laws, which though they did not prevent her from the secret and concealed exercise of her mission, which hundreds of bloody martyrdoms failed to put down, made all public exercise of it simply impossible. By this means alone it was that things came into their present condition. Liberty has now been restored to her, but she has to overtake the great tide of evil which has accumulated and rushed on with unchecked fury, while the hands of the true Mother were tied, and while she was compelled to look on powerless from a distance upon her children, given over to the power of the enemy. Never before did Satan wage a persecution so successful. The work now to be done is indeed enormous, and the means of attempting it are, humanly speaking, very small. Yet we do not despair, for we cannot bring ourselves to believe that, unless God had purposes of mercy towards our country, so wonderful a resurrection of the Church among us as the last few years have witnessed could possibly have taken place. Let us then "thank God and take courage.

Oh that we had with us the help of all who ought to be on our side! It is sad to think how many of our countrymen, who already see that our country and theirs can be saved only by bringing to bear upon it the principles of the one Catholic Church, continue to delude themselves with the vain hope that they may save it by working those principles in the bosom of a schismatical and heretical communion. What might we not hope to do, if all who desire the revival of Catholic principles of action were only united in the one Church in which alone their existence is possible? It is ours to unite heartily in prayer for the enlightenment of these our deluded brethren, first, no doubt, for their own sake, and then for the sake of our country.

ART. II.-CHRONICLE OF EVESHAM ABBEY.

Chronicon Abbatiæ de Evesham ad annum 1418. Edited by WILLIAM DUNN MACRAY, M. A., Chaplain of Magdalene and New Colleges, and Assistant in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. London: Longman. 1863.

TH

HE Master of the Rolls has rendered a very great service to all persons interested in the medieval history of England, though that service may be, in the form it is given, somewhat incomplete. It is not in his power, even if it be his will, to employ the proper instruments: three hundred years of heresy, with its accompanying ignorance, have collected

a cloud over the ancient records which modern learning cannot disperse; at least that sort of learning which is at the command of the Master of the Rolls. The ability to read an old writing is not the only qualification desirable in an editor; and even the accomplishments of a modern education may prove a snare. But the grave difficulty with which men have to contend is the ignorance of ancient ways, as well as the ignoring of modern practices, which, though they may be unknown to most English scholars, are not unknown to those who pretend to no particular erudition. Thus, by way of illustration, we may instance Mr. Macray himself-a man not inferior to any of his colleagues, and superior to some of them-who says that an indulgence of a hundred days was granted to those who venerated the church of Evesham. If Mr. Macray had been in the habit of gaining, or of trying to gain, indulgences, a practice not uncommon among his countrymen and countrywomen, even in and around Oxford, he would have doubted the reading of his MS. before he allowed such a statement to appear in print. Not having seen his MS., we cannot tell whether he has read it correctly or not; but we feel some little confidence that, if he has, the scribe made a grave mistake. The indulgence was granted to those who visited the church, not to those who venerated it, whoever they may have been.*

This chronicle of the abbey of Evesham the abbot was a peer of the realm-for which we are indebted to Mr. Macray, traces the history of the monastery from its foundation in the very beginning of the eighth century down to the beginning of the fifteenth. S. Egwyn, bishop of Worcester, moved by heavenly visions, established monks of the Order of S. Benedict in a waste and barren land, overrun with thorns and briers; but to-day and for many ages gone by, one of the most fruitful portions of fruitful England, the vale of Evesham.

S. Egwyn was bishop of Worcester, and his territorial rule extended over the desolate vale, but he procured from the Sovereign Pontiff a complete exemption from that rule for the rising monastery; the bishop of Worcester gave up the vale and its future inhabitants, and settled them with an independent jurisdiction, for which they were not accountable to anybody but to the Pope. This immunity finds no favour in the eyes of Mr. Macray, who says of it that it "proved so fertile in abuses, and formed at last so strong a link in the chain of causes which drew on the overthrow of the monastic system amongst us."+

"Concessit omnibus pœnitentibus et hanc ecclesiam venerantibus de pœnitentia sibi injuncta centum dies relexationis." Venerantibus may or may not be in the MS., but the bishop's formula was visitantibus (p. 279). + Pref. p. i.

Even if it were true that the exemption did all that is here laid to its charge, it is very little to the purpose; because exemptions are privileges which we need not discuss: they have been settled for many centuries by the supreme judge of bishops and abbots, and in this instance of the abbey of Evesham, it was the bishop of Worcester himself who barred his own rights.

In the course of time, as we shall see, the abbey had to fight for its privileges, but it never had to defend their lawfulness or even their expediency: the successors of S. Egwyn in the see of Worcester never disputed the exemptions as lawful in themselves, but they contended that the abbey had either lost them or had never possessed them. Neither does it appear that the ruin of monasteries was ever contemplated as a necessary consequence of independent abbeys. On the whole, bishops and abbots lived in peace; and if the world had not been troubled with other questions than that of exemption from episcopal or diocesan jurisdiction, it is just possible that the abbeys and their inmates might have been visible at this day.

For two hundred and forty years after its foundation the abbey of Evesham observed the rule of S. Benedict, peaceably governed by successive abbots, and in the possession of the endowments which S. Egwyn had given it or procured for it. S. Egwyn himself resigned his bishopric and became the abbot of the church he had founded. On the death of Eadwin, the nineteenth abbot, there was a reformer in the neighbourhood ready to do his work. He had his notions about divine service, and his theories about property, just as if he had been born six hundred years later. He was a great nobleman of Mercia, perhaps the subregulus, Alchelm by name. By some means or other he obtained a grant of the abbey from king Edmund, not the saint, as the chronicler is careful to tell us, and treated it as his property. The issue was that the monks were driven out, and secular canons introduced, who, as usual on occasions of this kind—and they were many in those days-accepted the abbey with diminished revenues: for the change was in the nature of a reform. These canons were expelled afterwards by S. Dunstan and S. Ethelwold, who restored the monks to their lawful home; the possessions of the abbey were also recovered, either from the chief robber himself or from his heirs and assigns.

After the death of king Edgar, who had in all matters relating to the religious houses cordially assisted S. Dunstan and S. Ethelwold, Elferus, earl of Mercia, seized upon the abbey, expelled the monks, and in their place substituted a few canons. He too was a reformer: he gave the lands of the abbey to his soldiers, and paid the priests who served the desolated

churches what he pleased. This nobleman, after a life of rapine, was seized with remorse when he came to die, and by way of restitution, gave the abbey to the monk Freodegar, who, when he went to take possession of the gift, was resisted by the canons and finally driven away. In this perplexity he made an exchange with one Godwin, lord of Towcester, who secured his bargain by obtaining a confirmation of it from Ethelred the king. The abbey and its possessions were now in the hands of men who cared nothing for the rule of S. Benedict, and the monks were excluded from it, to all appearances, for ever. In the beginning, however, of the eleventh century, king Ethelred sent a monk from Ramsey to the abbey, Aelfward by name, who, being a man of great resolution, rescued the church out of the hands of Godwin, and not only recovered most of its possessions, but re-established its exemption, which it had practically lost, from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Worcester, who had been himself, in an irregular way, one of the temporary owners of the plundered abbey. The powerful lords of Mercia were not the only persons whom the monks were in fear of in the matter of their lands: for those of a lower order in the state knew the value of broad acres as well as the great barons; and more than once did such people lay claim to fields and meadows, and go to law with the unhappy monks. One of these men living close by the abbey-rusticus, et moribus agrestis-entered upon the domains of the community, and held possession by violence, of the land he had stolen; he persisted in his purpose, and by dint of hard swearing carried on the process against the monks so far as to leave but one act undone previous to a formal sentence in his favour. The judges in the cause appointed a day for this man to appear before them on the land in question, and there to make oath that he believed it to be his own. On the day assigned the prior of Evesham, bearing the relics of S. Egwyn and accompanied by many of the monks, went forth, in sad procession, trusting no longer in human justice, but commending their cause to God and the saint their founder. The countryman also made his appearance, accompanied by a tumultuous rabble, who exulted in the anticipated plunder of the monks. He, too, had made his preparations: for he had covered the inner soles of his shoes with earth taken from land which was undoubtedly his own, and was therefore qualified to swear, when he stood on the lands of the monks, that he claimed the fields, which was true, and that he was standing on his own ground-also true.* He did not live to complete his perjury,

"Sumpserat de domo sua pulverem, et eo subtalares suos impleverat, ut tuto jurare posset quod supra terram suam consisteret" (p. 43).

for a reaping-hook or scythe, which he held in his hands was so carelessly handled that it struck him on the head. The blow was so violent that it deprived him of life-to the terror of his friends, but to the relief of the abbey, for his iniquitous claim perished with him.

At the Conquest, when so many religious houses, as well as churches, of greater and of less reputation, felt heavily the mailed hand of the rapacious barons, who paid themselves out of the spoils of England, the church of Evesham happily escaped. The abbot Agelwy found favour in the eyes of the Conqueror, and not only protected his own abbey, but afterwards, as one of the judges, procured the restoration of many stolen manors to their rightful owners. It was at the close of the twelfth century that the abbey suffered most; and the story of its wrongs is the chief subject of the Chronicle which is now before us.

By the martyrdom and canonization of S. Thomas, the great monastic church of Canterbury acquired a new title to the reverence of Europe: pilgrims from all nations thronged the roads that led to it, and the monks of Christchurch, guardians of the shrine, became a power in the land. None felt this to be an inconvenience more keenly than Baldwin, the archbishop, who ought to have rejoiced in the splendours of his church, and in the renown it had purchased by the blood of the martyr on whose throne he sat, but of whose spirit he was not the heir. Baldwin had been himself a monk and an abbot, but as bishop of Worcester, and afterwards as archbishop of Canterbury, the only sign of his ancient profession was his oppression of the monks of Christchurch. Confederate with certain

bishops who had always thwarted his martyred predecessor, he proposed to build a new church near Canterbury, and to endow it for secular canons. He endeavoured to hide his real intent by dedicating it to S. Stephen and S. Thomas; but the monks were not so simple as to enter the net prepared for them. They resisted the scheme; for it was neither more nor less than their eventual ruin. The archbishop proposed to make all the bishops prebendaries of the church; and even Henry II. himself was to have his stall in the new foundation, and to sing the office, at least by proxy. While the monks were striving to avert the degradation of the great church of Canterbury to the rank of an abbey of the second order, or, rather, of a priory, one of their number, Roger Norreys by name, betrayed the counsel of his brethren to the archoishop, and occasioned them greater trouble. When this was found out, the faithless brother was put in prison, out of which, however, he contrived to make his escape, through the sewers of the monastery, and into the court