Saint Andrews

“ Now, from legends we learn that St Andrews is possessed of a prodigious number of supernatural appearances of different kinds, sizes, and shapes—most of them of an awe-inspiring and blood curdling type. In fact, so numerous are they—80 in number they seem to be—that there is really no room for any modern aspirants who may want a quiet place to appear and turn people’s hair white. It might be well to mention a few of them before telling the tale of “The Veiled Nun of St Leonards Church Avenue.” ”

“ Of all the tales I heard, the one that pleased and fascinated me most was the legend of the monk that looks over St Regulus's Tower on moonlight nights. I went thither every night, and constantly fancied I saw a figure peering over the edge, but was not certain. Then I got hold of a very old man, who related to me the old legend. It seems that years ago there was a good Prior of St Andrews named Robert de Montrose. He ruled well, gently, and wisely, but among the monks there was one who was always in hot water, and whom Prior Robert had often to haul over the coals. ”

“ Andrews fell vacant. He at once was appointed to the bishopric by the pope, who said that ‘he was more worthy to be a pope than a bishop, and that the place was better provided for than the person.’ In 1390 he assisted at the funeral of Robert II at Scone, and crowned Robert III, under whose feeble reign he exercised a great influence on the affairs of the country. In the following year he was sent as ambassador to France to effect a treaty between France, England, and Scotland, when a year was spent in fruitless negotiations. ”

“ But whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a college alienated, and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.
St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or sympathy. Events long past are barely known ”

“ A burnished head, gleaming in the sunshine like the gilded ball on a church steeple, rose suddenly out of the waves of dry grass, and a pink-ginghamed figure, radiant with joy and good-will, confronted him. The Bishop's temper, roughly waked up by the unwilling and unepiscopal war-dance just executed, fell back into its chains.
"Did you tie that string across the path?"
"Yes," The shining head nodded. "Too bad you didn't fell 'way down. I'm sorry. But you kicked awf'ly."
"Oh! I did, did I?" asked the Bishop. "You're an unrepentant young sinner. Suppose I'd broken my leg?" ”

“ I’m glad.”
“So am I,” the lad smiled, and waited in an agony now of anxiety to know what it all meant. A minute, two minutes, and he still waited.
“Let me think,” the bishop crossed his legs with deliberation, and puffed a cloud of smoke and gazed at it, absorbed, as it rolled toward the hollyhocks. “Let me think.”
“Yes, sir,” and the lad shut his lips, as it might be to shut in something which kicked and struggled. The bees hummed; the bishop smoked as if hours were nothing, nor yet a young man exploding with curiosity. At length he put the pipe down on the table and pushed it from him. ”

“ The trouble is you want me to be as good as you are; and I can't. If you had had temptations like mine, trials like mine, I might try to follow you—I would try. But you haven't—you're an impossible model for me. You want me to be an angel of light, and I'm only—a man." He turned and went into the house.
The oldest inhabitant had not seen a devotion like the Bishop's and Eleanor's. ”

“ Andrews is the abject city’s name.
It is surely quite superfluous to mention,
To a person who has been here half an hour,
That Golf is what engrosses the attention
Of the people, with an all-absorbing power.
Rich and poor alike are smitten with the fever;
Their business and religion is to play;
And a man is scarcely deemed a true believer,
Unless he goes at least a round a day.
p. 16The city boasts an old and learned college,
Where you’d think the leading industry was Greek ”

“ In St Andrews the reformer was sure to be free from personal danger, and on the whole to have the sympathy of the citizens; though it was not to be supposed that—in the city and university where the late Archbishop Hamilton had been long supreme, and had recently been claiming to exercise the authority of Chancellor of the University, and new founder of St Mary's College, [226] and where he had left behind several relations and dependents more compliant with the new order of things than himself—there were not to be found in this crisis several in [Pg 189] fluential His preaching in St Andrews. ”

