Conventual Remains.—St. Andrew’s Hall.—The Festival.—Music: Dr. Hook, Dr. Crotch.—Churches.—Biographical Sketches: Archbishop Parker, Sir J. E. Smith, Taylor, Hooker, Lindley, Joseph John Gurney.
The sketch of the Cathedral has embraced so much of the early history of the various religious “orders,” as to render but little necessary respecting the origin of the “frÈres,” or friars, whose settlements, in the city and neighbourhood, once occupied such important place in its limits and history.
The Black Friars, or Preachers, White Friars, or Carmelites, Grey Friars, or Minors, and the Austin Friars, all had at one period, from the thirteenth century to the era of the Reformation, large establishments within its precincts; besides which, there was a nunnery, and divers hospitals, as they were called, such as the Chapel of the Lady in the Fields, Norman’s Spital, and Hildebrand’s Hospital; and hermitages without number lurked about the corners of its churchyards, or perched themselves above the gateways of its walls. The greater portion of these have left but a name, or a few scattered fragments, behind to mark their site; but one magnificent relic of the Black Friars monastery, comprising the whole of the nave and chancel of their beautiful church, yet stands in an almost perfect state of preservation,—a noble witness of the wealth and taste of the poor “mendicant” followers of Friar Dominick,—which was rescued from destruction at the period of the general “dissolution,” by the zeal and practical expediency of municipal authorities. Of the two friaries that have ceased to exist even in outline, it may suffice to record, that the Carmelites numbered among them the eminent writer, “John Bale, the antiquary,” as he is wont to be called; the Austin Friars seem to have possessed few particular claims for notice, save their less rigorous injunctions for fasting, but the Friars Minors were the great rivals of the Preachers, and both together, the sore troublers of the peace of the “Regulars,” who looked upon the growing power of this “secular” priesthood with a jealousy and hatred to be conceived only by those who appreciate duly the “loaves and fishes.” As a sample of the feeling existing, the account of Matthew Paris, the monk of St. Albans, may fairly be cited. He says, “The ‘friars preachers’ having obtained privileges from Pope Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. being rejoiced and magnified, they talked malapertly to the prelates of churches, bishops and archdeacons, presiding in their synods; and where many persons of note were assembled, showed openly the privileges indulged to them, proudly requiring that the same may be recited, and that they may be received with veneration by the churches; and intruding themselves oft-times impertinently, they asked many persons, even the religious, ‘Are you confessed?’ And if they were answered ‘Yes,’ ‘By whom?’ ‘By my priest.’ ‘And what idiot is he? He never learned divinity, never studied the devices, never learned to resolve one question; they are blind leaders of the blind; come to us, who know how to distinguish one leprosy from another, to whom the secrets of God are manifest.’ Many therefore, especially nobles, despising their own priests, confessed to these men, whereby the dignity of the ordinaries was not a little debased.”
Another says: “Now they have created two new fraternities, to which they have so generally received people of both sexes, that scarce one of either remains, whose name is not written in one of them, who, therefore, all assembling in their churches, we cannot have our own parishioners, especially on solemn days, to be present at divine service, &c.; whence it is come to pass that we, being deprived of the due tithes and oblations, cannot live unless we should turn to some manual labour. What else remaineth therefore? except that we should demolish our churches, in which nothing else remaineth for service or ornament but a bell and an old image, covered with soot.’ But these preachers and minors, who begun from cells and cottages, have erected royal houses and palaces, supported on high pillars, and distinguished into various offices, the expenses whereof ought to have been bestowed upon the poor; these, while they have nothing, possess all things; but we, who are said to have something, are beggars.” Alas! how many a poor curate of this nineteenth century, upon £30 a-year, might subscribe to a like pitiful complaint.
Another accusation against these mendicant friars, in their days of maturity, was that they used to steal children under fourteen years of age, or receive them without the consent of their friends, and refuse to restore them, embezzling or conveying them away to “other cloisters,” where they could not be found. A statute of Henry IV. subjected these friars to punishment for this offence; and the provincials of the four orders were sworn before the parliament, for themselves and successors, to be obedient to this statute.
Kirkpatrick, from whom the above is quoted, says elsewhere, that in 1242, a great controversy arose between the friars minors and preachers, about the greatest worthiness, most decent habit, the strictest, humblest, and holiest life; for the preachers challenged pre-eminence in these—the minors contradicted, and great scandal arose. And because they were learned men, it was the more dangerous to the church.
“These are they,” says he, “who in sumptuous edifices, and lofty walls, expose to view inestimable treasures, impudently transgressing the limits of poverty, and the fundamentals of their profession; who diligently apply themselves to lords and rich persons, that they may gape after wealth; extorting confessions and clandestine wills, commending themselves and their order only, and extolling them above all others. So that no Christian now believes he can be saved, unless he be governed by the councils of the preachers and minors. In obtaining privileges, they are solicitors; in the courts of kings and potentates, they are councillors, gentlemen of the chamber, treasurers, match-makers, matrimony-brokers; executioners of papal extortions; in their sermons, either flatterers or stinging backbiters, discoverers of confession, or impudent rebukers.”
Making all due allowance for the party feeling of the historian, thus commemorating the factions of the “Mother Church,” enough may be seen of the truth, to form a general idea of the condition of the brotherhoods, one of whose “palaces, supported by high pillars,” is now left us as a subject for our investigation.
The order of Black Friars owe their origin to the famous Dominick, notorious for his zeal in the persecution of the Albigenses. He figures also in the “Golden Legend,” as a miraculously endowed infant; his god-mother perceiving on his forehead a star, which made the whole world light. The common seal of the Black Friars, still preserved, commemorates another miracle concerning him: “Being grown to man’s estate, he became a great preacher against heretics; and once upon a time, he put his authorities against them in writing, and gave the schedule into the hands of a heretic, that he might ponder over its contents. The same night, a party being met at a fire, the man produced the schedule, upon which he was persuaded to cast it into the flames, to test its truth; which doing, the schedule sprung back again, after a few minutes, unburnt; the experiment was repeated thrice, with the same results; but the heretics refused to be convinced, and pledged themselves not to reveal the matter;—but one of them, it seems, afterwards did so.”
