The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond Part 1

The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond: A Picture of Monastic Life in the Days of Abbot Samson.

by Jocelin de Brakelond.

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 Wors.h.i.+p 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 l.u.s.tre 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 Glas...o...b..ry. One book alone the abbey has given us, but that one book is worth a thousand chronicles."

The original ma.n.u.script 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 Ma.n.u.scripts. 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 ent.i.tled "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 t.i.tle 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), a.s.sistant 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty 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 the Chronicle, however, and in other 13th century doc.u.ments in which his name is recorded, he appears simply as Jocelin.

He tells us he took the habit in 1173, "the year when the Flemings were taken captive without the town" (page 1); and that he then came under the care of Samson, at that time master of the novices, who told him some of his own experiences by way of warning against interference with the const.i.tuted authorities (6).

At the time of Samson's election as Abbot, in 1182, Jocelin was prior's chaplain, but within four months he was made abbot's chaplain, "noting many things and committing them to memory" (39): for which all students of English history are eternally grateful to him. In his capacity as Samson's chaplain, Jocelin was "constantly with him by day and night for six years, and had the opportunity of becoming fully conversant with the worthiness of his life and the wisdom of his rule"

(56).

Jocelin evidently starts at first with an admiration for Samson's vigorous and independent regime (see especially pages 52-3); but later on his faith in his master seems to have been a little shaken, and Samson's action in practically "jockeying" his favourite Herbert into the office of prior takes Jocelin's breath away. The eventful meeting of the chapter over, he sits down stupefied in the porch of the guest chamber (he being then hospitarius), and reflects on the situation (198). He cannot approve, moreover, Samson's action with regard to John Ruffus and Adam the Infirmarer, where he more than hints at the Abbot's acceptance of a bribe (200). The banking up by Samson of the fishpond at Babwell, thus flooding the pastures and gardens of others, he describes as "another stain of evil doing" (201): the Abbot's pa.s.sionate retort that "his fish pond was not to be spoilt on account of our meadows," obviously offending Jocelin's sense of the proprieties. He demurs, moreover, to the willingness of certain of the monks to strip even the shrine of St. Edmund himself to obtain an exemption of the Abbey from episcopal visitation, pointing out that there might come a time when the convent might need the control of a bishop, archbishop, or legate, over a tyrannous or spendthrift abbot (7).

It is perhaps for these reasons that we find Jocelin, at a date after Samson's death, on the side of the party of caution and moderation in the disputes over the election of a new abbot. The author, whoever he was, of the interpolated narrative in the Chronicle relating to Henry of Ess.e.x (101 _et seq._) refers to "Master Jocelin our almoner, a man of exalted piety, powerful in word and in deed"; and there can hardly be any doubt that this was our Jocelin. In the highly complicated story (printed in Mr. Arnold's second volume) of the preliminaries to the final approval by King John of Samson's successor, Abbot Hugh II., Jocelin the almoner took the side of Robert of Gravelee, the sacrist, who advocated the adoption of the plan followed when the previous vacancy occurred, of submitting to the king names from whom he could make a selection (as indeed John had asked might be done by letter dated 25 July, 1213), instead of asking him, as they did, to confirm an election already made. Jocelin, in a speech delivered in the chapter-house, seems indeed to have been the first to start the view that the convent had made a mistake, and that it ought to put itself right with the king. He again insisted on this at a second debate in December, 1213, and took a prominent part in the subsequent discussions, his name being recorded in the division list of June, 1214, when 30 voted on his side, and 32 for adherence to the claims of the Abbey.

The three delegates, the Abbot of Wardon, the Prior of Dunstable, and the Dean of Salisbury, who had been appointed by the Pope on May 18, 1214, to inquire into the Bury election, held the last but one of their numerous sittings on February 12, 1215, at which Jocelin was present. At last the delegates announced on March 10 their judgment confirming the election, which, with considerable trouble, they persuaded the sacrist and his party to accept, and to exchange with the new abbot the kiss of peace.

When, on April 24, 1215, the abbot elect, unsuccessful in obtaining John's favour, and refusing to bribe the king, though advised to do so by the courtiers, appointed certain officials to the custody of Abbey manors, he took the advice, amongst other high officers, of Jocelin the almoner; and this is the last we hear of our Chronicler.

