The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  ‘His appearance was striking and he soon became a well-known figure as he strode round the Close intimidating those answerable to the Church – from the humblest gatekeeper in the Close to the Bishop himself. He was a tall, slender man with a high-bridged nose and piercing grey eyes in a long thin face. He always wore the most severe black garb with a high-crowned hat, and was never seen without his Treasurer’s chain of office around his neck. He was unmarried and spent the little time that was not consecrated to his duties in studying and in writing his sermons.’

  Mrs Sisterson said, without taking her eyes from her sleeping child: ‘That sounds just like Canon Sheldrick!’ I glanced up from the manuscript and saw her husband and Mrs Locard exchange a look of amusement.

  ‘He was said to be a man of the utmost probity in personal matters with whose name no scandal attaching to women was ever associated – though a number of young ladies in the town had set their caps at him from the moment he arrived. And he would have been a worthy catch, for in addition to the prebendary income and the dividend he received as a canon, he had considerable expectations from his family. Moreover, given his ambition and his advantages, he was likely to become a bishop at the least. The Treasurer had no close friends in the town, remaining estranged from the conviviality of the community of the Close and openly disapproving – in a manner that must have cast a shadow over the warmth of the Chapter’s social intercourse – of the intemperance that was common among the canons of the day. This austere and disciplined way of life lasted until a few months before his untimely death.

  ‘Burgoyne’s position as Treasurer, his intellectual gifts and his unwillingness to shirk a battle, quickly made him the Chapter’s leading champion in its many disputes with the Corporation of the town. Of course, the Foundation at that period was much wealthier and more powerful than it is now. It possessed many properties in the town and because of that, there was constant conflict with the Mayor and Corporation.

  ‘But although the Chapter could stand with a single purpose against the town, it was itself far from united. Dr Sheldrick suggests that, with its fifteen Canons Residentiary living in the Close, it was like nothing so much as an Oxford or Cambridge college – with all the animosities and rivalries so common there. I know myself how bitter and irrational such conflicts can be.’

  ‘I’m afraid we all do,’ Dr Sisterson commented, looking at the Librarian’s wife. She smiled sadly and kissed the head of the child sleeping in her arms.

  ‘The Dean was already an old man when Burgoyne came, and during the succeeding years the young canon gained an ascendancy over him as he became more and more infirm and feeble-witted. The other canons could not or did not wish to stand up against their Treasurer, though many resented his power. When Burgoyne arrived most of the Chapter were Arminians and therefore sympathetic to the old Catholic rites and practices – though hostile to Catholicism itself. Most of the townspeople shared their views – and in fact many had secretly remained Catholics, though that was extremely dangerous. While Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury the Arminians were in the ascendant and clergymen with Calvinist leanings were ruthlessly persecuted. But now all that had changed. The Calvinist faction had gained power in Parliament and at Court, for Laud had over-reached himself by encouraging the king to make war against the Scots over the imposition of his prayer-book. The disaster which followed had brought about his downfall.

  ‘During the ten years before this there had been many arguments in the Chapter between Burgoyne, the most prominent of the Calvinists, and the traditionalists, championed by the Sub-Dean, Launcelot Freeth. The fiercest conflicts were about the fabric of the Cathedral for, as I will explain, it was on this matter that everything came together.

  ‘In all of these disputes Burgoyne and Freeth were well-matched opponents for they were very similar: clever, ambitious and proud. But while Burgoyne had an aristocrat’s contempt for dissimulation and intrigue, Freeth was adept at hiding his true feelings and was an unscrupulous opponent. From humble beginnings, he had clawed his way to his present position by cunning and deviousness.’

  ‘Dr Sheldrick puts it like that?’ the young canon asked.

  ‘He uses almost those precise words,’ I confirmed.

  ‘It seems an ungenerous way of describing a man whose hard work and natural abilities had carried him so far,’ he said mildly.

  I took his point. I myself had achieved what success I had by virtue of my own efforts, and without the influential connections and other advantages by which Dr Sheldrick had so obviously profited. ‘But think of his disgraceful conduct in relation to the college of vicars-choral,’ I replied.

  ‘Whatever did he do?’ Mrs Locard demanded.

  I turned to her and smiled. ‘You will hear in a moment. In fact, Dr Sheldrick mentions the college as one of the issues that divided the Chapter most bitterly. From the moment of his arrival Burgoyne made it clear that he was deeply opposed to the important role that music played in the Cathedral services. For according to his strict Calvinist lights, music was a sensual pleasure which, under guise of inducing spirituality, was only too likely to encourage gross and carnal thoughts. He neglected no opportunity to appropriate the college’s income for the Foundation, and since the Precentor, the canon responsible for music, was a close friend of Freeth, it may be imagined whether that helped to improve relations between the two men.

