English Iconoclasm IV

The fury of English iconolasm came hard upon one of the most prodigious periods of church building in the history of the country. Of the parish churches which ministered to the needs of the faithful virtually none were unaffected by the fifteenth century, If not being rebuilt entirely they were being completed, or extended, or gaining new features, such as clerestories and towers, or chantries, or at very least a few new windows in the latest style. This all reflected the great prosperity of the century. Not until the nineteenth century was there to be such an outburst of church building and improvement. That link is not accidental - the fifteenth and later nineteenth centuries were the two times in English history when wages were consistently ahead of prices. People had money, and they had devotion. 

Parish churches on the whole survived the reformation - the main exceptions were cities which witnessed the union of parishes such as York and Lincoln, and reflecting urban demographic changes.

For great churches - cathedrals, abbeys, collegiate foundations - the future was less certain. Here too there had been considerable building activity, and by 1500 English  architects were displaying not only maturity and confidence, but a renewed inventiveness, as in King Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster. That virtuosity can also be seen in a building linked to it in style if not otherwise, the well chapel at Holywell in North Wales. I cite that both because of its architectural finesse , but also because it is in a fairly remote location, away from the south-east, although it was a popular destination for pilgrims both from the elite and the populace at large - and also because it was sufficiently remote to survive as a place of such pilgrimage through the recusant era.

St Winefride's Well at Holywell, commissioned by the Abbot of Basingwerk circa 1500

Image: Wikipedia

Monastic building was still extensive and for which we have  evidence at Glastonbury, Evesham, Canterbury, Chester, Westminster and in the complete rebuilding of the cathedral priory at Bath. In my home county of  Yorkshire one can still see evidence of that confidence by the Cistercians at Fountains and Kirkstall, and by the Augustinians at Bolton and Bridlington. I did once hear an archaeologist (one of those amongst that community who do not believe in anything unless they have actually dug it up)  asserting that this was the monasteries spending up the money before they were dissolved...

Model of Glastonbury Abbey.

Reconstruction of how the abbey may have appeared in 1539
The easternmost Edgar chapel  and that of Our Lady of Loretto west of the north transept are from the first years of the sixteenth century

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Glastonbury Abbey from the west
 Today the shell of the Lady Chapel and Gallilee in the foreground survive as well as the eastern piers of the central tower and some portions of the aisle walls

Image: Canis Major on Flickr 




The view down the nave today

Image:earlybritishkingdoms.com 

 Evesham Abbey as it may have appeared in 1540
The bell tower is centre right, adjacent to the two surviving parish churches

Image:thealmonry.blogspot.co.uk 

 

The abbey from the south-west

Image:nblazydays.wordpress.com

The bell tower of Evesham Abbey. 
Completed on the eve of the dissolution it is, apart from the doorway of the chapter house and some very low walling all that survives above ground of the central buildings of the complex.

Image: railbus.co.uk

Fountains Abbey

  Image:Copyright Dave MacLeod/cisterciansshef.ac.uk

A reconstruction model of Fountains as seen from the east on the eve of the dissolution of the abbey
 Image:capper-online.de

Of these great churches the cathedrals survived, with the exception of St Mary's cathedral priory in Coventry, about which there is something here. The creation of five new dioceses ensured the survival of the main structure at Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough and Oxford, but many others listed as potential diocesan centre - the grand idea seems to have been a diocese for each county, but money constraints doubtless came intp play, leading to the loss of great buildings, including Bury St Edmunds, Colchester and Fountains.

 

A reconstruction of Bury St Edmunds in the later middle ages

Image:stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk 

A model in the abbey grounds at Bury St Edmunds showing the abbey in its earlier phase, before the collapse of the west tower in 1431 and its subsequent rebuilding

The present cathedral is the church to the immediate north-west of the abbey in the rear centre

Image:bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk 

Bury St Edmunds abbey today

At the rear is the splendid tower from 2000 of the Anglican cathedral

Image:Wikipedia

An engraving of an early sixteenth century drawing of Colchester Abbey  

Image:thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk 

By sheer good luck, and against the odds, churches such as St Albans survived, to become a cathedral in 1877, and parishes saved all or most of  Tewkesbury (bought at scrap value for £453 by the townspeople), Selby, Sherborne, Dorchester, Bridlington, Cartmel, Romsey, Wymondham, Croyland and others as well as Beverley, Ripon and Southwell collegiate churches.

For those with no potential as a cathedral or as a parish church, or where there were already large churches in a city, such as St Augustine's in Canterbury or St Mary's in York - both major buildings of cathedral size - the prospects were grim.

Overall the loss of buildings, let alone their decoration and furnishings was catastrophic. There are accounts of some being rapidly destroyed by new owners to prevent their return to their rightful possessors, and neglect, decay, casual plundering and vandalism took their inevitable toll.

To be continued

The last Abbot of Colchester

December 1st 1539 saw the third martyrdom of an English Benedictine abbot that autumn, with that of the Abbot of Colchester following those of his brothers of Reading and Glastonbury.

Bl John Beche, was also apparently known as Thomas Marshall - I have not seen an explanation of this point.

His date of birth is unknown. He was educated at Oxford (probably at the Benedictine Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College) and he took his degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1515, and within the next fifteen years ruled the Abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester (now Chester Cathedral), his name appearing as twenty-sixth on the roll of abbots of that foundation.

He was elected Abbot of St. John's, Colchester, 10 June, 1530, and, with sixteen of his monks, took the Oath of Supremacy on 7 July, 1534. The year 1535 brought the martyrdoms of the three Carthusian priors and their companions (4 May), of St John Fisher (22 June), and of St. Thomas More (6 July), all for the Papal right to universal supremacy in spirituals. Beche was so deeply affected by these examples that his unguarded expressions of reverence and veneration for the martyrs, reported by spies, drew down upon him the resentment of the King. In November, 1538, the Abbot of St. John's further exasperated Henry and his ministers by denying the legal right of a royal commission to confiscate his abbey. Within a year of this he was committed to the Tower of London on a charge of treason, was discharged from custody, and rearrested some time before the 1st of November, 1539.

Witnesses were found to testify how the abbot had said that God would "take vengeance for the putting down of these houses of religion", that Fisher and More "died like good men and it was pity of their deaths", and that the reason for the King's revolt from Catholic unity was his desire to marry Anne Boleyn. In his own examination the abbot yielded to human weakness and tried to explain away his former assertions of Catholic truth. Despite this he eventually received martyrdom. Tried at Colchester, by a special commission, in November, 1539, he no longer pleaded against the charge of contumacy to the newly established order of things. He was convicted and executed.

An anonymous contemporary partisan of Henry, quoted by Dom Bede Camm in "English Martyrs", I, 400, says of Abbot Beche and others who died at that time for the same offences, "It is not to be as these trusty traitors have so valiantly jeopardized a joint for the Bishop of Rome's sake. . .his Holiness will look upon their pains as upon Thomas Becket's, seeing it is for like matter".

Pope Leo XIII beatified Abbot John Beche on 13 May, 1895.
Adapted from the Catholic Encyclopedia 1913

The abbey is depicted in a drawing done before the dissolution - a rare thing in itself - and it gives some idea of the appearence of the church

The abbey church of Colchester before the dissolution.
From BL Cottonian MS Nero D VIII

The fifteenth century gateway and some stretches of precint wall are all that survive - the gateway gives some idea of what has been lost.

Photo from Wikipedia