Shrine of Saint William of Perth
c.1201

December 18, 2021

Two Caen stone fragments of an elaborate piece of sculpture in high relief may have originated from the shrine of St William of Perth.

The Text

The single version of the Life of Saint William of Rochester to have come down to us is contained in the Nova Legenda Angliae, a compilation of English saints lives edited anew by Wynkyn de Worde for publication in 1516, but essentially embodying the Sanctilogium Angliae of the St Albans' historian, John of Tynemouth, writing in the middle of the 14 century. William stands alone with Edgar in being a saint attached to a major English church and long enjoying official recognition, but only now securing inclusion in this major work of reference.

We must assume a source compiled at or at the behest of the church at Rochester.

What we have is a Latin Vita outlining briefly the pious circumstances of William's life and martyrdom, followed by the miracle which clinches his place among the saints. It runs as follows: The baker of Perth turns away from the sins of his worldly youth and embraces God. He excels in pious acts, among which the adoption of a homeless child, whom he cherishes and brings up almost as a son. He resolves to undertake a pilgrimage and takes the young man along as his sole companion.

But he is betrayed. Just beyond Rochester, where they had rested for three days, the youth persuades his master away from the right course and murders him. Thus martyred, he is ripe for the ranks of the saints and God's will is made manifest when a mad woman is cured by a garland of honeysuckle, which, in her wildness, she had made as a crown for the saint's wounded head. Finally we are told the martyr's body came to lie in the city of Rochester.

One peculiarity at least raises the possibility that the author, like the saint, was not a native of Rochester. This is the elaborate and rather self-conscious way in which Rochester is put on the map - "the city of Rochester, which in the tongue of the Saxons is called "Roffecestria", that is "the city of Roffa", in the province of Kent, sited on the River Medway in a very fine position, twenty-four miles from the city of London, metropolis of England, in the direction of "Dorobernia", which in former times was called Kaerkarec", but is now Canterbury". This is to all appearances a garbled version of the convenient description of Rochester in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Il,ill

William was known to have been a baker from Perth, to have undertaken a pilgrimage and to have been slain "in the midst of his penitential journey". But by virtue of his martyrdom he was also known to be much more: He was a "withered tree" which saw fit to reform itself and bear fruit, "watered by the water of wisdom and salvation" (Ecclesiasticis, 15,3). Like Job, he was "simple, upright, God-fearing and shunning evil." (ob, 2,3). In the words of the Psalms, he was "a father to orphans and protector to widows" (Ps 67,6). Like Abraham, he left behind kin and livelihood (Genesis, 12, 1) that, as the New Testament promises, "he might be enriched a hundredfold" (Matt, 19,29) "He was massacred as is an innocent lamb by the wolf, but rose up from the shadows of death as new fruit grows from the seed of corn" (ohn, 12,24) "clothed with light as with a garment" (Ps 103,2), to receive the "crown of life which God Himself promised His followers" (James, 1,12). The author leans heavily, therefore, on Biblical, in particular Old Testament, language and images. He makes much of the treacherous foster-child, of his scheming and insolence. The alliteration accompanying the villain's exit is magnificent, both in the Latin and in translation: "The foul wretch fled in the face of his felony, fled as a fugitive, fit not for refuge, but for death by the rope".

The description of the incident with the mad woman is lighter and more lyrical in tone - in sharp contrast to the laboured and stylized introduction which precedes it. The language is less obviously lifted straight from the Bible, the chief exceptions being graceful images culled from the Song of Songs and the Psalms. It is a delightful piece of writing, and we are left wishing that there was a good deal more of the same.

The Historical Context

Perth seems not to have bothered to have established a claim on the saint. William seems to have been forgotten even by the guild of bakers. But what Perth did provide was the sort of context in which a conversion such as William's reads as highly credible. It was the classic successful 12/13th century town in which rapid growth might lead to heightened social and religious tensions. An emphasis on charity and the impulse to go on pilgrimage were two characteristic aspects of the self-made man's religion in this period.

The Life hints that William's conversion was fuelled by guilt succeeding a dissolute and profligate youth: "forewarned of what was in store for him, he banished the ways of his youth and, subjecting his body he compelled the flesh to serve the spirit". He seems to have prospered in his trade, but "he set aside every tenth loaf for the poor out of charity that he might be worthy to eat the bread of angels among the heavenly company". "Nor did this true worshipper of Christ remain for long luke-warm in the service of God, but daily he frequented the thresholds of Holy Mother Church". William's motive in undertaking a pilgrimage is readily explicable in terms of the shifting urban context which Perth provided.

The pilgrim was a more than usually familiar figure in medieval Kent. Kent was a historically closely linked to the continent and was naturally equipped to become a corridor for travellers seeking the foremost shrines of Christendom. And, of course, Canterbury held the added attraction of the most frequented shrine in England. Early on we find a string of hospitals along the north Kent route, geared to accommodate pilgrims: Strood's hospital of St Mary was founded in 1193 by Bishop Gilbert de Glanville of Rochester (1185-1214) for the poor, weak and infirm of the neighbourhood, or travellers from other parts.

The people of Kent took their own place among the pilgrims. Bishop Hamo de Hythe's Register reveals penitential pilgrimage as being frequently imposed on wrong-doers called before the ecclesiastical courts. The penitential aspect of pilgrimage applied not just to sin that was brought before the courts. Its most potent appeal lay in its believed ability to cleanse the infirm of spirit and to make up to the Almighty for errors which threatened one's chance of salvation. This could even be achieved posthumously. In Sittingbourne in 1408 Henry Husee bequeathed, "that one go on pilgrimage to Walsyngham after my death, 10s". It is easy to see how the person of the pilgrim might come to be regarded as holy. From the 13th century onwards the pilgrim may have featured regularly in Kent churches. At Faversham, a pilgrim and King (St Edmund) greeted each other across the arch of the south wall of the chancel north aisle, close to the altar of Becket.

