  Dedication: St. Alban. Church of a Benedictine Monastery. When Sir Gilbert Scott began to restore and repair the old abbey church of St. Albans, in 1870, he found it in a very dilapidated condition. Among other base uses to which various parts of the Cathedral had been put, the Lady-Chapel had been converted into a grammar-school, and a thoroughfare had been made through the retro-choir. After Scott’s death, in 1878, Lord Grimthorpe, who had been diligent and liberal for years regarding restorations, succeeded in getting control of the entire work. He made various changes and additions, and inserted windows at his own pleasure, not always with judgment, nor in the best taste. The consequence is that St. Albans is open to much criticism. Yet it remains an interesting old pile in many respects. St. Albans did not become a cathedral until 1877. It was a famous old abbey church, dating back to the days of Offa II., King of the Mercians, who founded a Benedictine monastery here about 793. From this time until the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII., the Abbey of St. Albans was of the greatest importance. Its Abbot had a seat in the House of Lords, and took precedence of all the abbots in the kingdom. Naturally, therefore, the list of abbots is notable. Some of them were related to the royal family. Among those Royalty was entertained in the Abbey on many occasions as both guest and prisoner. When the Abbey was consecrated in 1115 by the Archbishop of Rouen, Henry I. and his queen, Matilda, with their courtiers, were entertained from December 27 until January 6; Richard II. stayed here for eight days after Wat Tyler’s rebellion had subsided; and here the conspiracy against him was planned, when the Duke of Gloucester and the Prior of Westminster were dining with the abbot, John de la Moote. In 1399 John of Gaunt’s body rested here; and Richard II., and Henry, Duke of Lancaster (Henry IV.) were here in the same year. During the Wars of the Roses the Abbey of St. Albans was frequently used as a prison. In the first battle of St. Albans (May 23, 1455), when the White Roses were victorious, Henry was confined in the monastery; but in the second battle (February 17, 1461), the king, having been captured, was set at liberty by his brave wife, Margaret of Anjou, who marched from Wakefield with 18,000 men. The royal party went to the Abbey, where the monks chanted thanksgiving and in every way received them with delight. The undisciplined horde of soldiers unfortunately ran wild in the town and plundered the Abbey. Their behaviour was such that Abbot John Stokes changed his politics, and became an ardent Yorkist. Among the celebrated monks of St. Albans Mat St. Albans for a long period received “Peter’s Pence.” This was first levied by the King of the West Saxons in 727, and was a tax of one penny on each family owning lands. The receipt amounted to thirty pence a year and went to the support of a Saxon College at Rome; and because it was collected on August 1 (the day of St. Peter ad Vincula) it was called “Peter’s Pence.” Offa induced the Pope to give it to the Abbey of St. Albans. The monastic buildings have all perished, and the only remnant of the Abbey is the Great Gate, built in the days of Thomas de la Mare, about 1365. Over the archway there is a large room in which sessions used to be held, and below the road the curious may inspect the dungeons. This Gateway was a law-court and prison; and, as the Abbot of St. Albans had civil jurisdiction over all the town, as well as his monastery, many offenders were tried and condemned here. In the days of Wat Tyler’s rebellion John Ball and his seventeen companions were tried here and spent their last days in the dungeons. Another scene that we can picture is that of the monks bringing out ale and wine to quell the fury of the mob that stormed the Gatehouse before the news of Wat Tyler’s death arrived. St. Albans was a favorite place of pilgrimage, for it sheltered the remains of the first Christian martyr in Britain. Alban, or Albans, was a young soldier, who, during the persecution of the Christians in the Fourth Century, befriended a deacon named Amphibalus by receiving him in his house. Amphibalus converted him. Alban exchanged clothing with him so that he might escape. Am Matthew Paris states that the body of St. Alban was, during an invasion, removed from the church for safety, and afterward placed in its original grave. Offa II. found the coffin containing the remains of the martyr and laid them in a splendid reliquary, taking care first to place a golden band around the head with the inscription “Hoc est caput Sancti Albani.” Offa also had the martyr canonized. With a miracle-working shrine, the richly-endowed monastery continued to flourish. The Abbey Church was deemed quite large enough until Paul of Caen (1077-1093) was appointed abbot by William the Conqueror. In about eleven years only (1077-1088) he rebuilt St. Albans, using many of the Roman bricks from the ruins of the neighbouring Verulamium and timber already collected. His was an enormous Norman