Jocelin himself mentions (23) that he had written a book on the many signs and wonders in connection with the martyrdom by the Jews of the boy Robert, who was buried in the Abbey Church; but this work is not known to be extant. The inaccurate Bale also ascribes to him the authors.h.i.+p of the tract _Super Electione Hugonis_ (also in the Liber Albus), from which the above facts as to Jocelin's later life have been gleaned. But there is no authority for this; and, as Mr. Arnold points out (i. lix.), the style of that work is different from the Chronicle.

Whatever criticisms one might be tempted to pa.s.s on Carlyle's appreciation of Samson, there need be no dissentient voice to his summing up of Jocelin's character:--

An ingenious and ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd, noticing, quick-witted man; and from under his monk's cowl has looked out on the narrow section of the world in a really human manner.... The man is of patient, peaceable, loving, clear-smiling nature; open for this or that.... Also he has a pleasant wit, and loves a timely joke, though in mild, subdued manner. A learned, grown man, yet with the heart as of a good child.

=The Central Figure of the Chronicle.=--Whatever his other merits, Jocelin's strong point was certainly not chronological sequence. With the a.s.sistance of the Table of Dates printed on pages 261-267, the reader will, it is hoped, get some useful sort of idea of the busy life of Abbot Samson, both within and without the walls of the monastery, whilst it was under his vigorous rule; and as to his personal characteristics, virtues and foibles, they are writ large in almost every chapter of the Chronicle.

He was obviously of humble origin, and his dialect was that of his native county of Norfolk (62). He seems to have lost his father early, for we read of his conferring, soon after he became Abbot, a benefice upon the son of a man of lowly station who had been kind to him in his youth and looked after his interests (66). As a child of nine, he had been taken by his mother to a pilgrimage to St. Edmund, after a dream which presaged his future service under that saint (56). When he was a poor clerk, William, the schoolmaster of Diss, had given him free admission to his school: a favour which he requited by giving Walter, son of William, the living of Chevington (67). Similarly, he helped those of his kinsmen who had recognized him when he was a poor clerk, provided they were worthy; but with those who had then held aloof from him he wished to have no dealings (66).

At some early date Samson went to Paris to study, a friend who then supported him there by the proceeds of the sale of holy water receiving afterwards a benefice from him (66). Just as he did not forget the friends who had helped him in his early struggles so he remembered past kindnesses shown to him when he was a poor monk and out of favour with the authorities. When Hugh, his predecessor, clapped him into irons, Hugh's cupbearer Elias brought him some wine to quench his prison thirst (67); and when he needed a night's lodging on his return from Durham on the business of the Abbey, a resident at Risby gave him the shelter which a neighbour refused (68). Neither favour was forgotten when Elias and William of Risby came before him as landlord.

By 1160 Samson was back from abroad as master of the schools at Bury, though he did not become a professed monk till 1166. Meanwhile he had been sent on an errand to Rome, with reference to the church at Woolpit, in which his native wit showed itself (73, 74). He seems to have been successful in his mission, getting from Pope Alexander III.

a reversion for the monastery of the Woolpit living; but, perhaps because he returned too late to prevent Geoffrey Ridel being appointed by the king (74), Abbot Hugh banished him, on his return, to Castle Acre. Here he remained in exile a long time (74), and he was sent there again after he had become a cloister monk, and had spoken up "for the good of our Church" in opposition to the Abbot (6).

=Samson in Subordinate Offices.=--Much as Hugh disliked Samson, he seems to have been a little afraid of him; and, to reconcile matters, he made Samson subsacrist. "Often accused," says Jocelin, "he was transferred from one office to another, being successively guest master, pittance master, third prior, and again subsacrist" (9). But he could not be induced to fawn on and flatter the Abbot, as other officials did; and Hugh declared that "he had never seen a man whom he could not bend to his will, except Samson the subsacrist" (10).

When at length Hugh's trying dispensation came to an end, through his horse accident at Canterbury in 1180, Samson was, as subsacrist, busy with new building operations for the Church (14). His superior officer, the bibulous William Wiardel, the sacrist, was jealous of him, and persuaded the wardens of the Abbey to stop any further expense for works during the vacancy (15). But Samson knew some things to William's financial and moral discredit, on which he was later able to base the sacrist's dismissal from office (46-7).

