The font of the parish church of Bridekirk in Cumberland – one of the finest Romanesque church furnishings to survive in northern Britain – has not wanted for antiquary, artistic and scholarly attention. The existence of the font and the interest of its runic inscription was first noted by Reginald Bainbrigg (1544–1613), headmaster of Appleby School, an enthusiastic (as well as intrepid) obtainer of Roman antiquities.1 Bainbrigg communicated details of the font to William Camden, whose publication of these engravings in the sixth and final edition of his Britannia in 1607 introduced the font to Jacobean England and set it on its course to wider fame.2 Over the course of the next four centuries, the font has been the subject of numerous studies by some of the leading antiquaries, gentlemen experts and professional scholars of the British Isles.3 It has been engraved, drawn and photographed by numerous artists and visitors, most elegantly by the accomplished draughtsman Charles Stothard in the summer of Waterloo.4 It has also been a regular feature of any serious itinerary of the Lakes and Wall country since the so-called rediscovery of the region in the 18th century.5 The font’s pretensions as a monument worthy of national (and even international) standing were confidently declaimed when Colonel Frecheville Ballantine-Dykes (1800–67), the squire of Dovenby Hall, who owned the presentation to Bridekirk church and who took an active interest in the Roman antiquities of his neighbourhood, presented a cast of the font to the Museum of Manufactures (as the earliest incarnation of the Victoria & Albert Museum was known) in 1863.6 Further fame followed a century later when, in 1953, the font graced the front of the dust wrapper of George Zarnecki’s Later Romanesque Sculpture and then, in 1967, was chosen as the back cover of the dust jacket for Pevsner’s Buildings of England volume on Cumberland.7 Yet for all this attention and interest, the judgement offered by a visitor to the church in 1814 that the font is ‘very ancient and very curious … about which much has been written, but little that is satisfactory’, continues to possess an element of truth: the font has been more often admired – and certainly more engraved and photographed – than studied in detail.8
There are two recent exceptions to this trend. The first is the study of the font made by C. S. Drake towards his catalogue of Romanesque fonts in Scandinavia and northern Europe, published in 2002.9 The second is a detailed study of the inscription offered by M. Barnes and R. I. Page as part of their corpus of Scandinavian runic inscriptions from the British Isles, published in 2006.10 Both works have certainly helped sharpen our understanding of different aspects and features of the font – yet there still remains much to say. Apart from early misinterpretations drawn from the runic inscription, and a rather later, misguided effort by one of the county’s most learned scholars of pre-Conquest sculpture, there has been almost no consideration of the identity of the patron or patrons whose investment resulted in the construction of so lavish a furnishing. This paper, in seeking to address this theme, will use neglected evidence – evidence that has been in print for more than 300 years, but almost entirely ignored – in order to offer a new identification of these patrons and to explore the intersection of their devotional priorities and territorial interests. What follows is less, therefore, a study of the font’s sculptural details, iconographic programme, and process of construction than an exploration of the world of lordship, power and devotion – the world of 12th-century secular hearts and minds – represented by the font.
The Bridekirk font (Figure 23.1) is found in the present parish church, five miles north of Cockermouth, in the historic county of Cumberland. The original medieval church was almost entirely demolished in the course of the construction of the present church in 1868–70. The original church had clearly suffered major alterations in the late medieval and modern periods, but a description of it in 1835, the best description we possess prior to its demolition, observes that the church was ‘an ancient edifice, principally in the Norman style’.11 In place of this church, the two architects, John Cory and Charles Ferguson, built a more coherent structure in a neo-Romanesque style – precisely the sort of ‘new imposing church’ that its Victorian parishioners had always dreamed of possessing.12 Cory and Ferguson – both, we should note, founding members of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological and Antiquarian Society and regular contributors to the society’s Transactions on a range of learned subjects – were nevertheless sensitive to the church’s Romanesque fabric and preserved some of this fabric in their new building.13 The 12th-century chancel arch was thus reused as the north transept arch, a 12th-century door and tympanum as the south porch entrance, and a second 12th-century door as a doorway at the east end of the south transept. A number of gravestones and other fragments, including what may be a late 12th-century carved panel, were also preserved. So, too, of course, was the font, which now stands – or, rather, stands cemented – on a later plinth close to the western end of the present church, so close, indeed, that it is almost impossible to examine in detail (or even photograph) the western face of the font.14
Our understanding of the origins of the font has been complicated by the view – a minority view, it must be stated, but one given fresh life by the rather equivocal comments of Barnes and Page in their recent survey of Scandinavian runic inscriptions – that the font was originally discovered at the Roman settlement of Papcastle.15 As was stated earlier, our earliest written reference to the font occurs in notes made by the antiquary, Reginald Bainbrigg, for his correspondent and friend, William Camden. According to Bainbrigg, the Bridekirk inscription ‘was in a stone found at Papcastle and now made a font stone at Bridekirk’. Camden himself describes how the font, which he describes (in the words of his earliest translator) as ‘a broad vessell of a greenish stone’, presumably because of the green moss on the font, was discovered ‘among many monuments of Antiquity’.16 This detail is not found in Bainbrigg’s report, so Camden is likely to have obtained this information from one of his local informants, possibly Oswald Dykes, possibly John Senhouse.17 According to William Stukeley, who visited Papcastle on 22 August 1725, ‘the famous font, now at Bridekirk, was taken up at this place, in the pasture south of the south-east angle of the city, by a lane called Moor-went’.18 Again, the precision of his details suggests the existence of a robust local tradition, one very likely communicated to him by his friend, Mr Humphrey Senhouse, who hosted Stukeley at his residence in Ellenborough and who accompanied him on his visit to Papcastle.19
There are good reasons, however, to doubt the veracity of this tradition. We should begin by observing that, in his notes for Camden, Bainbrigg had first written that ‘the inscription was found in Papcastle’ before erasing the ‘in’ and replacing it with ‘at’.20 His correction would suggest that he himself was unsure as to the details of the font’s discovery. The informants behind the statements made by Camden in 1607 and Stukeley in 1725 may have been local men with a usable store of information, but the discrepancy behind their reports – the font being discovered ‘among many other ancient monuments’ or in a precise corner of a local field – would imply that this information was not drawn from a fixed local tradition and, moreover, was subject to revision and improvement. The discovery of Roman sculpture and coins at Papcastle must have made the site an evocative, even convenient, location for the purported origins of many items of perceived antiquity. There is evidence that the vill had been a significant seigneurial centre in the early history of the lordship of Allerdale, and one of the early 12th-century lords, who we shall meet in due course, was credited with making his headquarters at Papcastle, perhaps within the surviving Roman remains. Yet the only known ecclesiastical building at Papcastle was a chapel dedicated to Saint Zita, which was in existence by the early 1470s. This chapel can have been raised no earlier than the 14th century and is unlikely to have possessed a baptismal font.21 We must therefore conclude that the ascription to Papcastle, if at all accurate, must refer to no more than the re-use and recycling of Roman stone from Papcastle rather than the discovery of the entire font in the grounds of the former Roman settlement. The Bridekirk font, we must stress, began and ended its life as a baptismal font at Bridekirk church.
Before we proceed to a description of the font, it is first essential to discuss the visit to Bridekirk church made by William Dugdale in the spring of 1665. This visit, as will become clear, marked a significant event in the history of the font, and is an event of central importance to the thesis advanced by the present paper.22 As Norroy King of Arms, Dugdale was responsible for all heraldic business in the counties north of the Trent; his visit to Cumberland and Westmorland in March and April 1665 was in fact the first heraldic visitation of these counties since 1615. In the course of his visitation – very likely on Saturday, 1 April – he and his young amanuensis and assistant, Gregory King, visited Bridekirk church and inspected the font. During their visit, King made drawings of the four sides of the font (Figure 23.2).23 Though his drawings are the earliest depiction of the font, they have never, remarkably, been published. What makes them particularly valuable is the fact that he labelled each of the four sides with the directions of the compass. This has significant implications for our understanding of the font’s orientation. Our only description of the location of the font in the original church is provided by the Cumbrian man of letters, George Smith, who, in a brief description published in 1749, stated that the font ‘faces the porch door’.24 Since this porch appears to have been the vestibule created by the collapsed west bell tower, the font was very likely situated towards the western end of the church.25 Unless the font was moved in its late medieval or early modern existence, itself unlikely but not impossible, its position at the western end must represent its location in the 12th-century church. King’s labelled drawings, when combined with Smith’s useful detail, thus allow us to re-create what may have been the original orientation of the font in the medieval church, which was significantly different, it is clear, from the font’s present orientation. This has implications for what follows: for when this paper refers to the north face of a font, it will be referring to the face labelled north by Gregory King.