edifice (460 feet), longer even than Canterbury (290 feet). After a hundred years or so, Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214) made various changes. Money was raised in various ways for the purpose, and among them the abbot persuaded his monks to do without wine for fifteen years and contribute the savings to the fund for building. After him came William of Trumpington (1214-1235), who continued the work of building. He also constructed the cloister. Let us see exactly in what their work consisted: “Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214) pulled down the west front and began to build a new one in its place. He laid the foundation of the whole front, but then went on with the north side first. The north porch was nearly finished in his time; the central porch was carried up as far as the spring of the arch; the southern porch was carried hardly any way up from the foundations. The porches are described by those who saw them before Lord Grimthorpe swept away the whole west front as some of the choicest specimens of Thirteenth Century work in England. The mouldings were of great delicacy, and were enriched with dog-tooth ornament. It is said that Abbot John was not a good man of business, and that he was sorely robbed and cheated by his builders, and so had not money enough to finish the work that he had planned. To his successor, William of Trumpington, it therefore fell to carry on the work. He was a man of a more practical character, though not equal to his predecessor in matters of taste. He finished the main part of the western front. Oddly enough no dog-tooth ornament was used in the central and southern porches, and the character of the carved foliage differs also from that of the north porch. In Abbot John’s undoubted work the curling leaves overlap, and have strongly defined stems resembling the foliage of Lincoln choir, while that of Abbot William’s time had the ordinary character of the Early English style. There is evidence to show that he intended to vault the church with a stone roof; this may be seen from the marble vaulting-shafts on the north side of the nave between the arches of the main arcade, which, however, are not carried higher than the string-course below the triforium. The idea of a stone vault was, however, abandoned before the two eastern Early English bays on the south side were built, for no preparation for vaulting shafts exists there. “Abbot John de Cella had begun to build afresh the western towers, or, according to some authorities, to build the first western towers that the church ever had; we have no record of their completion, and it is said that Abbot William abandoned the idea. We have only the foundations by which we can determine their size. William of Trumpington transformed the windows of the aisles into Early English ones. He also added a wooden lantern to The next changes were made in the east end. These were begun in the last half of the Thirteenth Century. The walls of the presbytery were raised; the Saint’s Chapel built; then the retro-choir; and then the Lady-Chapel (1326). Then Hugh of Eversden (1308-1326) became abbot and had to rebuild the part of the nave that fell in 1323. His work was continued by Richard of Wallingford (1326-1335) and completed by Michael of Mentmore in 1345. John de Wheathampstead, who was twice abbot (1420-1440, and 1451-1464), rebuilt the upper part of the west front, made changes in the roofs, inserted Perpendicular windows in the ends of the transept, and also converted the Norman triforium arches into windows by filling them with Perpendicular tracery. His chantry was built after his death. William of Wallingford (1476-1484) contributed the gorgeous screen. The exterior has no interest for the student of architecture. The enormous church is plain, and Lord Grimthorpe has been at work everywhere. The only feature that has any real beauty is the fine Norman tower. “It is 144 feet high and is not quite square in plan, measuring 47 feet from east to west, and two feet less from north to south. The walls are about seven feet thick; in the thickness, however, passages are cut. It has three stages above the ridges of the roof. The lower stage has plain windows in each face, lighting the church below; the next stage, or ringing room, has two pairs of double windows; and the upper or belfry stage, two double windows of large size, furnished with louvre boards. The parapet is battlemented, and of course of later work than the tower The pilgrims to St. Alban’s shrine used to enter by the North Door of the Transept, carrying the candles that they had bought at the Waxhouse Gate. This Norman doorway, with a Norman window on each side (modern glass), still exists. The upper part of the north wall with the wheel window was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The nave is immensely long—about a tenth of a mile. It is Norman, grim, and cold, but impressive. “As we stand just inside the west door of the church we are struck by the length of ritual nave, about 200 feet, the flatness of the roofs, and the