square pile of perhaps the most admirable mediæval brickwork in the
kingdom (its only real rival being Hurstmonceaux), it can scarcely be
called picturesque; its military history is of the slightest, and its
plan and general arrangements are fairly well known. Still, from the
great architectural charm of its construction and the many and various
noble families who have been concerned in its building and possession, no
“Memorials of old Lincolnshire” would be complete without some notice of
its history.
The word Tattershall is defined by Mr. Streatfield as meaning the house
or hall of Teitr, a Scandinavian name, signifying blithe or gay, thus
showing that before the Norman Conquest there probably was a Norse or
Danish dwelling on this spot.
But in Domesday it only appears as Thorp (now Tattershall Thorpe, a
hamlet half a mile away on the road to Kirkstead). This manor was
given by William the Conqueror to one of his attendant knights called
Eudo, son of Spirewic. His son, Hugh Fitz-Eudo, who was also called Le
Breton, erected the neighbouring Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead in 1139.
A small fragment, part of the south transept apparently, alone is left,
reminding one of the stately remains at Kirkstall and Roche, by its
unadorned simplicity of style, which distinguished the early buildings
of the Cistercian, itself a reformed branch of the Benedictine Order.
The chapel (_Capella extra portas_, as it is termed), a few yards south
of the abbey ruins, is described elsewhere in this volume, and is a
most delightful and dainty specimen of Early English architecture. It
contains the earliest wooden screen work (after that in the loft above
the altar at Compton, Surrey) in the kingdom, and a Purbeck marble figure
of an armed knight, which with its barrel helmet with perforations for
the eyes, no breathing holes, the general character of the armour,
and the foliage beneath the head, is dated somewhat between the years
1200 and 1225, and is most probably the effigy of Robert de Tatesale
and Kirkstead (a grandson of Hugh le Breton) who died in 1212. In 1220
he obtained from King John, by present of a well-trained goshawk, a
licence for a market on Fridays for Tattershall. The cross still exists,
with arms of Tattershall and Cromwell on it. His son, also a Robert,
obtained a licence from King Henry III. in 1230 to erect a castle of
stone in Tattershall:—“Pro Roberto de Tatteshale—Rex concessit Roberto de
Tatteshale quod libere et sine impedimento unam domum de petra et calce
firmari faciat apud manerium de Tatteshal: et mandatum est vice comiti
Linc. per literas clauses quod ipsam dictam domum firmare permittat
sicut praedictum est. Teste ut supra.”—(Patent Roll, fifteenth year of
the reign of King Henry III. m. 2.) Nine years afterwards he obtained
the same King’s leave to embattle this house (“quod possit kernellare
mansum suum.”—Patent Roll, 23 Henry III. m. 12). No remains of this
castle are known to exist now; it seems doubtful whether some portions
may not have endured into the early years of the last century, but this
point will be more fully dealt with later on. If this were not so, then
probably the first castle—as far as regards its masonry at least, for
the mounds and moats are remnants of its original fortifications—was
entirely swept away when the second castle was rising on its site in
all its whilom magnificence. The third Robert de Tattershall married
Mabel, eldest sister and co-heir of Hugh de Albini, fifth Earl of
Sussex and Arundel, and his grandson, the fifth Robert, was summoned
to Parliament in 1297 as the first Baron de Tateshale, and died in the
following year. His son, the sixth Robert, died in 1303, and the seventh
Robert in 1305, without any children. So that three aunts—Emma, who
married Adam de Cailli, and died in 1306; Joan, who married Robert de
Driby, and died in 1330; and Isabella, who married Sir John de Orreby,
became co-heirs. Tattershall seems to have become part of the share
of the second one, Joan. By her marriage with Robert de Driby she had
four children—Simon (died in 1323), Robert, John, and Alice. The third
son, Sir John de Kirketon (Kirton in Holland), apparently acquired and
held, from certainly 1334 till his death in 1367, the castle and manor
of Tattershall. And in Kirton there is still an entrance-gate which has