The gossip amongst the monks as to which of the brethren should fill Hugh's place is admirably told by Jocelin (Chap. ii.). Whilst the rest were babbling at blood-letting season, Samson the subsacrist sat smiling but saying nothing (21). The receipt of Henry II.'s order or permission to make choice of a new Abbot put the monastery in a flutter; and the selection of the deputation to wait upon the King, and their interview with their liege lord, is most navely described in chapter iii. The secret ballot at Bury for three names was a surprise to the higher officials (31), and they did what they could to diminish Samson's chances. But after some fencing the Bishop of Winchester asked the deputation point blank whom they wanted, and the answer was--Samson: "no one gainsaying this" (34).

=Samson as Abbot.=--And so the once oppressed and obscure monk returned to Bury the absolute ruler of the foundation, with the king's remark in his ears when he noted, with apparent admiration at Bishop's Waltham, how Samson comported himself in the royal presence: "By the eyes of G.o.d, this Abbot elect thinks himself worthy to govern an abbey!" (35). So indeed he did, setting to work at once after his ceremonial installation (37) to inst.i.tute reforms of all sorts. As Carlyle says, and his words must suffice in this place:--

How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapter-house, proceeded with cautious energy to set about reforming their disjointed, distracted way of life; how he managed with his Fifty rough Milites (Feudal Knights), with his lazy farmers, remiss refractory monks, with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings; how on all sides he laid about him like a man, and putting consequence on premiss, and everywhere the saddle on the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic method out of lazily fermenting wreck,--the careful reader will discern, not without true interest, in these pages of Jocelin Boswell.

To tell the story of all this would be to paraphrase the Chronicle; and the reader is therefore referred to the List of Contents for instances of the Abbot's capacity and resourcefulness in dealing with the complicated interests under his control.

But there is one aspect of his busy life to which allusion may perhaps here be made, as showing the influence and importance of the Abbot of St. Edmundsbury outside the monastery walls.

=Relations with Church and State.=--Samson's abbacy extended over the pontificates of five Popes and the reigns of three Kings, by all of whom his strength of character and wisdom of counsel seem to have been appreciated. Pope Lucius III., who had succeeded, in 1181, Alexander III., to whom Samson had twenty years before paid a visit on behalf of the Abbey (72), appointed the new abbot a judge in the ecclesiastical courts within seven months of his election (51). Urban III. granted Samson in 1187-8, the privilege of giving the episcopal benediction (84) and other concessions. Celestine III. placed him in 1197 on the commission for restoring the expelled monks at Coventry (142); and Innocent III. granted on December 1, 1198, without hesitation, on Samson's application, an exemption of Bury Abbey from episcopal visitation even by a legate unless he were a legate _a latere_ (124).

King Henry II., who had apparently formed a favourable opinion of Samson from his demeanour on his election (35), practically decided in his favour on February 11, 1187, in his dispute with Archbishop Hubert concerning his abbatial jurisdiction over Monk's Eleigh, where a case of homicide had occurred (78). In the same year, the king at Clarendon favourably considered Samson's pet.i.tion with reference to the immunity of Bury Abbey from certain taxes (96). Having taken the Cross on January 21, 1188, Henry II. came to Bury within a month to pay a pilgrimage to St. Edmund, when Samson endeavoured, without success, to obtain the king's permission to do likewise (81).

In the next year Henry died at Chinon (July 6, 1189), and Samson had to deal with a new sovereign: at whose coronation on September 3, 1189, he was present. One of Richard's earliest acts was the sale of offices, crown rights, crown property, and royal favours to fill his military chest; saying indeed that he would sell London if he could find a purchaser. Amongst the bargains of this sort was the sale to Samson of the manor of Mildenhall for 1,000 marks, after the astute abbot had offered him half that amount (70). The queen-mother was ent.i.tled by custom of the realm to 100 marks as a perquisite in connection with this transaction, and took in lieu thereof a gold cup which had been given to the abbey by Henry II. This same cup came back to Bury in exchange for 100 marks (71), when the 70,000 marks required to ransom King Richard was being raised in England (147).

When the news of Richard's capture reached England, Samson rose in his place in the King's Council to express his readiness to seek the king in Germany, either in disguise or any other way: "by reason whereof,"

says Jocelin, "he obtained great approbation" (81). Later on he did go to Germany, "and visited the king with many gifts" (82).

