CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FALL OF THE PALACE OF WYKES

Terror was depicted in every countenance as the drawbridge, that mass of stone, iron, wood, and brick-work was seen to give way, and divide with a crash, falling into the waters of the deep moat which surrounded the palace. Every inmate of that place who could move escaped before this catastrophe took place; and a motley group of terrified faces stood looking upon the troubled waters, the yawning land, the falling walls, as one after another of those massive pieces of stone fell inwards upon the beautiful tesselated pavements of the courts, and refectory, and cells, which had been so kept by the Bishop's serving men.

It was as if an earthquake had suddenly shaken the building to its foundation; but it was nothing more than a sudden landslip, arising from the springs which let in the banks of the moat, so as to lessen its once formidable barrier into the appearance of a ditch. This was not apparent at this moment, for the waters were so raised by the sudden ingress of the earth, that for a time a flood spread itself over both sides of these banks. It was only when the excess of water had escaped down the stream of the Holy Wells, into the Orwell, that the barrier became less formidable.

The Bishop and his niece were not long spectators of that terrible catastrophe. He was apparently excited to consternation, and showed it by his hasty departure, with Alice De Clinton, for Goldwell Hall.

Philanthropy moved in the heart of De Freston, who, after confiding his daughter to the care of Latimer, desired him to go at once to the mansion, of his relative and friend, Antony Wingfield, then in treaty with De Freston for the sale of those very premises which afterwards became his property. The young Antony had then consigned his mansion in Brook Street, and his chapel of St. Mary's, to the Lord De Freston. This chapel was called the Lady Grey's chapel; and was the spot in which De Freston requested his daughter, and such as liked to accompany her, to go and return thanks for their deliverance. Meantime, a messenger was sent to Freston Castle, for horses and men, to convey his daughter and her attendants home.

Alice De Clinton did not wait even to invite Ellen to accompany her to Goldwell Hall. She would have died before she would have condescended to show any affection towards one whom she considered as a favorer of heretics. Hence her haughty departure with her less haughty uncle, and such retainers as at such a time were not too terrified to attend upon them.

De Freston, having disposed of his daughter Ellen, turned his attention to the state of those unhappy domestics of the palace, who were then without house and home; and by his interest with the monks of St. Peter's Priory, and other religious houses, together with his more private interest with numerous rich householders in the borough, he got them all treated in such a way as to suppress their cries of lamentation at the fall of Wyke's Bishop's Palace.

Thousands of spectators soon collected round the spot, upon the green hills in the vicinity, to look upon the prostrate ruins. The central pillars alone of that proud building stood erect; and every now and then an alarm was given that they were seen to totter. The expanse of waters did not subside that night, so that the flood had reached to the very foot of the hills, in consequence of the main-buttress of the drawbridge having fallen, and choked up the passage of the stream, where the waters usually escaped to the Orwell.

Had any one been disposed to go over to the ruins, they could not have done so without a boat, and the only one belonging to the gardener had been sunk by the pressure of the falling boat-house. There was no fear, however, of any such intrusion. Men who looked upon the sacred edifice were too cautious to think of venturing over the waters, lest they should be buried under its walls.

Conversation, however, was alive, and superstition not less active among the people, for many said they had seen the Hermit St. Ivan hastening over the drawbridge into the castle, and many had heard him say that when he did so the walls would fall down. Some had dreamed one thing, some another. Some prognosticated the fall of Bishop Goldwell and his proud niece. Some had seen a strange thing fly up the chimney the night before--and one had seen St. Ivan riding upon a black cloud over the hills to the river, and was sure some catastrophe would befal him. Innumerable ingenious speculations were started, and as is very often the case in calamities of any kind, it was attributed to all sorts of causes.

'I will not believe,' said butcher Stannard, 'that St. Ivan is dead, until I know his ceil is deserted; so, who will go with me to the Holy Wells? What, none willing to go? What a set of cowards you all are!'

'I saw him go across the drawbridge, and I have heard him say, he should never return alive!'

