CHAPTER XILATER NORMAN DAYS

MARTYR WORTHYOne of the old-world villages, some few miles above Winchester, lying in a reach of the river Itchen of unusual beauty and charm.

MARTYR WORTHY

One of the old-world villages, some few miles above Winchester, lying in a reach of the river Itchen of unusual beauty and charm.

the order to extinguish fires and put out lights—probably as much a wise precaution to diminish risk of fire in crowded towns built mainly of wood as directly political in purpose,—was first promulgated here. Here first of all curfew was rung, as it has rung nightly ever since. Formerly it rang from the little church of St. Peter in the Shambles, behind Godbiete; now it rings from the old Guild Hall—the Hall, in earlier days, of the Guild Merchant of Winchester.

Another event which affected the popular imagination even more profoundly was the great survey of the kingdom, the results of which were embodied in the Domesday Book, so called because, as Rudborne says, “it spareth no one, just like the great Day of Doom.” The compilation of it was regarded as a great act of oppression. “Inquisition was even made as to how many animals sufficed for the tillage of one hide of land.” In reality it was an act of statesmanlike administration, the object of which was to collect accurate information for the purpose of assessing ‘geld,’ or dues for military service. Exact assessment for taxes is evidently not a modern terror merely, nor is the modern income tax-payer the only one who has objected to inquisitorial modes of assessment.

Winchester and London were omitted from Domesday Book altogether—an omission which was repaired, as far as Winchester is concerned, in Henry I.’s reign, when the Winchester Domesday Book, as it was called, was compiled. Needless to say, Domesday Book was merely the popular name for it; its real name was theRotulus Wintoniensis, or Book of Winchester, sometimes termedRotulus Regisor King’s Book. Domesday Book was kept at Winchester, and a copy of it at Westminster. The original is now in the Rolls Office.

It is certainly noteworthy that Winchester should have given birth to the two most valuable records of national history which this country has ever possessed, two records which no other nation can find any parallel to, viz. the English Chronicle and the Domesday Book. The value of the latter is that it gives us in absolutely unquestionable form the raw material of history, unwarped by personal bias, uncoloured by tradition. By means of it we can put to exact test many of the time-honoured statements, accepted for generation after generation without question or demur, and in that fierce crucible many and many a legendary tradition treasured hitherto as current historical coin, has been melted down and revealed as a spurious token merely. Such a one we probably have in the story already related of Abbot Alwyn and the monks of Newan Mynstre; the story of the afforestation of the New Forest is another. But the New Forest, though local, is rather beyond our scope: the reader is referred to the fuller volume on Hampshire for a discussion of this topic: and, indeed, the story of Norman Winchester is full enough as it is—replete with many a thrilling scene, many a notable historical figure. William himself, strong, stern, far-seeing and determined, a leader among men, toweringhead and shoulders above his contemporaries, capable of cruelty, hard and grasping, indeed, as were all who strove to rule in those stern days, but never small or moved by petty spite. “He nothing common did or mean,” might almost be said of him. And side by side with him, Lanfranc the Italian, smooth, supple, astute—like William, a master mind, a great man, but with the greatness of the ecclesiastical statesman rather than of the saint or even the scholar; and in sharp contrast Walkelyn the Norman, the high-minded, the conscientious, the ascetic—a scholar and a devotee rather than a statesman; and after these a host of minor personalities, striking and interesting enough, too, in their way. Foremost among these stands Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, son of the great Siward, Earl of Northumbria. A picturesque and pathetic figure he is, with certain virtues and high qualities all unfitted for his time.

Poor Waltheof—like Saul of old, his outward man striking and tall and goodly to look upon,—was the idol of William’s Saxon subjects. But the fair exterior covered after all but a weak and irresolute soul, no match for the master mind of William, who read him through and through as a reader reads his book. Yet though in his weakness William despised him, in his popularity William feared him, and when denounced by his treacherous Norman wife for the merely colourable part he had played in the Bridal of Norwich—