Many other marvellous tales are extant of holy St. Dominick, but we hasten on to take a look at the church of his followers. The present building bears date of the fifteenth century, and would seem to have been materially enriched by the famous Sir Thomas Erpingham, who takes such prominent place in the city, and church walls, and gateways, his arms figuring here in the stone-work between every two of the upper story of windows. In its primitive condition the church boasted of three chapels, one of them subterranean, three altars, two lights, and an image of St. Peter of Malayn; the choir was decorated with panel paintings, which found their way at the Reformation to the parlour of some private dwelling-house close by, whose walls they yet adorn. Two guilds were held there, the guild of St. William and the Holy Rood. In 1538, when the axes and hammers of King Henry were busy over the face of the land, and bonfires of libraries were being made in the precincts of every monastery, the house and church of the Black Friars was saved. Deputations to his majesty from the corporation of the city, successfully negotiated the transfer of the building to its possession, on consideration of the sum of eighty-one pounds being paid into the Royal Treasury. Mention is made in old records of a handsome library belonging to this as well as the Carmelite Monastery; their fate perhaps may be conjectured by that of many others of the time. Bale mentions the fact of a merchant buying the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings, to be used as waste paper, and ten years were occupied in thus consuming them. The chancel of the church has retained its character as a place of worship almost unvaryingly until the present day, at one time being leased to the Dutch, and in later times used as a chapel by the inmates of the workhouse; occasionally, however, it has served the purpose of a playhouse; as we find on record, injuries sustained by the breaking down of partitions at the performance of “interludes” in it upon Sundays, in the thirty-eighth of Henry the Eighth. The king’s players we also find similarly occupying the nave or hall in Edward the Sixth’s reign, during Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before Christmas. The cloisters and other portions of the monastery were in the reign of Anne, upon the first establishment of workhouses for the poor, appropriated to that purpose, the groined roofings to this day forming the ceilings of pauper kitchens and outhouses. The sole trace of ecclesiastical furniture lingering in the nave is a stone altar in one corner, much more noted as the place of gathering in after-times for the brethren of the St. George’s Guild than for any religious associations in the minds of the people. A gallery, now hidden by the gigantic orchestra built over it, savours also strongly of the primitive dedication of the building, else it has retained little more than its architectural beauties of outline to testify its original consecration. And now to trace its history, since, wrested from the mendicants, and deprived of its rights as a cemetery for the wealthy and beneficent dead, it first became the banquet chamber for municipal feasts, its walls shone gorgeously with tapestry hangings, and its tables groaned beneath the weight of luscious dainties. The kitchens and monster chimneys, with their long rows of spit-hooks and fire-places, that now stand gaping in silent desolation at the empty larders and boiling-houses in out-of-the-way corners of the premises, look like giant ghosts of ancient civic gastronomy, lurking about in dark places, mocking the shadowy forms of latter-day epicurism, that may be satisfied with the achievements to be performed by modern “ranges,” on ever so improved a scale. But the glories of the St. George’s feast are likewise departed from it; the corn-merchants, to whom its limits were awhile devoted, have built unto themselves an exchange; the assizes, once held in it, have been transferred to the little castellated encrustation that has grown out of one side of the real castle mound, and reft of all regular employment, the Hall now stands at the mercy of the city mayor, by him to be lent to whom he wills, for any or every purpose his judgment may deem consistent with propriety; hence the same walls echo one day the eloquent pleadings of a league advocate, the next to the cries of the distressed agriculturist; now to the advantages of temperance or peace societies, and the musical streams of eloquence that an Elihu Burritt can send forth, or witness the fires of enthusiasm a Father Matthew can elicit. Another week shall see it thronged with eager listeners to the reports of missionary societies, Church, London, or Baptist; the next with ready auditors to the claims of the Jews and the heathen calls for Bibles; interspersed among them shall be lectures on every branch of art and science, and every fashionable or unfashionable doctrine under the sun that can find advocates, down to Mormonism or Bloomerism itself. But prior to all in its claims upon the services of the magnificent old structure stands music—why else are its proportions hid by the unsightly tiers of benches that, empty, make one long for magic power to waft them all away, but which, once tenanted by their legitimate occupants, banish every murmur from one’s heart and mind?
Thanks to the enterprise and spirit of the lovers of harmony, this is not seldom; concerts for the rich and concerts for the poor, for the hundreds and the “millions,” have risen up to meet the calls of humanity for heart-culture by other inspirations than may be got from alphabets and primers, or intellectual disquisitions. And, triennially, arrive the great epochs of the city’s glory, when she asserts her claims upon the world of music, to be classed high among the nursing mother of genius, and foster-parents of art. Then is the hour of triumph for the Black Friars’ solemn and grand old nave, when its roofs and pillars tremble at the thunders of the Messiah’s “Hallelujah,” and resound to the electrifying crash, uttering “Wonderful;” or when they echo the sweet melodies of Haydn, Mozart, and Spohr; the refined harmonies of a Mendellsohn’s “Elijah,” the magic strains of his “Loreley,” or reflect the wondrous landscape painting of the mystic Beethoven. Nor was the day a small one when its orchestra gave utterance to the outpourings of a genius cradled and nurtured in its bosom, whose work is acknowledged to be great and good, albeit “a prophet” is not without honour save in his own country. And all praise be given as due to the generous help yielded to the son of the stranger as to the son of the soil. The world may yet live to be grateful to the city that in one year brought before it two such conceptions and creations as “Israel Restored” and “Jerusalem.” And so would we take our farewell of the old “Hall,” while our eyes are yet dazzled with the bright glitter of its thronged benches, galleries, and aisles, and our ears and hearts vibrating to the mighty “concert of sweet sounds” and peals of harmony poured forth from the almost matchless orchestra and benches of choristers, that lend their powers to complete the glories of the great “Festival.”
The festival suggests thoughts on music, its history and progress, and of the minds that have fostered and directed its growth in this particular region, so successfully as to have gained for the “Old City” its present high position in the musical world.
Music and devotion have gone hand-in-hand from the era of the earliest singing men and singing women of Israel, and the timbrel of Miriam; the Jewish temple echoed the lofty strains of “David’s harp” and the songs of the “Chief Musician;” from the pagan worship of the Greeks sprung the Ambrosian chant, and the Christian Church has been the birthplace and nursery of the grandest conceptions that have flowed from the pen of inspired genius in every later age. The antiphonal singing of the earliest choirs, where a phrase of melody, after being sung by one portion of the choristers, was echoed by others at certain distances, at a higher or lower pitch, gave rise to the modern fugue. The Pope from his throne lent his aid to improve the ecclesiastical chant, and gave it his name.