massiveness of the arcading dividing the nave from the aisles; for, though the four western bays on the north side and five on the south are Early English in date, there is none of that lightness and grace that we are accustomed to associate with work of this period, no detached shafts of Purbeck marble such as we see at Salisbury, no exquisitely carved capitals such as we meet with at Wells. William of Trumpington seems to have aimed at making his work harmonize with the Norman work that he left untouched; and when the rest of the main arcade on the south side was rebuilt in the next century, it was made to differ but little in general appearance and dimensions from Abbot William’s. “On entering by the west door a peculiarity will at once be noticed. About fifteen feet from the inner side of the west wall there is a rise of five steps which stretch right across the church from north to south. The floor to the east of these steps slopes imperceptibly upwards for eight bays, when a rise of three more steps is met with. On this higher level stands the altar, which is backed up by the rood screen. There is another step to be ascended to the level of the choir, and another to reach the space below the tower. Five steps lead from this into the presbytery; there is another step at the high altar rails, and four more lead up to the platform on which the high altar will stand. From the space below the tower one step leads up into the north aisle and two more into the north arm of the transept. From the level of the south choir aisle and south transept two steps lead up into the south aisle of the presbytery; from this aisle there is a rise of four steps into the aisle south of the Saint’s Chapel, and from this into the chapel itself a rise of four more. So that the floor of this chapel is, with the exception of the high altar platform, which is one step higher, the highest in the whole church, or nineteen steps above the floor just inside the west door. From the aisle of the Saint’s Chapel one step leads into the retro-choir, and two more into the Lady-Chapel; hence the floor of the Lady-Chapel is one step lower than that of the Saint’s Chapel. If we take seven inches as the average height of a step, it would appear that the floor of the Lady-Chapel is about ten feet higher than the floor at the west end of the nave.”—(T. P.) The nave is blocked behind the altar with a Rood screen, of Fourteenth Century work, much restored. It is pierced by two doors (also Fourteenth Century), through which processions passed into the choir. Upon it the organ is placed. The eastern part of the nave was rebuilt after the calamity that happened on St. Paulinus’s Day (October 10), 1323. Mass had just been celebrated, and the church was still crowded with men, women and children, when two of the great piers of the main arcade on the south side fell outwards, crushing the south wall of the aisle and cloisters. Soon the wooden roof of the nave also fell. Strange to relate nobody was injured; and although the shrine of St. Amphibalus was damaged, still the chest that contained his relics suffered no harm. All this part of the church had to be rebuilt; and, of course, the south arcade differs from the northern one. A massive pier, either the original Norman or one rebuilt in the Norman style, divides the five Early English bays on the west from the Decorated ones on the east. West we find the characteristic tooth ornament; and east, the characteristic ball-flower. When the pestilence was raging in London (only twenty miles away) in 1543, 1589, and 1593, courts of justice were held in this nave. On the north side a pier bears an inscription to the memory of Sir John Mandeville, the famous traveller, who was born at St. Albans in the Fourteenth Century and educated in the monastery school. The massive piers were coated with plaster and then painted. Each has traces of the same picture of the Crucifixion, with a second subject below it. This subject differs on every column. The soffits of the arches were also bright with colour, so that the severity and plainness that we now feel were originally missing. “Although in the four western bays of the main arcade the Early English work is very plain, yet the triforium is “The triforium over the Norman main arcade consists of large, wide-splayed, round-headed openings, in which the tracery and glazing introduced in the Fifteenth Century, when the aisle roof was lowered in pitch so as to expose the north side of the triforium to the sky, still remains. One of the triforium arches, namely, the third from the tower, was simply walled up at this time, and so retains its original form. The clerestory in this part of the church consists of plain, round-headed openings. Between each bay the outer southern face of each Norman pier is continued in the form of the flat pilaster buttress up to the roof.”