Diocese of Winchester

“ Bishop Morley, the friend of Ken and Izaak Walton, erected it. But Wolvesey and Farnham together proved too heavy an episcopal burden, and later bishops have preferred to reside at Farnham. So Wolvesey ceased to be the Bishop of Winchester’s official residence, and the greater part of Morley’s building was pulled down by Bishop North at the end of the eighteenth century. The growing need for the division of the diocese makes it quite possible, however, that the Bishops of Winchester may again be residing in Wolvesey Palace, as their predecessors did for so many hundreds of years. ”

“ Who can estimate the numbers, who in the great day shall give Him thanks for the blessings she has here dispensed? And yet, even here, much remains to be done. The agricultural population are very commonly deprived of their Church privileges; not indeed by the pressure of numbers, but by remoteness of situation. In the diocese of Winchester alone, no less than sixty hamlets have been reported to the bishop as needing new churches from this cause ”

“ Sussex was also taken from the Winchester diocese during the episcopacy of Daniel, Hedda's successor, and by way of compensation he was only able to add the Isle of Wight, hitherto unattached to any see. When the West Saxon kingdom became, in the ninth century, practically the kingdom 97of England, Winchester, of course, assumed a very important position. S. Swithun, who was chosen as bishop in 852, had great influence with King Ethelwulf, and his cathedral correspondingly became an object of veneration. ”

“ In population the diocese was the fifth in England, but it had no chapter, no diocesan funds, no common organisation ; the two counties had diverse traditions, and much of the patronage remained in the hands of external bishops and chapters. Ridding's work was to bring unity and a corporate spirit out of diversity and jealousy, to create all kinds of diocesan organisations, to raise the intellectual standard of the clergy, and to stimulate spiritual Life in neglected districts. As at Winchester, he was not understood at first, and encountered some opposition ”

“ Like master, like man, and great kings have always had great subjects. Such a one was Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, whose influence was all powerful during the next half century, and was reflected in Egbert’s still greater grandson, Alfred. Swithun belongs essentially to Winchester; he laboured incessantly for the kingdom, the diocese, and the city, and his shrine became for centuries afterwards the glory of its Cathedral, and the place of pilgrimage for thousands of pious feet. He built churches; he protected the Cathedral and Monastery by building a wall round it ”

“ Besides, it was not at any time easy to find among the laity persons properly qualified, in point of knowledge and letters, to fill with sufficiency some of the highest offices. We see the king was now obliged to have recourse to the lawyers: they gave as little satisfaction as the churchmen had done; and in a few years it was found necessary to discharge them, and to call in the churchmen again."
At the period of Wykeham's election to the see of Winchester, the bishops of that diocese had no fewer than twelve different castles or palaces, all furnished and maintained as places of residence. ”

“ W. Gunner stated that from a research among the archives of the bishops and of the college of Winchester, he had found that many Irish bishops, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were merely titular bishops, bearing the titles of sees in Ireland, while they acted as suffragans to bishops in England. A Bishop of Achonry, for instance, appeared to have been frequently deputed by William of Wykeham to consecrate churches, and to perform other episcopal duties, in his diocese; and the Bishops of Achonry seemed frequently to have been suffragans of those of Winchester. ”

“ The charters of the twenty years are too few to enable us to base any inference upon them; but in 931 the resignation of the bishopric of Winchester by the saintly Frithestan was succeeded by the election of Byrnstan to rule over the diocese with which he had been so long connected. ”

“ John Kaye, the bishop, and accompanied him in the visitation of his diocese. He was nominated chancellor of Winchester in June 1845, and two years afterwards commissary of Surrey in the same diocese. In 1847 he received the appointment of chancellor of Manchester from James Prince Lee, the first bishop of the diocese. As an advocate he was cautious and of sound judgment, and as a man he was liberal, just, and generous. ”

“ No groups of buildings are in their way more charming or more impregnated with human associations than the famous episcopal foundation of St. Cross—an asylum of peace and rest, comfort and repose, to those who find shelter within its ancient walls, and a standing monument to the memory of the pious Henry de Blois and the princely churchman, Cardinal Beaufort. Winchester, like many an English city, would be shorn of much of its interest were this benevolent institution to be removed. ”

“ We learn from the English Chronicle that this Christian church was erected not by Kynegils, who died in 643, but by Kenwalh or Kenulphus his son. Here then we have the beginning in a sense of the Winchester Cathedral of to-day. True, successive and more{24} glorious buildings have been erected on the same site, but they have been but the successors in direct line of that primitive church of St. Peter and St. Paul, rudely constructed, and possibly roofed with thatch, which Birinus dedicates ”

“ Accident served to invest the new abbey with peculiar interest and sanctity. A Danish descent on Picardy had driven a crowd of refugees to seek shelter across the sea, and they had crossed over to Hampshire, bearing with them their greatest treasure—the hallowed bones of their patron saint, St. Judocus or St. Josse. The king received them hospitably at Winchester, and the sacred relics were solemnly and splendidly enshrined within the partially completed church of the New Minster. ”

“ A large party was formed in England, especially amongst the greater barons, which was anxious to strip the clergy of their wealth and power, without any thought for the better fulfilment of their spiritual functions. In the Parliament of 1371 bishops were declared unfit to hold offices of state. Amongst others who (p. 260) were dismissed was William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He was a great architect and administrator, and having been deprived of the Chancellorship used his wealth to found at Winchester the first great public school in England. ”

“ We read that, before the Reformation, the monks of Netley Abbey, twelve miles distant, were wont to keep their brethren at Winchester supplied during Lent with oysters from Southampton Water, they in return receiving forty-two flagons of ale weekly.
Enough has been said above to show that no church in Great Britain, outside of London, is richer in monuments than Winchester Cathedral. It has also the distinction of great size, being 556 feet long, the longest nave in England. But the exterior is heavy, without a suggestion of the symmetry and grace of Salisbury. ”

