CHAPTER XIV.

THE RECLUSE.

In the days of Bishop Goldwell, and towards the end of the existence of the palace of Wyke's Bishop, there lived a man who came from a far country, and took up his solitary abode at the head of the little stream which rose from the side of the hill, in the valley of Utford. He had existed twenty years in that secluded spot, and was never known to shave his head or trim his beard in the course of that period.

In an age when superstition reigned supreme, and the poor dejected sinner knew not how to worship God in spirit and in truth, without flying from the face of men, and seeking something in solitude; in an age when the ministers of Rome taught that penance was meritorious, the self-immolating sacrifice of solitude became the surest way to obtain the crown of the saint; and many were the conscience-smitten convicts who were urged to depart from every tie of life, and give themselves up to the sternest impositions of devotion. They would retire from the world, live in a cave, kneel a certain number of hours on a hard stone before a cross in the wall of their cells, eat just enough coarse bread to keep life from departing, and drink of the water from some fountain sacred to their fancy.

Amongst the ignorant, these men were looked upon with the most profound veneration, were esteemed paragons of excellence; the most virtuous, the most pious saints upon earth. Their names were handed down to posterity, their deeds mentioned with respect, whilst they themselves deceived their own hearts with the ideas of their own fancies for divinity.

At the period of this narrative there existed a devotee of this kind, who went by the title of St. Ivan. He boasted his descent from Hurder the Dane; and, because his father, grandfather, or great-grandfather had been stolen, when a child in his mother's arms, and carried away by the chieftain, Hurder, during a Danish incursion, he called himself of Danish extraction. There was an Ivan de Linton, who originally built the chapel of Wyke's Bishop, and appointed priests to chaunt a requiem therein, for his father's soul, who was saved in the battle with the Danes upon Rushmere Heath, and died in a cottage or cave where an old man lived, at the Ufford Dell. A wild descendant of this Ivan came from Cambridgeshire, and became the St. Ivan celebrated for his solitary eccentricity. He was a physician in the latter part of the reign of Henry V.; so that he must have been an old man when he retired from the world.

For twenty years he administered advice to all who came to him, and, as he recommended abstinence for a certain number of hours previously to his consideration of plethoric diseases, he obtained wonderful celebrity for the cure of the Holy Waters from St. Ivan's Spring. Thus the spot was called, and, to this day, bears the name on the Holy Wells.

This old man used to perambulate the Bishop's palace every day. He never entered its walls, because he used to say that, when he did so, they would fall down, because the palace had been built upon the site of the chapel of his forefathers. He was greatly respected by the inhabitants of Ipswich, as pilgrims from all parts came to be healed at the well of St. Ivan.

From time to time, as the old man went his rounds, perambulating the moat of the castle, he observed, as many others might have done, had they as regularly frequented the spot, indications of danger in the walls of the building; for the banks of the moat on the castle side began to press more and more into the waters, evidently showing that a settlement was taking place which must one day be destructive to the edifice.

From year to year he had observed these signs, and no doubt expected to behold the demolition of a palace which he considered an innovation of his rights. For the twenty years he lived there, this was the theme of his prognostication, whenever any friend or stranger visited his cell. His ominous declarations had rather increased with his latter years, as the slips into the deep moat became larger.

Lord De Freston had often visited this eccentric man, and finding something more in him than the delusions of ignorance, he made great allowance for his vagaries. He found him communicative and well-informed upon all historical subjects, though pretending to be wrapt up in abstruse fallacies. He humored his fancies, and received from him far more honest disclosures than such men are apt to make. But upon the subject of the fall of Wyke's Bishop's Palace, he found an uniformity of opinion that made him doubtful of the man's sanity. Little, however, did that nobleman know of the daily calculations of St. Ivan, and perhaps, had he been aware of them, he would have equally doubted their accuracy.

A friendship certainly subsisted between them, which was nurtured by the kind heart of De Freston; for, unknown to the recluse, he employed poor people, from whom alone the hermit would take anything, to supply him with gifts of bread and viands whenever he could understand they would be received. Kind acts are always, one day or other, rewarded, let them be done by whom they will; whilst unkind ones will as assuredly meet with bitter reflections, if ever retribution visit the offender.