As to the font itself, this consists of a rectangular tub, which is 600 mm high and has a depth of 220 mm. A plain roll-moulding decorates the top of the font, while a second roll-moulding divides each of the four sides into two tiers. Each side of the font is thus divided into two separate registers. All eight of these registers carry rich sculptural decoration.26 On each of the four sides there is a combination of foliage, fruit, beasts and figural scenes. There is movement and drama in many of the scenes. Two basilisks devour a plant from either direction, their front paws almost touching; a dog bites eagerly into the stem of fruit-bearing vegetation; and a centaur fights in desperate combat with two beastly assailants. There is no coherent or integrated artistic programme, but rather a collection of visually arresting scenes. Perhaps the most significant of these scenes – the critical scene on any font – is found in the lower register of its east face (Figure 23.3). This depicts the baptism of Christ: a mighty John the Baptist holds a smaller Christ by the shoulders in the Jordan river; ‘the Spirit of God’ descends as a dove directly on to Christ’s head, with all the tautness and will, it must be conceded, of a bird of prey; and a small sphere, presumably the sun, sits in the top left corner, perhaps as a representation of the tearing open of heaven on Christ’s baptism. An equally gripping scene is found in the lower register of the south face. Running across the top of this register is a horizontal band, which carries an inscription. Beneath the band, on the left, is a kneeling mason, who raises a mallet in his right hand and gently edges his long chisel into the beading of the stems. We will return to both the inscription and the figure of the mason in due course. Now it is enough to observe the quality of the sculptural detail of these various scenes, from the pellets on the belt of the centaur through the texture of John the Baptist’s camel-skin garment to the richness of the mason’s hair and beard.
The complex interplay of ideas that informed both the design of the font and the responses of its viewers, especially its secular viewers, is clearest from the lower register of the north face of the font (Figures 23.4–23.5). This depicts a dramatic scene. On the far left is an elegant figure, brandishing a sword with one hand and pointing in the opposite direction with the other. Close to him a man raises his arm in exclamation while a female figure clutches the base of what may be a tree with mournful desperation. The possibility that this scene represents an episode from the life of St Brigit, possibly the episode in which she surrendered her father’s sword to a leper, can probably be rejected, since the only apparent correlation between this episode and the scene on the font is the individual on the left bearing a sword.27 The more standard view that the scene depicts episodes from the Fall seems on the whole a more compelling interpretation of its details. Identifying which episodes is less than straightforward, however. The view that the scene depicts either ‘the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden’ or ‘both the Temptation and the Expulsion’ fails to explain why Adam and Eve are fully clothed and why Eve appears to be clutching the base of a tree.28 Examination of the font itself reveals, in addition, that there was once an object in Adam’s left hand, which has since been obliterated. King’s drawing of the font in 1665 reveals that the item was some sort of tool, possibly even the traditional spade. His posture may even indicate his foot resting on the edge of the spade’s blade. The entire lower register is more likely, therefore, to represent a moment (or, perhaps, a combination of moments) following the Expulsion of Adam and Eve. These fortunes were not an unpopular subject for artistic and devotional expression in 12th-century England: wall paintings from the parish church of Hardham (in Sussex), for instance, appear to narrate the various labours and penitence of the couple following the Expulsion.29 They feature, too, in the 12th-century drama, The Play of Adam, which was written in French for what may have been a predominantly (if not exclusively) élite Anglo-Norman audience.30 Such dramatic entertainment, of which the Play of Adam is a valuable, but not unique, survival, appears to have exercised an important influence on contemporary – and especially secular – familiarity with events from the Biblical past and the lives of the saints.31
The parallels between the Play of Adam and this register on the font are striking. In the play, God stations an angel, ‘dressed in white’, at the gate of paradise and commands him to guard the way ‘with this sword that shines so brightly’: on the font, a magnificently garmented angel holds up his sword in threatening fashion.32 The stage instructions in the Play likewise required Adam to turn back to ‘look back to paradise’ and to ‘lift up his hands in its direction’: on the font Adam does, indeed, look back to paradise and hold up his left hand in its direction.33 More problematic, perhaps, is the depiction of Eve clutching the tree or shrub on the right side of the register. The play stage instructions narrate that Satan sowed thorns and thistles to strangle the crops planted by Adam and Eve and direct that both should ‘fall prostrate’ when they discovered his malice.34 One of the wall paintings at Hardham certainly shows Adam clasping the branches of a tree or shrub. This has generally been interpreted as Adam engaged in the cultivation of the land, but could easily represent his efforts to uproot the thorns planted by Satan.35 The register on the font may depict a similar scene, with Eve either cultivating the soil or, prostrate in grief, clutching the weeds planted by Satan. These details – however interpreted – underline the complex influences that not only determined the creative process represented by the carving, but also framed and informed the responses and reactions of its audience, including, perhaps, its patrons.
One of the most striking and most significant features of the font is its remarkable runic inscription (Figure 23.6). In fact, since Camden published the inscription in 1607, it was the first runic inscription ever published in the British Isles.36 The inscription is inscribed in the horizontal band that runs along the top of the lower register on the south face of the font. It is composed of a combination of mixed runes and Roman bookhand characters and offers a rhyming couplet in early Middle English verse:
Rikard he me iwrocte |
And to dis merd ger … me brocte.
In their survey of runic inscriptions, Barnes and Page have offered the following translation of this verse:37
Rikard he made me |
And to this splendour … brought me.
As is often the case with runes, no translation is necessarily straightforward. It is possible, for instance, that the Middle English word mērthe, meaning ‘splendour’, could be taken to mean Bridekirk itself – ‘this splendid place’. More challenging is the reading of the word beginning ‘ger … ’. This word has generally been taken to be ME gernr and translated as an adverb or adjective. On this reading, the inscription could be translated as:38
Rikard he made me |
And to this splendour carefully [or eagerly] brought me.
Barnes and Page have raised the possibility, however, that this word represents a personal name. On this reading, the verse could be translated as:39
Rikard he made me |
and to this splendour NN brought me.
The personal name represented by the graphs NN, depending on how they are read, could represent either various forms of the Old Norse Arnórr, which might be rendered Arner, Artur or Arnther in Middle English, or a rare form of the Old English Earnweard. The inscription may therefore, in effect, carry a double signature containing the names of the two leading craftsmen or, just possibly, the names of the senior mason and the font’s commissioner and patron. Such a reading must remain no more than a possibility.
The earliest efforts to identify a patron of the Bridekirk font focussed exclusively on the identity of this Rikard. For the first generation of commentators, Rikard (or Ekard as his name was transliterated) was the patron himself, ‘a General, or other great officer in the Danish army’, keen to erect a monument to his conversion to Christianity and to his baptism, even perhaps Erik Bloodaxe, the early 10th-century Norwegian warrior who was once, possibly even twice, king of the Northumbrians.40 It was the antiquary, William Hamper (1776–1831), who, in 1821, proposed that Rikard was ‘the ingenious sculptor’ rather than the patron and that the inscription was nothing less than his signature.41 Better readings and transliterations of the runic inscription have confirmed Hamper’s proposition. The fact, moreover, that Rikard’s name in the horizontal band sits directly above the depiction of the mason at work only strengthens this identification. But what can we say about this Rikard? When publishing the second volume of his four-tome work, The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia, in 1868, George Stephens (1813–95) – the ‘pioneering, erratic, and irascible’ scholar of runes and runic inscriptions – believed very little: ‘Richard’, he reminded his readers, ‘was a very common name’.42 By 1884, however, Stephens had formulated a more exciting thesis: that this Rikard was the same Richard the engineer whose career in the bishopric of Durham can be reconstructed from a range of evidence, including a fascinating miracle narrative.43 This evidence establishes that Richard was employed by Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham, to rebuild and renew the castle at Norham and that he was very likely responsible for the phase of major reconstruction dated to the 1160s.44 Stephens’s identification of Rikard the mason with Richard the engineer has been influential and is occasionally cited, not least, we may suspect, because the challenge of reconstructing the career of an individual craftsman – to compare with other 12th-century virtuosi – has always been an attractive one for historians.
