The struggle of the Christian faith, first against the paganism of the indigenous Britons, and secondly against the heathen Norsemen, is a very real part of our history. No doubt it encompassed many deeds of great individual courage, such as the folk of the period were hardly likely to forget.
By the time Christianity had gained supremacy and a great many religious houses had been set up, the tales were already very old, but they still made good capital for the Church’s purpose. As the monks had the monopoly in the matter of literacy, to them fell the task of writing down the stories for the first time. Naturally, each brother wanted to make the most of any legend connected with his own house, particularly as rivalry between the monasteries was rife, even to the point of occasional pitched battles for the possession of holy relics. The monkish chroniclers certainly made the most of the tales the folk had so far preserved, perhaps deliberately because they knew that the peasants of the time, like children, could and would believe in the miraculous; but it is more likely still that the scribes themselves believed what they recorded, and gave thanks where thanks were due to the God who still provided them with daily miracles to report.
This story of Roman Britain had been ‘going the rounds’ for five hundred years or so before the first abbey of St Albans was set up by King Offa of Mercia to mark the spot of the saint’s martyrdom.
About three hundred years after the first Roman feet stepped ashore on English soil with a view to adding it to the Roman Empire, the Christian Church came in for a bad time. It had to spend a lot of its energy striving with the all-too-attractive paganism of the indigenous folk, and a lot more countering the Roman pantheon, including the sun-worshipping cult of Mithras, which was everywhere growing in popularity. But for much of the time, the Roman overlords themselves were content to look the other way, and let religions get on as best they could, so long as they didn’t run foul of Roman law and disturb the Roman order.
However, in the time of the Emperor Diocletian (or thereabouts), there was a change of policy, and Christians began to be systematically persecuted by the Romans. Churches were destroyed, demolished by fire or dilapidated stone by stone. Sacred books and manuscripts, along with holy relics, were piled high in the streets and set fire to; and such people as would not renounce their faith were ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday’, priests and their flocks perishing together in one or other of the various ways the civilized Romans had at their disposal. Priests were, of course, particularly prized victims, and it is no wonder that many of them thought it their duty to flee while they had the opportunity, and lie low to keep the seeds of their faith safe against a time when they could once more be set in English soil.
One such priest was a man called Amphibalus, a good man, a good priest, and above all a good Christian. When his church was attacked, he managed to get away, dressed as he was in his priest’s robe, and was thereafter passed from friend to friend, every one of whom risked his life to keep the priest for a few days, feed him, and send him on again under escort in the dead of night to another place of comparative safety. Many who were not themselves Christians were brought into this deadly game of hide-and-seek, for though they did not share faith, they did often share British blood with the fugitives; and though by this time Roman and Briton were living side by side, and had even intermingled enough to find an integrated way of life, old hatreds die hard and the Romans were still the bitterly resented masters of the British, Christian and heathen alike.
So it was that one night the priest Amphibalus found himself in hiding under the simple roof of a heathen Briton named Alban. The two, until that time, had been utter strangers; but being confined in close quarters together, under the strain of imminent discovery, each took careful stock of the other. Amphibalus judged his host to be a man of strength, courage and integrity, though a pagan. Alban was much impressed by the complete faith his guest had in his god, even while admitting that he might very well be taken and put to torture or to death by fire or sword – or even like the crucified Lord he worshipped, on the cross. Amphibalus spent much of the night, as well as most of the day, in prayer or in meditation; but in spite of his peril, he seemed calm, even joyful, and completely unruffled in spirit. Alban watched him, and served him; and then, after some days, inquired of him what it was that gave him this sense of well-being and joy, fugitive though he was.
The priest in Amphibalus was quick to take up the challenge, and in a short time he had converted the heathen Alban; but as Amphibalus knew, conversion was often merely skin-deep, lying easily on the lips and tongue. When danger appeared, it was liable to slip away and dry up like dew in the rays of the morning sun. How would his new convert behave in the face of Roman accusation?
He had little time to wait for the answer. On the fifth morning of Amphibalus’s retreat in Alban’s hut, almost as soon as day had finally broken, the unmistakable sight and sound of Roman soldiers on the march reached them. The patrol was coming straight towards Alban’s humble dwelling, for the spies of the Roman governor of nearby Verulam had nosed out the runaway priest to his lair there. It was barely daylight, and both men inside the hut had only just risen from their rude couches. Seeing the soldiers, Amphibalus fell on his knees, and began to pray; but his convert looked round for more practical ways of dealing with the situation. Lying where he had thrown it off the night before lay the priest’s robe. Alban picked it up, put it on, and belted it round his own waist. Then before the soldiers could bang on the wood of his rude door, Alban opened it and stood before them, to all intents and purposes the Christian they had come to seek. The mistake was not discovered until Alban was brought before the Roman governor, by which time Amphibalus was once more on the run, and had got safely away.
Perhaps at this point Alban could have saved himself and got off with nothing worse than a beating, had he so wished; but the strength of his new faith upheld him, and boldly he declared himself to be a Christian. So they beat him without mercy, and at the end of it he was condemned to death by beheading, that very day, on a little hill that rose just the other side of the river Ver. News of what was afoot soon reached the populace, who left their homes and moved in excited droves towards the spot of execution, eager to be in the front row so as not to miss anything of the spectacle. It was getting towards dusk when Alban set off on his last walk, guarded by Roman soldiers, with his Roman executioner at his side.
