Instead of a Christmas tree... On New Year's Eve, I want to congratulate everyone with this photo.

 

Bellow I wrote a short (actually not...) congratulation for everybody in Russian. It would be quite hard for me to make it in English with all meaning I want to share, so feel free to use translation services you prefer to get the ideas...

 

Искренне желаю всем (в том числе и себе) плодотворного нового года. Для тех, кто использует празднование нового года в качестве точки отсчета, желаю преуспеть в том, чтобы всегда и везде фокусироваться на том, на что можно повлиять, как-то изменить. Остальным же желаю получить прекрасные плоды вашего труда (в том числе и над собой). Пусть всё, что вы посадили в этом году, во всех предыдущих годах прорастет в этом году и даст свои плоды. Но также желаю вам помнить о том, что нужно ещё и регулярно поливать и ухаживать за растениями… Желаю всем принятия того, что вы можете повлиять лишь на малую часть от того, что вас окружает. И вдохновения для того, чтобы продолжать свой путь, продолжать сотворять свою жизнь, делать ваш внутренний и окружающий мир лучше, добрее, наполнять радостью. Пусть всё способствует вашему росту и слиянию с Природой, своим чистым Сознанием.

В эти дни непременно стоит отметить для себя и поблагодарить себе и окружающему миру за все пройденные уроки, приобретения, провалы, ошибки. За то, что ни смотря ни на что мы продолжаем наше космическое путешествие. А если нам до сих пор трудно понять кто мы такие и что мы делаем в этом мире - то это повод начать предпринимать маленькие, пусть даже крошечные действия… Стоит фокусироваться на действиях, а потом уже на размышлениях или рефлексии…

Пусть в Новом году будут только благостные последствия наших действий (или бездействия). Пусть окружающие вас люди и обстоятельства всячески помогают вам, а вы в свою очередь инвестируйте в них. Что стоит наша жизнь, если в ней отсутствуют другие люди?…

Мира, Гармонии и Целостности в Новом году!

 

Happy Holidays everyone!

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAbuwUtCj_s

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

~Confucius

 

What is it with human kind when it comes to anger,violence and power?

Wars,deaths,bombing and collapsing civilizations is never in the hands of those with great powers.It begins from them until it spreads into humanity like venom in the air they breathe.

There isn't a human being out there who won't feel strong and unlimited when anger is the feeling that completely covers their existence.That's when it should be a warning that when anger fills up your whole body and mind,you are a letter away from being in danger.

Earth isn't capable of living in peace,after all it's story began with a violent crash of elements.All we gotta do is take that violence and create a whole new different idea.All the power that comes from it,could be handled to do good.

   

A personal consequence of BREXIT?

Haus Lange in Krefeld is an address of pilgrimage for architectural studies and those people interested in Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s style setting early work. Splendid and ageless architecture and garden environment.

Most recently this building became a new home for BREXIT refugee family that felt no longer welcome in England. Has it really become ‘a home’? If you watch the series of photos I took you might feel shocked as I was when I first lingered thru the stylish rooms. The car was still packed. The door was open… I entered as invited, saw valuable furniture, most goods still in boxes, piles of books. The pantechnicon obviously just left. Also very obvious: The landlady, mother and wife also left and will stay absent: ‘You will never see me again’ written on the mirror. That wasn’t a good sign. I felt sorry.

Then to my utmost horror I found the host floating dead in the pool… A husband, a father: dead! And nobody seems to care!

Even more desperate the boy hiding in the dining room – his distressed body language seems to ask: Can this my home? Where is my mother? Who is my mother? Where are my roots?

You may form your own opinion on this photo story – but being uprooted is the worst prerequisite for a new and positive start. Reasons are manifold. But if it comes to politics as a cause: Think before you vote, choose well whom you elect. It might affect your families’ life, too.

 

The artists Michael Elgreen and Ingar Dragset make us think with their fictive story and installation of an unhappy start in Haus Lange, Krefeld.

I as a photographer tried to transfer this mood and the atmosphre into 17 picture series ‘Die Zugezogenen’.

 

Krefeld, February 2017

Thomas Kopf

 

The phased introduction of the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000 means that whilst single-deck buses over 7.5 tonnes must be fully compliant from 1st January 2016, double deckers have a further 12 months grace. Therefore, Olympians can still be legally used on registered local bus services until January 2017. Not that I'm complaining. However a less able-bodied bus passenger who could until now easily board an elderly low-floor Dart may have a different opinion.

 

First South West (Devon & Cornwall as was) still operates a diminishing number of Volvo Olympians in Cornwall. However, their days appear to be numbered as more replacement Volvo B7TLs are due to be cascaded from South Yorkshire.

 

Surprisingly, one of the Olympians still giving sterling service in Cornwall is former First Cymru Palatine II-bodied 34162, which was new to the Bristol fleet and arrived in South Wales with her three sisters in 2008. She transferred to the South West in August 2014 after being replaced at Pontardawe depot by a former Hampshire & Dorset Alexander ALX400-bodied Volvo B7TL, bowing out after operating on the Llanelli Eisteddfod Park & Ride contract in the first week of the month.

 

In this late May 2014 shot, she is leaving Neath's Victoria Gardens on Service 903 (Neath-Pontardawe-Ystalyfera-Ystradgynlais-Abercraf), which caters for Neath Port Talbot College students.

Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe. And honouring its past as landscape park, it still has large gardened areas.

Put it to the people March 23rd March 2019

 

The reality is that c 1 million people turned up in person yesterday to walk from Hyde Park to Parliament Square to demonstrate their fear of the consequences of Brexit. These were the million who know that they must take action before it is too late as bad things happen when the silent majority act silently. These were the million who had the time, money and availability to attend as opposed to the silent mass who have lost faith and perhaps believe their opinion is not valued.

 

I implore anyone who has the slightest doubt as to the tangible benefits of EU departure - now is the time to write to your MP, now is the time to protest, now is the time to make your voice heard - If it's the first time you have written to your MP, it is especially important that you write (most MPs have contact page on the internet, it takes minuties to communicate dissatisfaction) as they have stopped listening to the vociferous remoaners who thought Brexit was a bad idea from the start. Yes, remoaners wanted a referendum but it was to put a bad idea to bed. Sure the EU has problems, but we can only effect change from inside by persuasion - not by shouting from the border.

 

The risks are too great to be silent and trust the likes of Boris, Farage and Rees-Mogg to see us right as Boris, Farage and Reed-Mogg are only in this maddness for the the illusion of power.

 

I have heard there is a petition thingy to revoke Article 50... here is a link to it petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584.

In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge (/ˈdɛmi.ɜːrdʒ/) is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.

 

The word demiurge is an English word derived from demiurgus, a Latinised form of the Greek δημιουργός or dēmiurgós. It was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written c. 360 BC, where the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The demiurge is also described as a creator in the Platonic (c. 310–90 BC) and Middle Platonic (c. 90 BC – AD 300) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.

  

Contents

1Platonism and neoplatonism

1.1Plato and the Timaeus

1.2Middle Platonism

1.3Neoplatonism

1.3.1Henology

1.3.2Iamblichus

2Gnosticism

2.1Mythos

2.2Angels

2.3Yaldabaoth

2.3.1Names

2.4Marcion

2.5Valentinus

2.6The devil

2.7Cathars

3Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

3.1Plotinus

4See also

5References

5.1Notes

5.2Sources

6External links

Platonism and neoplatonism[edit]

Plato and the Timaeus[edit]

Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus (28a ff.), c. 360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who "fashioned and shaped" the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and so it desires a world as good as possible. Plato's work Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiod's cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer.[1][2][3]

 

Middle Platonism[edit]

In Numenius's Neo-Pythagorean and Middle Platonist cosmogony, the Demiurge is second God as the nous or thought of intelligibles and sensibles.[4]

 

Neoplatonism[edit]

Plotinus and the later Platonists worked to clarify the Demiurge. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause (see Pythagoras' Dyad). Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge,[5] which, as Demiurge and mind (nous), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism (also called idealism). In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy,[5] Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge (or nous) within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus.[6]

 

Henology[edit]

The first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One (Τὸ Ἕν, 'To Hen'), the source, or the Monad.[7] This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the actions of the Demiurge. The Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous (consciousness) from its "indeterminate" vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection.[8] This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the "Demiurge" or creator. The second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or dynamis, also called the one or the Monad. The dyad is energeia emanated by the one that is then the work, process or activity called nous, Demiurge, mind, consciousness that organizes the indeterminate vitality into the experience called the material world, universe, cosmos. Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in The Enneads[9] which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the "mind" or nous (c.f. pantheism).

 

Plotinus' form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous as the contemplative faculty (ergon) within man which orders the force (dynamis) into conscious reality.[10] In this, he claimed to reveal Plato's true meaning: a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Plato's text. This tradition of creator God as nous (the manifestation of consciousness), can be validated in the works of pre-Plotinus philosophers such as Numenius, as well as a connection between Hebrew and Platonic cosmology (see also Philo).[11]

 

The Demiurge of Neoplatonism is the Nous (mind of God), and is one of the three ordering principles:

 

Arche (Gr. 'beginning') – the source of all things,

Logos (Gr. 'reason/cause') – the underlying order that is hidden beneath appearances,

Harmonia (Gr. 'harmony') – numerical ratios in mathematics.

Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus' Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Plato's Timaeus. The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius.[citation needed]

 

Iamblichus[edit]

See also: Panentheism

Later, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus changed the role of the "One", effectively altering the role of the Demiurge as second cause or dyad, which was one of the reasons that Iamblichus and his teacher Porphyry came into conflict.

 

The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, which conjoins the transcendent, incommunicable “One,” or Source. Here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge (material realm) coexist via the process of henosis.[12] Iamblichus describes the One as a monad whose first principle or emanation is intellect (nous), while among "the many" that follow it there is a second, super-existent "One" that is the producer of intellect or soul (psyche).

 

The "One" is further separated into spheres of intelligence; the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, while the latter sphere is the domain of thought. Thus, a triad is formed of the intelligible nous, the intellective nous, and the psyche in order to reconcile further the various Hellenistic philosophical schools of Aristotle's actus and potentia (actuality and potentiality) of the unmoved mover and Plato's Demiurge.

 

Then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine nous with the intellectual triad being promoted to a hebdomad (pure intellect).

 

In the theoretic of Plotinus, nous produces nature through intellectual mediation, thus the intellectualizing gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods.

 

Gnosticism[edit]

 

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Yaldabaoth. (Discuss) (November 2018)

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Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic "creator" of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in an unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to (or, at least possibly, the problem or cause that gives rise to)[citation needed] the problem of evil.

 

Mythos[edit]

One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. 'wisdom'), the Demiurge's mother and partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or "Fullness," desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and concluded that only he existed, ignorant of the superior levels of reality.

 

The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working, however, blindly and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiurgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself.[13]

 

Thus Sophia's power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.

 

Angels[edit]

Psalm 82 begins (verse 1), "God stands in the assembly of El [LXX: assembly of gods], in the midst of the gods he renders judgment", indicating a plurality of gods, although it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. Philo had inferred from the expression "Let us make man" of the Book of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to his helpers in the work of creation.[14]

 

The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis.[15] So Irenaeus tells[16] of the system of Simon Magus,[17] of the system of Menander,[18] of the system of Saturninus, in which the number of these angels is reckoned as seven, and[19] of the system of Carpocrates. In the report of the system of Basilides,[20] we are told that our world was made by the angels who occupy the lowest heaven; but special mention is made of their chief, who is said to have been the God of the Jews, to have led that people out of the land of Egypt, and to have given them their law. The prophecies are ascribed not to the chief but to the other world-making angels.

 

The Latin translation, confirmed by Hippolytus of Rome,[21] makes Irenaeus state that according to Cerinthus (who shows Ebionite influence), creation was made by a power quite separate from the Supreme God and ignorant of him. Theodoret,[22] who here copies Irenaeus, turns this into the plural number "powers", and so Epiphanius of Salamis[23] represents Cerinthus as agreeing with Carpocrates in the doctrine that the world was made by angels.

 

Yaldabaoth[edit]

 

A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge.

In the Ophite and Sethian systems, which have many affinities with the teachings of Valentinus, the making of the world is ascribed to a company of seven archons, whose names are given, but still more prominent is their chief, "Yaldabaoth" (also known as "Yaltabaoth" or "Ialdabaoth").

 

In the Apocryphon of John c. AD 120–180, the demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself:

 

Now the archon ["ruler"] who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ["fool"], and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.[24]

He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul, Yaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. At the consummation of all things, all light will return to the Pleroma. But Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths.[25]

 

Yaldabaoth is frequently called "the Lion-faced", leontoeides, and is said to have the body of a serpent. The demiurge is also[26] described as having a fiery nature, applying the words of Moses to him: "the Lord our God is a burning and consuming fire". Hippolytus claims that Simon used a similar description.[27]

 

In Pistis Sophia, Yaldabaoth has already sunk from his high estate and resides in Chaos, where, with his forty-nine demons, he tortures wicked souls in boiling rivers of pitch, and with other punishments (pp. 257, 382). He is an archon with the face of a lion, half flame, and half darkness.

 

Under the name of Nebro (rebel), Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. He is first mentioned in "The Cosmos, Chaos, and the Underworld" as one of the twelve angels to come "into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld]". He comes from heaven, and it is said his "face flashed with fire and [his] appearance was defiled with blood". Nebro creates six angels in addition to the angel Saklas to be his assistants. These six, in turn, create another twelve angels "with each one receiving a portion in the heavens".

 

Names[edit]

 

Drawing of the lion-headed figure found at the Mithraeum of C. Valerius Heracles and sons, dedicated 190 CE at Ostia Antica, Italy (CIMRM 312).

The most probable derivation of the name "Yaldabaoth" was that given by Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler. Gieseler believed the name was derived from the Aramaic yaldā bahuth, ילדאבהות, meaning "Son of Chaos". However, Gilles Quispel notes:

 

Gershom Scholem, the third genius in this field, more specifically the genius of precision, has taught us that some of us were wrong when they believed that Jaldabaoth means "son of chaos", because the Aramaic word bahutha in the sense of chaos only existed in the imagination of the author of a well-known dictionary. This is a pity because this name would suit the demiurge risen from chaos to a nicety. And perhaps the author of the Untitled Document did not know Aramaic and also supposed as we did once, that baoth had something to do with tohuwabohu, one of the few Hebrew words that everybody knows. ... It would seem then that the Orphic view of the demiurge was integrated into Jewish Gnosticism even before the redaction of the myth contained in the original Apocryphon of John. ... Phanes is represented with the mask of a lion's head on his breast, while from his sides the heads of a ram and a buck are budding forth: his body is encircled by a snake. This type was accepted by the Mithras mysteries, to indicate Aion, the new year, and Mithras, whose numerical value is 365. Sometimes he is also identified with Jao Adonai, the creator of the Hebrews. His hieratic attitude indicates Egyptian origin. The same is true of the monstrous figure with the head of a lion, which symbolises Time, Chronos, in Mithraism; Alexandrian origin of this type is probable.[28]

"Samael" literally means "Blind God" or "God of the Blind" in Hebrew (סמאל‎). This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant of its own origins, but may, in addition, be evil; its name is also found in Judaism as the Angel of Death and in Christian demonology. This link to Judeo-Christian tradition leads to a further comparison with Satan. Another alternative title for the demiurge is "Saklas", Aramaic for "fool".