We should nevertheless be cautious. What little we know about these careers of 12th-century masons and metalworkers – as the recent identification, for instance, of an Anglo-Norman mason working for Muirchertach Ua Brian, king of Munster and high-king, on his oratory of St Flannán in the 1090s has demonstrated – hints at complex and competitive networks of artisanal recruitment and employment in the early-12th-century British Isles.45 Stephens was not incorrect in his statement that Richard was a common name in the 12th-century north. Attributing two very different works – the first requiring the abilities of a sculptor with some skill in the carving of runes, the second demanding the expertise of an engineer versed in the business of tower-construction and in the latest fashions of seigneurial comfort – may do an injustice to the range, depth and vitality of artistic talent in 12th-century northern Britain. Even if we reject the possibility that the runic inscription carries the signature of two masons, Rikard is unlikely to have carved the font on his own. The acquisition of the stone and its transport to Bridekirk would at least have required a number of trained hands. Rikard may also have worked on the rebuilding and decoration of the church, but we must presume that this, too, was the work of more than one craftsman. At Bridekirk, therefore, we may therefore be looking at a small team of masons and sculptors – of Rikard & Co., as it were – rather than at one ‘ingenious sculptor’ working in precocious isolation. Stephen’s original identification of this Rikard with Richard the engineer should not only be treated with caution, but should not be allowed to obscure the extent of Rikard’s collaboration with other masons and craftsmen.
The details of the inscription and the depiction of Rikard on the font nevertheless tell us something important about the font’s patrons. There may have been other members of his team, and there may even be a second name included in the inscription, but it is Rikard’s name that was awarded such prominence in the inscription and which stands over the figure of the mason. The details of this figure – the long, braided hair (as long, indeed, as the hair of the angel in the Expulsion scene), the neat, trimmed beard, the decorated, belted and elegant garment (Figure 23.7) – bespeaks a clear pride in his professional calling and personal standing. This is the very ideal of a mason, and constitutes one of the finest depictions of a Romanesque craftsman in action.46 Rikard’s professional zeal was certainly shared by some of his contemporaries. So proud was Snarri of York in his office of toll-collector that his ivory seal-matrix depicts him elegantly dressed and holding a money-bag into which coins fall easily – but inescapably.47 In his miracle narrative concerning Richard the engineer, builder of Norham castle, Reginald of Durham declares that Richard is – he was evidently still alive – most famous ‘among the inhabitants of the region for his skill (ars) and reputation (nomen)’ and is called ‘by his name Richard the engineer’. This is exactly how Richard was styled in deeds drafted in his name for the monks of Durham: he evidently took satisfaction in his standing as ‘the engineer’.48 The pride taken by both Snarri and Richard in their professional status was likely to have recommended them to their lords and fellow citizens in York and Durham. The patrons of the Bridekirk font may have recruited Rikard the mason for exactly the same reasons: as much for his reputation as for his skill. The fact that it was this face of the font, the face which may have been seen on entry through the church’s southern door, may reveal the desire of the patrons to demonstrate Rikard’s contribution to the font’s creation. The pride expressed by Rikard in the elegance of his figure and in the pre-eminence of his name in the inscription must surely reflect, in its own way, the pride of his patrons.
Let us turn, finally, to the more problematic issue of when the font was carved. Zarnecki advanced a date range of the ‘third quarter of the 12th century’, but as a characteristically oracular statement, without any meaningful explanation of his reasoning.49 Dodwell discussed the font only within the context of the Dover Bible, which he dated to ‘1150–1160’, but, once again, offered no discussion of his criteria.50 Pevsner and his successor looked instead to ‘the mid-twelfth-century’.51 Such efforts should be treated with caution, dependent, as all such efforts are, on variable and subjective interpretations of style, expertise and technological change, and complicated by the difficulties of dating architectural and sculptural fashions at a local level.52 Certainly, as Drake has observed, the closest parallel to the Bridekirk font, in its shape and design, is the font now preserved at Lenton (in Nottinghamshire) that Zarnecki himself, it should be noted, dated to 1140 × 1160.53 The runic inscription offers only the most tentative help here. Barnes and Page observed that the use of the one of the runic graphs found in the inscription ‘seems to begin after 1150’, but were nevertheless only prepared to offer ‘a twelfth-century dating’ for the font.54 Then there is the related issue of the date for the surviving sections of the 12th-century church. These sections have been almost entirely ignored by the extensive literature on the font, so there has been little consideration of their date, but Pevsner and his successor volume dated them to the mid 12th century.55 Since there can be no certainty here, and since we are in danger of running around in ever more confusing circles, this paper will propose (in the light of the documents to be considered shortly) that the church was rebuilt and the font carved in the course of the 1140s, but that this was the climax of a process that began in the late 1120s or 1130s. Compelling evidence frames the historical context and leaves any later date unconvincing.
Who, then, were the patrons of Rikard and his colleagues? Critical evidence here is supplied by four documents published by William Dugdale in 1673, in the third and final volume of the Monasticon Anglicanum, that learned enterprise initiated by the Yorkshire antiquary, Roger Dodsworth, in the 1630s and 1640s, but completed by Dugdale himself over the course of the two decades following the publication of the first volume in 1655.56 In his source note for these four documents, Dugdale reveals that they had been in the possession of Richard Tolson ‘in April 1665’ – when Dugdale was conducting his heraldic visitation of the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland in his capacity as Norroy King of Arms. The precise circumstances in which this Richard Tolson shared his documents with Dugdale remains frustratingly unclear. Richard is known to have submitted his family descent and arms for Dugdale’s verification at Cockermouth on Friday, 31 March, and this may have been the occasion for the presentation of his muniments. Since, however, he also held the manor of Bridekirk, it is possible that he produced them when Dugdale made his visit to Bridekirk church. The story is complicated by the fact that there is evidence that Richard Tolson presented these documents to Dugdale – perhaps for a second time – in London in the early summer of 1666. Their eventual fate remains unknown, but they have long since disappeared, and may even have been destroyed in the Great Fire of London. No copy of these documents survives in the many notebooks belonging to William Dugdale or Gregory King. We are therefore dependent for the texts of these documents on their printing of 1673. This should not obscure their importance. Since Henry VIII had granted the manor of Bridekirk to Henry Tolson, the great-grandfather of Richard Tolson, in July 1543, the four documents must have passed into the possession of the Tolson family directly from the church of Bridekirk.57 What these four documents represent, in other words, is the archive of a 12th- and early-13th-century parish church.
For the purposes of the present paper, only two of the four documents directly concern us here. The first is a deed of Waltheof, son of Earl Gospatric, granting the vill of Appleton to the church of St Brigit (in Bridekirk) and confirming E. the priest and El. son of Erlaf the priest in their possession of the church. The second is a deed of Alan, son of this Waltheof, confirming his father’s gift of Appleton, supplementing this gift with the tithe of the mill of Broughton, and confirming Athelwold, son of Erlaf the priest, in possession of the church. Both deeds, it should be stated immediately, are not without their complications: there is tentative evidence that they were reworked, very likely in the first decade of the 13th century, but they both possess enough legitimate forms and enough verifiable detail to suggest that they were reworked from authentic single-sheet originals. They offer the best evidence discovered so far for the identities of the patrons of the font at Bridekirk and for the material investment made by these laymen in their church. We should stress that these deeds do not constitute the 12th-century equivalent of that contract between the canons of Beverley and the apprentice of a London goldsmith for the construction of a new reliquary shrine in 1292 – the earliest surviving artisanal contract from northern England – with its specific injunctions on the details of the design, the terms of the payment and the obligations on the goldsmith.58 But they nevertheless provide a clear and direct link between these laymen, their relations and followers, the priestly personnel of the church and the carving of the font.
Waltheof, son of Earl Gospatric, and his son Alan belonged to one of the élite families of northern England. Waltheof’s paternal kin had ruled Northumbria from their seat at Bamburgh since the early 10th century. More recently, his father, Earl Gospatric, had ruled as earl of Northumbria in the late 1060s, and his (considerably older) brother, Dolfin, had exercised some form of control over the territory centred on Carlisle in the 1080s and early 1090s. Waltheof and Alan were themselves lords of Allerdale in the shire of Cumberland, in what is now north-west England. They exercised their leadership and authority over a small set of vills in the coastal lowlands, over a share of the western lake fells, and over a spread of churches, enjoying a handsome array of services, revenues and rights and commanding a body of active tenants and followers.59 Waltheof had certainly been recognised as lord of Allerdale by the early 1120s, but may have been established there from still earlier. He appears to have died at some point early in the reign of King Stephen and probably by 1136.60 His son and successor, Alan, succeeded in the 1130s, but died sometime before June 1152. Waltheof’s deed for the church of St Brigit can very likely be dated 1126 × 1136, while Alan’s deed was very likely drafted soon after his succession and can probably be dated 1136 × August 1139.61 Both men enjoyed close ties to the premier rulers in northern Britain, the kings of Scots, and especially to King David, son of King Mael Coluim III. Waltheof himself can be seen attending upon David when he was princeps of Cumbria in the early 1120s, and he appears later to have entrusted custody of his son and possibly his lordship to David when king in the late 1130s.62 Alan, in turn, was an active supporter of David’s efforts to rule the northern shires of the English kingdom. Their ties to the king and his court has bearing on some of what follows.