The crowds blocked the way, and in spite of the Roman’s swords and staves, the journey was slow. The little bridge was so crowded that passage across it was impossible. Alban grew impatient at the delay, and said so to his executioner, who was, to say the least of it, surprised. So, while the soldiers attempted to clear the bridge, the soldier and his victim talked; but as fast as one crowd of onlookers was moved on, another took its place, and the delay grew tedious. Then Alban, anxious to be done with the business, announced his intention of crossing the river through the water, so as to come safely and quickly to the other side, and to the place of his execution. The Roman executioner, puzzled but impressed, stayed at his side. Some say they actually walked through the water, but there are those who declare that as soon as the feet of Alban touched it, the water of the Ver drew back on either side like the Red Sea before the feet of the Israelites, and allowed them dry passage. Whichever was the case, the executioner had lost all heart for his task by the time they reached the hilltop, and throwing down his sword, he declared before all the onlookers that he, too, wished to be a follower of Christ, and begged that he should be allowed to die by the side of Alban who had set him such a tremendous example.
His plea was granted, and Alban and his only convert died together. But the fame of Alban began to spread even as the awed crowd went on their way homewards, and soon there was a whole body of tales about the miraculous things that had accompanied Alban’s martyrdom. Indeed, so holy grew the spot at which he had been done to death, that when Christianity was once more in the ascendant a little church was built over it, until, in the eighth century AD, Offa, King of Mercia, founded an abbey there.
The fame of St Alban grew no less as the years went by, no doubt because the Christians had no wish to let the honour of their martyr diminish. Indeed, new dimensions were added to the story, little by little.
Amphibalus, it appeared, had made good his escape, and after much travelling arrived in Wales to seek refuge in the wild valleys among the mountains; but the pursuit was not allowed to falter, and in Wales at last he was apprehended, and brought back to Verulam. In due course, he was led out some four miles from Verulam (to what later became Redbourne Common), and there done to death, and buried. That would have seemed to be the end of the incident, but it was not so.
Some eight hundred years later, ‘a man of Walden’ was roused from his sleep in the small hours of the morning by the figure of a priest standing by his side. The ghostly visitant declared himself to be none other than Amphibalus, and said he had a mission for the man of Walden, whom he was visiting. It was that he should seek out the Abbot of St Albans, one Warren de Cambridge, and to him deliver a message, to the effect that the spot wherein the bones of Amphibalus lay was a sacred spot, and that action should be taken forthwith to ensure that in future it was venerated as it deserved.
Abbots never being averse to a bit of saintly publicity, Warren listened, and thereafter set up some inquiries of his own regarding the whereabouts of Amphibalus’s remains. There was little difficulty as it happened. A layman of the abbey came forward, and confessed that he, too, had had a vision, this time from St Alban himself. In this vision, the saint had indicated to him the exact spot where Amphibalus had been buried; but, said the layman, his remains had already been removed to St Albans. And, as the ghostly saint had recounted to him, so the layman repeated to the abbot the wonders and marvels that had accompanied the disinterment and the journey. The shrine of St Alban himself had been carried out to meet the holy relics of his mentor, and to make the four-mile journey easier to accomplish, it had miraculously diminished itself in weight till it was borne along as if it had been as light as the feathers in ‘the costly feather work’ adorning the monks as they processed in ‘their rich garments and golden hoods’. Alas, it was a long, hot and dusty walk for them, because the summer had been one of almost unprecedented drought, and the fields lay burnt and brown on either side of their path, while crops withered and cattle died for want of water. But once the bones of Amphibalus had been unearthed, and the chanting procession started again on its way back to St Albans, from the blue unclouded sky the rain began to fall a most wonderful golden rain that revived all it fell on in an instant and, moreover, without wetting a single feather or gold thread on the finery of the monks, or the shrine of St Alban. So, singing, said the layman, through golden light and a golden shower, they had brought Amphibalus home to their abbey. The place wherein his bones were lying was truly venerated already, and once this story was known, would be even more so.
To make assurance doubly sure, however, the abbot built upon the first grave of Amphibalus a church dedicated to St Mary de Pré, and a refuge for leprous women close by (as Matthew Paris reports). But church and hospital, like Alban and Amphibalus, have been swept away by time and now lie under the highway that today follows the track of the ancient Watling Street through modern Hertfordshire.
Edmund, King of East Anglia, was a Christian confronted with the necessity of preserving his kingdom and his faith from the heathen Danes. This story is the English version of his conflict with Ragnar Lodbrok and Lodbrok’s sons. Ragnar Lodbrok’s Saga tells quite a different tale. (The explanation of why Ragnar was called ‘Lodbrok’ is taken from the saga.)
The men from the North had their mouths full of proverbs. One of them was that if you save a man from drowning, no good will come of it. If legend is true, this proved to be the case with Edmund, King of East Anglia – though the Danes tell a very different story.
In Denmark there lived a chieftain called Ragnar. His wife, Thora, was said to surpass all other women in beauty and grace, as the hart surpasses all other animals, besides which she was the most accomplished of all her peers in the matter of handwork. But while she was growing up into this paragon of beauty and virtue, she was guarded night and day by a fearsome snake. Any wooer had to get by the snake before he could come near enough to the maid to pour out his passion to her, and many died in the attempt.
Ragnar, however, set himself to solve the problem. He had made for himself a pair of breeches and a cloak of animal skin with the hair-side outside. This was then boiled in pitch, and afterwards allowed to harden. Wearing this armour, he attacked the serpent and won the girl for his wife. This earned for him the nickname of Lod-brok, which means ‘Hairy-breeks’, and as Lodbrok he was always afterwards known.
