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00:00Hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution, all the ingenuity of humankind was devoted
00:09to the building, not of machines, but of monuments.
00:18Not of bridges, roads and railways, but of cathedrals.
00:24With only primitive tools, God's architects created a glimpse of heaven on earth.
00:34This is the story of the faith they carved in stone, and the events that shook them to
00:39their foundations.
00:54It was 1984, and York Minster was in flames.
01:00Struck by lightning, some said it was a message from God.
01:05But this wasn't the first time the Minster had been ablaze.
01:13Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions, and show wonders
01:30in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
01:41In 1829, the first signs of trouble arrived in a letter wrapped around a stone.
01:57Within a month of the first threatening letters, York Minster was devastated by an avenging
02:02fire.
02:08The blaze and its aftermath bound together the lives of two strangers, and what was found
02:18hidden in the debris rewrote the history of York Minster and revealed how the cathedral
02:25was built.
02:37The year had started like any other.
02:40York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in England, dominated the landscape around.
02:50Before the fire, this vast stone structure stood as an enigma.
02:58How had it been built?
03:01The masons who created York Minster had left behind no drawings and no plans for this great
03:06building.
03:11One man, antiquarian John Brown, was determined to rediscover the schemes of the medieval
03:18masons that had been lost over the centuries.
03:27Let anyone ask himself what caused the arches to be made the size and form they are.
03:34How came the centers of the curves of the arches to be where they are?
03:40What determines the thickness of the walls and projections of buttresses?
03:47Was it the result of an ungoverned caprice of the master builder?
03:51It must have been some regular system by which they were produced.
03:59Who were the masons?
04:01How did they live?
04:03How did they work?
04:05Their intentions, their methods, their lives remained hidden from view.
04:21The cathedral was built in the image of the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God.
04:28Heavenly Jerusalem is described in some detail in the book of Revelation.
04:31It's described as having great portals, great gilded gates.
04:35It has walls like unto clear glass and all its surfaces are described with a long, long
04:41list of precious stones.
04:43And so obviously a church like York Minster, full of stained glass windows, was probably
04:47the closest on earth you were going to get to that kind of glittering, bejeweled sort
04:52of vision found in the book of Revelation.
04:58If John Brown was to find the lost secrets of the masons, he believed that it would be
05:11in structures like the Great East Window that their intentions and their designs would be
05:16revealed.
05:18The Great East Window, a true marvel of York Minster, 77 feet in length, 32 feet in width.
05:30It's beauty and magnificence probably unrivalled.
05:36He first of all realised that in order to understand the building, you have to study
05:41the stones of the building, the glass of the building, the fabric of the building in great
05:46detail and as close as possible to the object.
05:51It's not just a question of standing back and looking at it in awe and saying this is
05:56a most magnificent, huge building, how wonderful it is.
05:59You have to get really close to.
06:04The Great East Window, completed in 1408 and based on the book of Revelation, was a reminder
06:10of the time when the terrors of the Last Judgment were ever present.
06:14If you look up there at the apex of the window, you can see the words, ego, some alpha et
06:24omega.
06:25The alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
06:33There, down there, if you care to look, is the Whore of Babylon, Mother of Harlots, sitting
06:43on the Red Beast with her harlot attendants.
06:46You can just make out the words, mater fornication.
06:54Mother of Harlots.
06:56There he is, and who adored us in all layers.
07:01And there, the dead, rising to judgment.
07:10And there, the consignment of the wicked of all classes to hell.
07:24The lake that burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death.
07:39Only half a mile away, the prophecies of the end of the world were being taken literally.
07:47What for John Brown was an object of fascination and study, was for another a matter of life and death.
08:08Jonathan Martin, a former tanner, had taken lodgings in York.
08:13For him, the Church of England had become too worldly, but overly concerned with its
08:18own self-importance and comfort.
08:21Martin's big grudge against the clergy of his time is that they have become too enmeshed
08:29in worldly life.
08:31They are too much concerned with society and their place in society.
08:37St. Solomon, rejoice not against me, or by an enemy.
08:43The dean and the canons lived in extremely large houses, had very lush dinners, were
08:49part of the social scene, they were seen going to balls, they would be at concerts.
08:53And he saw this as absolutely anathema to what a clergyman ought to be doing.
08:58Awake, ye drunkards, and weep and howl.
09:03The Minster itself was the setting for secular musical concerts in the nave.
09:10Great social occasions, where people in their hundreds would turn up to fill the vast space
09:15of the cathedral.
