A Legend of Reading Abbey

It was in the year of Grace eleven hundred and thirty-seven (when the grace of God appeared to be entirely departing from the sinful and unhappy land of England), and Stephen of Blois, nephew of the deceased King Henry Beauclerc, sat upon the throne, lawfully and honestly, as some men said, but most unlawfully, according to others.

And the woe I have to relate arose from this divergency of opinion, but still more from the change-ableness of men's minds, which led our bishops, lords, and optimates to side now with one party and now with the other, and now change sides again, to the great perplexing of the understanding of honest and simple men, to the undoing of their fortunes, and well nigh to the utter ruin of this realm, which that learned clerk and right politic King Henricus Primus had left in so flourishing and peaceful a condition.

Our great religious house of Reading (may the hand of sacrilege and the flames of war never more reach it!), founded and endowed by the Beauclerc, had then been newly raised on that smiling, favoured spot of earth which lies on the bank of the Kennet, hard by the juncture of that clear and swift stream with our glorious river Thamesis; and in sooth our noble house was not wholly finished and furnished at this time; for albeit the first church, together with most of its chapels and shrines, was in a manner completed, and our great hall was roofed in, and floored and lined with oak, the lord abbat's apartment, and the lodging of the prior, and the dormitory for the brethren, and the granary and the stables for my lord abbat's horses, were yet unfinished; and, except on Sundays and the feast days of Mother Church, these parts of the abbey were filled by artisans and well-skilled workmen who had been collected from Windsor, Wallingford, Oxenford, Newbury, nay even from the right royal city of Winchester, which abounded with well-skilled masons and builders, and the capital city of London, where all the arts be most cultivated. Moreover, sundry artists we had from beyond the seas, as masons and hewers of stone, who had been sent unto us from Caen in Normandie by the defunct king, and some right skilful carvers in wood and in stone, who had been brought out of Italie by Father Michael Angelo Torpietro, a member of our house, who had quitted the glorious monastery of Mons Casinium, which had been raised and occupied by the founder of our order, the blessed Benedict himself, when he was in the flesh, in order to live among us and instruct us in humane letters and in all the rules and ordinances of our order, wherein we Anglo and Anglo-Norman monks, in verity, needed some instruction. And this Father Torpietro of happy memory had also been enabled by the liberality of our first lord abbat to bring from the city of Pisa in Italie a right good limner, who painted such saints and Virgins upon gilded panels as had not before been seen in England, and who was now painting the chapel of our Ladie with rare and inappreciable art, as men who have eyes and understanding may see at this day. All the learned and periti do affirm that for limning and gilding our chapel of the Ladie doth excel whatever is seen in the churches of Westminster and Winchester in the south, or in the churches of York and Durham in the north, or in the churches of Wells and Exeter in the west, or in Ely and Lincoln in the east. [I speak not of the miracles performed by our relics: they are known to the world, and be at least as great as those performed by our Ladie of Walsingham.] Albeit our walls of stone and flint were not all finished in the inner part, our house was girded and guarded by ramparts of royal charters and papal bulls. Two charters had we from our founder, and one from King Stephen, confirmatory of those two. And great were the immunities and privileges contained in these charters. No scutage had we to pay; no stallage, no tolls, no tribute; no customs in fair or market, no tithing penny or two-penny, no amercements or fines or forfeitures of any kind! Our mills were free, and our fisheries and our woods and parks. No officer of the king was to exercise any right in the woods and chases of the lord abbat, albeit they were within the limits of the forests royal; but the lord abbat and the monks and their servitors were to hold and for ever enjoy the same powers and liberties in their woods and chases as the king had in his. Hence was the House of Reading ever well stocked with the succulent meat of the buck. Too long were it to tell all that our founder Henricus did for us. At the beginning of his reign, he abolished the ancient power of abbats to make knights; yet, in order to distinguish our house, he did, by a particular clause in our charter of foundation, give unto the lord abbat of Reading and to his successors for ever, authority to make knights, whether clerks or laymen, provided only that the ceremony should be performed by the abbat in his clerical habit and capacity, and not as a layman, and that he should be careful to advance none but men of manly age and discreet judgment. Of all the royal and mitred abbeys in the land ours was chiefest after Glastonbury and St. Albans; and assuredly we have some honours and privileges which those two more ancient houses have not. I, who have taken up the pen in mine old age to record upon enduring parchment some of the passages I witnessed in my youth and ripe manhood, would not out of any unseemly vanity perpetuate my name and condition; I would lie, unnamed, among the humblest of this brotherhood who have lived or will live without praise, and have died or will die without blame; but as the world in after-time may wish to know who it was that told the story I have now in hand, and what were my opportunities of knowing the truth, it may be incumbent on me to say so much as this:-John Fitz-John of Sunning was my secular name and my designation in the world of pomps and vanities; my mother was of the Saxon, my father of the Norman race; my mother (I say a requiem for her daily) descended from a great Saxon earl, or, as some do say, prince; and my father's grandfather, who fought at the battle of Hastings, was cup-bearer to William the Conqueror, in sort that if I could be puffed up with mundane greatness I have the wherewithal: my name in religion is Felix, of the order of St. Benedict and of the Abbey of Reading; and as a servant of the servants of the Lord, I have filled without discredit, in the course of many years, the several high offices of sub-sacrist and sacrist, refectorarius, cellarer, chamberlain, and sub-prior; and mayhap when I shall be gone hence some among this community will say that there have been worse officials than Father Felix.