The oratorio was the Phoenix that arose from the ashes of the “mystery,” the masses of Palestrina, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, and Hummel were responses to the calls of the church. The Reformation made no effort to sever music from the services of religion; Luther was an enthusiastic lover of harmony, and himself a composer of psalmody. The annihilations of the works of art, that banished painting and defaced sculpture, could not blot out music from the worship of the church. The “Te Deum” and “Jubilate” outlived the persecution of bishops and clergy, and the nasal whine of the Puritan conventicle was in itself a recognition of the true power and place of that noblest of nature’s gifts and sciences.
The quiet “Friends” nominally banish it from their form of worship; can any that have heard the flowing melodies that clothe their exhortations and prayers, say that it is so? Can any one that ever heard the voice of Elizabeth Fry doubt that poetry and music are innate gifts, that, once possessed, no human laws can sever from the utterances of a devotional spirit? No marvel is it, therefore, that a Cathedral city at all times is more or less the cradle of musical genius, or that scarce a record of a great master-spirit of harmony exists, but the office of “Kapellmeister,” or “Organist,” is attached to his name.
The Organ, that almost inseparable associate of ecclesiastical music, seems to have been an instrument of great antiquity; that one of the Constantines presented one to King Pepin in 757, appears to be an established fact, and that during the tenth century the use of the organ became general in Germany, Italy, and England. In Mason’s “Essay on Church Music” is a homely translation of some lines written by Wolstan, a monk of that period, descriptive of the instrument then known under that name.
“Twelve pair of bellows ranged in stately row
Are joined above, and fourteen more below;
These the full force of seventy men require,
Who ceaseless toil, and plenteously perspire:
Each aiding each, till all the winds be prest
In the close confines of the incumbent chest,
On which four hundred pipes in order rise,
To bellow forth the blast that chest supplies.”
It is presumed that the seventy men did not continue to blow throughout the performance on this monster engine, but laid in a stock of wind, which was gradually expended as the organist played; the keys were five or six inches broad, and must have been played upon by blows of the fist; the compass did not then exceed more than two octaves; half notes were not introduced until the beginning of the twelfth century, stops, not until the sixteenth; from which we may infer, that a real genuine organ, deserving the name, could not have been manufactured many years prior to the Reformation; but from the date of its first introduction may be ascribed the first attempts at the invention of harmony.
It is curious, however, in these days of penny concerts and music for the million, to look back to that time when the only probable entertainments of a secular character in which music bore a part, were such as could be furnished by the hautboys, sackbuts, and recorders of half-a-dozen “waytes,” as we find to have been the case in this city in the sixteenth century, when permission was first granted these performers to play comedies, interludes, plays and tragedies. Will Kempe mentions these same waytes with great praise, and their renown may be inferred from the fact of their being solicited by Sir Francis Drake “to accompany him on his intended voyage” in 1589, upon which occasion the city provided them with new instruments, new cloaks, and a waggon to convey their chattels. The inventory of musical instruments in the possession of the city in 1622, forms a rather striking contrast to a “band” of the nineteenth century, consisting as it did of only four “sackbuts,” four “hautboys” (one broken), two tenor cornets, one tenor “recorder,” two counter tenor “recorders,” five “chaynes,” and five “flagges.”
In the seventeenth century, when the country was deluged with civil war, and overrun with Royalist and Puritan soldiers, music declined, and we read little concerning it, here or elsewhere, until that age of strife and commotion had passed away.
In 1709, one of the city “waytes” advertised himself as teacher of the violin and hautboy, and in 1734 there appeared another advertisement of a concert to be given, tickets 2s. 6d., country dancing to be given gratis after the concert, doors to be open at four o’clock, the performance to commence at six, “by reason of the country dancing.”
In the course of the sixteenth century, the psalmody of the Protestant Church was brought nearly to its present state, and towards the end of that and commencement of the next century, shone that constellation of English musicians, whose inimitable madrigals are still the delight of every lover of vocal harmony. A madrigal differs from a glee, inasmuch as each of its parts should be sung by several voices; its name originated in Italy, and was applied to compositions in four, five, or six vocal parts, adapted to words of a tender character; neither madrigal nor glee should be accompanied by instruments.
In the Elizabethan age to sing in parts was an accomplishment held to be indispensable in a well-educated lady or gentleman; and at a social meeting, when the madrigal books were laid on the table, every body was expected to take part in the harmony; any person declining from inability, was regarded with contempt, as rude and ill-bred.
The rapid improvement of music in all its branches during the last century has been promoted mainly by the various societies, clubs, and other associations that have sprung up in the metropolis and many large cities, among which Norwich stands prominently; these have formed a bond of union between professional musicians and amateurs, mutually advantageous, by establishing among them a combination of talent and taste, that tends materially to cultivate the art to which they are attached. Norwich has produced many great minds, that have done much towards this work. In the last century the musical world were astonished by the wonderful precocity of the two young children, Hook and Crotch; the name of the former as notorious perhaps as much through the literary fame of his son Theodore, as for his own musical attainments.
It is said that young Hook was able to play pieces at four years of age, and at six to perform a concerto at a concert, and to have composed the music for an opera with thirty-six airs, before he was eight years old. In the course of his life he is said to have written two thousand four hundred songs, one hundred and forty complete works or operas, one oratorio, and many odes and anthems. He died in 1813, leaving two sons, Dr. James Hook, the Dean of Worcester, who died 1828, and Theodore Edward Hook, the author.
William Crotch, whose name has attained a wider celebrity, was also a native of the city, the son of a carpenter. His early displays of musical talent exceed in wonder even those of his fellow-citizen and co-temporary, Hook; and many curious anecdotes are related of its manifestation during his infancy. His father seems to have been a self-taught musician, who without any scientific knowledge had built himself an organ, upon which he had learned to play a few common tunes, such as “God save the King,” and “Let Ambition fire the mind.” About Christmas 1776, his child William, then only a year and a half old, was observed frequently to leave his food or play, to listen to his father, and would even then touch the key note of the tunes he wished to be played. Not long afterwards, a musical lady came to try the organ, and after her visit he seems to have made his first attempt to play a tune—her playing excited him to a painful degree, his mother describing him as so peevish that she could “do nothing with him.” Music had charms, however, to soothe his baby breast, and he consoled himself by picking out the air of “God save the King,” which in addition to being his father’s most frequent performance, had been also frequently sung as a lullaby by his maternal nurse. At this time he was two years and three weeks old, truly an infant prodigy! The report of his precocity gained little credence, until accident confirmed what had previously been deemed the exaggerations of parental fondness.