In the course of time, two sons were born to him, Inguar and Ubba, and he was a happy and contented enough king in his own country. One day he was out hunting – a favourite as well as a necessary sport – hoping to catch some of the waterfowl that were to be found among the islands near the coast of his realm. He loosed his favourite hawk, which pursued and struck its quarry, whereupon both birds plunged into the sea below. Lodbrok immediately launched a small boat to rescue his hawk, but no sooner had he done so than a violent storm arose, and swept the little craft out to sea before any of his men could get to his rescue. For several days Lodbrok was tossed about on the waves, until at last his tiny vessel was driven towards Britain, and he landed, weak and exhausted, at Reedham in Norfolk. (Reedham is now, of course, a fair distance inland; but it is reasonable to suppose that the coastline of East Anglia in the ninth century ad was very different, and Reedham quite accessible by water.)
There he was found by some peasants, who from his appearance and clothes judged him to be a man of importance, and carried him to King Edmund.
Edmund, besides being a devout Christian who felt it his duty to succour the needy, was impressed by his uninvited visitor; and in the same way, Lodbrok was impressed by the peaceable, mannerly order of King Edmund’s court. Besides, he wanted to make observations of Edmund’s military methods while he had the chance. So instead of asking to be sent back across the sea, he made it known that he would like to be allowed to remain awhile where he was. Edmund, of course, had no notion that he was entertaining a foreign king, though he recognized some good breeding in his guest. He agreed that Lodbrok should stay, and soon became very fond of the stranger.
Lodbrok missed his freedom to some extent, particularly his hunting; and as soon as he could he asked permission to accompany Edmund’s chief huntsman, Bern, on some of his expeditions.
Of course it was not long before Lodbrok’s great skill as a huntsman became clear to everyone. He outstripped Bern in everything connected with the chase, and won the king’s approval day after day. Bern was humiliated, and more. He harboured the notion that the king was so fond of his new, foreign huntsman that as soon as it was convenient, he would be got rid of so that Lodbrok might take his place. His rancour grew to bitter hatred, and he made up his mind to dispose of his rival at the first opportunity. This came sooner than he had expected, when they were out alone together in the woods. Bern turned upon Lodbrok, who was quite unsuspecting, and killed him with one blow. Then he concealed the body under the bushes in a thicket, called up the dogs, and went home. But as it happened, there was one hound that Lodbrok had taken a great fancy to, and had trained specially, since he had come to Edmund’s court. This dog regarded Lodbrok as its master, and when all the rest followed Bern, it slunk back and set watch over Lodbrok’s body in the thicket.
That night at supper, Edmund noticed the absence of his guest, and asked where he was. Bern replied that during the day’s chase he had become separated from Lodbrok, so that he had returned alone, and did not know where his companion had got to.
At that moment, Lodbrok’s dog came padding into the hall.
‘Ah! Here is his dog!’ said the king with relief. ‘It is never far from him, so we can rest assured he is not far off now.’
The dog went up to the king, and begged for food. He fed it, all the time expecting its master to appear; but supper was finished, and his uneasiness grew, because Lodbrok still did not come in. On the contrary, as soon as its hunger was satisfied the dog disappeared again. So it continued for the next few days, until Edmund, thoroughly alarmed by his guest’s prolonged absence, gave orders that the dog should be followed when it left the hall after being fed. This was done, and the hound led Edmund’s men straight to Lodbrok’s corpse.
Edmund by this time had grown exceedingly fond of Lodbrok, but in any case it was his duty as law-giver that he should find out how the stranger had met his death. Suspicion fell upon Bern, who was soon charged and convicted of the murder. Then Edmund took counsel with his ‘captains and wise men of the court’ as to what punishment could be meet for such a crime. Their verdict was that Bern should be ‘put into the same boat in which Lodbrok had come to England and exposed on the sea without sail or oar, that it might be proved whether God would deliver him’.
This was, accordingly, carried out. God did deliver him, and the boat drifted straight back to Denmark, to the very shores from which it had been driven in the first instance.
As soon as it was beached, the Danes who rushed down to haul it in recognized it, and began to question the voyager eagerly, if menacingly, as to the fate of their king.
Bern, treacherous murderer already, was now resolved on getting his own back on his former master. He had his tale ready, and described how Lodbrok had been cast ashore in East Anglia and taken to King Edmund, who had given orders immediately for Lodbrok to be killed. Then Bern had slipped away in Lodbrok’s boat to take the news home to his people.
The anger of Lodbrok’s people knew no bounds at hearing this false tale, and they swore to be revenged. Led by Lodbrok’s two sons, Inguar and Ubba, they were soon an army of 20,000 men, and with Bern as guide they sailed for English shores. Now the wind was against them, and drove them northward, so that they landed at Berwick-on-Tweed, where their rage and ferocity was such that they slaughtered everyone they came upon, regardless of age, sex or anything else; and after a whole summer thus terrorizing the North, they went home again to Denmark for the winter.
In the spring, however, they set out again, and this time landed their boats on the East Anglian coast. They ravaged the coast, burning villages and monasteries, and trying wherever and whenever possible to catch Edmund, defeat him and take their revenge for Lodbrok’s death.
On one occasion they besieged him in one of his castle strongholds, and kept up the siege so long that all those inside the castle were in grave danger of starvation. Edmund realized that in their weakened condition they would be no match at all for the fierce Danes, and that the only salvation of the English lay in trickery. They had now left within the castle walls one bull, and a few bushels of wheat. When that was gone, there would be no alternative to surrender. Edmund ordered that the grain should be fed without stint to the bull. The bull grew fat and sleek within a few days on this good diet, and when it was in prime condition the king gave commands that it should be let out secretly, as if it had escaped by mischance, among the Danes.
