Elizabeth W. Grierson

“ Then, in 1275, when he was quite an elderly man, he became Bishop of Hereford.
And a true ‘Father in God’ he proved himself to be, to the poor people, at least, for he had one or two very serious and rather funny quarrels with the rich and powerful nobles who lived in his Diocese. These quarrels arose not because he was jealous of his own dignity, but because he was jealous of the dignity of the Church, and he imagined that any slight or insult paid to him as Bishop, was really a slight and insult paid to the Church of God. ”

“ This new church was dedicated to ‘St. Ethelbert and the Blessed Virgin,’ and into it, when it was finished, the Bishop’s chair was carried.
For, although the young King could not be called a martyr, he certainly left the record of a pure and brave and noble life behind him, and it seemed fitting—and we are glad that it did so—that the memory of his name should linger, all down the ages, round the stately Cathedral which was built as an expiation of his death, and in which, for half a century at least, his body rested. ”

“ A statue of the murdered King has been placed, as you see, on a pedestal, close to one of the pillars, and here, on the floor, in front of the altar, is a circular slab of marble, on which is traced a representation of his murder.
But if we cannot visit St. Ethelbert’s shrine, we can visit another, which is six hundred years old, and which was erected to hold the bones of a very celebrated Bishop of Hereford, who was such a good man, that, after his death, people thought he deserved the name of Saint;—Thomas de Cantilupe. ”

“ But to see into the future is impossible. So, as if to shake the responsibility from his own shoulders, he did not actually forbid the scheme, but he pretended to be very angry, and strode out into the hall, and called to his knights and to his son, Prince Ecgfrith, to mount and ride with him to meet the stranger King. ”

“ Now, this Offa was a very great and mighty King, who cared for nothing so much as to extend the boundaries of his Kingdom, and he had succeeded in doing this in an extraordinary way. He had conquered the parts of the country which are now known as Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Surrey, and on the West he had driven back the Welsh beyond Shrewsbury, and had built a huge earthwork, which was known as ‘Offa’s Dyke,’ to mark the boundary of their domains. In this way it came about that in his days Cærffawydd, or ‘Fernlege,’ as it had come to be called, was in Mercia instead of Wales. ”

“ A great misfortune fell upon this good Bishop, for, for the last thirteen years of his life, he was blind, and I have no doubt that, during all the long period when he could not see, it must have been a great joy to him to think, as he was led out and in to Service, that he had been allowed, before the darkness fell on him, to repair the House of God, and to provide a fitting tomb for the royal youth in whose memory it had been erected. ”

“ Now, at that time people had the idea that they could atone for any wicked act that they had done by giving money or lands to the Church, or going on some pilgrimage; so Eadwulf told King Offa that he thought that first of all he had better see that King Ethelbert’s body had Christian burial—you remember it had just been thrown into a hole—and that after that he must go a pilgrimage to Rome, and tell the Pope the whole story, and do whatever he told him to do as a punishment. ”

“ Among other things, King Ethelbert’s shrine was destroyed, and, although we hope that his bones were taken care of, and buried somewhere in the church, or else burned up altogether, we cannot tell for certain what became of them.
Now, if there is one thing which we admire more than another about the grand old builders of the Middle Ages, it is their perseverance.
They would spend a hundred years over the planning and building of a church, when one man died another taking his place ”

“ But when, one day, he was riding with his attendants on these same Malvern Hills, and heard the sound of a hunting-horn, and, on asking what it meant, was told that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who was at that time the most powerful noble in England, also claimed the right of hunting there, and was out that day with his hounds, his anger rose, and he rode forward alone to meet the Earl and order him off the ground. ”

“ Then the victorious hoard of savages, for they were little else, swept on, straight to the Cathedral, where they knew that the holy vessels, at least, and the ornaments on the altar, would be of gold or silver.
But if they thought that they could obtain these easily they were mistaken, for they had not reckoned on the kind of men with whom they had to deal. For the brave priests determined to defend their church to the last, and shut and barricaded the doors in their faces ”

“ We can easily understand how these two parts of what to us is one Kingdom, managed to hold the Faith. They were more or less undisturbed by the fierce invaders who came from the North of Germany and from Denmark, and who were quite content to settle down in fertile England without taking the trouble to cross the Irish Channel and fight with the savage Irish tribes, or penetrate into the wild and hilly regions of Wales. ”

“ You all know what a glacier is? A river of ice which moves very very slowly down the side of a snow mountain, but which comes at last to the region where the air is so warm that it melts, and runs away down into the valley in a torrent of muddy water. ”

“ Although St. Ethelbert’s shrine no longer exists, if we go into the choir we can see the place where it stood—here, in this arch, between the two pillars nearest the altar on our right-hand side as we face it. ”

“ Perhaps that was the first thing that made King Offa’s conscience begin to prick, but, like King Ahab, he tried to brazen the matter out; saying to himself, “The deed is done and I cannot undo it, so I may as well have the Kingdom.” So he sent an army to East Anglia, and took possession of it. ”

“ Then, knowing that a King has need of a wife, he sent for all the aldermen and wise men of his Kingdom, as soon as the days of mourning for his father were over, and told them that he wished to wed the Princess Elfreda, daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, and that he willed that a deputation should go from among them to the Court of that Monarch, to ask, in his name, for her hand. ”

“ When he returned to England he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and a very good Chancellor he was, for he knew how to rule the students who were often very high-spirited and turbulent, just as students are nowadays. ”

“ They crossed the Severn at Worcester, and rode over the great hill of Malvern, and when they were within a day’s journey of the Royal Palace of Sutton, they pitched their tents at Fernlege, on the banks of the Wye, and there Ethelbert and most of his nobles waited, while one or two knights rode forward to inform King Offa of his arrival. ”

“ Alas! he little knew what a few short years were to bring; and we almost wish that the poor old man had died before his life-work was all undone.
For in 1056 a quarrel took place between Elfgar, Earl of Chester, and Edward the Confessor, who was King of England at that time. I do not know what the quarrel was about, but at any rate Elfgar was summoned to appear before the ‘Witan,’ or Parliament in London, on a charge of high treason. ”

“ But in later years he married another lady, and, after all, was buried in a church in Buckinghamshire, though, as you see, his effigy has been placed here to make the family group complete.
There are three very ancient things belonging to this Cathedral at which we must look before we leave it—a very old map, which hangs in that wooden case on the wall, quite close to the ‘chrysome’ tomb; a very old chair which stands on the north side of the altar ”

“ HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: TOMB OF BISHOP CANTILUPE.
His desire was that his bones should be laid to rest in his own Cathedral Church in far-away England, so, as it was an almost impossible task to convey a dead body across Europe in those days, do you know what his followers did? They boiled his body, until the flesh separated from the bones; then they buried the flesh in the Church of St. Severus near Florence, and the bones, which were now quite easy to carry, they brought to Hereford, and buried them in the Lady-chapel. They were afterwards removed to a little chapel known as the Chapel of St. ”

“ So the little fellow put the idea of earthly warfare out of his head, and set himself to study Greek and Latin instead, and when he was older he went to Oxford, and then to Paris with his brother Hugh, and soon became a very distinguished student. ”