it is at present. Then the abbey walls, crenellated and with towers
at intervals, were still standing in complete circuit, and the abbey
church, the second finest in the county and diocese, though unroofed,
was still erect. The houses, slate-hung in quaint patterns representing
fleurs-de-lis, oak leaves, swallow-tails, pomegranates, with gables to
the street, were very different from the present houses, stuccoed drab
and destitute of taste. Moreover the absurd, gaunt market hall erected
last century was not a central and conspicuous disfigurement to the
town.
But a few strides to the west, on the Plymouth road, stood Fitzford
House, a mansion recently erected, consisting of a court, entered
through a massive gate-house, and the mansion standing back, with porch
and projecting wings.
In this house lived the Fitz family. They had been there for four
generations and had married well. They were also well estated, with
property in Cornwall, in Kent and Southwark, as well as in Devon.
John Fitz, the father of the man whose tragic history we are about to
relate, married Mary, daughter of Sir John Sydenham, of Brimpton, in
Somerset, and had late in life one son, the “unfortunate” Sir John.
The Fitzes had been a family bred to the law; the first known of them,
John Fitz, had been a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, and the John Fitz who
married Mary Sydenham was also a counsellor-at-law, and he managed
considerably to add to the wealth of the family. When he had got as
much as he wanted out of the pockets of his clients, he retired to his
family place of Fitzford and there amused himself with astrology and
the casting of horoscopes. When his son John was about to be born in
1575, John Fitz studied the stars, and, says Prince, “finding at that
time a very unlucky position of the heavens, he desired the midwife, if
possible, to hinder the birth but for one hour; which, not being to be
done, he declared that the child would come to an unhappy end and undo
the family.”
John Fitz was riding over the moor one day with his wife, when they
lost their direction, were, in fact, pixy-led, and they floundered
through bogs, and could nowhere hit on the packhorse track that led
across the moors from Moreton Hampstead to Tavistock. Exhausted and
parched with thirst they lighted on a crystal stream, dismounted, and
drank copiously of the water. Not only were they refreshed, but at
once John Fitz’s eyes were opened, the spell on him was undone, and
he knew where he was and which direction he should take. Thereupon
he raised his hand and vowed he would honour that well, so that such
travellers as were pixy-led might drink at it and dispel the power over
them exercised by the pixies. The spring still flows and rises under
a granite structure erected in fulfilment of his vow by John Fitz; it
bears his initials and the date 1568 in raised figures and letters on
the covering stone. Formerly it was on a slope in the midst of moorland
away from the main track, near the Blackabrook. Now it is enclosed in
the reclaimed tract made into meadows by the convicts of Princetown.
Happily the structure has not been destroyed: it is surrounded by a
protecting wall.
In the same year that John Fitz erected this well, he obtained a lease
to carry water in pipes of wood or of lead through the garden of one
John Northcott to his mansion at Fitzford. The little house that he
built over the spring in his close, called Boughthayes, still stands,
picturesquely wreathed in ivy.
He died 8 January, 1589-90, aged sixty-one, and by his will made his
wife executrix and guardian of his son, who was then rather over
fourteen years old. There is a stately monument in Tavistock Parish
Church to John Fitz and his wife, he clothed in armour, which in life
he probably never wore, as he was a man of the long robe. The effigies
are recumbent, and by them is a smaller, kneeling figure of the son and
heir--their only child, the “unfortunate” John Fitz. But the widow did
not have charge of her son; as a ward under the Queen he was committed
to Sir Arthur Gorges, “who tended more to the good of the child than
his own private profit,” which was perhaps unusual. Mary Fitz retired
to Walreddon, near Tavistock, another house belonging to the family,
for her initials “M. F.” and the date 1591 are cut in granite over the
doorway. But presently she married Christopher Harris, of Radford, when
she moved to his house near Plymouth.
The young John Fitz is described as having been “a very comlie person.”
He was married, before he had attained his majority, to Bridget, sixth
daughter of Sir William Courtenay. Of this marriage one child, Mary,
was born 1 August, 1596, when her father was just twenty-one years old.