That bride-aleThat was many men’s bale—

William, deaf to all entreaty, kept him a close prisoner, and finally, at the Pentecostal Gemôt held at Winchester, had sentence of death pronounced upon him. Swiftly and secretly the order was carried out, and on May 31, St. Petronilla’s day, at early dawn, while the men of Winchester were in their beds, Waltheof was led out to execution on St. Giles’s Hill. He came arrayed in full dress as an earl, wearing his badges of rank, and on reaching the place of execution knelt down to pray. He continued sometime in prayer while the executioner, fearing interruption, grew restive and impatient. “Wait yet a little moment,” pleaded the victim; “let me, at least, say the Lord’s Prayer for me and for thee,” and the Earl’s voice was heard uttering the petitions one by one, till at the words, “Lead us not into temptation,” the axe descended. But, as the severed head fell from the body, the lips were seen still to be moving, and the words, “But deliver us from evil,” were distinctly heard. Such is the moving account we have of Waltheof’s death. The last chapter of the story belongs rather to Crowland than to Winchester. Buried in the first instance obscurely at Winchester, his body was later on permitted to be reinterred at Crowland, and, on raising it, the head was found to be miraculously reunited to the trunk, a thin red line alone revealing the death he had died. Kingsley has told it in masterly style inHereward the Wakeand the episode of his false wife Judith’s visit to her husband’s tomb forms a thrilling incident most picturesquely told.

Of Hereward himself Winchester history is silent, but Kingsley, in another striking passage, brings him too upon our local stage, when he rides to Winchester to make submission to the king. With his companions he rides along the Roman road which leads still from Silchester, till, from the top of the downs, they catch sight of the city lying beneath them.

Within the city rose the ancient Minster Church, built by Ethelwold—ancient even then—where slept the ancient kings, Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf, the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma, his wife, and Ethelred’s before him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died not twenty but two hundred years ago; and it may be an old Saxon hall upon the little isle, whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the downs which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which they saw with curses deep and loud—the keep of the new Norman castle by the west gate.

We will not stop to discuss this striking passage; and though Hereward be but a figure imported into our local history, the castle which he saw was, both then and for many years to come, the most noticeable and striking feature in Winchester, as also the leading outward symbol of the Norman presence and power. For centuries it was to hold its place supreme, to see one sovereign after other add and re-add to its palace, to stand siege and battery, to be the residence of kings and queens, to witness the birth of more than one heir tothe throne, to gather within its walls councils and parliaments. For 600 years it was to endure till Cromwell laid siege to it, and then razed it to the ground, all save the great Hall, built in Plantagenet days, by Henry III. which still remains glorious in its associations as in the beauty of its proportions. Yes, Hereward and his companions might utter curses loud and deep, for the rebirth of the nation, which the Norman period heralded, was not accomplished without much labour and travail, both of body and of spirit; but could he have looked forward, as we can look back, upon all that Norman rule has been the stepping-stone to, both in Winchester and elsewhere, he would have found, like the unwilling prophet of old, a blessing on his lips and not a curse, and we too shall be ready to offer up our Te Deum in a spirit of thankfulness, earnest and sincere, though the appropriate accompaniment to it be rather a subdued strain, and in a minor key, than an unbroken outburst of triumphal joy.

They shot him dead on the Nine-stone BrigBeside the Headless Cross,And they left him lying in his bloodUpon the moor and moss.Barthram’sDirge.

WhenWilliam the Conqueror died, the link with Normandy was temporarily severed, and during the reign of Rufus of evil memory Winchester declined in political importance; nor, apart from one or two episodes, are the Winchester memories of the reign of a striking character. It witnessed, indeed, the practical completion of Walkelyn’s life-work—the great cathedral—as well as the institution of St. Giles’s Fair, as already mentioned, but these belong in essence, though not in time, rather to the epoch of the Conqueror than to that of his violent-minded successor.

Most characteristic of all events of the reign was the long-drawn-out struggle between Rufus and Archbishop Anselm—“the fierce young bull and the old sheep,” as Anselm himself had in dismal prognostication dubbed them. On Lanfranc’s death in 1089 William kept the see vacant for several years, as was his practice in matters of church preferment, in the meantime shamelessly appropriating the temporalities of the see; and when as a result of a dangerous illness he at last agreed to appoint a successor, it was only with extreme reluctance and forebodings of ill that Anselm was at last prevailed on to accept the king’s nomination. Anselm’s fears were fully justified, and a state of hopeless strife soon existed between the two. To all Anselm’s demands, particularly his demand to go to Rome for investiture, the king returned an inflexible refusal, until a crisis was reached at a great council held in Winchester, memorable as the last personal meeting between the king and the archbishop. Every form of pressure was brought to bear on Anselm; he refused, as a matter of conscience, to give way, and finally announced his intention of going to Rome without the king’s sanction, as he could not go with it.

The king raged and stormed in vain, till Anselm, as he turned to leave the royal presence, begged permission to give him his blessing. “I refuse not thy blessing,” said the king, somewhat subdued; he inclined his head, and Anselm signed the sign of the cross over him. They never met again.

