CHAPTER XVIII

THE ISLE OF AXHOLME

Epworth and the Wesleys—“Warping”—Crowle—St. Oswald—St. Cuthbert.

The _Isle of Axholme_, or Axeyholm, is, as the name when stripped of its tautology signifies, a freshwater island, for _Isle_, _ey_ and _holm_ are all English, Anglo-Saxon, or Danish, for “island,” and _Ax_ is Celtic for water. The whole region is full of Celtic names, for it evidently was a refuge for the Celtic inhabitants. Thus we have Haxey, and Crowle (or _Cruadh_ = hard, _i.e._, _terra firma_), also _Moel_ (= a round hill), which appears in Melwood. Bounded by the Trent, the Idle, the Torn, and the Don, it fills the north-west corner of the county, and is seventeen miles long and seven wide. The county nowhere touches the Ouse, but ends just beyond _Garthorpe_ and _Adlingfleet_ on the left bank of the Trent, about a mile above the Trent falls. The northern boundary of the county then goes down the middle of the channel of the Humber estuary to the sea. Once a marsh abounding in fish and water-fowl, with only here and there a bit of dry ground, viz., at _Haxey_, _Epworth_, _Belton_ and _Crowle_, it has now a few more villages on Trent side, and two lines of railway, one going south from Goole to Gainsborough, and one crossing from Doncaster by Scunthorpe and Frodingham to Grimsby.

[Sidenote: TWO LINCOLNSHIRE MEN]

An unfair arrangement was made by Charles I. by which the Dutchman Vermuyden, the famous engineer who afterwards constructed the “Bedford Level,” undertook to drain the land, some of which lies from three to eight feet below high water-mark, he receiving one-third of all the land he rescued, the king one-third, the people and owners only the other third between them. This gave rise to the most savage riots; and the Dutch settlement at _Sandtoft_, where it is said that the village is still largely Dutch, was the scene of endless skirmishes, sieges, and attacks. A good insight into the lawlessness of the time is obtained from a book called “The M.S.S. in a Red Box,” published by John Lane. The ancestors of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, whose banishment with Bolingbroke in lieu of trial by combat, is described in the opening scenes of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.,” had a castle in Norman times near _Owston_, between Haxey and East-Ferry on the Trent: so that both the would-be combatants were Lincolnshire men.

Bolingbroke in the play is banished

“till twice five summers have enriched our fields,”

and Mowbray’s sentence is pronounced by the king in these words:—

“Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce: The fly-slow hours shall not determinate The dateless limit of thy dear exile. The hopeless word of never to return Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.”

_Richard II._, I. 3.

Norfolk was banished in 1398, and died in Venice in the following year, and in Act IV., Scene 1 of the play, when Bolingbroke announces that he shall be “repealed”:—

“and, though mine enemy, restored again to all his lands and signories.”

The Bishop of Carlisle answers:—

“That honourable day shall ne’er be seen. Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought For Jesu Christ; in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens; And, toil’d with works of war, retired himself To Italy; and there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country’s earth,[8] And his pure soul unto his Captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.”

[Sidenote: THE WESLEY FAMILY]

In the church of _Belton_ is a fine effigy of a knight in chain armour, an hour-glass-stand on a pillar near the pulpit, as at Leasingham, and a monument to Sir Richard de Belwood. _Temple Belwood_, in the centre of the island, was a preceptory of the Knights Templars. _Epworth_ is the chief town, and is famous as the birthplace of John Wesley. His father, Samuel, was the rector of S. Ormsby when he published his heroic poem in ten books on the Life of Christ, which caused him to be hailed by Nahum Tate, the Laureate of the day, as a sun new risen, before whom he and others would naturally and contentedly fade to insignificance.

“E’en we the Tribe who thought ourselves inspired Like glimmering stars in night’s dull reign admired, Like stars, a numerous but feeble host, Are gladly in your morning splendour lost.”

