was brought from their remoter possessions. Now, Crowland is no longer an island. It is The eastern border has been completely drained, and bears excellent corn crops. possible, indeed, that the monks, like their fellow Benedictines at Thorney, had a vineyard, as well as a herb-garden, close under the walls of their monastery. The warmly coloured frontages of farm-houses, and of cottages in the village, are frequently relieved by the green branches of clustering vines, which seem to flourish well in the rich soil. As we pass into the long, straggling village, we are at once confronted by the famous triangular bridge, which retained its use and its reputation after the destruction of the monastery which had raised it. Three streams, coming from the north, east, and west, met at this point, and passed onward towards Wisbeach. The houses of the village were built along these streams; their channels were open; and the monks, from whatever quarter they approached their abbey, had necessarily to cross one of them. Accordingly the present bridge, which may well represent an earlier one, was constructed in the first half of the thirteenth century. The mouldings, ribs, and vaulting below the crown of the bridge indicate the date. The streams are now conveyed underground, and the bridge, like a stranded monster which the tide has abandoned, serves as a play-place for the village children. Its three steep half-arches meet in the centre, and are climbed by rough steps. On the south side a weather-beaten figure, crowned, and holding what seems to be a globe in the right hand (the other arm has disappeared), sits with a melancholy air. Local tradition asserts that it represents Oliver Cromwell carrying a loaf. It is no doubt a waif from the ruined abbey, and may possibly have been intended for Ethelbald of Mercia, the founder.

Fragments of worked stone and of sculpture appear everywhere in the walls of the cottages and in their outbuildings. The dissolved abbey served as an open quarry, from which every man took at his pleasure. It stood at the eastern end of the village, which in the days of monastic prosperity was no more than an assemblage of cottages in which lived the workmen and the artisans who were immediately connected with the Benedictine house. The great tower, already seen far across the Fens, guides us toward the remains, which consist only of the monastic church, partly in complete ruin, and partly serving as the parish church of Crowland. It is only the north aisle of the nave, however, which has been thus preserved. The tower, built as we know in 1427, rises at the west end of this aisle, and was added, no doubt, as a campanile, since the great central tower of the Norman church had then been proved to be too weak for carrying the bells. Attached to this tower is a portion of the ancient west front; and beyond that lies the ruined nave. All building east of the

nave has entirely disappeared, and there is no fragment of any domestic structure. The village churchyard extends round the church and the ruins. It is striking to see among the usual modern memorials, with their simple and quaint inscriptions, one or two open coffins of stone, with the hollow for the head of the Benedictine brother who has been expelled from even this last resting-place. Crows and jackdaws in numbers frequent the

J.B.G. VIC NOLLS

tower, and the trees of the churchyard-the descendants, as we may choose to think, of those which troubled St. Guthlac and which gave name to the "Crowland," the little rising ground in the midst of the Fens.

The most interesting portion of the existing ruin is the west front of the church, which is of Early English date, with Perpendicular insertions and additions, and a fragment of the south aisle which adjoins it. In the year 1860 it was found that all this front was in a very unsafe It was then condition, and large masses of stone had fallen from the upper divisions. placed in the hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, who, by the aid of powerful screw-jacks, brought the whole mass back into position, and then underpinned it. It then appeared that, with the indifference to a secure foundation so often shown by early builders, the whole had been built directly on the peat soil, more than a foot of which was still

compressed between the foundation and the bed of gravel below. This was remedied, and the front is now safe. The early English portions, which consist of the portal and of the two arches with canopied niches on either side of the great window, are of very beautiful character. The portal is divided by a central shaft; and in the tympanum, or space above the shaft, is a large and deep quatrefoil, in which are sculptured five scenes from the life of St. Guthlac. The figures in the niches are those of the Apostles, under canopies, with the Saviour and the Blessed Virgin in the centre. Below these are bishops, kings, and warriors, no doubt representing the founders and the benefactors of the abbey. The great window was a Perpendicular insertion. The fragment of the south aisle, with its interesting arcades, belongs to the church which was begun by Abbot Geoffry in 1113. The ruined nave is Perpendicular. The older nave, which seems to have been throughout Norman, was rebuilt early in the fifteenth century. There are traces of Norman work in the wall adjoining the tower-arch; and the lofty tower-arch itself is Norman, with zigzag moulding. This arch-the western arch of the tower, which now closes the ruins eastward-is built up with fragments of all sorts, perhaps from the vanished choir. All the eastern part of the church, with the transepts, was taken down soon after the Dissolution. The nave and aisles remained, and served as the parish church until the close of the seventeenth century, when the nave-roof fell in, and the south aisle became ruinous. The north aisle was then fitted as at present. This is Perpendicular, like the rest, with some fine sculptured bosses in the vaulting. The gallery might well be removed. In the lower storey of the tower, which serves as a porch, is a memorial tablet for William Hill, sexton of the church for thirty-two years. He died, aged sixty-five, in 1792. When forty years old he was blinded by exposure during a deep snow-fall, yet "was afterwards able to find his way everywhere, and to know every grave in the churchyard.”

