Chapterhouse

“ When the Commons began to meet apart from the Lords they met a few times in the refectory, as I told you just now, but they soon settled down in this Chapter-House. It would be too long and tedious a story for me to attempt to recount the important acts that were passed in this memorable edifice. The Commons sat here till the last day of Henry VIII's life; their next meeting was in St. Stephen's Chapel in the adjacent Palace.
From 1547 to 1863, the Chapter-House was used as a storehouse for the public records. ”

“ In a secular foundation, where each man lives in his own house, only one common building besides the church is actually necessary. The refectory and dormitory are useless; the cloister is a luxury which may be dispensed with; but there must be a place where the whole body may meet for elections, and for whatever other business they have to discharge. The Chapter-house is therefore quite as much needed in a secular as it is in a monastic foundation. And it should be noticed that in secular foundations the Chapter-house is much more strictly part of the church than it is in a monastery. ”

“ Both the vestibule and the chapter-house are fine examples of Early English. In the former light, graceful piers support the vaulting without capitals, the mouldings being continued along the piers and vaulting in a very beautiful manner. The Chapter-House is a noble chamber. Its shape is oblong, and it was built about 1240. There is a fine east window of five lights; and windows of three lights are on the north and south sides, and have detached shafts. The glass is modern, and represents the chief persons associated with the history of the Cathedral. ”

“ The east walk of the cloisters was finished in 1345, and the south and west walks a few years later under the rule of Abbot Litlington. The north walk is a century earlier. From the east walk we enter the Chapter-House. The doorway is remarkably fine, with its sculptured figures in the mouldings. This is one of the finest and largest chapter-houses in England, and was built by Henry III. in 1250. Its plan is octagonal. There is a central, slender, clustered shaft from which the vaulting springs. This vault is a restoration. The windows have beautiful tracery, and are filled with modern glass. ”

“ He adds: "Slate it and pave the way to it and about it, that Friends may go dry to their meeting. [100] You may let any poor, honest Friend live in the house, and so let it be for the Lord's service, to the end of the world."
A deep hawthorn lane, winding to the left, led us to that apostolic meeting-house, well-nigh hidden from the road by its high, grey, ivy-topped wall. We passed through a grassy outer court into an inner enclosure thick-set with larches, hollies, and wild cherry. The paths are paved. Luxuriant ivy curtains porch and wall, and clambers up over the low tower. ”

“ I may mention early specimens of it at Chester, both in the Chapter-house (Fig. 385) and in the Lady Chapel, the latter with raised ridges; but in each the addition being only in the side cells. The Chapter-house at Wells has the intermediate ribs added throughout to those of the more normal examples at Westminster and Salisbury, giving its vaulting a peculiarly full and rich, though rather crowded, effect. Bosses are usually introduced at all points of meeting, adding greatly to the richness of the whole. ”

“ Yet at no extraordinarily remote day this chamber has evidently been tenanted, and, before it was given up to darkness, was comfortably fitted, according to the standard of comfort which was known in college in the days of George II. There is still a roomy fireplace before which legs have been stretched and wine and gossip have circulated in the days of wigs and brocade. For the room is spacious and, when it was lighted by the window looking eastward over the fields and common, it must have been a cheerful place for a sociable don. ”

“ The residences of all the great and wealthy possessed one general character. The central point and most important feature was the great hall, adjoining which in most houses a "parlour," or talking-room, had recently been built. A principal chamber for the ladies of the household was generally placed on the ground-floor, with an upper chamber, or "soler," over it. In the larger establishments additional chambers had been clustered around the main building, increasing in number with the wants of the household. ”

“ Horace Walpole wrote some bitter verses on the subject of that House whose members "sleep in monumental state, to show the spot where their great Fathers sate;"
"Thou senseless Hall, whose injudicious space, Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race, Where Kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene." [43]
Peers themselves no doubt regard the Upper Chamber as a haven where merit may receive its ultimate reward; where the achievements and the recompense of the deserving are suitably immortalized. ”

“ This done in his chamber, I with him to Westminster Hall, and there took a few turns, the Hall mighty full of people, and the House likely to be very full to-day about the money business. Here I met with several people, and do find that people have a mighty mind to have a fling at the Vice-Chamberlain, if they could lay hold of anything, his place being, indeed, too much for such, they think, or any single subject of no greater parts and quality than he, to enjoy. ”

“ In the daylight a warm dimness prevails. At night the Chamber looks more impressive, when a mellow radiance streaming from the lights through its glass ceiling falls upon the crowded benches. But to the uninstructed stranger accidentally straying into it on an off-day, its stiff arrangement of tiers of benches, upholstered in dark green, on each side, and the absence of any pictorial background, would suggest an assembly-room or debating-hall, with a certain air of distinction, it is true, but lacking character and soul. ”

“ The threshold theory must not be pushed to a disregard of the clear evidence for a certain amount of interior action. We have already come across examples of shallow recesses, such as a tent, a cave, a bower, a tomb, a shop, a window, within which, or from within which, personages can speak. There are also scenes which must be supposed to take place within a room. In dealing with these, I propose to distinguish between spacious hall scenes and limited chamber scenes. Hall scenes are especially appropriate to palaces. ”

“ That there should be a chapter-house attached to the cathedral, simply because a chapter-house was needed in former days, is all the reason that we can give for our affection; and we think that the old ladies have spent their money{36} well in preserving the relic. ”

“ In any event, when the business of the day is thus laid before the House the debate begins. To any one who comes into the House gallery for the first time, the scene on the floor is one of apparently hopeless confusion. Members are reading, writing, talking, and moving about the chamber. There is an incessant murmur and buzz of conversation along the aisles and in the galleries. You who are looking on see a member rise and begin to talk, sometimes quietly, more often with great violence and excitement, not because he is really excited, but because he wishes to be heard above the din. ”

“ Then there was half a dozen of other chairs,—all of different sorts,—and they completed the furniture of the room. It was not such a room as one would wish to see inhabited by a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England; but they who know what money will do and what it will not, will understand how easily a man with a family, and with a hundred and thirty pounds a year, may be brought to the need of inhabiting such a chamber. ”

“ Let us enter the chamber of the Commons. Here you see no amphitheatre for the ladies, no boxes for the Peers, nor for the corps diplomatique. A narrow gallery, only, is reserved for the reporters, and another, more spacious, is open to the public. Here are no costly marbles, no statues, no gilding. It is truly nothing but a chamber—a vast apartment, of greater length than width, without ornaments of any sort—indeed, perfectly naked. ”

“ Why not extend our plan up high enough for an 'upper room' for meetings?" This notion, carefully considered, not only in these consultations but in the prayers that closed them, impressed them both as a divine suggestion. The house was built accordingly. An outside staircase gave access to the upper story, which was all finished off in a rough, cheap manner for a chapel, and immediately and for a few years was occupied by the Methodist people of the south part of Middletown and of the farms adjoining, for prayer meetings, class meetings, and occasional exhortation and preaching. ”

“ Apart from the staircase tower, [490] the upper floor of the southern block consisted of the ‘upper’ frater or refectory, a spacious apartment, which had been used for Parliaments and the legatine trial of Henry VIII’s divorce case, and was sometimes known as ‘the Parliament chamber’. [1527] The ground floor is a little more difficult. The survey of 1548 assigns to it a ‘blind’, that is, I suppose, a windowless, or at any rate dark, parlour, which came next the buttery block, and a hall, to which the parlour served as an entry. ”

“ A hall scene does not require so much setting as a chamber scene. It is sufficiently furnished, at any rate over the greater part of its area, with the state and such lesser seats as can very readily be carried on during the opening speeches or during the procession by which the action is often introduced. A bar can be set up, or a banquet spread, or a sick man brought in on his chair, as part of the action itself. ”

“ This fine chamber, 152 ft. in length, is the scene of the state banquets and entertainments of the corporation, and of the municipal meetings “in common hall.” The building also contains a council chamber and various court rooms, with a splendid library, open to the public, a museum and art gallery adjoining. ”

“ The hall is to be furnished with scaffolds to sit on, for Ladies to behold the sports, on each side. Which ended the ladyes are to be brought into the Library, unto the Banquet there; and a table is to be covered and furnished with all banquetting dishes, for the Lord Chancellor, in the Hall; where he is to call to him the Ancients of other Houses, as many as may be on the one side of the table. ”

“ Social Hall is a spacious and cheerful room. The motto of "Our Mountain Home" in brilliant evergreen capitals adorns one end of the hall, while at the other a platform is erected for the musicians, behind whom there is room for those who don't dance to sit and look at the festivities. ”

“ There is a very good Hall at the entrance leads you to a large parlour and drawing room on ye right hand that opens to the gardens—a very good little parlour on the left with servants room, and another parlour for smoakeing, all well wanscoated and painted and the offices convenient—the Chambers are good and lofty and sizeable—good ffurniture in the best 2 Chambers, in an angle the staires leads up halfe way into ye middle of the house and so divides in four parts and runnes to each angle. ”

“ All around the meeting-house is a forest of great trees, and no other building is in the immediate vicinity. One might almost have imagined himself at a Quaker service in pioneer times in America, when the meeting-houses were really as remote and secluded as this one seemed, rather than within twenty miles of the world's metropolis, in a country teeming with towns and villages. ”

“ Sleepy towns most of them; but occasionally one into which the railroad has thrust itself and Industry flaunts a smoky chimney up to the blue sky. Quaker meeting-houses a plenty, with the tiny grave-stones hardly showing themselves through the long grass roundabout them. But those same neat stones show that the Friends are a long-lived folk, and if you lift yourself up to peer through the windows of one of these meeting-houses you may see the exquisite simplicity of its arrangement. ”

“ The beautiful Chapter-House is of Early English design, and was completed about 1230. It is ten-sided, and has a central pillar girt with Purbeck marble shafts, and a stone vaulted roof; lancet windows, filled with good modern glass enlighten the chamber, two in each side. An arcade runs round the walls beneath the windows, and in the carving we see the tooth ornament. ”

“ Yea, though a Chamber be never so closely locked up, Men find at their return, all things that are in it, even covered with a black thin Soot, and all the rest of the Furniture as full of it, as if it were in the house of some Miller, or a Bakers Shop, where the Flower gets into their Cupboards, and Boxes, though never so close and accurately shut. ”

“ Not wishing to disturb the congregation while at their devotions, we loitered near the doorway until the prayer was over, and in the mean time I glanced around the vicinity.
The "meeting-house," of large unhewn logs, was a story and a half in height, and about large enough to seat comfortably a congregation of two hundred persons. It was covered with shingles, with a roof projecting some four feet over the walls, and was surmounted at the front gable by a tower, about twelve feet square. ”

“ In the country, we are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet the meeting-house is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of Heaven, where another sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not plaster, we trust to make bread of life. ”