LINGFIELD AND CROWHURST
A chapter of Hume.--The Village Cage.--The Copthorne Poachers.--A
shop for three centuries.--The green-faced Soldan.--A griffin's
hoof.--Second-best fish.--Eleanor Cobham and the
Witch.--Crowhurst.--A tree and a rubbish-heap.--An iron
tombstone.--Fifteen daughters running.--Crowhurst Place.
Lingfield is not large enough, nor enough overbuilt and railway-ridden,
to dare to the title of capital even of a distant corner of Surrey. But
it stands above and apart from the quiet country round it, like a Bible
in an old library. Near it, or in its streets, are some of the prettiest
and most ancient timber houses in the county; the churchyard with its
brick paths, its rose-beds, the red walls round it and its view of the
Weald, has the serenity of deep meadowland and sunlit cloisters; the
church itself, with its sculptured oak and baronial tombs, belongs to
all English history from Crecy. If the churches of the surrounding
parishes, with their brasses and their registers, make up an admirable
local guide-book, the records of Lingfield church are a chapter of Hume.
[Illustration: _The Village Cage, Lingfield._]
The village itself is the pleasantest mixture of every style of Surrey
cottage, brick and timber, weather-tiling, plain brick, plain wood, and
a queer row of square white-stuccoed buildings which looks as if it had
been dumped inland from opposite shingle and dancing seas. It only lacks
tamarisk to be sheer Worthing. The village centres on its pond; not a
broad nor a very limpid piece of water, but distinguished by a pair of
swans, and by a curious obelisk standing at its head which once may
have marked a shrine. Built on to the bole of an old oak by the obelisk
is an apartment engagingly labelled "Ye Village Cage." Other Surrey
villages have had their cages, but only Lingfield has kept one. The door
is massive and threatening, and you get the keys at the chemist's the
other side of the road; or rather, a guide politely accompanies you and
displays the cage's secrets. The cage not long ago fell into disuse. It
was once used as a temporary lock-up for drunk or disorderly persons, or
others who had traversed the local by-laws of morality. Local justice
descended upon them, and they were cast into durance until morning
should bring soberness with a headache, or, in more serious cases, until
proper conveyance could be got round for Godstone. The cage has seen at
least one exciting rescue. This was some fifty or sixty years ago, when
a number of desperate characters vaguely described as the Copthorne
poachers were captured and haled into prison. As to the exact number of
captives, tradition varies; but the legend which is the most respectful
to the powers of the local constable sets it at eleven. The eleven were
surrounded, the door of the dungeon closed on them, and the village
tried to go to sleep. Darkness came on, and a daring deed. Other
poachers stole into the village, got to work with picks and crowbars,
took the roof off the dungeon and hauled out their comrades exulting.
The village wisely did not attempt a recapture.
The cage saw its last tenant in 1882, and the story of the rescued
poachers may still, perhaps, be heard from the mouth of the oldest
inhabitant, who was himself at one time a constable. As an expert in
suppressing crime, he never liked the plan on which the cage was built.
The floor is higher by two steps than the ground outside, and you had to
go upstairs to it. In fact, you had to throw your prisoner upstairs--a
most perilous business. It ought to have been built so that you could
take him by the left leg and throw him downstairs like a Christian.
Caged prisoners at Lingfield were not always treated with the utmost
rigour of the law. At one time the door was pierced by a grating, and
through the grating kindly souls passed packets of tobacco. Liquor could
not be passed in packets, but found its way in somehow. Afterwards in
severer days the grating was closed, and prisoners neither drank nor
smoked, as became their miserable condition. Nine years after the last
captive languished behind the blocked grating the prison was taken over
by the village for fresh purposes. Henceforward it was to be the museum,
and was duly vested in trustees. Its collection still grows slowly.
"Anything to do with village crime--we make that our special subject,"
the curator informs you with a pleasing urbaneness. The collection
includes a man-trap, a pair of handcuffs, a canvas bed which furnishes
the museum whenever it is wanted as a mortuary, a pair of farmer's
snowboots used a hundred years ago, and a pair of farmer's ordinary
boots used more recently.
