IX

LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDELEY

233

This is the cloister-garth of the once famous Cistercian monastery of Hayles. Nothing else remains; the splendid church, the conventual buildings, the approaches, the gatehouse, the precinct-walls-all have gone; there is nothing above ground but these ruined walls to tell of the vast edifice of which they once formed so small a part. A few years would suffice for the destruction of all that for three centuries had been the object of veneration. Neither here nor at Winchcombe, two miles away, was it any outburst of popular fanaticism, or any violent manifestation of popular hostility, that overthrew the shrines, and pulled down the walls of these two magnificent churches. The demolition was deliberate and systematic; it was a mere matter of business proceeding upon a cool calculation of profit and loss. That these buildings were landmarks in the history of the national church, that they were the supreme efforts of constructive art, was quite beside the question; it was enough that on utilitarian grounds they stood condemned; neither of them was needed either for a cathedral as at Gloucester, or for a parish church as at Tewkesbury; why then should they any longer cumber the ground? Rather let them be swept away at once and their materials put to some more profitable use. So, at any rate, thought the man who was responsible for their destruction, Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, Lord High Admiral of England, and brother-in-law of the King. Both abbeys had been granted to him at the dissolution in 1539, and he was not the man to lose any time in making the most of his acquisition. It would no doubt be unfair to condemn him on this count alone; nine out of ten men in his day, estimable citizens enough according to their lights, would have done the same, but for Thomas Seymour it is impossible on any count to feel either sympathy or respect. So thoroughly were his orders in each case carried out that not a single stone of either church remains, and it has been only in recent years that excavations have discovered their foundations, and given us indisputable evidence of their former splendour.

CH. IX

THE SHRINE OF THE HOLY BLOOD

235

As for the conventual buildings at Hayles, they might be put to some practical use, and the abbot's lodging on the west side of the cloisters, together with some of the domestic offices adjoining, was spared and converted into a dwelling-house. In Sir Robert Atkyns's time this was the seat of the Tracy family it survived till the middle of the eighteenth century, but has now entirely disappeared.

An admirable ground plan of the church, based upon the recent excavations, is exhibited in the small museum near the custodian's cottage. This will give the visitor a good idea of its position and proportions: he will notice that the cloisters and the abbey buildings were placed on the south side of the church; this was their usual position, unless, as at Tintern, there were special reasons for placing them on the north. The abbey was founded in 1246 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry the Third, and afterwards King of the Romans, an able statesman, to whom the chroniclers have done but scant justice. At the consecration ceremony in 1251, an immense gathering assembled, including the King and Queen, and thirteen bishops, each of whom said mass at a separate altar, the celebrant at the High Altar being the great bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste. But the crowning distinction of the abbey was the possession of the Holy Blood-"the blode of Crist, that it is in Hayles "--a relic which made it famous throughout the length and breadth of the land. This was presented in 1267 by Edmund, the son of the founder, and for its proper reception an apse with five polygonal chapels was added at the east end of the church, which had hitherto terminated in a straight wall. Here, at the back of the High Altar, stood the shrine which contained the Holy Blood--a shrine visited every year by thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the country. The "George" at Winchcombe, was the pilgrims' inn, and the gallery which runs along one side of the yard, is still called the pilgrims' gallery. The yard was probably larger in those days, and the gallery ran right round it, as is still the case at the

236

ABBOT STEPHEN SAGAR

CHAP.

"New Inn" in Gloucester. The paved way over the hill by which the pilgrims passed from Winchcombe to Hayles is also in existence, and is still the shortest route for walkers. The shrine itself was destroyed as completely as that of St. Thomas at Canterbury, but the base on which it stood, a structure eight feet by ten, still remains intact beneath the soil, and was uncovered by the explorers in 1900. The last abbot was Stephen Sagar, and in his time an old monk, about eighty years of age at the dissolution, had had the charge of the

sacred relic for forty years. "Some years ago, writes Mr. Bazeley in his paper on the abbey, "the matrix of a beautiful seal was found in Yorkshire with the figure of a monk. . . holding in his right hand the phial containing the Holy Blood, and in the other the asperges with which he sprinkled with holy water the pilgrims kneeling before the shrine. It bears the following inscription: Sigillum fraternitatis monasterii beatae Mariae de Hayles.' Probably Abbot Sagar, when he went some years later to his brother, Otho Sagar, vicar of Warmfield, to die, and be buried in his church, took the seal with him, and it was

IX

HAYLES PARISH CHURCH

237

subsequently lost." At the dissolution, the Commissioners viewed the "supposed relic called the Blood of Hayles," and upon examination judged it to be "an unctuous gum coloured." Among the tombs ruthlessly broken to pieces by Lord Seymour's agents was the "noble pyramis," or altar-tomb, that covered the remains of the founder, nor was any greater respect shown to the graves of his wife, Sanchia, Queen of the Romans, and of his sons, Henry, murdered at Viterbo, and Edmund, his successor in the earldom.

The small parish church of Hayles, as is the case at the old Llanthony, stands close beside the abbey. Originally built in the twelfth century, it passed, on the foundation of the monastery, into the possession of the monks and was much altered by them: the fragments of the original church which remain are the shafts of the chancel arch, and the two pilasters which support the south chancel wall.

The traveller who goes from Hayles to Winchcombe by road will have to cross the line of the new railway twice, but if he takes the short cut, which I have called the pilgrims' way, he will avoid it altogether, for it is carried from Cheltenham round the base of the projecting hills, and the Winchcombe station will be a mile away from the town. In either case he will cross the Isbourne by the bridge at the town-end, and pass up the quaint old-fashioned street to his inn. I have called Winchcombe an historic town, and Leland wrote that it was of old-time “mighty large." It was, in fact, one of the chief towns of Mercia, and a residence of the Mercian kings. Nor did it decline in importance during the seven centuries and a half that its great Benedictine monastery flourished. Its abbot was one of the three Gloucestershire abbots who sat in the House of Lords, the other two being the abbots of Gloucester and Cirencester. The abbey precincts were fortified-an exceptional privilegeand at the dissolution its estates were valued at a sum equivalent to more than £11,000 of the money of our own day. Of this magnificent foundation, however, beyond a few pavement