Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/659

 GLASTONBURY

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GLASTONBURY

well's own note in his manuscript "Remembrances" as to the booty obtained from Glastonbury at this, the second, spoliation: "The plate of Glastonbury, 11,000 ounces and over, besides golden. The furniture of the house of Glaston. In ready money from Glaston £1 ,100 and over. The rich copes from Glaston. The debts of Glaston. [evidently due to the abbey] £2,000 and above." While his monastery was being sacked and his community dispersed. Abbot Whiting was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London and subjected to secret examination by C'romwell. It is curious that the ordinary procedure of law, by which a bill of attainder should have been presented to and passed by Parliament, was utterly ignored in his case ; indeed his execution was an accomplished fact before Parhament came together. His condemnation and execution and the appropriation of his monastery wit h its possessions to the Crown could only be justified legally by the abbot's attainder, but no trace that any trial did take place can be found. Such an omission, however, was not likel}- to trouble Cromwell, as is shown by the note in his autograph "Remembrances": "Item. The Abbott of Glaston to be tryed at Glaston and also executyd there with his complycys. " Accordingly Abbot Whiting was sent back to Somersetshire, still apparently in ignorance of the fact that there was now no Ghistonburj' Abbey for him to return to. He reached Wells on 14 November, where some sort of a mock trial seems to have taken place, and the next day, Saturday, 15 November, he with two of his monks, John Thorne and Roger James, was carried from Wells to Glastonbury. At the outskirts of the town the three martyrs were fastened to hurdles and dragged by horses up the steep sides of Tor Hill to the foot of St. Michael's tower at its summit. Here all were hanged, their bodies beheaded and cut into quarters, Abbot Whiting's head being fixed over the great gate- way of his ruined alibey as a ghastly warning of the ]iunishment pi-epared for such as opposed the roj'al will (see Richard Whiting, Ble.ssed). There can be no doubt that a special example was deliberately made of Glastonbury, inasmuch as by its wealth, its vast landed possessions, its munificence, and the halo of sanctity with which its past history and present obser- vance had crowned it, it was by far the greatest spirit- ual and temporal representative of CathoUc interests still surviving in England. The savagery with which it was attacked and ruined was intended to and did strike terror into all the ^^'est of England, and during Henry's lifetime there was no further resistance to be feared from that part of his realm. During the brief restoration of Catholicism in Queen Mary's reign, some of the surviving monks petitioned the queen to restore their abbey again, as having been the most ancient in England. The queen's death, however, put an end to all hopes of restoration.

Buildings. — Very httle of the vast pile of buildings now remains above ground, but in its main lines the abbey followed the usual plan, a vast cruciform church on the north side, with cloister, conventual buildings, abliot's lodgings, and rooms for guests all south of this. The one unique feature was at the west end of the great church, where the west door, instead of opening to the outer air in the usual way, gave entrance to a so-called "Galilee", which in turn led into the church of St. Mary, the westernmost part of the entire edifice. This famous church, now often called in error the Chapel of St. Jo.seph of Arimathea, was built between 1184 and 1186 to take the place of the original i^ctusta ecclesia which had been entirely destroyed in the great fire of 1184. It is said to preserve exactly the size and shape of the original building and measures sixty feet by twenty-four. The (ialilee was added about a century later when the western part of the great church was being completed to form a connexion between the two churches, thus making the whole western extension about one hundred and nine feet long. This western

part is tlie most perfect of all the ruins. The Norman work of 1184, exquisite in design and very richly dec- orated, has stood perfectly, although in the fifteenth century a crypt was excavated beneath it to the depth of some eleven feet. At the same period tracery in the Perpendicular style was inserted in the Norman win- dows at the west end, portions of which still remain. Of the great church (400 feet by 80), the piers of the chancel arch, some of the chapels at the east side of the transepts, and a large portion of the outer wall of the choir aisles are practically all that remains. The nave consisted of ten bays ; the transepts of three each, the outer two on either side being extended ea-st ward to form chapels. The choir at first had four bays only, butwas increased to six in the later fourteenth century the chapels behind the high altar being again modified in the fifteenth century. It is much to be regretted that so large apartof the buildings has been destroyed, but since the ruins were for long used as a kind of quarry, from which anyone might carry off materials at sixpence a cartload, the wonder is that anything at all is left. The ruins have recently been purchased at the cost of £.30,000 ($150,000) through the action of the Bishop of Bath and WelLs (Anglican) and are now held by trustees as a kind of national monument. Every effort is being made to preserve what is left, and also, by means of excavation, to recover all possible knowledge of what has been destroyed.

One curious relic still exists. The church clock, formerly in the south transept of the great church, was removed in 1539, carried to WelLs, and placed in the north transept of the cathedral there. It bears the inscription Pctrus Lightfoot 7nonachus fecit }ioc opus, and was constructed in the time of Abbot de Sodbury (1322-35). The outer circle of the dial has twenty- four hours on it, another within I his shows the minutes, and a third again gives the [ihases of the moon. Above the dial is an embattled tower in which knights on horseback revolve in opposite directions every hour as the clock strikes and represent a mimic tournament. The original works were removed from Wells some years ago and mav be seen, still working, in the Vic- toria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. This, with Lightfoot's other clock at Wimborne Minster, Dorset, are commonly held to be the oldest known. Of the conventual buildings the abbot's kitchen and a small part of the hospice alone survive. The former is an octagon set within a square and crowned with an octagonal pyramid. Within it is square in plan, the roof rising in the centre to the height of seventy-two feet. The upper part forms a double lantern of stone, which was formerly fitted with movable wooden shutters so that the smoke might always be let out on the side away from the wind. Practicallj' all the rest is level with the ground, but mention must be made of the library, of which Leland, who saw it in Abbot Whiting's time, declares that no .sooner was he over the threshold but he was struck with astonishment at the sight of so many remains of antiquity; in truth he be- lieved it had scarce an equal in all Britain. In the town, amongst other buildings erected by various abbots, are the court-house, the churches of St. Benig- nus and St. John the Baptist, the tithe barn, a four- teenth-century building and the finest existing speci- men of tliis class of structure, also the Pilgrim's Inn, a late I'erpeudicularworkbuiltatthe end of the fifteenth century, where, it is said, all visitors used to be treated as guests and entertained for two days at the abbot's expense.

Still in the neighbourhood, in many places, one sees the ruined abbey's coat of arms: Vert, a cross botonee argent; in the first quarter the Blessed Mother of God standing, on her right arm the Infant Saviour, a sceptre in her left hand.

The Glastonbury Thorn {Cralegus Oxyacantha Prarox) is a variety of hawthorn, originally found only at Glastonbury, which has the peculiarity of