“ What with the religious convulsion of England, which, with the exception of Kent, fluctuated with the rise and fall of circumstances chiefly controlled by the policy of kings either heathen at one time and Christian at another, or the deposition and death of a Christian monarch, caused by one more powerful and deeply imbued with heathenism, the See of Winchester does not appear to have come into existence till about the middle of the seventh century. The establishment of its bishopric in a way marks the commencement of a new epoch in the English Church. ”

“ Is his conscience so much improved beyond what it was when he was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford, or Salisbury—for this book, I fear, was written so long ago—or is it that he would not risk losing a shilling a year more whilst there was anything better to be got than what he had? I cannot help saying, that if the Bishop of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy, and a very dull fellow, and a great rascal, for your friend. ”

“ Although many historical persons flit across the scene throughout the centuries, the personal associations of Winchester are dominated by the outstanding figures of Alfred, St. Swithun, and the great clerical craftsman, William of Wykeham, the builder of much of the cathedral, and the founder of St. Mary's College, Winchester, and New College, Oxford—the former of which, although of later foundation, was intended as a stepping-stone for the latter. ”

“ William Walkelyn, a relative, there is some reason to believe, of the Conqueror, became the first Norman bishop of Winchester.
Walkelyn enjoyed a high reputation alike for learning and for personal piety. The monkish author of the Annales de Wintonia describes him as a man “of perfect piety and sanctity of life, endowed with wondrous sagacity and withal of such abstinence that he eschewed both meat and fish and rarely tasted wine or mead, and then only with extreme moderation.” ”

“ The Black Death all but brought ruin to it, though later on William of Wykeham did much to restore its prosperity. Its best-known abbot was Walter Fyfhyde, abbot from 1318 to 1361.
Of St. Mary’s Abbey we have fewer details still. It enjoyed a considerable revenue from the tolls, or ‘octroi,’ on merchandise which entered the city at the East Gate.
Far different from the life of monk or nun was that of the friar. In the fourteenth century he was firmly established as a Winchester institution. He was the active missioner, the revivalist, the preacher. He moved in the world, not in the cloister. ”

“ The ground-plan of Winchester Cathedral is in the form of a plain Latin cross, hardly broken in its outline save by the Perpendicular prolongation of the Lady Chapel at the east end. But, simple as is the plan, "the great length of the church" (to use the words of Fergusson) "is pleasingly broken ... by the bold projection of its transepts, which here extend, as usual in England, three bays beyond the aisles, their section being the same width as that of the nave." The width of the nave with the aisles is 88 feet, while the transepts measure, from east to west, 81 feet. ”

“ A. 984. This year died the benevolent bishop of Winchester, Ethelwold, father of monks, on the Kalends of August; and the consecration of the succeeding bishop, Elphege [II.] , who by another name was called Godwin, was on the 14th before the Kalends of November; and he took the episcopal seat at Winchester, on the day of the two apostles Simon and Jude. ”

“ If the claim of Canterbury to be the "Mother City" of the Anglo-Saxon race be granted, few will deny to Winchester the honour of being her eldest and her fairest daughter. A royal city was this when Birinus, the apostle of Wessex, came hither in 634, on his way to the Oxfordshire Dorchester, to baptize the King of the West Saxons; and in 679 the episcopal see was established, a cathedral built, and a monastic house attached to it. ”

“ Chapel, with Fromond’s chantry used by Lower-school ‘Men,’—for Winchester is remarkable among schools as having two chapels—and the beautiful cloisters behind it, those cloisters which the Founder himself seems almost to pervade and to spiritualize with his presence, is a place to wander in and dream dreams of the past. Hall, approached, as befits its dignity, up a grand old stairway, is splendidly impressive, with its magnificent open timber roof and carved wainscot, and the Founder’s portrait—a picture of real grace and beauty—dominating the high table or dais at the other end. ”

“ Winchester Cathedral is a stately edifice, incorporating every style of English architecture from the Norman to the Perpendicular. It was founded on a more ancient site in 1079. The choir and transepts were finished in 1093. The conversion of the nave from Norman to Perpendicular was begun by Bishop Edington before 1366, and the whole was completed in 1486. The builder of the greater part of the nave was Bishop William of Wickham, the renowned architect and statesman, who occupied the See from 1366 to 1404. The church is the longest in England, measuring 560 feet in all. ”

“ These houses became very unpopular, as being colonies of foreigners whose interests were not those of England, and they were abolished in the reign of Henry V. When Henry VIII. went further and dissolved the monasteries altogether, it became needful to reconstitute those cathedrals which were administered by monks. St. Paul's not being such, remained on the old foundation; Winchester, of which the Bishop was Abbot of the Monastery of St. Swithun, was placed under a Dean and Canons, as was the great Monastery of Christchurch, Canterbury. The last Prior of Winchester became the first Dean. ”

“ Great as has been the part played by kings in the history of our city, that played by bishops has been even greater still, and few among the makers of Winchester hold a more prominent or more honourable place than the great bishop who had succeeded to the see a few years before Henry I.’s death, Henry of Blois, brother of Stephen of Blois, now king of England, whose fortunes were to be closely linked during the two following reigns with those of our city. ”

“ As a whole, this Cathedral of Winchester is a vast building, simple almost to a fault, yet one that possesses a solemn repose unspeakably restful to mind and spirit—a sense of undisturbed harmony and refined yet massive simplicity. Towards eventide the shadows of the turrets and pinnacles creep, day by day, over the surrounding bands of greensward, their cool greys advancing inch by inch until they reach the spacious pavements, whereon they cast the symbols of our Christian faith in ruddy trefoil-headed slants of glory. ”