BRAKELOND: A PICTURE OF MONASTIC LIFE IN THE DAYS OF ABBOT SAMSON***


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[Illustration: frontispiece]


THE CHRONICLE OF JOCELIN
OF BRAKELOND: A PICTURE
OF MONASTIC LIFE IN THE
DAYS OF ABBOT SAMSON.

Newly Edited by

SIR ERNEST CLARKE M.A. F.S.A.

[Illustration:
_Seal of Abbot Samson.
(Slightly enlarged. The length of the
original is 3-1/2 inches._)]

THE CHRONICLE OF
JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND:
A PICTURE OF
MONASTIC LIFE IN
THE DAYS OF ABBOT
SAMSON

Newly Edited by

SIR ERNEST CLARKE







Alexander Moring
The De La More Press
298 Regent Street London W 1903



"A VERITABLE MONK OF BURY ST. EDMUND'S: WORTH LISTENING TO, IF BY
CHANCE MADE VISIBLE AND AUDIBLE. HERE HE IS; AND IN HIS HAND A
MAGICAL SPECULUM, MUCH GONE TO RUST, INDEED, YET IN FRAGMENTS STILL
CLEAR; WHEREIN THE MARVELLOUS IMAGE OF HIS EXISTENCE DOES STILL
SHADOW ITSELF, THOUGH FITFULLY, AND AS WITH AN INTERMITTENT LIGHT."

     _Carlyle: Past and Present._ Chapter 1.




LIST OF CONTENTS


 SEAL OF ABBOT SAMSON.                                  _Frontispiece_

 _EDITOR'S PREFACE._

                                                                  Page
 Samson and his arch-eulogist--The Chronicle--Previous
    Editions of the Chronicle--The Chronicler--The Central
    Figure of the Chronicle--Samson in Subordinate
    Offices--Samson as Abbot--Relations with Church and
    State--Samson as an Author--Samson's
    Masterfulness--Samson as an Administrator--Epilogue     xv.-xliii.

 CHAPTER I.

 _BURY ABBEY UNDER ABBOT HUGH._

 The last years of Abbot Hugh--The monastery under a load of
    debt, and in the hands of Jew money-lenders--Inquiry by
    the Royal almoner--Caustic comment by Samson, master of
    the novices--Exemption obtained by Hugh from visitation
    by the Legate--Jocelin's reflection thereon--The Convent
    debt--Entertainment of strangers--Samson in various
    offices, but disliked by the Abbot--Accident to Hugh at
    Canterbury--His death--His house despoiled by his
    servants                                                      1-11

 CHAPTER II.

 _THE MONKS DISCUSS THE VACANCY._

 Wardens of the Abbey appointed by the King--Culpable
    Weakness of the Prior--William the sacrist--Activity of
    Samson as subsacrist--Jealousy of him--The Wardens stop
    further building operations--Much discussion by the
    monks as to the qualifications needed in the new
    Abbot--Samson silently notes all that is said--Jocelin's
    indiscretion in blurting out his private opinion             12-23

 CHAPTER III.

 _THE CHOICE OF A NEW ABBOT._

 Henry II. orders the Prior and twelve delegates from the
    Abbey to attend him to make choice of a new
    Abbot--Selection of the twelve--Six electors appointed
    to choose three names to be given under seal to the
    delegates--The journey to the Court--Gossip and telling
    of dreams amongst the monks left behind--The delegates
    before the King at Bishop's Waltham--The sealed paper
    opened--Samson eventually selected--Approval of the
    King, and his comment on Samson's demeanour                  24-35

 CHAPTER IV.

 _SAMSON'S INSTALLATION._

 Reception of the news at the Monastery--Samson blessed by
    the Bishop of Winchester--He journeys to Bury, and is
    welcomed by the Convent on Palm Sunday--His address in
    the chapter-house--Answer of Wimer the Sheriff--Jocelin
    made Abbot's Chaplain--New Seal struck with mitre graven
    thereon--Samson sets his household in order--General
    Court summoned--Demand of aid from his knights               36-42

 CHAPTER V.

 _THE NEW ABBOT'S REFORMS._

 Prepares an estate book--Buildings and repairs--Enclosure
    of parks--Hunting and dogs--Land
    improvements--Management of manors--General
    survey--Makes a kalendar--New regulations made in
    Chapter--Amount of the convent debts and their
    discharge--Dismissal of William the sacrist--Samson
    visits all the Abbey manors--His anxieties about the
    debts--His skill and energy in managing the
    estates--Appointed judge in ecclesiastical
    courts--Jocelin's excuse for Samson's fondness for
    betaking himself to his manors--The Abbot's complaint at
    the burden of his charge--His dream as a child--His
    control of temper--Order for production of convent
    seals--Thirty-three given up, all retained by the Abbot,
    except the prior's--Entertainment of guests                  43-59

CHAPTER VI.

