370 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[November, 



sweet music tliat arosi' from the minstrels' g tilery ; those walls then 

 deniuled of their costly ilriiperies, and resounding with the groans and 

 oaths of the Cavaliers, and once again consecrated by the solemn 

 psalms and hymns of the Presbyterians ; and now, rescued from the 

 dust and noise and bustle of the packer's warehouse, it silently wails 

 tQ witness the mysterious future, and again to see " one generation 

 passing away, and another coming." — Cor/aionduit of the Times. 



LIFE OF ST. ETHELWOLD. 

 By Hyde Clarice, Esq., F.L.S. 



The end of the tenth century is famous in English history for the 

 great extension of the Benedictine order, and of monastic buildings, 

 effected by St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his two coad- 

 jutors, St. Oswald, Archbishop of York, and St. Ethelwold, Bishop of 

 Winchester. These were men of remarkable ability, furniing a con- 

 stellation of talent, which might well affect the monkish writers with 

 admiration, and arrest the attention of Ihe historian. Under their 

 direction King Edgar lavished the wealth of his kingdom on the Be- 

 •nedictines, and he was able to boast of having erected fifty monasteries, 

 many of which flourished in splendour for above GOO years, and be- 

 came the germs of some of our finest monuments. The reign of Edgar 

 indeed, forms an epoch in our architectural history, and as to St. Ethel- 

 wold was committed the direction of the material part of this revo- 

 lution, it cannot be uninteresting to architects to contemjilate the 

 deeds of Ihis ornament of their profession, of whom it is to be re- 

 gretted that no modern memoir has yet bo.en written. 



Ethelwold was born towards the end of the reign of Edward 1st, 

 suniamed the Elder, between the years 010-20, in the imperial city 

 of Winchester, then the metropolis, and was the son of opulent, re- 

 spectable, and |)ious parents, his birth, according to the legends, being 

 preceded by omens of bis subsequent greatness. St. Swithin and 

 Daniel, Bishops of Winchester, were also natives of the city, as was 

 Ethelwold's after colleague, St. Oswald. Having at an early age 

 shown most pious dispositions, Ethelwold attracted the notice of the 

 illustrious King Athelstan, in whose palace he, with Dunstan, for some 

 time lived, and by whom he was afterwards placed under the care of 

 St. Alfege the Bald, Bishop of Winchester, uncle of St. Dunstan. 

 Having attained the proper age, and having previously received the 

 minor orders, he was consecrated priest by St. Alfege, in the cathe- 

 dral church at Winchester, at the same time with St. Dunstan, and it 

 is supposed about the year 936 or 937. Besides Dunstan and Ethel- 

 wold, there was another priest ordained, who was named Athelstan, 

 and who afterwards relapsed into a bad life, and Bishop Alfege is said 

 OQ this occasion to have prognosticated the several careers of the 

 yoang men. Ethelwold soon after retired to Glastonbury, and put 

 himself under the care of his friend Dunstan, who had introduced into 

 that house the rule of St. Benedict. Here Ethelwold afterwards be- 

 came Dean, and must have been present, and no doubt co-operated, at 

 the period when St. Dunstan was engaged in rebuilding the mo- 

 nastery. 



At Glastonbury Ethelwold greatly distinguished himself, not only 

 by his scholastic acquirements, and by the skill with which he taught 

 grammar and prosody, but by his great industry, labouring with his 

 own hands,, and even cooking and performing menial oirices. Being 

 seized with an ardent desire of acquiring knowledge, the dean had 

 intended to travel on the continent, but was prevented from carrying 

 his design into execution by the Queen-mother Edgiva. This prin- 

 cess was the daughter of Sigeline, a Kentish earl, and mother of 

 King Edmund 1st, and the reigning King Edred, whom she advised 

 not to allow such a man as Ethelwold, whose wisdom and acquire- 

 ments she highly praised, to leave his kingdom. The king, |)leased 

 with hearing such a character of EtiieKvold, took great interest in 

 him, and at the persuasion of the Queen-mother, gave, him an estate 

 at Abiiigdon, with the ch.irge to restore an ancient monastery, then 

 greatly (lila])idated, consisting of a wretched building, and only ])0s- 

 sessing lU manses. This event is gener.dly said to have taken place 

 in 954, but according to Ingulf and the Croyland charters, it was sis 

 ye.u's before, namely in 04b. With the consent of his abbot Dunstan, 

 and no doubt by his influence, Ethelwold went to Abingdon with Os- 

 gar, Foldbert, Friwegar of Glastonbury, Ordbcrt of Winchester, and 

 Edric of London, and soon collected a body of monks, of whom he, by 

 the king's wish, was ordained Abbot, and he then set himself to work, 

 by head and hand, to carry out the task imposed upon him. From 

 the king he obtained large estates at Abingdon, and a grant from the 

 treasury, and he found in the queen-mother a liberal benefactress. 

 From the king Ethelwold obtained a charter of ample privileges, 



which he himself appears to have illuminated. On a certain day the 

 king came to Ihe monastery, laid the foundations himself, and measured 

 them ont, giving directions also how the works should be prosecuted. 

