David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

The Compton Horse were now a few miles from the city that bore their name. Every now and then the Colonel would look back to check that his little troop were in their proper formation.

‘Don’t suppose you know how long the campaign will last, Powerscourt?’ he said as the spire of the minster came into view. ‘Short engagement, or long siege? Bloody boring things sieges, so they tell me.’

‘I doubt if it will last more than a couple of days,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But without your assistance the whole affair would have been a complete fiasco.’

‘Never thought we’d end up guarding a flock of treacherous parsons,’ the Colonel continued. ‘Don’t suppose we’ll be adding it to the regimental colours.’

‘I’m sure that your role will be recognized,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if they would be in time. Johnny Fitzgerald had ridden ahead to find out how long before the service would end.

‘I’d better detach a couple of fellows to sort out the commissariat,’ said the Colonel. ‘I feel as though I could manage a bite of luncheon quite soon.’

The Bishop was addressing his congregation. Anne Herbert was feeling deeply irritated that all these men, who had cared for her so well after the death of her husband, were now desecrating his memory. Lady Lucy was wondering where Francis was and if he would arrive in time. Patrick Butler was trying to hear what was happening outside. Once he heard the horses’ hooves rattling on the stones outside, he said to himself, he would slip out the side door. He checked once more the spot where the Chief Constable and Chief Inspector Yates had been sitting. They were not there.

The Bishop was holding up the box containing the words of the monk of Compton, recently serialized in the Mercury. ‘This casket,’ he told his congregation, holding it well aloft above the ornate pulpit, ‘contains the link between Compton’s past and Compton’s future. It was discovered in our crypt earlier this year. It contains what I believe to be the last writings of a monk who dwelt here in the days before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Those of you who live in or around Compton may have read my translations of the earlier sections of the document in our local newspaper. For the visitors to our cathedral on this special day, our one thousandth birthday, I would merely say that it is like a diary, the fears, the reflections, the last words of this monk, whose name we do not know, as his end approached and he went to the scaffold for his faith.’

The Bishop paused briefly. Patrick Butler listened hard for noises outside. There were none.

‘These are the last words of the monk of Compton before he was led away and put to death. “Tomorrow they are coming for me. It will be my last day on earth before I go to meet my father in heaven. They have brought me clean clothes. I would not have chosen to be hung drawn and quartered for my beliefs. But I cannot betray my conscience and my God by subscribing to a faith I do not believe in. I shall fix my eyes on Christ on the cross. May my blood flow in memory of his. May my wounds echo the sufferings of our Saviour in his last hours. May my agony contribute to the final victory of Christ over his enemies. And for my tormentors, secure in the faith of our fathers, I pray that the Lord will forgive them, for they know not what they do.”’

The Bishop put away his notes. The congregation were very still. Patrick Butler heard no noises coming in from outside. The Bishop raised his arms high above his head.

‘May the martyred monk of Compton act as a bridge between our glorious heritage of six hundred years in the true faith and the fresh dawn of a new Catholic beginning we are witnessing here today. For today is Christ risen. Today the stone has been rolled from the sepulchre of his dark entombment. Today is this cathedral risen from its own long entombment in the false religion so brutally imposed on God’s people all those years ago. True religion cannot depend on the lusts of princes or the arrogance and greed of their ministers. True religion cannot depend on the fancies of a Parliament or the passing whims of an electorate that may be moved more by the lures of Mammon than by the faith of our fathers. True religion could never depend on the body of men now sitting in the House of Commons, a body peopled by ever-growing numbers of professed atheists and a host of unbelievers. Thou art Peter, our Lord said, and upon this rock will I build my Church. That rock, that Church have survived intact across the years since those words were uttered in Jerusalem. The authority of Christ’s true Church stretches out across the centuries in an unbroken line to us here in Compton today. It is an authority above and beyond the reach of politicians and the fashionable doctrines of this unhappy world. That authority, slowly accumulated over the long ages of the Church’s life, is stamped on the patterns of our worship and on the conduct of our lives.’

Patrick Butler was still scribbling furiously in his notebook. Lady Lucy wondered if the Bishop was longing for martyrdom like the monk of Compton. Anne Herbert was wondering if the new cathedral authorities would apply to Propaganda for the monk to be canonized.

‘Let us give thanks on this day for the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour. Let us give thanks for the life and example of the monk of Compton, so brutally murdered for his refusal to betray the true faith. Let us give thanks for the Resurrection of our own cathedral, one thousand years old this year. Let us offer up our own sins and our own weaknesses and our own failings to God in his mercy.

‘Let me close by invoking the name of one of the greatest English Catholics of the last century. John Henry Newman was born and baptized an Anglican. He was ordained as an Anglican priest. He became a leader of the Oxford Movement, a doomed attempt to reform the Anglican faith. Shortly before he was received into the Catholic Church he wrote a remarkable essay. At the time he was making a choice, a choice between the soft life of an Oxford academic, the companionship of its fellows, the quiet beauty of its quadrangles, the cloistered havens of its great libraries, the candlelight and the fine wine flowing beneath the portraits of scholars past at High Table, and the very different world of the Catholic faithful, a world he had never met and scarcely knew. Newman’s words reach out to us all from the tiny parish of Littlemore outside Oxford where the future Cardinal wrote them seventy years ago. They call on us to make our choice of faith while we still have the chance. If we do not, the consequences may last for ever. Time is short, wrote Newman. Eternity is long.’

The Bishop bowed his head. A great silence had fallen over the cathedral. Nobody stirred. Nobody changed their position in the pews. Nobody checked the angle of their hat or crossed or uncrossed their legs. Many of them had their eyes closed in silent prayer. Maybe the spirit of John Henry Newman had descended on Compton’s cathedral to deliver a final benediction to the faithful. Then the Bishop turned very slowly and began his descent from the pulpit. The choir rose to their feet and resumed the singing of the Mass. Very faintly outside there came the noise of horses’ hooves. The cavalry had arrived. Patrick Butler began to rise from his feet to find out what was happening outside. Anne Herbert placed a hand firmly on his arm.

‘You can’t leave now, Patrick,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll never see anything like this again in your life. It would be like leaving Hamlet before the last act.’

Reluctantly he sat down again. The Mass carried on. He was wondering if Time is Short Eternity is Long could be fitted as a headline across one page or if he should run it, in the largest typeface his printers possessed, across a double page spread.