The deeds of Waltheof and Alan for their church of St Brigit offer a rare and revealing insight into the nature of their devotional life. Retrieving the character and quality of that life – as for the 12th-century secular élite as a whole – from the surviving evidence is no easy task. Perhaps Waltheof (as the late-11th-century monks of Worcester believed of Leofric, earl of Mercia) was accustomed ‘to drink very little’ – but still ‘be happy with drinking companions’; ‘to pray in secret’; and to hear ‘two masses each day’.63 But perhaps he was more inclined to spend nightly vigils at the shrines of the saints (as Guibert of Nogent has his bête noire, John, count of Soissons, declare) ‘because beautiful women spend the night here’.64 Waltheof is certainly known to have fathered sons by many sexual partners.65 There is much that we do not know. According to the early-17th-century historian John Denton, who very likely drew on material from the archive of Carlisle cathedral priory, Waltheof acquired a significant share of relics when on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Constantinople.66 Such a pilgrimage is not, in itself, unlikely, but our uncertainty about so significant a moment in Waltheof’s spiritual formation underscores the gaps – or rather gulfs – in our knowledge.
What evidence there is reveals that both Waltheof and Alan were as sensitive and as responsive to the currents and fashions of religious reform and renewal as other lords in 12th-century northern Britain. Two examples will have to stand for many. The first concerns the priory of Hexham. In his history of his own community, Richard, prior of Hexham, credited Waltheof and his son Alan with giving four bovates of land and a house for fishing herring in their lordship of Allerdale.67 The community at Hexham, possessing the relics of its episcopal triumvirate of Wulfric, Acca and Alchmund, had been refounded as an Augustinian community in the course of 1113, and the gifts made by Waltheof and his son reveal their commitment to its refoundation. The fact that they were served by a priest who bore the name of Acca – he witnessed Alan’s deed for the church of St Brigit’s – can only have reinforced the appeal of the refounded community of Hexham. The second example concerns Alan’s foundation of a Cistercian abbey on the isle of Holm Cultram. We possess no deed drafted in Alan’s name, partly because both Alan and his own son Waltheof appear to have died in unknown circumstances before they could complete their intended gift. But the deed of Henry, son of David, king of Scots, and earl of Northumberland, is explicit that Alan and his son had given the monks a share of their estate in Holm Cultram.68 Alan and his son appear to have been as electrified by the reformed life lived by the brethren of Cîteaux – by ‘the citizens of the saints’, as Bernard of Clairvaux put it with characteristic vehemence to another secular lord – as other leading laymen in the Latin West of the 1140s.69
Significant collaborators and sources of counsel in the rebuilding of the church of St Brigit, so the deeds of Waltheof and Alan reveal, must have been the clerical personnel of the church. The deed of Waltheof explicitly confirmed the church and all its pertinences to E. the priest and to El. son of Erlaf the priest, while the deed of Alan fitz Waltheof confirmed the church to Athelwold the clerk, son of Erlaf the priest. This Athelwold the clerk, son of Erlaf the priest, is likely to have been the same individual as the El. son of Erlaf the priest referred to in Waltheof’s deed; his name may have been some variation on Elwold (or even Aelwold). These deeds thus identify three different priests of St Brigit’s church in Bridekirk: E. the priest, Erlaf the priest and Athelwold the clerk, son of Erlaf the priest. Since by the time Alan had his deed drafted for the church, Athelwold the clerk appears to have succeeded both his father and E. the priest as sole custodian of the church, we may be dealing here with a line of hereditary priests, similar, in effect, to the custodians of Hexham church. These custodians were clearly men of status and standing: Waltheof refers to Athelwold the clerk as his ‘kinsman and foster brother’ (cognatus meus et alumpnus). The lords of Allerdale were evidently bound to the priests of St Brigit’s church and the priests of St Brigit’s to the lords of Allerdale by a complex weft of ties. There was honour and prestige for both sets of men in the association.
These three men – E. the priest, Erlaf the priest, and Athelwold the clerk – may have been more than familiar with the expectation that priests should decorate and embellish their churches.70 The hereditary priests of Hexham were celebrated by their descendant, Aelred of Rievaulx, in the 1150s ‘for restoring, adorning, and preserving the churches of Christ’, and the priests of Bridekirk were unlikely to have been any different.71 When composing his treatise on recluses for his sister in the 1160s, however, Aelred took a rather more hostile line, but his criticism – a rejection, in effect, of the artistic munificence for which his family seems to have been famed – nevertheless offers one of the most revealing insights into the investments of parish priests in the furnishing and decoration of their churches: ‘I would not wish you, on the grounds of devotion, to strive for that glory vested in painting or sculpture, in hangings decorated with birds or beasts or depictions of different flowers’.72 A more sympathetic expression of the value of such efforts was made by Sigar, parish priest of Newbald (in the East Riding, Yorkshire), in his Vita et uisio simiplicis Orm, which he composed in 1126 or soon afterwards.73 Sigar, it is clear, was no isolated and marginalised curé, but an active and widely regarded participant in a well-connected literary network.74 His Vita et uisio is none the less one of the few texts written by a parish priest (rather than by their monastic detractors) to have survived from early-12th-century northern Britain, and takes us closer to the values and aspirations of E. the priest and his colleagues than perhaps any other work. Even if his text, which recounts the visionary experience of a young boy by the name of Orm, who lived in the parish of Howden, owes more to the literary pretensions of Sigar than to the recollections of Orm himself, Sigar is explicit that the details of the vision were both widely verified and excitedly discussed by the ‘priests, monks, clerics, and the laity’ of the neighbouring parishes.75 His work is unlikely, therefore, to have strayed too far from the essential components of the narrative. The nature of the sights described by Orm – of the crucified Christ; of Michael the Archangel holding a book depicting the passage of time, its letters written in gold; of the open jaws of hell – surely underline, as has been observed, the impact of the visual experience of a parish church and of its furnishings on the imaginative landscapes and devotional practices of lay parishioners.76 In many ways, therefore, Sigar offers his readers (primarily, if not exclusively, the monks of Durham) an eloquent – if not necessarily deliberate – validation of the devotional purpose and effective power of ‘the paintings and carvings’ so denounced by Aelred and others. The idealised parish world evoked by Sigar was likely to have been one endorsed and cherished by his professional colleagues in Bridekirk.
As priests of the church of St Brigit, both E. the priest and his colleagues would have had every reason to welcome the rebuilding and furnishing of their church. The font – as Gillebertus, bishop of Limerick, described it in his contemporary treatise – was one of the essential furnishings for every parish church.77 The new emphasis on the sacramental efficacy of baptism, as articulated by Hugh of St Victor and others, may have been slow to reach northern Britain, though not as slow, perhaps, as we might imagine, but the liturgical and even cultic power that possession of a font gave to its custodians was unlikely to have been lost on the priests of St Brigit’s.78 They were even less likely to have been blind to the more temporal advantages offered by ‘the sacred font’. The carving of a new stone font was a powerful reminder of St Brigit’s status as a baptismal church and an equally effective statement of their own authority and standing. Fonts were also, moreover, valuable sources of profit. The prohibition on the taking of money for the baptism of children – as condemned, for example, at the legatine council of London in 1138, the acta of which were certainly still read at Hexham in the 1140s – was doubtless more honoured in the breach than the observance.79 It is not impossible that the second name identified by Page and Barnes in the Bridekirk inscription, a name which may be a form of the Old English Earnweard, is in fact the same individual as E. the priest. Even if this reading is rejected, E. the priest and Athelwold the clerk surely have as much right to be called the patrons of the Bridekirk font as the lords of Allerdale.
