"This _Isabell_, the daughter and heire of Sir _John Barry_,
knight, was, when the said _Thomas_ married her, the widow of
_Humfrey_ Lord _Stafford_, of Southwike, sonne of _William
Stafford_ of _Hooke_, Esquire, created Earle of Devon, by King
_Edward_ the fourth; to whom the King gave all honours, manors,
Castles, &c., which were _Thomas Courtneys_, the fourteenth Earle
of Devon: who neverthelesse, grew ingratefull to King _Edward_
his advancer, in revolting from him at the battaile of Banbury,
for which cowardise (hee being apprehended) was without processe
executed at Bridgewater, the seventeenth of August, _anno. 1469_,
having been Earle but three moneths."
At his death the ill-gotten estates of the Courtenays that he
possessed, were again forfeited, and Edward IV. gave a considerable
portion of them to another eminent west-countryman John, Lord Dinham,
and to other grantees, but the succession failed in nearly all the
recipients, and Henry VII., in the first year of his reign, made void
all these grants by Edward IV., and restored both the title and the
estates to their rightful owners.
Here, before we finally dismiss our thoughts on the signal catastrophe
that ended the dynasty of Stafford of Suthwyke, we dwell awhile on the
singular parallelism of characters and incidents that are presented to
us in each of our little narratives relative to the distinguished but
unfortunate house of Stafford.
Both the prominent factors of our unpretending histories fell victims
to the vengeance of the White Rose, the result of defection doubtless,
though of differing kind. Each experienced the same unhappy fate,
Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, was sent to the scaffold at
Bridgwater, by the peremptory mandate of Edward IV., Henry Stafford,
Duke of Buckingham, suffered in similar summary manner at Salisbury,
by the relentless order of Richard III.
Two eminent ecclesiastics of the highest dignity are also associated
with their relations. John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Lord Chancellor to Henry VI., finds place in the one, and John Morton,
Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor to Henry VII.,
appears in the other.
Both were west-countrymen also, having been born in neighbouring
counties, the one at a village in north Wilts, the other in a little
country town in central Dorset.
Stafford saw the beginning of the internecine strife of the Roses, but
was called away as their rival pretensions began to assert themselves,
and the deadly conflict to thicken.
Morton appeared at the conclusion of the disastrous quarrel, and it
was reserved for him to put a stop to the deluge of blood that had
been ruthlessly shed for so many years,--computed to have cost a
hundred thousand lives,--decimating his native land, and by uniting
and neutralizing the contending claims, bring it peace. A
statesman-like mission of the first importance, and carried out with
such consummate wisdom, that it has been aptly said, "he joined the
Roses, that is, he brought about the union of the Houses of York and
Lancaster, for that was his doing, and, so far as can now be seen,
would not have been done but for him. He made the Tudor dynasty, and
his name is buried under his own creation."
So ends our little story,--such are the momentous issues, that fill
the mind's eye, amid this rural quietness, as our steps make homeward.
Evening is approaching, and leaving the interesting precincts of
North-Bradley church, our path back to Trowbridge,--discerned afar by
its hood of smoke,--leads through some pleasant meadows by way of
Suthwyke. Here we halt for a moment to take a final look at the old
place, and first home of Stafford in these parts. If deserted, one
after another, by its antient possessors, it now appears shorn of the
original dignity that man's transitory occupation once conferred upon
it, and of which nothing but a memory remains, Nature, unchanging,
still continues to adorn it with her charms, and specially so just at
present, for the trees in the orchard that skirts the Court are in
full bloom, some of them "white as a sheet with blooth" (as the old
Saxon idiom of the west-country peasantry expressively describes it),
and others loaded with clusters of variously expanded chalices of all
shades of that inimitable pink, the which--for want of other
satisfactory description,--we are content to call "apple-blossom."
There, across the moat, lived the first Sir Humphrey,--this we
know,--but what voice shall come back from the Past, and point us to
the site of the cottage, wherein the future Archbishop--his presumed
son--first saw the light? All is silent.
Of the last resting-places of the Staffords of Suthwyke, greater
certainty exists, and widely divided are they all in death.
The two successive Sir Humphreys, their wives, and a stray descendant,
sleep where stood a venerable monastic church, on the shores of the
Atlantic, in southern Dorset; the unfortunate, headless Earl, lies in
Glastonbury's great Abbey in central Somerset; but the record of their
graves has perished with them. Not so the memorials that perpetuate
the memories of the Archbishop's mother and her famous boy. She
received honoured burial, presumably amid her native scenes, and, it
may be, among her own kindred, here in this little sanctuary in north
Wilts; but her distinguished son found sepulture far away in Kent, in
the glorious cathedral, whose throne he filled, and among those whose
names are entwined with the greatest traditions of the land, and
within the precincts of its most sacred place, near where his
canonized predecessor meekly met his death at the hands of savage men,
and thenceforward named for all time as
"THE TRANSEPT OF THE MARTYRDOM."
