"By the north aisle is a peculiar chappell of excellent worke,
the roof of wood curiously carved. I guesse the worke to be about
temp: Henry VI. about which time this kind of Gothique
architecture was at the height. This was as noble a Chapelle as
any in the county, now, in the windowe, like a great bay windowe
is only one scutcheon left entire; viz: Stafford,--_Or, a chevron
gules._ Another was quarterley, _now broken_: another thus
Stafford, imp: Beville. At the bottom thereof is a flatt
gravestone of freestone well worked, lineally with the figure of
a lady in a Gothique niche. In the limbe thereof this inscription
"=Hic jacet d'na Emma, &c=."
The old antiquary gives the inscription fairly correct as it now is
found, but at the end he adds these further words,--"=O Deus trina me
John conserva ruina=,"--(_O triune God, save me, John, from
perdition_). But such never could have existed on the face of the
gravestone, as the inscription, without this addition completely fills
the ledger-line around its edge. Probably he saw it in one of the
windows. He then goes on to say,--
"In the limbe of the windowe are these fragments "=Emme matris
d... d'ni Joh'is Archiep...r...dicti=." In the top of this
windowe, and also of the other, in scrolls,--"=Gnothi seauton:
Nosce te ipsum.=" The other windowe is all broken, but the scrolls
aforesaid: only the picture of the archbishop, except his head,
remains, of curious painted glass, he in his formalities, with
pall, crozier, &c., in a cope of sky colour. In a limbe of this
windowe "=hujus capelle ... Archiepi Cantuar=." In the carved wood
work of the roofe are several little hunting figures, as of men
carrying a deer, shooting a deer in the wood. One scutcheon of
Hungerford in wood. This chapell is built outside the church, as
Hungerfords at Sarum, but the scutcheons of stone are not
charged."
A review of the circumstances attending the origin and career of John
Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, furnishes a subject of peculiar
interest. Born, as we have observed, outside the legal pale, and as a
consequence, subject to all its worldly disadvantages, this drawback
appears to have found no hindrance to his advancement on the path of
life, which ultimately led--short of sovereignty--to the highest
station it had to offer. This result exhibits another striking
instance of those marvellous careers, that have so often waited upon
these natural children of mankind, who bearing down all obstacles in
their way, and contemptuous of the goody-goody frowns and askant
glances of their more piously-bred neighbours, by the force of their
character, and the self-reliance engendered by what is termed
misfortune of birth, have achieved the position of standing among the
leaders and rulers of their race.
Examined by the light of common sense, the cause of this innate
distinction is perhaps not far to seek. In its highest and truest
sense, such have received their being under the strongest impulses
that animate the human heart, knit by the influence of attachment
often so powerful, that no present consequence, or after consideration
received at the time a moment's parley, and Nature in the result
asserts the aristocracy of her lineage; whereof the life of the
Archbishop is a notable example. Proscribed doubtless, then as now, by
the social world from assuming equality with them, and unable
therefore to pursue any of the usual worldly professions with equal
chances of success, it is refreshing to find the highest human
vocation, the office of the Christian minister, was at his
acceptance,--the Church opened her door to the human waif,--who was
destined afterward to become her chief pastor. From his presumed
father--as usual--he received scant help, but five years before his
death, Sir Humphrey bestowed on him a costless gift, by presenting the
future Archbishop to the family living of Farnboro', in the diocese of
Bath and Wells,--a See he afterward presided over.
The close affection also that evidently existed between the Archbishop
and his mother, cemented doubtless by the circumstances of his birth,
and her consequent comparative isolation from society, is a delightful
trait in his character; and it may be fully surmised caused him to
take her to Canterbury, there to become a Sister of the religious
house, of which fraternity he was a Brother, in order that she might
be well cared for, and be near him, and where she probably passed the
last twenty years of her life. She lived long enough to see her
distinguished son ascend the Archiepiscopal throne, and as Lord
Chancellor also to the reigning sovereign, King Henry VI., become at
once the first citizen of his native land, both in Church and State; a
remarkable privilege, that few mothers indeed,--no matter what
distinction of birth or station they inherited,--have been destined to
witness.
At her death in 1446, the Archbishop had her body conveyed back to
North-Bradley, of which place she presumably was a native, and where
probably her son was born. There he deposited her remains in the
mortuary chapel attached to the parish church he had specially built
to receive them, under a tomb whereon he caused her form to be
depicted, and surrounded it with the simple inscription that still
remains to bear witness of his filial affection.
It is noticeable that some intimacy must have sprung up between his
father's family and himself, for although Sir Humphrey does not
mention him in his will, yet his second wife Elizabeth D'Aumarle does
so in hers. This intercourse probably ripened toward the end of his
life, for his legally-born half-brother, Sir Humphrey "_with the
Silver Hand_," who died ten years before the Archbishop, bequeaths him
some silver plate, and constitutes him one of his executors. This
acknowledgment would be quite in accordance with the ordinary ways
of the world, Sir Humphrey doubtless properly felt that the honour
of the friendship had now passed to the side of his presumed
half-brother,--the stray off-shoot of the Stafford blood, had outgrown
and overshadowed in position and fame, all the other branches of the
family tree, and consequent on this, as a matter of course, his
kinship was not disowned, and the Archbishop became the "_frater meo_"
of the Knight "_with the Silver Hand_."
But, strange irony of this world's remembrance,--in death, if not in
life their memory was to be avenged,--not a fragment of a memorial,
nor the trace of an inscription remains to any direct member of the
influential family of Stafford of Suthwyke and Hooke. Eschewing the
humble precincts of the churches of the parishes in which their homes
in Wilts and Dorset were situate as a place of burial, they caused
their dust to be carried many miles away to the grand Abbey Church of
Abbotsbury, and deposited in a Chantry they had founded therein, with
its attendant priest to supplicate unceasingly for the welfare of
their souls. Not very long after the last member of their race was
laid within it, ruthless hands razed the great fabric to the ground,
when all the memorials to the dead it contained were destroyed, and
with such completeness, that even the position of their sepulchres may
not at present be discerned, so that now, the tomb of the mother of
the Archbishop alone remains in these western parts, to bear indirect
witness of their former existence.
The Archbishop appears to have died at Maidstone on the sixth of July,
1452, and was buried in the "Transept of the Martyrdom" in Canterbury
Cathedral.
He lies under an immense (Purbeck?) marble stone, perhaps the very
largest in the cathedral, eleven feet five inches in length, by four
feet six inches in breadth. On this was originally a magnificent
brass, almost entirely filling the stone, but only the indent, now
also much frayed, remains.
The outline shews us the effigy of the Archbishop _in pontificalibus_,
with mitre and pastoral staff. He stands under a rich canopy with
pinnacles and finials, supported on long buttresses that extend down
to the base of the composition. Below his feet there was evidently a
square panel which probably contained the "confabulatorie epitaph"
seen and copied by Weever. Around the edge of the stone is a
ledger-line, that probably had the emblems of the Evangelists at the
angles.
The Archbishop's gravestone has shared the common fate accorded to all
the brass-inlaid stones, that doubtless formerly thickly adorned the
pavement of the cathedral, but of which not a single undespoiled
example now remains.
On a boss in the vaulting immediately above, are the prelate's arms,
being those of the See of Canterbury, impaling, _Or, on a chevron
gules, a mitre argent, within a bordure engrailed sable_ (STAFFORD OF
SUTHWYKE, _with difference_).