They were certainly in an excellent position to recommend the rebuilding and renewal of their church. Only two deeds of Waltheof have survived, but only one – for the church of St Brigit – includes a witness list. It is therefore impossible to assess how often he was attended upon by the priests of Bridekirk, but given the ties of kinship and friendship between Waltheof and Erlaf the priest, their interaction was likely to have been not infrequent. The seven surviving deeds of Alan are, in this regard, good evidence. Athelwold the clerk witnesses three of them.80 His attestation denotes that he enjoyed a prominent place in Alan’s household and perhaps even a significant role in his private chapel. The fact, moreover, that he is entered as the last witness in two separate deeds lets us infer – for it was a convention – that he was the scribe responsible for the drafting of both documents. There is the possibility, therefore, that Athelwold the clerk served the lords of Allerdale as their scribe, household clerk and keeper of their treasure, including their small array of relics. The impact of such local and household clergy on the devotional ideals and practices of the northern secular élite should not be underestimated. If the lessons taught by E. the priest and his colleagues were as arresting and as compelling as those recounted by Sigar to his own parishioners – that the daughter of a local knight had achieved salvation through her vow of virginity (rather than through the alms invested by her father), that the denizens of the earthly paradise were dressed ‘in rich vestments of many colours’, and that even the apostles were equipped with swords, which they were all too ready to unsheath in judgement – they are likely to have found a ready audience among Waltheof, his family and his following.81 Both men would thus have enjoyed multiple opportunities to encourage Waltheof and Alan to rebuild and renew the church of St Brigit and to remind them of the many advantages to be had – in the here and now as well as in the next world – in doing so. The Bridekirk font may, in effect, be the most lasting visible result of their encouragement.
The deeds printed by William Dugdale in 1673 reveal that a significant stage in the renewal and rebuilding of the church was represented by Waltheof’s gift of the vill of Appleton and his quittance from the obligation to render multure. His gift and exemption can be no more narrowly dated than 1122 × 1136. The beneficiary of his generosity was ‘the church of St Brigit the virgin’; indeed his deed provides the earliest evidence for the church’s dedication to this saint. While the church had a stone cross from the late 10th century or soon afterwards, the church itself was still very likely a wooden structure by the time Waltheof succeeded as lord of Allerdale.82 What he and those who witnessed his deed knew about the origins and early fortunes of the church is now lost to us, but their store of information is unlikely to have been negligible. Among those who must have known more than most, who will have played a significant part in the formulation and communication of this foundation narrative and history, were E. the priest and his colleagues. The testimonies of other 12th-century Cumbrian priests would establish that what they related to Waltheof and his family and followers was both detailed and full of resonance for themselves and for their listeners.83 They may have known, as is now widely believed, that the cult of St Brigit was brought to the north-west by Scandinavian settlers operating in the Irish Sea world, but they may not: they may have nurtured and developed an entirely different narrative of how their church came to be dedicated to this most powerful of female Irish saints. The Bridekirk font should thus be considered a silent memorial to the complex local narratives once vested in the church and its furnishings.
As lord of Allerdale, Waltheof was a lord of churches. The landscape of his territory was dominated by a spread of powerful churches dedicated to a range of saints, and many of these churches – including those of Aspatria, Brigham, Bromfield, Crosthwaite, Dearham, Isel and Torpenhow – belonged directly to him. They were his to retain or relinquish, even, indeed, to grant as a gift on the marriage of his own daughter.84 The priests who served them will have recognised him as their primary protector and benefactor; the prayers offered in them will have been made for his salvation and for the salvation of his relations; the tithes and revenues that sustained them will have been counted as a significant component of his own wealth; and the obligation to maintain and furnish them will have been his responsibility.85 Another one of these churches, so the deeds of both Waltheof and his son establish, was the church of St Brigit. Since he did not grant this church to one of the new religious communities in the north-west, since he retained it in his own hands, we must presume it was one of his favoured churches.86 The precise nature of its status by the early 12th century has been complicated, however, by the recent suggestion that it was originally founded as a chapel subject to the wealthy parish church of Brigham.87 On this interpretation, Waltheof would have made his gifts as a contribution to the chapel’s refoundation as a baptismal church. But we might note that this suggestion about its early lower status was primarily based on the supposition that both churches shared the same dedication to St Brigit. Against this, there is clear evidence that the medieval dedication of Brigham was to St Michael and that it was very likely changed to St Brigit – perhaps on false etymological grounds – no later than the 18th century.88 While there is record of litigation between the parish priest of Brigham and the lords of Cockermouth over the tithes of the chapel of Cockermouth castle, there is no such evidence for any dispute between the priest of Brigham and the custodians of Bridekirk, even when those custodians (from the early 13th century onwards) were the rather litigious Augustinians of Guisborough.89 The fact that the church of St Brigit was served by what may have been a hereditary line of priests would strengthen the likelihood that it was a church of independent standing by the beginning of the 12th century. By the 1290s, the living of Bridekirk was valued at £60, one of the highest in the former lordship of Allerdale, rivalled only by the figure returned for the church of Brigham, which was valued at £80.90 The gifts made by Waltheof and his son can only partially explain this high valuation, which was more likely to have been founded on a combination of other resources, including lands, tithes and fisheries.91 In making his gift to the church of St Brigit, therefore, Waltheof was not converting a chapel into a baptismal church, but investing some of his wealth for the renewal of a matrix ecclesia of established status and standing.
Waltheof’s deed for the church of St Brigit is explicit that he had made his gift for the salvation of himself, his wife, sons, kinsmen and friends. This in itself, of course, was no trivial request: the nature of their eternal destinies must have been an essential priority for many members of the laity. But Waltheof doubtless had other reasons to invest in his church of St Brigit. For Waltheof to have made his gift in the first place we must presume a sequence of events – a combination of actions and aspirations – that ended in the drafting and sealing of his deed. What this sequence of events might have been is revealed by two very different accounts of lay encounters with favoured churches and their saints. The first is found in the in the foundation history of the abbey of Saint Martin of Tournai by Herman, monk and abbot of the same community, in the early 1140s. Herman reports that when Fastrad, advocate of Tournai, would pass by the little church (ecclesiola) of St Martin – ‘riding with his knights’ – he would extend his hands and with tears declare: ‘Oh Saint Martin! Why do you have no concern for this church of yours, desolate for so long? Now, I beseech you, show mercy and grant that it be restored!’ So often did this occur, in fact, that his men, presumably those knights who rode in his company, pleaded with him to refound the church.92 Perhaps Waltheof was similarly accustomed, when riding with his own knights, to make similar requests on seeing the church of St Brigit. Hermann’s compelling description of the intervention made by Fastrad’s knights reminds us that the part played by Waltheof’s own followers – the Waltheof fitz Bueth, Roger fitz Aldan, and Uhtred fitz Gamel, for instance, whose names were entered in the witness-list of his deed – may have been no less influential in encouraging his own devotion to St Brigit and mobilising his investment in her church.