Stranger, who through these dim sepulchral aisles,
Strayest in silence 'mid the mighty dead,
Lo, History's tongue here Time's fleet ear beguiles,
Great memories rise at every footstep's tread;--
Entombed in peace, repose, life's tumult o'er,
Two famous prelates from the distant west,
One, Suthwyke's son,--though graven found no more,
Hear thou his erstwhile record, and request;--
"_Whose dust concealeth thou, O ponderous stone?
Marble declare;--John Stafford was his name;--
In whose seat sat he?--on the Primate's throne,
Illustrious there, from Bath with mitred fame:--
For Chief so great, pray, now from life laid down,
The Virgin born may grant him golden crown._"
[Illustration: BRASS OF SIR JOHN ARUNDELL, ST. COLUMB-MAJOR.]
"THEY DID CAST HIM."
A pleasantly representative English look has the irregular,
disjointed, yet withal eminently picturesque little town of Tisbury,
viewed from the acclivity of the railway station.
On the one side a group of cottages, and fine trees planted high on
the shoulder of the hill, shews well against the distant sky-line, and
patches of houses--broken in their midst by the principal hostelry of
the place, staringly obtrusive in the most modern brick and white,
perched at the top of the straggling street that leads up to
it,--carry the eye across to the further fringe of the elevation on
the other side, where an ecclesiastical looking edifice, gabled and
pinnacled, cuts into the ether and balances the picture.
Low in the valley on the extreme right, some very old, and, evidently
from this distance, unmistakably important buildings are gathered
together, attesting the presence of the chief domicile of the place in
days of yore, and still retaining much of their antient consequence
with old gateway, great kitchen, and turreted chimney, and vast barn
two hundred feet long, with roof arched and high as a cathedral,--the
antient Grange, or Place, and country seat of the Abbess of
Shaftesbury.
Thus much for the mid-distance of the scene; an equally
representative, and in some peculiarities unique fore-ground is at our
feet.
Centrally almost, comes the Church--large, substantial, and
well-windowed--with a curious, but now-a-day unfortunately very
common, half-antient half-modern look, exhibiting a low massive tower
rising from its centre, capped with a pseudo-classic lantern, pierced
with four large, circular, winking clock-face apertures. It stands in
a well-kept churchyard, ornamented by some noble yew trees, and around
two sides of it runs a road, skirted with low antient buildings,
picturesquely gabled and chimnied, and dating from Tudor times.
Immediately on the right of the church, and jostling, almost vulgarly
invading the sacred precincts of the churchyard, which it adjoins,
rises the obtrusive bulk of a huge brewery, with accompanying chimney
stalk, as big as the church itself, and almost as venerable
looking,[36] a pertinent illustration of the contiguity, so often
sarcastically associated in one of our modern political cries.
[36] Of late it has been considerably rebuilt, and "dappered up"
as the Dorsetshire folk express it, to newness and smartness of
appearance.
On the left of the church, but at further distance, and pleasantly
situated on an acclivity, is an immense well-built union workhouse,
larger than either.
Strange company these, materially and metaphorically, and eminently
characteristic of our modern civilization, the brewery and the
workhouse, with the church between them, and suggestive of many
thoughts;--of clamorous interest too even in this little town, in this
passing hour, as announcements in large letters attest that meet the
eye of the wayfaring man, tarrying here about.
But leaving these present-day regions of noisy morality, and all
"burning questions" akin, to other disciples, be the purpose of our
quiet enjoyment to-day of a fairer and more gracious kind, as we note
peradventure the career, and seek it may be the association and
historic companionship of one who trod the troubled path of life in
the past, and endeavour--however imperfectly--to brighten his memory
for a season.
A short leisurely stroll from the station leads us by the great shrine
dedicated to the Bacchus of our modern Briton, and we halt in front of
the gate opening to the path leading to the north porch of the large
church immediately before us. But ere we enter, we pause to take a
momentary glance at the long line of semi-ecclesiastical,
almshouse-looking buildings with Tudor gables and high chimnies that
skirt the opposite side of the road, and from one of which the civil
custodian of the church, in response to our enquiries, emerges.