When sunrise showed the Danes what a prize had fallen to them, they laughed uproariously, gave chase to the bull and soon brought it down. Delighted at the prospect of such a splendid meal at the expense of their besieged enemies, they began to carve up the carcase, remarking at the same time what a fine beast it was, fattened up for the king’s table, no doubt. But when they opened up his stomach, they found it to be full of still undigested grain – and were amazed. As they saw it, they were wasting time absolutely in trying to starve out a garrison that had provisions enough to feed grain to their animals! So they raised the siege, and once again went home to Denmark.
Again and again, however, they returned, and every time the English people suffered more than the time before, till there was hardly a homestead in East Anglia that had not been raided, or a town that had not been burned. The monks of Ely, Peterborough, Thorney and Crowland had been driven from their abbeys. While Ubba stayed on at Ely to guard the spoils. Inguar took an army and set out for Thetford, where Edmund had his court; but the king was a few miles away with his army, at a village called Hoxne. Before he could return, Thetford had been pillaged and plundered, and put to the torch. Then Inguar sent envoys to Edmund, with an offer that if the English king would surrender and become a Danish vassal, he should share what spoils there were. Edmund disdained to reply, and led his men into battle, meeting the invaders at Snarehill, just outside Thetford. The battle lasted from dawn to dusk, with great slaughter on both sides (indeed, it is said that the mounds still visible on the heathlands thereabouts cover the bones of those slain during that terrible day). Next morning, the invaders were in retreat; but Ubba had made a march from Ely with ten thousand men to reinforce his brother, and Edmund could do no more. His exhausted troops were defeated, and Edmund ‘yielded his own person to the torment, to save more Christian blood’.
Torment indeed was what the heathen Danes meted out to the unlucky king. Report has it that they beat him with bats, and scourged him with whips, but his still continuing to call on the name of Jesus drove them well nigh to fury. They bound him to a tree and made sport of sending their arrows through him till, mercifully, he died. Then contemptuously they hacked his head from his body, and kicked it into a nearby bush. So ended the battle of Hoxne, where a stone was afterwards set up to mark the spot at which Edmund had been bound to the tree to die. (He was avenged, at last, by the men of Devon, who defeated the brothers Inguar and Ubba seven years later near Bideford, and killed both – according to a story from Devon.)
When the last of the victorious Danes had departed, a few of Edmund’s faithful followers who had survived the battle crept out to recover the body of their dead king. They found it, headless, sagging in the bonds that bound it, and pinned by many an arrow to the tree. They took it down, and reverently buried it in a nearby chapel. Then they set about the task of burying their dead comrades, searching all the time for the head of their revered and saintly king as they did so. After forty days of looking, they were ready to admit defeat and give up, when one day they were startled by a voice, sounding exactly like that of their lost leader, shouting, ‘Here! Here! Here!’ Running towards the sound, they parted the bushes – and there lay the severed head, absolutely uncorrupted, between the paws of a great shaggy wolf, whose attitude was shown at once to be only that of protection. Indeed, when they went to remove the head from its custody, it made no effort to prevent them, but after watching them bear it reverently away, the ‘unkouthe thing, so strange ageyn nature’, simply turned and trotted peacefully away among the trees.
So the head was carried to the chapel, to be interred with the body – when another miracle took place. No sooner had the head been placed with the corpse than it miraculously joined itself on again, leaving no more than a faint red mark to show that it had ever been separated.
From that time on, the tomb of Edmund became a place of pilgrimage, so many were the miracles the dead king performed. At last, in 903, the temptation to appropriate such a splendid relic overcame the Abbot of Beodricsworth. He prepared a wooden shrine for it, and his monks translated it. Thereafter, what had been Beodricsworth became known as St Edmundsbury (or, as we should now say, Bury St Edmunds).
Still the story was not finished. When the Danes raided yet again, the body was taken to London for safety. Brought back again, it was honoured by a stone church to replace the wooden one, and at a still later date Baldwin, the first Norman abbot, built the beautiful one which fell into ruins only at the Dissolution.
In the meantime, however, the saint continued to perform his wonderful deeds, as, for instance, when King Sweyn had sworn to destroy St Edmundsbury and put to death every man, woman and child within the town. With this evil intention he set out from Gainsborough; but on the way, he was suddenly confronted by the ghost of St Edmund, seated on a horse, ‘clothed in full harness, and with a sword in his hands’.
Terror flooded through the Danish king, and he cried aloud for help, but the ghostly martyr-king rode straight at him, bore him down, and thrust the sword right through him. Then the phantom dissolved into thin air, while the flesh and blood king writhed in agony for a few lingering hours, and then died.
So the uncorrupted body of the saint remained to the glory of the monks (and their profit) at St Edmundsbury. It is said that they allowed a woman by the name of Oswin to view the corpse every Maundy Thursday, to comb its hair and trim its nails, both of which continued to grow.
The last to be heard of it is the account given at the end of the thirteenth century by a monk of St Edmundsbury, Jocelyn of Brakeland, who had been born in the town and become an inmate of the abbey.