But to return to St William. The only fairly securely identified depiction of him is that of All Saints Church, Frindsbury, uncovered during the 1883 restoration. There, in the chancel, in the south jamb of the south light on the east wall, "an unnimbed palmer" kept company with other saints, including St Edmund (archbishop, 1234-40, canonized 1247) and St Lawrence, both important to the Bishop of Rochester who acquired the church in 1256 and who also secured William's canonization in the same year. And so the veneration of William the pilgrim gained official recognition and there were doubtless celebrations at Rochester itself, perhaps centring on a translation or elevation of the relics. As we have seen, a pilgrim saint was a fitting focus for contemporary devotion, likely to attract the attention of locals and travellers alike.

The Cult

Throughout the Middle Ages Rochester appears to have been a place of passage, valued for its inns and its bridge. Pilgrims and travellers, like William (and like Mr Pickwick) saw it as a place where they might recover their strength for the really important business ahead. It was this that brought William to Rochester in the first place. It was this that may have fuelled his cult at its opening stages. And it may explain why the cult never enjoyed a very considerable degree of success in the long term.

The evidence for the cult of St William is extremely meagre. We gather from additions to a later Rochester manuscript that in 1201 he was "martyred outside the city of Rochester and buried inside the cathedral church of Rochester amidst a flutter of miracles". The same source records his canonization in 1256: "Laurence of St. Martin, Bishop of Rochester, crossed the sea to the Roman Curia where he obtained the canonization of the blessed martyr William who rests in the church of Rochester". At some stage, perhaps very early on, the Church of Rochester took possession of the body and thereby its cult. The translation inspired a vigorous increase of miracles, as no doubt did the elevation into a new shrine in the north transept. The place of martyrdom may have remained a point of secondary focus for the cult, the site perhaps of a chapel, but the centre, henceforth, was with the body, "inside the cathedral church of Rochester". And it was to cement this, presumably, that the Bishop himself sought and won canonization.

Several factors indicate that the success of the cult in the 13th century was considerable. Additions to the cathedral priory 'List of Benefactions' include the entry that "William of Hoo, the Sacrist made the entire choir.... from the offerings of St William". In the years following canonization, significant persons paid their court: "Hubert de Burgh, justiciar of England, gave the window in the centre to St William". In 1278, Bishop Walter de Merton chose to be entombed "in the area to the north beside the sepulchre of St William". In 1300 Ralph de Stanford gave seven shillings "to the feretory of St. William" on the King's behalf. It is likely that lesser folk, as they passed through, were prompted to similar action by the shrine of glittering newness and reputation. The new "St. William's door" was the means by which they came and went.

The 14th century evidence is of a different nature. Bishop Thomas de Wouldham bequeathed ten marks "for work on the tomb of St William" in 1360 - the shrine was evidently in need of repair. Hamo de Hythe's Register contains two instances in 1332 of penitential pilgrimages to St William's shrine imposed on malefactors by the Bishop's court. Both are ordered to deliver offerings of wax, but in each case it is commanded that like offerings are made first and foremost to, on the one hand, the High Altar at Rochester, and on the other, the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury.

What is interesting is that in both instances St William's shrine so clearly takes a secondary place.

For the later 15th and early 16th centuries there is impressive evidence for continuing activity at the shrine. The Sacrist's accounts for 1512-13 carefully note St William's income and also the purchase of one pair of candlesticks for the altar and one candelabra for the tomb. Wills reflect continuing attention to the upkeep of the shrine and a continuing belief in its efficacy. Presumably at least some of the offerings at the shrine came from pilgrims on their way through to Canterbury or elsewhere, but it seems reasonable to conclude that by this stage the focus of the cult was essentially local. St William is never particularly singled out in late medieval Rochester sources and his feast day failed to attach itself to the number of calendars belonging to the diocese which have survived. Like other cults which enjoyed a dramatic take-off in the 13th century, St William had descended into a quiet and unassuming respectability inside the city walls.

Sarah Blair

The shrine to Saint William of Perth was located in the North Quire Transept. The scar in the paving left by its destruction was present until Sir George Gilbert Scott’s repaving of the east end in the 1870s, although is recorded in a watercolour from before this time.

From its elongated outline, it has been proposed that the shrine would have resembled in form that of St Alban in St Albans. Rena Gardiner (1972) reimagined the splendour of the shrine to William of Perth in the Middle Ages.

The fragments featuring an identical Romanesque beaded diapering and were discovered as rubble material in the North Quire Transept along with the otherwise non-Caen stone fragments of the Sheppey chantry chapel. The rubble filled a void between two walls in the recess that is now referred to as John de Sheppey’s tomb, although the effigy was itself discovered at this time and is not thought to belong to the recess.

One fragment features an oak or vine-leaf motiff, stemming from what appears to be a thick tree-like stem. There is surviving green paint on protected areas of the foliage.

The other fragment features a parchment scroll and the torso of a figure holding a large bag slung over one shoulder, surely an identifier of a pilgrim. The fragment also features polychrome pigments.

A pencil sketch of the some of the fragments recovered from the tomb reveal a portion of the torso fragment has been lost, featuring a foliage motiff and a sloped canopy.

The sketchbook omits the foliage fragment, but another sketch from this notebook identifies another fragment with an angel motiff with identical beaded diapering, sadly no longer identifiable within the Lapidarium collection today.

The two surviving fragments are the only physical remains tentatively identified to date as belonging to this central spiritual focus of the Cathedral to which thousands if not millions of pilgrims would have travelled before its destruction at the Reformation. They are well worth conservation and further investigation.

Jacob Scott
Heritage Officer