Noon, as was stated at the end of the last chapter, was the hour of hospitality at that day, when men were less hasty to be made rich, and could afford the most wakeful hour of the day for public entertainments. Now, indeed friends visit each other at hours when their ancestors were about to retire for the night. But the hour of noon that day was a busy hour in the palace of Wyke's Bishop. It was alive with people passing and repassing, as the dinner-bell in the lofty turret kept up its peal. A joyful sound, indeed, to many a poor priest, who was melancholy only, on the prescribed day of fasting, when he was bound to keep in his own cell.

Many of the wealthiest townsmen were expected. The mayor, burgess, and portmen, together with their wives and daughters, were to be partakers of the hospitality of the Bishop. Understanding, as they soon did, that Ellen De Freston, the amiable daughter and heiress of the Lord of Freston Tower, was to be there, they assembled with far lighter hearts and livelier countenances than if they had no one to meet but her contrast, Alice De Clinton.

There came also, at the invitation of Bishop Goldwell, the priests of St. Peter and St. Lawrence, the priests of St. Mary at the Tower, St. Mary near the Elms, St. Saviour, St. John, St. Margaret and Trinity, then held as one, and of St. Michael, which stood upon the borders of the town wall. These were all assembled in the great hall, or banquetting-room of the palace, and took their seats previously to the entrance of Bishop Goldwell. The table was so arranged, in the shape of a section of a roof, that the Bishop was seen, as it were, from every part of the board, and could himself see every one of his visitors. He could thus be addressed by any one without inconvenience, and every speech could be distinctly heard.

As the Bishop entered, the numerous company rose. His reverence came, accompanied by the bailiffs of the ancient borough and their friends, together with all such as were acquainted with Lord De Freston. There was Edmund Daundy, Thomas Smart, Robert Tooley, John Sparrowe, and several others, twelve in number, who entered from the palace reception-chamber into the hall. The Bishop led the way in state, followed by Alice and Lord De Freston, Daundy and Ellen, Latimer and the bailiff's wife, and other couples, who were escorted to their seats with all-appointed etiquette.

Lord De Freston sat on the right hand side of the chair, or throne, and next to him sat Alice De Clinton, at whom no one could look without being struck with her cold and haughty dignity. Next to her, to his discomfort, sat William Latimer, who was in every respect a gentleman, at perfect ease with himself and others, though far from obtrusive. A daughter of the house of Sparrowe, a very ancient family in Ipswich, sat on his right, and then several of the burgesses of the town, the priests, and travellers, mendicants, and strangers, to the end of the table.

On the left of the Bishop sat Edmund Daundy, and next to him Ellen De Freston, and next to her John Sparrowe and others invited as friends, and then Thomas Bilney, John Bale, and several of their friends who had come with them, to hear what advice the Bishop would give in those troublesome times.

The 'benedicite' was chaunted by the priests, and the company arranged for the feast partook of the celebrated hospitality of that princely bishop, than whom Norwich never, in those Popish days, before or after, had a more truly liberal prelate. He was a man with a great degree of knowledge of men and manners.

He professed not a liberality he did not practise. He was consistent in his conduct, and did not condemn the ignorant. He courted not popularity at the expense of public principle, nor made friends of the private enemies of the church in preference to the encouragement of his own clergy. He regarded the conscientious scruples of others, permitted free discussion before him, and gave his opinions and advice with judgment and discretion. He was superior to the times he lived in, and was much beloved, both in private and public.

Whilst the Bishop was entertaining his company, St. Ivan, whose hour for perambulating the walls of the palace had arrived just as the bell had ceased, descended from his cave. He bound his loose vest round his loins, and, taking his staff in his hands, began his walk down the stone steps from his dwelling. The old man always knew everything going on in the palace. The poor who visited him could tell him the characters of its inmates, and frequently they described the haughty maid in her true character. He had that day heard of the arrival of Lord De Freston and his daughter, and was observed to be more than usually stirred in his mind at the circumstance. He paused as the palace came in his view, and shook his long white locks from his forehead as he surveyed the walls.

