The Clerkenwell Tales Peter Ackroyd (nice books to read TXT) 📖

“King Henry will argue –” the bishop began to say.

“There is many a man who begins language with a woman and cannot end it.20 No. We are the holy ones now. We are truly anointed. We will rule behind the king. So be of good heart. Dominus rises.”21

Chapter Twenty-three

The Author’s Tale

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1. By the time of Agnes de Mordaunt, the citizens of London insisted upon holding three days of mystery plays here, enacting the sacred history of the world from Creation to Judgement.

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2. There remains no trace or memorial of the convent in Clerkenwell except for one public house, the Three Kings, which stands on the ancient site of its hostelry. Its underground tunnels can still be seen, however, in the basement of the Marx Memorial Library at 37a, Clerkenwell Green.

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3. It was said that the Virgin had once appeared in this cloister to William Rahere, the founder of the priory, but at Rahere’s insistence no statue or altar had been erected; the Virgin’s words to him had not been recorded, but he had cried afterwards of the bush with red flames burning.

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4. Every Londoner was accustomed to the smell of faeces, and there were still parts of the city that were shunned for fear of contagion – shunned, that is, except for the snufflers and the gongers or rakers who collected the dung to spread upon the fields beyond the walls.

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5. On the site of the yard and privy where Radulf’s spirit left his body, singing, the bar and café of St. John’s Restaurant now stand.

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6. That area of Camomile Street is, to this day, reputed to be haunted.

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7. In some respects the stated beliefs of the Lollards have been considered by modern historians to be close to those of the predestined men or foreknown ones; but the Lollards were quite without the apocalyptic and messianic tendencies of that much smaller sect.

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8. In a sermon composed during this period, collected in Sermones Londonii (London, 1864), Swinderby inveighed against “the men commonly known as Lollards who for long time have laboured for the subversion of the whole Catholic faith and of Holy Church, for the lessening of public worship, the destruction of the realm, and very many other enormities.”

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9. In 1378 certain cardinals had proclaimed the election of Pope Urban IX invalid, whereupon the new pope excommunicated the complainants. The errant cardinals then retreated to Avignon, where they elected one of their own number as the “true” pope. Thus there began the division which brought forth two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon; there were two sets of cardinals, and in certain monasteries there were two abbots with contrary allegiances. The schism was maintained by personal jealousies and political ambitions, but also by ecclesiastical corruption and national rivalry. The Avignon popes were supported by France and by her allies, Scotland and Naples; the Rome popes were maintained by Germany, Flanders, Italy and, less enthusiastically, by England.

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10. A hundred years before an artist known only as “Peter the Painter” had been requested to delineate “the plain figures of death’s dance” and had succeeded in impressing and terrifying generations of Londoners.

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11. The Eighteen Conclusions have been found in a manuscript now kept in the British Library, under the reference Add.14.3405. It has been transcribed by Dr. Skinner thus:

“Item. Churches are dens and habitations of fiends. They are places of sin and occasions for sinning.

“Item. The pope is father Anti-Christ and its head, the prelates are its members, and the friars its tail.

“Item. The holiest man in the world is the true pope.

“Item. The place hallows not the man. The man hallows the place.

“Item. The needy man is the image of God, in more perfect similitude than wood or stone.

“Item. Confession should be made unto no priest, for no priest has the power to assoil a man of sin.

“Item. It is lawful for priests to take wives and for nuns to take husbands, since love is more commendable than chastity.

“Item. After the sacramental words said of a priest, there remains a cake of material bread on the altar which a mouse may nibble at.

“Item. The water hallowed by a priest is of no more effect than the water of a river or a well, since God blessed all things that He made.

“Item. It is not lawful for any man to fight or to do battle for any realm or country, nor should he plead in law for any right or wrong.

“Item. It is lawful and right to do all bodily works on a Sunday and all other days which have been commanded by the Church to be had holy.

“Item. Those who are saved can commit no sin.

“Item. The ringing of bells availeth nothing but to get money into priests’ purses.

“Item. Those who are saved make up the true church, in heaven and in earth.

“Item. The sacrament of baptism is a trifle, and not to be pondered.

“Item. It is no sin to do the contrary of the precepts of the Church.

“Item. It is as well to pray in a field as in a church.

“Item. It is no better for laymen to say the pater noster than to say ‘bibull babull.’ ”

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12. The husting of the citizens assembled at a stone amphitheatre a few hundred yards from St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was the ruin of the Roman building which had also been used for similar communal activities and been preserved by the citizens as an evident token of London’s ancient origins; it still contained the rows of seats for any great assembly. The guild halls of the eleventh and fifteenth centuries were built upon the same site. The present Guildhall can now be