Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal SeeEley, C. King
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See
Eley, C. King
Carlisle Cathedral (Carlisle, England)
George Fox, the intrepid founder of the Society of Friends, came to
Carlisle in 1653 and preached in the cathedral. Some of the congregation
being opposed to him, he was guarded while preaching, by certain
soldiers and friends who had "heard him gladly." At length the "rude
people of the city" rushed into the building, and made a tumult, so that
the governor was forced to send musketeers to quell it.
Fox thus describes the scene, in his "Journal":
"From thence we came to Carlisle.
"On the First-day following I went into the steeple-house: and after the
priest had done, I preached the truth to the people, and declared the
word of life amongst them. The priest got away, and the magistrates
desired me to go out of the steeple-house. But I still declared the way
of the Lord unto them, and told them, 'I came to speak the word of life
and salvation from the Lord amongst them.' The power of the Lord was
dreadful amongst them in the steeple-house, so that the people trembled
and shook, and they thought the steeple-house shook: and some of them
feared it would fall down on their heads. The magistrates' wives were in
a rage and strove mightily to be at me: but the soldiers and friendly
people stood thick about me. At length the rude people of the city
rose, and came with staves and stones into the steeple-house crying,
'Down with these round-headed rogues'; and they threw stones. Whereupon
the governor sent a file or two of musketeers into the steeple-house, to
appease the tumult, and commanded all the other soldiers out. So those
soldiers took me by the hand in a friendly manner, and said they would
have me along with them. When we came forth into the street, the city
was in an uproar, and the governor came down; and some of those soldiers
were put in prison for standing by me, and for me, against the
town's-people.
"The next day the justices and magistrates of the town granted a warrant
against me and sent for me to come before them. After a large
examination they committed me to prison as a blasphemer, a heretic, and
a seducer: though they could not justly charge any such thing against
me."
Fuller, about 1660, describes the building as "black but comely, still
bearing the remaining signes of its former burning."
Further mischief was also done to the building by the Jacobite prisoners
who were lodged in it after the defeat of the Young Pretender.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century some attempts were made at
restoring the cathedral, but they for the most part consisted of hiding
the beautiful choir roof with a stucco groined ceiling, and plentifully
whitewashing the building.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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