John Fitz was now of age, considered himself free of all restraint,
owner of large estates, and was without stability of character or any
principle, and was inclined to a wild life. He took up his residence at
Fitzford, and roystered and racketed at his will.
One day (it was 4 June, 1599) he was dining at Tavistock with some of
his friends and neighbours. The hour was early, for in the account of
it we are told that “with great varietie of merriments and discourse
they outstript the noontide.”
John Fitz had drunk a good deal of wine, and he began to brag of his
possessions, and boasted that he had not a foot of land that was not
his freehold. Among those present was Nicholas Slanning, of Bickleigh.
He interrupted Fitz, and said, “That is not so. You hold of me a
parcel of land that is copyhold, and though of courtesy it has been
intermitted, yet of due, you owe me so much a year for that land.”
John started from his seat, and told Slanning to his face that he lied,
and mad with rage, drew his dagger and would have stabbed him. Slanning
with a knife beat down Fitz’s blade, and the friends at the table threw
themselves between them and patched up the quarrel as they supposed.
Nicholas Slanning then left the apartment and departed for Bickleigh
with his man, both being on horseback.
They had not ridden far when they came to a deep and rough descent,
whereupon Slanning bade his man lead the horses, and he dismounting
walked through a field where the way was easier.
At that moment he saw John Fitz with four attendants galloping along
the lane after him. Without ado, Slanning awaited the party and
inquired of John Fitz what he desired of him. Fitz replied that he had
followed that he might avenge the insult offered him. Thereupon Fitz
called to his men, and they drew their blades and fell on Slanning, who
had to defend himself against five men. The matter might even then
have been composed, but one of Fitz’s men, named Cross, twitted his
master, saying, “What play is this? It is child’s play. Come, fight!”
Fitz, who had sheathed his sword, drew it again and attacked Slanning.
The latter had long spurs, and stepping back they caught in a tuft of
grass, and as he staggered backward, Fitz ran him through the body. At
the same time, one of Fitz’s men struck him from behind. Slanning fell
to the ground and died. He was conveyed home, and buried in Bickleigh
Church, where his monument still exists, but in a mutilated condition.
It was of plaster, and when the church was “restored” fell to pieces;
but the curious Latin inscription has been preserved.
[Illustration: SLANNING’S OAK
_From an oil painting by A. B. Collier, 1855_]
Nicholas Slanning had been married to Margaret, daughter of Henry
Champernowne, of Modbury, and he died leaving as his heir a child,
and the administration of his estates was committed to that son’s
great-uncle. Of Ley, the fine Slanning place, nothing now remains
except the balls that stood on the entrance gates, that have been
transferred to the vicarage garden at Bickleigh. The situation was
incomparably beautiful, and it is to be regretted that the grand old
Elizabethan mansion has been levelled with the dust. Sir Nicholas
Slanning, created a baronet in 1663, moved to Maristowe in Tamerton
Foliot, but the second and last baronet died without issue in 1700, and
in 1798 John Modyford Heywood, who inherited the extensive Slanning
estates through a female line, sold them all to Sir Manasseh Lopes, a
Portuguese Jew diamond merchant, who had obtained a baronetcy by buying
up rotten boroughs in Cornwall and putting in members whose votes could
be relied on by the ministry of the day. The baronetcy was created in
1805. The first baronet was the son of Mordecai Lopes, of Jamaica.
“Great,” we are informed, “was the lamentation that the countryside
made for the death of so beloved a gentleman as Maister Slanning was.”
John Fitz, then aged twenty-four, escaped to the Continent and stayed
in France, until the exertions of his wife and mother succeeded in
December, 1599, in procuring a pardon for him; whereupon he returned
home, unsubdued by the past, insolent, riotous, and haughty. At the
coronation of James I, 1603, he was knighted, not for any services
done to the Crown or State, but because he was of good family, well
connected, and with property.
