Chapter I: History of the Church (2)

An attack on relics was begun in 1538, and it was probably about this date that the shrine of St. Wilfrid was destroyed. In 1539 came the suppression of Fountains Abbey, the abbot who surrendered it being no other than Marmaduke Bradley. He had been Abbot since 1536, holding his canonry at Ripon at the same time, and after the suppression of the Abbey, he became once more a power at Ripon. As sole residentiary in 1544, 1545, and 1546, he appears to have used his influence well, and played a prominent part in the last architectural operations before the Dissolution. The old system of sanctuary, suited only to times when the State was weak, seems to have died out about this period. In 1545 came an Act for the dissolution of chantries and hospitals. As 'Supreme Head of the Church' Henry VIII. renewed the visitatorial authority of the Archbishops, and both he and Edward VI. confirmed the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Chapter. But the end was imminent. In 1547 the College was dissolved,[23] and its revenues were annexed to the Duchy of Lancaster. There had been attached to the church for centuries a =Grammar School=, for which the Chapter had claimed a monopoly of education within the Parish and Liberty, forbidding in 1468 the establishment of any other school without their special licence. This ancient seminary was apparently dissolved, and a new grammar school independent of the church was founded by Edward VI., whose benefaction was completed by Mary, the endowment being provided from the revenues of four of the late chantries. There had also been a Song-school, but it was perhaps merely a room in which boys of the Grammar School were trained to be choristers. Out of the confiscated revenues one or more clergy were paid to minister to the parish, but under Mary the old state of things was in some measure brought back. There was once more a Chamberlain, whose accounts show much the same items as do those of his mediaeval predecessors, and the old religion was restored; indeed, there were six altars in the church.

Under Elizabeth there was a return to the arrangement of Edward, the clergy (now as many as five in number) being denominated vicars. Archbishop Sandys (1577-1588), Lord Burleigh, Richard Hooker, Moses Fowler (afterwards the first Dean), and others tried to bring about the establishment of a theological college in the Bedern, and an increase of the endowments of the church, but in vain. The town must have lost all favour in 1569, by taking part in the Rising in the North. It was visited by the rebel earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, many of the townsmen and local gentry joining them, and for the last time the minster witnessed the celebration of the Mass. On the collapse of the rebellion, a number of those who had taken up arms were hanged at Ripon in sight of their homes, and the church suffered much damage from the Queen's soldiery, who stripped the lead from the roof. Like the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, this Rising was a protest against the Reformation, and the records of Archbishop Young (1561-1568), and of the Court of High Commission (1580), show that the people of Ripon still clung to the old religion. The pillage of Henry and Edward had no doubt destroyed most of the ornaments of the church, but some still remained or had been renewed under Mary, and the clergy displayed a marked reluctance in removing them; 'Images,' even when removed, were concealed in private houses. One vicar named Thomas Blackburne had continued the old practice of holding churchings in the Lady-chapel, and was ordered publicly to renounce this error, as well as that of having left "that olde, abhominable, and supersticious vawte called the Wilfride's nedle[24] and the alter therein" undefaced. One townsman is punished for having taken part in the Mass during the late Rising. The clergy generally were unclerical in dress and lax in their performance of the reformed services, which the parishioners showed a corresponding unwillingness to attend, while the old fasts and festivals were not wholly given up.

_Note_.--This representation much resembles that engraved on the old communion plate. As a view of Ripon Minster, it affords an instance of the inaccuracy of old architectural drawings; but it shows, at any rate, the effect of the spires.]

=The Chapter revived.=--On the accession of =James I.= a second futile attempt was made to obtain for Ripon a theological college.[25] The influence, however, of the queen, =Anne of Denmark=, gained from the king a greater boon, and in 1604 he re-established the Chapter. Under the new constitution there were six prebendaries, and for the first time a Dean. Much of the old endowments was restored, but the new stalls could not be identified with the old territorial prebends, and were therefore distinguished as 'the first stall,' 'the second stall,' and so on. After 1607 the Prebendaries were empowered to elect a Sub-Dean. The cure of souls was discharged by two vicars, and the choir was composed of six lay-clerks and six choristers. The parish remained a Peculiar. The spiritual jurisdiction of the Chapter and the Archbishop had been somewhat restricted by the Reformation, and the secular jurisdiction of the Liberty--especially in criminal cases--had been partly transferred to the king's itinerant justices. The Archbishop, however, still retained some criminal jurisdiction and also his 'Court Military,' which, strange to say, came to hear civil cases. During the latter half of the fifteenth century the secular cases heard by the Chapter had been chiefly cases of debt, and under the new constitution they were authorized to hold a court, which was called the Canon Fee Court, for cases of debt and other civil cases. Some obscurity exists as to the mediaeval relation of the Archbishop to the town. There was, of course, a town council, and its president the Wakeman[26] (an official peculiar to Ripon) had charge of what would now be called the town police. The ancient town bridges (of which only one remains) were under the charge of the Archbishop. During the sixteenth century the borough constitution had been the subject of disputes, in which Cardinal Wolsey had been concerned in 1517 and Archbishop Hutton in 1598. James I. therefore now granted a new Charter, under which the Wakeman became a Mayor; and henceforth the borough had also an independent court of its own. The dissolution of the Chapter in 1547, coming as it did upon the decay of the manufacture of woollen cloth, had been a great blow to the prosperity of the inhabitants,[27] and it was no wonder that when James visited the town in 1617 he received an ovation.