 At the banquet given in honour of this occasion, Ethelwold is repre- 

 sented by his biographers as having begun his career of ndracles, by 

 a prodigy much better suited to tlie tasLe of those times than of these, 

 having furnished to Ihe imnierous Northumbrian guests an inexhaus- 

 tible supply of wine from one jar. It appears to have been the prac- 

 tice in these days to board the workmen, and one of the legends relates 

 that the monk who had Ihe charge of supplying the workm^^n with 

 provisions was named Alfstan, and that he performed his duties most 

 laboiiously and assiduously, not only cooking and serving out the pro- 

 visions, bat himself lighting the fire, drawing water, and cleaning the 

 dishes. Abbot Ethelwold, seeing him one dav engaged in performing 

 his accustomed duties, begged him to dip his naked hand in the 

 cauldon, and to reach a piece of meat, which Alfstan did without 

 scalding his hand, a proof of the religious purity of himself an<l the 

 abbot, and of their unrefined manners. Among Ethelwold's gifts to 

 Abingdon, most of them the work of his own hand, were a gold sacra- 

 mental cup of great weight, three crosses of pure silver and gold, lost 

 in the troubles of Stephen's reign, and candlesticks, censors and other 

 vessels for the service of the church of pure silver, and some adorned 

 with precious stones. Many of these were afterwards carried off by 

 a Norman monk of Jumieges. At the request of King Edgar, Abbot 

 Ethelwold also made a silver altar table of the weight of three hun- 

 dred pounds, and which long remained admirab'e for the delicacy of 

 its workmanship. He also made two bells with his own hands, and 

 put tliem in the belfiy with two larger ones, which had been made by 

 St. Dunstan. Another of Ethelwold's works was a kind of chime con- 

 sisting of a wheel full of bells, called the golden wheel, on account of 

 its being gill, and winch was used on high festivals. Abbot Ethel- 

 wold w;is famous for preserving the sanctity of manners of his tJock, 

 but beseems to have been by no means illibeial as to matters of 

 eating and drinking, Ids allowances to the monks being so bountiful 

 as to become matters of proverb. As a ruler of the monastery 

 Ethelwold acquired the highest reputation, and formed a school for 

 singing and reading the service, to which persons fi'om all parts of 

 England resorted. Being greatly desirous of securing uniformity in 

 the mode of performing the service he sent to Corby in France, tliea 

 famous in this respect, and obtained some skilful monks as instmctors. 

 He also sent one of his monks, named Osgar, to the Benedictine Abbey 

 of Fleury to study the rules of the order in that school. This Osgar, 

 there is reason to believe is the one who succeeded our Abbot at Abing- 

 don. Ethelwold exerted himself to a great degree for the advance- 

 ment of his house, for which he obtained more than six hundred 

 cassates of land, and charters from Edred and Edgar. One of his chief 

 works at Abingdon was a cut which he made from the river [sis to 

 supply the abbey with water, and also to work a mill, wdiich he built. 

 While digging for this canal the excavators found in the sand near 

 the monastery of St. Helen, an iron cross, which Cessa, Viceroy of 

 Wessex, and ifounder of the old idjbey, had caused to be lai<l in the 

 tomb on his breast. Tliis cross was translated to the abbey, and be- 

 came famous under the name of the Black Rood or Cross, upon whicli 

 no one could take a false oath under pain of death, for it was believed 

 to be partly made out of one of the nails of the cross, and sent by 

 Constanline the Great or some of his British followers to England. 

 It is further related that the monks having sometimes attemjited to 

 adorn this cross with gold or silver, as fast as they put it on one 

 day it fell olF and dissolved on the next. Abbot Ethelwold's zeal for 

 his monastery was great, working even wdth his own hands, and hav- 

 ing as his biographer states, attracted the especial despite of the 

 devil, had on one occasion a heavy beam thrown at him by the gieat 

 enemy, which knocked him into a pit and broke several of his ribs, 

 and if it had not been for the pit the Abbot would have been crushed 

 to pieces. As it was he soon recovered. Under his go\ernnient the 

 house prospered in sanctity, and a young boy, who was a favourite of 

 the monks, had on his death-bed a beatific vision of the glories of 

 heaven. 



The time was now arrived when the talents of Ethelwold were to 

 shine in a still more extensive sphere, the unfortunate King Edwin, 

 pursued by the monks, had lost Ihe greater part of his dominions, 

 which had rebelled to his brother Edgar, and in 959 this patron of the 

 monastic order obtained by the death of his brother the undivided 

 rule of the whole empire. In 9.3S Edgar had granted a charter to 

 Abingdon, and in 960 at Dunstan's request he chose our Abbot to un- 

 dertake the work of the restoration of Evesham, wdio went there, 

 restored the monks and appointed Oswald Abbot. Of Ethelwold's 

 subsequent government at Abingdon, we have nothing more to relate 

 than that having made that abbey one of the great schools of learning 

 and piety, it became the nursery, whence the new monasteries of King 