 

The angelic name "Ariel" (Hebrew: 'the lion of God')[29] has also been used to refer to the Demiurge and is called his "perfect" name;[30] in some Gnostic lore, Ariel has been called an ancient or original name for Ialdabaoth.[31] The name has also been inscribed on amulets as "Ariel Ialdabaoth",[32][33] and the figure of the archon inscribed with "Aariel".[34]

 

Marcion[edit]

According to Marcion, the title God was given to the Demiurge, who was to be sharply distinguished from the higher Good God. The former was díkaios, severely just, the latter agathós, or loving-kind; the former was the "god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4), the God of the Old Testament, the latter the true God of the New Testament. Christ, in reality, is the Son of the Good God. The true believer in Christ entered into God's kingdom, the unbeliever remained forever the slave of the Demiurge.[25]

 

Valentinus[edit]

It is in the system of Valentinus that the name Dēmiurgos is used, which occurs nowhere in Irenaeus except in connection with the Valentinian system; we may reasonably conclude that it was Valentinus who adopted from Platonism the use of this word. When it is employed by other Gnostics either it is not used in a technical sense, or its use has been borrowed from Valentinus. But it is only the name that can be said to be specially Valentinian; the personage intended by it corresponds more or less closely with the Yaldabaoth of the Ophites, the great Archon of Basilides, the Elohim of Justinus, etc.

 

The Valentinian theory elaborates that from Achamoth (he kátō sophía or lower wisdom) three kinds of substance take their origin, the spiritual (pneumatikoí), the animal (psychikoí) and the material (hylikoí). The Demiurge belongs to the second kind, as he was the offspring of a union of Achamoth with matter.[25][35] And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of Sophía the last of the thirty Aeons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from the Propatôr, or Supreme God.[25]

 

In creating this world out of Chaos the Demiurge was unconsciously influenced for good; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he attempted to remedy this by sending a Messiah. To this Messiah, however, was actually united with Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are either hylikoí or pneumatikoí.[25]

 

The first, or material men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or animal men, together with the Demiurge, will enter a middle state, neither Pleroma nor hyle; the purely spiritual men will be completely freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the Pleroma divested of body (hyle) and soul (psyché).[25][36] In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of the animal, or psychic world.[25]

 

The devil[edit]

Opinions on the devil, and his relationship to the Demiurge, varied. The Ophites held that he and his demons constantly oppose and thwart the human race, as it was on their account the devil was cast down into this world.[37] According to one variant of the Valentinian system, the Demiurge is also the maker, out of the appropriate substance, of an order of spiritual beings, the devil, the prince of this world, and his angels. But the devil, as being a spirit of wickedness, is able to recognise the higher spiritual world, of which his maker the Demiurge, who is only animal, has no real knowledge. The devil resides in this lower world, of which he is the prince, the Demiurge in the heavens; his mother Sophia in the middle region, above the heavens and below the Pleroma.[38]

 

The Valentinian Heracleon[39] interpreted the devil as the principle of evil, that of hyle (matter). As he writes in his commentary on John 4:21,

 

The mountain represents the Devil, or his world, since the Devil was one part of the whole of matter, but the world is the total mountain of evil, a deserted dwelling place of beasts, to which all who lived before the law and all Gentiles render worship. But Jerusalem represents the creation or the Creator whom the Jews worship. ... You then who are spiritual should worship neither the creation nor the Craftsman, but the Father of Truth.

This vilification of the creator was held to be inimical to Christianity by the early fathers of the church. In refuting the beliefs of the gnostics, Irenaeus stated that "Plato is proved to be more religious than these men, for he allowed that the same God was both just and good, having power over all things, and himself executing judgment."[40]

 

Cathars[edit]

Catharism apparently inherited their idea of Satan as the creator of the evil world from Gnosticism. Quispel writes,

 

There is a direct link between ancient Gnosticism and Catharism. The Cathars held that the creator of the world, Satanael, had usurped the name of God, but that he had subsequently been unmasked and told that he was not really God.[41]

Neoplatonism and Gnosticism[edit]

Main article: Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Against the Gnostics; or, Against Those that Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to be Evil

Gnosticism attributed falsehood or evil to the concept of the Demiurge or creator, though in some Gnostic traditions the creator is from a fallen, ignorant, or lesser—rather than evil—perspective, such as that of Valentinius.

 

Plotinus[edit]

The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus addressed within his works Gnosticism's conception of the Demiurge, which he saw as un-Hellenic and blasphemous to the Demiurge or creator of Plato. Plotinus, along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas, was the founder of Neoplatonism.[42] In the ninth tractate of the second of his Enneads, Plotinus criticizes his opponents for their appropriation of ideas from Plato:

 

From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm—the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul—all this is taken over from the Timaeus.

 

— Ennead 2.9.vi; emphasis added from A. H. Armstrong's introduction to Ennead 2.9

Of note here is the remark concerning the second hypostasis or Creator and third hypostasis or World Soul. Plotinus criticizes his opponents for "all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own" which, he declares, "have been picked up outside of the truth";[43] they attempt to conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy, which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided embellishments. Thus their understanding of the Demiurge is similarly flawed in comparison to Plato’s original intentions.

 

Whereas Plato's Demiurge is good wishing good on his creation, Gnosticism contends that the Demiurge is not only the originator of evil but is evil as well. Hence the title of Plotinus' refutation: "Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil" (generally quoted as "Against the Gnostics"). Plotinus argues of the disconnect or great barrier that is created between the nous or mind's noumenon (see Heraclitus) and the material world (phenomenon) by believing the material world is evil.

 

The majority of scholars tend[44] to understand Plotinus' opponents as being a Gnostic sect—certainly (specifically Sethian), several such groups were present in Alexandria and elsewhere about the Mediterranean during Plotinus' lifetime. Plotinus specifically points to the Gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of the Demiurge.

 

Though the former understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the identification of Plotinus' opponents as Gnostic is not without some contention. Christos Evangeliou has contended[45] that Plotinus' opponents might be better described as simply "Christian Gnostics", arguing that several of Plotinus' criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well. Also, considering the evidence from the time, Evangeliou thought the definition of the term "Gnostics" was unclear. Of note here is that while Plotinus' student Porphyry names Christianity specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a known associate of the Christian Origen, none of Plotinus' works mention Christ or Christianity—whereas Plotinus specifically addresses his target in the Enneads as the Gnostics.

 

A. H. Armstrong identified the so-called "Gnostics" that Plotinus was attacking as Jewish and Pagan, in his introduction to the tract in his translation of the Enneads. Armstrong alluding to Gnosticism being a Hellenic philosophical heresy of sorts, which later engaged Christianity and Neoplatonism.[46][47]

 

John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska, and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library, stated[48] that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian Gnosticism, which predates Christianity. It appears that Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions (such as dystheism or misotheism for the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.

 

Emil Cioran also wrote his Le mauvais démiurge ("The Evil Demiurge"), published in 1969, influenced by Gnosticism and Schopenhauerian interpretation of Platonic ontology, as well as that of Plotinus.

 

See also[edit]

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Albinus (philosopher)

Azazil

Emil Cioran

Devil in Christianity

Gnosticism

Mara (demon)

Mayasura

Narasimha

Problem of the creator of God

Ptah

Simulated reality

Tenth Intellect (Isma'ilism)

Urizen

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

^ Fontenrose, Joseph (1974). Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origin. Biblo & Tannen Publishers. p. 226. ISBN 978-0-8196-0285-5.

^ Sallis, John (1999). Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus. Indiana University Press. p. 86. ISBN 0-253-21308-8.

^ Keightley, Thomas (1838). The mythology of ancient Greece and Italy. Oxford University. p. 44. theogony timaeus.

^ Kahn, Charles (2001). Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing. pp. 124. ISBN 978-0-872205758.

^ Jump up to: a b Karamanolis, George (2006). Plato and Aristotle in Agreement?: Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. Oxford University Press. p. 240. ISBN 0-19-926456-2.

^ The ordering principle is twofold; there is a principle known as the Demiurge, and there is the Soul of the All; the appellation "Zeus" is sometimes applied to the Demiurge and sometimes to the principle conducting the universe.[citation needed]

^ Wear, Sarah; Dillon, John (2013). Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist Tradition: Despoiling the Hellenes. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 9780754603856.

^ Wallis, Richard T.; Bregman, Jay, eds. (1992). Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. International Society for Neoplatonic Studies. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-1337-1.

^ "Matter is therefore a non-existent"; Plotinus, Ennead 2, Tractate 4 Section 16.

^ Schopenhauer wrote of this Neoplatonist philosopher: "With Plotinus there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, idealism that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught (Enneads, iii, lib. vii, c.10) that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time, with the explanation: 'For there is for this universe no other place than the soul or mind' (neque est alter hujus universi locus quam anima), indeed the ideality of time is expressed in the words: 'We should not accept time outside the soul or mind' (oportet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere)." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy", § 7) Similarly, Professor Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus (Enneads, iii, 7, 10), where he says, 'The only space or place of the world is the soul', and 'Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul'." [5] It is worth noting, however, that like Plato but unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers, Plotinus does not worry about whether or how we can get beyond our ideas in order to know external objects.

^ Numenius of Apamea was reported to have asked, "What else is Plato than Moses speaking Greek?" Fr. 8 Des Places.

^ See Theurgy, Iamblichus and henosis Archived 2010-01-09 at the Wayback Machine.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 5, 1.

^

It is on this account that Moses says, at the creation of man alone that God said, "Let us make man," which expression shows an assumption of other beings to himself as assistants, in order that God, the governor of all things, might have all the blameless intentions and actions of man, when he does right attributed to him; and that his other assistants might bear the imputation of his contrary actions.

— "Philo: On the Creation, XXIV". www.earlyjewishwritings.com.

^ Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho. c. 67.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 23, 1.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 23, 5.

^ Irenaeus, i. 24, 1.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 25.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 24, 4.

^ Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies. vii. 33.

^ Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 3.

^ Epiphanius, Panarion, 28.

^ "Apocryphon of John," translation by Frederik Wisse in The Nag Hammadi Library. Accessed online at gnosis.org

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Demiurge". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

^ Hipp. Ref. vi. 32, p. 191.

^ Hipp. Ref. vi. 9.

^ Quispel, Gilles (2008). Van Oort, Johannes (ed.). Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. p. 64. ISBN 978-90-04-13945-9.

^ Scholem, Gershom (1965). Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. Jewish Theological Seminary of America. p. 72.

^ Robert McLachlan Wilson (1976). Nag Hammadi and gnosis: Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology. BRILL. pp. 21–23. Therefore his esoteric name is Jaldabaoth, whereas the perfect call him Ariel, because he has the appearance of a lion.

^ Gustav Davidson (1994). A dictionary of angels: including the fallen angels. Scrollhouse. p. 54.

^ David M Gwynn (2010). Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity. BRILL. p. 448.

^ Campbell Bonner (1949). "An Amulet of the Ophite Gnostics". The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 8: 43–46.

^ Gilles Quispel; R. van den Broek; Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (1981). Studies in gnosticism and hellenistic religions. BRILL. pp. 40–41.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 5.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 6.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 30, 8.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i. 5, 4.

^ Heracleon, Frag. 20.

^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, iii. 25.

^ Quispel, Gilles and Van Oort, Johannes (2008), p. 143.

^ John D. Turner. Neoplatonism.

^ "For, in sum, a part of their doctrine comes from Plato; all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own have been picked up outside of the truth." Plotinus, "Against the Gnostics", Ennead II, 9, 6.

^ Plotinus, Arthur Hilary Armstrong (trans.) (1966). Plotinus: Enneads II (Loeb Classical Library ed.). Harvard University Press. From this point to the end of ch. 12 Plotinus is attacking a Gnostic myth known to us best at present in the form it took in the system of Valentinus. The Mother, Sophia-Achamoth, produced as a result of the complicated sequence of events which followed the fall of the higher Sophia, and her offspring the Demiurge, the inferier and ignorant maker of the material universe, are Valentinian figures; cp. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.4 and 5. Valentinius had been in Rome, and there is nothing improbable in the presence of Valentinians there in the time of Plotinus. But the evidence in the Life ch. 16 suggests that the Gnostics in Plotinus's circle belonged rather to the older group called Sethians or Archontics, related to the Ophites or Barbelognostics: they probably called themselves simply 'Gnostics'. Gnostic sects borrowed freely from each other, and it is likely that Valentinius took some of his ideas about Sophia from older Gnostic sources, and that his ideas in turn influenced other Gnostics.

^ Evangeliou, "Plotinus's Anti-Gnostic Polemic and Porphyry's Against the Christians", in Wallis & Bregman, p. 111.

^ From "Introduction to Against the Gnostics", Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222: "The treatise as it stands in the Enneads is a most powerful protest on behalf of Hellenic philosophy against the un-Hellenic heresy (as it was from the Platonist as well as the orthodox Christian point of view) of Gnosticism. There were Gnostics among Plotinus's own friends, whom he had not succeeded in converting (Enneads ch. 10 of this treatise) and he and his pupils devoted considerable time and energy to anti-Gnostic controversy (Life of Plotinus ch. 16). He obviously considered Gnosticism an extremely dangerous influence, likely to pervert the minds even of members of his own circle. It is impossible to attempt to give an account of Gnosticism here. By far the best discussion of what the particular group of Gnostics Plotinus knew believed is M. Puech's admirable contribution to Entretiens Hardt V (Les Sources de Plotin). But it is important for the understanding of this treatise to be clear about the reasons why Plotinus disliked them so intensely and thought their influence so harmful."

^ Armstrong, pp. 220–22: "Short statement of the doctrine of the three hypostasis, the One, Intellect and Soul; there cannot be more or fewer than these three. Criticism of the attempts to multiply the hypostasis, and especially of the idea of two intellects, one which thinks and that other which thinks that it thinks. (ch. 1). The true doctrine of Soul (ch. 2). The law of necessary procession and the eternity of the universe (ch.3). Attack on the Gnostic doctrine of the making of the universe by a fallen soul, and on their despising of the universe and the heavenly bodies (chs. 4–5). The senseless jargon of the Gnostics, their plagiarism from and perversion of Plato, and their insolent arrogance (ch. 6). The true doctrine about Universal Soul and the goodness of the universe which it forms and rules (chs. 7–8). Refutation of objections from the inequalities and injustices of human life (ch. 9). Ridiculous arrogance of the Gnostics who refuse to acknowledge the hierarchy of created gods and spirits and say that they alone are sons of God and superior to the heavens (ch. 9). The absurdities of the Gnostic doctrine of the fall of "Wisdom" (Sophia) and of the generation and activities of the Demiurge, maker of the visible universe (chs. 10–12). False and melodramatic Gnostic teaching about the cosmic spheres and their influence (ch. 13). The blasphemous falsity of the Gnostic claim to control the higher powers by magic and the absurdity of their claim to cure diseases by casting out demons (ch. 14). The false other-worldliness of the Gnostics leads to immorality (ch. 15). The true Platonic other-worldliness, which love and venerates the material universe in all its goodness and beauty as the most perfect possible image of the intelligible, contracted at length with the false, Gnostic, other-worldliness which hates and despises the material universe and its beauties (chs. 16–18)."