His father’s employer, passing the house at a time when the elder Crotch was absent from work on the plea of indisposition, heard the organ, and fancied that his workman was idle instead of ill; to convince himself, he went in, and found little Master William performing, and his brother blowing the bellows. The marvel spread, and attracted such crowds of auditors, that from that time the hours of his performance were obliged to be limited. As he grew older his musical attainments rapidly increased, while at the same time he discovered symptoms of a genius for drawing, almost equal to that which he had already displayed for music.
When he was twelve years old he did the duty of organist at several chapels in Cambridge, whence he removed to Oxford, with a view to entering the church; but he afterwards resumed the musical profession, and was appointed organist of Christ Church, in 1790. In 1797, he became professor of music in that university; and in 1799, obtained the degree of doctor of music. On the establishment of the Royal Academy, in 1823, he was nominated Principal of that institution, but retired from the office before his death. Dr. Crotch’s great work is the oratorio of “Palestine,” the poetry of which is the prize poem of Bishop Heber. He was also the author of several anthems, and other pieces of sacred music.
His death occurred suddenly, at the dinner-table, on the 29th of September, 1847, in the seventy-third year of his age, at the residence of his son, the Rev. W. R. Crotch, Master of the Grammar School at Taunton, where he had spent the later years of his life.
There are two points worthy of notice connected with the name and works of this great man. The country has raised no monument in any of its cathedrals or churches to his memory, and his greatest work, “Palestine,” is an oratorio almost entirely neglected. May it not be possible for the “Old City” that gave him birth to set an example to the rest of the musical world, by attention to these facts?
Most of the leading minds whose zeal and energy directed the earlier movements of the various musical societies in this district, are yet among the living, and the natural dictates of refinement cause us to shrink from any attempts at their biographies; it is, therefore, with the deference due to real genius, which needs no praise, that we pass in silence over the names of the most earnest promoters of the growth and cultivation of music, especially as developed in the workings of the Festival Committee, and its important adjunct, the Choral Society. The names and fame of Sir George Smart and Mr. Edward Taylor, professor of music at Gresham College, are already too much the property of the world at large to be reckoned among those whose privacy might be invaded by comment in these pages; but there are many more, who with them, may from the centre of that magnificent hall, and the midst of the greatest triumphs of music that have ever been achieved by its almost unrivalled choruses and orchestra, feel that “for their monument we must look around.”
And now it might seem but just and right that among the lions of the “Old City” we should find a place for the manifold ecclesiastical structures still surviving the downfall of “superstition,” and retaining their legitimate right, as houses of worship. To do justice to the antiquities or beauties that abound among them is a task beyond our powers, or the limit of such a work as this; their traceries, their curiously cut flint work, old carvings, rood lofts, chambers of sanctuary within, and heaped-up grave-yards without, verily burying the pathways of the streets, they line in such close succession—their monuments and epitaphs, quaint, grim, chaste, and uncouth; their steeples, spires, and towers, round, square, buttressed and bare—their bells musical and grand, cracked and jangling—their roofs slated, tiled, leaded, patched, perfect, or crumbling—their names and saintships a labyrinth of mystery in themselves—would it not fill a volume alone to chronicle even their leading features, to say nought of the changes they have undergone, the barter among goods and chattels, the chopping and changing, and massacres in the painted glass departments,—part of an Abraham and his ass left in a St. Andrews, the other portions transported to the windows of St. Stephens; of the ghostly outlines left of old brasses torn up and melted down by Puritan soldiers and coppersmiths—or the legends that hang about their shrines and mutilated images? We dare not venture upon the well-beaten track of archÆologians, topographers, and tourists; our glance must be cursory and superficial, content to ascertain by its sweeping survey that treasures of knowledge and stores of information await the patient and diligent investigations of more learned and scientific enquirers.
A visit to St. Stephens rewards the archÆologist by a sight of a few old stalls and a font of early date, while the historian associates with it the memory of the celebrated Parker, second Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a native of Norwich, and some say of this parish, but at any rate was singing pupil of the priest and clerk of this church. Parker’s life occupies an important position in history. The son of “a calenderer of stuffs,” in this city, he was at a very early age left fatherless, and dependent upon a mother’s guidance and direction for his education. Her superintending care provided him with a variety of masters for the several branches of learning—reading, writing, singing, and grammar—each being acquired under a separate teacher. He afterwards entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whence he was invited to the magnificent foundation of Cardinal Wolsey’s (now Christ Church) College, Oxford, but preferring to remain at Cambridge, he declined. In 1553, he was made chaplain to Queen Anne Boleyn, and received from her a special commission to superintend the education of her daughter Elizabeth. He was made chaplain to King Henry VIII., after the death of Anne Boleyn, and continued the same office in his successor’s reign; added to which, he was Rector of Stoke in Essex, Prebend of Ely Cathedral, and successively Rector of Ashen in Essex, and Birlingham All Saints, in Norfolk. He was chosen Master of Corpus Christi College in 1544, and Vice-Chancellor of the University. Happening to be in Norfolk during the celebrated “Kett’s rebellion,” he had the courage to go to the rebels’ camp and preach to them out of the oak of Reformation, exhorting them to moderation, temperance, and submission, which expedition, as we have seen elsewhere, had well nigh terminated fatally.
In 1550–1, he was put in the commission for correcting and punishing the new sect of Anabaptists, then sprung up. In Mary’s reign he was deprived of most of his dignities, upon the plea of his being married, and retired into Norfolk amongst his friends; but upon the succession of his old pupil, Elizabeth, he was exalted to the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury. Her Majesty made several visits to his house at Canterbury. His efforts to suppress the vague prophecies that were continually being set up in the various dioceses, and exciting the minds of the people, made him many enemies among the Puritans, but he still enjoyed the favour of the Queen. He died in 1576, leaving, amongst numerous charitable bequests, a legacy to be applied to keeping his parents’ monument, in St. Clement’s church-yard, in repair.