From him we learn that the house he dwells in was probably antiently
the Priest's dwelling, who was perhaps a monk appointed by the Abbess
of Shaftesbury to whom a large part of the manor of Tisbury belonged,
if not also the patronage of the benefice. In making some excavations
behind it a few years since, the skeletons of several persons were
found, on one skull the hair remained very perfect, but subsided to
dust the instant it was uncovered, as if shrinking from the sacrilege
of the intrusive eye and curiosity of the present. The building may
also have been a Cell attached to Shaftesbury Abbey, and this spot the
last resting-place of the solitary religious, once resident within it.
The pavement of the path through the churchyard leading to the church
is also strongly representative of modern destructive notions, and
exhibits,--although it traverses what we should regard from its
associations as sacred precincts,--a true example of the now-a-day
"way of the world." It is floored with the older memorial stones of
the departed that rest, now un-named, around, and the tear-wrought
memories they were charged to perpetuate, callously trod under the
foot of man, and in sure process of ruthless obliteration. "They are
only very old stones," said our cicerone in answer to our
protest,--"families all gone and no one to look after them,"--exactly
so, thought we with a half-sigh mingling with the echo of the
Ploughman's line, ringing a presaging knell over the fate of our
possible memory, when, as here, some day and perhaps
"--no distant date,
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,"
and this outrage on the memories of the departed, not the _best_
preparation altogether for entrance into the temple of Him, whose love
knoweth no change, and whose remembrance faileth not for the children
of men, more enduring than Job's yearning for graven words with iron
pen in the rock for ever, or even as vigorous Toplady puts it in
glorious anticipation,--
"My name from the palms of His hands,
Eternity will not erase."
Inside, the church has a somewhat desolate look,[37] and no antient
memorial catches the eye, except two small brass effigies of a
Franklin or Merchant of Henry the Seventh's days, in long tunic with
scrip buckled to his waist, and his wife with pointed head-dress and
embroidered girdle, riven from their sepulchral stone and nailed to
the wall; an early denizen it may be of the grand old domicile of
Place. A noticeable and somewhat unique feature however must not be
forgotten,--the cover of the font, pyramidal in shape, of oak panelled
and crocketted, and richly gilded. There were formerly two screens
across the transepts, but they have disappeared. There are fine roofs
to the side aisles, on the bosses are the Sacred Names, and the date
1595. A curious circumstance here may be mentioned, the tower has
three times been struck by lightning, once in 1762, again in 1795, and
also of late years,--and this doubtless accounts for the incongruous
style of its lantern-shape upper storey.
[37] It has recently been considerably restored.
But the chief historic association of the church, and what has led our
wandering feet here to furnish a text to hang our little story on, is
found in the chancel, though very little comparatively is to be seen
there even, by the uninitiated as things at present are, to give
direction to his thoughts.
Tisbury tells of Arundell! Such is the first suggestive thought to him
of the west-country that cometh to that little rural town, and
specially in this chancel, beneath whose pavement the dust of the
earlier members of one of its most distinguished descents is at rest.
But the home-land of that antient race, so happily and allusively
named after our gentle summer visitant,--the graceful-flighted
"chimney-haunting" swallow,--is not here.
Not on the boundless arid chalk plains, on whose rocky skirt the
swallow of the west has with kindred instinct migrated, seek we his
parent nest. In the dusky twilight of our national history we trace
probably his earliest haunts, chronicled in the great accompt of the
Norman Conqueror, as then holding considerable possessions amid the
rich plains of Somerset and breezy uplands of Dorset. Then we hear of
him nestling in a green combe in leafy Devon, and anon occupying a
"coigne of 'vantage" on the southern fringe of tor-crested Dartmoor,
and where his name still clings though its possessor has long since
fled. From thence in the days of the earlier Plantagenet kings, he
winged his flight across the deep-banked Tamar into far Cornubia,
where the soft mists of the Atlantic and warm southern sunshine
alternate, bathe the granite bastions that defend her valleys, and
there finally settled Arundell, there built he his parent nest and
reared his "procreant cradle," and thenceforward he and his for
centuries flourished and multiplied in great honour and ample estate,
until his name for power and influence was styled _the Great_, and it
became a household word in the county of his adoption.
But wealth and honour, not even when allied with teeming descendants
scattered around and settled in divers descents seemingly to defend
it, can perpetuate a race,
"There is no armour against fate,"
and to the mutation and decay, impartially entailed on human destiny,
both peer and peasant alike are equally doomed.
