CHAPTER V. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF ABBOTS-AND INCIDENTAL HISTORY OF THE ABBEY. 1.-ECGWIN, or Egwin, founder of the monastery and town of Evesham, was third bishop of Worcester, to which office he was consecrated in the year 693, being only about thirteen years after the formation of the diocese of the Wiccii. Stevens, in his Catalogue of learned Benedictines, says that he was son to the king of Mercia; 176 and his Life which is ascribed to Brithwald, archbishop of Canterbury-evidently a very early production, although the correctness of its ascription to the archbishop's time is disputed by bishop Tanner-is preserved among the Cotton manuscripts in the national Museum. His name is enrolled in the Romish calendar as both saint and bishop, and the day appointed for his commemoration is January 11. According to the monastic historians he was a kind and benevolent man, and we presume not altogether the visionary which they would fain represent him. Their details of visions and miracles were, we apprehend, rarely contemporary with the person to whom such were attributed; but being first admitted as legendary, were afterward recorded as facts. De Cressy in his Church History 177 states that the bishop was forced to leave the country, by reason of the calumnies raised against him by those whose ill-will he had excited, in opposing noxious customs which the people, then newly converted from paganism, refused 176 Stevens' Additions to Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. i. page 191. 177 Church History of Brittany by Hugh Paulin de Cressy, Rouen, 1668; p. 527. in to forsake. John of Tynemouth in like manner places his character for piety and sincerity in a favourable light; and adds, that the people finding him a check to their dissolute manners, expelled him from the bishoprick, and complained against him to the pope : 178 consequence of which he went to Rome, to appeal in person to the pontiff. To this journey his monkish biographers have, as usual, appended a silly tale; which may possibly have originated in the literal construction of some rhetorical account of the procedure as recorded by a contemporary writer. Here we are told that, though conscious of his present rectitude, yet in atonement for the sins of his people as well as his own youthful sallies, he bound himself with chains, locked them together, and threw the key into the Avon. Thus manacled, he commenced his pilgrimage to Rome; declaring that when his bonds should be loosed by divine interposition, then only should he be assured that his offences were forgiven. When he at length arrived at Rome the bells of the eternal city greeted him with a miraculous peal, and while he attended mass in St. Peter's, his servant having purchased a fish for their meal, found in it the identical key which his master had cast into the Avon. With this the pontiff himself unlocked his fetters, and the result was the bishop's triumphant return to the recovered esteem of king Cenred, and the veneration of the whole people.179 The plain English of the legend must be considered to be that Ecgwin's appeal to the Roman college was attended with the desired success. The year of this, his first, journey to Rome is not any where given: but his miraculous liberation was throughout the middle ages emblazoned in the armorial bearings of this monastery, which were— azure, a chain in chevron with a bolt in the dexter and a horselock in the sinister, between three mitres labelled, or. We here present them, copied from a fragment of ancient carving in oak, removed from an old tenement in Vine-street, at present known as the Horse and Groom Inn. The relic-enfolded in the still 178 Populus tandèm videns se illicitam non licere, et assueta vitia relinquere, contra sanctum Dei in iram, odium, et scandalum exarsit, et eum tandem de episcopatu expulit. De eo nempè non solùm apud regem accusatio, set etiàm apud Romanum antistitem ab inimicis prolata fuerat delatio."-Hist. Aurea, MS. c. 199. 179 De Cressy's Church History of Brittany, page 528. graceful arms of a mutilated though angelic bearer-is now preserved from further injury within a summer-house in the garden of Mr. Anthony New, in the same street. The ill-will which his people had shown toward him would naturally increase in the mind of Ecgwin any previous inclination he might have felt to retire from his episcopate; and the superintendence of a convent upon the lonely holme of Eoves having once glanced across his mind, there would be no difficulty at this period, to one in his elevated situation, in shaping circumstances to the desired event. In the year 708 we therefore find bishop Ecgwin again journeying toward Rome, where he arrived in 710. But he now travels accompanied by kings. One is his own sovereign, Cenred of Mercia; the other is Offa king of Essex. Ecgwin proceeds thither to resign his bishoprick to the pope, and to be recognized by him as the first abbot of Evesham: the newly-converted princes have been taught that christian duty calls upon them to retire from active life; and they are hastening to the pontiff, that they may receive his sacred warrant to betake themselves to the cloister. 