_SAMSON'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS._

 His personal appearance--His temperance and
    diligence--Abhors liars, drunkards and talkative
    folk--His eloquence--Preaches to the people in the
    Norfolk dialect--Management of his household--Strict
    regulation of expenses--Appoints none but fit persons to
    office--His treatment of his relatives--Gratitude for
    past kindnesses--Provides free lodgings for poor
    scholars--Expulsion of Jews from Bury--Purchase of the
    Manor of Mildenhall--Giving up of King Henry II.'s cup
    and its restoration--Samson's generosity--The Woolpit
    living--Samson recounts his visit to Rome in his early
    days, and his adventures                                     60-75

 CHAPTER VII.

 _THE ABBOT AS PEER OF PARLIAMENT._

 Dispute with Archbishop of Canterbury as to jurisdiction
    over manor of Eleigh--Quarrel with the Bishop of Ely,
    the Chancellor--Samson wishes to take the cross: the
    King refuses permission--Goes to siege of Windsor in
    martial array--Visits Richard I. in
    Germany--Excommunication by him of a company of
    roystering young knights--Embassies to Rome--The claim
    of the Earl of Clare to carry the Standard of St. Edmund
    in battle--Adam of Cockfield's inheritance--Herbert the
    dean and his windmill--Jocelin's New Year's gift--The
    Abbot's struggle with his rebellious knights                76-100

 CHAPTER VIII.

 _THE CASE OF HENRY OF ESSEX._

 Excesses of Henry of Essex--His cowardice in Wales--The
    wager of battle on the island near Reading--Henry's
    vision--His recovery and repentance                        101-105

 CHAPTER IX.

 _TROUBLES WITHOUT._

 The Bishop of Ely outwitted as to timber asked for by
    him--Dispute as to town bailiffs--Murmurings of the
    monks--Toll-right dispute with London merchants--Dues of
    the burgesses--Samson grants a charter to the town         106-117

 CHAPTER X.

 _TROUBLES WITHIN._

 Inefficient cellarers--New arrangements criticised--The
    Archbishop of Canterbury claims authority to visit the
    Abbey as legate--Samson's successful appeal to the Pope    118-127

 CHAPTER XI.

 _SAMSON'S CONTESTS WITH KNIGHTS,
 MONKS AND TOWNSMEN._

 King Richard's levies--The abbot's difficulties in making
    his knights comply--Goes to Normandy and arranges
    matters with the King--Samson's generosity to the
    abbey--He takes the cellarer's department into his own
    hands--Consequent discontent--Hamo Blund's will, and
    Samson's comments thereon--Riots in the
    churchyard--Rioters reduced to submission                  128-141

 CHAPTER XII.

 _THE CARES OF OFFICE._

 Restoration of the Coventry monks--Samson's hospitality at
    Oxford--His endowment of the Bury schools--Abbey
    improvements--The Abbot withstands King Richard over the
    wardship of Nesta of Cockfield--The King appeased by a
    present of horses and dogs                                 142-149

 CHAPTER XIII.

 _THE CUSTOMS OF THE TOWNSHIP._

 Old oppressive customs changed or abrogated by Samson--The
    Cellarer's difficulties in collecting _rep silver_--The
    hard case of Ketel--The Cellarer's dues--Lakenheath
    eels--Samson's reforms and his critics                     150-161

 CHAPTER XIV.

 _THE SHRINE OF ST. EDMUND._

 Fire around the shrine--The shrine unhurt--Vain attempts to
    hush up the scandal--Samson dreams of St. Edmund
    despoiled--The saint's body uncovered--Samson and
    certain of the monks view the sacred relic                 162-177

 CHAPTER XV.

 _THE MONASTERY IN REVOLT._

 Death of King Richard--King John visits the Abbey--Samson
    supports Ralph the porter against the monks--He
    withdraws from the convent--Disturbances in his
    absence--The monks submit--Reconciliation--Marshalling
    of the Knights--Further troubles about the manors and
    cellary                                                    178-189

 CHAPTER XVI.

 _ELECTION OF A NEW PRIOR._

 Death of Robert the Prior--Herbert the chaplain and Hermer
    the sub-prior candidates for the post--Through the
    Abbot's influence Herbert is elected--Jocelin
    moralizes--The gibes of the unlearned                      190-199

 CHAPTER XVII.

 _THE ABBOT'S FOIBLES._

 Samson's faults--The dam at Babwell--Trouble with the Ely
    monks--The Abbot summoned over sea to the King--Sets his
    house in order--His unfulfilled promises--The story
    breaks off                                                 200-211

  APPENDICES.

   I. SAMSON AS AN AUTHOR                                      215-221

  II. NOTES TO TEXT OF CHRONICLE                               222-256

 III. TABLE OF CHIEF DATES IN THE HISTORY OF
         THE ABBEY OF ST. EDMUNDSBURY, A.D.
         870 TO 1903                                           257-278

 _GENERAL INDEX_                                               279-285


PREFACE

=Samson and his Arch-Eulogist.=--Abbot Samson of St. Edmundsbury and
his biographer, Jocelin of Brakelond, undoubtedly owe such immortality
as they possess to their introduction to the world at large by Thomas
Carlyle. Learned historians and commentators of the past had made use
of the dry facts of the Chronicle for their disquisitions and
treatises; but none had recognized the human interest of Jocelin's
narrative until the Sage of Chelsea seized upon it as evidence of that
theory of Hero Worship on which he loved to insist.