He returned to Fitzford, where, finding his wife and child something
of a drag upon him in his wild and dissipated career, he turned them
out of doors, and his wife had to go for shelter to her father. Left
now to himself and his evil associates, “Men of dissolute and desperate
fortunes,” chief among whom was “Lusty Jacke, one whose deedes were
indeed meane, whose qualities altogether none,” he behaved in such sort
that “the Towne of Tavistocke, though otherwise orderly governed with
sobriety, and likewise of grave magistrates, was thereby infected with
the beastly corruption of drunkenesse. Sir John, of his own inclination
apte, and by his retained copesmates urged, persevered evermore to
run headlong into such enormities as their sensuality and pleasures
inclined unto, spending their time in riotous surfettinge and in all
abominable drunkenness, plucking men by night out of their beddes,
violently breaking windows, quarrelling with ale-conners [ale-tasters],
fighting in private brables amongst themselves. And when they had
abused the townsmen and disturbed their neighbours, Sir John’s own
house was their sanctuary or receptacle to cloak their outrages; so as
it seemed they lyved as, in time of old, the common outlaws of the
land did, neither worshipping God nor honouringe Prince, but wholly
subject to their contentes alone.”
According to Prince, about this time Fitz committed another murder; but
what seems to be better authenticated is that he all but killed one of
the town constables.
In the summer of 1605, Sir John Fitz was summoned to London to appear
before the courts, in answer to a claim of compensation for their
father’s murder, made by the children of Nicholas Slanning, the eldest
of whom, Gamaliel, was now about eighteen years old. He set out on
horseback, attended by a servant. Dissipation had weakened his mind
and shattered his nerves. He was in deadly alarm. Not only would he
be heavily fined for the assassination of Slanning, but he had been
playing ducks and drakes with his property which had been settled by
deed of 20 March, 1598-9, on his wife, and he expected to be called
to task for this by Sir William Courtenay, his wife’s father. He
took it into his head that his life was in danger, that the friends
and kinsfolk of Slanning would ambuscade and murder him; that Sir W.
Courtenay would be willing to have him put out of the way so as to
save the property from being further dissipated. At every point on his
journey he showed himself suspicious of being waylaid or pursued. Every
day his fancies became more disordered.
At length he reached Kingston-on-Thames, and put up for the night
there. But he could not sleep, noises disturbed him, and rising from
his bed he insisted on the servant getting ready his nag, and away he
rode over Kingston Bridge, alone, having peremptorily forbidden his man
to accompany him, entertaining some suspicion that the man had been
bought by his enemies and would lead him into a trap. He drew up at
the “Anchor,” a small tavern at Twickenham, kept by one Daniel Alley;
it was now 2 a.m., and all Twickenham was asleep. He hammered at the
door and shouted; presently the casement opened, and the publican put
out his head and inquired what the gentleman wanted. Sir John demanded
a bed and shelter for the rest of the night. Daniel Alley begged to be
excused, he had no spare room, his house was small and not fitted for
the reception of persons of quality. However, on Sir John’s further
insistence he put on his clothes, struck a light, descended, and did
his utmost to make the nocturnal visitor comfortable, even surrendering
to him his own bed, and sending his wife to sleep with the children.
Sir John cast himself on the bed. He tossed; and host and hostess
heard him cry out, and speak of enemies who pursued him and sought his
blood. There was no sleeping for Daniel or his wife, and the host rose
at dawn to join a neighbour in mowing a meadow. But when he was about
to go forth, his wife begged not to be left in the house alone with
the strange gentleman. The neighbour came up, and he and Alley spoke
together at the door. Their voices reached Sir John, who had fallen
into a disordered sleep. Persuaded that the enemies were arrived and
were surrounding the house, he rushed out in his nightgown, with his
sword drawn, fell on his host, and killed him. Then he ran his sword
against the wife, wounding her. But now, with the gathering light, he
discovered what he had done, and in a fit of despair stabbed himself in
two places. He was secured now by neighbours who had come up, and taken
to the bed he had just quitted. A surgeon was sent for, and his wounds
were bound up. But Sir John angrily refused the assistance of the
leech, and tore away the bandages, and bled to death.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO “THE BLOUDIE BOOKE; OR THE TRAGICAL END
OF SIR JOHN FITZ”]
Daniel Alley was buried on the 8th day of August, 1605, and Sir
John Fitz on the 10th, and “because he was a Gentleman borne and of
good kindred, hee was buried in the Chancell at Twickenham.” The
representative of the Fitz family was now his little daughter Mary,
whose story is also sufficiently curious to deserve a place here.
