THE GHOSTLY BISHOP OF FINGEST.
Nestling under the Chiltern Hills, at the head of the quiet Hambleden valley, through which a tiny stream runs to join the Thames a couple of miles or so below Henley, is the sleepy little village of Fingest, where, in days gone by, the Bishops of Lincoln had a palace.
One of these prelates, Bishop Burghersh, lies buried here, but they say that he does not rest quietly in the tomb in which they laid him, with pomp and ceremony, these five hundred years and more since. For Burghersh in life was not all that a bishop should be.
Burghersh was more a prince of the Church than a humble shepherd of souls, and his worldly ambition led him to adopt the most unworthy means in order to aggrandize his estate. He played the haughty tyrant over the simple timid villagers, and shamelessly grabbed here a piece and there a piece of the common land to add to his own park, and to provide him with the hunting that he loved more than the services of the Church.
And very stern was Burghersh, too, in upholding the game laws. The wretched peasant caught poaching on land which was justly his was given little mercy. The bishop’s foresters had the strictest orders to keep the villagers in their place—which was the other side of the Episcopal fence.
But at length Burghersh died, and they buried him with all the elaborate ritual of those far away days; and the village folk were not, perhaps, so sorry as they pretended to be, for at last, they thought, they were rid of their tyrant neighbour and looked for better times under his successor. But they were wrong.
Bishop Burghersh, in death, so the story goes, developed the conscience he had never known in life. He could not rest in peace.
Soon the rumour began to spread about the lonely country-side of a ghostly wanderer with the dead bishop’s face and voice, but clad as a keeper or forester, who glided among the trees of the Episcopal park, and put himself in the way of passers by begging them to help him find repose.
Not until all the land that he had stolen from the people, to enlarge his park, was returned to the rightful owners could he cease his nightly wanderings, he said. He appeared to his successors, beseeching them, for his soul’s sake, to dispark the ill-gotten land, but they would not listen to him. Instead they tried to put him to rest with chaunt and prayer; but this was unavailing.
Time went by, and others held the bishop’s land, and held fast to it, despite the ceaseless pleadings of the unhappy wraith, and even to this day they will tell you, sometimes floating along by the hedge of some quiet meadow, or flitting between the trees in a lonely copse, you may see a pale, sad-faced form in Lincoln green, seeking someone who will listen to his weary appeal, and return to the people the common land which he enclosed in the days when Edward III. was King of England.
Fingest to-day, you will find, a very charming little place amid woods and hills. Its fine old church has not changed much since Bishop Burghersh lived his selfish life in this quiet vale. There are traces of Saxon work in the Church, masonry that was three or four hundred years old in the bishop’s time, and an unusual tower of great age and height, ending in twin red gables, rises high above the little church.
Down the valley you come, in a few miles, to Hambleden, with its picturesque old manor house, and a little further on to a beautiful reach of the Thames, midway between Henley and Medmenham, with its old abbey and its memories of the eighteenth century “Hell Fire Club,” and the grim stories told of the wild and extravagant doings of its dissolute members.
Or go north from Fingest up through the beech woods and leafy lanes of the Chilterns, or west, till you rise, in a few miles, to six or seven hundred feet above sea level in a country that is as remote and unspoilt as you can wish.
All this you may reach from London in a summer day’s trip. Strike north from Henley or west from High Wycombe, or West Wycombe, and you will soon find yourself among little forgotten villages set among the woods where the Chilterns slope down to the Thames, amid scenery that is as charming as any England can show.