on it the arms of Tattershall quartered with those of Cromwell, showing
that this connection was kept up after his death. Owing to the deaths of
her brothers without leaving any children the Tattershall property came
through the family of Bernak by the marriage of Alice with Sir William
de Bernak (who died in 1339), and she herself died in 1341. Their eldest
son, Sir John de Bernak, had married Joan, sister and eldest co-heiress
of Robert Marmion, second Baron of Winteringham. This is another link
between Lincolnshire and this noble family besides Scrivelsby, which,
with “Tamworth tower and town,” had been granted to Robert de Marmion,
Lord of Fontenoy, by William the Conqueror, and the parish of Coningsby,
only a mile away from Tattershall, was Marmion property also. Sir John de
Bernak and his wife had two sons—John who died in youth, William who died
in 1359—and a daughter, Maud or Matilda. Consequently the reversion of
the Tattershall property came in 1367 to her and her husband, Sir Ralph
Cromwell. As pointed out above, the property being in possession of Sir
John de Kirketon till this year 1367, the Bernaks can never have actually
possessed it, though, curiously enough, William, brother and heir of
John, son of John Bernak, has the barony of Tateshale (put wrongfully
in Norfolk) twice attributed to him in an inquisition post-mortem in
1360, the thirty-fourth year of King Edward III. The family of Cromwell
seems to have been settled in the villages of Cromwell and Lambley in
Nottinghamshire, a few miles north-east of Nottingham, from about the
year 1166; but I know of no connection between this family and those of
Thomas Cromwell, the “Malleus monachorum,” and of Oliver Cromwell, the
Protector. The Cromwells had already, in the thirteenth century, been
allied with the family of Marmion, as the fourth Ralph Cromwell married
Mazera, second daughter and co-heiress of Philip de Marmion. The ninth
Ralph Cromwell, knight (son of Sir Ralph Cromwell and Amicia de Beler,
daughter and heiress of Roger de Beler, co. Leicester), who married
Maud Bernak, was summoned to Parliament as Baron Cromwell in 1375 and
1398, in which year he died, his widow surviving till the year 1419. The
second Ralph, Lord Cromwell of Tattershall, died in 1416. His son, also
Ralph, was Lord Treasurer of England from 1433-1443, a peer of great
wealth and influence, and the builder of the existing castle and church
of Tattershall. Another building of his in stone (no doubt because it
was easy to procure, as brick was at Tattershall) has been described
and illustrated in a previous volume of this series, _i.e._ Wingfield
Manor House, Derbyshire. He also held the appointment in 1435 (after
the death of the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, at Paris) of Master
of the Mews, and Falconer to the King. He married Margaret, daughter of
John, Baron Deincourt, and his wife Joan, daughter and heiress of Lord
Grey de Rotherfield, also connected with the family of Marmion. Lord
Cromwell died in 1455 (his wife having predeceased him in 1454), and left
no family. They both were buried in Tattershall Church. Consequently, his
two nieces, daughters of his sister Maud (who had married Sir Richard
Stanhope of Rampton, Notts, and who had died in 1455), became his
co-heiresses. Of these Maud married, first, the distinguished soldier,
Robert, sixth Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, who died in 1452, having had no
children by her; next, Sir Thomas Nevile, third son of Richard, first
Earl of Salisbury, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield in 1460,
also leaving no family; and thirdly, Sir Gervase Clifton, of Clifton,
Notts, who was killed at Tewkesbury in 1471. Maud herself died in 1497
and was buried in Tattershall Church. Joan married Sir Humphrey Bouchier,
third son of the first Earl of Essex, who was summoned to Parliament
(_jure uxoris_) in 1461 as Baron Cromwell, and who was killed at the
battle of Barnet in 1471. She married, secondly, Sir Robert Ratcliffe,
and died in 1472, leaving no children. She also was buried in Tattershall
Church.
According to the poet Skelton, King Edward IV. possessed Tattershall, as
he makes him say—
“I made the Tower strong—I wist not why—
Knew not for whom, I purchased Tattersall;”
and his badge, the falcon and fetterlock, may be seen in the east window
of the church.