The authority for the story of Sir John Fitz’s death is _The Bloudie
Booke; or, the Tragical End of Sir John Fitz_. London, 1605. Probably
enough written by a chaplain to the Earl of Northumberland, then at
Sion House, who hearing of what had happened, sent this chaplain to
Twickenham, and to Sir John, at the “Anchor,” “To put him in mind what
he had done and persuade him to repent.”
LADY HOWARD
The Earl of Northumberland had shown himself solicitous for the welfare
of the soul of Sir John Fitz when he heard of the murder and suicide
at Twickenham; he was even more solicitous over his estate. He was
aware that Sir John had left an only daughter, still a child, who was
with her mother at Radford. He posted up to London at once, saw the
King, and bought of him the wardship of the little orphan for £465,
to be paid in instalments, and raised out of the estate of the little
heiress, who was then aged nine years and one week.
“The law of wardship,” says Mrs. G. Radford, “seems so cruel and
tyrannical that it is wonderful that it should have endured so long. By
it, when any man who held land _in capite_, or direct from the Crown,
died, his heir, if a minor, belonged to the king, who had a right to
receive all rents and profits from these lands until the heir became
of age. He could also marry the ward to whom he would. Henry VIII
established the Court of Wards and Liveries, the number of estates held
_in capite_ being so great that some organized system was necessary.
By it the wardship and marriage of minors were sold to the highest
bidder, who was sometimes the child’s mother or the executors of the
father’s will. But if they were not very prompt in applying, or did
not offer the largest sum, then to any stranger. The guardian would
have complete control over the ward, who generally lived in his
house, could marry the ward as he liked, this also being generally an
affair of money, and received the rents of the minor’s estate without
any liability to account.”[6]
[Illustration: LADY HOWARD]
Accordingly, at the age of nine, little Mary Fitz was taken from her
mother, but under whose charge she was placed at first does not appear.
A year or two later, she was living in the house of Lady Elizabeth
Hatton, second wife of Sir Edmund Coke, then Master of the Court of
Wards. At once the Earl of Northumberland sent his brother, Sir Allan
Percy, into Devon to look over the estates of Mary Fitz and make what
money he could out of them by felling timber.
Sir Allan was, apparently, quite satisfied with what he saw; he was a
needy man, and resolved on marrying the heiress, and this he did about
1608, when he was aged thirty-one and she twelve. But as she was so
young it was arranged that she should not live with her husband till
she reached a nubile age. She never did live with him, for he caught a
severe chill through lying on the damp ground when hot and tired with
hunting, and he died in November, 1611. She was the wealthiest heiress
in Devonshire, and the Earl of Suffolk schemed to obtain her for his
third son, Sir Thomas Howard. She was not only rich, but beautiful.
Her father had been a remarkably handsome man, and Lord Clarendon,
long after this date, speaks of her as “having been of extraordinary
beauty.” But she balked all schemers by running away with Thomas Darcy,
a young man of her own age, son of Lord Darcy, of Chiche, afterwards
Earl Rivers. Lord Darcy could not object to the match, but Mary Fitz
was still a minor, and a ward. If proceedings were threatened, nothing
came of it, for the young bridegroom died. The exact date is not known,
but he could not have lived with her more than a few months after his
marriage.
