WINCHESTER.*
DEAN KITCHIN has done a first-rate piece of work in this history of the first capital of England. He has shown a true appreciation of the main interest of Winchester in devoting two- thirds of the work to its history before the fifteenth century, and in making it centre first round the West Saxon Kings and then round the Bishopric and the Cathedral. For, since Henry III., Winchester as a city ceased to have a history; and since William of Wykeham founded the College, it has ceased to be a centre of influence on the national life. In face of this fact, it is somewhat startling to find the " contents " open with the statement, "Winchester has no early history." But in the text it appears that "early history" means before the Saxon Conquest, and that "this can only be discerned by the evidence of the spade." Even this statement, however, is not strictly accurate, since "Hills," as Wykehamists still call St. Catherine's Hill and its surroundings, which King Canute gave, by the name of "Rifle," to St. Swithun's Cathedral, bear conspicuous to every eye the Celtic "white circular work, which though now overgrown with grass, still hangs boldly like a necklace round its shoulders ;" and the town itself, in its name of Winchester, or Gwent-castra, bears evidence of its Celtic and Roman origins. The Norman wall of Wolvesey, too, the old Bishop's Palace, now a Wykehamical carpenter's shop, bears "embedded in Henry of Blois' (nephew of Henry I., and brother of Stephen) work, the drums of many Roman columns and large quantities of Roman bricks." But it must be confessed that Celtic and Roman remains in Winchester are not of much living interest.
The "twin aldermen," Cerdic and Cymric, to whom the English Chronicle attributes the foundation of the West Saxon Kingdom and capital before 534, are not much more substantial figures; nor does the interest of Winchester really begin till the West Saxon King, in 676, transferred his Bishop's seat from Dorchester, near Oxford, to Winchester. But before this the history of Winchester Cathedral began when Cynegils, the first Christian King of the West Saxons, gave a grant of lands for the building of the first cathedral, part of which remain, "after a lapse of nigh twelve centuries and a half, in the hands of the Dean and Chapter." The Dean appears also to think that the ancient well he has recently opened in the crypt is part of this church, if not the site of the original Roman bapistery, in the days of adult baptism, and when a font really meant what its name implies, a well or pool in which the faithful could be dipped.
It was not, however, till 827 or 828, when Egbert returned in triumph to Winchester, having established the supremacy of the South over the Midlands and the North, as rex totius Britanniae, that Winchester became the capital of all England. Egbert's bones lie in one of the chests above the choir- screen in the Cathedral, made by Bishop Fox, but taken from chests made by Henry de Blois, who had placed in them "Kings with Bishops, Bishops with Kings commingled." In these chests Canute, and Queen Emma his wife, mother of Edward the Confessor, and William Rufus, lie undistinguished. But the most illustrious bones of all have disappeared. Alfred the Great, mythical at Oxford, was real enough here. In his palace at Wolvesey, he caused the English Chronicle to be begun, and continued it himself. He founded the "New Minster," which stood so close to the Cathedral that the rival Canons, for they were not then monks, used to try and sing each other down. Alfred was first buried in St. Swithun's, but he was too great for it. The Canons said his ghost walked, and gave them no peace. So he was translated to the New Minster, and when the New Minster was removed to Hyde Abbey, just outside the town, his relics were taken there too. Here they remained until the end of the last century, when the Corporation pulled down the Abbey, used the stones for a Bridewell, sold Alfred's tomb- stone to a passing visitor, who has placed it in Corby Castle wall, and the remains themselves were thrown away, and no one knows even where they were laid. Such were the exploits of the corrupt and unreformed Corporation for whom the Tories fought so hard. That the Corporation in this mis- represented the town, is shown by the fact that they would even have sold the ancient Butter Cross in the High Street, had not a popular clamour prevented their fell design from being carried out.
• Winchester. "Historic Towns" Series. By G. W. Kitchin, D.C., F.S.A. London: Lon8mana and Co.