''Was it for this,' he exclaimed, 'that my venerated sire built on yonder site the Chapel of Ufford, that wassail and waste might come, and the pomp, pride, and state of a Bishop's See might be gathered therein, to greet the nobles of the land, and the inhabitants of this town? Did he, for the space of a whole year, kneel day by day on the cold stone with which he laid the very foundation of his chapel? Did he dedicate the same to the saints, and vow to heaven one half of his wealth to build a holy temple, where priests should pray day and night, and the holy fire should be kept burning upon the altar? Was it for this, that, over his bones which lie there, a Bishop should hold his court, and invite all the world to partake of his hospitality, whilst I, the descendant of the founder, should be doomed to live in the sandstone cave of the Holy Wells, and to see the inheritance of my fathers thus polluted? But it will not be for long. Those walls will fall. They have not long to stand, perhaps not a day. I must look to it again.'

It was in this strain that the recluse indulged in his own peculiar view of things, and entertained a morbid hope that he should live to see the fall of Goldwell's palace walls. He indulged in a propensity for the superstitious, and, like an ancient sage, spoke in an oracular manner, as if positive of nis own inspiration. He was, however, much more hopeful from his earthly view of the state of the building and its adjacent ground, than from any second sight that he possessed, and this he hastened that very day to indulge.

St. Ivan, reverenced as he was by all the ignorant, and even respected by the learned, was not much regarded by the monks of St. Peter's Priory, or the abbots of Bury, on account of his utter detestation of their absurd relics, and silly pretensions to things they called sacred, which were of no estimation in his eyes--such as the shirt of St. Edmund, one of his sinews, his sword, the parings of his toe-nails, and other things to which they attributed great sanctity; drops of Stephen's blood, a piece of the real cross, the coals which broiled St. Lawrence, pieces of the flesh of saints and virgins, St. Botolph's bones, St. Thomas-à-Becket's boots, penknife, etc., skulls, candles, crosses, and such a variety of holy things, one and all of which St. Ivan, like a wise man, laughed at.

Though the monks were jealous of him, and some termed him heretic, others entertained a superstitious dread of him, which he well knew how to manage. The learned fraternity of Alneshborne alone paid him any respect, and he used to tell Lord De Freston that these Augustines were the only monks he ever knew good for anything.

The old man was kind to all. The austerity of his manners was softened by any case of humanity in distress; and it is supposed that a disappointment in his life, either in ambition, love, or professional celebrity, led him to the lonely cell of Ufford's dale. In that day, religion was so clouded with oral traditions, vain external ceremonies, and exclusive dogmatical pretensions to superior gifts of healing, miracles, and works, that real faith and godliness were things almost driven from the earth. No wonder, then, that a man who had perception enough to see so much dishonesty should be driven into himself for notions of duty and worship.

There was deep anxiety in his countenance as he glanced into the rippling stream from the Holy Wells, and took his way down its pebbly, shingly, and craggy sides towards Wyke's Bishop's palace. His foot was firm, his eye bright, and except the trembling of the hand as he placed his staff upon the ground, but little could be discerned of infirmity.

His path lay on the outside of the moat, and was so worn by twenty years' perambulations, as to have created a path, known as St. Ivan's path; few would walk in it, and hence the old man's observations upon the sinking of the walls, and the encroachings of the turfy bank, though strictly marked with willow twigs, were unnoticed by others.

That day, all his landmarks were bent prostrate with the waters, and with consternation, increased by previous anticipation, he observed a certain tremulous motion of the waters, ebbing from beneath the castle side of the bank. For a moment he stood aghast. He knew well what was going on in the palace, the number of souls therein, and the imminent danger which awaited every one then feasting at the Bishop's board. Recovering himself from his surprise, humanity prevailed over every other consideration, and the thought of so many perishing induced him to hasten his steps round the moat.

As he went on, his keen perception became more alarmed, for he perceived that the fall of the palace must quickly come. His agitation increased to such a degree, that he could not move quick enough, and men were surprised to see St. Ivan, hitherto always slow, calm, and gentle, with his hoary hairs and well-composed walk, now stepping short and quick with extreme trepidation.

His heart seemed swollen within him; his agitated spirit, now that he saw the near accomplishment of what he had been looking for so long, was dreadfully disturbed. He knew it would be in vain to tell the warder, the gardener, or the serving men. He knew they all understood that he would not pass the draw-bridge lest it should fall upon him, as he himself had issued a sort of oracular declaration that when he entered the palace it would fall down. He, therefore, hastened his steps, determined to terrify every one out of the palace before the crash came.