Ramsey Abbey

“ A little to the right lies Ramsey.Ramsey, famous for a rich abbey, where every monk lived like a gentleman: there is little of it left now, but a part of the old gate-house. TAB. XVII.In the yard I saw the neglected statue of the famous Alwyn the founder, called alderman of all England, cousin to king Edgar: I take this to be one of the most ancient pieces of English sculpture which we knew of: the insignia he has in his hand, the keys and ragged staff, relate to his office. Anno 1721 many pecks of Roman coins were found there. Probably from the name we may conjecture it was a Roman town. ”

“ Brit. p. 321, and MSS. Bibl. Lambeth, Wharton, L. p. 661. Libris Prioris Gregorii de Ramsey, Prima pars Bibliothecæ Hebraice, etc. Warton Dissert ii. Eng. Poetry.
[366] Bale, iv. 41, et ix. 9. Leland. Scrip. Brit. p. 452.
[367] Ailward, Bishop of London, gave many books to the library of Ramsey monastery, Hoveden Scrip. post. Bedam. 1596, fol. 252. Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. ii.
[368] In the year 1327, the inhabitants of Bury besieged the abbey, wounded the monks, and "bare out of the abbey all the gold, silver ornaments, bookes, charters, and other writings." Stowe Annals, p. 353. ”

“ We know that Mary, the daughter of his brother, King Stephen, was abbess from about 1155 until she broke her vows, left the Abbey, and married Matthew of Alsace, son of the Count of Flanders, about 1161. Henry was Bishop of Winchester from 1129 until 1171. What more likely, then, than that Mary should consult her uncle, known to be a great builder, about the erection of the large church at Romsey?
In the time of Juliana, who probably succeeded Mary, and was certainly abbess for about thirty years before her death in 1199, the transitional work in the clerestory of the nave was carried out. ”

“ This was no doubt used in constructing the roof of the westward extension of the nave and aisles. The next work was the insertion of the two large east windows and the building of the pair of Decorated chapels, one of which was dedicated to Our Lady, and the other to St. Æthelflæd, or Ethelfleda, as her name was then spelt. They were probably divided by an arcade, and stood until the dissolution of the [Pg 22] Abbey, when they were pulled down, being of no further use in the church of the abbey which was purchased by the people of Romsey and converted into a parish church. ”

“ The architectural student and the archaeologist, indeed, regret that so many of the abbey churches have become little more than picturesque ruins such as Glastonbury, or mere grass-covered foundations such as Bindon and Shaftesbury, and when so many have perished we cannot be too thankful that the splendid abbey church at Romsey still stands in all its pristine beauty and interest. ”

“ But to the tourist the most interesting thing in Romsey is the Abbey church, wonderfully dilapidated and picturesque, picturesque with what we generally (and rightly) think the exaggerated picturesqueness of Prout’s architectural pictures. Prout himself could67 scarce have rendered Romsey Abbey more flamboyantly time-worn than it is. Wild flowers, and even large bushes, grow on its walls, and have forced apart their Norman masonry. ”

“ Here—actually here, in these nooks all crumbling under Time's gnawing tooth—did old Cistercian monks kneel with shaved heads and confess their sins, and their bones have been powdered into dust three hundred years! Romsey Abbey—within whose well-kept walls we rather yawned over Palmerstonian eulogiums—is a [pg 714] thousand years old. This abbey is only six hundred and thirty-two years old. Romsey has been restored, and modern men go to church there on Sunday decorously. Netley has been left to go to utter ruin. Grass grows in its long-drawn aisles. ”

“ The names printed in ordinary type are taken from a board suspended in the retro-choir, those printed in italics are added from a list given in the “Records of Romsey Abbey,” by the Rev. H. G. D. Liveing, 1906, which embodies the result of the most recent research. Whenever the date is uncertain c. for “circa” is prefixed; the date of death when known is added, marked with o. for “obiit.” The spelling of many of the names is uncertain; in the list below the spelling follows that given by the authorities quoted above:
About the majority of the abbesses little or nothing is known ”

