CHAPTER XXXIV

BARDNEY ABBEY

The Excavations—The Title “Dominus”—Barlings—Stainfield—Tupholme—Stixwould—Kirkstead Abbey—Kirkstead Chapel—Woodhall Spa—Tower-on-the-Moor—Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk.

The fens were always a difficulty to the various conquerors of England, and, probably owing to the security which they gave, they, from the earliest times, attracted the monastic bodies. Hence we find on the eastern edge of the Branston, Nocton, and Blankney fens, and just off the left bank of the Witham river when it turns to the south, an extraordinary number of abbeys. For Kirkstead, Stixwould, Tupholme and Bardney, with Stainfield and Barlings just a mile or two north of the river valley, are all within a ten mile drive. Of these, Kirkstead was Cistercian, and Stixwould and Stainfield were nunneries. They were all most ruthlessly and utterly destroyed by Thomas Cromwell at the dissolution, so it is only the history of them that we can speak about.

[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]

Stixwould and Kirkstead were originally as much in the fen as Bardney; but since the “Dales Head Dyke” was cut parallel with the Witham and about a mile to the west from “Metheringham Delph” to “Billinghay Skirth,” the land between it and the river is known as the “Dales.”

[Sidenote: ST. OSWALD]

[Sidenote: A ROYAL ABBOT]

By far the oldest and the biggest and most interesting of the group was the great Benedictine Abbey of Bardney. This was founded not later than the seventh century. Some of the chronicles say by Æthelred, son of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; but it may have been by his brother Wulfhere, who reigned before him. Æthelred’s Queen Osfrida, niece of the sainted Oswald, the Northumbrian king who had defeated Cædwalla at Hevenfield in 635 and was himself killed in battle by Penda at Maserfield in 642—had before her marriage brought the relics of her uncle in 672 to Bardney, where they became the centre of attraction for pilgrims, and St. Oswald’s name as patron was added to those of St. Peter and St. Paul to whom the abbey was dedicated. Osfrida herself having been murdered by the Danes in 697, was buried here, and Æthelred, who in 701 founded Evesham Abbey, following the example of half-a-dozen Anglian and Saxon kings, gave up his throne after a reign of thirty years and entered Bardney as a monk in 704. In the quaint words of the chronicle he “was shorn a religious,” i.e., adopted the tonsure, and died twelve years later, after ruling for four years as Abbot of Bardney. One of the frescoes in Friskney church represents him resigning his crown to become a monk. St. Oswald’s arm, which had been preserved in St. Peter’s church at Bamborough, and which never withered, was afterwards transferred to Peterborough Abbey, according to Gunton, a little before the Conquest. A monk of the period wrote the following lines about it:—

“Nullo verme perit, nulla putredine tabet Dextra viri, nullo constringi frigore, nullo Dissolvi fervore potest, sed semper eodem Immutata statu persistit, mortua vivit.”

In which the monk, as usual, made a “false quantity.” In 870 Hingvar and Hubba, the Danes, in spite of its fancied security, utterly destroyed the abbey and put some 300 monks to death. They also destroyed Peterborough, Croyland, Ely, Huntingdon, Winchester, and other fine and wealthy monastic houses in the same barbarous manner. Bardney after this lay desolate for 200 years; after which, Gilbert De Gaunt, on whom the Conqueror had bestowed much land in mid-Lincolnshire, with the aid of the famous Bishop Remigius of Lincoln, restored it, and endowed it with revenues from at least a dozen different villages, amongst them Willingham, Southrey, Partney, Steeping, Firsby, Skendleby, Willoughby, Lusby, Winceby, Hagworthingham, Folkingham, and Heckington. This would be about 1080. In 1406 we read of Henry IV., our Lincolnshire king, spending a Saturday-to-Monday there, riding from Horncastle with his two sons and three captive earls of the Scots, Douglas, Fyfe, and Orkney, and a goodly company. The Bishop of Lincoln “with 24 horses” and the “venerable Lord Willoughby” came to do homage in the afternoon. The abbey stood on slightly rising ground, with a moat and deep ditch lined with brick, as at Tattershall, and enclosing twenty-four acres. It was half a mile from the present church. On the east side of the abbey is a large barrow on which was once a handsome cross in memory of King Æthelred, who is supposed to have been buried there, and it is quite possible that he was. The name of a field close by “Coney garth” is no doubt a corruption of Koenig Garth, which is much the same as the “King’s Mead fields” near Bath Abbey, immortalised in Sheridan’s “Rivals,” as the place of meeting between Captain Absolute and Bob Acres, and where Sir Lucius O’Trigger inhumanly asks Acres “In case of accident ... would you choose to be pickled and sent home? or would it be the same to you to lie here in the Abbey? I’m told there is very snug lying in the Abbey.”

