Читать книгу The Last Abbot of Glastonbury: A Tale of the Dissolution of the Monasteries - A. D. Crake - Страница 13

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No event of importance followed immediately upon the disclosure of the secret chamber;—the summer passed swiftly and pleasantly away, the orchards were already laden with the golden riches of autumn, ere the bolt, so long foreseen, fell.

We can hardly, ourselves, enter into the difficulties and trials which beset the Abbot of Glastonbury. We are accustomed to the spectacle of a Church, divided, at least externally, but to men who had grown up with the belief, that outward unity was essential to the preservation of Christianity, the absolute command to abjure the Papal Supremacy, to break off all relations with Rome, and acknowledge the King as the “Head of the Church of England,” was a matter of life or death.

So Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, not to mention hosts of others, died sooner than comply, while the more timid, shocked at the scandal, for such it was to them, gave outward obedience, and in their hearts prayed fervently that “this tyranny might be over past.”

Let it not, however, be inferred that therefore they were right in contending for the supremacy of Rome, only in the right, inasmuch as it is far nobler to die, than to deny one’s belief, or to swear falsely to what one does not believe in one’s heart.

And so while we reject their teaching on this point, we can feel the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of these noble, yet mistaken souls.

On the first visitation of his monastery, three years previously, the Abbot had taken the Oath of Supremacy, feeling that it was not a cause for which a man was bound to die, but he had never been a happy man since, he was too old to change his convictions. Therefore he absented himself from the place in Parliament, which was his as a mitred Abbot, who was ranked as the equal of a Bishop, and strove to hide his sorrows in obscurity. No fault was then alleged against him, the earlier visitors reported that his house was, and had long been, “full honourable.”

But the eye of the “Malleus Monachorum,” the arch enemy of the monks, Thomas Cromwell, was upon him, and at last this vigilant enemy, equally cruel and unscrupulous, found the pretext he desired, for sending the Abbot of Glastonbury, as also the Abbots of Reading and Colchester to the gibbet and the quartering block. Most of the Abbots had been led to save themselves by a voluntary surrender of their house and estates; those who did not thus bend to the storm, had to be destroyed on one pretence or another.

It was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, in the year of grace 1539.

The day was a bright day of early autumn, one of those sweet balmy days, when summer seems to put out all her parting beauties ere she yields her dominion to winter—the air was laden with fragrance, and there was a dreamy haze upon the scenery around, which seemed typical of heavenly peace.

But there was a sad despondent feeling, which weighed like lead, upon the hearts of all the elders present at the High Mass on that day, in the great Abbey Church, whose majestic ruins yet strike the beholder with awe.

After the Creed, the Abbot ascended the pulpit and gazed round upon the congregation, as upon those to whom he was about to preach for the last time; he took for his text the parting words of S. Paul at Miletus—“And now behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.”

As he uttered the words there was an audible expression of feeling on the part of the monks in the choir, the boys in the transepts, and the citizens in the spacious nave: was the text prophetical? One or two sobs might be heard.

Danger was at hand, and he knew it, and after a brief exordium he told it out plainly: the Royal Commissioners, with charge to bring him before the Council, were already on their way.

“Very sorry am I,” said he, “for you, my brethren, and especially my younger friends, of whom I see so many around. They will destroy this House of God, as they have so many others, they will spare you in the flesh, but if you are taken hence, and sent into a cold-hearted and wicked world, for which you are unfitted, having begun in the spirit, ye may be consumed in the flesh, and what shall I say, or what shall I do, if I cannot save those whom God has entrusted to my charge?”

Here a common utterance broke forth from the brethren which could not be suppressed.

“Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and earth shall witness for us how unjustly we be cut off.”

“Would that it might be even so,” continued the preacher, “that so dying we might pass in a body to our Father’s home above, but they will not do us so great a kindness. Me and the elder brethren they may indeed kill, but you who are younger will be sent back into the world ye have once forsaken, where divers temptations assail you. Alas, who is sufficient for these things?”

Here he paused, and then continued, “This may be the last time we meet within these sacred walls: the last time that they re-echo the tone of thanksgiving, which has arisen for nigh fifteen centuries on this spot.[12] But it is meet that we prepare for the stroke, and that we may do so the better, let us ask pardon for all the faults we may have committed against each other, and let each forgive, that so we may say the divine prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ ”

A solemn pause followed, during which there came a strange interruption, a sweet soft sound as of angels’ voices singing in harmony: not from the organ came that strange music, nor from any visible orchestra, but all felt it as it thrilled into their hearts. The venerable preacher was so moved that he sank down in tears, and for a long time could not resume his discourse, while all in the choir sat as if astonished, yet rejoicing in the token, as they believed it was, of God’s presence amongst them.

And the burden of the song seemed, “O rest in the Lord, wait patiently on Him.”