The abbot of the time was one Sampson, who, on ‘the fourth day of the Festival of St Edmund’ called together a few of his most important brethren and confided to them his overpowering wish to look with his own eyes upon the glorious body of the martyred king. So at midnight, when all the lesser brothers were safely asleep, the little band opened the shrine, and removed the coffin lid. The head was still joined firmly to the body, and rested on a little white pillow, quite unstained. The silken shroud which clothed the body was ‘of wondrous whiteness’, and covered equally white linen bindings. These the abbot forebore to have removed; but he took the head between loving hands and prayed for forgiveness for having dared to profane so holy a thing by his mean and sinful touch. Feeling emboldened, he laid his finger on the dead eyes, on the strikingly firm and beautiful nose; then he rested his hands upon the chest, and felt down the arms, and finally placed his own hand between the palms of the sacred ones folded in death. He noted that the feet still pointed stiffly upward, like those of a man newly dead, and when he had looked his fill, he called to all the other brothers with him to come closer and bear witness, so that they might testify to what they had actually observed.
All this the abbot related to the monks (among whom was Jocelyn, of course) next morning at matins, explaining to them that it would not have been fitting or decent for them all to have seen what he and the privileged few had witnessed. Then the monks sang the Te Deum, weeping copiously at the same time.
And perhaps there could have been those, even among the Abbot Sampson’s own following, who might have thought that he had stretched the tale a bit – if it had not been for an independent witness to corroborate. It so happened that a bold outsider, one John of Diss, sensing something afoot, had climbed to the roof of the church and peered down through a window to see it all exactly as the abbot described it.
Thanks be to God for the sharp eyes of John of Diss, and the sharp pen of Jocelyn of Brakeland, said many a holy brother thereafter! And certainly, to them we owe the rounding-off of the tale of East Anglia’s unlucky, saintly king, whose kindness to the man he saved from drowning did indeed cause him much mischief.
An example, perhaps, of just how far credulity could be stretched!
In the days of miracles, there came to Kent an abbot called Eustace, brought from Normandy to preach and to reprove the people of Kent for their heathen ways, particularly with regard to their sad lack of diligence in keeping holy the sabbath day.
After a rough sea passage, Eustace landed near Dover, and set about preaching immediately, holding his first meeting at the village then called Wi. Being thirsty after his landing he looked for some way of assuaging the thirst, and came upon a little spring gushing forth sweet, cool water, which so pleased his saintly palate that he there and then bestowed his blessing on it, that it might do good to mankind ever after.
It was soon found that the holy monk’s words had had great effect, for it began to be noised abroad that a drink of water from the spring was all that was needed to cure many of the ills that afflict mortal men. To the well came the blind, led by their friends; at the first sip from the spring, their eyes were healed and their sight restored. Those who came crippled, carried on the backs of others, left walking on their own two feet. The deaf heard, and the dumb spoke; pain was banished and wasting sickness exchanged for robust health. The fame of his well spread far and wide, and no one was more gratified than Eustace himself as the number of beneficiaries of his simple blessing of the spring grew larger and larger.
So it was that wherever he journeyed, the blind, the halt, the deaf, the dumb, the weak of body or mind and those tormented with madness flocked round him, and begged for his blessing. St Eustace was a humble man, and did not seek to emulate his Master, only to work through Him; but his faith helped him to help others, and to choose in what way he could best ensure such help.
One day, there came to him where he was preaching a poor woman said by her neighbours to have been attacked by devils, for she had begun to swell up till her body was of a huge and grotesque size, so that she could breathe only with difficulty, and found walking almost impossible. Nevertheless, to Eustace she came, and seeing him, implored him to cure her, and restore her to her normal, active life.
Eustace spoke comfortingly to her, and told her to cling fast to her faith and that through such faith she could regain her health.
‘Have confidence, my daughter.’ said Eustace. ‘Go to the spring at Wi, for surely the Lord hath blessed it. Drink of the spring, and with faith you shall be healed.’
Now by this time the concourse of people who gathered daily at the well was so great that a priest had been appointed to take charge of the fountain, and to give the pilgrims the water to drink. When the poor woman at length arrived at Wi, there were many people present already, who were there either to be cured themselves, or to witness the miracles that happened all the time. The priest drew water for her in a cup, and she drank; but no sooner had she done so than she was attacked by a great nausea, and began violently to retch, and then to vomit. After the first one or two violent spasms, there shot out of her mouth two black toads, which in the sight of all landed on the ground before her, and at once began to grow.
They grew, and they grew, and they grew – until suddenly, instead of toads, there sat before the woman two huge black dogs with horrid, protruding eyes as big as saucers; and while the people all round crossed themselves but continued to watch, the dogs in their turn began to grow. They grew, and they grew, and they grew, until, in the wink of an eye they were gone, and in their place stood two enormous black asses.
At this the woman, who ‘stood astonished’ (and no wonder!) broke into a furious rage at them, for they had proved beyond doubt that they were devils, and had been the cause of her misery. Moreover, as they had swollen from toad to dog, and from dog to ass, she had diminished in body till she was her own normal size again, and feeling health and strength returning to her, she ran at the asses, to come at them and beat them in revenge for the harm that they had done her.
The asses ran away from her rage, but she began to run after them, trying to catch them; and there is no telling what the end of the story might have been, had not the priest-in-charge of the well acted with such commendable alacrity. Having a cup of the blessed water in his hands, he sprinkled it quickly on the ground between the woman and the devilish beasts – whereupon the two asses rose straight up into the air and vanished from sight, though not before leaving with the crowd as they flew extremely disagreeable ‘traces of their foulness’.