The last scene of all in the reign is, however, Winchester’s most dramatic, as well as tragic, recollection. On the afternoon of Lammas Day (August 1), 1100, news came to Winchester that the Red King, who had been hunting that day in the New Forest, had

WATERSPLASH AT ITCHEN STOKEPerhaps the prettiest reach of the river Itchen—and that is saying a good deal—lying between Itchen Stoke and Ovington. The road between them crosses the main stream in a delightful ‘watersplash.’

WATERSPLASH AT ITCHEN STOKE

Perhaps the prettiest reach of the river Itchen—and that is saying a good deal—lying between Itchen Stoke and Ovington. The road between them crosses the main stream in a delightful ‘watersplash.’

there met a violent death. Prince Henry, his younger brother, with his followers had spurred into the city bringing the tidings, had seized the Royal Treasure, and had summoned the Witan to pronounce him king. Meanwhile the Red King’s body, alone and untended, lay weltering in blood on the spot where he had fallen, till a charcoal-burner, Purkess by name, travelling along had found it and placed it in his cart, that the poor remains might at least have decent sepulture in the cathedral of the diocese. As the news spread in the city an eager throng gathered and watched the road to await the sorry funeral cortège, as it made its mournful way, probably along the road from Compton through the south gate, and so into the old monastery. The interment took place the very next day, right under the tower—“on the Thursday he was slain, and on the morning after buried”; and when a few years later the Norman tower fell upon the tomb, men said it was the Red King’s crimes and not structural weakness that had occasioned the fall. His bones were transferred later on to one of the mortuary chests on the side screens of the choir, but popular tradition still points to a tomb beneath the tower as the tomb where he was originally buried, and speaks of it as Rufus’s Tomb.

And now, with Henry on the throne, Winchester resumed its former political importance. Henry reunited the Norman provinces to England, and the old activity of intercourse across the seas was resumed. But more than that, Henry identified himself with thecity more closely than any king has ever done before or since. His romantic marriage with the Saxon princess Eadgyth, of Romsey Abbey, grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, made him popular, and after his marriage he and his queen—the good queen Molde the people called her—made Winchester Castle their residence, and here their son William, the ill-fated hero of theWhite Shiptragedy, was born.

With its old political position restored, and the king reigning and residing here in person, Winchester rose to the zenith of its importance in Norman days.

A number of events of interest are identified with this reign. First and foremost, the birth of Hyde Abbey. Newan Mynstre, the pious offspring of Alfred and Edward the Elder, had since the translation of Swithun’s bones, during Æthelwold’s régime, steadily declined in importance, and its activity had been much hampered. The proximity to the older and more extensive foundation, which eclipsed and overshadowed it in importance, was one cause; another was the cramped nature of the site upon which the New Minster had been erected.

Always small and confined, so close were their respective churches that chanting in one disturbed the devotions in the other. The erection of William the Conqueror’s palace had made matters still worse, and the monks had had to forego a portion of their already over-congested area. Under these circumstances William Giffard, who had succeeded Walkelyn as Bishop of Winchester, obtained from Henry permission to move the monastery to the village of Hyde in the northern suburbs of the city, and here near Danemark Mead, where Guy of Warwick was said to have vanquished Colbrand the Dane, the new structure was commenced. The immediate result was highly satisfactory.

The monks of St. Swithun’s, who also had suffered from the over-close proximity and congestion, as well as from the rivalry of its over-close neighbour, heartily co-operated and granted the site for the new abbey. Old rivalries were allayed, and for a time a spirit of cordiality prevailed, while as a means of raising funds to assist both houses the king’s grant of a three days’ fair was added to, and an extension given for five additional days, making eight altogether.

In 1110 all was ready, and the monks of Newan Mynstre proceeded in solemn procession to take possession of their new home, bearing with them their sacred relics—the great cross of gold given by Cnut and Emma, and the remains of their illustrious dead, Alfred and Alswitha and their son Edward, for reinterment in the glorious new Abbey Church. Newan Mynstre had so far lasted for some 200 years; now it entered on a new and amplified existence—an existence destined to endure for over 400 years, during which, as Hyde Abbey, it was to maintain a proud and exalted position among the monasteries of the land, till Henry VIII.’s commissioners dissolved and swept it away, leaving what is now a scanty ruin merely—a gateway and little else—to speak of the formerglories of the once famous foundation of Alfred the Great.

Of interest and importance only second to that of the erection of Hyde Abbey was the appointment of the bishop, Henry of Blois, who succeeded to the see on the death of William Giffard in 1129—a man of high birth and extreme eminence, who was to play a leading part both in the national fortunes and in the fortunes of the city for over forty years. His career we shall deal with more fully in the next chapter.