Of tiny village streets there is no more fascinating byway than the
little road which leads up to the south door of Lingfield Church. On the
right is the Star inn, taking its sign from the arms of the great lords
of Sterborough who lie in the church; and built beside the inn a row of
quiet cottages, perhaps once part of the inn. On the left one building
stands out from the rest; an early sixteenth century timber house,
admirably preserved, and of peculiar interest because after three
hundred years it is still carrying on the business for which it was
intended. It was built as a shop, and it is a shop still. Modern
preference for plate glass and easily opened doors has changed the
original plan of the ground floor, but the first floor remains almost as
its builder left it, and its heavy girders with their rounded ends
jutting out over the pavement below are a happy testimony to the worth
of wealden builders and wealden wood. Wealden paint, on the other hand,
has not improved. The girders are still dark and stained as oak (or is
it chestnut?) should be stained by age and weather. But a yard or two
away there are beams as massive and as well-seasoned which flout the
lapse of centuries with a flaring and be-varnished buff.
The church is noble and tranquil without and within. A chained Bible
stands on a lectern; another Bible, "bought May the tenth 1683," as the
inscription runs on the title-page, "by William Saxby of Surry Esq., for
the use and benefitt of all good Christians" is in use to-day. But the
chief interest of the church to-day, as it has been its chief glory in
the past, is its association with the great family of Cobham. The
Cobhams of Sterborough--their castle stood two miles east of Lingfield,
but has fallen--came of a line which through two of the most eventful
centuries of English history was represented in almost every battle,
consulted in the most difficult diplomacy, and allied at last by
marriage to an English king. Their family goes back to a Justice
itinerant who settled in Kent; but the real founder of the Surrey branch
was the Justice's grandson, the first Lord Cobham of Sterborough. He was
one of the greatest soldiers of his day, and, from the ransoms he had
for the prisoners he took in battle, one of the richest. It was to him,
with Sir John Chandos and the Earl of Warwick, that Edward III entrusted
the Black Prince at Crecy; at Poictiers he rescued the King of France;
he was Lord Admiral of the King's fleet "from the mouth of the Thames
westwards"; and to end it all, he died in his bed of the plague. His
effigy on his tomb tramples a Soldan, whose face has been duly painted
green by the artist--an interesting relic, according to Mr. J.G. Waller,
of Crusaders' traditions. There were not enough names for colours in
those days, and perhaps the soldiers trying to describe the olive skins
of the Arabs, may have called them green. For some obscure reason, too,
the Soldan with his green face and his red beard is intended by the
artist to be alive. Nobody can say why that should be, but the sculptor
doubtless knew. He was a careful and accurate man; you can still trace
below Lord Cobham's left knee the fastenings of the Garter.
Lord Cobham's wife, Joan, was the author of one of the longest wills in
existence. She remembered everybody, including the prisoners in chains
at Southwark and the sick men in the hospitals. Her executor Robert
Belknappe was to have "a horn made from a griffin's hoof with a silver
core, and the said horn has a silver rim and two silver gilt feet." But
she was most anxious, poor lady, about her soul. "Before everything
else" there were to be said 7000 masses, immediately upon her death, and
the priests were to have L29 3_s._ 4_d._ for saying them. A penny a
mass, that is, and the priests took the pence. But it was twelve years
before they had said the masses.
The second Lord Cobham had mingled experiences of love and war.
