ELIZABETHAN CHESHIRE. I
The chief event with which all boys, I imagine, connect the name of
Queen Elizabeth is the defeat of the Great Armada sent against these
shores by the King of Spain. Doubtless on that summer night in the year
1588 there were watchers by the beacon on Alderley Edge who saw the
'Wrekin's crest of fire' flashing its message northwards. There was no
telegraph in those days, and yet in an hour or two at most the news of
the approach of an enemy was carried by beacon fires from the Channel to
the Cheviots. Cheshire indeed produced no Drake or Hawkins; but Sir
George Beeston, whose tomb you may see in Bunbury Church, commanded the
ship Dreadnought, one of the four ships that broke through the Spanish
line and took an active part in the pursuit and destruction of the
Spanish vessels.
A few years later Sir Uryan Legh of Adlington Hall accompanied Lord
Howard and Raleigh and the Earl of Essex on an expedition to Cadiz, when
they destroyed the ships in the harbour and for a second time 'singed
the King of Spain's beard'. The town itself was taken by storm, and for
his bravery on this occasion Sir Uryan Legh was knighted. The Leghs were
always to the fore when there was any fighting to be done. A canopied
arch in Prestbury Church marks his last resting-place, but the tomb
itself has long since disappeared.
One result of the expeditions of Drake and Raleigh was that Englishmen
were inspired with a passion for travel, whether abroad or at home,
partly for the sake of adventure and the pursuit of wealth, partly out
of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. The voyages of the great
navigators, 'itineraries' or diaries of travel, and histories of our own
country and its people were written at this period. These books show
clearly in their pages how intensely proud the Englishmen of Elizabeth's
day were of their country and their queen and her brave seamen, who by
their victories over Spain raised England to the first position among
the nations of the world.
Michael Drayton wrote a long poem called 'Polyolbion', in which four
hundred lines are taken up with a description of Cheshire, which he
calls the
thrice happy Shire, confined so to be
twixt two so famous Floods, as Mersey is, and Dee.
He speaks of Chester as
th' imaginary work of some huge Giant's hand:
which if such ever were, Tradition tells not who.
The book was illustrated by a number of curious maps, adorned with
quaint figures of men and women representing the rivers, hills, forests,
and castled towns.
John Speed was born at Farndon on the Dee, and wrote a book called the
_Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain_, which contained the earliest
set of maps published in England.
Cophurst, an old house near Sutton Downes in the Forest of Macclesfield,
is thought to have been the birthplace of the chronicler Raphael
Holinshed, who wrote a History of England and dedicated it to William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, the great minister of Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare
used this book for the plots of some of his plays.
The triumphs of Francis Drake were celebrated in a long Latin poem by
Thomas Newton of Butley, who placed the small brass tablet on the wall
near the pulpit in Prestbury Church to the memory of his parents. Newton
was for some time the head master of Macclesfield Grammar School.
Another Elizabethan poet was Geoffrey Whitney, who was born at Nantwich.
An inscription on an old house at Nantwich, bearing the date 1584, shows
that Elizabeth returned the affections of her people and did all she
could for them. The verse reads thus:--
God grant our royal Queen
In England long to reign;
For she hath put her helping hand
To build this town again.
[Illustration: MAP OF CHESHIRE. From Drayton's 'Polyolbion']
Nantwich had been almost totally destroyed by fire in the previous year.
The risk of fire was always very great, owing to the fact that nearly
all the houses of the Middle Ages were built of timber and thatched with
straw.
The black and white timbered halls are the glory of Cheshire. Let us pay
a visit to-day to Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton, perhaps the most
beautiful of them all. The people who live here are proud of their home,
and on certain days of the week allow you to examine at your leisure
many of the rooms in the old house, which remains in almost the same
condition as when the Moretons removed to a new and more spacious house
of brick hard by.
The framework of the house is all of wood, good solid English oak, and
black with age. The spaces between the beams and props are filled with
plaster and painted white. The principal beams which support the
building are of course upright, firmly laid on a foundation of stone.
Within the squares of this framework other beams are set in sloping
parallel lines, forming patterns of chevron or diamond, or arranged in
rows of quatrefoils and arcades of trefoil-headed arches. The upper
stories and the gables of the roof project beyond the ground floor of
the building, which is thus kept dry.
We cross the moat by a substantial stone bridge, and enter through a
gateway whose massive oaken lintel and side-posts are covered with rich
carving, and find ourselves in a square paved courtyard. Within the
gateway is a stone horse-block.
Facing us are two deep bay-windows formed of five sides of an octagon.
Over them you may read the carved inscription: 'God is al in al things.
This window whire made by William Moreton in the yeare of oure Lorde
MDLIX.' The building of the home was regarded by our Elizabethan
forefathers as an almost sacred work, to be carried out with hardly less
reverence than the building of a church.
A second gateway forms the entrance to the dining-hall on the one hand
and the kitchen on the other. The walls of the dining-room are lined
with wainscoting of panelled oak; the open timbered roof is held up by a
strong central beam; the windows are filled with countless tiny panes of
glass, with bright patches of red and orange and blue where the
coat-of-arms and crest of the Moretons are painted upon them.
