Part 14 (1/2)

_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 ”freres,” 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 n.o.ble 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 munic.i.p.al 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 a.s.sembled, 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 G.o.d are manifest.' Many therefore, especially n.o.bles, 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 s.e.xes, that scarce one of either remains, whose name is not written in one of them, who, therefore, all a.s.sembling in their churches, we cannot have our own paris.h.i.+oners, especially on solemn days, to be present at divine service, &c.; whence it is come to pa.s.s that we, being deprived of the due t.i.thes 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 G.o.d-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 n.o.ble libraries for forty s.h.i.+llings, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 part.i.tions 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 a.s.sociations 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 munic.i.p.al 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 a.s.sizes, 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 fas.h.i.+onable or unfas.h.i.+onable 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 a.s.serts her claims upon the world of music, to be cla.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 Phnix that arose from the ashes of the ”mystery,”

the ma.s.ses 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 n.o.blest of nature's gifts and sciences.

The quiet ”Friends” nominally banish it from their form of wors.h.i.+p; 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 a.s.sociate 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 inc.u.mbent 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 compa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed away.

In 1709, one of the city ”waytes” advertised himself as teacher of the violin and hautboy, and in 1734 there appeared another advertis.e.m.e.nt of a concert to be given, tickets 2_s._ 6_d._, 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.