In the year eleven hundred and thirty-seven I was but a youthful novice, still longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, and mourning for the loss of the worldly liberty I had enjoyed or abused in my mother's house at Sunning, which was a goodly house near the bank of Thamesis, on a wooded hill hard by the wooden old Saxon bridge of Sunning. But I was old enough to comprehend most of the passing events; and being much favoured and indulged by the lord abbat and several of the brotherhood, I heard and saw more than the other novices, and was more frequently employed upon embassages beyond the precincts of the abbey lands. It was a common saying in the house that Felix the Sunningite, though but little given to his books within doors, was the best of boys for out-door work. By the favour of our Ladie, the love of in-door studies came upon me afterwards at that time when I was first assailed by podagra, and since that time have I not read all the forty and odd books that be in our library, and have I not made books with mine own hand, faithfully transcribing the Confessions of St. Augustin, and the whole of the Life of St. Benedict, and missals not a few? But not to me the praise and glory, sed nomini tuo!

As I was born in the house at Sunning (may the sun ever shine upon that happy village, and upon the little church wherein rests the mortal part of my mother) on the eve of St. John the Evangelist, in the year of our Redemption eleven hundred and twenty, being the twentieth year of the Beauclerc's reign, I was, on the feast of St. Edbert, Bishop and Confessor, in the year eleven hundred and thirty-seven, close upon the eighteenth year of mine age.

St. Edbert's festival, falling in the flowering month of May, is one which my heart hath always much affected. The house had kept it right merrily; and notwithstanding the unfinished state of portions of the abbey, I do opine that our ceremonies in church and choir were that day very magnificent, and fit to be a pattern to some other houses. All labours were suspended; for he is a niggard of the worst sort that begrudgeth even his serfs and bondmen rest at such a tide; and eager as was our lord abbat Edward for the completion of our stately edifice, and speciliater for the finishing of our dormitory, he would not allow a man to chip a stone, or put one flint upon another, or hew or shape wood upon St. Edbert's day; and he was almost angered at the Italian limner for finishing part of a glory which he had begun in our Ladie's chapel. It was a memorable day, and, inter alia, for this: it was the first night that the good lord abbat slept within the walls of the abbey; for hitherto, on account of the cold and dampness of the new walls, he had betaken himself for his nightly rest either to a house close by in the town of Reading, or to the house of a God-fearing relation, who dwelt on the other side of Thamesis at Caversham.

After the completorium and supper (we had both meat and wine of the best at that c?na), the weather being warm, and the evening altogether beautiful, the abbat and reverend fathers, as well as the younger members of the house, gathered together in my lord abbat's garden at the back of the abbey, and sat there for a season on the green bank of the Kennet, looking at the bright river as it glided by, and at the young moon and twinkling stars that were reflected in the water, or discoursing with one another upon sundry cheerful topics. Good cheer had made me cheerful, and it remembers me that I made little coronals and chains of the violets that grew by the river bank, and of the bright-eyed daisies that covered all the sward, and threw them upon the gliding and ever-changing surface of the Kennet, and said, as I had done in my still happier childhood, "Get ye down to Sunning bridge, and stop not at this bank or on that, but go ye right down to Sunning, and tell my mother that I am happy with my shaven crown."

The lord abbat, looking back upon the tall tower of our church, and the broad massive walls of our Aula Magna, said-

"In veritate, this is a goodly and substantial house, and one fitted to beautify holiness."

"In truth is it," said that good and learned Italian father who had brought the limner from Pisa.

"Torpietro," said the abbat, "this soil grows no marble; we have not hereabout the nitent blocks of Carrara, or the soberer marble of Lucca; we have neither granite nor freestone; but rounded chalk-hills have we, and flints love the chalk-pit, and the pits of Caversham are inexhaustible; and with our mortar, rubble, and flints, we have built walls three fathoms thick, and have made an abbey which will stand longer than your Italian temples, built of stone and marble; for time, that corrodes and consumes other substances, makes our cement the harder and stronger. Somewhat rough are they on the outside, like the character of our nation; but they are compact and sound within, and not to be moved or shaken-no, scarcely by an earthquake."

"'Tis a substantial pile," quoth Torpietro. "Balestra, nor catapult, nor manginall, nor the mightiest battering-ram, will ever breach these walls; and therefore is the house safe against any attack of war, and therefore will it stand, entire as it now is, when a thousand years are gone."