According to the inscription on his tomb, broken in the church but
preserved in the College of Arms, he was "as brave as a leopard, a
sumptuous entertainer, handsome, imperturbable, and courteous." He was a
soldier, but the great struggle of his life had nothing to do with a
battlefield. It was his attempt to secure a dispensation from the Pope
for marrying his cousin in defiance of the canon law. Almost a year
passed before the Pope gave his decision on the point, and then he
ordered the unhappy cousins a horribly tedious penance. For four years
they might not eat meat; they might not drink wine on Wednesdays, and at
the six fasts they might only eat the second-best kinds of fish, and not
those which were most agreeable to them. They had to feed four poor
persons daily, and wait upon them themselves; and these poor persons
were to have bread and meat or fish, with half a flagon of ale, and were
to have new tunics and new russet hoods every year. All this was in
addition to various heavy fines. The money part must have been the least
exasperating: but it might have been amusing to choose the less
agreeable kinds of fish.
The eldest son of this much be-penanced marriage had two distinctions.
He was for some years the warden, at Sterborough castle, of the French
heir to the throne, the Duke of Orleans who was taken prisoner at
Agincourt; and he was the founder of Lingfield College. Lingfield
College had a provost, six chaplains, four clerks, and thirteen poor
persons, but none of its walls stand to-day. The life of the college
farm alone survives, in an inventory of the implements and live stock
taken at the Dissolution. Here are some extracts:--
THE LABORERS CHAMBRE.
Itm a mattres ii bolsters A cou'lett a payer of Shets iiii^s
Itm iii Axes & iii hedgying bylls ii^s
Itm ii Augurs a whymble a chesell a horsecombe x^d
Itm a Share a culter & a Towe (chain) xviii^d
Itm a pycheforke iii^d
Itm iii payer of new Trayes (? traces) vi^d
Itm an old sleyng rope ii hempon alters & a spade vi^d
_Husbondry._
Itm ii wenes (wains) w^t weyles unshod xiii^s iiii^d
Itm donge pott w^t wheles xvi^d
Itm iii barrowes ii good & one bad xld^d
Itm a grynstone xx^d
_Cattell._
fyrst viii Oxen price the yoke 1^s x^li
Itm iiii Steres price the yoke xl^s xl^d iiii^li vi^s viii^d
Itm xi bolocks whereof ix be yerelyngs and ii be ii }
yerelyngs price } l^s
Itm iii Steres of iii yeres of age price xl^s
Itm ten kene (kine) & a bull vii^li vi^s viii^d
Itm vi sukkyng Calves x^s
Itm v wenyers (weaning calves) x^s
Itm iiii yewes & iii lambes vi^s viii^d
Itm ii old geldyns pry^d (priced for) saddell xxvi^s viii^d
Itm an old horse v^s
Itm a lame horse to go to myll v^s
Itm iii mares ii grey & i bay xx^s
Itm a grey ii yere colt gelded price vi^s viii^d
Itm ii sowes and a bore vii^s
_Corne._
Itm whete in the mowe price xvi^s
Itm old Barley in the chaff v^s iiii^d
Itm xii acres of whete price the acre vi^s viii^d
Itm xxxiiii acres of ots price the acre ii viii^d iiii^li viii^d
_The Garnard._
Itm di (half) a quart of Barley xvi^d
Itm halff a quart of Ots xvi^d
Itm a busshell & a shald (sholl, scoop) iiii^d
Itm in the barn a pfan and a Shald iiii^d
Itm xx^c of hertlatth (? heart of oak laths) vi^s viii^d.
Warriors and statesmen though the Cobhams were, one of their women folk
has made more history than they. It was Eleanor, daughter of the founder
of Lingfield College, who married the Lord Protector, the "good duke
Humphrey" of Gloucester, and who was convicted of dire misdemeanours.
Edward Hall, the old historian, writing of 1441, tells the story:--
"For first this yere, Dame Elyanour Cobham, wife of the said duke,
was accused of treason, for that she, by sorcery and enchantment
entended to destroy the kyng, to thentent to aduance and to promote
her husbande to the crowne: upon thys she was examined in St.
