Charles Williams

Judgment at Chelmsford

Warsaw 2019

Contents

Prologue

Episode I. Modern Life

Episode II. The Chelmsford Witches

Episode III. The Reformation

Episode IV. The Girl Abbess of Barking

Episode V. John Ball and the Peasant Rising

Episode VI. St. Osyth and the Danes

Episode VII. Old King Cole

Episode VIII. The Invention of the Cross

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

The place is outside the gates of Heaven, considered as in the air above the diocese. CHELMSFORD enters

CHELMSFORD. I am a young See, yet I am one
with all the rest of Christendom, blest as they–
Canterbury, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch,
Jerusalem, my predecessors, my brothers and lords.
My house is in the plains beyond the mouth of Thames,
and built by the rushing wind and the tongued flames
where the coast of heaven borders the English coast
and the byres of Essex are the shires of the Holy Ghost.
I am as old as the whole Church in Britain.
Cedd raised the first rough fold of my sheep
and I hallow his name wholesomely where the plough
shears the fields still as in his own years,
but otherwise now towns are much of my ministry:
mark them, the might, mirth, and misery of England,
spreading, treading hard on each other’s heels, making me
changed from what I was once, before the charge
of my children was wholly mine, before the mitre
touched my brows with something darker than age,
to assuage their need, comfort, console, cherish,
lest if they perish I too be cast from the place
with my peers, the patriarchates, the heavenly thrones
whose zones map Christendom, in England, and beyond
where the great ships float from my river. To-day
the fledged heel of Contemplation strikes the edged wheel
of Time, to spin it, and heaven opens within.
It is my birthday; on this feast I come to the place
of grace in vision, to the gate of heaven, to walk
and talk with the grand celestial princes, they
who assess the deeds of the Church militant on earth,
and confess in clear light the fulfilment of their needs.
I am come shyly to meet them; blessed be he
who made me also in Christendom holy and free.

A kind of gentle discord. The ACCUSER comes in

THE ACCUSER. Halt there, sweet!

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