Ednoth’s Relics, and Thurkill’s Beard
The two stories combined here are so intertwined with regard to location and detail that it seemed a pity to separate them, especially as they illustrate so clearly the prevailing Zeitgeist – political and social, as well as religious.
In the days when the fenlands of England were overwhelmed with water, ‘a hideous fen of huge bigness often times covered with moist and dark vapours’, where ‘no countryman could endure to dwell by reason that such apparitions of devils were so frequently seen there’, there came into the region a monk seeking seclusion, the better to worship his god.
The monk’s name was Guthlac, and in the seventh century ad he left his brotherhood at the Monastery of Repton, in Derbyshire, and defying water, fog, ague and devils alike, set up the first religious house in what was later to be known as ‘the holy land of the English’. Within a short space of time, there were five great monastic foundations there, at Ely, Ramsey, Crowland, Thorney and Peterborough, to say nothing of other outlying cells attached to one or the other. And as they grew, so rivalry between them grew, especially in the matter of holy relics, and many are the tales that still abound of fights (usually from boats) and deceptions between one house and another as they struggled against each other for possession of the dead bodies of saints to add to their collection.
When Edmund Ironside fought Cnut the Dane, he took with him into battle Bishop Ednoth of Dorchester (who had previously been Abbot of Ramsey) and Wlfsius, who had succeeded Ednoth to the abbacy. Their duty was to pray for victory, but the heathen Danes were no respecters of persons, and both bishop and abbot fell on the field of battle. Cnut was victorious, and created his faithful friend Thurkill to be jarl (earl) of the whole district.
In this same battle also died Aylward, another noble son of Ramsey, and the monks of Ramsey set out to recover the bodies of Aylward and Wlfsius, to bring them safely home for burial. That being so, they decided to annex also the body of Bishop Ednoth, for after all, had not he, too, been abbot for many years? Besides, Ednoth was a character well known, and likely to be a miracle worker, especially to those who suffered from sore feet. It had happened that some years before, a ploughman had unearthed at Slepe (now St Ives) the remains of a man. While nobody then knew whose bones they were, a certain ‘worthy’ of the town claimed to have had a vision. At his side in the night had appeared the blessed St Ivo, a Persian archbishop who had travelled widely around AD 600, preaching the gospel with untiring energy and diligence. The vision informed ‘the worthy of Slepe’ that the bones recently unearthed were none other than his own, and bade the man make his vision known at Ramsey, where he would thereafter wish them to lie.
All this was done, but strange to say, Ednoth, who was then abbot, was not at all convinced by the vision. He contended that the bones might be those of anybody, a ploughman or a cobbler. Indeed, he went so far one day as to refer to the remains as those of St Cobbler! Neverthless, he was prevailed upon to fetch the grisly relics home, sharing the burden on his own shoulders with one Germanus; and it was noticed that ever afterwards, the Lord Abbot Ednoth had trouble with his boots, which caused him much pain and unease from sore feet. This was St Ivo’s vengeance upon Ednoth for his scepticism, people said. Now he was dead, and the monks of Ramsey desired to add his remains to those of St Ivo and their other treasures.
At this time, both Ely and Ramsey were in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Dorchester, so Ramsey was not the only place to feel it had claims upon his corpse.
First come, first served, however. The monks of Ramsey were there on the battlefield first, and appropriated him. They then set out on their long journey home, and once reaching the edge of the fens, they transferred all the bodies to flat-bottomed boats. Night fell as they approached the isle of Ely, and after some discussion, it was resolved to ask shelter from the brothers there, and proceed again next day.
Now between the monks of Ely and of Ramsey there was no love lost, as the saying goes. A few years before this incident, the famous Earl Brithnoth, being on his way to fight the Danes, had come to Ramsey with a large force of men, and had asked hospitality for them. Wlfsius, being of a stingy nature, had declared his abbey too poor and unprepared to feed such a host; and had added insult to injury by saying he would, and could, accommodate the earl and half a dozen of his noble followers, if they were prepared to let their men take their chance, fasting, in the night vapours of the fens. The good earl was affronted, and marched on with his men to Ely, where they were all fed and bedded down, and made much of. As a result of this, Ely received several manors and large tracts of land from Brithnoth, which he had formerly promised to Ramsey. Normal rivalry between the monks had henceforth become very embittered.
The brothers of Ely welcomed the tired travellers from Ramsey, helping them lift their sad cargoes on to biers, and placing them within the chapel of their own monastery till morning. They then fed the Ramsey monks with the best of everything they had, and the wine, too, passed round freely.
When morning came, the monks of Ramsey prepared to go on with their journey; but alas, when they came to take up the body of Bishop Ednoth, the bier was empty.
The brothers of Ely made no attempt to offer any supernatural explanation of its disappearance, beyond a half-hearted and feeble tale that during the night a heavenly glow had shone around the bier of the late bishop, which they had chosen to interpret as a sign that he wished to be left there. He was their bishop as much as he was Ramsey’s after all, so what did the monks of Ramsey propose to do about it? Ely had got him, and Ely was going to keep him, and that was that.
The monks of Ramsey out on the expedition were few, and those of Ely, at home, were many. Possession, even of a dead saint, proved to be nine points of the law. The brothers of Ramsey made a virtue of necessity, and retired disgruntled to their own island abbey.
As it turned out, Ednoth’s vacant throne at Dorchester was filled by another Ramsey brother, one Ethericus; and in the course of time this bishop brought to Ramsey Abbey other, though much more worldly treasure, as another old story tells.
