Government
How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of
fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapterhouse, proceeded with
cautious energy to set about reforming their disjointed
distracted way of life; how he managed with his Fifty rough
_Milites_ (Feudal Knights), with his lazy Farmers, remiss
refractory Monks, with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings;
how on all sides he laid about him like a man, and putting
consequence on premiss, and everywhere the saddle on the right
horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic method out of
lazily fermenting wreck,--the careful reader will discern, not
without true interest, in these pages of Jocelin Boswell. In
most antiquarian quaint costume, not of garments alone, but of
thought, word, action, outlook and position, the substantial
figure of a man with eminent nose, bushy brows and clear-flashing
eyes, his russet beard growing daily greyer, is visible, engaged
in true governing of men. It is beautiful how the chrysalis
governing-soul, shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts
forth winged, a true royal soul! Our new Abbot has a right
honest unconscious feeling, without insolence as without fear or
flutter, of what he is and what others are. A courage to quell
the proudest, an honest pity to encourage the humblest. Withal
there is a noble reticence in this Lord Abbot: much vain
unreason he hears; lays up without response. He is not there to
expect reason and nobleness of others; he is there to give them
of his own reason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as we
said, who can suffer from them, and for them; bear the burden
their poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under; and in virtue
_thereof_ govern them, lead them out of weakness into strength,
out of defeat into victory!
One of the first Herculean Labours Abbot Samson undertook, or the
very first, was to institute a strenuous review and radical
reform of his economics. It is the first labour of every
governing man, from _Paterfamilias_ to _Dominus Rex._ To get the
rain thatched out from you is the preliminary of whatever
farther, in the way of speculation or of action, you may mean to
do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw, had become empty, filled
with deficit and wind. To see his account-books clear, be
delivered from those ravening flights of Jew and Christian
creditors, pouncing on him like obscene harpies wherever he
shewed face, was a necessity for Abbot Samson.
On the morrow after his instalment, he brings in a load of money-
bonds, all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other Convent
Seal: frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless confusion of Convent
finance. There they are;--but there at least they all are; all
that shall be of them. Our Lord Abbot demands that all the
official seals in use among us be now produced and delivered to
him. Three-and-thirty seals turn up; are straightway broken,
and shall seal no more: the Abbot only, and those duly
authorised by him shall seal any bond. There are but two ways of
paying debt: increase of industry in raising income, increase of
thrift in laying it out. With iron energy, in slow but steady
undeviating perseverance, Abbot Samson sets to work in both
directions. His troubles are manifold: cunning _milites,_
unjust bailiffs, lazy sockmen, he an inexperienced Abbot;
relaxed lazy monks, not disinclined to mutiny in mass: but
continued vigilance, rigorous method, what we call 'the eye of
the master,' work wonders. The clear-beaming eyesight of Abbot
Samson, steadfast, severe, all-penetrating,--it is like _Fiat
luxe_ in that inorganic waste whirlpool; penetrates gradually to
all nooks, and of the chaos makes a _kosmos_ or ordered world!
He arranges everywhere, struggles unweariedly to arrange, and
place on some intelligible footing, the 'affairs and dues,
_res ac redditus,'_ of his dominion. The Lakenheath eels
cease to breed squabbles between human beings; the penny of
_reap-silver_ to explode into the streets the Female Chartism of
St. Edmundsbury. These and innumerable greater things.
Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care; here
is the man that has declared war with it, that never will make
peace with it. Man is the Missionary of Order; he is the
servant not of the Devil and Chaos, but of God and the Universe!
Let all sluggards and cowards, remiss, false-spoken, unjust, and
otherwise diabolic persons have a care: this is a dangerous man
for them. He has a mild grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a
sorrowful pity: but there is a terrible flash of anger in him
too; lazy monks often have to murmur, _"Saevit ut lupus,_ He
rages like a wolf; was not our Dream true!" "To repress and
hold-in such sudden anger he was continually careful," and
succeeded well:--right, Samson; that it may become in thee as
noble central heat, fruitful, strong, beneficent; not blaze out,
or the seldomest possible blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to
scorch and consume!
"We must first creep, and gradually learn to walk," had Abbot
Samson said of himself, at starting. In four years he has become
a great walker; striding prosperously along; driving much
before him. In less than four years, says Jocelin, the Convent
Debts were all liquidated: the harpy Jews not only settled
with, but banished, bag and baggage, out of the _Bannaleuca_
(Liberties, _Banlieue_) of St. Edmundsbury,--so has the King's
Majesty been persuaded to permit. Farewell to _you,_ at any
rate; let us, in no extremity, apply again to you! Armed men
march them over the borders, dismiss them under stern penalties,
--sentence of excommunication on all that shall again harbour them
here: there were many dry eyes at their departure.
New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the Incubus of
Debt once rolled away. Samson hastes not; but neither does he
pause to rest. This of the Finance is a life-long business with
him;--Jocelin's anecdotes are filled to weariness with it. As
indeed to Jocelin it was of very primary interest.
But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that
spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery as
material. With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations
and _tacenda_ are, at the earliest opportunity, softly, yet
irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end;
even the building where they used to be carried on was razed from
the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and 'on its place grow rows of
beams:' Willelmus himself, deposed from the Sacristry and all
offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute taciturnity
unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor Willelmus
did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight
wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,--now grown, in a manner,
indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin hints not; one knows not
how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and
darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his
only true course.
Drunken dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better
keep out of Abbot Samson's way. _Saevit ut lupus;_ was not the
Dream true! murmured many a Monk. Nay Ranulf de Glanville,
Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these strict
ways; and watched farther with suspicion: but discerned
gradually that there was nothing wrong, that there was much the
opposite of wrong.