Towards the end of Richard's reign, in 1198, Samson tried to avoid sending four of his knights to Normandy, in obedience to the King's orders, and went to see him, with the result that Richard accepted four mercenaries, and afterwards a hundred pounds to discharge the obligation (128-30). He brought back with him on this occasion for the adornment of the abbey church a golden cross and a valuable copy of the Gospels (130); and Jocelin records that so often as he returned from beyond sea on his numerous visits abroad, he brought back with him some offering for the church (131), besides making gifts to it on other occasions.

In 1198 a serious quarrel took place between Richard and Samson over the wards.h.i.+p of Nesta of c.o.c.kfield, the daughter of a family whose tenure of lands from the Abbey is recorded with wearisome iteration in the Chronicle. Samson would not give way, despite the threats of the King, which he "very wisely pa.s.sed over without notice," and in the end Richard yielded with a good grace, asking the abbot if he would send him some of his dogs. The abbot of course complied, and added some horses and other valuable gifts, in exchange for which Richard sent him a ring given to him by the new Pope, Innocent III. (147-9).

Just as Samson had "obtained the favour and grace of King Richard by gifts and money, so that he had good reason to believe that he could succeed in all his undertakings, the King died, and the abbot lost all his labour and outlay" (178). It became therefore necessary to propitiate Richard's successor. King John made an early pilgrimage to St. Edmund, but left in bad odour with the monastery, which had spent much money on his entertainment, but had only received in return thirteenpence offered by the king at the shrine of the Saint on the day of his departure, besides a silken cloth borrowed for the occasion from the sacrist and never paid for (178). John must, however, have thought highly of the abbot to summon him over sea in 1203 to confer with him as to the Pope's letter concerning the dispensation of Crusaders from their vows (207).

=Samson as an Author.=--Once when Jocelin asked why he had been sighing so heavily and was so wakeful at nights, Samson confided to him how greatly he felt the burden of his charge; and on another occasion said that if he had known what it involved, he would, rather than be abbot and lord, have preferred to be keeper of the books, "for this office he had ever desired above all others" (55).

Jocelin hints a polite incredulity; but there are evidences that Samson was fond of books, and was indeed an author. There is a small volume, t.i.tus A viii. in the Cottonian collection, which includes in its contents a work in two books, ent.i.tled _De Miraculis Sancti aedmundi_. From a number of marginal notes, of even date with the fourteenth century text, and which ascribe to Samson, amongst other writers, the authors.h.i.+p of various pa.s.sages in the great legendary life of St. Edmund in the Bodleian Library (MS. 240), Mr. Arnold arrived at the conclusion that "the writer of the work was unquestionably Abbot Samson." For the evidence the reader is referred to Appendix I. (pages 215-21); but it would appear that the work was written before the date when he became abbot, and perhaps before he had been appointed to any one of the numerous offices in the monastery to which he was from time to time transferred by the capricious Hugh (9).

Whenever any new event was recorded in his patron saint's honour, Samson caused it to be recorded: hence at his desire the episode of Henry of Ess.e.x, whom St. Edmund had "confounded in the very hour of battle" (102), was reduced to writing at Reading, and interpolated by some other monk in Jocelin's chronicle.

=Samson's Masterfulness.=--Samson, like his prototype of Scripture, was a "strong man," and as such he came into constant conflict with those who sought to try conclusions with him, usually to their own regret. From instances innumerable, the following may be selected as typical. At his very first general court of his knights, Thomas of Hastings tried to press the claim of his nephew Henry--a minor--to the hereditary stewards.h.i.+p of the Abbey; but Samson said he would consider the matter when Henry could perform the duties (41). Richard, Earl of Clare, demanded his guerdon of five s.h.i.+llings for the office of Standard-bearer of St. Edmund. Samson retorted that the payment of the money would not inconvenience the Abbey; but there were two other claimants for the post, and Richard must settle first with them. The Earl said he would confer with Roger Bigot his kinsman, "and so the matter was put off even to this day" (86).

Geoffrey Ridel, the Bishop of Ely, sent a blundering messenger to the abbot to ask for timber from woods at Elmswell, meaning Elmsett.