As to the condition of Winchester in Henry’s reign we have fortunately sources of exact and unusually ample information. From the Domesday Survey of William the Conqueror, Winchester and London had been entirely omitted. Henry gave orders for a Winchester Domesday, as it is sometimes termed, to be compiled—a survey limited, it is true, to the king’s lands, that is, the lands in Winchester paying land-tax and brug-tax (the latter a tax of uncertain nature, perhaps dues on brewing). This was supplemented by a second survey made some years after by order of Bishop Henry of Blois; and the results of the two surveys are of peculiar importance and interest, for though the church properties are left entirely unnoticed, we glean from it knowledge, not only of the streets and properties, but also of the occupations and handicrafts,et hoc genus omne, of Norman Winchester.

The mode of taking the census was peculiar. Eighty-six of the leading burghers were empanelled andsworn to hold a grand inquest, and to return a faithful verdict. From their labours we gather not only that the Norman city, in its general ground plan, its walls, gates, and the dispositions of its streets, reproduced very closely many of the features of the original city erected by the Romans, but that that general character has remained practically undisturbed to the present day. The main artery and commercial thoroughfare was then, as now, the High Street, referred to only indirectly in the census asVicus Magnus. Nearly all the other streets crossed it at right angles and were named after the different trades followed in them; and we gather that in Winchester, as in all other mediaeval towns, each trade had its own special street or quarter, and their general disposition was somewhat according to the scheme annexed.

Some few of these names linger still, though practically all the special industries have long since disappeared. Minster Street has survived and for obvious reasons, Sildwortenestret and Bucchestrete have survived to modern times in Silver Hill and Busket Lane respectively, while Gere Street or Gar Street, curiously enough, survives, though all but unrecognisably, in Trafalgar Street. The list of the trades alone is lengthy and varied, and in itself a telling testimony to the prosperity of the city at the time. The occupations of cloth-weaving, tailoring, tanning, remind us of the great industry of the district—sheep-rearing—the wool and other products of which formed the staple attraction for continental merchants to throng to the city

during the fairs of St. Giles. The shieldmakers reflect its military importance, and the goldsmiths the rank and material wealth of those for whom it catered.

Naturally enough, many other interesting details are to be gathered incidentally,e.g.the names of the inhabitants, among which many names still familiar as distinctively Winchester names are to be found, and their various ranks and occupations. We read, for instance, of a market near the three minsters, of which the present Market Street is a survival; of ‘estals,’ or stalls, in the High Street, a reference with a curious modern echo, inasmuch as the stalls in the High Street and Broadway have been quite recently the source of much local heart-burning and contention; of ‘escheopes,’ or shops, which had belonged to the Confessor’s queen, Edith; of reeves (prepositi), and of a ‘stret bidel’ (orstreet beadle). One curious entry relative to Eastgate speaks of certain steps which gave access to the church above the gate (qdā gradˢ ad ascendendā ad ecclam sup portā), showing that King’s Gate was not alone among the city gates in having a little church above it.

Another important feature we gain information on is the position of the Gilds. These trade organisations had now become important and fully organised; they served for the protection of their members, they made regulations for the conduct of the several trades, and their headquarters were used as clubs or places for general meeting and discussion—the latter including almost as asine qua nonale-drinking, and that not alwaysin moderation. The Survey contains references to three halls or ‘gild’ headquarters—Lachenictahalla(orchenictes’ hall) near Westgate, theChenichetehallanear Eastgate (on the site of the present St. John’s Rooms), and theHantachenesle in Colebrook Street. What the very obscure termHantachenesle, applied to the last named, means is a problem on which so far no satisfactory light has been thrown. Nor is it clear who the ‘cnechts’ or ‘chenictes’ were—whether, as is generally assumed, they were ‘knights,’i.e.young men of rank, or ‘cnechts,’i.e.sons of burghers not yet admitted to the ‘Freedom.’ We read that at the Chenichetehalla, the ‘chenictes’ drank their gild (chenictehalla ubi chenictes potabant Gildam suam), and at the Hantachenesle the ‘approved’ or freemen drank theirs (Hantachenesle ... ubi pbi homiēs Went potabant Gildā suā). That this beer-drinking was often inordinate we gather from various contemporary references, such as Anselm’s rebuke of a certain monk who was given to frequenting the gilds and drinking deeply:in multis inordinate se agit et maxime in bibendo ut in gildis cum ebriosis bibat. There is also a reference to a ‘Gihald’ or ‘Gihalla’—possibly a ‘Gild’ Hall,—and the Pipe Rolls of this reign mention a Tailors’ Gild, and aChepemanesela, orChapman’s Hall. The whole subject of these gilds, as well as of their halls, is one of great obscurity, and the references in the Winton Surveys, full of interest as they are, serve rather to whet our curiosity than to actually solve any problems they suggest.