Queen Mary, to whose “Most sacred Majesty” the poem was dedicated, bestowed on him the Crown living of Epworth, to which he was presented in 1696, two years after her death. But, though he owed his living to the Whigs, rather than side with the dissenters, he voted Tory, and was accordingly persecuted with great animosity by high and low, thrown into prison for a debt, his cattle and property damaged, and in 1709 his home burnt down, which made a deep impression on his six-year-old son John, who never forgot being “plucked as a brand from the burning.”

John, the fifteenth child, was the middle brother of three, who all had a first-rate public school and university education, getting scholarships both at school and college: John at Charterhouse, the others under Dr. Busby at Westminster, and all at Christchurch, Oxford, whence John, at the age of seventeen, wrote to his mother “I propose To be busy as long as I live.” Eventually he became a Fellow of Lincoln. The whole family were as clever as could be, and the seven daughters had a first-rate education from their father and mother at home. Mrs. Wesley was a remarkable woman, a Jacobite—which was somewhat disconcerting to her husband, who had written in defence of the Revolution—and a person of strong independence of spirit. Of her daughters, Hetty was the cleverest; and she is the only one who gives no account of the famous “Epworth Ghost,” which is significant, when both her parents and all her sisters wrote a full account of it. Hetty’s poems are of a very high standard of excellence, and it is more than likely that she wrote the verse part—for it is partly in prose dialogue—of “Eupolis’ Hymn to the Creator,” which is far better than anything else attributed to Sam Wesley. He died in 1735, and John, who had been curate to him at Epworth and _Wroot_ (the livings went together), left the neighbourhood; and the place which had been the home of one of Lincolnshire’s most remarkable families for nearly forty years knew them no more. (_See_ Appendix I.)

[Sidenote: JOHN WESLEY]

Lincoln, however, saw John Wesley, for he preached in the Castle yard in 1780, as his father had done seventy-five years earlier, when he was spitefully imprisoned for debt. He was preaching at Lincoln again in 1788, and again in July, 1790, in the new Wesleyan Chapel. Eight months later he died. His last sermon was preached at Leatherhead, February 23, 1791, and his last letter was written on the following day to Dr. John Whitehead. He died on March 2, aged 88, having, as he said, during the whole of his life “never once lost a night’s sleep.” A memorial tablet to John and his brother Charles was placed in 1876 in Westminster Abbey. But there is also a fine statue of him as a preacher in gown and bands, showing a strong, rugged and kindly face, and at the base an inscription: “The world is my parish.” This is in front of the City Road Chapel, which he had built in Moorfields, and where he was buried, but not till 10,000 people had filed past to take their last look at the well-known face as he lay in the chapel.

Dean Stanley visiting this once, said that he would give a great deal to preach in the pulpit there, and when, to his query whether the ground was consecrated and by whom, the attendant answered, “Yes; by holding the body of John Wesley,” he rejoined, “A very good answer.”

John Wesley himself had been denied access to Church of England pulpits for fifty years, 1738-1788. Even when he preached at Epworth in 1742, it was from his father’s tombstone; and in most cases his congregations, which were often very large, were gathered together in the open air. We hear of him preaching to a large assemblage in the rain at North Elkington, on April 6, 1759; and also at Scawby, Tealby, Louth, Brigg and Cleethorpes; but in June, 1788, he notes in his diary: “Preached in church at Grimsby, the Vicar reading prayers (a notable change this), not so crowded in the memory of man.” Each president of the Wesleyan Conference sits in Wesley’s chair on his inauguration, and has Wesley’s Bible handed to him to hold, as John Wesley himself holds it in his left hand in the statue.

[Sidenote: WARPING]

We have alluded to the process of _warping_ which is practised in the isle. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon _Weorpan_ (= to turn aside); it indicates the method by which the tide-water from the river, when nearly at its highest, is turned in through sluices upon the flat, low lands, and there retained by artificial banks until a sufficient deposit has been secured, when the more or less clarified water is turned back into the river at low tide, and the process may be continuously repeated for one, two, or three years. The water coming up with the tide is heavily charged with mud washed from the Humber banks, and this silt is deposited to the depth of some feet in places, and has always proved to be of the utmost fertility. The process is a rather difficult and expensive one, costing £10 an acre, but it needs doing only once in fourteen years or so. A wet season is bad for warping, and 1912 was as bad as 1913 was good.