09:19In the 19th century, it was not only Martin who objected that the cathedral was losing
09:24its way.
09:26As one Colonel Chumley wrote to the dean,
09:30I wish to make some remarks about the service on a Sunday evening.
09:34It is quite disgraceful to see the wanderers and lovemakers in every part of the cathedral,
09:40and when the anthem is finished, it is like the close of a theatre.
09:48The nave of the Minster, the large public area of the Minster, was not used for religious
09:55services at all, but was a promenading area.
09:59It was somewhere for the clergy and gentry to go for a nice walk on a Sunday afternoon
10:04in the dry, away from the mud of the city streets.
10:08It seemed to some that the Minster had forgotten its true spiritual purpose,
10:13exchanging the concerns of God for the concerns of men.
10:17The Minster was primarily open to clergy and gentry.
10:24It was not intended to be a place for ordinary people to turn up.
10:29If they wanted to sit in one of the pews for Edensong,
10:32they had to tip the verger to open the door at the end of it to unlock it.
10:37So it's very much about letting the right sort of people in
10:42and keeping what they saw as the wrong sort of people out.
10:47The judgment of God.
10:51Jonathan Martin believed that God would exact a terrible punishment
10:55unless the Church of England saw the error of its ways.
11:00As an act of duty, he resolved to warn them.
11:05On January 16th, 1829,
11:10Mr. and Mrs. James Butler's afternoon was interrupted
11:15by the appearance of a letter wrapped around a stone.
11:20Bafflement at how the letter got there was only increased by what it said.
11:26Hear the word of the Lord.
11:29Oh, you blind hypocrites and serpents
11:36and vipers of hell.
11:40Oh, you fools and greedy wolves.
11:43Your time is short.
11:46You will be punished.
11:50Vipers of hell.
11:53Oh, you fools and greedy wolves.
11:55Your time is short
11:58and the judgments of God is hanging over your...
12:03guilty heads.
12:06How can you escape the hottest place of hell?
12:12Your friend, J. Martin.
12:20Mr. Butler did what any self-respecting person would do
12:23in the face of such intemperate expression.
12:26He ignored it.
12:30He ignored it.
12:45Unaware of brewing trouble,
12:48John Brown attempted to crack the mason's code
12:51he believed was embedded in the minster.
12:54When Brown started his investigations,
12:58things medieval were not particularly fashionable.
13:02The fact that people had managed to build such astounding buildings,
13:06which, let's face it, still astound us today,
13:09was seen very much as the work of God,
13:12the hand of God working through man,
13:15and that was very much a perception of that period.
13:18There was still a very strong undercurrent
13:21that the reason that great cathedrals had been built,
13:24the way they'd been built, the fact that they were still standing
13:28was very much as being a physical statement on earth
13:31of the power of God.
13:34For John Brown, it was time for a new explanation,
13:37although he knew he would not find the answer
13:40in his meticulous drawings alone.
13:46He even joined the Freemasons
13:49in the hope that the craft secrets of the medieval builders
13:52might have been handed down through the generations.
13:56Brown gradually became convinced
13:59that the key to understanding the work of the Masons was geometry.
14:06He realised, I think, that a lot of the design work was done
14:10using, in a sense, very simple geometry,
14:13but on the basis of very simple use of geometrical forms,
14:17just using rulers and compasses.
14:20It was possible to create extraordinarily complex buildings,
14:24such as York Minster, from the drawing board.
14:29Good evening, good evening.
14:32Ah, James, I thought you'd like me here.
14:35Gentlemen, in respect of our...
14:38Brown believed he was on the edge of a breakthrough.
14:41He developed a geometrical scheme
14:44that he was convinced was the key to all the Masons' designs.
14:49As he explained to a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London,
14:54it was a geometrical scheme that had biblical authority.
14:58And it is an undeniable fact
15:01that the dimensions of the length and width of Noah's Ark,
15:05300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide,
15:08is strictly in accordance with those given in my geometrical scheme.
15:12No, not preposterous, sir.
15:14Not only Noah's Ark, but also the Ark of the Covenant
15:17and the House of the Lord, built by King Solomon.
15:20Preposterous.
15:24Stop.
15:28Just as Brown felt he was on the verge of cracking the Masonic code,
15:32something happened to change his work forever.
15:35Glory be to God!
15:37Glory be to God!
15:45The lake hath burned, and the fire hath brimmed still.
15:54A choirboy, Robert Swinbank, was the first to notice the smoke.
