David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

The real Bishop was hosting an important conference in the study of his Palace. The front of the building looked out over the Cathedral Green but the study was at the back. In daylight there was a peaceful view over the Bishop’s garden, said to be one of the largest and finest of its kind in the country. On the desk, large enough to intimidate any passing prebendary, sat the wooden box found behind the coffin during the excavations in the crypt. Two gentlemen sat across from the Bishop, inspecting the documents contained inside. To Moreton’s right was Octavius Parslow, senior keeper of documents at the British Museum, a man with a reputation for scholarship that stretched across the great museums and universities of Europe. To his left, Theodore Crawford, Professor of History at the University of Oxford and one of the leading scholars of the sixteenth century in Britain. They both wore fine gloves as they passed the document from hand to hand. From time to time Crawford, a thin man in his early forties with a goatee beard, would snort rather loudly and make a jotting in his dark red notebook. Parslow had placed a large magnifying glass in front of him and would raise it to peer earnestly at the writing. The Bishop had an enormous volume by his side, bound in fading brown leather, which contained the early records of the cathedral.

The Bishop coughed slightly and smiled at his guests. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have now had over an hour and a half to peruse these documents. Would you be so kind as to give me your preliminary thoughts on them?’

The two scholars looked at each other, both reluctant to speak first.

‘Could I ask you, if I may, Bishop, as to your own view on the matter?’ Octavius Parslow was playing for time.

‘Well,’ said the Bishop, ‘I am a mere country bishop, as you both know. My speciality is in the early textual analysis of the Gospels. But I have consulted widely in the district. It is surprising how much expertise you can find in these rural parts if you know where to look for it.’

Four eyebrows shot up in unison across the desk. Surely the man wasn’t going to suggest that Compton was a centre of learning to rival Berlin or Bologna. The Bishop noted the look of disdain on his visitors’ faces and reminded himself of the obligations of Christian charity.

‘It is my belief,’ he went on earnestly, ‘though I would never dare to lay claim to the wisdom you two scholars have brought to my Palace this evening, that the document is a diary, a record, kept by one of the monks when the present cathedral was still a monastery in 1530 or 1540, I am not at all sure of the dates. It would be a most magnificent find if it were true, for we celebrate one thousand years in the life of abbey and cathedral at Easter.’

Even Parslow and Crawford were impressed by the thousand years of history.

‘Professor Crawford?’ said the Bishop hesitantly. ‘Perhaps you would like to give us your opinion.’

The Professor snorted slightly once again. He took off his spectacles and laid them on the desk. ‘Interesting though your speculations are, my dear Bishop,’ he just about managed a smile for Gervase Bentley Moreton, ‘I feel it far too soon to pass any kind of authoritative judgement. There are a number of problems in my view. Even by the standard of Church Latin of the time, the language is very poor. I do not say that renders it inauthentic, but it raises the possibility the strong possibility in my judgement, that it may be either a forgery, or a joke document written to impersonate what the author thought would be the grammar and vocabulary of a country bumpkin.’

Bishop Moreton had rather more respect for country bumpkins that either of his visitors. ‘And what is your view, Mr Parslow?’ He turned to face the man from the British Museum.

‘I would have to say first of all, Bishop,’ Octavius Parslow was tapping his fingers slowly on the desk, ‘that I would wish to take issue with my colleague here about the Latin.’ He bestowed a condescending smile on his fellow scholar. ‘Crude, yes, ungrammatical, yes, but not, I would suggest, the work of a country bumpkin. There are records from one or two of the northern abbeys, Bolton, I believe, and perhaps Fountains, where the phraseology, while obviously not from the senior common rooms of Oxford, is not dissimilar. My reservations centre rather more on the sequence of legislation described in the documents. Surely the Act of Annates was passed before the Act of Succession? Yet here it would appear to be the other way round. There may be some perfectly innocent explanation as to why history seems to have been running in reverse order here in Compton, but for the moment I cannot see it.’

‘I am not at all sure,’ Professor Crawford returned to the fray, ‘that the precise order of the various acts is significant. The fellow is not writing an academic thesis, merely giving his reactions to contemporary events. He could have made a mistake.’

This time it was Octavius Parslow who snorted. ‘I don’t think you will find that statement to be borne out by the historical records at all,’ he said, turning slightly red.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen.’ Bishop Moreton tried to restore some kind of order. ‘Could I ask you a more specific question about the document. What date would you say it was?’

‘Speaking for myself,’ said Professor Crawford, ‘I could not hazard my academic record or my professional reputation on that question at this juncture.’

‘Mr Parslow?’ said the Bishop.

‘In my view, Bishop, it would be premature to attempt any precision at this stage.’

The Bishop felt himself growing drowsy. He had had a very busy day, with a diocesan meeting that had lasted for a full three hours. He lowered his head as if in concentration, but his eyes were closing. Various phrases penetrated his brain as the battle raged on across his desk. ‘Need to see the whole question in its proper historical context,’ ‘further documentation to be consulted in the Bodleian,’ ‘a question not merely of the Dissolution of the Monasteries but of the wider evolution of Tudor religious policy in its entirety,’ and this from the Oxford Professor Crawford, ‘need to consult widely with colleagues, possibly even in Cambridge,’ ‘detailed textual analysis vital before any proper historical comparisons can be made at all.’

The bells of Isaiah and Ezekiel woke the Bishop at eight o’clock precisely. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this has been most illuminating. Perhaps we could continue our discussions over dinner.’ As the Bishop led Professor Crawford and Octavius Parslow towards his dining room, he reflected on the idea of time in Compton running backwards. You could leave these two here, he said to himself as he beamed happily at his guests, discussing this document and they’d keep going all the way back to the Dissolution of the Monasteries themselves in 1539. They might be able to keep the academic argument going right back to the foundation of the abbey in 901.

Lord Francis Powerscourt enjoyed being a Bishop to begin with. He wasn’t quite sure precisely what a Bishop of Compton would do when he sat here. Maybe his job was simply to preside over the services, to give his seal of approval to all those Te Deums and Cantate Dominos that would have echoed round the choir down the centuries. Then the pain got worse. He was on the second sleeve of his shirt now and was seriously worried that he would be on his trousers or his waistcoat next. He limped painfully round the cathedral, checking all the doors. He passed the treasury, filled with ancient crosses and chalices and Communion cups. One of the past glories of the minster was in there, a small box said to contain relics of Thomas a Becket. This piece of treasure had brought great wealth to the cathedral in years gone by as pilgrims came from all over England to pay tribute. The money they left had been enough to repair the great crossing when the tower fell down in the fourteenth century. Above him, as he passed the mighty pillars, the jokes of the medieval stone workers were still there, a cobbler mending shoes, someone removing a thorn from his foot, a fox stealing a goose, a spoonbill eating a frog. The circuit of the doors took him over forty minutes. Normally it would have taken less than ten. His leg was still painful. He wasn’t quite sure how much blood he had lost, spots of it marking his progress round the building.