent practice, he was able to expresse his thoughts freely.” Then St. John “commanded a surgeon to use his skill; and in a short time, by such care, but principally by the prayers and benedictions of the good prelat, he became of a lovely and chearfull countenance, adorned with beautifully curled haire, and ready in speech. This miracle was wrought in his first diocese.”[407] Notwithstanding the author of the “Church History of Brittany” calls this a “miracle,” the story rather proves that John of Beverley used a judicious method to remove impediments of speech, and obtained the growth of the boy’s hair by surgical aid.
The same writer adds, on the same authority, that the wife of “a count, named Puch,” was cured of a forty days’ sickness, by John of Beverley giving her holy water, which he had used in dedicating the count’s church. Also, according to him, when the lusty men of Beverley drag wild bulls into the church-yard (to bait them) in honour of the saint, they “immediately loose all their fury and fiercenes, and become gentle as lambes, so that they are left to their freedom to sport themselves.” William of Malmsbury relates this “as a thing usually performed, and generally acknowledged by the inhabitants of Beverley, in testimony of the sanctity of their glorious patron.”
Again, it is related in the Breviary of the church of Sarum, concerning St. John of Beverley, that while he governed in the see of York, “he was praying one day in the porch of St. Michael, and a certain deacon peeping in saw the Holy Ghost sitting upon the altar, excelling in whiteness a ray of the sun:” and the face of this deacon, whose name was Sigga, “was burnt by the heat of the Holy Spirit,” so that the skin of his cheek was shrivelled up; and his face was healed by the touch of the saint’s hand: and “the saint adjured him, that whilst he lived he would discover this vision to no man.”[408]
The more eminent fame of the patron of Beverley is posthumous. In 937, when England was invaded by the Norwegians, Danes, Picts, and certain chiefs of the Scottish isles, under Analaf the Dane, king Athelstan, marching with his army through Yorkshire to oppose them, met certain pilgrims returning from Beverley, who “informed him of the great miracles frequently done there, by the intercession of St. John.” Whereupon the king, with his army, went to Beverley, and entering into the church there performed his devotions before St. John’s tomb; and, earnestly begging his intercession, rose up before the clergy, and vowed, that if victory were vouched to him by the saint’s intercession, he would enrich that church with many privileges and plentiful revenues. “In token of which,” said he, “I leave this my knife upon the altar, which at my return I will redeem with an ample discharge of my vow.” Then he caused an ensign, duly blessed, to be taken out of the church, and carried before him. And at the sea-coast “he received a certain hope of victory by a vision, in which St. John of Beverley, appearing to him, commanded him to passe over the water, and fight the enemy, promising him the upper hand.” Athelstan was suddenly surprised by Analaf; but a sword fell “as from heaven” into the king’s scabbard, and he “not only drove Analafe out of his camp, but courageously sett upon the enemy, with whose blood he made his sword drunk, which he had received from heaven.” This battle, which was fought at Dunbar, was the bloodiest since the coming of the Saxons. The victory was entirely for the English: five kings were slain, and among them the Scottish king Constantine. Athelstan, returning in triumph, passed by the church of St. John at Beverley, where he redeemed his knife. He bestowed large possessions on the church, with privilege of sanctuary a mile round; ordaining that whoever should infringe it should forfeit eight pounds to the church; if within the three crosses, at the entrance of the town, twenty-four pounds; if within the church-yard, seventy-two pounds; but, if in sight of the relics, the penalty was the same that was due to the most enormous capital crime. A testimony of this privilege of sanctuary at Beverley was a chair of stone, thus inscribed:—“This stone chair is called Freed-stoole, or the Chaire of Peace: to which any offender flying shall enjoy entire security.” In the charter of the privilege, “King Athelstan,” saith mine author, “expressed it elegantly, in this distich:—
As free make I thee,
As heart may think or eye may see.”[409]
Moreover, respecting the great victory of Athelstan, an ancient biographer of the saints[410] relates, that the king prayed that through the intercession of St. John of Beverley he might show some evident sign, whereby both future and present ages might know, that the Scots ought, of right, to be subject to the English. And thereupon, saith this writer, “the king with his sword smote upon a hard rock by Dunbar, and to this day it is hollowed an ell deep by that stroke.”[411] This, saith another author, was near Dunbar castle; and “king Edward the first, when there was question before pope Boniface of his right and prerogative over Scotland, brought this historie for the maintenance and strength of his cause.”[412]
The monastery of St. John at Beverley having been destroyed by the Danes, king Athelstan founded in that place a church and college of canons, of which church St. Thomas à Becket was some time provost.[413] In 1037, the bones of St. John were “translated” into the church by Alfric, archbishop of York, and the feast of his translation ordained to be kept at York on the 25th of October.[414] “On the 24th of September, 1664, upon opening a grave in the church of Beverley a vault was discovered of free-stone, fifteen feet long and two broad; in which there was a sheet of lead, with an inscription, signifying that the church of Beverley having been burnt in the year 1188, search had been made for the relics of St. John, anno 1197, and that his bones were found in the east part of the sepulchre and there replaced. Upon this sheet lay a box of lead, in which were several pieces of bones, mixed with a little dust, and yielding a sweet smell: all these were reinterred in the middle alley of the church.”[415] Another writer[416] states the exhumation to have taken place “on the thirteenth of September, not the twenty-fourth;” and he adds, “that these relics had been hid in the beginning of the reign of king Edward VI.”