^ Turner, "Gnosticism and Platonism", in Wallis & Bregman.

Sources[edit]

This article incorporates text from the entry Demiurgus in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines by William Smith and Henry Wace (1877), a publication now in the public domain.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

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What will you experience, after your human vessel passes away (die). The human vessel is destroyed by a happening or by aging and the body can’t fulfill the tasks at hand to sustain life and the body and brain passes away. The Soul, your consciousness of your awareness will pass over. Suppose a person has a car accident and the body and brain died. On that moment the Soul will stop projecting consciousness more or less in your body. And the Soul will observe your physical body and what is happening to your physical expression of energy. As awareness you will float next to your body or look at it from above. On this moment of passing over, you cannot reason and you do not remember who you are. This makes dying or passing over as we call it, a very tranquil process. You just observe everything that is happening to your physical body. Because also how you died, is an experience and as Souls we want to gather all information we can and we do. Our observer is not in our brain and not in our body, the observer is always our direct conscious part of our Soul as awareness. On the moment of passing over, you just observe. Than suddenly you will be pulled to another location, a location of a funeral, cremation or even a ceremony, by the thoughts of the loved ones who are still on earth. Again you will observe everything that is happening on the funeral, cremation or ceremony, you can hear thoughts, see people who are saying goodbyes to you of your previous life. Again to gather all information about this life, we observe automatically, what happens to us. How long it will take for a passed over Soul to use the conscious awareness of the Soul again, is different for all Souls. With one it goes quicker than another Soul. Depending, when you are ready for it or not. Normally we observer in a human life, direct with our conscious part of our Soul without our senses, this happens on a high energetic frequency. That is the reason why we can observe in life, as well as after we passed over. Our human life happens in the apparently material dimension, everything looks real, still it is an expression of energy we are dreaming. Because of the cause and consequence in repetitive cycles we experience life as a constant, that means we see life as a reality, however it is still an important dream. That gives us the opportunity to experience a seemingly material life. When we pass over we will come into the In-between dimension (This is the dimension between earth and Heaven. Heaven is the immaterial pure positive dimension. The Soul is always present in this in-between dimension and can’t be part of the apparently material dimension. That is why the Soul projects consciousness into the human vessel. To become a part in this dream and a play its part. Our senses are like a filter over our awareness, and works on a low energetic frequency, this means, that we can’t use this in the In-between dimension. Because our senses just like the apparently material dimension happens all on a lower energetic frequency. To make things simple for our Soul and we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel and that creates the so called reality.When the Soul focus of attention is in the in-between dimension as we passed over, we first only observe as told above. After this we start to reason and to remember with our conscious part of our Soul on a high energetic frequency, this takes a while. That is the reason that after you passed over there is no panic. Again real passing over is very tranquil. You feel an incredible love surrounding you, this is happening. Because you feel the connection you have with Oneness (=God), all energetic awarenesses have an individuality AND on the same time they are all connected to each other. So in the in-between dimension, you feel this incredible love around you and you feel very comfortable. This is also depending on how large your ego perspective has grown in life. You start to learn how to remember your previous life (last life), with your conscious part of your Soul. You start to reason again, and slowly you become the same perspective and personality, you were as you lived your human life. You are literally the same person as you were in life, only you don’t have a physical body anymore, but an esoteric body. A body of energetic light, because everything is created from energy. You will notice that when you think about a loved one on earth, you will be there too. And you can observe this loved one doing his or her things on earth. Or when a loved one speaks to you in thoughts, you will hear them and be there to communicate. Only the loved ones on earth, rarely understand, sense or hear you. When someone on earth a loved one thinks of you, you think of this person and visa versa. That is how we as Souls are connected. You can even split your consciousness again, and talk with more people on the same time. As Soul we can do so much more. When you think about a place you visited in the past when you were alive, you can visit it again, to see it again and float around in the streets, beach or what ever you like to visit again. When a loved one is thinking about you with thoughts, you can hear the thoughts too. Because we don’t have the flat simple senses, we had on earth. After a while you will feel an urge to move on and to go back home, to Heaven. Because the love is drawing you home. This happens also depending on how large your ego perspective has developed. Can you let go of the loved ones, can you let go of your possessions on earth, can you let go of the ego perspective you have taught yourself and was taught by others Also the loved ones on earth have to let you as passed over Soul go too. When they hold tide to your being, your Soul will stay longer connected to earth because of the loved ones. Many people experience the passed over loved one, talking to them, to let them go. Which is really necessary. Some people have a big trouble of letting go the passed over loved one, and pull them constantly back to earth. This can take a while, because the loved one has to accept that you have passed over and moves on in her or his life. Better is for a loved one to accept right away that you passed over, and focus again on positivity in their lives.

When you let go of the loved ones on earth, the possessions and earth, you are ready to move on on your journey to Heaven. When your loved ones let you go, you will go into a next phase of passing over. This phase is called the path to enlightenment. When people really get enlightened in life and die, they will immediately merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension. To be enlightened means that you bring your conscious part of your Soul, what is your awareness and equals all your thoughts, memories and formulation of thoughts unto a pure positive angelic level. We humans are ALL reincarnated angels. Believe it or don’t, still it is true. That is the reason why we have to bring our thoughts back on the angelic level of formulating all the time pure positive thoughts. Thoughts are energy patterns moving in space. When you formulate positive thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a high frequency. When you formulate negative thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a low frequency. In a human life most people create more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, this will cause a split Soul. Between your awareness and your Higher Self. Your awareness is vibrating energetic on a much lower frequency than your Higher Self. The Higher Self is your angelic pure positive awareness. The voice of the Higher Self can be heard by your intuition and conscience. That is how you can know, why we are angelic beings from origin. Before you were born, your Soul split into a conscious and a subconscious part. The conscious part is your awareness, your formulation of thoughts, memories and everything we learn into our memory. Not in our brain, because the brain is an expression of energy, to give form to our thoughts. At birth, the awareness is cleared from memory of previous lives, and in total cleared from your Souls life. So you can start living this experience fresh and clean. In some cases young children can remember past lives, because they have still a good connection with the Higher Self. Some can tell you some interesting details of real past lives. That is another story for another time. Which you can find in previous answers about past lives.

What is balance in yourself, balance in yourself, is to bring the thoughts of your awareness on the same level as the Higher Self awareness is thinking. A difference in thoughts, will cause negative emotions and bad feelings. As a signal to tell you, that you are not on the positive path in life. Transform your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. What equals the same thoughts as your Higher Self and you will create positive emotions and you feel good, balanced and positive again. You are then on the right positive path in life. It is a guidance to help the Soul to find its way in a human life. We only lost touch with this guidance system of the Higher Self. This balance in thoughts of your awareness and the higher Self is also called enlightenment. To create One Soul again. When your awareness formulates positive thoughts the same as your Higher Self does, than your awareness vibrates energetically on the same high frequency. Just like Jesus has told us too. When you are born you are One (One Soul), when you grow up you become TWO (Soul and Ego), when you die, what will you do, when you are TWO? We explain this later. We need long explanations, because it is necessary to understand what happens when you passed over. You see that we have never been told the truth, that is why we have such a lack of information about this event. The enlightened persons after death, will pass over and merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven. They are home. This is the quickest way to go back home to Heaven. The normal persons in life who has formulated positive thoughts in life which is called thoughts and actions upon by the perspective of the Soul. And they have on the same time formulated negative thoughts in life, what is called thoughts and actions by the egoistic and greedy ego perspective. The ego perspective is always the creator of negative thoughts. Most people have this split Soul and can’t merge with the Higher Self and can’t enter Heaven. Negative thoughts creates negative emotions and feels bad or sad. Positive thoughts creates positive emotions and feels great. How you feel is always a result of the thoughts you have been formulating consciously or subconsciously. A positive thought is good for you AND on the same time it is good for all people on the world AND good for Nature. This is the only way to create balance in yourself, balance between all people and balance with Nature. The people who have a split Soul, they will go into a next phase after they passed over, in the In- between dimension and let go of their loved ones and earth. They will have to become enlightened as an angel, other wise you can’t enter Heaven. Believe me, this is the best place to be. These people, most of you, will experience that our fears, worries, and other negative emotions which are based on negative thoughts and indirect actions in life will repeat again in new dreams. Again to give you a choice. To choose a positive thought or a negative thought. When you choose a negative thought. The dream will repeat itself, perhaps slightly in a different way. You will see all the wrong doings and consequences in your life. Until you choose the positive thoughts and reach enlightenment. That means that you choose pure positive thoughts that equals your higher Self. When you do, you cause your Soul to become ONE< that means that your awareness and Higher Self vibrates on the same energetic high frequency. The Higher Self is than able to merge with your awareness and now you will go into Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension that vibrates on a high frequency. Than you are able to remember all previous lives including the total life of your Soul. Enlightenment is the key to enter Heaven. As I explained also in the Gospel to Heaven, the real path to Heaven in my first pinned answer in my profile on Quora.

Children are helped by spirit guides to go through this process. No one is alone. All humans have at least two spiritual guides. Only most of you don’t know this, because you are all busy to enjoy yourself, to get what you want. Instead of evolving as a human being into enlightenment. Spiritual development means therefor the development of negative thoughts into positive thoughts in your perspective. That is how you can evolve in life. Than you have people who embrace the occult, satanism and made very egoistic decisions in life, by killing, deceiving, destroying, etc. These people have a very large ego perspective, and they will need many centuries to restore their Soul as One. They will often choose again and again negative thoughts. They will experience a kind of Hell, because they created this experience, by their expectation. Everything that you desire, wish to experience, consciously AND subconsciously will immediately manifest in the in-between dimension. So thoughts have consequences. In this last group of passed over Souls you have also Souls of a human life or other lives from other planets, that chooses to stay negative, egoistic and destructive. They desire to keep their influence in life on certain people, who connects with them through blood rituals, sacrificing and others. We call these the Fallen angels. The angels who desire not to return to Heaven. They don’t want to do the effort to become enlightened. They are the creators of negativity in life, which are performed by humans in our society to make our civilization more and more negative, evil and bad. These are the people who desire power, possessions and oppression, by force and negative actions. They want to pull other Souls into the same fallen angel situations, as they are or will be. In the end every one will come back to Heaven. That is our natural state of being of everyone. That is why it is said: God forgives everyone. When you choose to go to Heaven, do the effort of becoming enlightened and embrace pure positive thoughts, you will return to Heaven. This is all the real judgment of our lives. No one will escape their thoughts and actions on earth. Like Jesus said; the first in life (people with a large ego perspective) will be the last in Heaven. Which is true and confirms these statements again and again. God forgives everyone, but do you forgive yourself? Than you have what is called repentance, repentance means to become enlightened. To do the effort to develop your thoughts into pure positive thoughts. That is repentance. Something so easy, so misunderstood by many. False prophets? There are many. It is your decision to find out, who is right and who is wrong. How more enlightened you will be, how more awakened you will become, how more you will see the truths in life. Religious scriptures, books, movies and even main stream media all are rewritten for power and control. Many untruths are told and spread, to keep you trapped into a repetitive cycle, without transforming your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Why is this no where mentioned? Because the people with power don’t want to share knowledge and wisdom. Negative people are easy to enslave and positive happy souls are not. Last point. A hell does not exist as the opposite of Heaven. This is very logical. A human being, a Soul and even a fallen angel as Soul all are constructed from a harmonious energetic intelligence and being. This can only happen in a harmonious and balanced positive dimension. It is only the thoughts with free will, that makes the difference, the thoughts we choose to embrace. Positive or negative thoughts. Still the body and construction of the Souls or a human vessel is all angelic perfection. The same is with humans, we are part of our own angel being projected as consciousness in a human vessel. All humans are equal, only the thoughts they choose with free will are different. Do you see what I mean? We choose positive thoughts or negative thoughts. This decision, decides who we will become in our awareness, a good or a bad person or somewhere in between. Still humans are part of the developed intelligence angelic pure positive dimension, other wise we cannot even exist. Therefore hell does not exist. The opposite of Heaven is real CHAOS and no intelligence or being can exist here. Some of us will experience a hell as they have embraced evil thoughts in life, they will manifest this, in the in between dimension like a dream. You will reap, what you sow.

Most people forgot that at every situation in life you have a choice, to formulate positive or negative thoughts. A human life was created for our Souls. This means that a human life is in fact the school for the Soul. To experience a material life with fun and enjoyment, to learn from the experiences, to create new experiences and to evolve in the end. We lost our guidance and control of our thoughts. When you don’t master your thoughts, you don’t master your feelings. Most of us want to embrace, hide, avoid and even justify negativity in life, instead of transforming negativity into positivity. This is the biggest problem in life, what has created our unbalanced world.

Read my words and study them, which I have described in my answers and you see that everything interlinks and is connected on this way. Still it is your choice if you want to do something with it or not.

 

www.quora.com/What-happens-to-the-human-soul-after-death-1

THE EASTERN GRAY/EASTERN GREY SQUIRREL (SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS)

  

By Paul Williams

  

The Grey (or Gray) squirrel, you either love 'em or you hate 'em. Cute and fluffy little funsters or destructive critters who ruin trees, kill bird chicks and trees and damage our homes... oh and it's their fault we lost our native Red squirrels as well!

  

OK

  

I get it and I see both sides of the story of course. For my part, I am a nature, wildlife and landscape photographer who prefers the company of animals and natural beauty to fellow humans who are systematically plundering Mother Earth's resources and killing off her beautiful creatures at an alarming rate! I believe there is a natural order of things, creatures kill other creatures to survive, they adapt to situations and when mankind encroaches on their territory to make a fast buck, those animals sometimes adapt to survive and the order changes.

  

That is the balance of nature which is ever changing and affected by us..... the dumbest of the great apes. Some species are driven out by others, some may be destined to become extinct, the fittest will survive, and sometime a species will need intervention and help from mankind in order to survive... usually as a direct consequence of mankind's own actions in destroying the animal kingdom's natural habitat of course.

  

I adore these little fellas and at almost sixty years old, I never grew up knowing red squirrels at all. I've seen reds in Scotland and black squirrels in Stanley Park on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, but in my beloved home country of England I have always known and loved the cute little Greys. They visit my garden and give me hours, days, weeks of happiness and wonderful photographic opportunities, and I see them in Parks and forests all around me, so it's time to offer up an insight into the Grey squirrel, much loved, much hated... a sort of Marmite rodent if you will.

  

WHAT EXACTLY IS A SQUIRREL?

  

The word 'Squirrel', was first recorded in 1327 and hails from the Anglo-Norman word 'Esquirel', from old French 'Escurel', which was a reflex for the Latin word 'Sciurus'.The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is also known as the Eastern Grey squirrel or simply grey squirrel depending on the region of the world it is found. It is a tree squirrel, of the squirrel family Sciuridae including over one hundred arboreal species native to all continents of the world other than Antarctica and Oceania. Tree squirrels live mostly in trees, apart from the flying squirrel. The best known genus is Sciurus, containing most of the bushy tailed squirrels which are found in Europe, North America, temperate Asia as well as central and south America.