Ethericus had been sent to Ramsey when he was no more than a child, for it was the custom for the monks to conduct a school for the sons of the nobility. There were, of course, other boys of his own age there, and it is reported of him that ‘he loved well the place of his education’. But boys will be boys, and most boys get into mischief. So did Ethericus. It appears that one day three boys, including the future bishop, were larking about in the church, and somehow or other managed to dislodge one of the bells, which hung from a beam in the western tower. It was one of the larger bells, and of considerable worth and price; but it fell, and it cracked. The boys were very frightened, both of spiritual and of corporal punishment, for the rod and the lash were not used sparingly for misdemeanours in such establishments.
When the abbot sent for them, they went in trembling fear to confess the crime; but the abbot was in lenient mood – or perhaps he remembered being a boy himself. However it was, he let them off with no more than a lecture and a token punishment. In their gratitude, the three boys (all of whom lived to be very important people) vowed to the abbot that if God preserved them to reach manhood, they would repay the damage they had done a hundred times over. Etheric stayed on at Ramsey, took his vows and became a monk there; and when Ednoth was killed at Assunden, Etheric was chosen as his successor in the bishopric of Dorchester. He had a great love of Ramsey, and seems to have been a frequent visitor there.
After the death of Edmund, the Danes were in control of the country, and the Danish king, following the precedent of all conquerors before him, parcelled out land taken from the vanquished English among his own noble followers. So it was that Thurkill came into possession of the Manor of Ellesworth. The Abbot of Ramsey already owned a small part of this manor, the eastern part, and had often cast covetous eyes on the larger, and much more valuable, western side of it. The Church was doing its best to remain on good terms with the Danish king, who in turn did his best to placate it, for it was both rich and influential; but the seizure of land from the English and the gift of it to the king’s Danish followers made many a churchman seethe with righteous anger. So it was at Ellesworth.
Thurkill had brought with him to Ellesworth his Danish wife and one little son, but before much time had passed his wife was stricken with illness, and died. Thurkill, still a man in the very prime of life, was not a widower for long. He very soon chose another lady, much younger than himself and in the usual way became completely besotted by his new wife. It was a great grief to him when the king’s business took him away for long spells at a time, during which his wife was left in full charge of the manor in his stead.
The real sufferer, of course, was the motherless little boy of the first marriage. He was the apple of his father’s eye, and it soon became evident to the second wife that the child was a serious rival for her husband’s love. Moreover, since it was the custom for land and goods to be handed down to the oldest surviving son, she saw no future as lord of the manor for her own offspring while the little boy still lived.
Her jealousy of the child turned to vitriolic hatred, and she could barely endure to watch the little boy running to his father to be picked up, played with, and made much of. At last when she could contain her feelings no longer, she sought the help of the local witch, who at that time lived in the village of Ellesworth. What she wanted of the witch was a potion to administer to her husband, that would have the effect of turning the father’s love away from his little son.
The witch was clever, and her evil brew soon had the desired effect. When the child ran to his father to escape the persecution of his stepmother he was heartbroken to find himself rebuffed, pushed aside, cursed and even struck by the man who until then had been his refuge and his idol. The wife was delighted at the result of her evil plot, especially as Thurkill grew ever more uxorious as his love for his child turned to dislike.
The child in his misery soon fell sick, and from being a happy, healthy little boy, grew into a thin and haggard one, whose very presence in her household irritated his stepmother more and more each day. She now had the love of her husband wholly to herself; but the fact remained that while the boy lived, he was his father’s heir, and her own children could therefore never inherit.
The thought drove her almost mad with anger and jealousy, and when, on the next occasion that Thurkill had to be away, the child got in her way, she gave vent to her passion and beat him till she killed him. It was then that she had to turn again to the witch, for without help she could not dispose of the body.
Steeped in evil sorcery and potent as she was, the witch had never before been actually involved in murder, and she was half afraid; but she saw at once the advantage the knowledge that a murder had been done could be to her, and after demanding an exorbitant fee, she agreed to carry away the little body secretly, and dispose of it somehow. In fact, she bore it to a meadow lying in the parish of Lollesworth, adjoining Ellesworth, and there she buried it.
When Thurkill at last returned home, the child’s absence could not but be noticed, and to forestall any questioning, the wife met her husband with the most woeful tale of the boy’s disappearance. In pretended sorrow and simulated grief, she sobbed out the tale to her adoring husband.
‘He was listless, and pining, as he has been often of late,’ she said. ‘He would not eat, he would not play. Instead, he roamed about the hall and the yards alone, and would not obey when told to come indoors. Then one day, he had gone, and did not return. I set the men and the womenfolk to search for him, and though they looked for three days, he could not be found!’
Then Thurkill looked at her beauty and her lissom body, and was consumed with desire for her. The son he had grown to ignore of late slipped from his mind and was forgotten. His lady wife needed no potion from the witch to make him forget all the world, except her, so no more questions were asked. He would surely soon have other sons.
As time went by, however, the witch fell upon hard times, and became very poor indeed. She bethought her of the secret she shared with Thurkill’s wife, and turned to her for sustenance. At first it was freely given, but as with all blackmailers her demands became more and more importunate. The servants of Thurkill’s household began to comment among themselves upon the frequency of her visits, and mutter that she had but to ask, to be loaded down with gifts.
The wife, meanwhile, had managed to convince herself that her guilt was completely unsuspected, and that all had now been hidden by time; moreover, since the witch herself was also implicated, it was very unlikely that she would disclose what she knew. But she dare not allow the gossip of her household the leniency to hit upon the truth. Next time, therefore, that the witch presented herself and begged for alms, the lady bade her servants to bring the wise woman to her.
