HEREFORD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL

THE QUEEN HANDS THE DRUGGED CUP TO ETHELBERT

THE NORTH TRANSEPT OF THE CATHEDRAL
on the cover

IN BLACK AND WHITE

THE CATHEDRAL

THE NAVE

THE SCREEN

TOMB OF BISHOP CANTELUPE

TALES OF ENGLISH MINSTERS

HEREFORD

It is possible that anyone who visits Hereford Cathedral, after having visited the other two great Cathedral Churches of the West of England, Worcester and Gloucester, may feel a little disappointed, for it is smaller and plainer than either of them, and there are not so many stories that can be told about it. It has no Royal Tomb, nor any great outstanding Saint, yet in one respect it is the most interesting of the three.

Indeed, in this one respect, it is the most interesting of all the English Cathedrals, for it does not only carry our thoughts back, as the others do, to the days when the torch of Christianity was re-lit in England by missionaries from Iona and Canterbury, but it takes them farther back still to the days when the early British Church existed, and had Bishops of her own; for, as doubtless you know, Christianity was brought to Britain from Gaul as early as two hundred years after Christ.

We do not know who brought it. The names of the first missionaries are forgotten. Probably they were humble Christian soldiers who came in the ranks of the Roman legions, and they would be followed by a few priests sent after them by the Church in Gaul to minister to them; and from the ranks of these priests one or two Bishops would be consecrated.

It all happened so long ago that it seems vague and far away, and it is difficult to pick out authentic facts.

We can only say with an old historian, that ‘we see that the Light of the Word shined here, but see not who kindled it.’

Perhaps you know also that this early Christianity was swept away from all parts of the country, except in Ireland and Wales, by the coming of the heathen Angles, Saxons, and Danes.

We can easily understand how these two parts of what to us is one Kingdom, managed to hold the Faith. They were more or less undisturbed by the fierce invaders who came from the North of Germany and from Denmark, and who were quite content to settle down in fertile England without taking the trouble to cross the Irish Channel and fight with the savage Irish tribes, or penetrate into the wild and hilly regions of Wales.

So it came about that, while the English people were so harassed and worried with war and cruelty that they forgot all about the new doctrines which had been beginning to gain a slender foothold in their land, the people of Wales had still their Church and Bishops.

These Bishops seem to have held much the same Sees as the Welsh Bishops hold to-day. Bangor, Llandaff, Menevia or St. Davids, Llanelwy or St. Asaph, and three others with strange Welsh names, one of which was Cærffawydd, which meant the ‘place of beeches,’ and which we now know as Hereford.

For in these days Wales was larger than it is now, and was bounded by the Severn, and Cærffawydd was a Welsh town, if town it could be called, not an English one.

These Bishops were governed by an Archbishop, who is spoken of sometimes as living at Carleon-on-Usk, sometimes at Llandaff, and sometimes at Hereford.

Now, of course you have all heard about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; and you may have read about them in Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’; about their bravery, and chivalry, and purity, and how they took an oath—

and about Bishop