[Sidenote: BARDNEY ABBEY]

The site of the abbey when excavations were begun in 1909 was apparently a grass field with a moat; but since then the whole of the great monastic church has been laid bare to the floor pavement, which was about four and a half feet below the surface. The Norman bases of the eight chancel columns and twenty pillars of the nave are now visible, and also of the four large piers which supported the tower arches; these must have been very beautiful, each nave pillar having round a solid core a cluster of twelve, and the tower piers of sixteen, columns. All down the church, which is 254 feet long and over sixty-one feet wide, tombs were found _in situ_, with inscriptions, the earliest being that of Johanna, wife of John Browne of Bardney, merchant, 1334, and the handsomest that of Richard Horncastel, abbot, 1508, which measures eight feet by four, is seven inches thick, and weighs three tons. This had been already moved, and it is now fixed against the south wall of Bardney church. Adjoining the south side of the nave is the cloister; and the chapter-house, parlour, dormitory, dining-hall, cellar, kitchen, well and guest-house are all contiguous. A little way off are the infirmary-hall and chapel, with three fireplaces and some tile paving. Not much statuary was found, but various carved heads and iron tools, pottery, etc., one headless figure three feet high of St. Laurence and, most interesting of all, the reverse of the abbey seal which was in use in 1348, showing St. Peter and St. Paul beneath a canopy and the half figure of an abbot with crozier below. We know that the obverse had on it a figure of St. Oswald, but that has not yet been found. It is made of bronze or latten.

The huge extent of the buildings and the beauty of the column bases and the plan of this, the earliest of English monasteries, with its moat enclosing the whole twenty-five acres, and its king’s tumulus, make a visit to the site very interesting, and the vicar, Rev. C. E. Laing, has worked hard with his four men each year since 1909, and with the help of kind friends has managed to purchase three acres, but is greatly hampered by want of funds, which at present only reach one quarter of the sum required.

[Sidenote: THE TITLE “DOMINUS”]

Mr. Laing has published a little shilling guide to the excavations at Bardney, with photographs, which explain the work very clearly and show the tombs with their inscriptions. From this it will be noticed that Abbot Horncastel is called on his tomb “Dompnus,” _i.e._, Dominus, and Thomas Clark, rector of Partney, has this title “Dns.,” and also Thomas Goldburgh, soldier, has the same. This is the same name as that on the old Grimsby Corporation seal of the princess, who is said to have married Havelock the Dane (_see_ Chap. XIX.). Dominus is a difficult title to translate, for if we call it ‘Sir,’ as the old registers often do, it is misleading, as it has no knightly significance, and it probably meant no more than “The Rev.,” or in the case of a soldier “Esq.” or “Gent.” It certainly does not imply here that the owners of the title belonged to “the lower order of clergy,” and yet that is the recognised meaning of it in many old church registers, _e.g._, in the list of rectors, vicars, and chantry priests of Heckington, taken from the episcopal records at Lincoln. Some of the vicars and most of the chantry priests are called “Sir,” and this generally implies a non-graduate. So also in the chapter on the clergy with the list of rectors and curates given in Miss Armitt’s interesting book, “The Church of Grasmere” (published 1912), pp. 57-60 and p. 81, we find that the tythe-taking rector is termed “Master,” and bears the suffix “Clerk”; while “Sir” is reserved for the curate, his deputy, who has not graduated at either university. This view is upheld in Dr. Cox’s “Parish Registers of England,” p. 251. The Grasmere book speaks of “_Magister_ George Plumpton,” who was son of Sir William Plumpton, of Plumpton, Knight, and rector of Grasmere, 1438-9. In 1554 Gabriel Croft is called rector, and his three curates for the outlying hamlets are put down as—