St. Peter’s Mancroft, the brightest star in the constellation of churches that illumine the “Old City,” has beauties and curiosities of almost every variety and character to offer for investigation; but perhaps none so loudly appeal to the senses of the citizens at large as the eloquent “changes” rung upon its magnificent set of bells, whenever occasion offers for a display of the fulness and richness of their tone; and, possibly, their melody is never more appreciated than when it comes forth in the softened echo of the beautiful muffled peal.
Touching the presence of bells in the church, we have noticed elsewhere that they were introduced among the incrustations of Pagan worship that grew up around the early Christian forms, and owed their origin to the superstition that the sound of metal preserved the soul from the danger of evil spirits; but there are other curious facts connected with their history. The Roman Catholic baptised the bell, using holy water, incense and prayers in the ceremony and according to the missal of Salisbury, there were godfathers and godmothers, who gave them names.
A strange allegorical signification of bells after their baptism was written by Durandus, the great Catholic authority, for the mysterious services of the church. “The bell,” he says, “denotes the preacher’s mouth, the hardness of the metal implies the fortitude of his mind; the clapper striking both sides, his tongue publishing both testaments, and that the preacher should on one side correct the vice in himself, and on the other reprove it in his hearers; the band that ties the clapper denotes the moderation of the tongue; the wood on which the bell hangs signifies the wood of the cross; the iron that ties it to the wood denotes the charity of the preacher; the bell-rope denotes the humility of the preacher’s life,” &c. &c. The description goes on yet further into detail; but the analogies between the subjects and their allegorical representations are so undiscernible, as to make it a somewhat tedious task to follow it throughout.
But St. Peter’s has manifold attractions beyond its bells. It has brasses and effigies, and monuments of every variety, commemorating the pious deeds of clergy and laity, warriors and comedians. Its vestry has pictures and tapestry and quaint alabaster carvings; little chapels jutting out from the nave like transepts, perpetuate the memory of old benefactors; and beneath its pavement lie the remains of the great philosopher Sir Thomas Browne, whose words of rebuke to the sepulchral ambition of the nameless tenants of monuments that make no record of those that lie beneath, involuntarily arise to the mind while contemplating the spot chosen for his last resting place. “Had they made so good a provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the act of perpetuation; but to subsist in bones, to be but pyramidically extant, is a fallacy of duration.” And again, “to live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only our hope, but an evidence in noble believers; ’tis all one to lie in St. Innocent’s church-yard or the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything in the ecstacy of being ever, as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.”
Happy philosophy, that could permit him calmly to contemplate the vicissitudes to which his bones might be subjected, even to the legitimate possibility of the sanctuary chosen for their resting-place being actually invaded by the blows of the workmen’s pickaxe, as veritably did occur some few years since, when the curious of the present generation were thus accidentally afforded an opportunity of cultivating a personal acquaintance with the anatomical outlines and phrenological developments of one whose intellectual offspring had been canonized, and enshrined among the household gods of the learned and the great for more than a century.
The very slight sketches of eminent characters that are suitable for so light and general a book as this, may perhaps be legitimately introduced in the course of a tour among the churches, their parochial headships affording the best facilities for arrangement; but it seems almost sacrilege to hash up into abridgements or synopses, biographies so fraught with national and European interest, as are many of those whose birth-place has been the Old City of Norwich, yet more is impossible within the compass of the Rambler’s pen; and to adopt the alternative of omitting all mention of such names, would be to blot out some of the brightest pages from the annals of its history.
Among them, and perhaps the highest upon the pinnacle of fame, is that of Sir James Edward Smith, the LinnÆus of our country, the concentration of whose “life and Correspondence” into two bulky volumes, evinces wondrous powers of discriminating selection, and condensation, in the biographer who has undertaken the important and onerous task. What, then, can be effected in the hasty notices of a mere rambler’s gleanings? Little more, if so much, as a bare outline of the leading features in the life of this brilliant ornament of our city and country, but enough, we trust, to lead any who have not already acquired a more intimate knowledge of his personal history, to feel earnest to repair the omission. He was a native of the parish of St. Peter’s Mancroft; and of his education, it is worthy of note, that he never left the parental roof to enter either a public or private boarding-school: he is one of the many favourable testimonies to the advantages of a strictly domestic education, conducted by aid of the most efficient masters, under the immediate superintendence of parental care. About the age of eighteen, he devoted himself to the study of botany as a science, and says himself, “the only book he could then procure was ‘Berkenhout,’ Hudson’s ‘Flora’ having become extremely scarce.” He received “Berkenhout” on the 9th of January, 1778, and on the 11th began to examine the Ule curopÆus (common furze), and then first comprehended the nature of systematic arrangement, little aware that, at that instant, the world was losing the great genius who was to be to him so important a future guide, and whose vacant place in the world of science he was destined so ably to fill. LinnÆus died that night, January 11th, 1778.
In 1780 Mr. Smith went to Edinburgh, and from thence to London, with a view to study for the medical profession. During his stay there, he became intimate with Sir Joseph Banks, an eminent patron of natural science, through whom he heard that the library and museum of LinnÆus were for sale, and immediately he entered into negotiations with Dr. Acrel, of Upsal, concerning it, which ended in his becoming the purchaser of the whole collection at the price of nine hundred guineas. From London he went to Leyden, and graduated as a physician at the university there. From thence he proceeded on a tour, visiting most of the classical spots and celebrated places in Italy and France, and upon his return to London devoted himself almost exclusively to pursuits connected with his favourite science, botany. By the assistance of his personal friend, the Bishop of Carlisle, one among the many great minds with whom he held constant communion, he set about establishing the LinnÆan Society. Its first meeting was held in April, 1788, when an introductory address, “On the Rise and Progress of Natural History,” was read by Sir James, then Dr. Smith, which paper formed the first article in the “Transactions of the LinnÆan Society,” a work which has since extended itself to twenty quarto volumes. In 1792 Dr. Smith was invited to give instructions in botany to the queen and princesses at Frogmore; and in 1814, received the honour of knighthood from the Prince Regent.