  

The scientific classification for the Eastern Grey is:

  

KINGDOM: ANIMALIA PHYLUM: CHORDATA CLASS: MAMMALIA ORDER: RODENTIA FAMILY: SCIURIDAE GENUS: SCIURUS SUBGENUS: SCIURUS SPECIES: SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS

  

They were first noted by German naturalist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist - Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788.

  

A mammal and rodent, predominantly herbivorous they are none the less an omnivore with a life span of between two and ten years. They can grow to 70cm in length and weigh up to 8kg. There are more than two hundred and sixty species of worldwide squirrel, the smallest being the African pygmy squirrel at just 10cm in length, whereas the Indian giant squirrel is three feet long! The oldest fossil of a squirrel, Hesperopetes, dates back to the late Eocene epoch period Chadronian period of 40-35 million years ago. The tree squirrels rotate their ankles by 180 degrees, so that the hind paws pointy backwards gripping tree bark which enables them to descend a tree headfirst.

  

Originally native to Eastern and Midwestern United States of America, they were first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1876 in Henbury Park, Macclesfield in Cheshire when Victorian banker Thomas V. Brocklehurst released a pair of Greys that he brought back from a business trip to America after their attraction as pets had waned. Victorians had a penchant for collecting exotic animals and birds of the world, but trends came and went and subsequently animals were simply discarded into the wilderness. There are early records of greys released near Denbighshire in north Wales from private collections. Later introduced to several regions in the UK, they quickly settled and spread, colonizing an area of three hundred miles in a quarter of a century between Argyll and Stirlingshire in Scotland.

  

Introductions of the Greys between 1902 and 1929 (the year of the last recorded introduction), included: Regent’s Park in London, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Hampshire. Grey Squirrels spread into Gloucestershire and eastern Wiltshire with animals coming directly from the United States or from Woburn. One hundred greys were released in Richmond Park in Surrey in 1902, Ninety one into Regent’s Park between 1905 and 1907 and a further ten New Jersey imported greys were introduced into Woburn Park in Bedfordshire.

  

Predators include hawks, weasels, raccoons, bobcats, foxes, domestic and feral cats, snakes, owls, and dogs, African harrier-hawks in Africa and... oh yes, Mankind pretty much everywhere who despise, mistreat, cull or eat it .

  

FACTS, MYTHS AND THAT POXY PARAPOX!

  

The massive decline in native red squirrels blamed upon the spread of the invasive greys has always been perhaps a little harsh as reds were already in a steep decline due to loss of habitat and disease and thus the greys simply took over the areas where the reds were dwindling. It's also a fact that reds were also seen as a plague, branded as pests who killed birds and damaged trees and the culling of reds almost brought them to the brink of extinction. Licenses to kill reds could still be obtained up until the seventies!

  

Reds suffered at the hands of mankind thanks to a combination of agricultural deforestation also linked with war and fuel needs which caused extinction in Southern Scotland and Ireland by the early eighteenth century, way before greys had been introduced. Harsh winters killed off the less hardy red population in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  

Greys are more adept at finding food and adapting to locations and environments, but also carry the squirrel poxvirus (SQPV) which although not particularly harmful to them, is a serious infection for the reds.

  

Parapox in red squirrels causes swollen lesions around the mouth, eyes, ears and nose also the front paws and sometimes genitals and skin ulcers and kills a red within fifteen days. There is no definitive correlation between the spread of the virus and the spread of the Greys, it actually arrived in several areas before the greys began to colonize there. An epidemic virus was observed in Red squirrels from at least 1900 with isolation attempts failing, and the first case of Parapox in the UK was in 1980 in the county of Norfolk. Greys cannot transmit the virus to reds via saliva or faeces, but reds can between each other from bodily secretions and at animal feeders in gardens. The transmission from greys to reds is though to come from parasites. Eight to ten per cent of reds survive the virus, and there is some evidence that reds are slowly building an evolved resistance.

  

Greys are seen as pests to forest land, stripping bark from trees during May and June, and are also capable of destroying household bins, water pipes, causing roof damage not to mention taking eggs and killing young chicks of ground nesting and songbird populations. They also take from bird feeders and there is a whole industry for creating squirrel proof feeders these days.

  

THE CULLING OF GREY SQUIRRELS

  

Grey squirrels have limited legal protection and can be legally controlled all year round by a variety of methods including shooting and trapping. Methods of trapping and killing include Drey poking and shooting, Tunnel trapping using spring traps set in accordance with BASC’s trapping pest mammals code of practice. They can also be shot using a shotgun or powerful air rifle or up until September 30th 2014 poisoned by Warfarin (Now outlawed).

  

Whilst professional trapping and extermination is hopefully done as humanely as possible, there have been cases, many of them where cost savings have been gained by battering the squirrels to death! Grey squirrels are trapped in ghastly metal contraptions for hours and hours, wearing themselves out frantically trying to escape by gnawing at the metals bars. They bite the floor and scratch at them with their claws and do not get a moments peace or rest through absolute fear. Once the traps are retrieved, each squirrel, terrified will be thrown into a sack and smacked on the head countless times with a blunt instrument. When a mother is slaughtered, her babies who are totally dependent on her, will die a slow death of thirst and starvation.

  

There is an argument for the control of Greys on many grounds but also a counter argument that Culling does not work, and has not on countless times where, once a population of greys have been culled, the nearest group will move back in and claim the land. The university of Bristol concluded that there was little evidence that culling greys to save red squirrels was effective, and that perhaps finding a way of boosting red squirrel immunity to the poxvirus or planting areas of yew trees where reds are known to thrive and spending money on research into positive moves might be a better option.

  

In Ireland, the re-introduction of the Pine marten, a species made extinct originally by the very same land owners who also wish to do the same to the grey squirrel, has seen the rapid demise of the grey and the reintroction of the native reds. Red squirrels are smaller and more nimble than their grey counterparts, and as such can get to the very ends of tree branches where neither the pine martins, nor more importantly the heavier greys can, thus surviving and thriving. As a result in Ireland, the grey squirrel population has crashed in approximately 9,000 km2 of its former range and the reds has become common once more after a thirty year absence... oh and Pine Martens are protected again!

  

In Scotland, Pine Martens exist in areas where Red squirrels thrive, and greys do not. So perhaps there is a lesson here, as in England where there are no pine martens, the greys are prolific breeders. So there is an argument against the barbarity of shooting and poisoning greys, and if, as so many believe, the greys MUST be controlled, how about a more humane and natural method that nature intended.. with re-introduction of predators. Just a thought!

  

So a few facts and figures on the greys and to wrap up, from a purely personal perspective I love these little guys, as I do almost every creature in nature other than those eight legged beasties that shall not be named and for which I have a deep and powerful phobia that borders on paranoia!

  

I could no more harm an animal deliberately than eat a McDonald's McRib (Once saw how they are made and let me just say... eeeuuuuuwwwww!!).

  

They are small, cute, cuddly, furry, they photograph beautifully, have great personality and make me smile. They trust me enough to take food from my hand in parks, and I can't bare the though of ugly, hairy land owners sticking a shotgun in their face and blowing them away! I appreciate they can be a pest, a problem, a menace, that their PR managers might have a bit of a problem winning you over when they flay small chicks alive on your lawn or decimate the songbird population by stealing their eggs.... and perhaps there is a need to keep the population under control and try and re-establish the red population.....

  

Yep I get that....

  

I just hope we can solve the problem more humanely to create a peaceful coexistence of the reds and greys in different areas. A man can dream can't he.

  

Paul Williams June 18th 2021

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams).

  

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 40.599+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.

  

***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on June 23rd 2021

  

CREATIVE RF gty.im/1324832837 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 5,341st frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Six metres, at 14:00pm on Monday 20th January 2020, on a beautifully sunny afternoon off Birdcage Walk and Horse Guards Road in the grounds of St James's Park.

  

Situated in the City Of Westminster, the Park spans twenty three Hectares and is the oldest of the Royal Parks of London, with a variety of visiting and nesting birds that include Ducks, Canada Geese and Pelicans.

  

Here we see, Sciurus Carolinensis (Eastern Gray Squirrel or Grey Squirrel), a tree squirrel native to North America and first introduced to the UK in the 1870's.

  

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Nikon D850 Hand held with Sigma OS Optical Stabilization enabled on normal setting. Focal length 175mm Shutter speed: 1/400s Aperture f/8.0 ISO800 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. Auto ISO 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Shutter priority mode. Matrix metering. White balance on: Auto1 (8510K). Colour space: RGB. Vignette control: Normal. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

    

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LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 29.35s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 0m 17.88s

ALTITUDE: 45.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 94.5MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 44.70MB

    

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

East Loddon woolshed is unique for its use of materials in that it is a precise, industrialised example of a building type not generally designed with such formality or consequence. The 28-stand shed is of English-bond exposed brickwork, buttressed on all sides with segmental brick arches over all openings. 184 feet long, the building has a saw tooth corrugated iron roof on bolted cast iron trusses with gabled ends distinguished by symmetrical buttressing about the arched entrances with oculus louvres over. The original glass in the clear-story has been replaced with iron, but otherwise the woolshed is in original condition.

© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal

   

A Still Life

A consequence of climate change: After the warmest Christmas ever - about 15 °C - plants started blooming. Now they are covered with snow.

As a kid, I was mostly unconcerned with my appearance on camera. It was easy to brush off the chaotic results, no matter how stupid I looked in photos or videos. It didn't matter much, it was all just memories – belonging equally to me as anyone else. There was no social consequence or significance to my image. I had solitary things on my mind, and they didn't care how I looked in the mirror. I could see past my face and body, focus on myself as just another person in the picture. No one came along and said I should care, but one day I caught myself worrying in the mirror. Standing there with concerns I never imagined having, wondering if the things I thought about others – attractions and revulsions – were things they might be thinking about me. Suddenly, it mattered a lot.

 

Someone more social might have seen that as a challenge, to develop a personal style and define who they'd be as a teenager. But I didn't stand a chance, having never made friends or engaged with the effort of fitting in. I used to be fine with staying the same, but I couldn't shake the concern staring back at me. It reached a pitch of paranoia I was embarrassed to admit, spending long stretches of time choosing what to wear, doing things with my hair, trying to take a single self-portrait that I didn't hate an hour later. From when I was fourteen to nineteen, it's a real challenge finding any pictures of me. I didn't let them get taken, unless I was just a floating head in a family photo, or caught candid in a busy background. I tried to control my image for so long that I wasn't sure who I was seeing. A sort of depersonalization settled in, I couldn't figure out the real me anymore. It was easier to stick with thinking and feeling – and not to look unless absolutely necessary.

 

Not liking your body is an isolating experience, and I think it's even more so for men. I never heard of it happening, so I saw myself as doubly distorted, body and mind. I joked the other day that "women are supposed to hate their bodies." Which isn't true, but it's accepted as common. There's a long list of masking methods for those who feel it – make-up tutorials, more hairstyles, clothes that change your shape. Boys can wait and grow a big beard if they've got a problem, but that was a long way off for me. Besides, I wanted to be the man with a face, not hiding half of it under facial hair. I made a lot of decisions that would have been less likely if I liked me more, like shaving my head for several years. Not because I preferred the look, but because it was less for me to think about. If I couldn't look the way I wanted, whatever that was, it was easier to limit my options.

 

I was in my early twenties before I finally stopped backing into that corner. I didn't have a clue how I'd do it, but I wanted to stare straight at myself without feeling an ounce of discomfort. It took me years to just quit caring, and the desensitizing process of my daily journal was the biggest reason. From the very beginning, way back in 2007, at least one of my daily photos had been some sort of self-portrait. Since there was nothing I hated more, it seemed like an appropriate challenge. The oldest secret I'd kept was an honest reflection, and every artist I admired stared straight at things that they'd been hiding. There's a shadow we cast backwards on our memories, but I like to be honest in overcast weather, when everything I remember is equal and obvious. I haven't forgotten any of the feeling, but I'll never cover the mirror again.

 

May 19, 2022

Annapolis County, Nova Scotia

 

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New England is laced with thousands of miles of abandoned railroads. Some were never of much consequence and should never have been built while others were once heavy duty signaled mainlines.

 

This is one of the latter types and arguably this structure was the most famous on the line. This is Joslin Arch on the former Boston and Maine Cheshire Branch that provided the Fitchburg Railroad and later the B&M a connection from the east west mainline at South Ashburn, MA northwest 54 miles to Bellows Falls, VT. Organized by businessmen in the important town of Keene, NH the Cheshire Railroat opened its thru route in 1849 and was independent for its first 40 years until being absorbed by the FRR.

 

Engineered and built to a gold standard it featured some 20 stone arch bridges but none more impressive than this one at MP 89.4 (measured from Boston) crossing the East Branch of the Ashuelot River in South Keene. The largest on the line it is 45 ft above the river and has an inside diameter of 60 ft with a total length including the wing walls of 186 ft. Built in 1847 of locally cut granite it served for over 120 years until the last train ran in late 1971 or early 1972, I don't know exactly. In its glory days however countless milk trains fro. the Rutland connection passed on their way to Boston as well as glamorous passenger trains such as the Green Mountain Flyer and the Mount Royal. But none were more famous than The Cheshire that from 1944 to 1952 used the famous number 6000, the pioneering 1935 Budd Built 'Flying Yankee' articulated streamlimer modeled after the Burlington's famed Pioneer Zephyr. To see a picture of the fluted stainless steel speedster on this very structure check out this link: blog.nhstateparks.org/from-railroad-to-rail-trail-a-histo...

 

If you care to learn more about the Cheshire I HIGHLY recommend the book Iron Roads of the Monadnock Region by Blodget and Richard's.

 

Keene, New Hampshire

Friday August 19, 2022

Hero City: Voronezh.

From 10 to 17 September 2011, Voronezh celebrated its 425th anniversary. The anniversary of the city was given the status of a federal scale celebration that helped attract large investments from the federal and regional budgets for development. On December 17, 2012, Voronezh became the fifteenth city in Russia with a population of over one million people. Today Voronezh is the economic, industrial, cultural, and scientific center of the Central Black Earth Region. As part of the annual tradition in the Russian city of Voronezh, every winter the main city square is thematically drawn around a classic literature. In 2020, the city was decorated using the motifs from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. In the year of 2021, the architects drew inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen as well as the animation classic The Snow Queen from the Soviet Union.

The best know event in which the Leslies of Pitcaple got entangled, was the 'Tragedy of Frendraught'. I have told this story before, but I will write it out again here, as told by Andrew Leith-Hay in his book 'The Castellated Architecture of Aberdeenshire', printed in 1849, and of which I recently came by a copy! It is, as they used to say in my father's day, a 'ripping yarn'! I shall type it out in full.

 

"The dispute which occurred between Crichton of Frenraught and Gordon of Rothiemay led to disastrous consequences, and amongst others the well known and often related burning of the house of Frendraught, in which strife James Leslie, second son to the laird of Pitcaple, was much implicated. The lands of these proprietors (Crichton & Gordon) being adjacent, disputes as to right of property led to personal hatred, and of course, as was inevitably the case in those licentious days, the friends of either party espousing the cause of the hostile barons, armed to support the pretensions of their respective champion.