In 1625 a plague, such as had not occurred here since 1546, prevented the country folk from approaching the minster, and obliged them to have their children baptized in the fields. Several changes in the surroundings of the church took place at this time. The Bedern, with its quadrangle, hall, and chapel, had been demolished by 1625, in which year the Deanery was erected, perhaps upon its site. Of the old prebendal houses some had been sold, or let; others, perhaps, were occupied by the Prebendaries of the new foundation. In 1629 the ancient Palace, which stood to the north of the minster and west of the Deanery, was turned into a poor-house. The town (and doubtless the minster) was visited in 1633 by Charles I. on his way to his coronation at Edinburgh.[28] A few years later he was to pass through again, a captive on his way to Holmby House.

Ripon had escaped the Wars of the Roses, but it was not unscathed by the Great Rebellion, for in 1643 it was occupied by Sir Thomas Mauleverer, a Parliamentary officer, whose soldiery broke into the minster and shattered the magnificent glass in the great east window, and doubtless much other glass besides. At the end of the war the manorial rights were sold to Lord Fairfax, and the Chapter was again dissolved, "one who called himself Dr. Richardson" being "appointed to preach in the minster by the Parliament, tho' in all probability he was never in any Orders, Presbyterian or Episcopal."[29] The Chapter was revived at the Restoration, but all its members were new save one.

In the same year (1660) the central spire, which had been injured by lightning in 1593, fell through the roof, wrecking many of the beautiful canopies of the stalls. The damage to the choir and other parts of the church, estimated at L6000, was repaired with money raised under a brief from Charles II., but the spire was never rebuilt, and in 1664, to avoid any further catastrophe, the western spires, though sound, were deliberately removed.[30] The place of the spires was ill supplied by the erection of battlements and pinnacles, which were renewed in 1797.

It was perhaps at this period that the west gate of the precincts was pulled down--a mediaeval structure which contained at least seven rooms, and which stood at the bottom of Kirkgate. The graveyard in the middle ages contained a cross, at which a service was held on Palm Sunday; also, possibly, a mortuary chapel and a well associated with St. Wilfrid--(not, of course, the St. Wilfrid's well which now fills the public baths). Of these things there is now not a trace, save, perhaps, the stump of the cross, near the south wall of the nave. Nor are there any undoubted remains of the mediaeval wall which enclosed the precincts, except the fragment with an archway in it, which still forms the southern entrance. The mediaeval prisons, which belonged respectively to the Archbishop and the Chapter, have long vanished, as has also that which appertained to the Court of Canon Fee, but there is a Liberty prison of some age in 'Stammergate.' Most of the archiepiscopal palace had disappeared by 1830, but there was still a portion which was used as the court-house of the Liberty. In that year this was pulled down, and the present court-house was built upon the site. A memory of the Palace survives in 'Hall Yard,' and there still remains what is, perhaps, a remnant of the actual fabric, in the shape of an old cottage with an external staircase, which stands behind the wall to the west of the public garden that fronts the north side of the church. In the above-mentioned wall is an Early English doorway, with a dripstone adorned with the nailhead moulding. The door has a flat-arched wooden frame, the spandrels of which are carved with _fleurs-de-lys_, while the wooden tympanum above has Perpendicular panelling. This doorway is not, perhaps, a relic of the Palace. It is not in its original position, and indeed is said to have come originally from St. Mary Magdalene's Hospital. Several of the old houses adjoining the Cathedral on the south side, and along St. Agnes-gate, may possibly have been inhabited by the Prebendaries of the Second Collegiate foundation, but the stone-roofed house adjoining Bondgate Green Bridge is the only one in Ripon which can be identified with a mediaeval prebend--that of Thorp, and even here the existing fabric can scarcely be pre-Reformation. St. John's Hospital,[31] whose inmates for several centuries have been women, was unfortunately rebuilt in 1869, but the modern chapel (served by one of the cathedral clergy) retains a bell of 1663. The old Grammar School,[32] which stood at the foot of the steps from St. Agnes-gate to the Minster, has been pulled down since 1872.