  ‘Freeth’s hostility towards the interloper increased as it became more and more probable that Burgoyne would defeat him in the succession to the Deanship. Not only was the political wind blowing in his direction, but he was a member of the powerful Burgoyne family – a Calvinist-leaning dynasty whose principal estates lay about the town and whose head, the Earl of Thurchester, was his uncle. The Earl had enormous influence both in Parliament and at Court. The Burgoynes’ principal seat, Thurchester Castle, was a few miles from here and they possessed huge estates in this county. (Dr Sheldrick gives rather a lengthy account of their history, which doesn’t seem quite relevant to me. He mentions that the family has disappeared almost entirely now and the title is extinct.) For centuries, members of the Burgoyne family had been buried in the Cathedral and their monuments are many and handsome. How bitterly Freeth must have resented this man who was destroying everything he believed in and taking from him his one chance of power and riches. Possessing no wealth, but with a wife and many children, he was always in need of money and eagerly looked forward to the handsome emolument he would have received as Dean.

  ‘All these issues surfaced very suddenly when a fierce dispute broke out about the miserable state of the Cathedral. Only the Choir was in use for services because the main body of the building had been sealed off and left unused at the time of the Dissolution. That was done because the spire had begun to show signs of instability and the Foundation could not afford the expense of repairing it. The cutting off of the greater part of the building was easily done because the Choir was separated from the nave by a stone screen.’

  ‘A pulpitum,’ Dr Sisterson exclaimed. ‘It always makes me think of “pulpit” but it’s not that.’

  ‘But the Cathedral doesn’t have a pulpitum,’ Mrs Locard objected.

  ‘Indeed it does not and the reason for that will emerge very soon. The pulpitum had only a single door at its centre and that had been bricked up. The only way into the body of the Cathedral was through the door at the end of the nave. That was locked all the time and there was only one copy of its key – a huge object nearly a foot in length.’

  ‘I see it every day of my life,’ Dr Sisterson put in. ‘It is still in use. It is in the custody of the head-verger.’

  ‘As it was in Burgoyne’s time,’ I said. ‘He was at that date a very old man called Claggett. Burgoyne used to take the key from him and let himself into the building at night, for from the moment of his arrival he was deeply troubled by the Cathedral’s neglect and dilapidation. He saw it both as a reflection on the status of his family – since the Cathedral was almos
t their private chapel – and as a threat to his status as the future Dean. He perceived clearly what his fellow-canons either failed or refused to see: that if, as was very probable, the spire were to collapse, it would damage the rest of the building beyond repair. The idea of becoming Dean of half a cathedral was a poor enough prospect, but to become Dean of a ruined cathedral held very little appeal. For several years he failed to find any support within the Chapter for his project of restoring the spire. The canons were reluctant to spend the huge sum of money required since it would have had to come from their own income. Burgoyne argued fiercely with the Sacrist, who was in the pocket of Freeth and refused to concede that the Cathedral was in danger of complete collapse.

  ‘From his frequent visits at night to the great, rotting shell of the nave and transept, Burgoyne knew how close to destruction the building was. The floor beneath the crossing-tower was littered with masonry for timbers and stones from the spire had been steadily falling through the rafters and puncturing holes in the bricked vault for many decades. Burgoyne would frequently be accompanied by the Cathedral Mason – a man called John Gambrill. The two were in complete agreement on the importance of repairing the spire, since Gambrill derived his income from work on the building.’

  ‘I think that’s rather unfair of Dr Sheldrick,’ Dr Sisterson interrupted. ‘Gambrill was the best stone-mason in the town – indeed, one of the best in the country whose work is much admired by architectural historians to this day. He loved the building – on which he had worked all his life – and must have deeply resented the fact that the Chapter granted him insufficient resources to prevent its deterioration. I know how he feels, for every penny spent on it is grudged by my fellow-canons.’

  I had never seen him so close to anger. ‘I’m sure that’s so,’ I said. ‘But Dr Sheldrick points out that in the years since his appointment the Chapter had had a number of arguments with him. There had also been a serious incident during his youth in which the darkest accusations had been made against him. That’s an interesting story in itself. Gambrill had, at the age of fourteen, started as an apprentice under the Cathedral Mason of the time and had risen by hard work and skill. Very soon nobody knew the craft better than he. As well as being a gifted craftsman, he had a shrewd head for business and these gifts aroused the envy of the Deputy Mason who resented him all the more because Gambrill had been promised the hand of their master’s daughter, who was his heir, and the Deputy feared that this meant that Gambrill and not he would become the next Cathedral Mason. There was an accident while the two men were working on the roof of the Cathedral and the Deputy, Robert Limbrick, died. Gambrill survived but lost his right eye and afterwards walked with a limp. The widow of Limbrick laid an information against Gambrill in the Chancery Court alleging that he had killed her husband. The quarrel was apparently made up, however, for Gambrill later took on the dead man’s son as his apprentice. By the time of the events I am describing all that was long in the past and Gambrill, whose mother had been a washerwoman and whose father was unknown, had, by virtue of hard work, ability and conspicuous honesty, become a prosperous figure in the town. He had inherited his father-in-law’s handsome house in the High Street with a fine garden backing onto the Close and had furnished it in an elegant style, and lived in it with his wife and their five children.

