The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1884-03-21
Famous Hermits.

John Bigg, commonly known as "the
Dinton hermit" q man of some parts,
who had been clerk to Judge Msyne,
the regicide. After the revolution John
Bigg renounced the world and retired to
3 cave in the neighborhood of Dinton
Hall, his masters seat, near Aylesbury.
OF course it was believed by all loya.ists
that the hermit had been stricken by re-
morse for the share he had taken in the
martyrdom of Charles l.. and that it
was a self-appointed penance that he
was undergoing. Be it as it may, the
spectacle Of a penitent lawyers clerk
was then considered to be marvel, and
the whole countryside fiocked to see
the regicide's ex-scrivener sitting in his
cave and arrayed in long robe, with Q
hood Enthusiastically bifurcated, and the
whole covered with small patches. The
Dinton hermit never asked for charity,
but the country people knew what he
liked and brought him plenty of food.
He seems to have been the reverse of q
melancholy man, since he habitually
carried at his girdle three bottles. one
filled with milk and the other two filled
with strong and small ale, respectively.
The Dinton hermit was alive in 1896,
and had then been an inhabitant of his
cave for upward of thirty years. A
much more modern hermit was William
Lole, who called himself "the
hermit of Newton Burgeland, place
near Ashby-de-la-ZOuch, in Leicester
shire, and was living so recently as
1868. He assuredly was no aseetic of
whom it could be said that "moss was
his bed, the cave his humble cell. his
food the fruits, bis drink the crystal
WELL" He lived in a comfortable cot
tage, enjoyed good dinner, his glass
of beer, and his pipe. Yet, according
to mis- own deposition, he was fully en-
titled to be styled hermit. True
hermits," he was wont to say,
throughout every age, have been the
firm abettors of freedom" This doc
trine William Lole personally vindicat-
ed by doing precisely what he liked.
He allowed his beard to grow to a
'patriarchal length; and he had many
suits of clothes of original and gro
tesque cut, with twenty different kinds
of hats. In the garden of the hermit
of Newton Burgeland there was large
tub, into which, when he had a crowd
of visitors, he would Chamber and deliv-
er ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS against the Pope
of Rome. Otherwise the old gentle
man seems to have been q harmless &C.
centric enough. 1t is. at.the same time,
painful to have to note that eremitical
history makes mention of at least one
anchorite who turned out to be a
fraud This was the once we'll
known "hermit of Bath" For many
years he dwelt in a hut built of rough
stones, duly overgrown with moss and
lichens, few miles from Bath. His
cell was surrounded by a tolerably large
garden, and there he seduously devoted
himself to the cultivation of strawbcr-
ries. which. in the season, he freely Of
fered to the visitors who, led by curiosi-
ty, had come from the city OF Bladud
to see so remarkable a person. He
wore a monastic robe and cowl, and q
long white beard, and looked very ven
cradle. BY degrees the ladies and
gentlemen for whom he 80 oblig-
ingly plucked his strawberries came
to think that they would like some sugar
and little cream with the delicious
fruit; and kind old dame, whose cot
tage was not far from the hermit's cell,
was glad to supply sugar and cream,
and the necessary spoons and saucers.
Of course the hermit would not hear
of accepting any remuneration for his
Strawberries. but his fashionable visit
ors did not forget to bestow a gratuity
upon the kind old lady who provided
the accessories. Toward the close of
one summer the hermit announced that
on n given day he would make public
revelation of the long-hidden causes
which had led him to renOunce the
world and all its vanities. There was a
very large concOurse that day at the
hermitage, and the consumption of
Strawberries and cream was tremen-
dous. At the appointed hour the an
chorite mounted table and male his
anxiously-expected revelation. He had
first, he said, to express his deep sense
of gratitude to his kind friends who,
for more than twenty years, had be-
slowed their patronage upon him by pur-
chasing his strawberries and cream at
prices varying from shilling to half
crown a plate, and of the sale of which
his old woman-servant had rendered
him faithful account. By these means
he had. in the course of twenty years.
realized quite a nice little fortune, with
which he intended to resume his real
rank in life, which was that of man of
fashion. On his first coming to Bath,
he concluded. he had recently been
ruined at the gaming-tab History has
omitted to state whether the company
mobbed the hermit of Bath at the end
of his explanatory speech. Possibly, as
he had made plenty of money, they
thought him very clever fellow.
The early church owed vast debt of
gratitude to the authorities of the The
bald, to the desert fathers, who dwelt in
cavernous solitudes, fed, rs the lege nds
tell, by ravens, conSorting unframed
with wild beasts, and meeting some
times with fauns and satyrs, but who
certainly passed their lives in prayer
and resignation, in contemplation, and
sometimes IN ecstacy, eliminating in
visionary alterations little short of mad
ness. Yet the hermits of the Thebaid
were the germs of those great monastic
communities which toward the end of
the dark, and in the beginning OF the
middle ages, saved civilization from be-
ing utterly wrecked and annihilated in
a deluge Of bloodshed and rapine. 1t
was hermit, who, at the close of the
eleventh century, wandered throughout
Europe preaching the first crusade; and,
although the precise object which Peter
proposed to himself has not even to this
day been plished. the influence of
the crusade can be directly traced in
every epoch of medieval and modern
civilization. Most mundane things have,
unhappily, a tendency to degenerate,
and oriental reclusiOn faded from the