Meanwhile the Minster itself had been undergoing restoration--in 1829 and the following years at the hands of Blore, when upwards of L3000 were spent, and from 1862 to 1870 at the hands of Sir G. Gilbert Scott, and at a cost of about L30,000.

From the eighth century up to 1836 Ripon had been in the diocese of York. In that year was created the modern diocese of Ripon, and the church thus attained to cathedral rank. It had, however, always had some pretension to that rank, not merely as a mother-church but because (up to 1836) the Archbishops had their throne in the choir; indeed, it is styled a cathedral in documents of 1537 and 1546. The diocese is composed of parts of Yorkshire taken from the sees of York and Chester, and included Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield, until in 1888 a portion including Halifax and Huddersfield was taken away to form part of a new diocese of Wakefield. There are three archdeaconries: those of Richmond, Ripon, and Craven. The first is a survival, in a diminished form, of the ancient archdeaconry of the same name; the others are modern; the last is the only one which is held without a canonry. In accordance with the Act of 1840, the Sub-Deanery has been suppressed, the Prebendaries have been reduced to four, and their style has been changed to that of Canons. In 1841, provision was made for the appointment of Canons honorary. There is also a precentor, and three other clergy who act as minor canons, and assist him in discharging the cure of souls--for though the huge mediaeval parish has been gradually divided into many, the greater portion of the city itself is still served from the cathedral church. The choir is composed of six lay-clerks and twelve choristers. There was as late as 1890 a Choir-school, but most of the present choristers come from Jepson's Hospital--a charity which was founded in 1672, in Water Skellgate, and the old buildings of which were pulled down in 1878.

There are still some relics of the ancient jurisdictions of the Chapter and the Archbishop. Though the secular jurisdiction has been gradually reduced by legislation to the scope of Quarter and Petty Sessions, the Liberty has Quarter Sessions of its own, and its justices are still nominated by the Archbishop, while his Court Military survived at any rate into the nineteenth century. A copyhold court, called the Canon Fee Court, is also still held by the Chapter. As regards ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the mediaeval right of the Chapter to hear testamentary and matrimonial cases (which were not taken away from the ecclesiastical courts till 1857) probably survived at least until the abolition of the Peculiar. Peculiars, with but one or two exceptions, had ceased to exist by 1850, and Ripon, once exempt from archidiaconal authority, is now itself an archdeaconry. The Bishop of Ripon has, of course, his Consistory court, which is held at the Cathedral.

In ending this account of one of the most venerable of English churches, it is worth while to remark that, of the four mother-churches of the old diocese of York, Ripon is the only one besides York Cathedral itself which still has a collegiate foundation.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The archbishopric of York arose out of the bishopric of Northumbria in the eighth century.

[2] The name in this form is modern. In common speech the street is always 'Stammergate,' which is probably a corruption of 'Stanbriggate.' The latter is the original name of the street, and appears frequently in mediaeval records. It has reference to a stone bridge over a brook where the gas-works now are. The continuation of this street toward the Cathedral is called St. Mary-gate, but this name again seems to be modern, and to have arisen from a notion that 'St. Mary-gate' is the origin of the word 'Stammergate'--a notion which would be rendered more plausible by the fact that this was the situation of the Lady-kirk.

[3] The question whether his monastery church stood over the Saxon crypt which exists below the present Cathedral is reserved for Chap. III.

[4] For the place of Ripon in the theory of the direct connection of Saxon architecture with the Comacine Guild of Italy, see _The Cathedral Builders_, by Leader Scott, p. 139 _sqq._

[5] An MS. which has been thought to be identical with Wilfrid's gift came into the market recently, and has passed to America.

[6] The Saint's return after his long exile is still commemorated at Ripon, early in August, on the first Saturday after Lammas Day, when a man dressed as a Saxon bishop and riding a grey horse is escorted through the streets.

[7] This liturgical term sometimes refers to the _burial_ of a saint, sometimes, as here, to the _death_.

[8] There is also mention of an Abbot Tylberht, but he may be the same as Tatberht.

[9] _I.e._, 'Elves-how'--'the hill of fairies.' Coins of Aella and other early kings have been found in the hill.