  ‘He was a tall, handsome man and was well-liked since he was frank and open-handed, and spoke his thoughts without prevarication. And he was quick to help his neighbours when they were in distress – though he was also swift to anger and he was said to be unforgiving when once he was crossed. There were stories current in the town that he had been unwisely extravagant over his house at the urging of his wife – a greedy and mercenary woman who was anxious to show her superiority to her friends and neighbours – and that he had got into debt. If that was so, it made the prospect of being commissioned to do a great deal of work on the Cathedral all the more important to him. Dr Sheldrick says he embraced enthusiastically Burgoyne’s project and the two men, leaving the Sacrist entirely out of the matter, began to draw up plans and estimate costs.

  ‘Despite their differences in social condition and religious affiliation, Burgoyne and Gambrill had a good understanding at first. Apart from the Cathedral, the two men had another passion in common – though at first Gambrill did not know it. He adored music and was a gifted player upon the viols. Despite his conviction that it was a corruption, a source of worldly pleasure, Burgoyne secretly loved music, too. Although in his early years at Cambridge he had indulged freely in this pleasure, he had later schooled himself to resist it by forcing his mind into the paths of prayer whenever he was assailed by this temptation. And when he came to the Cathedral he succeeded for the first few years in remaining undistracted by the choir and the college of young vicars-choral. But now Burgoyne would often find Gambrill standing in a trance of pleasure listening to the choir, or would come upon him singing or whistling and his own love of music began to revive.

  ‘And then one day Gambrill told him that a nephew of his wife’s was a gifted singer, and that the family was anxious that he should enter the college and have his education paid for in return for his services in the choir. Burgoyne declined to help on the grounds that the matter lay outside his authority. But it happened that a day or two later he encountered Gambrill with the boy in the Close and the youth was presented to him and for some reason Burgoyne changed his mind and agreed to persuade the Precentor to admit him to the college. The Precentor must have been surprised by Burgoyne’s suit to him but he was impressed enough by the boy’s singing to grant him a sizarship that would pay for his board and lodging. He was lodged in a part of the college which, conveniently enough, was beside Gambrill’s house – the Old Gatehouse on the same side of the Close.

  ‘If the Precentor had been surprised by Burgoyne’s change of heart, he was to be yet more astonished for from this moment Burgoyne abandoned himself to his passion for music with all the force of his austere personality. He began to haunt the Cathedral in order to listen for hours to the choir practising – neglecting his duties. His favourite place was in the organ-loft from where he could look down upon the choir without being observed. He set out to win the friendship of the Precentor whom he had previously despised as a man of low birth and to this end sent for instruments and printed music from London and became a kind of patron of the college. They became such good friends that the Precentor would lend him his keys so that he could come and go as he liked.

  ‘All this while Burgoyne, in his position as Treasurer, was making a prodigious effort to find the money required for the work he and Gambrill were planning: increasing rents and pursuing debtors with the full rigour of the law. Then he conceived his master-stroke: closing down the college of vicars-choral.’

  ‘Since he loved music,’ Mrs Locard said, ‘is it not strange that he should wish to do that?’

  ‘It is, and Dr Sheldrick suggests that his desire to close down the college arose from his fear that it represented a temptation to himself as much as to anyone else. He knew that this suggestion would be strongly resisted and so, before proposing it openly, he attempted to win over a majority within the Chapter. He set about trying to awaken the slumbering consciences of some of his fellow-canons by a quiet reference to various little personal failings and a reminder, in the more recalcitrant cases, of how their little lapses might be perceived if they should fall under the harsh light of public scrutiny.’

  I saw Dr Sisterson smile and when he noticed my curiosity he said: ‘Dr Sheldrick has a very generous way of interpreting Burgoyne’s conduct.’

  ‘Do you think so? He seems a very admirable figure to me.’

  ‘Don’t you think’, he suggested, ‘that his high-minded fastidiousness for the worldly concerns of his colleagues was a kind of arrogance?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so,’ I said, strangely stung. ‘He appears to me to have been a principled and ascetic man.’

  ‘I imagine that his
wealthy and privileged background’, Mrs Locard put in mildly, ‘made it hard for him to sympathize with colleagues who did not have his advantages.’

  Dr Sisterson and I nodded. I continued: ‘Events played into his hands. In the spring of the year before his death, a crack in the spire that had opened up decades earlier suddenly widened and it became obvious to even the most stubborn of the canons that a severe storm might well bring it crashing down. Now Burgoyne laid before the Chapter his proposal to sacrifice the college in order to save the Cathedral. He demanded a complete restoration of the spire and showed that it could largely be paid for by selling the college’s endowments which consisted of a manor-house and three farms in the village of Compton Monachorum. Against him he had all the most powerful canons – Freeth, the Librarian Hollingrake, the old Dean, the Sacrist and the Precentor – who argued that the Cathedral’s reputation for music-making was one of its proudest boasts. Burgoyne, however, had won over to his side those whose consciences he had touched, and the proposal was passed by a narrow majority amid great bitterness. Freeth and Hollingrake, however, forged a deed which your husband, Mrs Locard, was kind enough to show me this afternoon. This made it impossible for Burgoyne to suppress the college after all.’

  ‘We’re not sure that they forged it,’ Dr Sisterson objected. ‘It’s possible they found an earlier forgery and believed it to be genuine. But even if Freeth did forge it, who can say what his motives really were?’