16:00The fire had already been raging for four hours.
16:03The sight of the cathedral ablaze
16:05was terrible to those who witnessed it.
16:12The fire had already been raging for four hours.
16:25The sight of the cathedral ablaze
16:27was terrible to those who witnessed it.
16:33The flames took hold of the place known as the choir,
16:36where the services were performed.
16:41They start trying to put the fire out,
16:44but they have very, very inadequate equipment.
16:49We're not thinking of anything like a modern fire service.
16:53We're thinking of fairly elderly people
16:56retained in the vicinity
16:59to turn up with a bucket of water.
17:03Which they then have to walk off and refill.
17:06But at that point,
17:08they seem to think that the fire is containable.
17:11But at that point,
17:13they seem to think that the fire is containable.
17:16And they don't realise just how dramatic the fire is going to be.
17:21One hour after the fire had first been noticed,
17:24the whole organ went up in flames.
17:28The organ apparently started to play on its own.
17:34And it emitted this sort of groaning, bellowing noise
17:38with no human agency.
17:41And it appears that the heat from the fire, the hot air,
17:44was actually being sucked up through the organ pipes
17:47and started emitting this noise on its own,
17:50which must have been a most extraordinary experience.
17:53There's this crashing with this terrible groaning
17:56and squeaking and pipes playing.
17:59It must have sounded like hell itself was opening up.
18:02The organ acts like a chimney
18:05and the fire shoots up to the roof
18:08and the roof catches ablaze.
18:11And at that point, they realise that potentially
18:14the whole cathedral could be ablaze.
18:18The Great East Window itself,
18:21with its scenes of the apocalypse, was under threat.
18:28Streams of molten lead poured from the roof.
18:32As the Minster clock struck nine,
18:35the fire took a new, dramatic turn.
18:38Smoke and ashes turned day into night.
18:41The roof of the choir had collapsed.
18:45When the fire had burnt itself out,
18:48its softest embers from the blaze
18:51had burned the fire to the ground.
18:59In a moment of silence,
19:02it was clear that the government had bought into the fire
19:05and decided to put it out.
19:08When the fire had burnt itself out, the choir end of the cathedral was left in ruins, a
19:19smouldering mass of charred wood and fallen stone.
19:26In the Times, the news came in the form of a letter.
19:31The fire is supposed to have proceeded from the negligence of some individuals in not
19:36putting the gas out safely.
19:39The first reports were that it was an accident, but then people remembered the warnings.
19:48Your friend, J. Martin.
19:59Jonathan Martin stands charged with having willfully set fire to York Minster.
20:05He is a cheerful, serene-looking man.
20:08He has the Northumberland brogue and an impediment to his speech.
20:14Now they remembered him, a man who could sometimes be seen with black leather cape riding on
20:21the back of an ass.
20:25There's a very strong reaction in the city to find Jonathan Martin and to make him pay.
20:32A huge manhunt is launched to track him down, and they want vengeance.
20:38They want this man tried.
20:39They want him hung.
20:41They're not looking for Christian forgiveness and understanding.
20:44They're looking for revenge.
20:53After the devastation of the fire came the arduous task of clearing up.
20:58For John Brown, it was a deplorable loss.
21:10By some miracle, the Great East Window had been left standing, but the massive pillars
21:19of magnesium limestone had been eaten away by the flames.
21:32The wooden choir stalls, the pulpit, the archbishop's throne and the organ, all destroyed.
21:44The entire 14th century oak vault that had once formed the ceiling had collapsed, leaving
21:50nothing but sky.
21:53Horrible.
21:55Wretched fanatic.
21:59But John Brown's greatest surprise was not to be found above his head, but below it.
22:13As the workers cleared away the debris, they made a remarkable discovery.
22:22They had found the top of a column, evidence of a hidden structure beneath the floor.
22:36Excited by their find, they began to dig down.
22:40He wouldn't have known whether he was digging through the roof of something that was suddenly
22:45going to fall into a void or a vault, or quite what he was going to find.
22:52You can really imagine his excitement as slowly this huge column becomes uncovered.
22:56Is it the only one?
22:57Is it attached to anything?
22:58Where does it go?
22:59What's under there?
23:08Spurred on by the discovery of these old abandoned structures, Brown continued the excavation
23:13under the choir.
23:17Suddenly he was presented with this opportunity, this golden opportunity to do the unthinkable
23:22really, to dig up a floor in a church and to keep digging down to see what was underneath
23:29it.