[10] At a later period the Chapter claimed also that 'St. Wilfrid's men' need not pay tolls when travelling on business through the realm, and on one occasion they issued to a Ripon clerk a kind of passport.

[11] Frisia's debt was remembered in the seventeenth century, when one of the Canons of Antwerp wrote an account of Ripon monastery for his countrymen.

[12] Until Walbran drew attention to this passage, the rebuilding was attributed to Thurstan.

[13] Especially at St. Wilfrid's shrine.

[14] It has been suggested that this was the iron which in Saxon times had been used for the ordeal of fire.

[15] A Peculiar is a district taken out of its geographical surroundings for purposes of ecclesiastical jurisdiction (_Sir W. Anson_).

[16] In later times (at any rate) the Archbishop apparently had a spiritual court of his own. A Chapter minute of 1467 declares a certain person accused of a spiritual offence to be "non de foro Capituli sed de foro Archiepiscopi, unde litterae correctionis emanarunt."

[17] This church had disappeared, as Leland tells us, long before his visit to Ripon, which took place about 1538. The dates of its erection and demolition are both unknown. In the Chapter-house is preserved a key which has been assigned to the fifteenth century, and which has been thought to have belonged to Allhallows, but it is thought that the church disappeared at an early date.

[18] This Sunday is still called Wilfrid Sunday at Ripon. The Saturday preceding it is the day on which the town commemorates the Saint's return from his first appeal to Rome. The season is regarded as a holiday, and another relic of the nativity festival survives in the fair held on the Thursday after August 2nd.

[19] The Easter Communion has survived till our own day. Within living memory, and at a period when Early Celebrations were not usual, it was celebrated at 7 A.M., and people drove in from the outlying places.

[20] This word is probably connected with the Anglo-Saxon 'bed,' a prayer (whence 'bedesmen'), and means a 'house of prayer.' In one passage of the records it is rendered in Latin by _proseucha_.

[21] It was Walbran, again, who drew attention to Leland's phraseology here.

[22] The Canon of Stanwick was always in Ripon, but was not considered technically a canon-resident. Perhaps he was not entitled to the special fees for residence. He had, however, full capitular rights. These had been denied to him by Dragley, but were now restored by the Archbishop.

[23] If the Ripon hospitals were dissolved they were re-established, for they are still fulfilling their purpose.

[24] _I.e._, the Saxon crypt.

[25] The project is being realized in our own day.

[26] _I.e._, the watchman, or setter of the watch. The town motto is, "Except the Lord keep the city, the _Wakeman_ waketh in vain." After 1598 a horn was blown every evening to denote the setting of the watch. If any house was robbed between horn-blowing and sunrise, compensation could be claimed from the town. To support this system a small tax was levied on each house-door, and if a house had two doors it paid more, as being more liable to be robbed. A relic of the system still survives. Every night a horn is blown thrice before the Mayor's door at 9 P.M. and thrice at the Market Cross afterwards. The ancient horn of the Wakeman (which appears on the city arms) is still worn by the Sergeant-at-mace in civic processions.

[27] Since then, however, another industry had arisen--the manufacture of spurs, for which Ripon became famous, and James was presented with a pair. This industry did not die out till the end of the last century, and a spur is still the crest of the city. The manufacture of saddle-trees, which flourished here in the sixteenth century, is still carried on.

[28] In 1640 he was at war with the Scots for their opposition to episcopacy, and it was at Ripon that the disgraceful negotiations were begun, by which a sum of L850 a day was to be paid to maintain their invading army, pending a more permanent settlement. The house in which the 'Treaty of Ripon' was negotiated stood near Ailcy Hill, and disappeared about the beginning of the century. Charles is said to have visited the town four times altogether.

[29] Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy," quoted in _Surtees Soc._, Vol. 78. There is a tablet to Richardson's wife in the south Choir-aisle.

[30] The following is probably the true version of a story that is told in connection with their demolition. One of the workmen had been hoisted by means of a pulley, and was being held aloft by his comrades below, when he spied some coursing in progress on Bondgate Green. Seeing the hare well away and the dogs straining in the leash, he shouted "Let go!" And his comrades below did.

[31] For the other hospitals, the 'Thorp' house, and other old buildings still standing, see Chap. IV.

[32] Ripon Grammar School has produced an Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton (one of the two of that name who held the office from 1595 to 1606 and from 1749 to 1757 respectively: the latter Hutton became Archbishop of Canterbury); also Beilby Porteous, Bishop of London (1776-1787), and Dr. William Stubbs, late Bishop of Oxford.