Ill health caused Sir James to return to his native county to recruit his strength, and there he continued to pursue his literary avocations in comparative privacy. His “English Botany” is a work consisting of thirty-six octavo volumes, and contains 2592 figures of British plants. It is a curious and melancholy coincidence, that the fourth volume of his “English Flora” reached him on the very last day he ever entered his library; and he thus had the gratification of seeing the completion of a work which, in his own estimation, was calculated, beyond all the other labours of his pen, to establish his reputation as a botanist, and confirm his erudition as an author.
St. Giles, the next in order of the saintships, in addition to its architectural beauties, with which we pretend not to “meddle,” presents a few legendary claims to our notice. The effigy of St. Christopher, of a monstrous size, with his staff sprouting by his side, was originally painted over the north door, as the patron saint of children presented for baptism, who generally were brought in at that door. In most churches where a north door existed, this image or painting of St. Christopher was wont to appear, depicted on as large a scale as the wall would permit, in conformity with the legend that he was a saint of noble and large stature. In the aisle once stood a chapel, altar, and image of St. Catherine, with a light burning before it, and against one of the pillars stood a famous rood, called the Brown Rood.
St. Benedict, the patron of monks, has his monument in the form of a little ancient church with a little tower, round at the bottom and octagonal at the top, where three little jingling bells give notice of the hours of prayer.
St. Swithin, that famous prophet of wet weather, has his memorial, too, not far distant. More have heard the old adage, “If it rain on St. Swithin’s day, there will be rain more or less for forty succeeding days,” than may have cared to trace its origin, which seems involved in some mystery. One authority tells us that St. Swithin was Bishop of Winchester, to which rank he was raised by Ethelwulf, the Dane; and when he died in 865, he was canonized by the pope. He had expressed a desire to be buried in the open church-yard, and not, as was usual with bishops, within the walls of the church: his request was complied with; but upon his being canonized, the monks took it into their heads that it was disgraceful for a saint to lie in the open church-yard, and resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to be done in solemn procession on the 15th of July. It rained, however, so violently on that day, and for forty days succeeding, as “had hardly ever been seen,” which made them set aside their design as heretical and blasphemous; and instead, they erected a chapel over his grave, at which many miracles are said to have been wrought.
Another writer tells us that “St. Swithin, a holy bishop of Winchester, about the year 860, was called the weeping St. Swithin, for that, about his feast, PrÆsepe and Aselli, rainy constellations, arise cosmically, and commonly cause rain.” The legend attached to its name is perhaps almost the only particular attraction of this little church.
The church of the holy St. Lawrence stands upon the spot of ground that in ancient days, when Norwich was a fishing town, was the quay or landing-place for all the herrings brought hither, the tithe of which was so considerable when it belonged to the bishops of the East Angles, that when Alfric, the bishop, granted the key staithe, with the adjoining mansion, to Bury Abbey, about 1038, the abbey, upon building the church, had a last of herrings reserved to it, to be paid them yearly. This last of herrings was compounded for by the celerer of the convent, about the time of Henry the Third, for a pension of forty shillings, which was annually paid until the time of Henry the Seventh, and then done away with, on account of the meanness of its profits.
On the sides of the arch of the door in the west are two carvings, one representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, the other that of St. Edmund, who is seen in a rather mutilated condition, (in more senses than one) his head lying at some distance in a parcel of bushes, while the Danes are shooting arrows into his body, alluding to that portion of the legend which says that when they could not kill him with arrows, Hunguar the Danish leader ordered them to smite off his head, and carry and throw it among the thickest thorns of the adjacent wood, which they did; but a wolf finding it, instead of devouring it, kept it from all beasts and birds of prey, till it was found by the Christians and buried with his body, and that in a surprising manner.
In the fifteenth century, three “Sisters of Charity,” called the Sisters of St. Lawrence, dwelt in a tenement by the churchyard. In 1593, the copes were turned into pall cloths, and in 1643 the painted glass of the windows was smashed, and other considerable damage done to the ornamental fittings up of the building.
Near to the church is the well of St. Lawrence, the water of which is now conveyed to a pump; bearing this inscription upon it:—
This water here caught
In sort, as you see,
From a spring is brought
Three score foot and three.
Gybson hath it sought
From St. Lawrence’s well,
And his charge this wrought
Who now here doth dwell.
Thy ease was his cost, not small—
Vouchsafed well of those
Which thankful be, his work to see,
And thereto be no foes.
From St. Lawrence’s belfry, the curfew is rung at eight each evening.
St. Gregory’s contains an altar tomb, with a long Latin inscription to the memory of Sir Francis Bacon, a judge in the court of King’s bench, in the time of Charles II.
On the communion table is an inscription to Francis Watson, a pedlar, who painted and marbled all the pillars of the altar, adorned it, and railed the front.
St. John’s Madder Market owes its distinctive name to the market formerly held on its north side, for the sale of madder, an article used in dying. Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk, the widow of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, beheaded by the command of Queen Elizabeth, lies buried in the choir of the church.
St. Andrews, the second church in point of architectural beauty, stands upon the site of one founded prior to the Conquest. Its eastern window bears traces of sad havoc having gone on in the midst of the scriptural scenes it was intended to depict.
At the east end of the two aisles are doors entering from the porches, and over them verses.
Over the south aisle door—
This church was builded of Timber, Stone and Bricks,
In the year of our Lord XV hundred and six,
And lately translated from extreme Idolatry
A thousand five hundred and seven and forty.
And in the first year of our noble King Edward
The Gospel in parliament was mightily set forward.
Thanks be to God. Anno Dom. 1547, December.
Over the north aisle door—
As the good king Josiah, being tender of age,
Purged the realm from all idolatry,
Even so our noble Queen, and counsel sage,
Set up the Gospel and banished Popery.
At twenty-four years she began her reign,
And about forty four did it maintain.
Glory be given to God.
There were formerly brass effigies of John Gilbert and his wife, with seventeen of their children.
St. Peter’s Hungate, or Hounds’ Gate, owes its name to the fact of the hounds belonging to the bishop being formerly kept close by. The old church was demolished in 1458, and the new one, commenced the same year, was finished in 1460, as appears by the date in a stone on the buttress of the north door, where there is an old trunk of an oak, represented without any leaves, to signify the decayed church; and from the root springs a fresh branch with acorns on it, to denote the new one raised where the old one stood.
St. Michael at Plea takes its name from the Archdeacon of Norwich holding his pleas or courts in the parish; it has some curious panel paintings of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, the Lady of Pity, Judas, John and the Virgin, St. Margaret and the Dragon, St. Benedict and St. Austin.