So, in Cornwall, for centuries, the generations of Arundell succeeded
each other at Lanherne and Trerice, the great twin stems of this noble
stirpe, and spread and rooted themselves, in divers offshoots located
near. But gradually that name, although surnamed _the Great_, and
their descendants, one after another, dwindled away under the breath
of Time, until its sound became an echo and a tradition only, in the
regions of its olden home, and finally became extinct.
In 1701, the _Great_ Arundell of Lanherne (from them the dormant
Arundells beneath our feet were descended), last of his name of the
elder house, died, and a distaff only followed him to his grave. She
was wedded and the mother of a son,--but his name was not
Arundell,--but on him his grandfather settled all his estates, and the
heritage of his antient name.
Again the succession was denied, daughters only were born to him, and
distaff succeeded distaff. One of them sleeps below, presumably in
life a happy and unique fate befell her, as by her marriage with Lord
Arundell was united the two descents of Lanherne and Wardour, and her
name will probably recur to our thoughts again before our little story
ends.
Seventy years--just a spell of human life--later, in 1773, the final
representative of the almost equally distinguished descent of Trerice
(they had been ennobled by Charles II. in 1664), John, fourth and last
Baron Arundell of Trerice, passed to that bourne, from which no
traveller, however distinguished, returns. It is curious that both he,
and his noble wife--who was a sister of the Earl of Strafford and
pre-deceased him--both found their sepulchre far eastward of their
native home, and repose in the chancel of the church of
Sturminster-Marshall in Dorset, not very far from this.
But to return to Arundell of Tisbury--yet we must still digress for a
time--and to this chancel, where, beginning three centuries ago, and
descending from him of whom we propose to have something to say, lie
the ashes of the ancestors of the green branch of this antient stock
located not far off, still nobly upholding its olden name and fame,
although in its earlier days it had to struggle fiercely through some
of the direst vicissitudes that environ human life, to perpetuate its
existence.
To translate our thoughts, once more, for a short time to Cornwall,
and recall the then representative of the Lanherne descent, Sir John
Arundell, knt., a man great at the Courts of king Henry VII. and his
bluff son Henry VIII. From both those monarchs he received
distinguished marks of favour, being successively nominated a Knight
of the Bath, a Knight of the Garter, and also for his valour at
Terouenne and Tournay at the celebrated "battle of the Spurs" created
a Knight-Banneret.
He was well descended. On his father's side of the family escutcheon,
among other venerable Cornish bearings, was displayed the blue field
and _golden bend_ of the antient Carminow,--insignia for dignity
rivalling the blazon of the distinguished Scrope,--and quartered also
with it, there appeared, in happy alliance with the swallows of
Arundell, the garland of kindred _martlets_ that fringe the shield of
the olden race of Chidiock in Dorset. His well-born mother was a
daughter of Sir John Dinham of Hartland, a noble Devonian name of that
era, her brother, to whom she was coheir, being John, Lord Dinham, so
created by king Edward IV., 28 February, 1466, also like her husband
included within the circle of the Garter, and holding high office
under Henry VII.; she could also claim the blood of illustrious
Courtenays among her ancestors.
Sir John Arundell by marriage allied himself with families of great
influence, his first wife being the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas
Grey, Lord Marquis of Dorset, step-son to Edward IV., and half-brother
to the Queen of Henry VII.,--her mother being the last descendant and
sole heiress to a great but unfortunate Devonshire name, Cicely
Bonville. Secondly, he wedded Katharine, daughter of Sir Thomas
Grenville, a knightly and warlike race of the first renown in north
Cornwall, and sister of Jane, who was married to his kinsman the other
Sir John Arundell of Trerice. His aunt, his father's sister Elizabeth,
was married to Sir Giles, who was afterward created Lord Daubeney, and
K.G.,--a man like himself of high rank at the Court of Henry VII.
In 1506 he was appointed Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall, a position
of great honour and influence in his native county, and in 1509 the
office was confirmed to him for life.
Thus by birth, alliance, honours, appointments, and possessions, he
seems to have been amply qualified to sustain the appellation bestowed
on his ancestor, that of being designated _the Great Arundell of the
West_.
He died in 1544-5, and a superb brass exhibiting the effigies of
himself and two wives, his children, and elaborate armorial insignia,
still exists in the church of St. Columb Major, in Cornwall, but
whether he was buried there, or in St. Mary Woolnoth in London, there
is some doubt,--but the balance of testimony inclines toward St.
Columb.[38]
[38] Refer to pages 67-8-9 for a further account of this knight,
and detailed description of his memorial brass.