“Dns. William Jackson, called in his will ‘late Curate of Grasmer.’”

“Dns. John Hunter.

“Dns. Hugo Walters.”

This entry is followed by—

“_Sirre_ Thomas Benson curate” who witnesses a will in 1563; and in 1569 we have “_Master_ John Benson Rector.” In 1645 we have a “Mr. Benson” doing the duty as rector during the Commonwealth, and in 1646 we have “Sir Christopher Rawling,” who had probably served as curate for some years, as he is, at his child’s baptism in 1641, styled “Clericus.” Clearly this word “Sir” is here the translation of the Latin “Dominus,” and the previous entries bear out the statement that the prefix ‘Sir’ here betokens the lower order of clergy who had not graduated at either university. But that this was not a plan universally followed is made quite clear from the monuments at Bardney, where we find a rector and an abbot and a soldier all called “Dominus.” Perhaps in neither of these cases is it necessary to translate the word by ‘Sir,’ why not leave it at “Dominus”? From a letter in _The Times_, May, 1913, I gather that this word “Dominus” is responsible for the title “Lord Mayor.” The words “Dominus Major” are first found among the City of London Records for 1486, in an order issued for the destruction of unlawful nets and coal sacks of insufficient size. The words only meant “Sir Mayor,” but in course of time they came to be translated “The Lord The Mayor,” which easily passed into “The Lord Mayor,” a title which did not come into general use till 1535.

[Sidenote: BARLINGS ABBEY]

_Barlings Abbey_ stood a mile west of the Benedictine nunnery of _Stainfield_, which was founded by Henry Percy in the twelfth century. The abbey was founded about the same time by Ralph de Hoya for Premonstratensian canons. This term is derived from the “_Premonstratum_” Abbey in Picardy, _i.e._, built in a place “pointed out” by the Blessed Virgin to be the headquarters of the Order. This was in 1120, and the Order first came to England in 1140. At the dissolution they seem to have had thirty-five houses here, Tupholme Abbey being one of them. The canons lived according to the rule of St. Augustine, and wore a white robe. In the revolt against the suppression of the smaller houses, known as “the Lincolnshire Rebellion,” or “the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in 1537, the prior of Barlings, Dr. Matthew Makkerell, a D.D. of Cambridge, took a prominent part, and under the name of Captain Cobbler, for he took that disguise, he led 20,000 men. They were dispersed by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the prior was hanged at his own gate.

The abbey is sometimes called Oxeney, because the founders removed the canons from Barling Grange to a place called Oxeney in another part of the village, but the name followed them and Oxeney became Barlings.

_Barlings_ and _Stainfield_ are both near Bardney to the north, and _Tupholme_ and _Stixwould_ just as near on the south. _Tupholme_, like Barlings, has a Premonstratensian house, founded 1160. A wall of the refectory with lancet window, and a beautiful stone pulpit for the reader during meals is all that is left. It is close to the road from Horncastle to Bardney.

[Illustration: _Remains of Kirkstead Abbey Church._]

[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD ABBEY]

_Stixwould_ is three miles to the south, and was, like Stainfield, a nunnery. It was founded by Lucia the first, the wife of Ivo Taillebois. Nothing is left of it; but in the parish church are some stone coffins, a good parclose screen, used as a reredos, and a remarkable font, whose panels, bearing emblems of the Evangelists and of the first four months of the year, are divided by richly carved pinnacles with figures of lions and flowers. Near by is _Halstead Hall_ (“Hawstead”), a fifteenth century moated house of the Welby family, from which Lincoln, Boston, and Heckington are all visible.