The property, being forfeited to the Crown, was bestowed in 1487, by
King Henry VII., on his mother Margaret, Countess of Richmond. King
Henry VIII. granted it, in 1520, to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
upon his marriage with Mary, the King’s sister. In default of heirs,
it again reverted to the King. In 1551 King Edward VI. granted the
castle and manor to Edward Fines, Lord Clinton, who was created Earl of
Lincoln in 1572. His great-grandson, Theophilus, fourth Earl, in 1649
petitioned Parliament for compensation for the damage done to Tattershall
Castle during the civil war. Tradition has assigned the dismantling and
unroofing of the castle to the time just after the battle of Winceby,
near Horncastle, in 1643, and W. A. Nicholson[92] has recorded several
inscriptions on its walls, of the years 1642, 1644, 1645, and 1648,
showing that it probably was not in good keeping about that period. It
continued in the possession of the male line of the Earls of Lincoln
till the year 1692, when Bridget (only daughter and heiress of Hugh
Boscawen by Margaret his wife, fifth daughter and eventually co-heiress
of Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln) married Hugh Fortescue of Wear
Gifford, North Devon (one of the most charming manor houses imaginable),
an ancestor of the present noble proprietor, the Earl Fortescue.
We may now turn our attention to the past and present state of this once
magnificent residence. It was built, as mentioned above, by Ralph, the
third Baron Cromwell, of whom William of Worcester speaks as follows in
his _Itinerary_: “The Lord Treasurer expended in building the principal
and other towers of his Castle of Tattershall above four thousand marks;
his household there consisted of above a hundred persons, and his suite
when he rode to London commonly of one hundred and twenty horsemen,
and his annual expenditure was about five thousand pounds.” The date
of the castle’s erection can be told, within a very few years, by the
heraldry which is its most prevalent ornament. There is the coat of arms
of Tattershall (chequy _or_ and _gu._, a chief _erm._), which might be
used by any lord of Tattershall since heraldry began; of Driby (_arg._ 3
cinquefoils _gu._, a canton _gu._), which would date from the reign of
King Henry III.; those of Bernak (_erm._ a fesse _gu._) and of Cromwell
(_arg._ a chief _gu._ over all a bend _az._), from the reign of King
Richard II. (the first shield in the fireplace on the ground floor, i.e.
_gu._ 10 annulets _or_, has been supposed to be an early shield of the
Cromwell family), but the shields of Cromwell and Tattershall impaling
Deincourt (_az._ a fesse dancetté between 10 billets _or_) show that not
until after Lord Cromwell’s marriage with Margaret Deincourt could the
castle have been thus decorated, and, as there were no children of that
marriage, there could be no such union of arms after their deaths. Also,
the very frequent repetition of the Purse (with its double bags and the
motto, “N’aj je le droit?”), the badge of office, marks the period of
building as coinciding with that of Lord Cromwell’s tenure of the Lord
Treasurership, _i.e._ from 1433 to 1443. It is an interesting thought
for Lincolnshire folk that very probably a celebrated Lincolnshire man,
William Patten of Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, was the architect
of these “bricky towers”; the school at Wainfleet, also in brick, is
another token of his architectural skill in this material, as his work at
Winchester Cathedral and at Magdalen College, Oxford, testified in stone.
He was a great architect, a personal friend of Lord Cromwell’s, and was
one of his executors (another one being, curiously enough, Chief-Justice
Sir John Fortescue, an ancestor of the present proprietor); the
neighbouring church of Tattershall being unfinished at Lord Cromwell’s
death, William of Wainfleet helped to complete it, having probably
designed it also.
The plan of a mediæval castle was, generally speaking, as follows: There
was an outer wall surrounded by a ditch, over which a drawbridge would
give access to the main entrance. Then separated from the first by a
second ditch would be the second (the inner) wall. Both walls would be
strengthened by towers at suitable points. Within this inner ward, as
the space inside the inner wall was termed, the chief living rooms—the
barracks, so to speak—would stand. Finally, there would be the donjon
or keep, the strongest of the castle buildings, frequently erected on a
mound, and capable itself of withstanding for some time a hostile attack
even though the rest of the castle was in the enemy’s hands.
