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Tales of English Minsters: Hereford

At the very moment that this wicked scheme was being arranged, the two Kings and their trains had met, and after greeting one another courteously they all came riding, with great joy, home to the Castle. The black-hearted Queen went out to meet them, but her fair young daughter, Princess Elfrida, was not with her. She was too shy and modest to greet her lover in public, so she had crept up alone to the top of the Castle, and stood there, peering over the battlements, to see what manner of man he had become. For it was not the first time that they had met. They had been playmates in their youth when Ethelbert as Ætheling had visited Sutton with his father, and they had thought much of each other ever since. And it chanced that Ethelbert glanced up at the battlements, and when he saw the maiden, with her flaxen locks and blue eyes, looking down at him, his heart leaped for joy, and as soon as he had greeted the Queen, and quaffed a cup of mead, he made his way up to where she was, and there they sat together, so the old books tell us, all the sunny afternoon, while the rest of the gallant company, King Offa, and Prince Ecgfrith, and all the knights and nobles, went a-hunting the wild wolves in the forest near by. And as they sat they talked together, and Ethelbert told the Princess how all the people of East Anglia were looking forward to welcome their young Queen; and, both of them being true Christians, they made a solemn vow that they would rule their land in ‘righteousness and the fear of God, even as King Ethelbert of Kent and Bertha his wife had ruled their kingdom.’4 That night a great feast was held in the Palace of Sutton, a feast more magnificent and gorgeous than had ever been held there before. King Offa sat at the head of the table, wearing his royal robes and the golden crown of Mercia on his head. Beside him sat his wife, and close by were the youthful bride and bridegroom, and ‘that noble youth Ecgfrith’ as the old chroniclers call him. Nobles and thanes and aldermen crowded round the board, and gleemen who sang fierce war-songs of Hengist and of Cerdic, and of Arthur and his Knights, and the red wine was poured out, and they drank long and heartily; more heartily, perhaps, than they ought to have done. For the Queen made Cymbert, who stood behind the King’s chair, fill his cup again and again with strong, fierce wine, which had been a present from the Frankish King, and when his brain was heated, and he was not master of himself, she leant against him, and whispered in his ear; and the poor half-drunken Monarch muttered that she could do as she would, little recking that from that time the glory would depart from his house. Then she spoke lightly and gaily to her guest, handing him a golden cup filled with wine as she did so. ‘Now must thou drink to us, fair sir, and to thy bride, even as we have drunk success and long life to thee.’ And the young King took it gladly, and drank the blood-red draught, little dreaming that it had been drugged by the cruel hand that gave it to him. But so it was, and soon, feeling drowsy, he retired to his chamber, and dismissing his attendants, threw himself, all undressed, on the couch, and fell into a heavy slumber. You know the rest of the sad story: how the trap-door fell, and the couch fell with it, and how Cymbert the Warden either smothered him with the silken cushions among which he was lying, or, what is more likely, cut off his head with his own sword, for the tale is told either way. When the cruel deed was done, the Warden and the servants who were with him, took the lifeless body, and carried it out secretly by the postern, and at first thought of throwing it into the river. But remembering that the Queen had ordered it to be buried, Cymbert made the others dig a great hole, into which they flung it, and, such was the wildness and lawlessness of the time, when they had covered it up, and stamped down the earth upon it, they thought that the whole matter was ended. That was a very great mistake, however, for, although the deed was done, there were many, many consequences to follow. It was as when a stone is thrown into the midst of a pond. The stone may sink, but in sinking it makes ripples which go on widening and widening until they cover the whole surface of the water. Of course the murder could not be hidden, for on the very next morning the East Anglian thanes and noblemen demanded to know what had become of their Master, and when they discovered the fate that had befallen him, they made haste to flee, in case they too should be murdered. Then the next thing that happened was that Princess Elfrida, the poor broken-hearted young bride, felt so shocked and terrified at the thought that her own father had allowed the man she was about to marry to be put to death in such a treacherous manner, that she was afraid to live at home any longer, so she slipped out of the Palace, accompanied by one or two trusty attendants, and fled to a monastery at Crowland in the Fen country, where she became a nun. Perhaps that was the first thing that made King Offa’s conscience begin to prick, but, like King Ahab, he tried to brazen the matter out; saying to himself, “The deed is done and I cannot undo it, so I may as well have the Kingdom.” So he sent an army to East Anglia, and took possession of it. But I think that all the time he must have been feeling more and more unhappy, for, remember, at heart he was a good man, and had lived, up to this time, a noble and honourable life; and a certain terror must have fallen upon him when, two months later, his wife Quendreda died, and, sitting by his desolate hearth, he remembered the old story of the King of Israel who had done as he had done, and on whom the wrath of God had so speedily fallen. It must have been almost a relief when one day Eadwulf, Bishop of Lichfield, came to him and said: ‘What is this that thou hast done? Killed a defenceless man in thine own Palace, and taken possession of his Kingdom. Hadst thou killed him in open battle, no one could have blamed thee, but to murder him in secret when he came as a friend was not worthy of thee, O King.’ ‘I know it, I know it,’ replied Offa, who was now thoroughly sorry for his deed; ‘but it was the wine which I drank, which my wife gave to me. It inflamed my brain so that I knew not what I said.’ Now, at that time people had the idea that they could atone for any wicked act that they had done by giving money or lands to the Church, or going on some pilgrimage; so Eadwulf told King Offa that he thought that first of all he had better see that King Ethelbert’s body had Christian burial—you remember it had just been thrown into a hole—and that after that he must go a pilgrimage to Rome, and tell the Pope the whole story, and do whatever he told him to do as a punishment. Then he added some words which were very solemn, but which turned out only too true. This was what he said: ‘Because thou hast repented of thy evil deed thy sin will be forgiven; nevertheless, the sword shall not depart from thine house. It was in thine heart that Mercia should be the greatest of English Kingdoms, and so it might have been. But now the glory shall depart from thee, and another King, even the King of Wessex, shall be greater in power and shall become the first King of the whole of England.’ Offa did as he was bid. He had the body of the young King taken from its rude grave, and buried in the little church of reeds and wattles at Fernlege, near which Ethelbert had sat and mused on the night before his death. <div class="ctr pgbreak v6" id="i_31"> <ANTIMG class="figfull" alt="" style="width:605px" src="images/i_31.jpg" /> S. B. Bolas & Co. HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: THE NAVE. </div> Then he went to Rome and told the whole story to the Pope, and said how penitent he was, and how gladly he would do anything in his power to atone for his sin; and the Pope, who wanted to have more churches built in England, told him to go home again, and show his sorrow by building a really fine church at St. Albans—where the first English martyr Alban laid down his life for the Faith—and another at Fernlege, where there was only the plain little Cathedral Church of wood. Offa promised that he would do these things, and when he returned to England he gave orders that the two buildings should be begun without delay. Very soon afterwards he died, and it fell to the lot of one of his Viceroys, whose name was Milfred, to carry out his plans at Fernlege, and to build an ‘admirable stone church’ there. And so King Offa vanishes from history, and although we cannot doubt that his penitence was very deep, and that his great sin was forgiven, it is very striking to read how Bishop Eadwulf’s words were fulfilled, and how the glory did indeed ‘depart from his house.’ We have seen how his wife died, and how his youngest and fairest daughter became a nun. Then he himself died and was buried, not in either of the two great Minsters which he had caused to be erected, but in a little chapel on the banks of the Ouse, near Bedford. One day a dreadful flood came, and the Ouse overflowed its banks and washed away the chapel, and King Offa’s bones along with it, and no one ever knew what became of them. Soon afterwards his only son, Prince Ecgfrith, died, and slowly the Kingdom of Mercia grew less and less important, and the little Kingdom of Wessex grew greater and greater, until its King, King Ecgbert, great-grandfather of Alfred the Great, became ‘Overlord’ of the whole of England. As for King Offa’s eldest daughter, Eadburh, her story is the saddest of all, for she was a wicked woman like her mother; and she did one bad thing after another, until at last she had neither money nor friends left; and the old chroniclers tell us that, ‘in the days of Alfred, who reigned over the West Saxons, and who was Overlord of all the Kingdoms of England, there were many men yet living who had seen Eadburh, daughter of Offa, and wife of Beorhtric, begging her bread.’ But it is pleasant to think that if Eadwulf’s words came true in such a terrible way, the dream or vision which poor King Ethelbert had on the last night of his life came true also, but in a much happier and sweeter manner. For, as I have said, under the direction of Milfred, King Offa’s Viceroy, a noble stone church replaced the little wooden one at Fernlege, or, as it soon began to be called, ‘Hereford,’ which means ‘The Ford of the Army,’ because, when the Mercian soldiers wished to pass into Wales, they crossed the River Wye at this point. This new church was dedicated to ‘St. Ethelbert and the Blessed Virgin,’ and into it, when it was finished, the Bishop’s chair was carried. For, although the young King could not be called a martyr, he certainly left the record of a pure and brave and noble life behind him, and it seemed fitting—and we are glad that it did so—that the memory of his name should linger, all down the ages, round the stately Cathedral which was built as an expiation of his death, and in which, for half a century at least, his body rested. It was not taken into the new Cathedral at once, however, which seems rather curious, but it was left for more than a hundred years in the grave in which it had been laid by Offa, before he went on his pilgrimage to Rome. Perhaps this was because there was constant fighting going on all these years between the people of Mercia and the Welsh; and Hereford, being just on the border of the two Kingdoms, was so constantly exposed to the danger of being raided, or looted, or burned down, that no one had any time to think about anything