EASTONA typical Itchen valley village, one of the most picturesque in the county, with an old Norman church, quaint thatched cottages, and clipped yews.

EASTON

A typical Itchen valley village, one of the most picturesque in the county, with an old Norman church, quaint thatched cottages, and clipped yews.

But whatever their exact function and organisation at the time, from them the important Merchant Gild grew, and its hall in High Street (on the site occupied now by the old Guildhall) was the centre for many years of corporate and civic rule, till the erection some forty years ago of the present and more pretentious Guildhall in the Broadway.

The whole circumstances of this so-called Winton Domesday are of unusual interest. The original MSS. exist, bound in an ancient leather binding, considered to be the work of contemporary Winchester craftsmen. These are now the property of the Society of Antiquaries.

Significant among other features of the mediaeval city was the Jewish quarter, or Ghetto, a survival of which we have in the present Jewry Street, at that time Scowertene Street. Abutting on this, in the rear of what are now the extensive premises of the George Hotel, dwelt the Jewish community, with a synagogue of its own, for the Jews were not merely tolerated here, but actually welcomed. The extensive commercial relations now rapidly developing between Winchester and the Continent were doubtless responsible for this, and the Jew in his ancient prescriptive capacity of banker was found to be an effective ally in building up the commercial importance of the rapidly developing city. References to the Jews at Winchester are fairly frequent all through the next two centuries, the period of Winchester’s commercial prosperity. In Richard I.’s reign Richard of Devizes tells us of a Lombard Jew lending moneyto the Priory of St. Swithun, and lamenting the leniency shown to them by Winchester; while later on in the thirteenth century we read of a Jew—“Benedict, a son of Abraham”—being actually granted the full freedom of the city. These facts reveal to us the scope and the importance held by the Winchester of mediaeval times as an emporium and centre of commerce of more than local repute. But we are anticipating, and we must now return.

The remaining distinctive feature of the city to be noted was the monastic quarter, which occupied practically the whole area between High Street, Calpe Street, and the outer city wall. Foremost in importance was the great Convent of St. Swithun’s—its great cathedral church forming its effective boundary to the north, its great gate opening into Swithun Street close to the little postern gate or King’s Gate, and with the south-eastern edge of the city wall as its southern limit. Behind it, eastward, was the bishop’s residence—Wolvesey, the ancient court of the Saxon kings—and flanking High Street at the eastern end was Nunna Mynstre, or St. Mary’s Abbey, part of the revenues of which were derived from the tolls or octroi duties levied on commodities entering the East Gate.

Such then, in bare outline, was the Winchester of Henry’s reign—not without its miseries, its injustices, it is true, but, as the times went, busy, prosperous, and developing. But this state of things was not to endure for long. Henry’s heir, William, had perished in theWhite Ship; and though he had done all he could toavert it, the land was to be shortly handed over to a disputed succession and the horrors of civil war when he died. Winchester has good reason to cherish the memory of Henry I. and to recall his reign with satisfaction. He died in 1135, and was buried in Reading Abbey, which he had himself founded.

Let us now praise famous men....It was he that took thought for his people that they should not fallAnd fortified the city against besieging.Ecclesiasticus.

Greatas has been the part played by kings in the history of our city, that played by bishops has been even greater still, and few among the makers of Winchester hold a more prominent or more honourable place than the great bishop who had succeeded to the see a few years before Henry I.’s death, Henry of Blois, brother of Stephen of Blois, now king of England, whose fortunes were to be closely linked during the two following reigns with those of our city.

A scheming statesman and an ardent churchman, he was to play a leading part in national affairs in the troublous times that were to follow—to direct his see for over forty years, and to leave indelible marks of his occupancy in the see and the city alike, of which St. Cross Hospital, Wolvesey ruins, the Cathedral font and portions of its fabric are but some of the most notable and most enduring.

And the times were troublous indeed. TheWhite Shiptragedy had bereft not only the king of his heir, but the nation of a male claimant to the throne in the direct line, and all Henry’s influence was insufficient to secure the crown for his daughter Matilda, the widowed Empress of Germany. The feeling of the time was adverse to having a female as sovereign; and Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, actively championed by Bishop Henry, and strongly supported by the barons, bore down all active opposition.