23:30They dug down and they started discovering bits of the cathedral buried beneath the ground,
23:35which had never been imagined before.
23:37Nobody had the faintest idea that these things were there, so it must have been tremendously
23:41exciting to dig down and find bits of York Minster underground, which had not been seen
23:46for hundreds of years.
23:49The extent of the excavation would, I'm sure, astound people today.
23:54Once he discovered the column, he effectively digs up almost the entire choir area, and
24:02he does it in an approach which actually preserved by our standards quite a lot.
24:13He's actually stripping back the layers, so he is exposing whole layers of archaeology
24:19at each stage.
24:21But the extent of it and the manner of it, it's pretty rough and ready stuff.
24:25It's men with pickaxes and shovels.
24:31As they continued digging, they began to find old walls of unusual stonework, stonework
24:37that no one had seen in the current Gothic building.
24:42They started examining these walls and it was quite clear that the quality of the masonry
24:47was much cruder than the Gothic church, and the walls did not line up with the Gothic
24:53church.
24:54So, clearly, there was something here which had not previously been imagined.
25:02Galvanized by their curiosity, they pressed on.
25:06But they were in an area full of bones and were haunted by the fear of violating the
25:10chambers of the dead.
25:14But in those old walls, they had already found the remains of the dead.
25:18Not the bones of men, but the skeleton of the building that had stood there before.
25:27What he had found, in fact, was the remains of the very first post-Norman conquest building
25:34erected from the 1070s onwards.
25:37The first great, large-scale building at Yorkminster, which underlies everything that we now see.
25:45He knew that any of this survived, and the significance of what he discovered is still
25:51being discussed to this day.
25:55As Brown unearthed his great discovery, the person who had made it all possible was unearthed
26:01himself.
26:07Feelings were running high.
26:09Many were demanding that Jonathan Martin be hanged for burning down the Minster.
26:14There were great concerns about civil unrest, about a mob descending and basically taking
26:20Martin to natural justice.
26:24There were suggestions that he could be hung from the city walls in the manner of a traitor.
26:38If anger was roused, so was curiosity.
26:42It was the interest of the public, and visitors were granted admission just to stare at Martin
26:47through the window.
26:50Martin becomes a celebrity.
26:53Once they start allowing people to visit him in jail, the reports say that hundreds of
27:00people are coming in, and it's, you know, polite members of society, and Martin's sort
27:07of shaking hands with more polite people than he ever has in his life.
27:09Remember, this guy is a tanner, which is one of the most stinking, horrible trades
27:14that you possibly could be doing in the early 19th century.
27:20It's a sort of a zoo mentality, you know, let's go and have a look at the madman, let's
27:23go and see him.
27:24You know, you can almost imagine people sort of poking him through the bars to see if he'll
27:28respond.
27:32Martin did not seem sorry for what he'd done.
27:36A young lady asked him,
27:36Do you not have any regrets for what you've done, sir?
27:40No, not at all.
27:42It may make them stand and consider their ways.
27:46All those that are truly converted will think I did right enough.
27:51Martin was an enigma.
27:54Why did he do it?
27:56The people of York did not need to wait long for an answer.
28:03The trial took place only seven weeks after his arrest.
28:07The prospect of Martin in the witness box turned out to be the hottest ticket in town.
28:13The trial of Jonathan Martin was the event of the decade.
28:19Everybody wanted to go, everybody as anybody wanted to be seen there and to be there and
28:23to hear what was said.
28:25And they were actually issuing tickets to let people in because they were worried about
28:29the number of people and the crush of people turning up.
28:35It's all right.
28:53Jonathan Martin seemed cheered by the great hullabaloo and public interest.
29:01He's made as much noise as Napoleon Bonaparte ever did, I think.
29:09Quite a number of the newspaper entries are very detailed accounts of what people are wearing,
29:16who said what, you know, Martin stands up and says this.
29:19So there was tremendous appetite, much in the same way as there is in a lot of our press today,
29:24tremendous appetite for every gory detail, but everybody wanted to be there.
29:29Jonathan Martin.
29:31You stand indicted for that you, the said Jonathan Martin, did unlawfully, maliciously.
29:38Not maliciously, sir.
29:42Maliciously and feloniously did set fire to the Cathedral Church of St. Peter of York.
29:50What say you, Jonathan Martin?
29:52Are you guilty or not guilty of the offense by this indictment laid to your charge?
29:58It was not me, my Lord, but my God did it.