The second narrative is found in two miracula composed by Reginald of Durham. Reginald’s collection of miracles worked by St Cuthbert, which he composed in the early 1160s and then supplemented with further miracula in the 1170s, offers one of the most detailed insights into the social and devotional fabric of 12th-century northern England; his collection will be an essential source for our further discussion.93 Reginald relates that the people of Leighton in Cheshire were reluctant to visit their little church there because – even ‘though a baptismal church’ – it was ‘built of unshapely wattle’ and was thus ‘held in low esteem and thought to be of no importance’.94 Only when St Cuthbert appeared to a rich young man of the locality during a nocturnal vigil in the church and healed the deformity of his face – by forcibly pressing the young man’s face on the altar – was the young man prompted, together with his wife and their son, to demolish the wooden church, rebuild it ‘in coursed stone in a most seemly manner’ (lapideo tabulatu decentissime) and enrich it ‘with many gifts of land’.95 These two miracula establish that members of the secular élite were not only credited with a decisive role in the renewal of their local churches, but were believed to enjoy a close relationship with the patron saints of these churches. In the same way that Cuthbert of Durham intervened in the sleeping hours of the laity, so we may wonder if St Brigit – ‘in the stillness of the evening air, half-heard and half-created’ – haunted the dreams of Waltheof, his wife, and their son.96
Every parish church, in Cumberland as in other corners of 12th-century Christendom, was, first and foremost, the possession of their patron saint. This possession found clearest expression in the multiplicity of customs associated with each church, especially – as Reginald of Durham’s collection reveals – the diversity of celebrations that marked their feast days: the drinking and dining, the singing and dancing, even the slaughter of a donated bull.97 Parish churches were also, significantly, the primary location for the saint’s continuing miraculous interventions. Reginald of Durham reports that Plumbland church in the prouincia of Allerdale – less than five miles to the north-east of Bridekirk – had been the site of many miracles worked by the saint before proceeding to narrate one of the latest and more remarkable of these.98 His statement may have served his rhetorical purpose, but must surely reflect the contemporary expectation that saints should, and often did, intervene within the space of their parish churches. St Cuthbert was in this regard no way exceptional. The small dossier of miracles compiled by a monk of St Bees in the first decades of the 13th century recounts miracles worked by St Bega since the refoundation of her church in Kirkby as a Benedictine priory in the 1120s.99 The dossier provides a valuable insight into the sort of miracles that might been worked by other saints in other churches in 12th-century Cumbria – of the many miracles, for instance, credited by Reginald to Cuthbert at Plumbland. The dossier thus narrates her miraculous interventions to preserve her rights, to punish oath-breakers, and to protect the denizens of her vill from the depredations of the men of Galloway. When, therefore, a monk of Glasgow, completing his life of St Kentigern in 1147 × 1164, declared that the saint’s miracles ‘still appear in Cumbria (in Cambria)’, there was more than rhetorical flourish to his claim.100 The lordship of Allerdale, which possessed at least one church and possibly more dedicated to St Kentigern, would certainly have been one venue for the performance of such miracula.101
St Brigit the virgin may have been as dynamic a force in the lives of the lay patrons and priests of Bridekirk as St Cuthbert was at Plumbland and St Bega at Kirkby. Waltheof doubtless had many reasons to visit the church of St Brigit. His ties of kinship and fosterage to the priests of the church, as detailed in his deed, may have endowed him with an early and enduring attachment to the church. Given the proximity of Bridekirk to his headquarters at Papcastle, the church is likely to have been a regular stop in the moveable feast that was his itinerary. The church will have offered him and his family a convenient location for the celebration of some of the major feasts of the church and for the performance of their private devotions.102 It may also have offered them, as other churches offered, a comfortable venue for them to take rest and refreshment with kinsmen, friends and followers – Cumbrian weather permitting.103 But they must have come, too, in search of St Brigit. If her feast day on 1 February was celebrated there with the same solemnity and conviviality as that accorded to the saints of other parish churches, Waltheof and his family would have been immersed in the liturgical drama of her feast and versed in the miracles that formed part of her lesson.104 They may also have been treated to lavish suppers by E. and Erlaf the priests.105 Such occasions will have provided the priest with a welcome opportunity to press upon the lord the significance of the saint and the need for the further endowment of her church (even, perhaps, to complain of the heavy burden of Waltheof’s mill at Broughton on the community). Perhaps like the rich young man of Leighton and his family, Waltheof and his wife were accustomed to spend nocturnal vigils in the church of St Brigit and to seek out her miraculous intervention. If, like the monks of St Bees, one of the priests at St Brigit had also compiled a small dossier of miracles in the first decades of the early 13th century, we might have as revealing an insight into the impact of St Brigit on the prouincia of Allerdale as we do for the intervention of St Bega in the lordship of Copeland. According one of the miracula in the St Bees dossier, Godard, the constable of Egremont castle in Copeland and a contemporary of Waltheof’s, was taught the temerity of his arrogance when one of his men was punished by St Bega herself for pasturing his favourite horse on a field belonging to the new priory.106 Godard was evidently known to Waltheof: not only do they both witness one of the earliest deeds for the monks of St Bees, but Waltheof also attests Godard’s own deed of gift for the same community. Beyond the statement that it was drafted ‘on the day of the dedication of the church’, the deed reveals little about the events and experiences that prompted Godard to make his gift to the community.107 His encounter with St Bega may not have occurred on the lines recounted by the compiler of the miracle collection, but his devotion to the saint was evidently significant enough to deserve remembrance in her community. Godard and Waltheof doubtless had much to discuss whenever they met, but that their conversation occasionally turned to the power of St Bega and St Brigit seems a not unreasonable possibility.
Interest in the life of St Brigit was not confined, however, to the talk of Waltheof and his circle. That this was a conversation enjoyed in many different corners of the North Sea world in the first half of the 12th century is clear from the presence of her statue, complete with titulus, in the golden altar carved in c. 1135 for the church in Lisbjerg in Denmark – an altar more or less contemporary with Waltheof’s own deed of gift for her church in Bridekirk.108 Her inclusion in an early-12th-century monastic calendar from Durham Cathedral priory and in a later one from St Bees’s priory would hint at similar talk from Waltheof’s own orbit.109 But the clearest evidence for interest in the cult of St Brigit – from within circles very close to Waltheof and his son – is the uita of the saint composed by Lawrence of Durham, monk of the community of St Cuthbert. Lawrence dedicated his work to the future Aelred of Rievaulx, and in his letter of dedication declares that he was simply rewriting a life of St Brigit which had been given to him by Aelred’s father Eilaf, the priest of Hexham. He describes this life as being semibarbarus, which might mean that it was written in an inferior style or possibly even in the vernacular.110 What is striking is that when Lawrence composed his work and wrote his letter of dedication to Aelred, sometime in the late 1120s or early 1130s, Aelred was serving as seneschal (dispensator) at the court of David, king of Scots, and was thus still very much immersed – as Waltheof and his household would remain immersed – in the values, obligations and priorities of the secular world, so immersed, in fact, that he did not refrain from an unpleasant dispute with a knightly courtier (militaris) at the court of King David.111 Lawrence’s uita of St Brigit reveals, in other words, a close interest in the life of St Brigit by priestly, monastic and secular élites with whom Waltheof and his family entertained close and collaborative ties. There must have been multiple opportunities for Waltheof, when conversing with the brethren and benefactors of Hexham, and when sharing company and conviviality with Aelred and his courtier companions, including his knightly rival, to have been both informed and inspired by talk of the virtues and miracles of St Brigit.112 The interest expressed by Eilaf and his son at Hexham, by Lawrence and his confrères at Durham, and by his readers at the court of King David in the uita of St Brigit may therefore have played no small part in encouraging and increasing the devotion of Waltheof, his family, and his followers.
The refoundation of the church of Kirkby (now St Bees) by Waltheof’s contemporary, William Meschin, lord of Copeland, may have offered a further source of inspiration and encouragement. By the early 12th century, the church of Kirkby may have enjoyed the status and rights of a matrix ecclesia, may have been served by a hereditary priest and may already have become the focus for a local cult dedicated to a virgin by the name of Bega. The church of Kirkby was therefore in many respects similar to the church of St Brigit. At some point in the 1120s, William Meschin refounded the church of Kirkby as a Benedictine priory dependent on St Mary’s, York, the wealthiest monastic community in northern Britain. The refoundation of the church, the first phase of which was signalled by the consecration of the church by Archbishop Thurstan of York, breathed fresh life into the fortunes of both the church and the cult. A finely carved early-12th-century lintel – distinguished enough to merit inclusion in the Romanesque exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1984 – provides some indication at William Meschin’s investment in the church.113 Waltheof was closely involved in this campaign of refoundation. He was present on the day of the church’s formal consecration, and he himself gave the church of Stainburn, near Workington, to the new foundation.114 The successful refoundation and enrichment of the church of Kirkby will have offered Waltheof and his family a model for what could be achieved through action and investment. Waltheof may not have not refounded the church of St Brigit as a Benedictine priory, but he did renew a church dedicated to a female saint of noted local power.
What Waltheof began, so his son and successor, Alan fitz Waltheof, continued. Alan not only confirmed his father’s gifts, but supplemented them with a tithe of the mill of Broughton, presumably in Great Broughton, which remained within the parish of Bridekirk until 1863. Waltheof had granted the church exemption from multure, and it was presumably to his mill at Broughton that this due was owed. Alan’s gift not only confirmed their exemption from multure, but – more valuably – endowed the church with a share of the mill’s profits. By the time Alan’s deed was drafted, which was probably in the late 1130s, Athelwold the clerk, son of Erlaf the priest, had succeeded as sole priest of the church. The collaboration of Athelwold and Alan was to result not only in the gift of the tithe of Broughton mill, but also in the realisation of an even more ambitious project: the rebuilding of the entire church in stone. A date of rebuilding in the 1140s would sit happily with the rather imprecise mid-12th-century dating offered for the surviving fabric of this church. Such rebuilding was no small undertaking, requiring the recruitment of suitably skilled craftsmen and representing a sizeable financial outlay. Craftsmen and builders, especially if they were as talented as Rikard the mason, were unlikely to have come cheap. Richard the engineer was rewarded by Hugh, bishop of Durham, with two modest estates in the bishopric of Durham and with citizenship of the city of Durham, but Bishop Hugh evidently hoped to retain Richard on a long-term basis, presumably for future building projects.115 Richard was even admitted to the bishop’s circle of household officials and men of business.116 Alan and Athelwold were unlikely to have offered anything as generous for Rikard and his team, who presumably settled for payment in cash or kind.