In the church of St. Simon and St. Jude, is a curious monument of a knight in armour, with a number of other figures grouped around the altar on which he lies. In this parish is the bridge where the “cucking stool” was wont to be kept, an instrument of punishment for “scolding and unquiet women,” of as ancient origin as the time of the Anglo Saxons; the offender was seated in a kind of chair, fixed at the end of a plank, and then ducked in the water; a cheating brewer or baker subjected himself to a similar degradation.
St. George’s Tombland, so called from the burial ground upon which it stood, has also some curious monuments; near it is a house, commonly called Sampson and Hercules Court, from two figures that formerly supported the portico, but which now stand in the court. The house was formerly owned by Sir John Fastolf, afterwards by the Countess of Lincoln, and in the time of Henry VII., by the Duchess of Suffolk.
“St. Martin’s at the Plain” stands close by the scene of the memorable battle between the rebels under Kett, where Lord Sheffield fell, and many other gentlemen and soldiers: the conflict lasted from nine o’clock on Lammas morning until noon. The World’s End lane leads hence to the dwelling of Sir Thomas Erpingham, long since transformed from a sumptuous mansion into the abode of poverty, its chambers subdivided and parcelled out, defaced and disguised by whitewash and plaster, and yet more by the accumulations of dirt and decay; until it needs the microscopic vision of an archÆologist to trace even its outline, among such a mass of confusion and rubbish.
“St. Helen’s,” which belonged to the monks, is now cut up into three parts, the choir being turned into lodgings for poor women, part of the nave and aisles into the same for poor men, while the intermediate portion is used for divine services. A charity that owns an annual income of £10,000, might, we think, find some better arrangements possible to be made. Kirkpatrick, the celebrated antiquarian, lies buried here. Over the south entrance to the church are these lines—
The house of God
King Henry the Eight of noble Fame
Bequeathed the City this commodious place,
With lands and rents he did endow the same,
To help decrepit age in woful case,
Edward the Sixth, that prince of royal stem,
Performed his father’s generous bequest.
Good Queen Eliza, imitating them,
Ample endowments added to the rest;
Their pious deeds we gratefully record,
While Heaven them crowns with glorious reward.
St. Giles’ Hospital, to which the church of St. Helen has been united by the appropriation of its nave and chancel, is a relic of great antiquity—a memorial of the liberality of Bishop Suffield, who in 1249 founded it, appointing four chaplains to celebrate service there for his soul, and all poor and decrepit chaplains in the diocese, endowing it with means to support the same number perpetually, and to lodge thirteen poor people with one meal a day. There were also appointed afterwards four sisters, above fifty years of age, to take care of the clothing, &c. &c. The master and chaplains were to eat, drink and sleep, in one room, and daily, after grace at dinner before any one drank, the bell was to ring and the chaplains to go into the choir and sing Miserere mei Deus. There was also an Archa Domini, or Lords’ Box, from which the poor that passed by, were daily to be relieved as far as the funds permitted. From Lady day to the Assumption, at a certain hour the bell was to ring and a quantity of bread, “enough to repel hunger,” to be given to the poor then present; and “because the house should be properly ‘Domus Dei,’ or the house of God, and of the Bishops of Norwich,” it was ordained that “as often as any bishop of the see should pass by, he should go in and give his blessing to the sick.” Edward VI. dissolved the Hospital and gave it to the city as a house for the poor. A school was also established, which was afterwards transferred to the Free School. The cloisters of the old hospital still remain almost entire, and serve as walks for the pensioners.
St. Edmund, St. James, St. Paul, St. Margaret, all the Saints, St. Saviour, St. Clements the Martyr, St. Peter Southgate, and per Mountergate, St. Julian, St. Michael at Plea, at Thorn, and Coslany, St. Ethelred, St. John’s Sepulchre, and St. John’s Timberhill, St. George, and St. Augustine, fill up the register of ecclesiastical edifices; each possesses some particular claim to notice, down to the legend of the Lady in the Oak, that gave a distinctive title to the church of St. Martin at Oak, where her image once figured in an oak tree in the churchyard, and wrought wondrous miracles, which caused so much adoration to be paid to the graven image, that the purgers of idolatry in good young King Edward’s reign, found it needful to displace it from its high position, and cut down the tree in which it stood.
Among the biographies associated with the various districts over which these patron saints may be said to hold their reign, are those of the eminent divine, Dr. Samuel Clarke, of the seventeenth century; Kay, or Caius, the founder of Caius College, Cambridge; Professors Hooker and Lindley, the great botanists; William Taylor, Sayer, Sedgwick, Gurney, Opie, and Borrow, among the literary celebrities of the age; Professor Taylor and Dr. Bexfield, names known well in the musical world, and many others, whose lives and works entitle them to be ranked among the leading characters of their time; while in the medical profession, the names and fame of Martineau and Crosse have become European. Few of these can we pause to sketch—many of them are among the number of those whose work is not yet done; and of others it may be said that their memory is too fresh in the hearts of those bound to them by chords of affection and friendship, for a “stranger to intermeddle” therewith.
William Taylor was the friend and correspondent of Southey. It is said, in his “Life,” that he once jocosely remarked, “If ever I write my own life, I shall commence it in the following grandiloquent manner; ‘Like Plato, like Sir Isaac Newton, like Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, I was born on the 7th of November, and, like Mrs. Opie and Sir James Edward Smith, I was baptized by the Rev. Samuel Bourn, then the Presbyterian minister of the Octagon chapel.’” His attainments as a German scholar were notorious, and his metaphysical writings earned for him a widely-extended fame. His translations of German theological works, may be regarded as the first introduction of that school of literature, that is at this moment deluging our country with the copious streams of philosophy, whose deep and subtle waters, whether invigorating or noxious, are spreading themselves through every channel of society in our land.