At _Crowle_ is a church of some importance, for in it is a bit of very early Anglian carving, probably of the seventh century. It is part of the stem of a cross, and has been used by the builders of the Norman church as a lintel for their tower arch. On it are represented a man on horseback (such as we see on the Gosforth cross, and on others in Northumbria), some interlacing work and a serpent with its tail in its mouth. Also two figures which I have nowhere seen accurately explained, but explanation is easy, for if you go and examine the great Anglian cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, you will find just such a pair of figures with their names written over them thus: “S. Paulus et S. Antonius panem fregerunt in Deserto.” The figures are so similar that they would seem to have been carved by the same hand, and the cross at Ruthwell can be dated on good evidence as but a year or two later than that at Bewcastle, whose undoubted date is 670.

[Sidenote: ST. OSWALD]

The church is dedicated to _St. Oswald_, not the archbishop of York who died in 992 and was buried at Worcester, but the sainted king of Northumbria who died in battle, slain by Penda, King of Mercia, at Maserfield, A.D. 642. His head, arms and hands were cut off, and set up as trophies, but were afterwards kept as holy relics, the hands at Bamborough, while one arm was for a time at Peterborough. The head was at Bamborough, and later at Lindisfarne in St. Cuthbert’s Cathedral, where the monks placed it in St. Cuthbert’s coffin. He had died in 687, and this coffin, when the Danes pillaged the cathedral, was taken away by the monks to Cumberland and carried by them from place to place in their flight, according to St. Cuthbert’s dying wish; and from 690 to 998, when it finally rested in the cathedral, it was kept in the coffin which is now in Durham Library. For 100 years, 783 to 893, it rested at Chester, and then passed to Ripon, and so to Durham, where it was enshrined and visited by hundreds of pilgrims. The marks of their feet are plain to see still. In 1104 the coffin was opened, and St. Oswald’s head seen in it. In 1542 the shrine being defaced, the body was buried beneath the pavement. In 1826 it was again opened, and some relics then taken out are now in the Cathedral Library—a ring, a cup and patten, the latter about six inches square, of oak with a thin plate of silver over it, and a stole. This was beautifully worked by the nuns at Winchester 1,000 years ago, and intended for Wulfstan, but on his death given by them to King Athelstan, and by him to St. Cuthbert’s followers.

[Sidenote: ST. CUTHBERT’S TOMB]

The late Dean Kitchin described to me how, in company with a Roman Catholic bishop and a medical man, he had opened what was supposed to be St. Cuthbert’s tomb about the beginning of this century. The old chronicler had related how he was slain in battle, how the body was hastily covered with sand and afterwards taken up, and for fear of desecration was carried about by the monks whithersoever they went, until at last it was laid in a tomb, and a shrine built over it in Durham Cathedral. He also said that the saint suffered from a tumour in the breast, the result of the plague in 661, which latterly had got better. It was known where the shrine was and the reputed tomb was close by. The tomb slab was removed; beneath it were bones enough to form the greater part of one skeleton, and there were two skulls. “What do you think of that?” asked the dean; the bishop at once replied “St. Oswald’s head.” The doctor then said, “This body has never been buried.” “How do you make that out?” “Because the skin has not decayed but dried on to the limbs as you see, as if it had been dried in sand,” just as tradition said. “Also,” he said, “there is a hole in the breast here which has partly filled up, evidence probably of a tumour or abscess which was healing,” again just what the chronicler stated. One of the skulls showed a cut right through the bone, like the cut of axe or sword, again corroborating the story of the death of St. Oswald in battle. The whole account seemed to me to be most interesting, and certainly it would be difficult to obtain more conclusive proof of the veracity in every detail of the old chronicler.

##