Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/65

 9-s. vi. JULY 2i, 190ft] NOTES AND QUERIES. 51 Any one who has read his ' Beowulf' must be aware of this use of ecg in O.E., but MR. HARRISON credits me with ignorance of it. He says that I failed to perceive that in O.E. names it " was a poetical name for a sword.' Owing to the very great antiquity of O.E. personal names, it should be obvious that we must not explain them by invoking the artificial poetic diction. They must be ex- plained in conjunction with their continental cognates, and it is the root meaning that we must start from. There is no doubt about that of ecg; it is the English cognate of Latin octet. But it is risky to attempt to explain the meaning of these Germanic names. All we can do is to point out the stems from which they are derived, as I did in the case of Ecg-geat and Ead-geat. There is no doubt as to the root of geat, but it is impossible to determine its meaning in personal names. It may mean one of the tribe of Geatas, or the god Geat (a hypostasis of Woden), or simply " hero," or half a dozen other things. W. H. STEVENSON. AN ABBOT OF FURNESS (9th S. v. 396).— Probably the REV. MR. McGovERN will agree with me that one or two of the charges men- tioned in the passage he quotes are so absurd as to refute themselves. Such calumnious statements, however, do some good, for they occasionally induce the reader to look into the matter for himself with a result not anti- cipated by the author of them. The history of the destruction of Furness Abbey resembles the history of the destruction of many of the monasteries in the sixteenth century. It is a tale of royal cupidity, of corrupt and un- scrupulous agents, of surrenders extorted from timid monks by threats or false pro- mises. That this was the case at Furness is proved by overwhelming evidence, as is also the fact that the kings commissioners, do what they might, were unable to make out any serious charges against the abbot or the other members of the brotherhood. Four antiquaries of note have dealt with the subject, to say nothing of historians, and in every case the verdict is the same. Thus, for instance, Baines, in his ' History of Lancashire' (vol. i. chap, xii.), quotes from original papers in the British Museum as to the dissolution of the abbey:— " All the members of the community with the tenants and servants were successively examined in private: and the result of a protracted inquiry was that though two monks were committed to Lancaster Castle, nothing could be discovered to criminate either the abbot or the brotherhood. The commissioners proceeded to Whalley, where a new summons compelled the abbot of Furness to re- appear before them. A second investigation was instituted, and the result was the same. The Earl of Surrey, one of the commis- sioners, having done his utmost to discover crimes, but without result, resolved to try if he .could not persuade the abbot to sur- render the abbey of his own free will. He found him " of a very facile and ready mind " on the subject, and, accordingly, a deed was offered him to sign, in which, having acknow- ledged the " misorder and evil rule both unto God and the King of the brethren in the said abbey, he in dis- , charge of his conscience gave and surrendered to Henry all the title and interest which he pos- sessed in the monastery of Furness, its lands and revenues." The neighbouring abbey of Whalley had just been suppressed and its abbot hanged. The abbot or Furness accordingly, placed between the gibbet and surrender, signed. As to the nature of the " misorder and evil rule" which the abbot admitted, it may be guessed from a list of the " crimes charged on the monks of Furness and Salley " (Bib. Cott. Cleopatra, E iv. 69, p. iii b). There are about a dozen of them, some amusing, all puerile. The most serious is the first, in which the abbot is charged with telling a falsehood on one occasion; another accusation is that he believed in the prophecies of the Holy Maid of Kent. Two monks are also chargeo with the heinous offence of having said that " the bishop of Rom was unjustly put down," and that "no secular knave shud be hed of the church." So perished this grand old Cistercian pile, that its wealth, which had been used to feed the poor, might fill the royal treasury. The effect of its fall on the surrounding country was great. Whitaker tells us how the peasantry relapsed into agricultural barbar- ism, till even the tradition that wheat had ver been grown in the neighbourhood died away, though it had been ingathered regularly every year oy the monks and their tenants until the former disappeared. Nor was Fur- ness Abbey any exception to the rule. And yet there are people in hundreds in England who believe that monastic life in the sixteenth century seethed with corruption, and who are even inclined to forgive Henry all his murders and other crimes, oecause he so ruthlessly swept the monks away. T. P. ARMSTRONG. Timperley. In West's ' Antiquities of Furness' (1774), Appendix No. x. (4), is the list of "crimes charged on the monks of Furness and Salley,"