Mary, still a ward, was now married, for the third time before she was
sixteen, to Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Suffolk, not
to Sir Thomas, his third son, as had been at first designed. The young
couple resided with the Earl at Audley End, and there her first child
was born, a daughter, Elizabeth, born on 21 September, 1613, who does
not seem to have lived long, as she disappears altogether within a few
years. There was a second daughter, Mary, born in London, the date
not known; but Sir Charles Howard died on 22 September, 1622, without
leaving male issue. It was when a widow about this time, apparently,
that Lady Howard was painted by Vandyke, and this was engraved by
Hollar. The painting cannot now be traced. She was now one of the
stateliest dames of the Court of Henrietta Maria, where she cultivated
the friendship of the Duke of Buckingham, who exerted his influence
with her so as to render her propitious to the addresses of one of
his own dependents, Sir Richard Grenville. The Duke considered that a
rich wife would help on the fortunes of his favourite, and thus did
the heiress of Fitzford and Walreddon give herself to her fourth and
worst husband. But before marrying him she was cautious to tie up her
estate in such a manner that he could not touch it. Without breathing
a word of what she was doing, she conveyed all her lands to Walter
Hele, Anthony Short, and William Grills in trust to permit her during
her life, whether sole or married, to receive the rents and dispose of
them at her own goodwill and pleasure. Sir Richard Grenville went with
his wife to Fitzford, and there in May, 1630, their first child was
born, and christened Richard after his father. Sir Richard was mightily
incensed when he discovered that he could not handle the revenues of
the estates, and this led to incessant bickerings. Clarendon says:--
“He had nothing to depend upon but the fortune of his wife: which,
though ample enough to have supported the expense a person of his
quality ought to have made, was not large enough to satisfy his vanity
and ambition. Nor so great as he, upon common reports, had promised
himself by her. By not being enough pleased with her fortune, he
grew less pleased with his wife; who, being a woman of a haughty
and imperious nature, and of a wit far superior to his own, quickly
resented the disrespect she received from him, and in no degree studied
to make herself easy to him. After some years spent together in these
domestic unsociable contestations, in which he possessed himself of
all her estate, as the sole master of it, without allowing her out of
her own any competency for herself, and indulging to himself all those
licences in her own house which to women are most grievous, she found
means to withdraw herself from him, and was with all kindness received
into the family in which she had before married, and was always very
much respected.”
Before proceeding with the quotation from Clarendon, it will be well
to give at once some illustrative touches as to the annoyances she
underwent at the hands of Sir Richard, and as to her own conduct
towards him. He confined her to a corner of her own house, Fitzford,
excluded her from the government of the house, and installed his aunt,
Mrs. Katherine Abbott, as his housekeeper, with control over the
servants and the keeping of the keys.
This was bad enough, but there was worse to come; his violence and
language towards her were so intolerable that she was constrained to
appeal to the justices of the peace, who ordered him to allow her forty
shillings a week. This, after a time, he refused to pay, unless she
would grant him an acquittance. All this is stated in the lady’s plea
to obtain a divorce in 1631-2. He also called her bad names before the
justices, “she being a vertuous and a chaste lady”--a pretty scene in
the court at Tavistock for the citizens to witness and listen to.
“He gave directions to one of his servantes to burn horse-haire, wooll,
feathers and parings of horse hoofes, and to cause the smoke to goe
into the ladye’s chamber, through an hole made in the plaistering
out of the kitchen. He broke up her chamber doore, and came into her
chamber at night with a sword drawn. That for the key of his closett
which she had taken away and denyed to give him, he tooke hold of her
petty coate and tore it, and threw her upon the ground, being with
childe, and, as one witness deposeth, made her eye blacke and blewe.”
Sir Richard, on his side, complained, “That they had lived quietly
together for the space of two years, and till they came to this
Court.... That she hath often carried herself unseemly both in wordes
and deedes, and sunge unseemly songs to his face to provoke him, and
bid him goe to such a woman and such a woman, and called him a poore
rogue and pretty fellow, and said he was not worth ten groates when
she married him; that she would make him creepe to her, and that she
had good friends in London would beare her out of it. That she swore
the peace against him without cause, and then asked him, ‘Art thou not
a pretty fellow to be bound to the good behaviour?’ Then she said he
was an ugly fellow, and when he was once gone from home, she said, ‘The
Devill and sixpence goe with him, and soe shall he lacke neither money
nor company!’ That she said such a one was a honester man than her
husband, and loved Cuttofer (George Cutteford, her steward) better than
him. That there were holes made in the kitchen wall by the lady or her
daughter (i.e. Mary Howard), that he gave direction that they should be
stopped up, that she might not harken to what the servants said in the
kitchen, that she had ten roomes at pleasure, and had whatsoever in the
house she would desire. That she locked him into his closett and tooke
away the key, and it is true he endeavoured to take away the key from
her, and hurt his thumb and rent her pocket.”