'And so have I,' replied the butcher, 'and I have heard that he is now beneath those ruins, and yet I have my doubts, and if no one will go to the cave with me, I will go alone.'

The sturdy butcher started off for the deep dell of the Holy Wells, followed at a respectable distance by two or three of the townsmen, whose curiosity had been excited: but who gave him plenty of space to show his bravery by himself, not willing to interrupt him, or interfere with his ascent to the hermit's cell. A party stood at the foot of the stone steps by which Stannard ascended to the cave. He had indeed called aloud to the old man before he ventured to ascend--but of course received no answer.

He entered the cave--he found a rustic table with a Latin Bible thereupon, a lamp suspended from the ceiling, two loaves of brown bread in a recess, and a jug of water.

The cave was dry, and strewed with rushes; his bed was formed of the same material, placed upon a ledge of sandstone rock; a few boxes of salves, and bottles of medicine were ready to be given to the poor: but this strange habitation possessed no pretensions to comforts. Yet here Ivan had been for many years, the celebrated hermit of the Holy Wells.

Butcher Stannard soon returned, convinced, and convincing others that the old man was only to be found under the ruins of the Bishop's Palace.

Gorgeous tapestry might be seen floating in the wind from the various broken down compartments. The walls had mostly fallen inwards, and the waters had rushed into the court, and escaped through the broken and other confined masses on the other side. A more complete specimen of ruin could not be seen: valuable pieces of furniture, panels, and legs of tables, were floated out of the ruins upon the moat, and these were strictly preserved, as relics, and carried to the various religious houses, as mementoes of the once flourishing palace of the Bishops of Norwich, the first and the last in the ancient town of Ipswich. What a wretched sight did that palace now afford: but how much more calamitous might it have been, had the festive hour not been so suddenly interrupted by the entrance of St. Ivan. It was better that the palace should fall down than that souls should perish therein.

The site of the palace--the spot of the Hermit's cell--the stream of the Holy Wells, are still to be seen, though now the square plot of ground is an orchard belonging to the owner of Holy Wells, and the stream which then flowed in a direct line to the river is now diverted, and forms magnificent fish ponds.

Tradition still preserves the name of the Hermit: and the monks of St. Peter, after his decease, though they had been jealous of his sanctity, raised a cross to his memory, at the Holy Wells, which went by the name of St. Ivan's Cross, and became a place of pilgrimage for saints and sinners, for two hundred years afterwards.

Throughout the records of that day, nothing is discoverable but the jarring complaints of the Prior of St. Peter's and his brethren, at the influence of the hermit of the Holy Wells, who would not submit to observe any of the rites and ceremonies of the Church of Rome, without a restitution of his lands, hereditaments, and rights in Wykes Ufford and Whitton, which belonged to his ancestors, and descended from them to himself. It is recorded that he sued the Bishops of Norwich in the ecclesiastical court of Canterbury, for their usurpation of one moiety of that property which belonged to him and his heirs, the whole of which had been seized by the church. Law was the most expensive thing to be had in England in that day, as it is in this. A flaw is to be picked in almost every man's title to his estate, through which lawyers gain an entrance to the property--and there they fed and fatten. Formerly Judges were elected from ecclesiastical bodies, and their amanuenses, generally clergymen, called clerks--they retain the name to this day: but better for them and all men, they are not the judges of the land.

No doubt Goldwell knew the claim which had been urged by Ivan De Linton's descendants to recover the one moiety of the estates in Wykes Ufford and Whitton, as the Bishop of Norwich was left executor, after the various gifts to the church, to see the rightful heir instituted. It might be that this Ivan, who was Dr. Ivan, of St. Mildred's, A.D. 1425, was not considered the rightful heir. Be that as it may, he considered himself such, and spent a fortune in endeavoring to obtain his property. From that day, the gradual decline of the Bishops of Norwich, as far as regarded temporal possessions in Ipswich, began, and there is scarcely now a single acre of land, or a single house in the neighborhood, which belongs to that See.