“ Yes, I do, too," he fired at me. "I know it happens, sometimes."
With that the lines of his face broke into the sunshiniest smile. He threw back his head with sudden boyishness, and chuckled, "I ought to know; I've had experience," he said. His look settled again thoughtfully. "Did I ever tell you that story—the story about the day I rode seventy-five miles? Well, I did that several times—I rode it once to see my wife. But this was the first time, and a good deal happened. It was a history-making day for me all right. That was when I was aide-de-camp to General Stoneman. Have I told you that?" ”

“ The bishop, in the brightening morning, with no sound on earth but the wind and Billy’s hoof-beats, threw out his arm boyishly.
“Si la jeunnesse savait—si la vieillesse pouvait”—he said aloud. “I am old—I know, and to-day I am young—I can. It’s a good day. Something good is to happen to-day.”
The ferryman’s house was on the Lancaster side, but a hut was on this shore, where he sat often in the daytime. Out of this rose a man’s figure, and stood with arms stretched and head back in a giant yawn. ”

“ I hope you'll see I'm right, Jim, but right or wrong, I've made up my mind."
The Bishop stretched a large, bony hand across the little table that stood between them. Fielding's fell on it. Both men smoked silently for a minute.
"Have you anything against the girl, Dick?" asked the Bishop, presently.
"That she's her father's daughter—it's enough. The bad blood of generations is in her. I don't like the South—I don't like Southerners. And I detest beyond words Fairfax Preston. But the girl is certainly beautiful, and they say she is a good girl, too," he acknowledged, gloomily. ”

“ The twenty-one men in St Andrews, whom the first General Assembly deemed qualified "for ministreing and teaching," were with few exceptions professors, or regents. For the number of the ecclesiastics who joined the congregation at St Andrews in the early months of the Reformation, see supra, p. 13. In September, 1566, St Andrews was emphatically declared to be "the most flourishing city as to divine and human learning in all Scotland" (Laing's Knox, vi. 546) . ”

“ Andrews are the ones least known to the world at large—its antiquity, the ruins of its once stately cathedral, its grim though [Pg 221] much shattered castle, and its university, the oldest in Scotland—one and all, if better known, would bring many tourists who do not care for golf links and resort hotels.
Hither we came from Kinross by the way of Cupar, of which we know nothing save the old Scotch saw of a headstrong man, “He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar,” but why anyone should be so determined to go to Cupar is not clear. ”

“ The Scots honour St. Andrew as principal patron of their country, and their historians tell us, that a certain abbot called Regulus, brought thither from Constantinople in 369, certain relics of this apostle, which he deposited in a church that he built in his honour, with a monastery called Abernethy, where now the city of St. Andrew stands. Many pilgrims resorted thither from foreign countries, and the Scottish monks of that place were the first who were culdees. The Muscovites say, he preached among them, and claim him as the principal titular saint of their empire. ”

“ Andrews remains vacant and churches founded in Lothian only. During the war of succession which followed the death of Malcolm the Third and ended in the firm establishment of the sons of the Saxon Queen Margaret upon the throne of Scotland in the person of Edgar, her eldest son, no successor appears to have been appointed to Fothad, the last native bishop of St. Andrews, and no attempt appears to have been made to follow out the policy which had been inaugurated by that queen of assimilating the native church to that of Rome. ”

“ How could she help it?” The bishop’s sidewise smile came swiftly, without bitterness, only sadly. “He was brilliant, winning, and a great, splendid picture of a man. And I was—as you see—small and ugly.”
A glance of surprise flashed from the young eyes. “I don’t see, sir,” he said bluntly, and stared at the figure in the chair, a strong note in deep black of clothes and sharp white of collar, against the softness of the summer setting.
It is said that in another life the bodies we shall wear—not of flesh and blood, but as real—will be the close expression of personality ”