30:05It was reported that he seemed perfectly unconcerned at his situation, his countenance placid,
30:12and that a smile passed occasionally over his lips.
30:17It turned out that there had been not one, but five warnings.
30:23On the 27th of December, on one of the gates of the choir was found a letter which I will read to you,
30:31to which unfortunately no attention was paid at the time.
30:36That letter is in the prisoner's own handwriting.
30:45It is extremely ill-spelt.
30:48It was found stuck up on one of the gates over which he went into the choir.
30:53It is in these words.
30:55I write, oh, clergymen, to you to warn you to fly from the wrath to come,
31:04you blind guides and deceivers of the Poetia.
31:13How can you escape the damnations of hell?
31:17I warn you to repent and cry for mercy, for the sword of justice is at hand,
31:27and your great churches...
31:29I wrote five letters, sir.
31:32And your great churches and ministers will come rattling down upon your guilty heads.
31:43Martin seems throughout his religious career to have had a habit of pinning up letters on church doors,
31:50denouncing the clergy.
31:53One of the things he is convinced of is that the clergy are not doing their appointed role.
32:02They're offering the wrong kind of spiritual guidance.
32:06They're false guides.
32:08And also that they don't have the right kind of services because it doesn't come from the heart.
32:22It was Martin's turn to speak.
32:25His chance to explain why he had set fire to the cathedral.
32:30I dreamt that there was a wonderful thick cloud came from the heavens and rested upon the cathedral.
32:38Then it rolled over and rested on the lodgings where I slept at.
32:42The house shook wonderfully so that I was awakened out of my sleep.
32:48I was surprised and I was astonished.
32:52We had dreams, and one of the dreams is of a big black cloud over the minster,
33:05which then moves across York to the house where he's staying.
33:10And it's from that he wakes up and he realizes that this is a sign
33:18that there is going to be smoke and fire over the minster and that it's his responsibility to do this.
33:25And I prayed to the Lord and I asked the Lord what it meant.
33:31And I was told by the Lord that I was to destroy the cathedral.
33:37On account of the clergy going to plays and balls and playing at cards and drinking wine,
33:46it was fulfilling the will of God according to the prophecy of Joel
33:52that there should be seen signs in the heavens, blood and fire and vapors and smoke and so on.
34:00One strand of his ranting, if you like,
34:03is this attack upon the fat, indulgent, luxurious clergy.
34:10There's a big thing about fat clergy.
34:13The minster and its clergy would have been perceived by a lot of people in that courtroom
34:17as being very aloof, very elite, possibly had it coming to them.
34:34Martin told the court that on the day of the fire, he'd attended a service at the minster.
34:40After last prayers that afternoon, I thought, it did not come from their hearts.
34:49They are men and their prayers, the organ, such a noise of buzz, buzz,
35:01said I, I'll have thee down tonight and thou shalt buzz no more.
35:13Martin explained that he had hid behind a pillar, only emerging once everyone had gone.
35:20All was darkness. I could not see my hands in front of me.
35:24I did not know where to go at first.
35:28I went into the main body of the cathedral and I asked my Lord God what to do first.
35:35And he told me to go to the bell loft.
35:41And the Lord said, strike a light.
35:52I had a little piece of flint in my landlord's tinderbox with me.
35:58I saw plenty of rope and I took out a razor that I brought with me and I cut a piece.
36:03I kept drawing and drawing until I had nearly a hundred feet.
36:08And I took it and I made a scaling rope out of it and I tied knots in it.
36:13With this rope, Martin said he scaled the interior gates into the choir.
36:18Once over the gates, he'd arrived at the most sacred part of the cathedral.
36:24I began to look about me and then I saw gold and tassels and fringes and fine velvet.
36:34And I began to ask the Lord, what shall I make of them?
36:38And the Lord said, make unto thyself a robe like David the king and put the fringe at the bottom of it.
36:46Then asked I, what am I to make of the tassels?
36:51Said the Lord, put them upon your cap.
36:55Glory be to God! Glory be to God!
37:03It is a wonder that they did not hear me outside, for I prayed very loud.
37:09And I was so happy, I cried, glory be to God!
37:15Glory be to God! Glory be to God!
37:24I am, however, tired talking. Otherwise, I would tell you a bit more.
37:30Everyone knew that if Martin was found guilty of criminally setting fire to the minster, he would be hanged.
37:39John Brown
37:44Whatever the fate of Jonathan Martin, the fire he had started had provided John Brown with the opportunity of a lifetime.
37:51The challenge for Brown now was to make sense of his new discoveries.
