Cathedral Senior Guide, Tom Fedorek, has embarked on a number of articles about stones of historic and special significance that have come to and are incorporated into the Cathedral. The Magna Carta Pedestal is the first of those articles. – RM
If you stand before the high altar of St. John the Divine and look slightly to the right, there is a credence table for chalices and other accessories used in the Eucharist. Supporting the table is a shaft of three roundish stones. They are Caen stone, a light-colored, fine-grained limestone quarried in northwestern France since Roman times and used to build churches in southern England, including Canterbury Cathedral.
The three stones were cut more than eight hundred years ago. How did they come to be at the cathedral, and why?
The Magna Carta
The shaft of stones is known as the Magna Carta Pedestal. The surrounding inscription reads:
The adjoining shaft was once a part of the high altar of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund upon which on November 20, 1214 the barons swore fealty to each other in wresting the Great Charter from King John. It is placed here as a symbol of the political traditions, laws, and liberties which is the inheritance of the English-speaking commonwealths throughout the world.
The abbey church where the barons swore their oath was one of the largest in England with a length of five hundred feet, constructed between 1080 and 1200. It housed the shrine of St. Edmund, a ninth-century king of East Anglia martyred by invading Danes. In 1539, the church and other abbey buildings were systematically destroyed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries.
The account of the English barons swearing the oath upon the altar comes from the chronicle of Roger of Wendover, a monk at the abbey. In 1214, the barons gathered there to discuss their grievances against King John under the guise of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund. Roger’s chronicle states:
They all swore on the great altar that, if the king refused to grant those liberties and laws, they themselves would withdraw their allegiance to him, and make war on him, till he should, by charter under his own seal, confirm to them everything they required; and finally it was unanimously agreed that, after Christmas, they should all go together to the king and demand the confirmation of the aforesaid liberties to them.
The barons met with the tyrannical King John at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. There the king agreed to the terms of the Great Charter (Magna Carta) that had been drafted in large part by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. The Magna Carta and its later revisions became the foundation of English law and government. Fundamental rights granted by the charter, such as consent to taxation, protection from search and seizure, and trial by peers, were later enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt called “the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.”
The Marquess of Bristol
An old cathedral guidebook says of the stones: “They were given to the Cathedral in 1922, with the consent of the Abbey authorities, by the Marquis of Bristol through Dr. Raphael Constantian of New York.”
Eight men have held the title of Marquess of Bristol over the past two centuries (“Marquess” is the British spelling of “Marquis). All have been members of the Hervey family (pronounced “Harvey”). The family has deep roots in Bury St. Edmunds and the surrounding region. As long ago as the seventeenth century, Herveys were members of Parliament for Bury St. Edmunds. The region encompassing Bury and the abbey’s vast land holdings are known as the Liberty of St. Edmund. In 1806, Frederick Hervey, the 1st Marquess of Bristol, became Hereditary High Steward of the Liberty of St. Edmund and ever since, his successors have had this ceremonial role.
The Marquess who gifted the stones to the cathedral was Frederick William Fane Hervey (1863-1951), the 4th Marquess, also known as Lord Bristol. We see him here in the uniform of a rear admiral in the Royal Navy, where he served from 1877 to 1911.
According to a report in the Bury Free Press (July 8, 1922):
In July 1921 Lord Bristol’s Agent selected three small stones from the High Altar site, one of which bore traces of carving which showed it to be from a Gothic structure. These were packed into a wooden box by the Agent and sent to Liverpool and they subsequently arrived in New York and have been built into the Cathedral there.
The report explains that the stones were requested by Raphael Constantian, who visited Bury St. Edmunds in 1921 for the specific purpose of acquiring altar stones to be incorporated into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Once the stones were received in New York, Constantian responded to the Marquess:
The observance of Magna Charter Day in this country is a very significant thing. It is part of that coming to a better understanding between the Mother Country and America which is so much desired by all lovers of peace, to say nothing about all else that such a better understanding would bring in its train. We look back upon our visit to your old city with great pleasure.
Raphael Constantian
Raphael Constantian’s main connection to the cathedral appears to have been through his business, Obelisk Waterproofing Company.
Obelisk owned a technology for waterproofing stone buildings by coating the stone with paraffin wax. The technique was invented in England by Robert Caffall, who brought it to the United States. He won renown by applying it to Cleopatra’s Needle, the ancient Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. Hence the company’s name.