But king though he was, Stephen’s personal position was very different from that of his Norman predecessors. Brave and frank, but personally easy-going, dependent, moreover, on the goodwill of the powerful interests which had placed him on the throne, his authority was weak and his hold on his subjects ineffective. Barons and bishops strengthened themselves against him, and an era of castle-building commenced, which was to usher in a period of more terrible oppression than the country has ever witnessed before or since, for, secure in their strongholds, the Norman barons fastened themselves on the defenceless countryfolk like vultures on their prey, and there was none to make them relax their hold. As theChroniclesays:

They filled the land with castles and they cruelly oppressed the wretched folk with castle works. When the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men. When took they the men who they thought any goods to have both by night and by day, churls and women, they cast them in prison for their gold and silver, and they tortured them with painsuntellable—for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke—they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head and hanged fires upon their feet.... Many thousands they killed with hunger.... Then was corn dear and flesh, cheese and butter, for none there was in the land.... And they said openly that Christ slept and his saints.

Such was the anarchy, such the ruin, which weak rule had brought upon the realm.

Prominent among the castle-builders—though not among the oppressors—were certain of the bishops, and none more so than Bishop Henry. The bishop’s residence at Wolvesey, the ancient seat of Alfred and the Saxon kings, he converted into a strong Norman fortress, the ruins of which still stand, while at Merdon (near Hursley, some five miles from the city), at Bishop’s Waltham, and at Farnham, he reared fortresses also. Thus Winchester became remarkable in one respect—it had two fortress castles instead of one, a privilege it was later on to pay dearly for.

But Bishop Henry had other schemes too. Of royal birth, reared in the atmosphere of church ascendancy in the great and ambitious house of Cluny, and naturally masterful in temperament, he was aiming at higher rank and wider influence. Bishop of Winchester though he was, and Abbot of Glastonbury—for by special papal sanction he had been allowed to hold this valuable and influential office alike with his bishopric—there was still the archbishopric before him, and when in 1136 this fell vacant he seemed by every natural claimto be marked out for it; but Stephen had begun to feel his brother’s yoke growing heavy on him, and after some long delay Bishop Henry was passed by and Theobald, Abbot of Bec, appointed. Henry was deeply mortified; and though the Pope soon after appointed him as Papal Legate over Archbishop Theobald’s head, his wounded pride never forgot the affront it had received.

Disappointed of his hopes of Canterbury he worked hard to persuade the Pope to divide England into three provinces instead of two, with Winchester diocese as the third archbishopric; and though not actually successful in this, the Pope is said to have encouraged him in his project.

While matters were thus strained between the bishop and the king, Stephen, who had witnessed with alarm the growth of the castle-building and the power of the barons, determined to enforce his authority upon them. He called on several of the bishops to surrender their castles, and, being met by refusal, treated the Bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury with such cruelty and personal indignity that the latter died from the hardships inflicted on him. This act of unparalleled folly—for the person of a bishop was regarded as sacred—not only estranged public sympathy, but fanned to active flame the smouldering resentment of Bishop Henry. As Papal Legate he summoned Stephen to answer for his conduct before him at a council held at Winchester, and here the king was not only condemned, but even obliged to do penance. Stephen’s position was gravelycompromised, and Matilda’s supporters, who had long bided their time, broke into active opposition. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, her half-brother, took up arms in her behalf; Matilda landed at Arundel; and Stephen in fighting at Lincoln was taken prisoner.

Such an event seemed a token from heaven. Bishop Henry openly espoused Matilda’s cause; he proclaimed her at Winchester as “Lady of the English.” The city opened its gates to her, and she marched in in triumphal procession with all her forces and took possession of the Castle, while the occasion was celebrated by a solemn service of rejoicing in the Cathedral.

But this state of things was not to last. Arrogant and impracticable, she quickly alienated her own supporters, and finding the bishop by no means subservient, as she had expected, she summoned him to yield up his Castle of Wolvesey to her, to which summons he is said to have enigmatically replied, “I will prepare myself,” and this he did. He repaired and strengthened his Castle and threw his influence again into the scale of Stephen. Thus civil war broke out once more, and for six years the country was torn again by every kind of evil and oppression. In these troubles Winchester, placed, as it were, between anvil and hammer, with the empress-queen in the Castle and the bishop at Wolvesey, suffered terribly. Raid and counter-raid, siege and counter-siege succeeded one another, till almost the whole city—houses, churches, monasteries alike—were consumed in the flames. Alswitha’s foundation, Nunna Mynstre, or St. Mary’s Abbey, parish

THE DEANERY, WINCHESTEROne of the few remaining links with the conventual buildings of St. Swithun’s Priory, which among the Benedictines were always placed on the south side of the minster. Formerly it was the quarters of the Prior of St. Swithun’s. Philip of Spain was lodged here when he came to Winchester to marry Queen Mary of England.