 

With others, the above mentioned James Leslie joined the Crichtons, and on the 1st of January 1630, they left Frendraught for Rothiemay, with the purpose either of making its owner their prisoner, of of insulting him by fierce defiance on his own territories.

 

Information of this onslaught having been given to the laird of Rothiemay, he resolved to set forth and encounter his assailants, accompanied by his son and a small party of horsemen and foot. Having crossed the river Deveron, his party soon encountered the Crichtons, and a serious conflict took place, which terminated in the defeat of the Rothiemay party. Considering the violence of feeling, and the nature of the encounters of these times, the loss of life seems to have been unusually limited. The laird of Rothiemay died of his wounds, as did the brother of Gordon of Lesmore, while on the side of the Crichtons, John Meldrum of Reidhill was the only person seriously wounded.

 

John Gordon, the eldest son of the deceased laird, resolving to revenge the death of his father, collected his followers and assisted by the freebooter, James Grant, and his associates, he resolved to lay waste the lands of Frendraught, in which he had greater probability of success from the absence of Crichton, then in England, who lost no time in submitting his case to the king, and soliciting the interference of the law to check these violent and reckless proceedings.

 

A commission was in consequence issued by the Lords of the Council, empowering Frendraught and others to apprehend John Gordon and his associates. This delegation proving insufficient, the Council sent Sir Robert Gordon, Tutor to Sutherland, and Sir William Seton of Killesmuir, to the north with fresh powers; and believing that additional influence would be requisite to produce an amicable settlement, and to quiet the district agitated by warfare of these hostile barons, the commissioners were instructed to solicit the aid of the Marquis of Huntly and the Earl of Moray, in their labours for the restoration of amity and peace.

 

The Commissioners lost no time in proceeding to the North, and having separated at Aberdeen, Sir Robert Gordon went to Strathbogie, but was disappointed in seeing the Marquis of Huntly, who had gone to attend the funeral of the laird of Drum. The day of Sir Robert's arrival at Strathbogie, the Grants, James and Alexander, descended from the mountains, with a party of two hundred Highlanders, to join in the foray against the laird of Frendraught. The intervention of the commissioner now became most important, and the result eminently successful. Having heard of the advance of the Grants, he immediately proceeded to Rothiemay, where he found John Gordon and his vassals armed, and in the act of setting forward to meet their lawless associates. It so happened that the Earl of Sutherland, the nephew of Sir Robert, was then at Rothiemay on a visit, and joining him in persuasion, they not only induced John Gordon and his friends to desist from their intention, but they prevailed upon James Grant to disperse his band and retire to the wilds from whence they came.

 

Subsequently the commissioners visited Huntly Castle, and, in conjunction with the Marquis, prevailed upon the hostile lairds to reconcile their differences, and refer all matters in dispute to their decision. The terms of this adjustment were agreed to by the parties, and they shook hands in apparent amity and reconciliation.

 

The laird of Frendraught had no sooner brought this serious quarrel to an end, than a dispute arose with the laird of Pitcaple. John Meldrum of Reidhill having been wounded in the scuffle where old Rothiemay lost his life, had been allowed some compensation by Frendraught in recompense of his partizanship, but Meldrum conceiving this gratuity disproportioned to his own estimate of his services, he thought abuse might induce Frendraught, particularly when accompanied by threats, to bestow upon him a more liberal allowance.

 

Frendraught continuing obstinate, Meldrum acted very much in the custom of the times, and without ceremony carried off two horses from the park, for which act he was prosecuted for theft, and refusing to appear, was declared rebel. Meldrum had taken refuge in the house of John Leslie of Pitcaple, whose sister he had married. As a commissioner, Frendraught on the 27th September 1630, went in search of Meldrum, and on the lands of Pitcaple he met with James Leslie, the second son of that family, and one of his former adherents in the skirmish with Rothiemay.

 

Instead of giving Frendraught assistance in the object of his visit, Leslie remonstrated with him, bringing to his recollection the services performed in his behalf by his brother-in-law, Meldrum, and himself, in his feud with Rothiemay. This seemed to soften the laird of Frendraught, but Robert Crichton of Conland became incensed at the freedom with which Leslie addressed his kinsman, and high words having passed, Conland drew a pistol from his belt and shot young Leslie in the arm, but with such effect that he was carried home apparently in a dying state.

 

This laid the foundation of the fearful tragedy, which events growing out of this quarrel tended to produce. The Leslies confederated and flew to arms, while Frendraught, apprehensive of the powerful attack he had every reason to anticipate, proceeded on the 5th October to solicit the intervention of the Marquis of Huntly and also of the Earl of Moray. With the latter he was unsuccessful, but Lord Huntly agreed to mediate.

 

Accordingly a messenger was dispatched to Pitcaple requesting his attendance at the Bog of Gight (Huntly's castle). The laird learning Frendraught was at the Bog, determined to proceed there without an escort; but having assembled and equipped about thirty horsemen, he marched to the conference. Upon his arrival, as might naturally be expected, he complained bitterly of the injury which his son had sustained, declared his determination to be revenged and declined to listen to any amicable adjustment until it was ascertained whether his son would survive the wound he had received. Irritated at the defence made by the Marquis for Frendraught, Pitcaple mounted and abruptly left the castle with his followers.

 

Hearing that the Leslies were assembled and watching the return of Frendraught, Lord Huntly detained him for two days, and would not then permit him to depart without an escort, ordered to see him home safely. At the head of this party were John, Viscount Aboyne, and the laird of Rothiemay. They arrived without interruption at Frendraught, where they were hospitably received and entreated to remain for the night. To this they unfortunately acceded and the following dreadful occurrence took place :-

 

The sleeping apartment of the Viscount was in the old tower of Frendraught, leading off from the Hall; immediately below this apartment was a vault, wherein there was, according to (the historian) Spalding "ane round holl devised of old, just under Aboyne's bed." His page, English Will, as he was called, and Robert Gordon from Sutherland, slept in the same room. The laird of Rothiemay with some of his servants were in an upper chamber, immediately over that in which the Viscount slept; and in an apartment directly above the latter were laid George Chalmer of Noth, Captain Rollock, one of Frendraught's party, and George Gordon, servant to Aboyne.

 

About midnight, the whole tower almost instantaneously took fire, and so suddenly and furiously spread over and consumed the edifice, that of its inmates the Viscount, the Laird of Rothiemay, English Will, Colonel Ivat, a friend of Aboyne's and two other persons, perished.

 

Robert Gordon, who lay in the same room with the Viscount, made his escape, as did George Chalmer and Captain Rollock. As Robert Gordon saved his life, it is probable that Lord Aboyne might also have done so, had he not resisted advice to get away as fast as possible, instead of which he ran to the chamber of Rothiemay and awakened him to his danger. While performing this friendly action, the staircase took fire and cut them off from all means of retreat; they then appeared at a window looking to the court, calling for assistance, which in all probability it was impossible to afford them.

 

Spalding, without explaining what possible effort under such circumstances could have saved the inmates at the summit of the tower enveloped in flames, with its narrow staircase and surrounding wood work on fire, and filled with smoke, seems to reflect on the conduct of the family of Frendraught. He states "The laird and the lady with their servants all seeing and hearing this woeful crying, but made no help, nor manner of helping, which they perceiving, they cried oftentimes mercy at God's hands for their sins, syne clasped in other's arms, and cheirfully suffered this cruel martyrdome."

Posting shots on other social media showed me many churches had to be revisited. Just about the last one to be thus revisited was Minster-in-Thanet, as the album had 55 shots from two previous visits, and I thought such a large and imposing church deserved more.

 

So, after seeing online its now open every day, we headed off there this morning.

 

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Minster Abbey on the Isle of Thanet was founded in AD 669 by Domneva, niece of King Erconbert of Kent. The enormous parish church, built some distance to the south-west of the abbey, dates from two distinct periods. The nave is Norman, a magnificent piece of twelfth-century arcading with tall cylindrical pillars. The chancel and transepts are thirteenth century, with a three-light east window, each one double shafted inside. This end of the church has a simple stone vaulted ceiling which adds greatly to the grandeur. The glass is by Thomas Willement and dates from 1861. Ewan Christian restored the church in 1863 and added vaulted ceilings to the transepts. They had been intended by the medieval designers, but were never built. There is a set of eighteen fifteenth-century stalls with misericords and an excellent sixteenth-century font and cover.

 

kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Minster+in+Thanet

 

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MINSTER.

THE next parish to Monkton eastward is Minster, antiently written both Mynstre, and Menstre, being so named from the Saxon word Minstre, signifying a church or monastery. It is divided into two boroughs, viz. Way Borough and Street Borough; the former of which lies on the ascent on the northern side of the street; the latter contains the street and church, with the southern part of the parish.

 

THIS PARISH is about three miles and an half from east to west, and near as much from north to south. The farms in it are perhaps as large as in any other parish in this county; the occupiers of which are, in general, men of considerable ability. The west part of this parish is bounded by a lynch or balk, which goes quite across the island to Westgate, called St. Mildred's Lynch, an account of which has already been given before, and which is the bounds of this manor from that of Monkton, as well as of the parish. This lynch has formerly been much broader than it is now, many of the farmers, who occupy lands bounding on or near it, having through a coveteous humour, not only dug up the mould or top of it, to lay on their land, but in some places have ploughed upon it. Too many instances of this kind are practised in other places, not only of this island, but of the county in general, so that there is scarce a remembrance left where those balks or lynches have been; such has the greedy avarice of the occupiers been, and this is one instance of the ill consequence of the neglect of the courts leet and baron. The village of Minster lies nearly in the centre of it, on low ground at the foot of the high lands, having the church on the south side of it; northward of the village it rises to high land, being a fine open champion country of uninclosed corn land, on which are situated Minster mill, Allan Grange, and Powcies, the latter at the extremity of the parish, close to which was, till lately, a small grove of oaks, the only one in this island. Lower down, about a mile southward, is Thorne manor, and beyond that Sevenscore farm. At the south-eastern extremity of the parish, and partly in St. Laurence, is Cliffsend, or Clyvesend, so called from its being at the end of the cliff, which extends from Ramsgate; it was antieutly a part of the estate of St. Augustine's monastery, and is called by Thorne in his Chronicle, the manor of Clyvesend. Here are now two considerable farms besides cottages.

 

About a mile and an half south-east from Minster church, is Ebbsfleet, formerly called by the various names of Hipwines, Ippeds, and Wipped's fleet; this seems to have been a usual place of landing from the ocean in this island; here it is said Hengist and Horsa, the two Saxon generals, first landed with their forces, about the year 449. Here St. Augustine, often called the Apostle of the English, first landed, in the year 596; and here too St. Mildred, of whom mention has been made likewise before, first landed from France, where she had been for instruction in the monastic life; and not many years ago there was a small rock at this place, called St. Mildred's rock, where, on a great stone, her footstep was said, by the monkish writers, to have remained impressed. (fn. 1) Below the church of Minster, southward, is the large level of marshes, called Minster level, at the southern extremity of which runs the river Stour, formerly the Wantsume, which, as has already been noticed before, was antiently of a much greater depth and width than it is at present, flowing up over the whole space of this level, most probably almost to the church-yard fence, being near a mile and an half distance; but the inning of the salts by the landholders, which had been in some measure deserted by the waters of the Wantsume at different places, so far lessened the force of the tide, and of the river waters mixing with it, that it occasioned the sands to increase greatly near this place, where it was at length entirely choaked up, so that a wall of earth was made by the abbot of St. Augustine, since called the Abbot's wall, to prevent the sea at high water overslowing the lands, which now comprehend this great level of marshes, at present under the direction and management of the commissioners of sewers for the district of East Kent. A part of these marsh lands have been much improved by means of shortening the course of the river Stour to the sea, by the cut at Stonar, which lets off the superfluous water in wet seasons with greater expedition, and a very valuable tract of near two hundred acres has been lately inclosed by a strong wall from the sea near Ebbs-fleet. Between the above-mentioned wall and the river Stour lie a great many acres of land, which the inhabitants call the salts, from their being left without the wall, and subject to the overflowing of the tide, so long as it continued to flow all around this island. Over against the church is a little creek, which seems to have been the place antiently called Mynstrefleet, into which the ships or vessels came, which were bound for this place. As a proof of this, there was found some years ago in a dyke bounding on this place, in digging it somewhat deeper than usual, some fresh coals, which very probably had fallen aside some lighter or boat in taking them out of it. (fn. 2)

 

I ought not to omit mentioning, that on the downs on the north part of this parish, where the old and present windmills were placed, is a prospect, which perhaps is hardly exceeded in this part of the kingdom. From this place may be seen, not only this island and the several churches in it, one only excepted; but there is a view at a distance, of the two spires of Reculver, the island of Sheppy, the Nore, or mouth of the river Thames, the coast of Essex, the Swale, and the British channel; the cliffs of Calais, and the kingdom of France; the Downs, and the town of Deal, the bay and town of Sandwich, the fine champion country of East Kent, the spires of Woodnesborough and Ash, the ruins of Richborough castle, the beautiful green levels of Minister, Ash, &c. with the river Stour winding between them; the fine and stately tower of the cathedral of Canterbury, and a compass of hills of more than one hundred miles in extent, which terminate the sight.

 

In the marshes on the south of this parish, there was found in 1723, an antique gold ring; on the place of the seal, which seemed to represent an open book, was engraved on one side an angel, seemingly kneeling, and on the other side a woman standing with a glory round her head; on the woman's side was engraved in old English characters, bone; on that of the angel, letters of the same character, but illegible. A fair is kept in this village on a Good Friday for pedlary and toys.

 

By the return made to the council's letter, by archbishop Parker's order, in the year 1563, there were then computed to be in this parish fifty-three housholds. By an exact account taken of Minster in 1774, there were found to be in this parish one hundred and forty-nine houses, and six hundred and ninety-six inhabitants; of the houses, sixteen were farm-houses, and one hundred and thirty three were inhabited by tradesmen, labourers, and widows.

 

THE MANOR and ABBEY OF MINSTER was antiently called Thaket manor, and continued so till, from the foundation of the abbey or minster within it, it acquired the name of the manor of Minster, though in the survey of Domesday, taken in the year 1080, it is still called Tanet manor, Kar exoxnv; but I have met with it no where else so late by that name.

 

This manor was in the year 670 in the possession of Egbert, king of Kent, whose two nephews Ethelred and Ethelbright, sons of his father's elder brother Ermenfride, deceased, (who left likewise two daughters, Ermenburga, called also Domneva, married to Merwald, son of Penda, king of Mercia, and Ermengitha, were left to his care, under promise of their succeeding to the kingdom. These princes were kept under the inspection of one Thunnor, a flattering courtier, who persuaded the king to have them murdered, left they should disturb him in the possession of the throne; which Thunnor undertook and perpetrated. To expiate this crime, the king, by the advice of archbishop Theodore, and Adrian, abbot of St. Augustine's, sent to Domneva, who had taken the vow of chastity on her, to offer her any satisfaction for this crime, when, as an atonement, she requested of the king, according to the custom of those times, to grant her a place in Tenet, where she might build a monastery to their memory, with a sufficient maintenance, in which she, with her nuns, might continually pray for the king's forgiveness, who immediately by his charter, which concludes with a singular curse on the infringers of it, (fn. 3) granted her for the endowment of it full one half of this island, being the eastern part of it, comprehended within the bounds of this manor, and since separated from the western part of the island and manor of Monkton, by a broad bank or lynch, made quite across the island, since called St. Mildred's Lynch, and remaining at this day.