Tattershall Castle was defended by an incomplete outer moat, which,
starting from the north-east angle of the area, went along the north
and west sides, and communicated with the river Bain; there is still
some water in portions of this ditch. It probably was carried eastwards
so as to enclose the church, but there is a noticeable dip in the
ground on the eastern side of the castle area, which is probably the
same moat defending that portion of the castle. From a plate of the
castle published by Buck in 1727 (which is in the writer’s possession),
much knowledge can be gathered of the arrangements and buildings of
Tattershall at that date. The inner moat was complete, and the outer wall
which surrounded it, for the most part of brick, is in fair condition;
it was supplied with water from the outer moat by a culvert piercing the
outer bank and wall about the middle of the north side, which is plainly
visible, and around which the bank is faced with stone. This, according
to Buck, was protected by a strong and tall tower over it. On the east
side of the moat may be seen a blocked up arch, which was connected with
the outer moat at that point, and ran eastwards beneath the church to
that part of the moat. The main entrance to the castle was evidently a
little north of this arch, much in the line of the present pathway, for
Buck plants a large gateway with two towers and portcullis here, on the
inner side of the inner moat. Just outside and to the eastwards is a
brick building of two storeys, and of exactly similar work to that of the
rest of the castle. This house, which was probably used for guard-rooms,
had at the north-west angle a turret staircase, and the only door on the
ground floor was originally on the southern end, opening on to a terrace
wall which defended this part of the castle. The outer wall was about
twelve feet high (judging from the mark where it joined the house), with
arched recesses and loopholes, and over all a platform with a crenellated
parapet. A brick turret was at the south end of it, and the ruins of
this and the drain into the moat are still visible. On the south side of
the inner moat can be seen some stone corbels in the brick-facing wall,
which were evidently to support a drawbridge. On the west side of the
outer wall is a large brick one-storeyed building (with little arched
cupboards or recesses in the walls, as will be found elsewhere), probably
a guard-room, and the ruins of a strong tower farther to the north and
east, on the edge of the outer moat.
On the south of the inner court is a large piece of ground, elevated
and surrounded by a stone wall, except on its eastern side; this was
probably an adjunct of the original castle, and was used for tilting and
other exercises. It was approached doubtless by the drawbridge already
mentioned. Eastward it joins a still larger portion of ground on the
south of the church—the castle garden or pleasaunce. This is walled in
partially with brick, and has had two doorways in the south side. In
the spandrils of one were the coats of arms of Cromwell and Tattershall
quarterly, and that of Deincourt.
The inner ward now is nearly flat, and contains no buildings save the
great tower or keep, having unfortunately been levelled about 1790.
Besides the entrance-gate already mentioned, we find from Buck’s view
that in 1727 there still existed the eastern portion of the chapel,
showing an apse of which two perpendicular windows were visible, and a
great part of the dining-hall, which had a fine bay window and five other
windows. To the left of the keep, and in the left foreground, are some
buildings which very possibly were the remains of the castle of King
Henry III.’s date.
Next we come to the chief feature of the place, the so-called Castle,
which in reality was only the representative of the keep of earlier days.
The inner ward wall joined it at the north-east and south-east towers,
where the marks are plainly visible; the north, west and south sides were
defended by the outer moat. It is 87 feet long by 69 feet wide, and the
parapet of its angle turrets is no less than 112 feet above the level
of the ground at its base. It is almost entirely constructed of small
red bricks, traditionally supposed to have been brought from Flanders,
though there is no reason why they should not have been made in the
county. The walls externally have patterns, chequers, and lozenges in
blue-black bricks upon their surface, and the groining of brick in the
upper rooms is most delicately moulded, and may well serve as a lesson
to us, even in this twentieth century, in artistic workmanship. On this
work still exists considerable traces of pink plaster with red lines, to
imitate brickwork—a curious case of carrying coals to Newcastle! Local
stone (Ancaster probably) is used for the windows (which retain most
of their tracery and mullions, except those of the ground floor), the
machicolations, the battlements (in one place cement has been used for
repairs), and the very admirably executed chimney-pieces, which will
receive special attention later on. There are brick relieving arches
over all the windows, doorways, and fireplaces in the castle. The large
windows, which are more evident on the west, the exposed side, than
on that facing the inner ward, show that the great change in warfare
was in progress—that “villainous saltpetre” was altering the type of
fortification from a massive tall keep like Rochester or Conisboro’, or
the Edwardian castles of Harlech or Conway, to low-walled earthworks,
such as those which still surround Berwick, and which were erected in the
“spacious times of great Elizabeth”; also, these windows show that the
nobleman’s castle was changing into the nobleman’s palace or mansion, of
which, again, the Elizabethan buildings, such as Longleat, Hatfield, and
Haddon Hall, are the finest examples.