That sermon ended in broken words of faith, love, and hope—words of deep emotion never forgotten by any present—and then the Celebration proceeded, with its stores of rich comfort and celestial joy.[13]

The following day the Abbot left early in the morning for a small country house belonging to the Abbey about a mile-and-a-half away. This he did that the scandal of an open arrest, and a probable conflict, might be averted, for he felt that his people might not peacefully bear the spectacle of their venerated Father led away like a criminal.

But he made no concealment of his retreat, so when the Commissioners arrived, later in the morning, they had no difficulty in learning the place, and they followed him to the country house.

In an old oak-panelled apartment sat the once powerful Abbot, writing calmly a few parting directions, chiefly concerning the disposal of such personal property as might serve as mementoes to those who loved him, when they should see his face no more.

He was calm and resigned, although once, as he wrote, tears issued from fountains which had been long dry, and rolled down his aged and worn cheek—he was but human.

In the window seat, his eyes fixed upon the road which led from the Abbey, sat Cuthbert.

Suddenly he rose hastily.

“Father,” he said, “they are coming; a number of mounted men are in sight, wilt thou not fly? We may yet hide thee, they will be ten minutes ere they arrive; fly for our sakes, for my sake—thy adopted child.”

“My son, I cannot; life has little yet to tempt me, and far better for me that I should bear witness to my faith with my blood, and receive the martyr’s palm which God hath already granted to many of my brethren, than live a few more miserable years, and see the wild boar rooting up the vineyard of the Lord, and the beasts of the field devouring it.”

After a pause he continued—

“Dost thou see them plainly? Who is their guide?”

“Shame upon him, it is Nicholas Grabber; rather should they have cut my feet off than have forced me to do the like.”

“Nay, my child, I left word where I was, and strict directions that no concealment should be attempted.”

“Yet some other guide were more fitting than one of thine own children, shame upon him. Oh, my more than father, do fly; they will drag thee to a shameful death, like thy brethren of Reading and Abingdon. Is it not written, ‘When they persecute you in one city flee ye into another?’ ”

“Too late, my son, they are at the gate.”

“We will hide thee; there must be some place to hide in here, some secret chamber.”

“They are on the stairs, my son; do not let them see thee weep, be manly.”

Cuthbert strove to repress his emotion and to maintain outward composure, when the door opened and three men entered, rude of aspect.

“My name is Layton,” said the foremost, “and these two worthy men be Masters Pollard and Moyle; we be pursuivants of the King, and in his name, and by virtue of his warrant, we have charge to arrest thee, unless thou clear thyself by thy answers to certain questions.”

“What are they?” said the Abbot, calmly.

“Hast thou taken the Oath of Supremacy?”

“I have, to my great sorrow.”

“To his great sorrow, mark that, Master Pollard; and why to thy great sorrow?”

“Because it was a treason to the Church.”

“Then thou wilt not renew it?”

“Never.”

“That is enough to hang thee, proud Abbot, but thy talk interests me, and I would fain hear a little more from thee; what dost thou think of the King’s divorce?”

“I am not fain to answer thee on that matter.”

“But the law enables us to compel an answer from every man, and construes silence as treason; loyal men need not conceal their thoughts, and there is no room in England for disloyalty.”[14]

“Construe my silence as treason if thou wilt, I have naught to say on the matter.”

“There is something more for me to say. Dost thou love life, Master Abbot? For if so, in spite of thy treasons just uttered, thou mayst save it; we know full well that the names of the men who supplied money and arms for the late most unnatural and parricidal rebellion in the north, which men call the Pilgrimage of Grace, are known to thee, only reveal the secret, and thou art safe.”

“Get thee behind me, Satan; dost thou think I would save my life at the expense of others, and take reward to slay the innocent?”

The Abbot’s manner was so firm and decided, the answer so bravely given, that the villain started. “I will patter with thee no more, thou hoary sinner,” he said at last; “thou hast the papers concerning this rebellion concealed somewhere, and we know it; we will pull thy Abbey down, stone by stone, if we find them not: thy answers are cankered and traitorous, and to the Tower thou shalt go, the Tower of London. Ah, who is that boy?”

“Thou mayst take me too,” said Cuthbert, as he stood before them, emerging from the curtained recess of the window with flashing eyes and burning cheeks, “for all that the Lord Abbot hath said, I say also.”

“Ah, thou young cockatrice, we see well what a dam hath hatched thee—another treason to the account of the wily priest here.”

“Cuthbert,” said the Abbot, “thou art running into needless danger—God calls thee not to suffer.”

“What is good for thee, Father, must be good for me also.”

“We may as well take him up to town too,” said Master Pollard.

“Nay, it is not our business,” said Layton; “if we arrested every young fool this traitor hath taught, we should go up to town with three hundred boys behind us, and should need their nurses to take care of them; the ground-ash were fitter for this young master’s back, but we have no time to waste on his folly, let us be moving, we have to search the chambers at the Abbey, perchance we may come across these papers.”

Need we say they searched in vain.