Constantian was born in Armenia and trained as medical doctor in Edinburgh before emigrating to America. He became an executive at Obelisk after a chance meeting with Caffall’s son. The exact date that Obelisk began working for St. John the Divine is unclear – one source puts it in 1909 – but it was still doing so in 1925, as seen in an advertisement from that year.
His second connection to the cathedral was through William Thomas Manning and their shared concern for the welfare of Armenian Christians during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. As president of the Armenia-America Society, Constantian participated in drafting appeals to the U.S. government. Manning, then the rector of Trinity Church, was also outspoken on the issue. In 1920, they both spoke at a rally for a free Armenia held at the cathedral’s Synod House.
A third connection is Constantian’s professional relationship with Cornelius Wickersham, who steered Obelisk into some lucrative assignments. Cornelius was the son of George Woodward Wickersham, a prominent New York attorney who had served as Attorney General in the administration of William Howard Taft. The elder Wickersham was an active Episcopal layman – a vestryman of St. George’s Church, a friend and admirer of Manning, and a cathedral trustee involved with the fund-raising campaign for the nave. His grandson, George W. Wickersham II, would later be installed as a canon of the cathedral.
It is unclear if the idea for a Magna Carta Pedestal originated with Constantian, but he was clearly the principal actor in making the idea a reality. He is presumed to have provided the funding, as well, perhaps in gratitude for Manning’s advocacy for the cause of a free Armenia, or as a good will gesture towards a longtime customer of his company.
Magna Carta Day
During Manning’s episcopate, the cathedral conducted a special service annually on Magna Carta Day, June 15, or the Sunday following. He was an Englishman by birth, a native of Northampton. The commemoration of the document that was the foundation for so many of the liberties enjoyed by both Britons and Americans had a deep meaning for him.
When the Magna Carta Pedestal was dedicated on Sunday, June 18, 1922, George Wickersham spoke at the service of the document’s continuing relevance:
The greater freedom from oppression which the English-speaking peoples of the world have enjoyed over all other peoples has been because from the thirteenth century to the present time they have held fast to the guiding principles embodied in the charter of John. Today they are expressed in the written Constitution of the American Commonwealth as limitations imposed by the people upon their government …
So let us be thankful for the vision of liberty which the men of 1215 possessed and rejoice in the stable institutions of our day by means of which the aspirations of Runnymede have become the accepted liberties of the free English-speaking commonwealths of the twentieth century.
The phrase “English-speaking commonwealths” also appears in the pedestal’s inscription, suggesting that Wickersham participated in drafting it.
The 1941 observance of Magna Carta Day must have been fraught with emotion for the bishop. Only a few weeks earlier, the Luftwaffe had paused the Blitz, the eight-month campaign of incessant nighttime bombing of English cities that had left more than 40,000 civilians dead and more than two million homes destroyed or damaged. More than 3,000 British aviators had died defending their country. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament had been bombed. Coventry Cathedral had been destroyed.
After leading a solemn procession to the Magna Carta Pedestal, the bishop read from the inscription: “It is placed here as a symbol of the community of political tradition, laws, and liberties, which is the inheritance of the English-speaking commonwealths throughout the world.”
Placing his hand on the shaft, he continued: “In the presence of God and by this time-honored stone we swear anew our loyalty to the free gospel of Christ. With God’s assistance we will safeguard our liberties and transmit them unsullied to the generations yet unborn.”
My sincere thanks to John Saunders, Adrian Tindall, and Patricia Mackie of the Bury Past & Present Society for tracking down the information about the acquisition of the stones.
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Sources: Giles, J.A. (translator). Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History (London: H.G. Bohn, 1892) ● Hall, Edward H. A Guide to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 15th ed., 1950 ● Jones, Dan. Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking, 2014) ● Wright, Milton. “Staying the hand of time,” Scientific American, August, 1931 ● “Manning would re-open war to free Armenia,” New York Times, March 1, 1920 ● “Cathedral service for Magna Carta,” New York Times, June 19, 1922 ● “Magna Carta Day held at St. John’s,” New York Times, June 16, 1941 ● “The Marquess of Bristol” (obituary), Times of London, October 25, 1951 ● Bury Free Press, July 8, 1922.