Stephen's Chappel before the Bisshop of Canterbury; and there by
examinacion convict and judged to do open penance, in iij open
places, within the city of London, and after that adjudged to
perpetuall prisone in the Isle of Man, under the kepyng of Sir Jhon
Stanley, Knyght. At the same season were arrested, as ayders and
counsailers to the sayde duchesse, Thomas Southwel, preiste and
chanon of St. Stephen's, in Westminster, Jhon Hum, preist, Roger
Bolyngbroke, a conyng nycromancier, and Margerie Jourdayne, surnamed
the witche of Eye, to whose charge it was laied y^t thei, at the
request of the duchesse, had devised an image of waxe, representing
the kyng, which by their sorcery, a litle and litle consumed,
entendyng thereby in conclusion to waist, and destroy the kynges
person, and so to bring him to death; for the which treison they
wer adjudged to dye, and so Margery Jourdayne was brent in
Smithfelde, and Roger Bolyngbroke was drawn and quartered at
Tiborne, takyng upon his death, that there was neuer no such thing
by theim ymagined; Jhon Hum had his pardon, and Southwel died in the
toure before execution."
The beautiful duchess's penance is in all the history books. But it is
Shakespeare, and not the historians, who makes her walk through the town
in a white sheet and barefoot.
Three miles north of Lingfield is Crowhurst, one of a noble pair of
names. Crowhurst in Sussex and Crowhurst in Surrey each has its
immemorial yew, a tree of trees. But the yew of the Surrey
churchyard--is there no better way of honouring a tree than the
Crowhurst way? Who is to look at a tree like this without unhappiness?
From the road the first impression to be had of it is nothing very
imposing; a mass of deep and shining green, of no great stature, with
strong, springy branches brushing the church walls--that is all. But the
nearer view! You expect, and find, an enormous gnarled trunk, and
then--Your first idea is that someone has thrown a rubbish-heap at the
tree, and that most of the rubbish has stuck--old tea-trays, broken
kettles, saucepan-lids, the sides of tin trunks. You then perceive that
over gaps and wounds in the vast and writhen shell there have been
bound, or nailed, or otherwise fastened a number of patches of thin
sheet iron, painted a peculiarly ugly red. These patches of paint shriek
with the names of a thousand cockneys, and the names suit the method of
mending the broken tree. Gus should be the name of the man who fixed
that patch; Erb, surely, daubed on that paint; Alf, I think, drove in
that nail. Could none of the foresters of the weald have helped a great
tree better in its old age? There should be methods of preserving a tree
which are not of necessity hideous; else, it would be better for the
giant to die as it pleased.
The church stands commandingly on a hill, overlooking level pastures and
woodlands. But the view to the west, with all its breadth and quiet, is
not more happy than the nearer picture to the east. Church gates stand
opposite few more charming medleys than the multiplied gables, tumbled
triangles, and oblongs of red tiles belonging to the roofs of the house
on the other side of the road. This fine old brick building, with its
formal garden path and clipped yews is now, like the Gainsfords'
manor-house a mile away, merely a farmhouse. But it was once the family
residence of the Angells, the other great family of Crowhurst after the
Gainsfords. Like the Gainsfords, the Angell family has disappeared. The
last John Angell died in 1784, and left a very curious will. His
property was to go to anyone who could prove _himself_ (not herself)
descended from an ancestor of his who lived in the reign of Henry VI.
Many claims followed; none were proved.
[Illustration: _Crowhurst Church and the old Yew._]
The house has one record at least of unrequited hospitality. This is an
extract from the parish registers:--
"1653. July 24.--William Hillyer sonne to ---- Hillyer of Bingfield
in Barkshire whoe coming as a stranger to M^r. Angell's house in
Crowhurst dyed: by whom being carefully attended by physiteans and
others in his sicknes and decently and in good fashion buried, the
father of the sayd William Hillyer refused to paye one farthing for
his physitean and buriall like an unnatural father."
Inside the church is a strange monument--a slab of Sussex iron, let into
the floor near the altar, and commemorating Anne Forster, the
granddaughter of a patriarchal neighbour, Sir John Gainsford. It is odd
in more than one way; it is the only iron tombstone in the county,
though it is a tombstone that has often been copied. There are still
several reproductions of it scattered about the country in the form of
firebacks; evidently the founders considered the design convenient.
