David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘What a frightful business,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Thank God we seem to live in more enlightened times. Now, my last question is this. Do you have details of the executions at individual abbeys or churches or cathedrals? Compton is my main interest, as you will appreciate.’

If Jarvis Broome was wondering why Powerscourt should be so interested in possible deaths in Compton three and a half centuries before he did not show it.

‘I might be able to help you there,’ he said, reaching up towards a long series of black notebooks on the top shelf of his bookcase. ‘We certainly know about three abbots who were put to death at Colchester, Reading and Glastonbury. I’ve been round all the major places over the past couple of years and taken notes on what was relevant in the records. Calne, Cambridge, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Compton, here we are.’

Powerscourt leaned forward to look at the black notebook.

‘It would seem, Lord Powerscourt, that there were a number of deaths in Compton round the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. One monk, killed the year before.’

‘How did he die?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘He was burnt at the stake. Two more were given the full disembowelling treatment early in the year the monastery was dissolved. One last death shortly afterwards. The last Abbot was executed and his head put on display at the gateway leading into Cathedral Close. It seems that some more people may have lost their lives in the Prayer Book Revolt, but the records are unclear about the manner of their deaths.’

Powerscourt took himself off for a solitary walk after lunch. He had borrowed Jarvis Broome’s desk and notepaper to send a brief letter to Dr Williams in Compton. He was, he wrote, now in possession of further information which confirmed, if confirmation was necessary, the substance of what he had said in his earlier letter. He asked the doctor to reply by return to his London address. Round and round the Fellows’ Garden he walked, ignoring the neatly kept rectangle of grass, the flowers coming into bloom, the birds still singing happily in their trees. The manner of death, he told himself, gives little clue as to the reason for it. There was no sense in it. Cries of alarm drew him to the terrace overlooking the river. A party of visitors had taken a punt on the river and appeared to have no idea about the propulsion techniques required on the Cam. The boat was going round and round, disturbing the ducks who scurried crossly away towards the more peaceful waters of Trinity and St John’s. Powerscourt wondered if he should offer instructions from his position on the bank. Then he saw that the pole had been abandoned and the party were going to proceed with the aid of two paddles in the stern of the boat. In the summer term, he said to himself, they would have been laughed to scorn.

The Dean’s rooms were on the top floor of a tiny quadrangle off the front court. The chaos reminded Powerscourt briefly of the office of the editor of the Grafton Mercury.

‘I only moved in here yesterday,’ said the Dean. ‘My apologies for the chaos.’ Powerscourt saw that there was some form of order in the confusion. All the books were stacked neatly under the shelves by the side of the window. The pictures had been placed around the room underneath the places where they were going to hang. A large pile of papers, sermons perhaps, or unmarked undergraduate essays, were on top of the desk.

The Dean himself was a tall figure in his middle forties with jet black hair to match the colour of his cassock. He wore a silver crucifix around his neck.

‘Thank you so much for taking the trouble to talk to me when you are in the middle of moving house,’ Powerscourt began, ‘and I fear you may find my questions somewhat unorthodox.’

‘Fire ahead,’ said the Dean cheerfully.

Powerscourt had already decided that there was no point trying to navigate his way towards the crucial query. He went straight to the point.

‘Can you be an Anglican priest and a Roman Catholic priest at the same time?’

The Dean stared at Powerscourt. Powerscourt said nothing.

‘God bless my soul,’ said the Dean. ‘Perplexed undergraduates reading theology – and most undergraduates reading theology these days are very perplexed indeed, Lord Powerscourt – ask me some pretty strange questions but I’ve never been asked that before. Just give me a moment to think about it, if you would.’

The Dean stared hard at the opposite wall. Powerscourt noticed that the Dean seemed to have a large collection of watercolours of derelict and desolate abbeys in the north of England. Fountains, he thought he could decipher at the bottom of one painting, Rievaulx on another. Desolate since the Dissolution of the bloody Monasteries, he said to himself. Were they never going to leave him in peace?

‘I think this might be the answer,’ said the Dean finally, his hands twisting at the chain of his crucifix for inspiration or consolation. ‘In theory, the answer has to be No. You have to swear allegiance and fidelity to one particular faith when you take holy orders. But in practice the answer might be Yes. It might be possible, if the person concerned is prepared to lie to their superiors and believes that the sins committed in terms of one religion are outweighed by the advantages conferred by the other.’

Powerscourt had suspected that the answer might be something like this. No certainty anywhere.

‘And do you think, Dean, that it would be possible to live this double life for years and years?’

The Dean’s fingers were off again. Powerscourt wondered how often he had to replace the chain.

‘I fear the answer is the same. In theory the answer would have to be No. In practice, if you were very careful and took great care to conceal your true allegiance, there is no reason why you should not keep up the fiction for a long period.’

‘I realize,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that this is an impossible question. In these circumstances, of a man masquerading, if you like, as a Protestant priest and a Catholic priest at the same time, which is likely to be his true position?’

‘Would he regard himself as a Catholic or a Protestant, do you mean?’ said the Dean quickly.

‘I do.’

Once again the Dean stared at his wall. Faint sounds of somebody practising the organ drifted in from the Chapel next door. Powerscourt thought it was Bach.

‘This time,’ the Dean said finally, ‘you’ll be relieved to hear that I think the answer is more clear cut, even if it’s not absolutely definitive.’

Certainly not, thought Powerscourt. In this world of scholarship and perplexed theology nothing was ever likely to be definitive.

‘Let me give you an analogy, if I may,’ the Dean went on, ‘between republics and monarchies. I don’t believe nations become republics because they want to be republics, if you see what I mean. They become republics because they don’t want to be monarchies. Republics, by definition, are non-monarchies. Anglicans are Anglicans to some extent because they don’t want or weren’t allowed by their governments to be Catholics. Anglicans to some extent define themselves by being not Catholics. Previous centuries have seen a great deal of anti-Catholic hatred whipped up in this country. Even today the celebrations of Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night are hardly a celebration of Christian unity. But Catholics don’t define themselves by not being Anglicans, if you follow me. They have older, historically longer continuities. So I think it would be very difficult for this imaginary person to be really an Anglican purporting to be a Catholic. I think it is more likely to be the other way round, that he is truly a Catholic pretending to an Anglican.’

‘Or, perhaps,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that he was an Anglican and converted to Catholicism but forgot to slough off his Anglican skin, as it were.’