The whole of the seventeen chapters of Book II. of "Past and Present,"
published in 1843, are devoted to a study of Abbot Samson, and the
lessons which Carlyle thought "our own poor century" could learn from
him.

From that day to this, Samson has been more or less a household word;
and, as John Richard Green says in his "Stray Studies" (1876), "In the
wandering gossipy pages of Jocelin of Brakelond the life of the
twelfth century, so far as it could penetrate abbey walls, still glows
distinct for us round the figure of the shrewd, practical, kindly,
imperious abbot who looks out, a little travestied perhaps, from the
pages of Mr. Carlyle."

=The Chronicle.=--Mr. Green further says:--"By a rare accident the
figure of the silent, industrious Norfolk monk, who at the close of
Henry the Second's reign suddenly found himself ruler of the
wealthiest, if not the greatest, of English abbeys, starts out
distinct from the dim canvas of the annals of his house. Annals indeed
in any strict sense St. Edmund's has none; no national chronicle was
ever penned in its scriptorium such as that which flings lustre round
its rival, St. Albans; nor is even a record of its purely monastic
life preserved such as that which gives a local and ecclesiastical
interest to its rival of Glastonbury. One book alone the abbey has
given us, but that one book is worth a thousand chronicles."

The original manuscript of the Chronicle occupies 43 folios (121-163)
of a thick quarto volume on vellum once in the library of Bury Abbey,
afterwards in the hands of the family of Bacon of Redgrave, then
belonging to Bishop Stillingfleet of Worcester, and now preserved in
the British Museum amongst the Harleian Manuscripts. The contents of
this _Liber Albus_ (Harl. MS. 1005) are very varied; and a complete
list of the 144 items in it which relate to the Abbey will be found on
pp. 122-4 of the 1821 Edition of the _Monasticon_. (Another copy of
the Chronicle was in the Cottonian MS. Vitellius DXV., burnt in the
fire of 1731.) Three facsimiles of portions of the MS. are given in
the Camden Society's Edition of the Latin text (to be presently
referred to), and the writing is there ascribed to the end of the 13th
or beginning of the 14th century.

=Previous Editions of the Chronicle.=--In the year 1840, John Gage
Rokewode, F.R.S. (1786-1842), Director of the Society of Antiquaries,
brought out for the Camden Society a thin quarto book in the familiar
green cover, which he entitled "Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda de
rebus gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi." It was this
book that attracted the attention of Carlyle, with the results already
stated. Rokewode was a scion of the distinguished family of Gage of
Hengrave, near Bury, and took the additional name of Rokewode on
inheriting in 1838 the estates of the Rookwood family. He was a very
learned genealogist, and the author of a History of Hengrave and of
the Hundred of Thingoe. His observations on Suffolk families and
topography are therefore to be relied upon, though subsequent
investigation has corrected some of his notes on historical matters.

Rokewode's text was in the original Latin; but to meet the popular
demand for the Chronicle caused by Carlyle's published appreciation of
it in "Past and Present" (1843), a translation into English was made
by Thomas Edlyne Tomlins (1804-1872), and was published in 1844 by
Whitaker & Co. in the "Popular Library of Modern Authors," under the
title of "Monastic and Social Life in the Twelfth Century."

Mr. T. E. Tomlins was a nephew of the better known Sir Thomas Edlyne
Tomlins (1762-1841), assistant counsel to the Treasury, who wrote "The
Law of Wills" and other well-known text-books. The younger Thomas was
an attorney, and also wrote on legal subjects. Tomlins' translation of
Jocelin was issued in the somewhat forbidding form of a tall
paper-covered book of 64 pages of double columns of small type,
without any break from start to finish: the few notes at the end being
mostly on legal points, and none of them of great merit.

It does not appear that Mr. Tomlins had any special knowledge of his
subject; and, as a consequence, his translation contained a quantity
of errors, both of omission and commission. His book has been used as
the ground-work for the present edition, but the alterations made in
the text have been so numerous and important as to be practically
equivalent to a new translation altogether. The three Appendices
(pages 215-278) are wholly new.

The task of rendering the Latin text into satisfactory and accurate
English has been made easier by the publication in 1890-6 of Mr.
Thomas Arnold's three volumes of "Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey"
(No. 96 of the Rolls Series). "Tom" Arnold (1823-1900) was the second
son of Arnold of Rugby and the younger brother of Matthew Arnold; and
he undertook a quantity of work for the Rolls Series, not all of which
he was able to carry through with the completeness that he desired.
Especially with regard to the Annals of St. Edmundsbury there was a
quantity of material that he could not deal with in the leisure at his
command. But so far as concerns the Chronicle of Jocelin (which
occupies 228 pages of his Volume I.), his edition of the original
Latin text was carefully revised and annotated.

=The Chronicler.=--Of Jocelin of Brakelond very little is certainly
known beyond what he himself tells us in the Chronicle. There are two
streets in Bury St. Edmunds known as the Long and Short Brackland or
Braklond, and probably Jocelin took his name from his place of birth.
In the text of