Perhaps they might have made a better job if they had been severer
scholars; for some of the lettering on it is quaint and topsy-turvy, the
S's being twisted the wrong way round and the F's lying unhappily feet
uppermost. Yet it fits well with the other old Gainsford and Angell
monuments, and is also a memorial of a dead and gone industry, the
iron-smelting of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent.
[Illustration: _The Farmhouse opposite Crowhurst Church._]
Leisured churchgoers should choose a service at Crowhurst at sunset:
September drives the sun at the right angle to light its dark oak and
the great beams of the belfry. Many churches have windows built high in
the west end, through which part of the splendour of the setting sun can
filter; but this window is set low, and the red sky floods the church.
From the church to Crowhurst Place a mile away runs an interesting
byway, the only one in Surrey, so far as I know, built by a private
gentleman of permanent material, extending for a mile from his house to
his place of worship. In the year 1631 the John Gainsford of the day, at
the fine old age of 76, determined he would walk wet to church no more.
He had a stone-flagged causeway laid from the manor-house to the
churchyard, "it being before," as the Parish Register informs you, "a
loathsom durtie way every stepp." He paid two workmen fifty pounds for
the job, and the causeway is still to be picked out across the meadows.
[Illustration: _Crowhurst Place._]
The Gainsfords were one of the best, though not the greatest of the old
Surrey families. They are first heard of in the reign of Edward III,
when John and Margery Gaynesford had the manor of Crowhurst from John de
Stangrave and Joan his wife--a delightful gathering of English names.
One of them, in Tudor days, was Sheriff of Surrey, and well in the Tudor
fashions: he had six wives. But he must have found them disappointing in
their family duties, for the first five of them brought him fifteen
daughters running, and it was only from the sixth and last that he got a
son and heir. He was one of a long succession of Johns and Erasmuses,
but the line failed at the end. There were never enough boys in the
Gainsford families, and when at last the manor went to a daughter the
spell was broken; the house was sold.
[Illustration: _The Bridge over the Moat, Crowhurst Place._]
Crowhurst Place was originally a timber house built in or near the reign
of Henry VII, and according to tradition Henry VIII used to stay there
on his way to visit Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle over the border. It was,
and still is in some respects, an admirable example of the masonry and
carpentry of the fifteenth century, but the destroying hand of later
builders has removed part of the timber and filled up the gaps with
brick and weather-tiling, so that its full character has been taken
away. The great hall, with its glorious beams, was too much for the
utilitarian. The waste of space distressed him. He therefore cut it in
two by running a floor across the length of it halfway up, and
subdivided his floor into bedrooms to accommodate the resident farmer's
numerous family. It would be difficult to ruin a fine hall more
completely.
But the house still has its own beauty, though it is the wild beauty of
poverty and neglect. It stands half a mile from the road to the
south-west of the church, approached by a rough bridle path. The first
glimpse through the trees is of gables striped white and dark; a moat,
befeathered and noisy with ducks, and a little wooden bridge crossing
the moat to a side-door. Beyond lie great barns, a flagged courtyard and
flagged paths, and round the corner a second bridge over the moat,
brickbuilt and massive; and by the garden gate a mounting-stone, which
it would be pleasant to think gave Anne Boleyn's royal wooer an easy
step into the saddle. But it came later, perhaps.
Is it not possible that Crowhurst Place may be rescued as Tangley Manor
was? It has the hall, and the kitchen and the oak panelling, and the
great fireplaces for which we search all the house-agents' catalogues;
it is moated, it has dined a king; there should be a ghost somewhere.
But it rests apart, a farmhouse only. Brambles grow about it, such as
should fence in a castle of sleep; above them timbered gables and tall
chimneys to fit the cold and spacious hearths within. The fires that lit
those hearths wait their rekindling.