[Illustration: LITTLE MORETON HALL]
In the kitchen are marks of the growing comfort and luxuries of
Elizabethan days--the rows of pewter plates bearing the Moreton arms,
and a great spice-chest where the fragrant spices of the East, brought
home by travellers, were stored, as well as the sweet herbs, the sage
and rosemary, lavender and thyme, from the herb-garden of the Hall. In
the open fireplace, ten feet wide, an ox might well be roasted; the
smoke from the log-fire was carried upwards from the roof by a
chimney-stack of brick.
Over the 'screen' or passage that divides the dining-hall and the
kitchen is a musicians' gallery, where the players of the viol and the
harp made music while the squire and his lady supped in the early
evening.
To the left of the gatehouse through which we first entered is the
chapel, where the chaplain read the daily prayers to the assembled
family. A narrow spiral staircase fixed upon a central newel post leads
to a long gallery at the very top of the house, running the whole length
of one side of the courtyard. This was the ballroom, where Elizabeth
herself may perhaps have danced, as tradition says she did, for we know
that she was fond of visiting her people in their own homes.
Few sixteenth-century houses were without a secret chamber. Little
Moreton Hall contains two such rooms, cunningly concealed in a corner of
the house. They are entered by sliding panels from an apartment over the
kitchen, and the fugitive could escape his pursuers by an underground
passage leading underneath the moat to the open field beyond.
At opposite corners of the moat are two green circular mounds, on which
probably once stood two watch-towers to guard the house against attack.
A large number of the old halls of Cheshire were at one time moated for
their protection, though in many cases the moats have been filled up,
now that they are no longer necessary. Peel Hall in Etchells, Irby,
Swinyard Hall, Twemlow, Marthall, and Allostock Hall still retain
portions of their original moats.
[Illustration: THE GALLERY, LITTLE MORETON HALL]
Handforth Hall was built, as the inscription over the entrance door
tells us, 'in the year of our Lord God MCCCCCLXII by Uryan Brereton
Knight.' The Tudor builders were not ashamed to put their names to their
work. Within the Hall is a wide oak staircase with a wonderfully carved
balustrade, one of the most beautiful pieces of Tudor woodwork in
Cheshire. Sir Uryan's daughter married Thomas Legh of Adlington, who
built the timber portions of Adlington Hall in 1581.
As you have already seen in a previous chapter, some of the timber
houses of Cheshire belong to a period much earlier than the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. Just as they reached their highest pitch of beauty and
richness under the Tudors a new style of domestic architecture was
coming in. Bricks, which had been very seldom used since the days of the
Romans, were again employed. The bricks were much larger than those used
by the Romans; in fact they were precisely similar to those of the
present day. They were not, however, laid as they are now, but in the
style called 'English bond', in which one 'course' or row shows all the
long faces and the next one all the short ends.
These brick mansions were larger and more spacious than the old wooden
ones, and built for comfort rather than defence. They were set in the
midst of broad parks, and surrounded by terraced lawns and gardens
enclosed by walls of clipped yew-trees. Sometimes ornamental fish-ponds,
such as you may see at Gawsworth, were laid out in front of the house;
avenues of limes and Spanish chestnuts imported from abroad were planted
along the roadway leading to the principal entrance. Their general
shape, out of compliment to Queen Elizabeth, was that of the letter E.
Brereton Hall is a good example of this 'Tudor' style. It was built in
1586, the first stone being laid, so it is said, by the queen herself.
In the eastern parts of Cheshire, where stone is abundant, houses
similar in design were built of this material instead of brick. Arden
Hall, near Stockport, is now in ruins, but enough remains to show the
chief characteristics of an Elizabethan mansion; the turret with
circular stone staircase, the wings with gabled ends, and the bay
windows carried up to the roof. Other Elizabethan houses are Marple
Hall, Poole Hall, Carden Hall in the Broxton Hills, Dorfold Hall, and
Burton Hall in Wirral.
[Illustration: TUDOR MONUMENTS IN GAWSWORTH CHURCH
The central figure is that of Mary Fitton]
In Gawsworth Church are a number of monuments of members of the Fitton
family, who lived at the Old Hall at Gawsworth. Mary Fitton was one of
Elizabeth's maids-of-honour, and used to take part in plays for the
amusement of the queen; and it is not at all unlikely that she was a
friend of Shakespeare. It is indeed supposed that she is the 'dark lady'
of whom the poet speaks in his sonnets. From an examination of these
Fitton monuments you can learn what the costume at the end of the
sixteenth century was like. Lady Alice Fitton is surrounded by the
kneeling figures of her two sons and two daughters, the former in plate
armour, the latter wearing the familiar head-dress and ruff which are
such distinctive features in the dress of Tudor ladies. The figures are
carved in alabaster, and have clearly at one time been painted in bright
colours. The picture of Mary Fitton will help you to recognize the Tudor
monuments which are to be seen in many Cheshire churches.