"Nay," said the abbat, "name not war: a sacred place like this is not to be assaulted; and our good and brave King Stephen is now firmly and rightfully seated, and we shall have no intestine trouble. We have no fig-trees, or I would quote to thee, Brother Torpietro, that passage which saith.... Felix, my son, leave off throwing flowers in the stream; run unto the gate, and see what is toward, for there be some who smite upon the gate with unwonted violence, and it is now past the curfew."

When the abbat first spoke to me, I heard a mighty rapping, which I had not heard before, or had not heeded, being lost in a reverie as I watched my coronals on their voyage towards Sunning bridge; but when his lordship spake to me, I hurried across the narrow garden, and into the house, and up to the outer gate, where I found Humphrey, the old janitor, and none but he. Humphrey had opened the wicket, and had closed it again, before I came to the gate. "Felix, thou good boy of Sunning," said he unto me, "thou art as nimble as the buck of the forest, and art ever willing to make thy young limbs save the limbs of an old man, so prithee take this corbel, and bear it to my lord abbat's presence forthwith, and bear it gently and with speed, for those who left it said there was delicate stuff within, which must not be shaken, but which must be opened by the lord abbat right soon. So take it, good Felix, for there is no lay-brother at hand, and the weight is nought."

I took up the corbel gently under my left arm, and began to stride with it to the abbat, down at the Kennet banks. I was presently there, for albeit the corbel was of some size, the weight thereof was indeed as nothing.

"So, so," said my lord abbat, as he espied me and my burthen, "What have we here?"

"Doubtless," said the then refectorarius, "some little donation from the faithful. Venison is not as yet; but lamb is in high perfection at this season."

"Nay," quoth the coquinarius, "from the shape of the wicker, I think it is rather some sizeable pike, sent down by our friends and brothers at Pangbourne."

"Bethinks me rather," said the lord abbat, waving his right hand over the corbel (the jewels and bright gold of his finger-rings glittering in the young moon as he did it), "bethinks me rather that it is a collation of simnels from our chaste sisters the nuns of Wargrave, who ever and anon do give a sign of life and love to us the Benedictines of Reading Abbey. But open, Felix! cut the withies, and undo the basket-lid, and let us see with our own eyes."

As my curiosity was now at the least as great as that of any of my superiors in age and dignity, I cut the slight bindings, and undid the corbel; and then there lay, uncovered and revealed to sight-the most beautiful babe mine eyes ever beheld withal!

"Benedicamus!" said the lord abbat, gazing and crossing himself.

"Miserere! The Lord have mercy upon us! But what thing have we here?" quoth the prior.

"'Tis a marvellous pretty infant," said the limner from Pisa, "and would do to paint for one of the cherubim in the chapel of our Ladie."

"A marvellously pretty devil," said our then sub-prior, a sourish man, and somewhat overmuch given to suspicious and evil thoughts of his brothers and neighbours: "What have we celibatarians and Benedictines to do with little babies? I smell mischief here-mischief and irregularity. Felix, what knowest thou of this corbel? I hope thou knowest not all too much! But know all or know nothing, why, oh boy, didst bring this arcanum into this reverend company?"

"Father," said I, "'twas Humphrey bade me bring it, and for all the rest I know nothing;" and this being perfectly true, yet did I hold down my head, for that I felt the blood all glowing in my face, not knowing how or why it should be so.

"Bid the janitor to our presence," said the lord abbat.

Humphrey, who had nothing doubted that the basket contained some creature comforts, such as the faithful not unfrequently sent to our house, soon appeared, and was not a little amazed to see the amazement of the monks, and the high displeasure of the abbat; for as age had somewhat dimmed his sight, and as the last gleams of twilight were now dying away, the good janitor did not perceive the sleeping babe.

"Humphrey," said the abbat, "what is this thou hast sent us? Tell me, in the name of the saints, who gave thee this basket?"

As the abbat spoke the infant awoke from its slumber, and began to cry out, and lay its arms about, as if feeling for its nurse; and hereat our old janitor's wonderment being manifoldly increased, he started back, and crossed himself, and said, "Jesu Maria! Jesu Maria!"

"Say what thou hast to say," cried our sacrist; "my lord abbat would know who left this corbel at the gate, and why thou didst take it in?"

"But," said the old janitor, making that reverence to his superiors which he was bounden to do, "may I ask what it is that the corbel holds?"

"A babe," said the prior.

"And of the feminine gender-to make the matter worse," said the teacher of the Novices.

"'Tis witchcraft," said Humphrey-"'tis nought but witchcraft! What Christian man, or woman either, could ever think of sending a babe to the monks of Reading!"

"But who sent the basket?" said the abbat.

"That know I not," said old Humphrey, still crossing himself.

"Then who left it with thee?" asked the sacrist.