“ Eadward’s eldest daughter Ælflæd and her sister Æthelhild [Pg 17] both adopted the religious life, and lived for a time at the monastery at Wilton. Here Æthelhild was buried, while Ælflæd was buried at Romsey. Their half-sister St. Eadburh became abbess of St. Mary’s Abbey at Winchester; and it is highly probable that Ælflæd ruled as abbess over the sister establishment at Romsey. ”

“ Nature it would seem was much the same in the sixteenth century as it is now, and the convent servants loved gossip as much as ours do.
The abbess, finding that she could not maintain her authority in the abbey, resigned, and Anne Westbrooke, formerly mistress of the convent school, was appointed to succeed her in 1515. She died in 1593, and was succeeded by the last abbess, Elizabeth Ryprose; she seems to have been a capable woman, and tried hard to do her duty. But it was too late to purify the abbey. Various nuns were reprimanded or punished in 1527 by the vicar-general. ”

“ Ramshorn, who, belonging, as I have said, to the profession, had strong opinions as to the wickedness of not going to church. It was of no use, he said to himself, trying to upset her ideas, for to succeed would only be to make her miserable, and his design was to make the race happy. In the grand old Abbey, therefore, they heard together morning prayers, the Litany, and the Communion, all in one, after a weariful and lazy modern custom not yet extinct, and then a dull, sensible sermon, short, and tolerably well read, on the duty of forgiveness of injuries. ”

“ Westmacott of Sir William Petty, the founder of the Lansdowne family, who was born at Romsey in 1623, and was buried within the abbey, and on the north side a tomb on which a child lies on its side as if asleep, with its limbs carelessly stretched out.
the north aisle of the nave
There is no painted glass of mediaeval date to be seen in the church; such as we find is modern. The three lancets at the west are the work of Messrs. ”

“ The abbess was required in the injunction issued about 1283 not to exercise an autocratic power but only a constitutional one, being guided by the advice of her chapter. It was forbidden to any men except the confessor, and the doctor in case of illness of a nun, to enter the convent; all conversation with outsiders was to take place in the presence of witnesses and in an appointed place. The nuns were forbidden to visit the laity in Romsey, and other like ordinances were enjoined. ”

“ Originally it was a chapel or chantry where mass was said for the repose of the soul of some private benefactor of the Abbey; then it became the eastern apse of the parish church of St. Lawrence; still later it was used as a school, and now serves the purpose of a choir vestry. There are within it two piscinae and two aumbries at different levels, indicating, no doubt, an alteration of level in the altar itself during the period that this chantry was in use. ”

“ Rising amidst green, folding meadows, on the right bank of the Severn, the ruined Abbey forms the central feature in a beautiful, tranquil scene; and, set amidst rich, dark foliage, with the river rolling by, and cattle standing knee-deep in the shallows, has exercised the brush of many a landscape artist.
Founded by Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Chester, early in King [Pg 142] Stephen's reign, Buildwas Abbey is built in a plain, severe style, offering a striking contrast to its more elegant rival at Much Wenlock. ”

“ Ida, the elder, married first Gerard of Gueldres, and then Reginald of Damartin, and the younger, Maud, married the Duke of Brabant, so that it would seem that the pope did not take a very serious view of the Abbess Mary’s broken vows.
pier in the north nave arcade
The thirteenth century abbesses followed one another in quick succession, no good thing for the discipline of the abbey. When Matilda died in 1219, the old gallows on which the abbess had had the right of hanging offenders condemned by her court, fell into disuse, but the right was restored by the King to Amicia. ”

“ During this same century the smaller lady chapel, called the Bow Chapel, was built, and the nave restored in the style of the time by Abbot Peter Ramsam (1475-1504) . To these two men we owe our present splendid fabric. Any visitor to Sherborne Abbey can for himself easily perceive the differences which mark off the choir as a building from the nave. The choir from floor to vault is one harmonious piece of work, so lovely, so complete, that the wit of man could scarcely design anything finer ”