 

The story of this grant, as told by Thorn, a native of this parish, and a monk of St. Augustine's monastery, in his chronicle of that abbey, is, that Egbert granting Domneva's petition, demanded of her how much land she desired; who replied, as much as her deer could run over at one course; this being granted, the deer was let loose at Westgate, in Birchington, in the presence of the king, his nobles, and a great concourse of people. Among them was Thunnor, the petrator of the murder, who, ridiculing the king for the lavishness of his gift and the method of its decision, endeavoured by every means to obstruct the deer's course, both by riding across and meeting it; but Heaven, continues the chronicler, being offended at his impiety, whilst he was in the midst of his career, the earth opened and swallowed him up, leaving the name of Tunnor's-leap, or Thunor's hyslepe, to the ground and place where he fell, to perpetuate the memory of his punishment, though it was afterwards called Heghigdale. Meanwhile the deer having made a small circle eastward, directed its course almost in a strait line south-westward across the island from one side to the other, running over in length and breadth forty-eight plough-lands; and the king, immediately afterwards delivered up to Domneva the whole tract of land which the deer had run over.

 

This tract or course of the deer, which included above ten thousand acres of some of the best lands in Kent, is said to have been marked out by the broad bank, or lynch, across the island, since called St. Mildred's Lynch, thrown up in remembrance of it; (fn. 4) but notwithstanding this well-invented story of Thorn, it is more probable that this lynch was made to divide the two capital manors of Minster and Monkton, before this gift to Domneva.

 

Puteus Thunor, (or Thunor's leap) says the annalist of St. Augustine's monastery, apparet prope Cursum Cervi juxta Aldelond; and the place where the king stood to see this course is represented to be by it, where formerly was a beacon, it being some of the highest land hereabouts, where the king might see the course. This Puteus Thunor, or Thunorslep, is very plainly the old chalk pit, called Minster chalk-pit, which its not unlikely was first sunk when the abbey and church here were built, and the bottom of it in process of time, being overgrown with grass, gave occasion for the invention of this sable of Thunor's being swallowed up by the earth at this place. The name of Thunorslep has been long since obliterated, and even the more modern one of Heghigdate has been long forgotten. Weever says, he lieth buried under an heap of stones, which to that day was called Thunniclam.

 

Domneva being thus furnished with wealth and all things necessary, founded, in honor of the B.V. Mary, a monastery, or cloyster of nuns, afterwards called ST. MILDRED'S ABBEY, on part of this land, on the south side of the island near the water, in the same placewhere the present parochial church stands. Archbishop Theodore, at the instance of Domneva, consecrated the church of it, and she afterwards appointed the number of nuns to be seventy, and was appointed by the archbishop, the first abbess of it; she died here and was buried on the glebe of the new monastery. Ermengitha, her sister, was after her death sainted, and lived with Domneva, in the abbey here, where she died, and was buried in a place about a mile eastward of it, where the inhabitants have found numbers of bones, and where it is probable, she built some chapel or oratory. In a field or marsh called the twenty acres, a little more than a quarter of a mile eastward of the church of Minster, are several foundations, as if some chapel or oratory had been built there. (fn. 5)

 

Domneva was succeeded as abbess by her daughter Mildred, who was afterwards sainted. She is said to have been buried in this church. On her death Edburga succeeded in the government of this monastery, who finding it insufficient for so great a number of nuns, built another just by, larger and more stately, which was consecrated by archbishop Cuthbert, and dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul; and to this church she, about the year 750, removed the body of St. Mildred, at whose tomb many miracles were said to be wrought afterwards. Edburga was buried at Minster in her own new church, and was afterwards sainted. She was succeeded as abbess of this monastery by Sigeburga. In her time was the first depredation of the Danes in Thanet; who sell upon the people, laid every thing waste, and pludered the religious in this monastery; from this time they continued their ravages throughout this island almost every year; hence by degrees, this monastery fell to decay, and the nuns decreased in number, being vexed with grief and worn down with poverty, by the continual insults of these merciless pirates, who landed in this island in 978, and entirely destroyed by fire this monastery of St. Mildred, in which the clergy and many of the people were shut up, having fled thither for sanctuary; but they were, together with the nuns, all burnt to death, excepting Leofrune the abbess, who is said to have been carried away prisoner.

 

The Danes, however, spared the two chapels of St. Mary, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, in one of which divine service was afterwards performed, for the inhabitants of this parish and the adjoining neighbourhood. The antient scite of the monastery, together with this manor, and all the rest of the possessions of it remained in the king's hands, and they continued so till king Cnute, in the year 1027, gave the body of St. Mildred, together with the antient scite of the monastery, this manor and all its land within this island and without, and all customs belonging to this church, to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, which gift was confirmed by king Edward the Confessor. (fn. 6)

 

The abbot and convent of St. Augustine becoming thus possessed of this manor, fitted up the remains of the abbey to serve as the court-lodge of it; accordingly it has ever since borne the name of Minstercourt. In the survey of Domesday, taken in the 15th year of the Conqueror's reign, anno 1080, this manor is thus described, under the general title of Terra æcclæ Sci Augustini, the land of the church of St. Augustine.

 

In Tanet hundred. St. Mildred's.

 

The abbot himself holds Tanet manor, which was taxed at forty-eight sulings. The arable land is sixty-two carucates. In demesne there are two, and one hundred and fifty villeins, with fifty borderers having sixty-three carucates. There is a church and one priest, who gives twenty shillings per annum. There is one salt-pit and two fisheries of three pence, and one mill.

 

In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth four times twenty pounds, when the abbot received it forty pounds, now one hundred pounds.

 

Of this manor three knights hold so much of the land of the villeins as is worth nine pounds, when there is peace in the land, and there they have three carucates.

 

After which king Henry I. granted to the monastery of St. Augustine, about the 4th of his reign, a market, to be yearly held within this their manor of Minster, with all customs, forseitures, and pleas; which was confirmed among other liberties by Edward III. in his 36th year, by inspeximus.

 

King Henry III. in his 54th year, anno 1270, granted to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, free-warren in all their demesne lands of Minster. (fn. 7) King Edward II. in his 6th year, confirmed to the abbot free-warren in this manor among others, and next year anno 1313, in the iter of H. de Stanton and his sociates, justices itinerant, the abbot, upon a quo warranto, claimed and was allowed sundry liberties therein mentioned, in this manor, among others, and likewise free-warren in all his demesne lands of it, view of frank pledge, and wreck of the sea; one market weekly on a Friday, and one fair yearly on the eve and day of St. Mildred the Virgin, and other liberties therein mentioned; as having been granted and confirmed by divers of the king's predecessors, and allowed in the last iter of J. de Berewick and his sociates, justices itinerant; and that king Edward II. by his charter in his 6th year had sully confirmed all of them, and by the register of this monastery, of about this time, it appears that this manor had within its court the same liberties as those of Chistlet and Sturry. King Edward III. in his 5th year, exempted the abbot's homagers and tenants of this, among other of their manors, from their attendance at the sheriff's tourne, and afterwards by his charter of inspeximus in his 36th year, confirmed to this abbey all the manors and possessions given to it by former kings; and by another charter, the several grants of liberties and confirmations made by his predecessors, among which were those abovementioned; and king Henry VI. afterwards confirmed the same.

 

Next year the abbot and his servants taking distresses on their tenants of this manor, the tenants, to the number of six hundred, met and continued together for the space of five weeks, having got with them a greater number of people, who coming armed with bows and arrows, swords and staves, to the court of this manor and that of Salmanstone, belonging likewise to the abbot, laid siege to them, and after several attacks set fire to the gates of them. For fear of these violences, the monks and their servants at Salmanstone kept themselves confined there for fifteen days, so that the people enraged at not being able to encompass their ends in setting fire to the houses, destroyed the abbot's ploughs and husbandry utensils, which were in the fields; and cut down and carried away the trees on both these manors.

 

At the same time they entered into a confederacy and raised money here by tallages and assessments, by means of which they drew to them no small number of others of the cinque ports, who had nothing to lose, so that the abbot dared not sue for justice in the king's courts; but a method it seems was found to punish these rioters, or at least the principal of them, who were fined to the abbot for these damages six hundred pounds, a vast sum in those days, and were imprisoned at Canterbury till the fine was paid. The uneasiness of the tenants under such respective suits and services, seems to have occasioned the abbot and convent to have compounded with them, which they did in the year 1441, anno 20 Henry VI. By this composition the abbot and convent agreed, that the tenants should not in future be distrained for the rents and services they used to pay; but instead of them should pay compositions for every acre of the land called Cornegavel and Pennygavel, (fn. 8) which composition for the Cornegavel and Pennygavel land, continues in force at this time, being sixpence an acre now paid for the Cornegavel land.

 

In the time of king Richard II. this manor, with its rents and other appurtenances, was valued among the temporalities of the abbot and convent, at 232l. 4s. 3d. per annum; and the quantity of land belonging to it was by admeasurement 2149 acres and one rood.

 

In which state this manor continued till the final dissolution of the abbey of St. Augustine, which happened in the 30th year of Henry VIII. when it was surrendered, together with the rest of the possessions of the monastery, into the king's hands; at which time the manor and rents were of the value of 276l. yearly. (fn. 9) After which, the see of this manor, with the antient court-lodge of it, formerly the monastery, and then called Minster-court, with all the lands and appurtenances belonging to it, continued in the crown, till king James I. in his 9th year, by his letters patent, granted to Sir Philip Cary, William Pitt, esq. afterwards knighted; and John Williams, citizen and goldsmith of London, this lordship and manor of Menstre, with its rights, members, and appurtenances, late parcel of St. Augustine's monastery, except and reserved to the king's use, all advowsons and patronages of churches, chapels, &c. belonging to this manor; and he granted likewise all the rents of assize called Cornegavel land, in the parish of St. John, parcel of this manor; and the rents of assize of free tenement called Pennygavel land, in the parishes of St. Peter and St. Laurence, (fn. 10) to hold the manor, with its right, members and appurtenances, of the king, as of his manor of East Greenwich, by sealty only, in free and common socage, and not in capite, nor by knight's service; and to hold the rents of assize of the king in capite, by the service of one knight's fee; which grant and letters patent were conconfirmed by an act specially passed for the purpose, that year.

 

Some years after which, the heirs of the beforementioned Sir Philip Carey and John Williams, then Sir John Williams, bart. of Carmarthenshire, divided this estate; in which division, the manor itself with the court-lodge, part of the demesne lands, royalties, and appurtenances, was allotted to Sir John Williams, bart. (who died in 1668, and was buried in the Temple church, London); whose descendant of the same name, bart. of Carmarthenshire, dying without male issue, his daughter and sole heir, then the widow of the earl of Shelburne, carried it in marriage, at the latter end of king Charles II.'s reign, to Col. Henry Conyngham, afterwards a major-general in king William's reign, who died possessed of it in 1705. He left two sons, William and Henry, and a daughter Mary, married to Francis Burton, esq. of Clare, in Ireland. William, the eldest son of the general, succeeded him in this manor and estate in Minster, but died without surviving issue, upon which this estate descended to Henry Conyngham, esq. his younger brother, second son of the general, who was in 1753, anno 27 George II. created baron Conyngham, of Mount Charles, in Donegall, in Ireland; and afterwards by further letters patent, in 1756, viscount Conyngham, of the same kingdom; and again in 1780, earl Conyngham, and likewise baron Conyngham, of the same kingdom, with remainder of the latter title to his sister's sons. He married Ellen, only daughter of Solomon Merret, esq. of London, by whom he had no issue. He died s.p. in 1781, and was succeeded in his title of baron Conyngham by his nephew Francis Pierpoint Burton Conyngham, eldest son of his sister Mary, by her husband Francis Burton, esq. above-mentioned, which Francis, lord Conyngham, died in 1787, leaving by his wife Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Nathaniel Clements, esq. and sister of Robert, lord Leitrim, (who survived him) two sons, Henry, who succeeded him in title, and Nathaniel, and three daughters, Catherine married to the Rev. John Shirley Fermor, of Sevenoke; Ellen, to Stewart Weldon, esq. and Henrietta.

 

Henry, so succeeding his father as lord Conyngham, was created in December 1789, viscount Conyngham and baron Conyngham, of Mount Charles, in Donegall, to whom the inheritance of this manor and estate now belongs; but the possession of it for life is vested in the right hon. Ellen, countess dowager Conyngham; widow of Henry, earl Conyngham, above-mentioned. The arms of lord viscount Conyngham are, Argent, a shake-sork, between three mullets, sable. Supporters. The dexter—An horse charged on the breast with an eagle, displayed, or, maned and hoofed of the last. The sinister—A buck proper, charged on the breast with a griffin's head, erased, or, attired and unguled of the last. Crest—Anunicorn's head erased, argent, armed and maned, or. Motto—Over fork over.

 

A court leet and court baron is held for this manor, by the stile of the courtleet, and view of frank pledge, for the manor of Minster, in the hundred of Ringslow, alias Tenet, and the court baron for the said manor.

 

The court-lodge, formerly a part of the nunnery, was, after the dissolution of it, made use of as a farmhouse, in which some of the monks of St. Augustine resided, to manage the estate of it, which they kept in their own hands. On the north side of it, which seems to have been the front or entrance, is a handsome stone portal, on the top of which, in the middle, within a circle, are the arms of the abbey of St. Augustine, viz. Sable, a cross, argent. At a small distance from it stood antiently a very large barn, sufficient to hold the corn growing on all the demesnes, being in length 352 feet, and in breadth 47 feet, and the height of the walls 12 feet, with a roof of chesnut. When the estate was divided, 154 feet in length of this building was carried to Sevenscore farm, where it was burnt, by an accident unknown in 1700, and the remaining part here was burnt by lightning afterwards. On the south side of the house stood a chapel, said to have been built by St. Eadburga, the third abbess here. In it the body of St. Mildred is said to have been placed by her, or rather translated from the other monastery. Some of the walls and foundations of this chapel were remaining within the memory of some not long since deceased, but it is now so entirely demolished, that there is nothing to be seen of it, excepting a small part of the tower, and of the stairs leading up into it. Just by these ruins of the tower is a small piece of ground, in which lately in digging for mould, several human bones were dug up. There is a view of the remains of this nunnery in Lewis's Thanet.

 

THE OTHER PART of this estate, the scite of which lies about a mile eastward from Minster-court, since known by the name of SEVENSCORE, on which is built a substantial farm-house, with large barns and other necessary buildings, was allotted to —Carey, in whose successors viscounts Falkland, this estate continued down to Lucius Ferdinand, viscount Falkland, who not many years since alienated it to Josiah Wordsworth, esq. of London, whose son of the same name died possessed of it about the year 1784, leaving two sisters his coheirs, one of whom married Sir Charles Kent, bart. and the other, Anne, married Henry Verelst, esq. who afterwards, in right of their respective wives, became possessed of this estate in undivided moieties; in which state it still continues, Sir Charles Kent being at this time entitled to one moiety, and Mrs. Verelst, the widow of Henry Verelst, esq. above-mentioned, who died in 1785, and lies buried in this church, being entitled to the other moiety of it.