Every record of that period will produce testimony of their possessions in Wykes Ufford. The Bishop's Hill still forms one of the loftiest features over the town. The deep glens of Holy Wells, at the bottom of that hill, with the stream, the moat, the site of the palace, nay, within the memory of man, the beams of the cross which stood at the head of the stream which gushed from beneath the sandstone rocks, were found crossing each other, and were dug out of the earth during the life of the late owner of the property. Many an hour has the writer of these pages spent in that glen at that spot, and many a book has he perused within the precincts of the Hermit's cave, now closely planted with alders, firs, and brush-wood.

Lord De Freston and his daughter Ellen might be found in the Lady Grey's Chapel of St. Mary's returning thanks for their deliverance. Lord De Freston lived in an age when the support of the Papacy was accounted such an undoubted act of piety, that any nobleman attempting to dispute its sway was to be looked upon as an enemy to his God and his country. Lord De Freston, though he never exercised his authority with the hierarchy, to argue with them upon useless and fanciful customs, which they constantly introduced, was highly pleased with the manner in which William Latimer had conducted himself that day, and fully agreed with him in his animadversion upon the fooleries of the monastic establishments, the wisdom of unfolding the Scripture, and the necessity of learning in those who were to be the public expounders of the truth.

After returning thanks in the chapel, he accompanied Edmund Daundy to his mansion, where the conversation was renewed concerning the steps to be taken for the inspection of the ruins, and the disposal of the body of St. Ivan.

'I do not think the priests of St. Peter's will grant him a place of sepulture within the precincts of their monastery,' said Daundy; 'neither will Bishop Goldwell be disposed to allow that he may be buried within the grounds, inside the walls of Ipswich. For the most part, the priests looked upon him as one excluded from the kingdom of heaven, frequently crossed themselves whenever his name was mentioned, and none of them, I am quite sure, would perform his funeral ceremony.'

'Yet the old man had some virtues, which would be no disgrace to any one! He was conversant with the Scriptures, he was kind to the poor, meek and peaceable in his demeanor, spent many hours of the day in meditation and in the exercise of benevolence, and but for his abhorrence of the superstitious deceptions of those customs which the worst days of Rome have sanctioned, might have been deemed a good Catholic. Abstemious to the utmost, his fasting was an every day temperance. Devout in the extreme--all his hours were spent in devotion; generous to the last farthing, he gave away all that was given him, and lived upon the loaves of charity. I took care that he should not want bread whilst he lived, though he always thought it came from poor people, whom his medicinal cures had restored to health. I will not ask any of the religious houses in Ipswich to give him a place of burial.'

'Where then do you propose to bury him?'

'In the chapel of the Priory of Alneshborne. I will see this fraternity to-morrow morn, and ask their permission that the bones of St. Ivan may rest in my own family vault, beneath the altar in their chapel: for the Lords of Freston, though not all buried there, have a right of sepulture reserved to themselves, beneath the high altar of their chapel. This was one of the conditions upon which the extra-parochial lands, belonging to their monastery, were granted to them. I think I shall have no difficulty in this. The only difficulty I expect to meet with will be the finding a place of rest for the body in some sacred place, until all the preparations for his interment shall be completed. I will bring my men up to the town on the morrow. In the meantime, do you interest yourself in the good graces of the bishop, and the monks of St. Peter's, first that I may search the ruins of the palace for his body, then, that it may be decently kept within the walls of St. Peter's Priory until such time as I am prepared for the burial. I intend to watch the body myself on the night of its burial, as a mark of my respect for the deceased.'

'I will do my best endeavors. I can go to Goldwell Hall, suggest the propriety of searching the ruins, under the authority of the Mayor of the town, both to preserve whatever valuables can be thence recovered--end then ask, for you, the body of St. Ivan.'

This the good Daundy faithfully performed. And that very evening Ellen De Freston and Latimer, together with Lord De Freston, were seated in their favorite room of Freston Tower.