Gents Mag 1858 part 2 p.479
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introduction | ||
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list, 3rd qtr 19th century | ||
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Gentleman's Magazine 1858 part 2 p.479
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cathedrals
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Cathedrals
CATHEDRALS PRIOR TO THE CIVIL WARS. THE earliest printed description of an English cathedral does not date further back than the eighteenth century. Drake and Dart, the respective historians of York and Canterbury, were pioneers on a field which for years remained unoccupied, till such men as Gosling, Bentham, and Harwood appeared. It was not, however, their plan to take any extended view of a subject so interesting, they confined their attention and researches to a single church and city: Browne Willis, who had acquired his love of architecture and monuments of the middle ages, while a boy at Westminster school, in the aisles of the neighbouring abbey, was the first to publish a survey of cathedrals. His notices, meagre, alas! as they are valuable, suggested the works of Storer, Buckler, and Winkles, and the admirable, but imperfect illustrations of Mr. Britton. If we add the last edition of the Monasticon Anglicanum. we shall exhaust the list of any general survey of all the cathedrals comprised in one work previous to the present year. For the long period which intervened between the Reformation and the accession of the House of Hanover, we have only the partial and cursory observations of detached writers, and the narrative, in the "Mercuries" of the day, of the sacrilegious outrages committed by the unscrupulous Hazelrigge and Waller. These, necessaily, permit us rather to guess than see the actual state of the cathedrals at a period of great importance, that immediately preceding the wars of the King and Parliament, - "That violent commotion, which o'erthrew, In town, and city, and sequestered glen, Altar, and cross, and church of solemn roof." Fortunately, a MS. which now lies before us affords a curious, and at times, a minute insight into the actual state of the churches, the number and order of the ornaments, the efficiency of the choir, the behaviour of the clergy, the aspect of the structure and its adjacent close, with glimpses of everyday life, customs, and manners, long fallen into desuetude. In the year 1634, three gentlemen of "Merry Norwich," a Captain, Lieutenant, and Auncient, took their journey a-foot to see, not foreign lands, or make the grand tour, but with the better and more patriotic and sensible purpose of acquainting themselves with the beauty and antiquities of their own country. They were persons of observant miinds, devotional temper, and a considerable fund of quiet humour; in fact, the very companions we should choose for good fellowship in the long vacation, on a long bright summer's day. Their journey lay through twenty-six of the English counties, and commenced on August 11. Persons whose daily life is spent in a cathedral town, are very frequently those least acquainted with its history and architecture; what we can do any day we very often put off to an indefinte period; Westminster Abbey is more familiar to strangers from the country, we are bold to say, than to the two millions who dwell within the sound of Bow bells: our worthy officers are no exception, for not a syllable occurs in reference to the chief ornament of their native city. The triumvirate were voluntary members of the military company of Norwich, officers of train band or militia. The Lieutenant, from the little hints that peep out of the narrative, was clearly the chronicler, and the hand- |
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