St. Swithun's famous bones, which were enshrined, were scat- tered at the Reformation. It is sad or joyful for the patriotic Winchester man to know that there is not the smallest his- torical foundation for the legend which credits this poor saint with responsibility for the rains which so often ruin the English summer. In the first place, the contemporary writer who saw the translation of the relics says not a word about even a storm on the day; in the second place, even if there had been a deluge, it could not have stopped the removal of bones inside the church from the place where they lay not more than a dozen yards west of the doors. Indeed, the translators had an uncommonly good time of it, and the only thing that flowed was wine or beer :—" Many the dishes and the wine cups; all faces shine with joy. There is a full dish for every one : and when all are satisfied, the tables still groan under the viands. The flitting butlers ran from hall to cellar, and urge the guests to drink : placing before them huge bowls brimful with wine and liquor countless." Perhaps it was the demand for cooling liquors on the third morning (the feast lasted two days), the fatal impaav which Pindar sings of, which caused the legend to arise.
We are not quite sure that Dean Kitchin is sound about one of the most curious points in the early history of Winchester Cathedral. He writes as if its earliest inhabitants were Benedictine monks. But this is doubtful. The early inhabitants of the English minsters were in the nature of missionary priests, companions of the Bishops, and secular, not monks; or if monks, hardly of strict Benedictine rule. In the German cathedrals, and in the French cathedrals, they always remained secular Canons. In Alfred's time, Winchester still retained its Canons. But by the time of Dunstan, the Papacy, which was always stronger in England than in France or Germany, had definitely committed itself on the side of the monks, who represented in England the foreign and Papal influence, and substituted the theory of personal salvation for that of spreading light to others. Dunstan, accordingly, in 962, through Ethelwold the Bishop, dispossessed the Canons, on the usual fanatic's plea of im- morality (the Canons were then allowed to marry), and put Benedictines in their place. Walklin, the first Norman Bishop, and builder of the present cathedral, in 1070 pro- posed to restore the Canons, and is said to have had them all ready to instal ; but he was stopped by Lanfranc himself, a monk and a "Papist." And so, greatly to the disadvantage of Winchester, the Benedictines remained, until "the whirligig of time brought about his revenges," and Henry VIII. turned them out to make room for secular Canons allowed to marry, a remnant of whom still "hold the fort."
Even by the time of the Conquest, though nominally still the capital, Winchester had fallen into the second rank to London. It had become the appanage not of the King, but of the Queen, the " morning-gift " or dower of the Lady of England. It is true William the Conqueror was crowned a second time at Winchester by Papal legates after his election and coronation in London. The Domesday-Book's other title is the Liber de Winton, because it was made and for many years kept at Winchester, though Winchester, like its rival capital, was not included in it. The Royal Hoard or Treasury was kept here till the reign of Henry II., and a special Domesday-Book for Winchester was made for Henry I. between 1107 and 1119. The reign of Stephen, however, proved to be its destruction. Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, played the part of King-Maker between Stephen and the Empress Matilda. At one time, Matilda held the Royal castle built by William the Conqueror at the West Gate and the upper part of the town, and Henry of Blois held his castle of Wolvesey and the Bishop's soke in the lower part of the town for Stephen, and bombarded the castle from thence. Hyde Abbey, the Nuns' Minster close to the Cathedral, twenty churches, and a large portion of the city, were burnt to the ground. A little later, Henry was on the point of getting Winchester made an Archbishopric with seven Sees under it ; but the Pope refused assent, and so, though Winchester was always the "richer manger," Canterbury still remained the "higher rack." Under Henry called Henry of Winchester, in the struggle against the foreign favourites, Winchester, and the Cathedral especially, again became the battle-ground of the contending parties, and were taken and retaken by Simon de Montfort and the King. So ruinous were the effects, that the city could no longer pay its rent to the King. It never again recovered.
One would have wished that Dean Kitchin had given rather more of the civic history of the place, with its Merchant Guild granted by Ethelwulf in 856; its " husting " court ; its "Wic- gerefa" Beornwnlf, who died in 897; its possible Mayor in 1243, and its two Bailiffs, six Aldermen, and other officers. But non omnia possumus °nixes, especially in a limited space, and we hope that Dean Kitchin will return to the charge, and give us an enlarged History of Winchester, its Kings, its Bishops, and its Bailiffs, its Minsters and its Guilds, alike.
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