‘You have been treated well,’ she said, ‘and you now take advantage of kindness. You will get nothing else here!’
The witch could hardly believe her ears. She looked at the noble lady with unrelenting eye, and said,
‘Madam, I know what I know!’ in a most menacing fashion.
‘You know nothing, you evil old hag!’ shrieked the guilty lady. ‘Be off, before my servants set the dogs on you!’ And that was her last word.
The witch stumbled away, her mouth twisting with anger and her fingers writhing with passion, as she wizened out the best way of accomplishing her revenge. She could not denounce the lady without implicating herself and giving away her own part in the horrid murder, but with her last hope of sustenance gone, it made little odds, anyway. So she took her herself off to Bishop Etheric, told the whole tale, confessed her guilt and threw herself on his mercy.
The bishop summoned Thurkill and his wife to his synod, that they might make full inquiries on the witch’s deposition. Then Thurkill flew into a passion, and vowed that he would not appear at the bidding of any English churchman, at which the bishop was also made angry, and set the whole matter before King Cnut.
Now Cnut was wise; and though he had a loyalty to those who, like Thurkill, had helped to put him on the English throne, his chance of remaining there in peace depended largely on his good relations with the Church, which he had been very diligent to foster. So the king compromised. He commanded Thurkill to appear, as bidden by Etheric; but he added that the trial should not be merely before Etheric and his synod. Instead, Thurkill should take with him eleven witnesses (or jury) of his own choosing, and that his wife should likewise take with her eleven of her own sex. In this way they would be tried by their peers, in Danish fashion, and their innocence, or guilt, thus publicly established. Thurkill now had no course open to him but to obey.
The bishop fixed the date and time of the meeting, and chose for the meeting place the field at Lollesworth where the witch had declared she had buried the body of the murdered child.
The day came, and with it came Athelstan, Abbot of Ramsey, with a great number of the brethren. Before them in procession were carried many of the holiest relics the abbey possessed, and they wended their way across the fields singing as they went, to where Bishop Etheric waited at the gruesome spot. Then the relics were placed upon the grave, for the ceremony to begin.
Thurkill stood to one side, with his eleven witnesses chosen from his Danish friends. A magnificent spectacle they provided, too, for they were all tall, strong and handsome, though none more so than Thurkill himself, with his tanned face, sea-blue eyes and golden-auburn hair, which surrounded his noble head like a halo, and ran down round his shoulders to join the curly copper-golden sculptured beard of which he was inordinately proud. From their belted tunics hung their swords, and each man’s cloak was fastened on the shoulder with a pin or brooch that showed their class and worth. On the opposite side stood Thurkill’s disdainful lady and the eleven others of her sex, all ready to testify to her innocence if need be. They were in every respect a match for their menfolk, heads held high and long hair plaited and intertwined with jewels. Among such high-born, foreign juries, what chance had the bedraggled English village witch of making her accusation hold?
Then Thurkill was brought forward, and the deposition against him spoken. Proudly and defiantly he repudiated it, and declared in ringing tones that all present could hear that he was utterly innocent of the murder of his son, and of all knowledge whatsoever of the manner in which the child had met his death.
He could see from their demeanour that he had impressed his judges, the bishop and the abbot; and he looked across at his beautiful, proud, and beloved wife, awaiting in her turn the ordeal of question and accusation. Wishing above all now to spare her such public humiliation, he raised his voice again.
Winding his hand into the curls of his splendid beard, he said, ‘O Bishop! Just as God permits me to glory in this beard, so my wife is innocent and clear of the dreadful crime imputed to her of killing my beloved son!’
And he threw back his head, and took away his hand – and with it came the glorious beard, drawn out by the roots from his face.
Then the great crowd of ordinary folks shouted their feelings aloud, while the monks and the clergy fell on their knees and chanted in an ecstasy of praise to their God who had worked such a miracle in the sight of all men. The friends of the Dane turned aside in shame and embarrassment, while Thurkill himself stood dumb with amazement, and gazed towards his wife, for surely this must prove that she was guilty.
But the lady only tossed her head with disdain, and continued to deny any part in the crime. So the bishop had no option but to command the grave to be opened, and men with mattocks, who had been standing ready, began to dig as soon as the holy relics had been safely removed from the spot. It was only a few minutes before the little skeleton was unearthed, and laid on the grass for all to see.
At that, the lady broke down, and confessed before them all; and Thurkill admitted his fault in so basely neglecting his child and stifling his own suspicions.
Then Bishop Etheric showed his clemency, judging that they had had public punishment enough; but he gave them the humiliation of doing penance yearly, on the anniversary of this day.
Thurkill was both relieved and grateful for such lenient punishment of his wife, and in return he made over to the bishop all of the western part of the manor of Ellesworth, free from any claim from him, or from his heirs, for ever. And he asked that the bishop would bestow it on some religious place where prayers might be said to help him and his wife assuage their terrible guilt.
The Abbot Athelstan already held the eastern part of Ellesworth, and had long coveted the rest; so there and then Etheric bestowed it upon the abbot and monks of Ramsey, to their great joy.
Then the relics were lifted high again, and the procession once more began to move in all solemnity, with the abashed Danes and the excited mob following after. It takes very little imagination to hear Etheric’s low murmur to Athelstan at his side, under cover of the chanting of the brothers. ‘Well, that settles my debt to Ramsey for the cracked bell, I think, old friend? More than a hundredfold. I’d say! Wouldn’t you?’