“ No trace is left of Edward's Norman monastery, save the foundations of some of the pillars and a round arch in the cloisters; but we know that his church was nearly on the same place as the present Abbey, and that the old Norman nave stood for many hundred years joined on to the choir and transepts of the new Early English building, and was pulled down bit by bit as the later church grew. For the beautiful Abbey which we see before us now, in the heart of a busy thoroughfare, is the work, not of one generation, but of five hundred years. ”

“ Architects and contractors must live, even though to earn a livelihood they disastrously renew delightful work that has been mellowing for centuries. Everywhere the old work has been scraped, and glass-papered, and tinkered, and endued with a modern smugness, until, as you stand before it, you sigh for the richness of colour that was a delight and a warranty of antiquity.
68 Romsey Abbey is almost entirely Norman—thick-limbed and sturdy, with a virile simplicity in its ornaments of pier and arch. ”

“ We may be thankful that, with the exception of a few windows on the north side there is no Perpendicular work. When we remember that the wealth which flowed into the coffers of many cathedral and abbey churches during the Middle Ages chiefly in the form of offerings from pilgrims at wonder-working shrines, was often used in almost entirely rebuilding, or, at any rate remodelling, the churches in the fifteenth century, we may be surprised to find so little work of this period at Romsey. ”

“ After ten years of married life, the rash lovers were compelled to separate, the power of the Church proving too strong for them. In the reign of Henry III. power to condemn and to hang criminals was restored to the abbess of Romsey—this peculiar privilege having become obsolete. The rules of the monastery were strict and the discipline well maintained, earning for Romsey a reputation for high moral tone, as well as for liberality and learning. A marvellously beautiful piece of the nuns’ handiwork can still be seen in an altar cloth of the present church. ”

“ All the others which once stood here have disappeared, leaving nothing to remind us of their former existence save, in some few cases, the name of a street or lane. Of the glorious Abbey, probably the wealthiest nunnery that ever existed in the kingdom, nothing but the walls that once enclosed the precincts on the south-east, and the foundations of the church, long entirely hidden from sight by surface soil, now happily opened out by recent excavations, remain. ”

“ The history of York Abbey is heartbreaking to lovers of art—for from every standpoint St Mary’s church stood as a perfect type of English work. How few people realise that within a few hundred yards of the world-famed minster are the remains of what was architecturally a far more glorious structure, and which, though not so great in length, possessed more beauty of workmanship than the venerable minster. English Gothic was at the height of its perfection{40} when, in 1270, Abbot Simon of Warwick rebuilt the Abbey. ”

“ The aged clerk who conducted me about, said he remembered when a boy to have seen soldiers with long bag-wigs like those in the picture.
About three-quarters of a mile from the Minster, on a hill near to the town, are the romantic ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey, overgrown with trees and ivy. The people here have the not very praiseworthy project of erecting a public building on the same hill: they have even begun to dig the foundation; in doing which they have come upon some of the most beautiful remains of the old abbey, as perfect as if executed yesterday. ”

“ On the northern bank of the river Calder, in a deeply secluded vale, sheltered by majestic forest trees, which rise from the skirts of level and luxuriant meadows to the tops of the surrounding hills, stands the ruined Abbey and home of that little colony of Monks, who, with their Abbot Gerold at their head, were detached from the mother Abbey of Furness in 1134 to begin their fortunes under the auspices of Ranulph de Meschines (the second of the name) their powerful neighbour and founder. ”

“ The local presbytery of 1618 deserve even more contumely for their hideous disfigurement of the three bays of the nave that still remained, which were rebuilt, and walled in in most ruthless fashion.
The wonderful charm of Melrose Abbey as a building{188} is not its only feature. The remains lie here of King Alexander II. and his spouse; Douglases without number; and many other men and women who have loomed largely in the history of our island. ”