 

WASCHESTER is an estate lying at a small distance westward from Minster church, part of which was formerly parcel of the demesnes of the manor of Minster, and was included in king James's grant to Sir Philip Carey, William Pitt, esq. and John Williams, goldsmith, as has been mentioned before in the account of that manor; they in the year 1620, joined in the sale of them to Jeffry Sandwell, gent. of Monkton, who purchased other lands of different persons in this parish, Monkton and Birchington, the whole of which he sold in 1658, to John Peters, M. D. Philip le Keuse, and Samuel Vincent, which two latter alienated their shares soon afterwards to Dr. Peters; at which time all these lands together, not only comprehended Waschester farm, but likewise part, if not the whole of another called Acol. From Dr. Peters this estate descended to Peter Peters, M. D. of Canterbury, who died in 1697, upon which the inheritance of it descended to his sole daughter and heir Elizabeth, who in 1722 carried it in marriage to Thomas Barrett, esq. of Lee, whose second wife she was; he died possessed of it in 1757, upon which it descended to their only daughter and heir Elizabeth, who entitled her husband, the Rev. William Dejovas Byrche, to the fee of it. He died in 1792, leaving an only daughter Elizabeth, married to Samuel Egerton Brydges, esq. of the Middle Temple, barrister-atlaw, but now of Denton-court, who in her right possessed it, and afterwards sold it to Mr. Ambrose Maud, who now owns it.

 

SHERIFFS COURT is an estate lying somewhat less than a mile westward from Waschester, in the hamlet of Hoo in this parish; it was formerly called Sheriffs Hope, from the hope, or place of anchorage for ships, which sailed in the river Wantsume, which once ran close by this place. It is said by some to have taken its name from its having been part of the possessions of Reginald de Cornhill, who was so long sheriff of this county that he lost his own name and took that of Le Sheriff, from whence this place gained the name of Sheriffs hope, or court. He was sheriff from the 4th to the 9th years of king Richard I. in the last year of that reign and during the whole reign of king John. His arms are on the stone roof of the cloysters at Canterbury, being Two lions passant, debruised of a bendlet, impaling three piles. After this name was extinct here, the family of Corbie became possessed of this estate; one of whom, Robert de Corbie, died possessed of it in the 39th year of king Edward III. whose son Robert Corbie, esq. of Boughton Malherb, leaving a sole daughter and heir Joane, she carried it in marriage to Sir Nicholas Wotton, who, anno 3 Henry V. was lord mayor of London. His descendant Sir Edward Wotton procured his lands in this county to be disgavelled by the acts both of 31 Henry VIII. and 2 and 3 Edward VI. and from him this manor descended to Thomas, lord Wotton, who dying anno 6 Charles I. without male issue, his four daughters became his coheirs, of whom Catherine the eldest carried this estate in marriage to Henry, lord Stanhope, son and heir of Philip, earl of Chesterfield, whose widow Catherine, lady Stanhope, sold it to Henry Paramor. He was the tenant and occupier of Sheriff's court, being the eldest son of John Paramor, of Preston, the grandson of Thomas Paramor, of Paramor-street, in Ash, near Sandwich. They bore for their arms, Azure, a fess embattled, counter embairled, between three etoils of six points, or. (fn. 11) . He left it to his brother Thomas Paramor, whose grandson of the same name died possessed of it in 1652, and was buried with his ancestors in this church; from his heirs this estate was alienated to Thatcher, in which name it continued, till at length it was sold by one of them, to Mr. Robert Wilkins, gent. of St. Margaret's, Rochester, who possessed it for many years. He died without issue, and it has since become the property of Mrs. Terry, the present owner of it.

 

TO THIS MANOR is appurtenant the small MANOR OF PEGWELL, or COURT STAIRS, in the parish of St. Laurence.

 

ALDELOND GRANGE, usually called Allen Grange, situated about a mile northwardfrom Minster church, on the open high land, was so called in opposition to Newland Grange, in St. Laurence parish. It was antiently part of the possessions of the abbey of St. Augustine, and was in the year 1197, assigned by Roger, the abbot of it, to the sacristy of the abbey, for the purpose of upholding and maintaining the abbey church, as well in the fabric as ornaments, but on the condition that the sacrist for the time being, should perform all such services to the court of Minster as were due, and had been accustomed to be done for the land of it. (fn. 12)

 

The measurement of this land, according to Thorne, amounted to sixty-two acres; and to this Grange belong all the tithes of corn and grain, within the limits of the borough of Wayborough, excepting those which are received by the vicar. On the dissolution of the abbey of St. Augustine, in the 30th year of Henry VIII. this estate, then amounting to six score acres, came, with the rest of the possessions of the monastery, into the king's hands, where it did not continue long, for he settled it in his 33d year, by his dotation charter, on his new founded dean and chapter of Canterbury, with whom the inheritance of it continues at this time.

 

It has been demised by the dean and chapter, on a beneficial lease, the rack rent of it being 413l. per annum, for twenty one years, to Mr. Edward Pett, of Cleve-court, the present lessee of it. Messrs. Jessard and Paramor are the under lessees and occupiers of it.

 

POWCIES, which stands about half a mile northeastward from Allan grange, was formerly a gentleman's mansion, a large handsome building standing on much more ground than it does at present, with a gate house at the entrance into the court before it; all which being pulled down, a modern farm-house of brick has been built on the antient scite of it.

 

This seat was once in the possession of the family of Goshall, of Goshall, in Ash, where Sir John Goshall resided in king Edward III.'s reign, and in his descendants it continued till about the reign of king Henry IV. when it was carried in marriage by a female heir to one of the family of St. Nicholas, owners likewise of the adjoining manor of Thorne, in whom it continued down to Roger St. Nicholas, who died in 1484, leaving a sole daughter and heir Elizabeth, who entitled her husband John Dynley, of Charlton, in Worcestershire, to the possession of it. By her he had two sons, Henry and Edward, the eldest of whom succeeded to this estate, which he afterwards alienated, about the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign, to John Roper, esq. of Linsted, afterwards knighted, and anno 14 James I. created baron of Teynham; whose great grandson Christopher, lord Teynham, in king Charles I.'s reign, conveyed it to Sir Edward Monins, bart. of Waldershare, who died possessed of it in 1663, leaving Elizabeth his widow surviving, who held it in jointure at her death in 1703; upon which it devolved to the heirs and trustees of Susan, his eldest daughter and coheir, late wife of Peregrine Bertie, deceased, second son of Montague, earl of Lindsey; and they, in the reign of king William and queen Mary, joined in the sale of it to Sir Henry Furnese, bart. of Waldershare, who died possessed of it in 1712, as did his son Sir Robert in 1733. After which it became, with his other estates, vested in his three daughters and coheirs, and on a partition of them, anno 9 George II. this estate of Powcies was wholly allotted, among others, to Anne the eldest sister, wife of John, viscount St. John, which partition was confirmed by an act passed next year; after which it descended down to their grandson George, viscount Bolingbroke, who in 1790 alienated it to Mr. Henry and John Harnett, the present possessors of it.

 

THORNE, or as it is vulgarly called, Thourne, is a manor in this parish, situated about a mile southward from Powcies above mentioned, being so named from the quantity of thorny bushes growing on and about it. This manor was antiently the seat of a family which took their name from it, one of them, Henry de Thorne, was owner of it in the year 1300, anno 29 Edward I. and resided here; against whom it seems complaint was made to the abbot of St. Augustine, that he caused mass to be publicly said in his private oratory, or chapel, (the remains of which are still so entire as to be made use of as a granary, &c.) at this his manor of Thorne, (apud spinam) to the prejudice of the mother church, and the ill example of others; and he accordingly was inhibited from so doing in future, by the archbishop's letters to the vicar of Minster, dated that year. And under the cross in this church, in the north wall of it, is an antient tomb or coffin of solid stone, let into the wall under an arch of antient Saxon ornaments. On the stone which covers the tomb is a cross flory, on each side of which are two blank shields, and round the edge of the stone these words in old French letters: Ici gift Edile de Thorne, que fust Dna del Espine. This seems probable to have been one of the family, owners of this manor.

 

After this family of Thorne were become extinct here, that of Goshall, of Goshall, in Ash, appear to have been possessors of this manor; in whom it continued till about the reign of king Henry IV. when it went by marriage by a female heir to one of the family of St. Nicholas, in whose descendants it continued down to Roger St. Nicholas, who died in 1474, and as appears by his will, was buried before the image of St. Nicholas, in the chancel of Thorne, at Minster. Roger St. Nicholas, his son and heir, left an only daughter Elizabeth, who entitled her husband John Dynley, esq. of Charlton, in Worcestershire, to the possession of it. After which it continued down in the same owners as Powcies last above-described, till it came into the possession of George, viscount Bolingbroke, who in 1790 alienated it to Mr. Henry Wooton, the present owner of it.

 

See a custom for the demise of tenements by will within the borough of Menstre, secundum consuetudinem manerii, anno 55 Henry III. Itin. Kanc. rot. 18, in Robinson's Gavelkind, p. 236.

 

Charities.

THE OCCUPIER of Salmeston Grange, in St. John's parish, is bound by his lease to distribute to six poor inhabitants of the parish of Minster, to be nominated by the minister and churchwardens, in the first week, and on the middle Monday of Lent, to each of them, nine loaves and eighteen herrings; and to three poor people of the same, to each of them, two yards of blanket; and every Monday and Friday in each week, from the Invention of the Holy Cross to the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, to every poor person coming to Salmeston Grange, one dishfull of peas dressed.

 

THOMAS APPLETON, of Eastry, yeoman, by his will in 1593, gave to the relief of the poor of this parish, the sum of 5l. to be paid to the churchwardens yearly, for the use of the poor people, inhabitants there, fourteen days before Christmas day, the same to be paid out of certain lands belonging to him, called Hardiles, in the parish of Woodnesborough.

 

RICHARD CLERK, D. D. vicar of Minster, partly by deed in 1625, and partly by will on Nov 6, 1634, gave 120l. to be lent unto four parishioners, born in Minster, whose fathers were deceased, and they not sufficiently stocked, for the term of one, two, or three years, but not exceeding that; the interest arising from it to be divided among the poor of the parish. With this money the trustees purchased houses, which are at present divided into four tenements, besides the parish work-house, called the seoffees houses; and seven other tenements, called Cheap Row, the rent of which is annually distributed in clothing to the poor persons of the parish. They are all at present let to the churchwardens and overseers for the time being, by a lease of 99 years, from 1729, at the rent of 6l. This trust is now vested in Mr. William Fuller, of Doctors Commons, as heir of the last trustee; the trust not having been filled up since the year 1696.

 

JOHN CAREY, esq of Stanwell, in Middlesex, by will in 1685, gave 10l. per annum to be paid yearly to the churchwardens, out of his farm of Sevenscore; to be disposed of to the poor yearly, on St. Thomas's day.

 

THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Westbere.

 

The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a very handsome structure, consisting of a nave and two side isles, a cross sept, and east chancel; the nave is of Saxon, the transept and chancel of gothic architecture; the last is curiously vaulted with stone, and provision was made for the same in the transept, but it was never completed. In it are eighteen collegiate stalis, in good preservation. At the west end of the church is a tall spire steeple, in which is a clock and five bells.

 

When the Danes plundered and burnt the abbey of Minster, they seem to have spared the two chapels of St. Mary, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, or however the stone work of them was preserved, and not burnt with the roof and other works of timber. The former of these was afterwards made into the present parish church, and has since been considerably enlarged.—The nave or body of the church seems to have been the old building; the pillars of which are thick and short, and the arches all circular, and a low roof was probably upon them, according to the simplicity and plainness of those times; but since the wall has been built higher, as appears by the distance there is, betwixt the top of the arches and the wall plate across; and an handsome chancel added at the east end, and a square tower on the west, with a high spire covered with lead placed on it. The chancel or choir and the middle of the cross are vaulted, and by the footings which are left, it was certainly intended that the whole cross should have been finished in the same manner. The eighteen stalls mentioned before, have very handsome wainscot behind, according to the mode of those times; in these the monks, vicars, and priests used to sit during the performance of divine service. Besides the high altar in this church, there were before the reformation other altars in it, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, St. James, and St. Anne. At these, as likewise before the Holy Cross, were lights constantly burning; for the maintenance of which, there were societies or fellowships, who contributed towards the maintenance of them, and those who died left in their last wills constantly small sums of money for that purpose. Under the middle of the cross was the rood-lost, the going up to which out of the chancel is yet to be seen, as are the mortice holes in which the timbers were put, on which the lost was built. On the north wall of it is the antient tomb of Edile de Thorne. On the pavement, as well as in the church porch, are several large flat gravestones, the inscriptions, if any on them, entirely worn away; they seem very antient, and are not improbably, memorials of some of the religious of this place, but they do not seem always to have lain where they do now. On the front of the tower of the steeple is a shield, carved in the stone work, viz. A fess, between three lion's passant. Among other memorials in this church, in the chancel, is one for Francis, son and heir to Edward Saunders, gent. of Norbourne-court, which Edward married the female heir of Francis Pendrick, esq. by his wife, who was nurse to queen Elizabeth. He died anno 1643; arms, A chevron, between three elephants heads, impaling a saltier, ermine, between three leopards faces. In the middle isle a monument for Bartholomew Sanders, gent. and Mary his wife, daughter of Henry Oxenden, esq. of Wingham; arms, Per chevron, sable and argent, three elephants heads, counterchanged, impaling Oxenden. On a mural monument are the effigies of a man and woman. kneeling at a desk, for Thomas Paramor, esq. sometime mayor of Canterbury, and Anne his first wife; arms, Azure, a fess embattled, between three stars of six points, or, impaling or, on a chevron, three stars of six points, sable, between as many dragons heads, quartered. In the north isle are several memorials for the Paramors. On a wooden frame, near the altar, a memorial for Col. James Pettit, obt. 1730. On the south side of the chancel, a mural monument for Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Knowler, gent. of Herne, wife of John Lewis, vicar of this church, obt. 1719. A memorial for John Lewis, formerly vicar of this church, obt. 1746, æt. 72. A memorial for Elizabeth Blome, daughter and coheir of John Blome, gent. of Sevenoke, obt. 1731; arms, in a lozenge, A cross fitchee, and cinquefoil, quartered with a greybound, current. A mural monument for Harry Verelst, esq. of Aston, in Yorkshire, formerly governor of Bengal, obt. 1785; he married Anne, coheir of Josiah Wordsworth, esq. of Wadworth, in Yorkshire, and of Sevenscore, in this parish, and left by her four sons and five daughters. In the south isle memorials for the Harnetts, Kennetts, and Colemans. In the middle isle are memorials for several of the Jenking's. Leland, in his Itinerary, vol. vii. p. 130 says, S. Florentius jacet in Cemiterio S. Mariæ in Thanet, cujus Tumba Crescit signis. (fn. 13)

 

On the top of the spire was formerly a globe, and upon that a great wooden cross, covered with lead, over which was a vane, and above that, an iron cross; but about the year 1647, the noted fanatic Richard Culmer, having got the sequestration of this vicarage, took it into his fancy that these were monuments of superstition and idolatry, and got these crosses demolished by two persons of the parish, whom he had hired, after he had himself before day, by moon light, fixed ladders for them to go up and down, from the square of the tower to the top of the spire. But if all the figures of a cross are monuments of idolatry, and to be removed, the poor caitiff has done his work but by halves, or rather not all, when he took down these from the spire and left the church standing, which is itself built in the form of a cross.

