Robert Annys: Poor Priest

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1901

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1901,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press
J. B. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

TO THE READER

Admirers of William Morris—among whom I count all his readers—will recognize the personal description of John Ball as taken from his "A Dream of John Ball." They will also note that some parts of his sermon as well are from the same book. It seemed to me that certain bits of Morris's imaginative work were too fine and true to be spared in any attempt to set the blunt old poor priest before the modern reader. I have no fear of bearing off undeserved palms; for just as a few of the sayings of John Ball bear the marks of authenticity too clearly upon them to be mistaken for mine, so such as are taken from Morris are as clearly distinguished by the marks of supreme beauty and genius.

In the course of many years of close reading, it is inevitable that there should have been woven into this book some of the ideas and prepossessions of certain Church historians. Although many other writers have been exceedingly helpful and suggestive, I want especially to acknowledge my indebtedness to Renan, Kingsley, Fisher, Baldwin Brown, Gosselin, Braun, Montalembert, Vincent, and Sheppard.

I

The great Minster of the Fens never looked lovelier than at the close of a November day, 1379. The coloring of Fenland is not attuned to the brightness of Spring or Summer, but there is in the late Autumn a subtle quality that brings out its true charm. The dull browns and yellows of the marshes, the warm red-browns of the rushes, the pale greens of the swamp grasses with the glint of the sun low down at their feet,—all on this day found just the right complement in the great, heavy, gray clouds that broke here and there only to show irregular bars of saffron sky. Just before night fell there was one supreme moment when a patch of gold lingered in the north just over the wonderful octagon, the glorious crown of St. Audrey, and the great west front with its noble tower and its wealth of windows flung the orange gleam of the setting sun over the landscape as a gauntlet proudly thrown in the face of Night. The lordly outlines of the vast edifice looked lordlier than ever as the slowly gathering darkness descended and drew it up into itself.

The east wind blowing from over the sea, pungent with the odor of marsh plants, was keen, and caused a man who was surveying the scene to gather his thin gown more closely about him. Until he stirred, this man might almost have been taken for a part of the landscape, so admirably did his garb of coarse russet sacking harmonize with his surroundings. Although he shivered slightly, he did not move from his position, but remained with arms tightly folded on his breast, and his deep-set eyes fixed earnestly upon the solemn pile before him. A solitary figure he stood in the vast stretch of sky and land, and he felt himself peculiarly alone. Yet as he faced the Cathedral there was no sign of faltering or dread in his face, but rather a distinct note of defiance.

Not long before, the stately procession of priests had departed from the Vesper service. A choir boy of angelic countenance, but impish spirit, had for an instant trailed his violet robe in the dust and flung the stone he picked up straight at the russet form. Not a priest in line but envied the boy. Outwardly, the russet priest showed no sign. He thought of St. Francis who had been stoned by the very ones who later placed those stones under his direction. Also he thought of the stoning of One greater than St. Francis.

One year before, at Oxford, Robert Annys had bidden farewell to his beloved master, John Wyclif, and had become one of his noble band of poor priests,—or russet priests, as they were familiarly dubbed,—who went about the country, preaching the Gospel and teaching the people how to read, that they might bring Holy Writ more closely into their lives. As a student, he had passed many happy years by the side of his great master at Balliol, translating the Bible into the language of the people so that they might come to know God and love God by themselves without the shadow of the priestly office ever between. Nevertheless, although he had been well content to pass all his life in that beautiful manner, when the time came that his master ordered him out into the world, he went without a murmur and bravely, empty handed, with no more thought of the morrow than had the twelve whom Christ had bidden:—

Since then he had lived close to the people, he had been of the people. He had come to them, not with the crumbs from the Communion table but with the strong bread of life. He had preached the Gospel in the fields while the heat rose in palpitating waves, and on the downs while the hail beat on his bare head; he had prayed over them while the shears dripped white from the sheep of their overlord; he had hungered with them and thirsted with them and shared such coarse food as they had; he had watched with them as some worn soul departed from its worn body. His way had led to no sumptuous oratories of towered castles, to no cushioned prie-dieux in scented chambers. He had shrived, not grand seigneurs and haughty dames whose momentary comfort had been disturbed by the pricking of a superficial regret, but strong, simple souls who trembled from the sway of tremendous feeling—men who thirsted for the blood of their child's betrayer, victims who raged at infamous injustice and brooded over desperate means to escape their thraldom. No lightly felt peccadilloes were confessed to him, but the agony and shame of those whose tortured souls hung betwixt heaven and hell.

And he had grown to love this life. He had thought to have a peculiar aptitude for letters, and his master had never altered translation wrought by him. Yet he knew now that his gift lay rather in swaying men, and one short year had done much to make his name known from Sussex to Lincolnshire. No wonder, then, that he had joy in his work, for it is not given to man to know greater happiness than this: to watch the face of a fellow-man kindle with a new and great hope, which he knows he has planted within the other's breast. Yet deep down within there had been slowly growing in his heart a secret questioning. He had been warned by his master to hold himself strictly to the work of spreading the knowledge of the Gospel, and he had been clearly enjoined against undoing the peace of the realm and setting serfs against their masters, as a certain mad priest named John Ball was even at that moment doing, both by the reckless violence of his language and the revolutionary quality of his theories.