Merrie England

Joseph Pearce

Description

Join Joseph Pearce on a journey into the real Shire-a voyage into the mysterious presence of an England which is more real than the one you are accustomed to seeing, the one which seems to be in terminal decline. The England Pearce wants us to know is an enchanted and unchanging place, full of ghosts who are as alive as the saints. It is an England that is rural, sacramental, liturgical, local, beautiful . . . a place "charged with the grandeur of God".

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Travel writing
• Catholic Church

Informations

• Publié par: TAN Books
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505107203
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Merrie England
Merrie England
A Journey through the Shire
Joseph Pearce
TAN Books Charlotte, North Carolina
Merrie England copyright © 2016 by Joseph Pearce.
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in articles and critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover and interior design by David Ferris.
ISBN: 978-1-5051-0719-7
Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress.
Published in the United States by
TAN Books
P.O. Box 410487
Charlotte, NC 28241
www.TANBooks.com
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
For the ghosts of England’s past who accompanied me on the journey
THEY called Thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time;
A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime;
And, spite of change, for me thou keep’st the same
Endearing title, a responsive chime
To the heart’s fond belief; though some there are
Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare
For inattentive Fancy, like the lime
Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask ,
This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime;
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?
Forbid it, Heaven!—and MERRY ENGLAND still
Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme!
—William Wordsworth
Contents
Preface
A Note: On Lost Time
1 Norwich Cathedral
2 Ely
3 Peterborough Cathedral
4 Sherwood Forest
5 Kinder Scout
6 York
7 The Yorkshire Moors
8 Goathland and Beyond
9 Egton Bridge: An Oasis of Sanctity
10 Holy Island
11 Derwent Water
12 Scafell Pike
13 Hay-on-Wye
14 The Road Untravelled
15 Oxford
16 The South Country
17 London
18 Thaxted
19 Oxburgh Hall
20 Walsingham
DRINK MORE DEEPLY … Springs That Nourished Our Pilgrim on His Journey
Image Credits
Preface
T he journey on which you are about to accompany me is a voyage into the mysterious presence of an England that is more real than the one that you are probably accustomed to seeing. It is not the England that presents itself to the unenchanted eye, the England that seems to be in terminal decline, its death throes made manifest in the all too obvious signs of decay and ultimate disintegration. It is, in stark contrast to this mutable England, an enchanted and unchanging place, full of ghosts who are as alive as the saints. It is an England that is rural, sacramental, liturgical, local, beautiful … an England that is “charged with the grandeur of God”.
This England, partaking of the divine essence from which it receives its being, shines forth the mysterious paradox that a thing both is and was at the same time. We can take almost any example to illustrate this paradoxical mystery, but let’s take the case of Shakespeare. Like the England that gave him birth, Shakespeare both is and was . He was a great playwright and poet, but it is also true to say that he is a great playwright and poet. Shakespeare is a fact. He lived and did things. In this sense, he not only was but is. You cannot look at the history of England or of great literature without looking at Shakespeare. He is staring you in the face because his presence is real—and his presence is present. He is as well as was.
In order to understand this more fully, we need to understand the relationship of time to eternity. With our finite perception, we can perceive only the past. Even the present, by the time that we perceive it, has become the immediate past. The future, on the other hand, can only be a figment of our imagination. It is what might happen. The nearer the future is to us, the more predictable it might be. I might intend to go to a café for a coffee this morning, and in all probability I shall do so. The further the future is from us, the less predictable it becomes. I can’t even be sure of the place in which I’ll be living five years from now. Indeed I can’t even be sure that I’ll be living.
For God, however, there is no past and there is no future. For God, everything is present. This is the deeper meaning of divine omnipresence—not that God is present everywhere, though He is, but that everything is present to God. For God, therefore, we cannot say that Shakespeare was, but only that he is.
Where is all this leading? Well, in the case of England, we must insist that England is eternally greater than those who happen to be wandering around today on the geographical stage on which the drama of England is being performed. Most people walking around on the stage today have no idea what England is or who they themselves are. Thankfully, however, England is not dependent on them. Like the souls in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce , they are pathetic shadows of who they are meant to be. They are relatively insubstantial. They are certainly less real as Englishmen than Alfred the Great, Bede the Venerable, St. Edward the Confessor, Chaucer, St. Thomas More, the hundreds of English martyrs, Shakespeare, Austen, Newman, or Tolkien. All of these people are England. Please note: They are England.
Seeing the true England through the perspective of the Triune splendour of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, we know that such an England can never die—not because it lingers like a fading coal in the memory of mortal men, but because it exists as a beautiful flower in the gardens of eternity. This is the England to which, under God, I owe my allegiance. Deo gratias! And this is the England through which I wander in the following pages, and to which you are invited to join me.
A Note On Lost Time
W hat follows was written at the turn of the present millennium. Any apparent anomalies with regard to dates are explained by the time lost between its being written and its being read.
_____________
Norwich Cathedral
 