180 180 This is the tone in which even the venerable Bede, who wrote at the time, complacently applauds the abdication of Cenred and Offa." In the fourth year of the reign of Osred, Coinred, who had for some time nobly governed the kingdom of the Mercians, did a much more noble act, by quitting the throne of his kingdom, and going to Rome; where being shorn, when Constantine was pope, and made a monk at the relics of the apostles, he continued to his last hour in prayers, fasting and almsdeeds..... With him went the son of Sigher, king of the East Saxons, whose name Both these kings had lavishly endowed the bishop's new foundation, and Ecgwin seems to have been anxious to secure pope Constantine's confirmation of his recent acquisitions. This he, according to the cartulary, obtained during the same year. The document is there given in the Latin language, but in Saxon characters, addressed to Brithwald archbishop of Canterbury, and concludes by denouncing all who should ever presume to infringe the regal donation." At Ecgwin's return the archbishop convened a synod at Aln-cestre, distant from Evesham seven miles; where a Mercian palace had stood, and where also Ecgwin, it is said, had usually exhorted the people. In this synod his charters were confirmed, and Wilfred archbishop of York was appointed to consecrate the new foundation.182 181 Mr. Green, in his History of Worcester, attributes to St. Ecgwin, upon the authority of Bale, the introduction of image-worship into Britain. The Virgin Mary, at her miraculous visit to the bishop, not only having required him to erect a church at Evesham to her honor, but likewise to prepare an image of herself, which was to be erected for worship at Worcester. Upon similar authority it is further stated that at a later period-about the year 708a council was held in London, under archbishop Brithwald, and authorized by pope Constantine, wherein images were ordered to be erected in churches and to be honored with masses and worship. 183 We learn from bishop Tanner, that Ecgwin was author of the following pieces. 1. De suis Apparitionibus. 2. De Primordiis sui Cœnobii. 3. De Vita S. Aldhelm. 4. De Vitis variorum Sanctorum. He died, according to his chroniclers, on the 30th of 184 was offa, a youth of most lovely age and beauty, and most earnestly desired by all his nation to be their king. He, with like devotion, quitted his wife, lands, kindred and country, for Christ and for the gospel, that he might receive an hundred-fold in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting. He also, when they came to the holy places at Rome, receiving the tonsure, and adopting a monastic life, attained the long wished-for sight of the blessed apostles in heaven."-Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, by Giles, book v. chap. xix. 181 Cottonian MS. Vespasian B xxiv. folio 72; copied in Dugdale ii. 14, and given in Roman type in Tindal, 152. The autograph was in the Arundel Library, but does not appear in the Catalogue of that portion, now in the British Museum. 182 De Cressy's Church History of Brittany, page 528. 183 Green's History of Worcester, vol. i. page 95. December, 717, and was buried in the church pertaining to his monastery. The Romish calendar having marked the 11th of January as his day of saintly celebration, Mr. Butler supposes the latter to have been the day on which his body was translated, in the year 1183.185 His epitaph, preserved by Leland, is as follows: "Rupe sub hac vili tegitur vir summus, et urna Clauditur angusta, quem, subvehit alta per orbem Tertius ac decimus moderans existeret ortus." 186 The Harleian Chronicle 187 presents us with the bare names of eighteen abbots, the immediate successors of St. Ecgwin, who faithfully retained the possessions bequeathed them by the founder. They are as follow:-2. Athelwold, successor to Ecgwin; 3. Aldbore; 4. Aldbath; 5. Aldfert; 6. Tyldbrith; 7. Cutulf; 8. Aldmund; 9. Credan, whom we must regard as the saint of that name whose relics we have noticed on page 50; 10. Tinthferth ; 11. Aldbald; 12. Etbrith; 13. Elferd; 14. Wefard; 15. Kynelm ; 16. Kynach; 17. Ebba; 18. Kynath; 19. Edwin. After Edwin's death, possession of the abbey-as particularized in a former chapter-fluctuated among monks, bishops, and chieftains, till the year 960; when Dunstan, champion of the Benedictine rule, appointed 20. Osward, abbot of Evesham; from whom the monastery passed into the hands of laymen and seculars. One of these, a chieftain named Achelm, repenting of his acquisition, is said to have appointed a monk named 21. Freodegar, abbot of this monastery. He, however, unable to expel the secular clerks, retired from the supremacy. After this, 185 Butler's Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal Saints, i. p. 48. 186 Lelandi Collectanea, ed. 1770, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 300. 187 Chronica Abbathia Eveshamensis.-Harleian MS. number 229. |