else. But at last there came a period of peace, and the Bishop of Hereford who was living then, whose name was Æthelstan, determined that he would restore the Cathedral, which had got sadly knocked about in these border quarrels. When he had done so, he took King Ethelbert’s bones from their humble resting-place, and had them brought into his newly restored church and placed in a gorgeous shrine which he had prepared for their reception. A great misfortune fell upon this good Bishop, for, for the last thirteen years of his life, he was blind, and I have no doubt that, during all the long period when he could not see, it must have been a great joy to him to think, as he was led out and in to Service, that he had been allowed, before the darkness fell on him, to repair the House of God, and to provide a fitting tomb for the royal youth in whose memory it had been erected. Alas! he little knew what a few short years were to bring; and we almost wish that the poor old man had died before his life-work was all undone. For in 1056 a quarrel took place between Elfgar, Earl of Chester, and Edward the Confessor, who was King of England at that time. I do not know what the quarrel was about, but at any rate Elfgar was summoned to appear before the ‘Witan,’ or Parliament in London, on a charge of high treason. His guilt was not proved, but the King was so angry with him that he made him an outlaw, which was, of course, very unjust. Elfgar, as was to be expected in these old warlike days, determined to have his revenge, so he went and hired the services of a band of Danish pirates who chanced to be cruising about in their ships round the coast of Ireland. Then he went to Gruffydd, King of North Wales, who was his friend and neighbour, and asked him if he would help him also. Gruffydd agreed readily, for he hated the English, and soon a fleet of Danish ships came sailing up the Severn, full of fierce pirates and wild Welshmen, all of whom were sworn to obey Elfgar and Gruffydd. They came to the West Country because they knew there were a great many rich churches there that they could plunder, and as soon as the river became too shallow for their ships, they disembarked, and marched in the direction of Hereford. Now, as perhaps you know, Edward the Confessor was very fond of the Normans, and he had made one of his favourites, a Norman noble named Ralph, Earl of Hereford. This Ralph was a brave man, and quite ready to lead the citizens and the people of the neighbourhood out against the lawless invaders, but he made one great mistake. It was the custom, in his own land, for all the gentlemen to fight on horseback, instead of on foot, as was the way of the Anglo-Saxons, and he insisted on his followers following the foreign fashion, setting the example himself, with the result that everyone felt awkward and embarrassed, and very soon it became evident that Elfgar and his friends were going to have the best of it. Seeing this, Earl Ralph lost his head, and ran away, and perhaps we cannot wonder that the simple country folk followed his example, although, alas! one or two hundred of them were overtaken and killed before they had gone very far. Then the victorious hoard of savages, for they were little else, swept on, straight to the Cathedral, where they knew that the holy vessels, at least, and the ornaments on the altar, would be of gold or silver. But if they thought that they could obtain these easily they were mistaken, for they had not reckoned on the kind of men with whom they had to deal. For the brave priests determined to defend their church to the last, and shut and barricaded the doors in their faces; and, although at last they were overcome and the church looted, it was not until seven of their number lay dead in the great Western doorway. A scene of wild confusion followed, and when the wild invaders marched away again there was nothing left of the little city or of the great church which Æthelstan had restored with so much labour and pride but a few smouldering ruins. Among other things, King Ethelbert’s shrine was destroyed, and, although we hope that his bones were taken care of, and buried somewhere in the church, or else burned up altogether, we cannot tell for certain what became of them. Now, if there is one thing which we admire more than another about the grand old builders of the Middle Ages, it is their perseverance. They would spend a hundred years over the planning and building of a church, when one man died another taking his place; and when—as happened here, and many times elsewhere—the church was destroyed, either by accident or design, they lost no time in useless lamentations, but just patiently began to build it up again, trusting that in the future a time would come when their work would be prized and taken care of, as it deserved to be. So we find that in a very few years the work was begun once more from the beginning, this time by a Norman Bishop, named Robert de Losinga; and we are glad to know that his work remains, for if we go into the Cathedral we can see part of it still standing, for it was under his directions that parts of the choir and of the south transept were built. <div class="ctr pgbreak v6" id="i_42"> <ANTIMG class="figfull" alt="" style="width:547px" src="images/i_42.jpg" /> Photochrom Co., Ltd. HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: SCREEN. </div> That was more than eight hundred years ago. Then followed the building of the nave, the Lady-chapel, the north transept, and the tower, until, some four hundred years after Bishop Losinga had begun it, the great church was completed, and stood much as it stands to-day, except that a wooden spire surmounted the square tower of stone. This spire was taken down in 1790. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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