Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

incorporated historic material partly, as discussed earlier, for ‘curiosity’ but also perhaps
because of a power in the stones themselves, not unlike that ascribed in the Catholic
Church to sacred relics. The ‘Saxon portal’ from the hospital church of St Magdalen that
marked the entrance to St Peter’s connects the building to the martyrdom of Thomas
Becket, another saint who died defending the Church from secular authority. 18 Hence the
inscription which Milner had cut into a stone in the centre of the arch to the effect that the
gate was ‘built in the year of Christ 1174 Rebuilt… 1792’. 19 It was the equal but opposite
action to Hoadly’s intervention in the cathedral, here the interference with the fabric was
constructive, the keystone, symbol of Christ, the link between past and present.
How far Milner took this belief in the connection between God and the Gothic
into the realms of the supernatural is suggested by a later letter to Gage of 25 March
1824. Southey had just published his Book of the Church, an account of the Established
Church written largely in refutation of Lingard. Still at odds with Gage and Gage’s friend
the lawyer Charles Butler (1750-1832) in their attempts to achieve a compromise on
Emancipation Milner wrote:
There is one place in which I should have no objection to meeting Mr Butler. It is in the Dead vault of
Cossey Chapel. There with a glimmering taper placed upon poor Edwards leaden sealing I would pray that
the Almighty would permit him to appear for a moment… & to declare whether I or his other Counsellor
had advised him right…I do assure you Dr Sir, that often in the dead of the night I have looked without my
curtains to see if God would permit me to see & converse for a minute with the spirit of Edward
Jerningham. 20
Jerningham, who had died unexpectedly two years earlier, had been an ally of Gage and
Butler and Secretary of the Catholic Board, a lay organisation. In public Milner had often
found himself at odds with him but in private not only were they friends, but Milner had
inspired and guided Edward and his father in the building of a Gothic chapel at the family
seat, Costessey (pronounced Cossey) Park, in Norfolk. Now demolished, the chapel,
18
Milner, Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p.242.
19
Milner, Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p. 242.
20
Milner to Gage, March 25 1824, Hengrave mss 21/2/7.
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