[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL]

_Kirkstead_ is three miles further south, and here is one of the most beautiful little thirteenth-century buildings in the county. It is near the ruin of the abbey, of which only a gaunt fragment remains. This chapel of St. Leonard is a real gem of Early English architecture. It is an oblong chamber with vaulted roof adorned with tooth and nail-head ornament, springing from bosses low down in the wall. The wall is arcaded all round, and the capitals exquisitely carved. Bishop Trollope speaks of the western door as “one of the most lovely doorways imaginable, its jambs being first enriched by an inner pair of pillars having caps from which spring vigorously and yet most delicately carved foliage, and then, after a little interval, two more pairs of similar pillars carrying a beautifully moulded arch, one member of which is worked with the tooth moulding. Above this lovely doorway, in which still hangs the cöeval delicately ironed oak door, is an arcade of similar work, in the centre of which is a pointed oval window of beautiful design. The inside is still more beautiful than without.”

Inside, part of a rood screen with lancet arcading is earlier than anything of the kind in England, except the plain Norman screen in the room above the altar in Compton Church, Surrey. A mutilated effigy of a knight with a cylindrical saucepan-shaped helmet and a hauberk of banded mail, shows a rare instance of thirteenth-century armour. It is thought to be Robert, second Lord of Tattershall, who died about 1212.

The ruinous state of this lovely little building, which was used for public worship until Bishop Wordsworth prohibited it, as the building was unsafe, has long been a crying scandal; the owner always refusing to allow it to be made safe by others, and doing nothing to prevent its imminent downfall himself. The present Act of 1913 has, it is devoutly hoped, come in time to enable proper and prompt measures to be taken to put it into a sound condition.[28]

Quite near to Kirkstead is the newest Lincolnshire watering-place—_Woodhall Spa_.

[Sidenote: WOODHALL SPA]

A deep boring for coal in 1811 found no coal but struck a spring or flow of water, which is more highly charged with iodine and bromine than any known spa. This has been utilised, and a fine range of baths, on the principle of those at Bath, has been set up, though the water, unlike that at Bath, or at Acqui near Genoa, does not gush out boiling hot, but has to be pumped up 400 feet and then heated. All the various kinds of baths and appliances for the treatment of rheumatism, etc., are now installed, and quite a town has arisen on what was not long ago a desolate moor. The air is fine, the soil dry and sandy, the heather is beautiful around the place, and the Scotch fir woods and the picturesque “Tower-on-the-Moor”—a watch-tower or part of a hunting-lodge built by the Cromwells of Tattershall—add a charm to the landscape, though the “greate ponde or lake brickid about,” mentioned by Leland, is gone.

[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]

[Sidenote: CHARLES BRANDON DUKE OF SUFFOLK]

The Duke of Suffolk, to whom his sovereign gave so many Lincolnshire manors, was son of Sir W. Brandon, the king’s standard-bearer who fell at Bosworth field. Henry VIII. had a great liking for him and made him Master of the Horse, a viscount, and afterwards a duke. Like his royal master, he was the husband of several wives, the third of four being Mary Queen of France, widow of Louis XII. and second sister of Henry VIII. He resembled the king, too, in being a big man; indeed he was remarkable for his bodily strength and feats of arms, and was victor in several tournaments. The pains he took to quell the Lincolnshire Rebellion greatly pleased the king, who showered rewards on him with lavish hands. He is said to have somewhat resembled him, his countenance being bluff and his beard white and cut like the king’s. He was good-tempered and fortunate in never giving offence. Hence, on his portrait at Woburn Abbey he is said to have been “Gratiose withe Henry VIII. Voide of Despyte, moste fortunate to the end, never in displeasure with his Kynge.”

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