Such are the actual remains of Crowland-sufficient, as has been said of a similar monastic ruin, "to move pity in the beholder" who remembers what was the ancient glory and the widespread reputation of the place. It is indeed impossible even for one who is unacquainted with the history of Crowland to look on the ruins without interest; but it is this history which really attracts the visitor to a place so remote, and so hidden among the marshes. We will follow it briefly.

In the earlier days of Christianity in England, the great district of the Fens presented special attractions to the hermits and solitaries who at that time regarded an isolated, ascetic life as the highest development of their religion. It was well protected in itself; for the deep morasses rendered difficult of access the little islets of firmer soil which rose from the midst of the reeds and water-flags; and much of the district seems to have been a sort of border-land, over which the neighbouring kings held but an imperfect authority. Those who fled from the world, therefore, found themselves tolerably safe from pursuit in the far solitudes of the Fens. And the country itself possessed many charms in the eyes of at least the later monastic writers. They praise it for its wide extent, its pleasant appearance (and, in full summer, the mass of waving green which covered the surface may well have been delightful to look upon), its streams and lakes, its abundant fisheries, and its quantity of game and waterfowl. Even the hermits could thus manage to support themselves; and at a very early period many a little island among the reeds had its

EARLY HISTORY OF CROWLAND.

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solitary inhabitant. Thorney, the "Island of Thorns," was once known as Ancarig, the "Anchor's (anchorite's) Island." St. Etheldreda, when fleeing from the world, sought an asylum on the high ground of Ely (the "Eel's Island"); and her house-priest, Huna, after her death, became a hermit on an island farther among the marshes, still known as Honey ("Huna's Isle"). The great Abbey of Peterborough was founded in 655, on the border of the Fens, for the sake of their advantages and security; and others, like Ramsey, arose in the same manner. But in most cases the monasteries of the Fen-land, which afterwards became so famous, grew up round the cell of some hermit, or were founded in the place which had been sanctified by his religious life. The monastery of Crowland was gradually formed round the cell of the hermit Guthlac.

Guthlac (born in 673-died 713) was a youth of the royal house of Mercia, who, touched by the passion for solitude which at that time so closely followed a full acceptance of Christianity, retreated into the heart of the Fens. The land swarmed with life; but it was also (according to the belief of the age) the haunt of myriads of evil spirits, who delighted to attack the hermits. They assaulted Guthlac in hosts. They sat on the roof of his cell and disturbed him by strange noises. They once carried him far into the icy regions of the north, and showed him there the entrance to the pit of hell; but St. Bartholomew appeared radiant in glory, and compelled them to bring Guthlac safely back to his cell. They presented themselves in various shapes, sometimes pleasing, more often terrific ; and they not seldom took the form of the crows which frequented and gave name to the island. These tormentors were at length put to flight by Guthlac's incessant prayers and penances. The existence of his cell became known to the world; and at length Ethelbald, another of the Mercian Athelings, came as a fugitive to Guthlac, and prayed for shelter and protection. Guthlac foretold that in due time he would become king. So it fell out. Guthlac died at Crowland; and, after his death, Ethelbald, the king, built a stone church there (the earlier buildings were of wood), and endowed the monastery which had gradually been formed by those who gathered round the cell of the holy hermit.

At this point we encounter a certain difficulty. The first Abbot of Crowland after the Norman Conquest was an Englishman named Ingulf, who had been a monk of Fontenelles. A history of the abbey, attributed to this Ingulf, long passed as authentic; and, although scholars occasionally hesitated to accept it, it is only very recently that it has received a fatal blow, and has been definitively pronounced to be a forgery. It is not, however, a modern forgery. Early in the fifteenth century the monks of Crowland, who were called on to defend certain of their possessions, found it necessary for that purpose to produce some of their earlier charters. The forgery of a charter was, it may be feared, looked upon as more than pardonable in the later monastic period, at least by the monks who were to profit by it. A long series of forged charters exists in connection with the neighbouring monastery of Peterborough; and there is hardly a monastic chartulary in which some documents that are at any rate doubtful may not be discovered. Ingulf's "History of Crowland" is filled with charters which, now that modern learning has enabled us to criticise them, are found to bear on their faces the broad evidences of their manufacture-ingenious, perhaps, for the time at which they were constructed, but quite unable to stand the test of later