How Alan and Athelwold divided the costs of such payment remains unknowable, but that gifts made by Alan and his father helped meet them – directly or otherwise – seems likely. By the 1140s, rents collected from the vill of Appleton and money saved through the exemption from multure – the gifts, of course, of Waltheof – would have complemented the existing resources of the priests of Bridekirk for perhaps more than a decade. By the 1140s, in other words, Athelwold may have had enough cash to spare to initiate the rebuilding campaign. It is not impossible, indeed, that this had been Waltheof’s intention from the beginning: that these gifts should serve as a first step towards the rebuilding of the church, as a down payment, in effect, for the recruitment of masons as talented as Rikard. Alan may likewise have made his gift of the tithe of the mill of Broughton in order to sustain the financial position of the church during – or towards the end of – the rebuilding campaign. But Alan’s investment was not confined to his gift of the tithe. As lord of Allerdale, he was very likely responsible for the supply of the distinctive local red sandstone employed for the construction of the church. Evidence from the 13th century reveals that most of this sandstone originated in quarries in Aspatria, which was less than seven miles north of Bridekirk, and that the lords of Allerdale controlled these quarries closely.117 An alternative source of stone may have been the Roman remains at Papcastle: various Roman altars and building stones from Papcastle were later certainly used in the construction of Cockermouth castle in the 1230s and 1240s.118 These remains would have belonged to Alan in his capacity as lord of Allerdale. The church of Bridekirk, in other words, can fairly be described as his, down to the very stonework.
The campaign initiated by Alan resulted in the construction of a single-aisle church. The surviving fragments of that church – the cushion capitals of the chancel arch, the figure of Christ in majesty on the tympanum over the south door – suggests that the finished church, though comparable in size to many other northern parish churches, was the product of some investment. It is possible, as Malcolm Thurlby has proposed, that the tympanum was painted.119 There is no reason to suppose that the significance of their decision to rebuild the church – of the visual power and theological resonance of what William of Malmesbury memorably described as a ‘new style of architecture’ – was somehow lost on Alan and Athelwold.120 Goscelin of Canterbury believed that no church could rival the structures built by ‘the noble architect of the eternal palace’ (eternii palatii architectus), but he was doubtless speaking for many when he conceded that churches should, ideally, be ‘magnificent, radiant, spacious, full of light, and very beautiful’.121 His sentiments were as likely to have been shared as much by the secular élite as by his monastic – and indeed female – readership. According to Reginald of Durham, it was the local rich man and his family who choose to rebuild their baptismal church of Leighton ‘in dressed stone’ so that it was not ‘held in low esteem and thought to be of no importance’. In replacing the church of St Brigit with a new stone structure, Alan and his wife may have hoped to do something similar at Bridekirk. Lay patron and priest thus constructed a church where they could celebrate the feast of St Brigit in appropriate splendour and where they could bring family, friends and followers to share in its admiration – a church, in other words, of which they could be proud.
Alan may have had further reason to rebuild the church in stone. The location of his father’s tomb remains unknown. Subsequent members of the family were buried within the precincts of reformed religious communities: Alan’s nephew, Gospatric, earl of Dunbar, with the Benedictines of Durham, and his early-13th-century successor as lord of Allerdale, Alice de Rumilly, with the Cistericians of Fountains.122 Alan buried his only son and heir, Waltheof, in the Arrouaisian priory in Carlisle, and he himself may have been buried in the same location.123 But, in the late-11th and early-12th century, before the fashion for burial within reformed monastic communities became established for leading landholders in northern England, many great men appear to have been buried in their favoured parish churches. Waltheof’s own father, for instance, had been buried at the door of Norham church.124 Michael, bishop of Glasgow, was buried in Morland church (in Westmorland), another high-status church, in 1114: since he may have been a native of Cumbria, it is likely that there was some local, even filial, attachment represented in his choice of burial location.125 The survival of a small number of late-12th-century grave slabs from Bridekirk establishes that priests and local knights were choosing to be buried in the church’s cemetery (or just possibly in the church) in the two generations following Alan’s own death.126 Waltheof may have chosen the church of St Brigit as a suitable venue – a ‘splendid place’, as the inscription on the font proclaimed – for his own eternal commemoration. Alan was doing more than rebuilding the church: he may have been rebuilding the location of his father’s tomb. This possibility adds resonance to his deed confirming his father’s gift to the church of St Brigit. Where this deed fits in the sequence of the building campaign is difficult to fix with any certainty, but internal details suggest that it was drafted in the late 1130s and thus at the beginning of the campaign. When Alan, his widowed mother, Sigerith, and his followers assembled to witness the drafting of his deed, they may have done so inside the church soon to be rebuilt in stone and close to Waltheof’s tomb.
With the church completed (or nearing completed), Alan fitz Waltheof and Athelwold the clerk would have now turned to the business of its adornment with furnishings and lighting. The bestowal and installation of such furnishings were rarely entered in any written record and have all too often fallen victim to the vagaries of devotional fashion, sectarian violence and cross-border warfare.127 It is indicative that one of the few 12th-century references to the presence of crosses (and just possibly of a Trumphkreuze) in northern parish churches should be a description of their destruction and humiliation by Gallovidian raiding partings in the late 1130s.128 The survival of a late-12th-century reliquary cross from St Helena’s church in Kelloe (in County Durham), decorated with scenes celebrating the part of St Helena in the discovery of the true cross and still bearing the remains of the iron fittings for the burning of votive candles, is a striking reminder of what we have lost.129 All that remains now at Bridekirk is, of course, the font; yet it was likely to have been joined by many other items. The rich array of sumptuous vestments, books, altar furnishings, reliquaries and relics given by the royal clerk and official, Thomas of Burgh, to his chantry in Brigham church in the 1320s – known only because carefully itemised in an indenture of 1348 – may offer some idea of the sort of gifts made by his 12th-century predecessors.130 E. the priest and Athelwold the clerk are likely to have taken the initiative here, being more than happy – like their Somerset contemporary, Wulfric of Haselbury – to spend some of their income on ‘reliquaries and books and vestments’ (phylacteria et libri et uestimenta) so as to crown their parish church ‘with glory’.131 But Alan fitz Waltheof and his family are likely to have made their own such gifts to the church. Alan may have known that his grandfather, Earl Gospatric, had conveyed two embroidered altar cloths (dorsalia), presumably from his private chapel, to the two recluses who heard his death-bed confession; both cloths could still be seen in the church of Durham in the 1190s.132 In a form of gift-giving that may have been more common than the surviving evidence indicates, David, king of Scots, would donate silver chalices to those parish churches in Craven (in Yorkshire) damaged by warfare in the early 1150s.133 Alan himself, in what was clearly a terrible and devastating moment in his life, would convey possession of his family’s cherished relic of the holy cross, together with the body of his only son and heir, to the Arrouaisian canons of Carlisle.134 If Alan was willing to make the sort of investment recorded in his deed, he was surely inclined to have made other gifts to their church of St Brigit. The font at Bridekirk may therefore be a lasting reminder of the other, all too perishable, but nevertheless valuable furnishings given by the lay patrons and priests of Bridekirk to their church.
Behind countless Romanesque fonts there was a necessary negotiation between craftsmen, priests and patrons. The design and iconographic details of the Bridekirk font were likely to have been the result of such negotiation. As the craftsmen entrusted with the creative process of carving the font, the contribution of Rikard and his team was likely to have been significant. Such craftsmen were in no way uneducated: they may have been more than familiar with relevant and recondite chapters of biblical history and more than sensitive to the scriptural and theological value of their artistic decisions. Theophilus Presbyter may have written his text for other monk-artisans active in the monastic community, but his dedication to the moral purpose of his craft and his delight in the virtues of artistic workmanship were unlikely to have been confined exclusively to his Benedictine readership.135 Reginald of Durham’s miracle narratives concerning Richard the engineer is here revealing. According to Reginald, Richard possessed a ‘book on the life of St Cuthbert, which he kept suspended by a cord round his neck’ and a small relic of the cloth (pannus) in which St Cuthbert’s body had been wrapped, which he stored within the book. Richard was so enamoured of his relic and book that he was accustomed, ‘when sitting with his companions’, to regale them with their precious character.136 On this evidence, it seems, 12th-century masons and builders did not require instruction in the lives and miracles of the saints; they carried their relics with them, boasted about their power to their friends and colleagues and were empowered by their protection – even when undertaking so secular a business as the construction of a seigneurial residence. That Rikard and his team may have possessed their own share of relics and texts, conversed with each other and with others about the power of their favoured saints and entertained a similar conviction about the moral purpose of their task should not be ruled out.