Take breath, friend of mine, after the shadow of this great and much
honoured Tudor magnate has passed across the screen of the past, dimly
lit by the illumination of your thoughts,--for a broad and striking
glimpse follows in his wake, of what we are sometimes apt to term the
"good old times" opens upon us, as we rapidly picture the chief events
that characterized the days of Thomas Arundell his second son, and the
first of Wardour, and glance at his companions at the Courts of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI., together with those of his immediate descendants
in the succeeding reigns of the two last Tudor sovereigns.
If those eventful times were not "good" in the large acceptance of the
term, there was a large infusion of stern unflinching reality within
them. The influence of strong mental power meets us everywhere, men
aspired to be men,--sons of Anak in their resolutions,--and the views
they took and combated for, were to them no myths,--nor did the almost
absolute certainty of the fate of the martyr's stake, the headsman's
block, or the confiscator's hand, if the enterprise should fail, deter
or daunt an inflexible and often relentless purpose, dictated perhaps
by the call of religious sentiment, or animated by the promptings of
high personal ambition alone, or cast it may be, in the mould of real
or imaginary patriotic duty.
Contrasted with such, our puny doings of the present offer suggestive
difference to the life-poised movements carried out by the deep-souled
resolves that sustained the doings of the men, who passed through the
grim ordeal of the blood-gripped days of Wolsey and Somerset,--some
episodes of which, occurring during the reign of Henry VIII. and his
son the boy-king, we propose lightly to glance at,--when the
'shapings' of the history of our native land lay in rather grander
purpose than the now-a-day trivialities and companionship ravings of
our modern political 'stump.'
Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, who died in 1545, by his first wife
the Lady Elizabeth Grey, left two sons,--Sir John the elder, a country
gentleman located at the old family seat of Lanherne, and Sir Thomas,
ancestor of the Wardour descent, and the subject of our little story.
Sir Thomas, born probably about 1500, was as a younger son sent early
a-field to seek his fortune, and for that purpose introduced, it may
be by his father, to the precincts of the Court of Henry VIII., where
afterward he appears to have spent much of his time amid its
phantasmagoria of pleasures and horrors, ecclesiastical, military, and
civil.
Beginning, if not exactly with actual attendance at the Court itself,
but doubtless intended as a stepping-stone to it, we first hear of him
as attached to the service of the next potential person of the realm,
the subtle and ambitious Wolsey, in whose retinue he was appointed as
one of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber to my Lord Legate and
Cardinal, with whom he was on friendly terms, and who probably brought
him into notice.
The pompous semi-royal state in which this notable ecclesiastic lived
and moved, even in that extravagant age, is almost incredible. His
setting off to France on one of his diplomatic journeys is thus
described,--
"Then marched he from his own house at Westminster, through all
London, over London Bridge, having before him a great number of
gentlemen, three in a rank, with velvet coats, and the most part
of them with chains of gold about their necks; and all his yeomen
followed him with noblemen's and gentlemen's servants, all in
orange tawny coats, with the cardinal's hat and T and C, for
Thomas Cardinal, embroidered upon all the coats, as well of his
own servants, as all the rest of the gentlemen's servants; and
his sumpter mules, which were twenty or more in number. And when
all his carriages and carts, and other of his train were passed
before, he rode like a Cardinal very sumptuously with the rest of
his train, on his own mule, with a spare mule and a spare horse
trapped in crimson following him. And before him he had his two
great crosses of silver, his two great pillars of silver, the
King's broad seal of England, and his Cardinal's hat, and a
gentleman carrying his cloak-bag, which was made of scarlet,
embroidered with gold. Thus passed he forth through London, and
every day on his journey he was thus furnished, having his
harbingers in every place before, which prepared lodgings for him
and his train."
All this was not much beyond the state this proud churchman ordinarily
assumed, and it leaves little room to wonder why Henry VIII. and
Wolsey could not exist together, nor of church and state being
straightway at issue, nor why not long afterward the knock of a
heart-broken monk at the gate of the Abbey of Leicester was the knell
of his own order in England.
Wolsey passed out of his troubled existence in November, 1530, and in
the year following, 1531, an event took place that at once placed Sir
Thomas among the foremost men of that era, this was his marriage with
a scion of the noble house of Norfolk,--Margaret, eldest daughter of
Lord Edmund Howard.
He was the third son of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk, K.G.,
who died 21 May, 1524, by his first wife Elizabeth, daughter and
coheir of Sir Frederick Tilney.
Concerning this Duke a few words. "On May 13, 13 Henry VIII., 1521,"
says Collins,--
"he performed the office of Lord High Steward on the trial of
Edward, Duke of Buckingham, and gave sentence of death on him,
whereat he was so much concerned, as to shed tears."