CHAPTER
1
Norwich Cathedral
T he romance of Gothic architecture was brought to life for me by G. K. Chesterton. Quite literally brought to life. In prose prophetic and profound, he had written of an optical illusion caused by a stationary furniture van parked in front of a cathedral spire; when the van moved off, it appeared for a moment that the spire, and not the van, was moving. This was the inspiration for an essay in which Chesterton imagined the great Gothic cathedrals and churches of Christendom marching across Europe, spreading the Faith they symbolised. Never again could I look upon church architecture without this poignant imagery imposing itself. Every morning, walking to work, the spire of Norwich Cathedral moving behind the rooftops conjured images of the Church Militant on the march, the spire pointing heavenwards a permanent reminder of the Church Triumphant. Yet, in spite of this, I had resisted the temptation to investigate the cathedral more closely. I was afraid if I looked upon her magnificence, the magic would pass and she would once more turn to stone. I was scared she would be petrified.
And if I was expecting to be disappointed, I was not to be disappointed. A feeling of anticlimax overcame me as I crossed her threshold. Along the walls were no statues of her saints, stone symbols of centuries of sanctity and service to her spouse. Instead, her walls had been sold as advertising space to wealthy parishioners. Similarly, the holy relics of those who had given their lives for the Faith had long since been purged in some puritanical pogrom. The area originally set aside for them had become a repository for antique silver, unholy relics one was asked to deposit fifty pieces of silver for the privilege of seeing. Neither was this the only snub against God’s saints. Directly beneath the bishop’s throne, the repository for the holy relics lay bare. Above it, a note of derision had been nailed: “Directly above this spot is the bishop’s throne. People once believed that the ‘essences’ of the holy relics passed up the ‘flue’ into the bishop above”.

_____________
A view of Norwich Cathedral from the cloisters
One can almost hear the howls of derisive laughter from the self-righteous sons of the “Enlightenment”. It is a pity that they miss the point. They fail to realise that our ancestors understood essentials. That is, they understood the “essence” of things. They understood, for instance, the meaning of the word “essence”, which has its derivation in the Latin, esse , “to be” or “to exist”. The essence of the holy relics, therefore, didn’t require a “flue”. The faith of our fathers in the ability of the saints to intercede for them was all that was needed. The essence of the holy relics, their being , the reason for their existence , was as an aid to prayer; the use of holy objects as an assistance to holiness. The architect who designed the flue never intended it to be utilitarian. It wasn’t required physically; it was desired spiritually. It was symbolic. A “nice touch”. Perhaps a lighthearted touch. A joke. Those who deride and pour scorn on the civilisation of our ancestors have missed the point, and not just the point but the joke as well. Furthermore, by failing to see the joke, they have unwittingly turned the joke upon themselves. One can imagine the saints in heaven laughing at the foolishness of the faithless generation, though the laughter would be not scornful but celestial, intermingled with the prayer to “forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
Ironically, the one cheerful part of the visit, the one antidote to the doom, despondency, and desecration, was a reminder of death. An epitaph scrawled beneath a skull:

All you that do this place pass bye
Remember death for you must dye .
As you are now even so was I
And as I am so shall you be .
Thomas Gooding here do staye
Waiting for God’s judgement daye .
Thank goodness for Thomas Gooding and his timely reminder of the egalitarianism of death! In an age when the old think more of facelifts than funera