37:57The remains of the ancient crypt which have been discovered correspond with the earliest Norman work in England.
38:07And no doubt can be reasonably entertained that they are the remains of the church built by Archbishop Thomas.
38:17The old Norman cathedral that once stood where the current Gothic cathedral stands today was built by Thomas of Bayeux in 1080.
38:30Before Brown made his discoveries, it was thought that all trace of it had gone forever.
38:37Brown tried to figure out dimensions of the newly discovered walls and foundations.
38:43Although his work was flawed, we now know the Norman building was huge.
38:50The Normans come along and build this immense structure, far higher than anything they'd seen before.
38:57And it was a massive structure.
39:00This huge barn-like nave where most of the people would have gone in most of the time, dominating the city.
39:08The Norman building was wide enough to fit its rival, Canterbury, inside it.
39:16And the Norman cathedral was built about as wide as it was possible to build.
39:21Because the Norman cathedral was so large that it was impossible to build it from the ground up.
39:27It was as wide as it was possible to build.
39:30Because it's almost impossible to find a timber long enough to build anything wider than that.
39:38If you have a building that's 45 feet wide, you need a tree trunk that's 45 feet of straight timber plus several feet at either end to sit on top of the wall.
39:49And that's about as big a timber as you can find in this country.
39:54The dimensions of the old Norman cathedral provided a crucial insight into the structure of the building that stands today.
40:02The scale of York Minster as designed in the Norman period fundamentally determines everything you see now.
40:12And this is why York Minster to this day is so immensely wide.
40:17Because when the Gothic cathedral was built, they placed the Gothic columns on the foundations of the Norman cathedral.
40:26And since the Norman cathedral itself was very wide to start with, this meant that the dimensions of the Gothic cathedral were equally wide.
40:36And so it's a hidden skeleton, if you like, running underneath the Gothic cathedral.
40:43The original intention was to build the nave vault in stone, as was the norm.
40:51But as was apparent from the ashes of the burnt out choir, the vaults of the Minster had not been built in stone, but in wood.
41:00Now the question is, why did they not build a stone vault and why did they settle for a wooden vault?
41:07And a very likely answer is that they were afraid that the stone vault would not stand up.
41:13They knew perfectly well that if they pushed the stone vault beyond the limits of their current understanding,
41:21they were moving into unknown territory and they might end up with a collapse.
41:28John Brown's discoveries had revealed something unexpected.
41:32The role of the Minster in its own misfortune.
41:36But if it's true that the cathedral was so big that the masons took fright at building the vault in stone,
41:41then perhaps the Minster was too ambitious for its own good.
41:45It had a built-in fatal flaw.
41:49The scale of the building and the ambition of the building are one of the great achievements of York Minster.
41:55But because it could only be achieved with wooden vaults, it has an Achilles heel built into it, if you like.
42:02And this has resulted in a series of catastrophic fires through the centuries,
42:07which have successfully burnt down most of the arms of York Minster.
42:13In the court of Assizes, the issue before the jury was whether Martin was sane or insane.
42:19His only chance of avoiding the hangman's noose was if he was found to be mad.
42:25A key witness for the prosecution was Mrs. Lawn, Jonathan Martin's old landlady.
42:31At the time you saw him, you think he was perfectly rational?
42:35Yeah.
42:36You never saw anything in him like one deranged?
42:40No.
42:41He was perfectly sound?
42:43Yeah.
42:44Perfectly sensible?
42:45Yes.
42:46Perfectly likeable?
42:48Yes.
42:49According to my judgement.
42:51Mrs. Lawn was one of several witnesses who testified that Martin seemed perfectly normal, perfectly sane.
42:58His friends didn't realise they could be condemning him to die.
43:03It's clear that many people found Martin a perfectly rational individual.
43:11It's clear that many people found Martin a perfectly rational individual.
43:20And Martin is quite clearly able to function quite effectively in a variety of jobs,
43:29in a variety of towns, for long periods of time.
43:34And so there's a certain plausibility to saying that he is sane.
43:44Dr. Caleb Williams was one of several doctors to visit Martin in prison to assess his sanity.
43:51Martin did not want to be judged insane, but his brother had hired an eminent barrister to defend him.
43:58It was his brief to convince the jury that Martin was mad.
44:03In the first place, I would ask you what appears to you to be his state of mind.
44:10I would consider him to be what is denominated a monomaniac.
44:15A monomania is a degree or species of insanity that is confined to one idea only,
44:23or to one train of ideas upon one particular subject.