—(T. P.) The piers of the choir, like those of the nave, were originally painted. So was the ceiling. Wall-paintings were likewise discovered between the clerestory windows in 1875. The choir-stalls and Bishop’s Throne are modern. In the south-choir-aisle the tomb of Roger and Sigar, two local hermits, was once a place of pious pilgrimage. The arches of the Tower are fifty-five feet high. The four inside faces of the lantern contain windows above the arcade, and the ceiling of the lantern (102 feet from the floor) is painted with the red and white roses of Lancaster and York, and various coats-of-arms. The effect of the tower is impressive. The peal consists of eight bells, cast in London in 1699. Some of the bells have been recast. Beneath the Presbytery notable abbots, monks and laymen were given burial. The presbytery is divided from the aisles by solid walls, broken by On the right and left of the altar are chantries. The south one is that of John of Wheathampstead, who was twice Abbot (1420-1440, and 1451-1464). His effigy is robed in full vestments, carries a pastoral staff and wears a mitre. His rebus—three ears of wheat—and his motto—Valles habundabunt—appear in various places. On the other side of the steps the handsomer Ramryge Chantry commemorates Abbot Thomas Ramryge, who also has a rebus—a ram wearing a collar with the letters R. Y. G. E. upon it. He entered office in 1492, and, strange to relate, no details of his rule are known. The date of his death is also a blank. Yet here is his fine monument in the Perpendicular style. Behind the Wallingford Screen lies the Saint’s Chapel, with the Shrine of St. Alban in the centre. “The bones of St. Alban were of course counted as the chief treasure of the Abbey, in some respects the most valuable relics in the kingdom, since they were the bones of the first Christian martyr in the island. It was meet and fitting, then, that the most splendid resting-place should be chosen for them. The bones themselves were enclosed in an outer and an inner case; the inner was the work of the sixteenth Abbot, Geoffrey of Gorham (1119-1149), and the outer of the nineteenth Abbot, Symeon (1167-1183). These coffers were of special metal encrusted with rich gems. It is recorded that the reliquary was so heavy that it required four men to carry it, which they probably did by two poles, each passing through two rings on either side of the coffer. It is said to have been placed in a lofty position by Abbot Symeon; but the pedestal of which we see the reconstruction to-day was erected during the early part of the Fourteenth Century, in the time of the twenty- “Such a precious thing as this jewelled shrine and the still more precious bones within it could not be left for a moment unguarded and unwatched, for stealing relics, when a favourable opportunity arose, was a temptation too great to be resisted by any monks, however holy. So on On the south side is buried Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV., brother of Henry V., and uncle of Henry VI. He died in 1447. The handsome tomb was probably erected by the Abbot Wheathampstead, who was a great friend of Duke Humphrey’s. In the north aisle of the Saint’s Chapel we come to the pedestal of the Shrine of St. Amphibalus (see page 362). It stood in the centre of the retro-choir until Lord Grimthorpe removed it to its present position. An oak screen separates the Saint’s Chapel from the Retro-Choir. This is Lord Grimthorpe’s work, and through it we pass. The Retro-Choir dates from the end of the Thirteenth Century, and has been greatly restored. In the centre once stood the shrine of St. Amphibalus (now removed to the north aisle of the Saint’s Chapel), and there were several altars: to Our Lady of the Four Tapers; to The Lady-Chapel, greatly restored, dates from the latter part of the Thirteenth and early part of the Fourteenth Centuries. Several changes of style may be noted. The side windows are fine examples of the Decorated, and the statuettes ornamenting the jambs and mullions still remain. The eastern window of five lights is a strange combination of tracery and tabernacle work. Originally the Lady-Chapel was separated from the retro-choir by a screen. The glass in the windows is modern, and the stone vaulting is also modern. Historical associations are numerous. Beneath the floor lie the hated Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt; Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, son of the famous Hotspur; and Thomas, Lord Clifford: whose bodies were found lying dead in the streets of St. Albans, after the first battle in 1455, in which they fell fighting for the Red Rose party. Beyond the eastern bay on the south side was built the Chapel of the Transfiguration, dedicated in 1430. Of late years this addition was rebuilt for a vestry. The walls were made lower than the original ones, so as to show the fine window above that consists of a traceried arch within a curvilinear triangle, beneath which is a row of niches. Beneath these is a very fine row of sedilia and piscinoe. The carving in the new chapel is very naturalistic, and represents the poppy, buttercup, primrose, gooseberry, rose, blackberry, pansy, ivy, maple, and convolvulus and other local flowers and leaves. |
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