William Jackson Hooker, the son of a manufacturer of Norwich, rose to the rank of Regius Professor of Botany, in the University of Glasgow. In early life he was spoken of by Sir James Smith as the first cryptogamic botanist of the time, and his after-works proved the accuracy of the opinion. His “Muscologia Brittannica,” and “Monograph on the Genus Jungermannia,” are unrivalled as guides to the scientific enquirer, and, with his other works, may be classed among the gems of English literature. In the course of his rambles in the neighbourhood of his native city, he discovered, in a fir-wood near Sprowston, that quaint, curious, one-sided looking little moss, called Buxbaumia aphylla, which, destitute of any visible foliage, rears its little club-like seed-vessels upon its foot-stalks in the most eccentric possible manner. The muscologist may search long and often ere a specimen may meet his eye, even within the precincts of the grove where Dr. Hooker first discovered it; but many another rare and beautiful contribution to a moss herbarium shall reward him for his pains, especially the elegant Bartramia, with its exquisitely soft velvet foliage, and globular seed-vessels, to be met with in such rich abundance in few other soils.
Lindley, the Professor of Botany in the London University, is another genius raised from the nursery grounds of the Old City; his father having followed the profession of horticulture at Catton, one of the suburbs of Norwich.
One more biographical notice must close our list, and with it we make an end of our chronicles and “Rambles in an Old City.”
To those who were among the privileged number of friends, acquaintances, or even fellow-citizens of Joseph John Gurney, it will be easy to imagine why so beautiful a subject has been chosen for the closing sketch of our “pencillings by the way;” and the world at large will see in the name of the great philanthropist, whose memory sheds a sacred halo over every spot familiar with the deeds of gentle loving-kindness, tender mercy, and active benevolence, that marked his earthly career—a meet theme from which to borrow a ray of glory to brighten the scene of our “Ramblings,” as the landscape borrows a golden tint from the lingering beams of the sun that has set beneath the horizon.
As the brother of Elizabeth Fry, her fellow-worker in the field of usefulness, and her companion in her memorable visits to the prisons of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Continent, his history could not have failed to possess a deep interest, even apart from the individual characteristics of his bright and beautiful home-life, and the lustre shed upon his name by its familiar association with those of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Buxton, in the cause of slave emancipation.
The third son of John and Catherine Gurney, and sister of Priscilla Wakefield, he was born at Earlham Hall, August 2d, 1788. It is a singular fact connected with the name, that one of his ancestors, in 1653, was sent a prisoner to the Norwich gaol, for refusing to take the oath, and that Waller Bacon, of Earlham, who committed him, resided at the time in the very Hall which the descendants of the prisoner afterwards occupied. When Joseph was only four years of age, the family of eleven children lost the superintending care of their mother, and his home education mainly devolved upon his three elder sisters, among whom was Mrs. Fry. Their home was the scene of rich hospitality, dealt out by their liberal-minded father; and the literary tastes, intellectual pursuits, and elegant accomplishments, in which every member of the social group delighted, drew around them a brilliant circle of the choicest society, to which the late Duke of Gloucester was a frequent and welcome addition.
The scholastic instruction of Joseph John was at first superintended by a clergyman, and afterwards matured at Oxford, where he attended the professor’s lectures, and enjoyed many of the advantages of the university, without becoming a member or subscribing to the thirty-nine articles.
Such an education naturally tended to create some doubts as to the system of Quakerism; but after much examination and consideration, his preference became settled in favour of the views and profession of his old “Friends;” and consistently with them he lived and died, by no means finding in them any barrier to the fullest and freest association with any other body of Christians, or to a personal friendship with the ecclesiastical bishops of the diocese, with one of whom, Bishop Bathurst, he was a frequent and esteemed guest; while to Bishop Stanley was left the melancholy opportunity of bearing a testimony to his public and private character, in the memorable form of a funeral sermon from the cathedral pulpit, a tribute of respect unexampled since the days of George Fox. His life spent in doing good, in preaching as the minister of the society to which he belonged, in England, Ireland, upon the Continent, and in America, was full of interest. In the legislative hall, at Washington, before the assembled members of Congress, his voice was heard. Louis Philippe, Guizot, and De Stael, were among his auditors in France; the King of Holland abandoned, through his counsel, the importation of slave soldiers from the Gold Coast; Vinet at Lausanne, D’Aubigne in Geneva, and the King of Wirtemberg, held council with him. To attempt to chronicle his deeds of pecuniary munificence, public and private, would be an herculean task. The great sums lavished upon public societies, the world of necessity was made acquainted with, but they formed but a moiety of the aids furnished from his abundance to the wants of the needy. He was truly one whose left hand was not suffered to know the deeds of its fellow. The sick and the poor, at home and abroad, the industrious and the struggling, the aged and the young—each and all shared his bounty and loving help, for he was one who gave, and did not fling his charities down from the proud heights of opulence, so that poverty might blush to pick them up. But the record of his life was inscribed upon the page of history in characters indelible by the tears that watered his pathway to the tomb. We have made a faint effort to paint the last solemn scene that marked the close of the lamented Bishop Stanley’s career, and were almost tempted to place side by side with it the shade of grief that hung over the city when the great “Friend” was suddenly called home from his labours of usefulness and love upon earth. Few will ever be able to forget the scene of mourning and sorrow that followed the unlooked-for event, or the almost unparalleled silence of woe that was written upon every heart and countenance among the thronging thousands that attended to pay the last tributes of respect at the grave of the beloved and honoured philanthropist; when Magistrates and Artizans, Clergymen and Dissenting Ministers, Churchmen, Independents, Baptists, Methodists, and Friends, representatives of every grade of society and shade of religious opinion that the Old City could send forth, gathered around that lowly spot of earth to drop a tear, and seek inspiration from the spirit of love that seemed to breathe around the silent tomb. And who will forget the thrilling prayer offered up from the lips of the widowed mourner, who fulfilled, in the midst of that heart-stricken multitude, her measure of obedience to the will of Heaven and the duty of self-government, by public prayer and thanksgiving. Who does not rank among the noblest of the many noble sermons of the good Bishop Stanley, the far-sounding appeal that was sent forth from the pulpit of his cathedral, “Watchman, what of the night?”—the commemorating words that have been inseparably linked with the name and memory of Joseph John Gurney from that hour.
Years have passed since these events occurred, but the remembrance of them is vivid; the rich legacy bequeathed to the Old City by the holy life, walk, and conversation of such a man is not soon expended; but treasured in the sanctuary of many loving hearts, it is nurtured, and brings forth fruit, fifty, seventy, and a hundred-fold, to the honour and glory of God, and to immortalize the memory of a faithful servant in the vineyard of souls.
THE END.
j. billing, printer, woking, surrey.