44:27The important thing about monomania in the early 19th century, as it's used,
44:32is that a monomaniac is just insane on one topic.
44:38Rest of the world and rest of topics, he's going to be perfectly rational,
44:44capable of planning, capable of functioning, and for long periods of time being lucid.
44:49But in the case of Martin, they say, on matters of religion,
44:54he's suffering from these delusions and these delusions of being spoken to by God.
44:59How was the eye?
45:01The eye was red.
45:03I need hardly ask you whether persons acquainted with medical subjects of this sort
45:08look to the eye of the patient as a test of their state of mind.
45:13The eye is frequently observed, certainly, and the countenance generally.
45:19When he talked upon religion, his eye became glassy and pupil much dilated.
45:27When he was excited, it betrayed a great deal of monomaniacal expression.
45:33The medics who appear in Martin's defence claim that they've got special expertise
45:39in being able to read physical signs,
45:44and some of the things that they appeal to seem pretty strange to the modern lay reader
45:52and probably wouldn't be easily recognised by early 21st century psychiatry.
45:58And they say that because we've got long experience of working with the insane,
46:05we know and can interpret these kinds of signs.
46:09How was he as to his pulse?
46:12The pulse was uncommonly hard and not very frequent.
46:17I examined the state of the heart, but I found the action of the heart did not account for the strong pulse.
46:24I therefore attributed it to his delusion and to the state of his mind.
46:31Is it your opinion that he is of sound or of unsound mind?
46:37Of unsound mind, most undoubtedly.
46:42Martin really resents his defence strategy.
46:47He wants to emphasise he's not mad.
46:50He says he's an agent of God.
46:54God wouldn't choose a madman to do his work.
46:59It was not only Jonathan Martin that was on trial at the criminal court of Assizes.
47:04Fanaticism itself was in the dark.
47:08Madman or prophet?
47:11As the jury went out, Martin's life hung in the balance.
47:17It took the jury just seven minutes to reach their verdict.
47:32Brown's mission was not over.
47:36The discoveries after the fire led him to delve further into the history of York Minster.
47:42And he began to investigate the old and neglected archives of the cathedral.
47:47It was here he made one final discovery.
47:53He spent hours in archives, looking through all the medieval sources that he could find,
48:01pouring over these crumbling documents which were very difficult to read in many cases,
48:06very uncomfortable.
48:08And he spent years going through all this material which had never been published.
48:13So the only way of accessing it was to go and sit in the archive room
48:17and read it for hours and hours and hours.
48:20In these archives, Brown stumbled across an extraordinary set of old manuscripts,
48:25documents that had been long forgotten.
48:31He starts pulling out these rolls that, because they've been back against the wall,
48:36some are very badly affected by damp, some of them have rotted,
48:39and he's literally pulling these rolls out of the cupboard and unrolling them,
48:43saying, you know, what are these, what are we here?
48:46These documents, dating from 1370,
48:49revealed how the money was spent on the building of the Minster.
48:54Detailed accounts on parchment.
48:57They were stitched together to form long rolls.
49:02At long last, in his hands, he had the key to understanding
49:06the way the Minster had been built, day by day.
49:11The fabric rolls really show us the sharp end of how you build a medieval cathedral.
49:16They detail people being paid for so many days,
49:20they detail people's role and status,
49:23and they're really the reality of the building.
49:27They're as far away as you can get from the whole mythical idea
49:32of stone trees rising up to heaven and supporting a celestial roof.
49:38They are the absolute, you wake up on a Monday morning,
49:41you get up, you do this bit of wall,
49:43your friend the plasterer is paid to plaster that bit,
49:46your mother is paid to wash the cloths that have been keeping the plaster wet
49:51while you've been working on something else.
49:53It's the absolute daily grind of how to build a cathedral.
49:59In the fragments of dry old parchments,
50:02the real lives of the medieval masons whispered down through the centuries.
50:08They may drink in the lodge in the afternoon,
50:11as long as they do not leave their work for longer than it would take to walk half a mile.
50:19The regulations for masons spelled out the rules
50:22that govern the working lives of the medieval builders.
50:25If masons want to eat before noon,
50:29they must not leave the lodge for longer than would be noticed by a watchful person.
50:37Anyone who breaks these rules will be cursed by God and St. Peter.
50:44There is a whole raft of rules about how the amount of drink,
50:49the amount of ale that they have is quite strictly regulated
50:52because they don't drink water because it's not fit to drink.