“ Andrews, where, after completing his studies in humanity and philosophy, he applied himself to the oriental languages. He soon joined the communion of the Roman church, went to France and Italy, and subsequently travelled through Turkey and the East. He mastered so many languages that he was credited with being able to speak to the people of every nation in their own tongue. On returning to Europe he entered the order of Minims at Avignon. Afterwards he lived in retirement at Rome for five years in the French monastery of the Holy Trinity, belonging to his order. ”

“ It was by such advice as this that he exhorted Churchmen to give the Puritans no cause to complain of them.
Other things for which the Bishop especially pleaded, in his time, were the preservation of the doctrine of the Church of England, a higher standard of living among the clergy, and a warmer pastoral spirit. He says of clerical neglect: [5] "If you attend not to the flock, the flock will attend to you. ... While you are neglectful of the people, be sure that the people has its eye on you."
One side of Andrewes' character we must not pass over. ”

“ Andrew, where the relics should be enshrined. St. Rule is said to have carried out the command in company with many fellow voyagers, and to have founded the church of St. Andrew's, where he lived more than thirty years after his landing. A cave on the sea coast hard by still bears his name. He is said to have retired there for prayer. The old church of St. Rule, with its quaint, slender tower, was the first cathedral of the city, which formerly bore the saint's name.
Most modern historians identify St. Rule with an Irish abbot of similar name who is honoured on this day. ”

“ Andrews, was of Norman origin, and was said to have been educated in France. He became one of the clerici regis in Scotland, and he was made chancellor of Scotland in September 1199. During the following month he was elected bishop of Glasgow. ”

“ Heaven grant it may not come for me, I must leave the place.' That was all he could decipher on the burnt paper.
"'We must explore that Prior's Well (evidently that is its name) to-morrow morning,' said our master. We were all up at dawn, and got all the men available to cut down the shrubs, bushes, and the undergrowth round the well, the growth of ages. When the well was exposed it looked very like the holy well at St Andrews, only it had been very finely carved and ornamented at one time. ”

“ Andrews, apprehended that blessed martyr of Christ Jesus, Walter Myln; a man of decrepit age, whom most cruelly and most unjustly he put to death by fire in St. Andrews, the twenty-eighth day of April, the year of God 1558. This did highly offend the hearts of all godly, and immediately after his death a new fervency arose amongst the whole people; yea, even in the town of St. Andrews, the people began plainly to damn such unjust cruelty. ”

“ It has been well to speak of him to show you that even in James' time, when the Church seemed to be going to destruction, there were men who stood up for its rights against the attacks of Puritans. There was at least one good Bishop, and that man Bishop Andrewes, who emphasized the teaching of the Church, and whose life was a model for his brethen to follow, who was as pious and gentle as he was undoubtedly learned. ”

“ Andrews, where he opened a shop with his old sign of the A. B. C. After remaining two years he travelled further north, and in 1622 settled in Aberdeen. Here he met with considerable encouragement from the authorities of the town and the university, and also from Bishop Forbes, who remained through life his firm friend. The house he occupied was on the north side of Castle Street, with the sign of ‘The Townes Armes.’ From 1622 to 1645 he printed continuously, issuing, besides a number of academic productions, some extremely interesting Scottish books. ”

“ It is said that the awe of Andrewes's presence was wont to restrain King James from that unseemly levity in which he was rather too prone to indulge. Andrewes only went to court to deliver his divine Master's message, and so, ‘when through weakness he was unable to preach,’ Bishop Buckeridge tells us, ‘he began to go little to the court.’ Though he was so often preferred, Andrewes was quite indifferent about preferment ”

“ As before, he rode out from the Phoenix Hotel, and at ten o'clock in the morning he turned into Fairfield. It was a still, bright Christmas morning, crisp and cool, and the air like wine. The house stood bravely in the sunlight, but the branches above it were bare and no softening leafage hid the marks of time; it looked old and sad and deserted to-day, and its master gazed at it with a pang in his heart. It was his, and he could not save it. He turned away and walked slowly to the garden, and stood a moment as he had stood last May, with his hand on the stone gateway. ”