Athelwold the clerk is likely to have been a no less forceful contributor to the carving of the font. As the sacred custodian of the font, it was presumably Athelwold who must have conversed directly with Rikard and his team – perhaps in the early Middle English of the inscription – and who must have been most active (and perhaps most articulate) in determining some of the decoration of the font. It was presumably they, in collaboration with Rikard and his colleagues, who decided that the face of the font (on the orientation recorded by Gregory King in 1665) that looked towards the chancel – the liturgical heart of the church – should depict the baptism of Christ. Distinguishing between the respective contribution of mason and priest, of Rikard the mason and Athelwold the clerk, is far from straightforward, however. The parallels between decorative features on the Bridekirk font and on Roman monuments from the region – the patterns of the flowers, the beading on the stem, even, perhaps, the use of the inscription – invite particular comment.137 Are these parallels the result of observations made by Rikard and his team when working in situ? Or are they the recommendations of Athelwold the clerk? Athelwold may not only have been familiar with the surrounding monuments, but he may have taken particular delight – as Aelred believed other northern priests delighted – in ‘birds or animals or flowers of one sort and another’.138 We may suspect that these decorative features were the consequence of conversation between both mason and priest.
A third voice of no less weight in this conversation may have been that of Alan fitz Waltheof. Alan had every reason to take an interest in the carving and completion of the font. It is possible, for instance, that he intended the font to be finished for the baptism of his only known son and heir, Waltheof. The date of Waltheof’s birth is unknown, but must have occurred at some point in the 1140s. Be that as it may, it is worth recalling that it will have been Alan who, as lord of Allerdale, permitted Rikard and his team to take local stone from his quarries to carve the font. But his contribution was likely to have been more than simply the supply of resources: he may have expressed his own recommendations on the design of the font. The laity were unlikely to have been silent partners in such enterprises, relegated, as some recent works have relegated them, to the role of passive beneficiaries of a clerically controlled educational programme. Sigar, priest of Newbald, may have cast the young Orm as an ‘idealized impression of child piety’, but his presentation of the boy’s knowledge and interpretative skills were presumably believable enough not to stretch the credulity of his learned readership and thereby discredit his text.139 An ability to recognise and interpret the identity and accoutrements of Christ and his saints was surely one as useful in a parish church as it was in paradise. Theophilus Presbyter may have been correct to suppose that representations from the passion of Christ and the martyrdom of the saints could inspire the faithful to embrace ‘the observance of a better life’, but such responses can only have been effective if the laity were already familiar with these episodes.140 A diet of private prayer, sermons, sacramental ritual and liturgical drama was likely to have ensured that many members of the secular élite possessed more than a passing knowledge of biblical, theological and sacramental detail. The household of Hugh, earl of Chester – a friend, no less, of Anselm of Bec – was unlikely to have been unusual in its passionate commitment both to the business of the hunt and in its devotion to some of the greatest soldier-martyrs.141 The possibility that Alan and his household possessed both enough knowledge to formulate views on the decoration of the font for his new church and the confidence to express such views with eloquence and insight deserves to be taken seriously.
Examination of the north face of the font underlines the possibilities of his contribution. The upper register shows a centaur in mortal struggle with two beasts, while the lower register depicts an episode (or episodes) from the Expulsion narrative (Figure 23.4). As the current interest implies, Alan would not have been the only 12th-century laymen to express an interest in the features and meaning of beasts. The fact that the monks of his foundation of Holm Cultram possessed an unillustrated copy of Philippe de Thaon’s poem, Bestiaire, by the final third of the 12th century underlines the existence of wider interest in the theological resonance of such beasts in this corner of Cumberland.142 If Philippe’s Bestiaire, composed in the 1120s, is any guide to the sort of conversations that might have occurred on this subject within the élite circles of Allerdale, lay as much as monastic and clerical, Alan may have been more than sensitive to the theological resonance of the dove, the dragon and the centaur – all beasts, of course, carved in the registers of the font. The depiction of the centaur – a beast divided, as Philippe de Thaon put it, between ‘truth’ (verité) and ‘villany’ (vilainie) – in violent and desperate combat with two dragon-like enemies must have spoken eloquently to lay conceptions of their duties and obligations in a sinful and compromised world.143 Alan’s interest in the centaur’s struggle may have been more than matched by his interest in the narrative of the Expulsion in the lower register. As was seen earlier, there is tentative evidence that this depiction of the Expulsion was inspired by some sort of dramatic or literary tradition. Perhaps Athelwold the clerk was as accustomed to staging similar dramas for Alan and his household as his contemporary, Geoffrey, school-master of Dunstable, was for the laity of his own town.144 Since, as Philippe de Thaon contended, beasts ‘keep in memory the fact of the ancient crime’ committed at the Fall, the depiction of the centaur’s struggle can only have reinforced the drama of the post-Expulsion fortunes of Adam and Eve in the lower register.145 These two registers were not separate, one designed for the laity, the other for the clerical élite; they formed a united and compelling whole. The laity were more than equipped to take a devotional interest in the theological status of Adam: Alan’s cousin, Waltheof, even appears to have changed his name to Adam, possibly on taking clerical vows, in the 1120s or 1130s.146 There is no reason to believe, then, that the general scheme and details of the north face of the font could not have been requested by Alan and his family in conversation with Athelwold the clerk and Rikard the mason.
The evidence reviewed in the course of this paper, most notably two deeds printed by William Dugdale in 1673, has revealed a complex process behind the carving of the Bridekirk font. An important moment in this process was marked by Waltheof’s generous gifts to the church of St Brigit, which can be dated to the late 1120s or early 1130s. But far from representing the beginning of this process, these gifts were likely to have been the product of an existing relationship between Waltheof and the church – a relationship inspired, perhaps, as much by the magnetism of St Brigit as by the words and encouragement of E. the priest. His gifts provided a significant contribution to the church’s endowment and may have supplied some of the wealth for its subsequent rebuilding in the 1140s. The process continued when Waltheof’s gift was confirmed and enhanced by his son and successor, Alan, in the late 1130s. In the following decade, in close collaboration with Aethelwold the clerk, Alan undertook the rebuilding of the old wooden church in stone, complete with sculptural and painted decoration. The construction of the church was accompanied or soon followed by the provision of furnishings and other items. Among these furnishings was the font itself. There can be no fixed date for the completion of the font, but the chronology offered in this paper, which would do no violence to the date-range proposed by Pevsner and others, would point to a date in the second half of the 1140s. Its completion by Rikard and his team very likely marked the formal end of the campaign of renewal initiated by Waltheof and E. the priest and his colleagues. If Rikard the mason has occupied most previous considerations of the font, this is perhaps only just. But this paper has revealed the contribution of others – not only of the lay patrons and priests of the church, but also of their wives, knightly followers and neighbours. Out of their interaction came the rebuilding of the church and the carving of the font. The Bridekirk font, when examined in the context of other evidence, thus allows us to listen in on conversation and chatter about the Expulsion of Adam and Eve, the virtues and vices of centaurs and other beasts, the power of saints as vested in their parish churches, and, above all, the continuing appeal of St Brigit. The font, together with the surviving remains of the church raised by its patrons and priests, stand as lasting memorials to the breadth and vitality of this long-distant conversation.
I should like to thank Trevor Lloyd (of Whitehaven) for his gentlemanly hospitality and good humour on my many visits to the north; Claudia Contreras Rojas for her superb printing skills all the staff of the Cumbria Archives Service at Carlisle and Whitehaven for their energetic and informed assistance; Lynsey Darby, archivist at the College of Arms, for her generosity and guidance; Richard Sharpe and Nicholas Vincent for their forensic reading; Agata Gomołka for teaching me the difference between a hammer and a mallet; Jim King for letting me use his photographs of the present west front of the font (Figures 23.4–23.5); and Richard Plant, John McNeill and Manuel Castiñeiras for their monumental patience and unfailing encouragement.
