Manners and customs; Rites and ceremonies -- Great Britain
Thus an old Yorkshire history: "While he was in his greatness, he was
characterized a person of a generous mind, a lover and encourager of
learning and learned men (being himself very learned), hospitable and a
great benefactor to the public; but when, through anger and disgust, he
sided with the parliament and Puritans, he was styled by the Royalists a
perfidious prelate, the shame of the clergy, and the apostate archbishop,
which how much he deserved, considering his provocations, let the reader
judge. He hath many things in print, etc." Lord Campbell adds this tribute
to the memory of this unfortunate prelate, for truly unfortunate he must
be esteemed, "He will always be memorable in English history, as the last
of a long line of eminent ecclesiastics, who, with rare intervals, held
for many centuries the highest judicial office in the kingdom, and
exercised a powerful influence over the destinies of the nation."
Such are a few of the romantic and interesting facts relating to the
military experience of English bishops, which are scattered through the
pages of our national history. In some cases we cannot blame, in others we
must actually applaud, our fighting bishops for patriotism, courage, and
conduct of no common order; and where we may be disposed to censure, we
may justly pause, and weigh the character of the times, the usages of the
church, and admit that in their day and generation, they were not acting
so opposite to their character and profession as we may be disposed to
regard them, if we do so from the higher spiritual conditions of our own
more favoured and settled times.
The Cloister and its Story.
BY S. W. KERSHAW, F.S.A.
"The treasures of antiquity laid up
In old historic rolls I opened."
--BEAUMONT.
Fair and famed are the monastic ruins of our land, from Fountains and
Rievaulx among the Yorkshire dales, to Tintern on the silvery Wye, and
Netley near the placid Solent, one and all alike tell a tale of their past
annals, making up, verily, a treasured page of "Bygone England."
With these buildings are closely connected one of their great agencies,
when, as dispensers of learning, in the early ages, darkness and ignorance
was all around. Just as the legendary dictum arose, that the exquisite
lantern of Ely Cathedral became a guiding light to the traveller, in the
fens and morasses of Eastern England, so these religious homes were the
beacon spots of learning.
In that remote period of way-faring, it was the custom for some churches
to have a fire lighted in an iron framework on the top of an angle
turret, to direct the steps of the stranger, especially through those vast
woods which covered our land, and of which a famous example existed in the
forest of Galtres, in Yorkshire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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