THE DEANERY, WINCHESTER

One of the few remaining links with the conventual buildings of St. Swithun’s Priory, which among the Benedictines were always placed on the south side of the minster. Formerly it was the quarters of the Prior of St. Swithun’s. Philip of Spain was lodged here when he came to Winchester to marry Queen Mary of England.

churches, domestic buildings, all alike perished. Far and wide the flames spread—even the new building of Hyde Abbey, only erected some thirty-one years, was involved in the general conflagration. The Cathedral and St. Swithun’s Priory alone escaped, and that, it is said, because Robert of Gloucester generously forbore reprisals.

But the empress’s cause was a declining one, and though David, king of Scotland, and Robert of Gloucester stoutly attacked Wolvesey, it held out till relieved by Queen Matilda in person, and it was now the empress’s turn to suffer siege in the Castle. Various accounts are given of what occurred; in one it is stated[2]that, being straitened for provisions, she escaped by feigning herself dead, and was carried out in a coffin. Be this as it may, her forces were routed—she fled, and both Robert of Gloucester and King David were taken prisoners. Finally, the war exhausted itself. The land was ruined, impoverished—nothing seemed left to strive for. Peace was made on terms of compromise, and King Stephen, restored to the throne, entered Winchester with the empress’s son, Prince Henry, who was acknowledged as his heir. Stephen died soon after, and Henry II. became king.

And now matters went badly for Bishop Henry. Henry the king was determined to bring the castle-builders to book, and Henry the bishop was a foremost offender, and in addition he had to defend himself from charges brought against him by the monks of Hyde.

In marked contrast with his behaviour elsewhere, Bishop Henry had acted oppressively against them, and when their abbey was destroyed he had even forced from them the ashes to which it had been reduced. No slight treasure the latter, for did they not contain the molten remains of cross and shrine and chalice, the cross of Cnut and Emma, their great prize and possession, and many another treasure, which though now but molten metal, still reckoned a value in thousands of pounds? Fortune was against the bishop, and he found it convenient to retire abroad, to Cluny and elsewhere, for a time, while the new king established his authority, made order in the distracted kingdom, and razed the offending fortresses to the ground. Thus while the bishop’s palace at Wolvesey still remained, the Norman keep was dismantled and rendered harmless, and some of these ruins we can see there to-day.

The succeeding years were to present Bishop Henry in a less ambitious and altogether more attractive light. He had played for his great stake—played and lost: his legatine commission had expired, his archiepiscopal dream had rudely disappeared. His political power shattered, and his personal influence largely compromised, he was glad to make peace with the king and full restitution to the monks of Hyde, and he returned to his see to spend the last portion of his life—some fifteen or sixteen years—in acts of quiet episcopal rule and active beneficence. During his stay on the Continent he had amassed many treasures of art, and these he brought back with him—very probably thewonderful and curious black stone font, one of a rare series of seven English fonts, four of which are in our own county and diocese, was placed by him in the Cathedral at this time. But a far nobler and more noticeable monument he was already rearing for himself in the outskirts of the city. Some mile down the valley, in the little village then known as Sperkforde, he had, in the early days of Stephen’s reign, commenced to build a hospital or almshouse—the Hospital of St. Cross—and to this he now devoted himself.

Filled as the land then was with misery and ruin, relief of the hungry and distressed was a peculiarly pressing need, and the bishop’s aim was to relieve distress. Following the hospitable example of the great Clugniac house in which he had been reared, the gates of St. Cross were to be ever open, ready to give kindly welcome to all who should enter there in want. Thirteen aged brethren were to be maintained in ease and comfort. One hundred of the poor of Winchester were to be regularly fed there in the “Hundred Mennes Hall,” and seven poor Grammar School boys of Winchester—for Winchester had its Grammar School then, earlier even than the College of Wykeham—were likewise to be fed and provided for daily. In 1157 Bishop Henry committed the guardianship of his hospital to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitallers as they were called, whose special care was to aid wandering men, particularly the poor pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulchre. And so the brethren of St. Cross wearthe black gown and the eight-pointed silver cross of the Knights of St. John to this day.

St. Cross is Bishop Henry’s great memorial. He lived to see it firmly established, but otherwise in his later years he took but little part in public affairs. One of his last acts was to receive his cousin, the repentant King Henry, after the murder of à Becket, when he bade him welcome him with affectionate admonition and gave him his blessing. He died in 1171 and was buried in the Cathedral; the tomb popularly designated William Rufus’s Tomb has been thought to be his. Great and high-minded as a churchman, he had lived through the period of personal striving—“the fever, and the watching, and the pain” of self-advancement and of worldly ambition. His selfish schemes had died and nobler ones had succeeded, which revealed the man at his greatest and his best. Truly it might be said of him—

That men may rise on stepping-stonesOf their dead selves to higher things.