[Illustration: TATTERSHALL CASTLE, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.]
The basement storey contains a large central room, with a very flat
arched ceiling, a room in each of the towers, except the south-eastern
one (which contains the staircase), and a room in the thickness of the
eastern wall, which has similar arched recesses in its north and south
walls to those already described. There has been a well in the centre of
this basement area. A staircase leads down to the central room from the
outside of the east wall.
There seem to have been no less than forty-eight separate apartments,
four of these being very large (about 38 feet long by 22 feet wide and 17
feet high), and occupying the centre of the building one over another.
That on the ground-floor may have been the common hall or hall of
entrance; it is entered by a door in the east wall, and has four large
windows, which have lost their tracery and mullions, two in the western
side, and one at each end, and an exceedingly fine stone fireplace in the
eastern wall. Its arch is of ogee shape, well moulded, much flattened,
the ogee ending in a finial above the upper battlemented edge, which has
small pilasters with capitals at each end. The heraldic decoration is as
follows, reading from left to right:—Cromwell (ancient?), the treasurer’s
purse, a lion rampant (for D’Albini), treasurer’s purse, Marmion,
Bernak, treasurer’s purse, Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt,
treasurer’s purse, Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly. In the lower line
come treasurer’s purse, barry of ten (if Cailli, it should be barry of
eight; it is sometimes assigned to Clifton, but it does not agree with
the shield of Clifton of Buckenham[93] who married Elizabeth, sister of
the second Baron Cromwell, or of Clifton of Clifton,[94] Maud Stanhope’s
third husband), treasurer’s purse, Deincourt, Driby, treasurer’s purse,
Grey of Rotherfield, and treasurer’s purse. In the middle, beneath the
point of the ogee, is the shield of Cromwell, much defaced.
The room on the first floor might have been the hall of state or the
audience chamber. Approach to it is gained by a newel staircase, the
steps being stone, in the south-east turret, which begins a few feet
above the level of the ground, and ends at the fourth storey, the
ground-floor large room having had an entrance, now blocked up, from
its south-east corner into this staircase. The hand rail, continuous
and ingeniously moulded in stone, flush with the wall, is noticeable. A
similar one, but slightly projecting, is in the staircase of the Alnwick
Tower in the Bishop’s Palace, Lincoln; another in the staircase to the
crypt in Grantham Church; and another, of much later date, in Kirby Hall.
The large room on this storey has three windows with excellent
Perpendicular tracery, and the two western ones have the recess ribbed
and vaulted; there is no window opening through to the north, as a
chamber has been constructed in the thickness of the wall. The fireplace,
which is in the east wall, has a well-moulded depressed arch, with
amusing grotesques in the spandrils on either side and at the side of
the circles, reminding one of the hard-working creations of Dicky Doyle
on the cover of _Punch_. The pilasters and battlemented top are much
the same as in the lower fireplace, but its chief ornament is a row of
heraldic shields and badges in circles across its front. First comes the
familiar purse, then Tattershall, St. George and the Dragon, Cromwell
and Tattershall impaling Deincourt, Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly,
on a shield couché, with two savage men as supporters, on an esquire’s
helmet a cap of maintenance inflamed. Next comes a representation under
an embattled arch of a lion being rent asunder by a man, a feat which
was related of Hugh de Nevile, who served in the Crusades under King
Richard I. It does not seem quite clear why this achievement of a Nevile
should appear here, though, as we have seen, Maud Stanhope married a
Nevile as her second husband. Then comes a lion rampant for D’Albini,
and the treasurer’s purse. The spaces between the roundels above are
occupied with shields of Bernak, Driby, Cromwell (one defaced), Cromwell,
Tattershall, and Deincourt below, with the treasurer’s purse. About the
end of the eighteenth century this fireplace was bricked up and opened
at the back, to be used for the room in the eastern wall, where dwelt
a pensioner, whose duty it was to be in readiness to light a cresset
beacon-fire on the south-east tower in case of invasion.