 

The church of Minster was antiently appendant to the manor, and as such was granted with it, first to Domneva, and afterwards became part of the possessions of the abbey founded by her here; and after the destruction of it came with the manor, by king Cnute's grant, to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, to which it became appropriated in the year 1128, anno 29 Henry I. and was at that time assigned, with the chapels of St. John, St. Peter, and St. Laurence, with all rents, tithes, and other things, belonging to them, to the sacristy of that monastery; which regulation was confirmed by archbishop Theobald, and afterwards, in 1168, by pope Alexander, who consigned it to the reparation of the church of the monastery, which had been but just before burnt down. (fn. 14)

 

In the year 1176, anno 23 Henry II. the tenants of the Halimot, or manor court of Minster, agreed, that from thenceforth they would all cop their corn; and that they and their heirs, then and for ever afterwards, should pay all their tithes lawfully by cops, and all other matters of tithes, which they were accustomed to pay, as amply as they had ever paid them from the time of the dedication of the church of St. Mary of Menstre.

 

By an agreement entered into in 1182, between the archbishop and the abbot of St. Augustine's, this church was exempted from the payments of all dues and procurations to the archdeacon; and that year the archbishop confirmed this church to the monastery; which agreement was renewed in 1237, by archbishop Edmund; and further, that the abbot and convent should present to the archbishop, in the chapels of St. Peter, St. John, and St. Laurence, fit perpetual chaplains to the altarages in them, provided those altarages were worth ten marcs, with which the chaplains should be content, on pain of forfeiting the same; the vicar of the mother church of Menstre, having a sufficient vicarage taxed from antient time in the same, taking and receiving in right of his vicarage, the tenths of small tithes, viz. of lambs and pigs, and the obventions arising from marriages and churchings, which were forbid at the chapels, and were solemnized, &c. at the mother church only, and the burials of certain corpses, being those of the tenants or occupiers of lands in these chapelries, who were to be buried at Minster, unless the vicar gave leave to the contrary. At the same time the archbishop, with the consent of the archdeacon, confirmed this church to the abbot and convent, together with the several archiepiscopal confirmations of it, and those of the several kings of England. This part above-mentioned of the revenue of the vicarage of Minster, arising from these chapelries, has long since been lost, except that out of Salmestone Grange, amounting to 10s. a year; which, perhaps, might be a composition for the tenths of the small tithes, &c. in them. The altarages above-mentioned were the customary and voluntary offerings at the altar, for some religious office or service of the priest. To augment these, the regular and secular priests invented many things. For it is to be observed, that only a portion of these offerings, to the value of ten marcs, or 6l. 13s. 4d. was what the chaplains of these three chapels were presented to, and that they were accountable for the residue to the abbot and convent, and that if they presumed to detain any more of these offerings beyond that sum, they were to be deprived even of that. For this reason, they were to swear to the abbot and convent, to give a true account of the offerings made at their several altars, on their respective offering days, and in no shape to detriment their parish of Menstre, as to legacies or obventions, personal or predial, but to conserve all the parochial rights of the same, entire and untouched, to the utmost of their power. Then marcs appear now but a small sum for the maintenance of a parish minster; but when the value of money at the time when this composition was made is considered, it will be found to be a handsome and generous allowance to a chaplain, especially as their stipends were then paid by authority; ten marcs were then equal to more than sixty pounds now, and in a council held at Oxford but fifteen years before, it was decreed, that where the churches had a revenue as far as five marcs per annum, they should be conferred on none but such as should constantly reside in person, on the place, as being a sufficient maintenance. In 1348 H. Kinghton informs us, a chaplain's usual stipend was no more than four or five marcs, or two and his board; as for the chaplains of these three chapels, though they were to receive no more than ten marcs of these altarages, they were not excluded the enjoyment of the manses and glebes, given to these chapels when they were first consecrated, which made some addition to their income, and perhaps enabled them to keep a deacon to assist them. (fn. 15)

 

On the great and principal festivals, the inhabitants of these three chapelries, preceded by their priests and other officers, with their banners, tapers, &c. were used to go in procession to Minster, their mother church, there to join at the solemn mass and other divine service then performed, to make their offerings and pay their accustomed dues, in token of their subjection to their parochial or mother church.

 

The appropriation of the church of Minster, together with the advowson of the vicarage, continued, in manner as has been already mentioned, with the abbot and convent till the dissolution of their monastery in the 30th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered, together with the rest of the possessions of the monastery, into the king's hands. After the dissolution of the monastery, there could not be said to be any parsonage or appropriation of this church, for the demesne lands of the manor of Minster, which are very extensive in this parish, were subject, as to the tithes of corn, to only a small modus or composition to the vicar, of eighteen shocks or cops of wheat, and eighteen shocks or cops of barley, or thereabouts; and the vicar was intitled, in right of his vicarage, to the corn tithes of the lands in the remaining part of the parish, as will be further noticed hereafter.

 

When the vicarage of this church was endowed and a vicar instituted, is no where found; but certainly it was before the year 1275; for in the act of consecration of the church or chapel-yard of St. Laurence that year, when that chapel was made parochial, mention is made of the vicar of Menstre, &c. and in the year 1384, anno 8 Richard II. this vicarage was valued at thirty marcs. After the dissolution of the abbey of St. Augustine, the advowson of this vicarage continued in the hands of the crown, till king Edward VI. in his first year, granted it, among other premises, to the archbishop, since which it has continued parcel of the pos sessions of that fee, the archbishop being the present patron of it.

 

This vicarage is valued in the king's books at 33l. 3s. 4d. and the yearly tenths at 3l. 6s. 8d. In 1588 here were three hundred communicants, and it was valued at 1501. It is endowed with a manse and glebe of about twenty-four acres of land, upland and marsh; all the corn tithes, and other tithes of that part of the parish called Street-borough; and of about one hundred acres in the other borough, called Weyborough, except the corn tithes of the demesnes of the manor of Minster, for which the modus or composition above-mentioned is paid.

 

¶The land in Minster level, which is pasture, paying but four-pence an acre for tithes, Dr. Richard Clarke, vicar here in 1597, made a composition with his parishioners, by which they obliged themselves to pay him at the vicarage house, within three days after every quarter, after the rate of twelve-pence an acre for their marsh land, or else to lose the benefit of the composition. (fn. 16) Dr. Meric Casaubon, who succeeded Dr. Clarke, would not abide by this composition, but afterwards compounded with the occupiers, at the rate of twelve-pence an acre for the worst of the land, and of fourteen pence and sixteen pence for that which is better; and in the year 1638 he demanded his tithes of the marsh land in kind, or eighteen pence per acre, which was agreed to by the parishioners, and paid by them till the year 1643; when the civil wars being begun, and this county in the power of the parliament, Dr. Casaubon, being continually threatened to be turned out of his vicarage, was content to receive one shilling per acre for the marsh land; in which manner he received it till the end of the year 1644, when this vicarage was sequestered, and one Richard Culmer was put into possession of this vicarage, (fn. 17) who to ingratiate himself with the parishioners, agreed to take no more than twelve pence an acre of them, as did Dr. Casaubon in 1660, on his being restored to this vicarage; at which rate the tithes were afterwards uniformly taken, till the time of the present vicar; the several vicars not being disposed to quarrel with their neighbours, though the land now lets for as much again as it did in Dr. Casaubon's time, viz. at 28s. an acre and upwards. There have been several litigations and issues at law tried between the present vicar, Mr. Dodsworth, and his parishioners, on account of this modus for the marsh land, all which have been decided in the vicar's favor, who set aside the modus of one shilling per acre by the verdict in his favor, and now takes from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. for the grass land, according to its goodness; yet there are ten acres of grass land late in the possession of Josias Fuller Farrer, esq. which never having paid more than four-pence per acre, remain at that composition. The present value of it is about 350l. per annum.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol10/pp264-294

 

28" x 21"

Ceramic, unglazed porcelain, geode slices, red jasper

 

This piece began taking shape in my mind's eye shortly after the BP oil spill began. Although my thoughts & feelings about the event are full of ugliness & angst, the work itself was a joy to create .... Camouflaged Emotion

 

L1270229 Atlanta

as long as I'm rich :-) Daffy Duck. HGGT!!

 

cornus, flowering dogwood, little theater garden, raleigh, north carolina

01/12/17 #1796. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs...Grating some cheese is a welcome bonus.

Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called the "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Manor Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe..

 

Im Tierpark Berlinsind 2023 rund 20 lebensgroßen Dinosaurier, über den Park verteilt, zu sehen.. Die tonnenschweren Nachbildungen sind nicht nur optisch bis ins Detail ihren lebenden „Vorfahren“ nachempfunden. Spezielle Technik lässt die Dinosaurier täuschend echt wiederbelebt erscheiunen. Sie zeigen so auch typische Bewegungsabläufe und geben akustische Laute von sich. Zusätzlich zu den beweglichen Exponaten erfahren die Besucher*innen in einer thematischen Ausstellung mehr über die Lebensweise der Dinosaurier und können erstaunliche Parallelen zur heutigen Tierwelt entdecken. „Dinosaurier gelten als das bekannteste Symbol für ausgestorbene Tierarten – die Faszination für T-Rex und seine Artgenossen ist bis heute ungebrochen“, verkündet Zoo- und Tierpark-Direktor Dr. Andreas Knieriem. „Und das Thema Artensterben ist hockaktuell – über 37.000 Arten gelten derzeit weltweit als unmittelbar vom Aussterben bedroht. Auch heutige Giganten, wie der Afrikanische Elefant oder das Spitzmaulnashorn, könnten – wenn wir nicht intervenieren – ausgerottet werden“, ergänzt Knieriem. Die Dinosaurier-Ausstellung ist von April bis Oktober 2023 zu sehen. Der Besuch bei Triceratops und Co. ist im regulären Eintrittspreis enthalten.

 

Quelle: www.tierpark-berlin.de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/din...

 

In 2023, around 20 life-size dinosaurs are on display in the Berlin Animal Park, spread throughout the park. The replicas, which weigh several tonnes, are not only visually modelled on their living "ancestors" down to the last detail. Special technology makes the dinosaurs look as if they have been brought back to life. They also show typical movements and make acoustic sounds. In addition to the moving exhibits, visitors can learn more about the dinosaurs' way of life in a thematic exhibition and discover astonishing parallels to the animal world of today. "Dinosaurs are considered the best-known symbol of extinct animal species - the fascination with T-Rex and his fellow species is still unbroken today," announces Zoo and Animal Park Director Dr. Andreas Knieriem. "And species extinction is highly topical - more than 37,000 species are currently considered to be in imminent danger of extinction worldwide. Even today's giants, such as the African elephant or the black rhinoceros, could - if we don't intervene - be wiped out," adds Knieriem. The dinosaur exhibition is on display from April to October 2023. A visit to Triceratops and Co. is included in the regular admission price.

   

Source: www.tierpark-berlin.de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/din... (German only)

I was on a lunch break from my job in the operating theatre, a couple of hundred yards from here. I had my camera with me, as I often did, when I noticed this bus. As a type, it wasn't unusual on the 192 route and I certainly didn't know much on the technical side about them but I have to say I recognised it! Only a few years had passed since I rode these on a regular basis to my school in Chorlton. I recognised a 'foreigner' in Stockport! My family moved to Stockport in 1968 and I was a regular traveller on local buses. When 'SELNEC' was created as the South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire abomination of business and liveries, 'borrowing' buses became commonplace. This carries the BS sticker, identifying it as belonging to Birchfields Road Depot. My 1974 reference book by A. Witton tells me that it's a Leyland Titan with a Metro Cammell body, dating from 1963 or 1964, ex Manchester Corporation.

That aside, we have a 'moment in time' in Stockport. The businesses on the right are long gone but the Garrick Theatre above them still exists. Part of the frontage on the right is now a real ale/live music venue called the 'Spinning Top'.

The scaffolding surrounds the construction of a post office facility that has since been run down with the rest of the post office.

The Unity Inn, just visible to the left of the bus, has been boarded up for years

The building behind the construction site was demolished to make way for Stockport's biggest McDonald's franchise, the current focal point for teenage violence in the area, mostly in the night hours, though nobody seems to correlate that with a 24 hour facilty.

As for the rest of the vehicles, I'll leave them you! Enjoy!

 

Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe, but with less species.

Photographed near Truth or Consequences on a day long drive through western New Mexico, USA.

The Ogilvies of Deskford & Findlater aquired land over the next few generations and grew in wealth and influence as a consequence. In 1510, Alexander Ogilvy succeeded as 4th laird. In 1517 he received a charter from the Crown by which the baronies of Findlater, Deskford, Keithmore, Glenfiddich, Auchindoun, and other lands, with the fishings on the Deveron and the water of Ythan, the constabulary of Cullen, in the counties of Banff and Aberdeen, and the lands of Ballhall and others in Forfarshire, were all incorporated into one free barony, called the barony of Ogilvie.

 

He married firstly, Lady Janet Abernethy, by whom he had a son James, and she having died, he married secondly, Elizabeth Gordon, a granddaughter of Alexander, first Earl of Huntly. Perhaps at the instigation of his 2nd wife, he disinherited his son James and in 1546, settled the whole lands of the barony on Sir John Gordon, third son of George, fourth Earl of Huntly. After the death of Alexander Ogilvie, Sir John Gordon married his widow, Elizabeth Gordon, and took possession of the estates. Naturally, James Ogilvie, the lawful heir, considered that he had been unjustly disinherited, and a bitter quarrel arose between the Gordons and the Ogilvies,

©2014 Jaime Salazar- All rights reserved.

500px.com/jaimesalazaralzate.

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© Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission.

A breach of copyright has legal consequences

30 by 30 acrylic on gallery canvas

Photographed in Montenegro.

Won recgnition for my photo at PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, VT . Juror Lee Anne White. On view throught the month of May.

Fall River, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. View large on black

 

Explored 10/4/10, #404

What is it that, when the inevitable short term consequences of Brexit – companies leaving, investment plans abandoned, GDP contracting, the Union shattered – are followed by having to negotiate individually with 26 EU countries and the rest of the world, deprived of the clout of the EU (with each country insisting on freedom of entry for its citizens), we will be able to do that we can't do now?

(Acrylics by VK)

The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.

 

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

 

The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

 

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?

 

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

 

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.

 

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

 

Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

 

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’

 

Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

 

***

 

Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

 

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.

 

Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

 

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

 

The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.

Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.

And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’

 

***

 

The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.

 

The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.

 

Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.

 

By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.

 

Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.

 

Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.

 

It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.

 

‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’

 

Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.

 

England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’

 

We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’

 

The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’

   

THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT

In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.

 

Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.

 

By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.

 

One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.

 

In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.

 

Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.

 

In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.

 

In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.

 

In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.

 

Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.

 

www.templechurch.com/history-2/timeline/