And St. Cross, at whose gates the needy wayfarer still receives hospitable welcome as he did in Bishop Henry’s day, flourishes still, exercising a far wider measure of beneficence and power for good than its founder, in all probability, anticipated or even dreamed.

Ay, that approves thee, tyrant, what thou art,No father, king, or shepherd of thy realm;But one that tears her entrails with thy hands,And like a thirsty tiger suck’st her blood.Edward III.

Weneed not stay to discuss in much detail the course of events during the reigns which followed. It was but a blackened and ruined Winchester which emerged from the disasters of the civil war. With two monasteries, some twenty churches, and most of the domestic dwellings consumed, it took her all her energies to reconstruct the desolate fabric; nor did she ever completely recover the blow. Hyde Abbey was at once recommenced, and gradually, but only very gradually, resumed its former importance. St. Mary’s Abbey, too, was rebuilt, and Winchester, as the natural centre of the wool trade, was able steadily to recover her commercial activity, and managed to retain her importance as a centre of traffic and intercourse some two hundred years or more longer, but politicallyher supremacy had departed for ever, and London henceforth was more and more to hold unchallenged sway.

Henry II.’s visits in Winchester were not frequent, and in addition were but casual. It was here, while recovering from illness, that he matured his great scheme for the administration of justice, the division of the country into circuits with itinerating judges of assize, to hold assizes or sittings for the due dispensation of the king’s justice, from which circumstance Hampshire has always occupied a foremost position in the assize list, but Winchester was in no sense his capital.

Richard I. paid the city the compliment of coming here after his release from captivity to be crowned in the Cathedral, and though at the royal banquet following thereon the citizens of Winchester strove with those of London for the honour of serving the king with wine—a privilege involving the reversion of the golden goblet in which the wine was to be served—their claims were overruled and London bore off the prize.

More important were the building projects of the Bishop of Winchester, Bishop Godfrey de Lucy, who had succeeded to the see the year before Richard came to the throne. The pilgrim stream which flowed through Winchester had swollen to such proportions as to embarrass the monks of St. Swithun’s. Bishop Godfrey formed a confraternity to raise funds and carry out an extension eastward of the fabric, to make it possible for the pilgrims to visit the shrine of thesaint without invading the body of the church, an extension which, owing to the limited area of firm ground on which the Cathedral stood, had to be made on an artificial foundation, in peaty and waterlogged soil, and to this fact must be in part attributed the insecurity of the fabric, which has necessitated the enormous and heroic labour of repair now actively in progress. Of this, however, more anon.

But Bishop Godfrey de Lucy had wider aims also. As bishop and receiver of the dues from St. Giles’s Fair, the commercial prosperity of the city was of great moment to him, and he improved and developed the Itchen navigation by means of a canal—or “barge river,” as it is termed—and constructed a huge reservoir at Alresford, much of which remains still as Alresford Pond, to retain the water necessary to keep the channel full. The trade of Winchester was evidently still a highly valuable asset.

Of King John’s reign we have memories in keeping with the general course of his doings. He was frequently here, hunting regularly in the forests all round the city, and here his son and successor, Henry of Winchester, afterwards Henry III., was born. It was at Winchester that John received Simon Langton and the other bishops exiled during the interdict, and in the chapter-house of the Cathedral that he received the papal absolution for his offences against Holy Church. But the peace thus dishonourably ushered in was of short duration, and a year or so later Winchester was in foreign hands, being held by Louis,Dauphin of France, whom the barons had invited over to expel John from the throne.

But when John died, as he did shortly afterwards, the barons withdrew their support from the Dauphin, and John’s son Henry, then a lad of nine years old only, ascended the throne—Henry III., Henry of Winchester.

We cannot give in full the story of Henry, interesting and important as it is, and intimately associated as much of it was with our city; for Henry was here continually, he made it his chief residence, and in the years that followed Winchester had often reason to pay dear for his attachment to his parent city. Wild disorder, riot and revel, profuse expenditure and pinch of consequent poverty, anarchy and siege and civil warfare in her streets, all followed in turn, till order was at last evolved, and dignified and noble parliaments assembled in her Castle Hall, the symbol of the reign of law that was to follow, and the earnest of that rule by representative assembly which has made our nation—and almost Winchester herself—the mother of parliaments, honoured through the length and breadth of the world.

Chequered as the reign was to be, the early years were quiet and prosperous, till Henry’s evil genius, Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, gained ascendancy over the king. The king’s marriage to a French princess, Eleanor of Provence, followed, and the king, under the influence of a foreign wife, and a prelate and justiciar of alien sympathies, entered on a

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