50:55But then they have a whole raft of rules about how drunk you can be
50:58while you're still working and how you're not allowed to swear
51:01when you're working on the minstrel,
51:03you're not allowed to start fights when you're at work.
51:06And it does paint this picture of really rather a rowdy crowd
51:10who needs some pretty strong controlling really.
51:14As Brown delved further into the archives,
51:17he found evidence for his old theory about the way the cathedrals were built.
51:24Items in the lodge, 7th January 1399.
51:3396 iron chisels, 24 mallets, 2 tracing boards, 1 iron compass.
51:45He finds things like compasses and dividers
51:50and from that he realises that these people are not just jobbing labourers
51:58who stumble across a way of doing something or by some miracle this building grows,
52:03that these are people that understand how you can use geometry
52:07to create these great spans and spaces, these great heights.
52:12And he argues that really in the face of a general belief
52:16that everybody in the Middle Ages was really a little bit thick
52:20and didn't understand and it was all a miracle and it was all magic.
52:24Brown had in his hands documents showing that the medieval masons
52:28had used geometry in their designs.
52:36Gentlemen of the jury, are you agreed on your verdict?
52:40Do you find the prisoner, Jonathan Martin,
52:43guilty or not guilty of the crime charged in this indictment?
52:48We find him guilty but consider that he was insane at the time that he committed the act.
52:57Then, gentlemen of the jury, your verdict must be not guilty.
53:05On the grounds of insanity.
53:10Martin was spared the hangman's noose, but he was not a free man.
53:15Instead, he was committed to the lunatic asylum known as Bedlam.
53:21He spent the rest of his days locked up where he worked on apocalyptic drawings
53:26predicting that God would burn down the cathedrals of England.
53:46Brown was never able to prove that the masons' geometrical designs
53:50were based on biblical principles.
53:54Despite his conviction that he had found the Masonic key
53:57that lay behind Noah's Ark, the Temple of Solomon and the Minster itself,
54:02this work languished unpublished and never gained the acceptance he craved.
54:08But his early discoveries of the Norman Cathedral
54:11revealed that in one way, he might have been right.
54:16Well, thanks to the measurements taken by John Brown following the 1829 fire
54:21and others that we've been able to add subsequently,
54:24we now have a good idea of the dimensions of the Norman Cathedral.
54:29And some of these on paper look very peculiar,
54:32like 25 feet 5 1⁄2 inches seems a very odd dimension.
54:37But there is one dimension which stands out from all the rest,
54:40which seems not to be a random dimension,
54:44and that is the dimension of the internal length of the transepts,
54:49which is exactly 144 feet.
54:59Now, the number 144 has a profound significance
55:03in the Bible.
55:05And in the Book of Revelation,
55:07it is the number associated with the heavenly Jerusalem,
55:11with heaven, if you like.
55:13And every church on Earth was, in a sense, an image, a vision,
55:18an anticipation of the heavenly Jerusalem.
55:23So it cannot be a coincidence
55:25that one of the fundamental dimensions in the Norman Cathedral
55:30is exactly 144 feet.
55:36Even more intriguingly,
55:38the design of the Norman Minster itself
55:41is related to that key number, 144.
55:47If you analyse the dimensions in York Minster,
55:50it turns out that strange-looking dimensions
55:53like 25 feet 5 1⁄2 inches
55:55are in fact in a very precise geometric relationship
56:00to the fundamental dimension of 144 feet.
56:04So all the dimensions within the Minster
56:07are in fact related geometrically
56:11to that one key symbolic dimension.
56:18A piece of wood under each foot to keep out the cold.
56:22John Brown had been virtually bankrupted
56:25by his lifelong obsession with the Minster.
56:32Until the end of his days,
56:34he could be seen at the huge oak doors
56:37selling his guide to the cathedral.
56:42The legacy of John Brown lives on.
56:45The old pillars that he discovered
56:47under the floor of the burnt-out choir
56:50can be seen today.
56:54And in the room where the medieval masons worked,
56:57it's just possible to make out some of the lines of their designs
57:01etched into the floor.
57:07There are even footprints of their dogs.
57:11After the fire in 1829,
57:13the choir was rebuilt in the precise image
57:16of the original medieval design.
57:19York Minster is still a vast, magnificent edifice,
57:23and its wooden vaults remain to this day its Achilles' heel.
57:30VW.
57:36VW.
57:39VW.
57:43VW.
57:47VW.
57:51VW.
57:55VW.
57:59Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen,