London. Walter Besant

of questioning. As yet there was no knowledge. Therefore every man's life, however miserable, was, to his happy ignorance, the certain ante-room of heaven. We are fond of dwelling on the mediæval hell, the stupidity and the brutality of its endless torture, and the selfishness of buying salvation by masses. Hell, my friends, was always meant for the other man. He who saw the devils painted on the church-wall, rending, tearing, frying, cutting, burning the poor souls in hell, knew these souls for those of his enemies. Like Dante, he saw among them all his public and his private foes. He looked upward for his hope. There he beheld loving angels bearing aloft in their soft arms the soul redeemed to the abode of perfect bliss. In that soul he recognized himself; he saw the portraiture, exact and lifelike, of his own features.

      When the ambassadors of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid brought gifts to the great King Karl, the finest thing he had to show them was the splendid service of the Church.

      This story is told literally. It might be told as an allegory. In London Saxon and Norman, as also for many centuries to follow, the finest thing they had to show was the Church, with its music that moved the heart to tears; its promises, which steeled the soul to endurance; its glories, which carried the beholder far away from the wattle and clay of his hut and his grimy leathern doublet; its frown, which stood between him and the tyrannous Over Lord, and saved his home from starvation and his womankind from dishonor. Fortunate was it for the people that they had the Church to show to those ambassadors of the Moslem.

      III

      PLANTAGENET

I. ECCLESIASTICAL

      Prince Pantagruel and his companions, pursuing their incomparable voyage, sailed three days and three nights without discovering anything, and on the fourth day made land. The Pilot told them that it was the Ringing Island; and, indeed, they heard afar off a kind of a confused and oft-repeated noise, that seemed at a distance not unlike the sound of great, middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once.

      Commentators have been much exercised as to the city which the great Master of Allegory had in view when he described l'Ile Sonnante. Foolish commentators! As if even a small master of allegory, much less the great and illustrious Alcofribas Nasier, could, or would, mean any one town in particular! One might as well search for the man whose portrait he painted and called Panurge. He described all towns. For, in truth, every mediæval city was an Ile Sonnante, and the greater, the richer, the more populous, the more powerful was the city, the louder and the more frequent were the jinglings and the janglings, the sonorous clang and the melodious peal, the chimings and the strikings, the music and the jarring of the thousand Bells. They rang all day long; they rang from the great Cathedral and from the little Parish Church; from the stately monastery, the nunnery, the College of Priests, the Spital, the Chantry, the Chapel, and the Hermitage. They rang for Festivals, for Fasts, for Pageants, for Processions, for Births, Marriages, and Funerals; for the election of city officers, for Coronations, for Victories, and for daily service; they rang to mark the day and the hour; they rang in the baby; they rang out the passing soul; they rang for the bride; they rang in memory of the dead; they rang for work to begin and for work to cease; they rang to exhort, to admonish, to console.

      With their ringing the City was never quiet. Four miles out of London, the sound of the Bells rang in the ears of the downcast 'prentice boy who sat upon the green slopes of Highgate: the chimes of Bow struck merrily upon his ear above the tinkling of the sheep bell, the carol of the lark, and the song of the thrush. To him they brought a promise and a hope. What they brought to the busy folk in the streets I know not; but since they were a folk of robust nerves, the musical, rolling, melodious, clashing, joyous ringing of bells certainly brought for the most part a sense of elation, hope, and companionship. So, in this our later day, the multitudinous tripper or the Hallelujah lad is not happy unless he can make, as he goes, music – loud music – in the train and on the sands. So, again, those who march in procession do not feel complete without a braying band with drums great and small, banging and beating and roaring an accompaniment to the mottoes on their banners, and uplifting the souls of the champions who are about to harangue the multitude.

      The Ile Sonnante of Rabelais may have been Paris – of course it was Paris; it may have been Avignon – there is not the least doubt that it was Avignon; it may also have been London – there can be no manner of question on that point. Rabelais never saw London; but so loud was the jingle-jangle of the City bells that they smote upon his ear while he was beginning that unfinished book of his and inspired the first chapters. London, without a doubt, London, and no other, is the true Ile Sonnante.

      Of Plantagenet London there is much to be said and written. Place à l'Église! It was a time when the Church covered all. Faith unquestioning seemed to have produced its full effect. The promised Kingdom, according to eyes ecclesiastic, was already among us. What could be better for the world than that it should be ruled absolutely by the Vicar of Christ? Yet the full effect of this rule proved in the event not quite what might have been expected.

      In London, says an observant Frenchman, there is no street without a church and a tree. He speaks of modern London. Of London in the thirteenth century, there was no street without its monastery, its convent garden, its College of Priests, its Canons regular, its Friars, its Pardoners, its sextons, and its serving brothers, and this without counting its hundred and twenty parish churches, each with its priests, its chantries, its fraternities, and its church-yard. The Church was everywhere; it played not only an important part in the daily life, but the most important part. Not even the most rigid Puritan demanded of the world so much of its daily life and so great a share of its revenues as the Church of the Middle Ages. There were already whispered and murmured questions, but the day of revolt was still two hundred long years ahead. Meantime the Church reigned and ruled, and no man yet dared disobey.

      Let us consider, therefore, as the most conspicuous feature of Plantagenet London, her great religious Houses. We have seen what they were in Norman London. Already there were there in existence the Cathedral of St. Paul's, with its canons and priests, its army of singing men, clerks, boys, and servants – itself a vast monastic House; the Priory of St. Bartholomew; the House of St. Mary Overies; the Hospital of St. Katherine; the Priory of the Holy Trinity. After three hundred years, when we look again upon the map of London, and mark in color the sites of Monastery, Nunnery, Church, College, and Church-yard, it seems as if a good fourth part of the City area was swallowed up in ecclesiastical Houses. Not so much was actually covered by buildings of the Church, but at least a fourth of the City, counting the gardens and the courts and chapels, belonged to the Church and the religious Houses. Without such a map it is impossible to estimate the enormous wealth of the mediæval Church, its power, and its authority. It is impossible to understand without such a map how enormous was that Revolution which could shake off and shatter into fragments a power so tremendous. Because, as was London, so was every other city. If London had a hundred and twenty churches, Norwich had sixty; York had forty-five. If the country all round London was parcelled out among the religious Houses, so all over the land, manors here, and estates there, broad acres everywhere belonged to the monks. But though their property was enormous, their power was far beyond that conferred by any amount of property, for they held the keys of heaven and kept open the gates of hell.

      As for the vast numbers actually maintained by the Church, the single example of St. Paul's Cathedral – of course, the largest foundation in the City – will furnish an illustration. In the year 1450 the Society, a Cathedral body, included the following: the Bishop, the Dean, the four Archdeacons, the Treasurer, the Precentor, the Chancellor, thirty greater Canons, twelve lesser Canons, about fifty Chaplains or chantry priests, and thirty Vicars. Of inferior rank to these were the Sacrist and three Vergers, the Succentor, the Master of the Singing-school, the Master of the Grammar-school, the Almoner and his four Vergers, the Servitors, the Surveyor, the twelve Scribes, the Book Transcriber, the Book-binder, the Chamberlain, the Rent-collector, the Baker, the Brewer, the singing-men and choir-boys, of whom priests were made, the Bedesmen, and the poor folk. In addition to these must be added the servants of all these officers – the brewer, who brewed in the year 1286, 67,814 gallons, must have employed a good many; the baker, who ovened every year 40,000 loaves, or every day more than a hundred, large and small; the sextons, grave-diggers, gardeners, bell-ringers, makers and menders of the ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpenters, masons, painters, carvers