Welcombe—Snitterfield—Warwick—Leicester’s Hospital—St. Mary’s Church and
the Beauchamp Chapel.
THE distance between Stratford and Warwick is eight miles, and the road,
the broad highway, runs direct. It is an excellent road, but for those
who do not care overmuch for main routes, however beautiful, in these
times, a more excellent way, for a portion of the journey at any rate, is
by Snitterfield. You turn off to the left from the tree-bordered main
road at a point a mile and a half from Stratford, well in view of the
lofty obelisk on the hillside at Welcombe which was built in 1873 to
perpetuate the memory of the obscure person, a certain Mark Phillips, who
had erected the mansion of Welcombe Lodge in 1869. Without the aid of
this monument he would by now have been completely forgotten; but it is
120 feet in height and prominently visible from amazing distances, and so
its object is attained. Not perhaps exactly in the way originally
intended, for being in a district where most things are associated in
some way with Shakespeare, it is generally supposed to be one of them,
and when the disappointed stranger finds himself thus deluded, he usually
reflects upon Mark Phillips in the most scathing terms.
Up at Welcombe are those Dingles already referred to. The way to
Snitterfield takes you uphill, past lands that once belonged to
Shakespeare, and by a pond which is all that is left of the lake of
Snitterfield Hall, a mansion demolished in 1820. Here the road has
reached a considerable height, commanding beautiful views down over the
valley of the Avon at Hampton Lucy and Charlecote.
[Picture: Leicester’s Hospital, Warwick]
Snitterfield village is embowered amid elms. The church is a rustic
building in the Decorated style, with seventeenth-century pulpit and
enriched woodwork of the same period furnishing the altar-rails. Here
the Rev. Richard Jago was vicar for twenty years, dying in 1781. His
duties did not bear heavily upon him, and he occupied most of his time in
writing a long poem, “Edgehill, or the Rural Prospect Delineated and
Moralised,” a published work which no one ever reads, the prospect of
moralising held forth on the title-page scaring the timid. His vicarage
remains, and on its lawn are still the three silver birches planted by
his three daughters. There are some beautiful lime-trees and an ancient
yew in the churchyard. No relic of Henry Shakespeare, William
Shakespeare’s uncle, or of his father or grandfather, who lived at
Snitterfield, now remains.
The road now trends to the right, and, steeply descending, regains the
main route into Warwick. The town of Warwick looms nobly before the
traveller approaching from the west. The broad level highway makes
direct for it, and over the trees that border the road you see, as a
first glimpse of the historic place, the lofty tower of St. Mary’s
church, rising apparently an enormous height, and looking a most
worshipful specimen of architecture. On a nearer approach it sinks into
less prominence, and, passing through an old suburb, with a porch-house
on the right, formerly the “Malt-Shovel” inn, the West Gate of the town,
with its chapel above it, takes prominence.
[Picture: Leicester’s Hospital: The Courtyard]
The West Gate is one of the two surviving ancient gateways of Warwick and
leads steeply up into the town beneath a rude-ribbed arch of great
massiveness, based sturdily upon the dull red sandstone rock. It is a
very picturesque and in every way striking composition, and if it were
not for the even more picturesque scene provided by Leicester’s Hospital,
just within the gate, would be often illustrated. But the nodding black
and white gables of that almshouse effectually attract the greater
notice. The West Gate, with the chapel above, dates from about 1360.
Nowadays it is almost only the curious visitor who passes through the
long, tunnel-like arch, gazing with astonishment at the sudden outcrop of
rock on which the building stands, and at the ribbed stone roof
supporting the chapel. A roadway has been made to the right of the gate,
through the town walls, and the traffic goes that way by choice,
obscuring the ancient defensive function and importance of this entrance
to the town. A chapel also occupies the like position over the East
Gate, and shows that the people of Warwick prayed as well as watched.
The Leicester Hospital, so-called because founded by Robert Dudley, Earl
of Leicester, looks down with admirable effect from its elevated position
on the left hand, as you come up into the town; but it would look even
better if it were properly kept. It very urgently needs a thorough
overhauling, not in the necessity for any structural repairs, but with
the object of treating the buildings in a sympathetic and cultured way.
There is a vast difference between photographic views of what is called,
in the Wardour Street way, “Leycester’s” Hospital, and the actual effect
of looking upon the place with one’s own eyes. The Hospital, in fact,
looks very much better in photographs than it reveals itself to the
disappointed gaze: simply because those responsible for the upkeep of it
do not understand how to treat the old timbers, and have smeared them
over with black paint.
This Hospital or Almshouse occupies the site of the ancient united
religious and charitable guilds of Holy Trinity and St.
George-the-Martyr, with some of their surviving buildings. These united
fraternities had numerous activities. They supported the priests who
served in the chapels over East and West gates, and contributed towards
the keep of others in the parish church; being also largely responsible
for the maintenance of the great bridge, now and for long past in ruins,
which carried the Banbury road across the Avon, in front of Warwick
Castle. They also supported eight poor persons of the Guild. In common
with all other religious, or semi-religious institutions, the Guild was
dissolved in the time of Henry the Eighth, and its buildings were granted
by Edward the Sixth to Sir Nicholas le Strange, from whom Dudley acquired
them; or, according to another version of these transactions, Dudley had
a gift of them direct from the town of Warwick, to which the Guild had
voluntarily transferred its property. This gift to the magnificent
Dudley, the newly-created Earl of Leicester and possessor of vast wealth
and power, was not for his own personal advantage, but for the purpose of
helping him to establish an almshouse, which he at once proceeded to do,
in the interest of “twelve impotent persons, not having above £5 per
annum of their own, and such as either had been, or should be maimed in
the warrs of the Queen, her service, her heirs and successors, especially
under the conduct of the said Earl or his heirs, or had been tenants to
him and his heirs, and born in the Counties of Warwick or Gloucester, or
having their dwelling there for five years before; and in case there
happen to be none such hurt in the Warrs, then other poor of Kenilworth,
Warwick, Stratford super Avon in this county, or of Wootton under Edge or
Erlingham in Gloucestershire, to be recommended by the Minister and
Churchwardens where they last had their aboad; which poor men are to have
Liveries (viz. Gowns of blew cloth, with a Ragged Staff embroydered on
the left sleeve) and not to go into the Town without them.”
Leicester and his magnificence, and all the direct lineage of the Dudleys
have disappeared long ago. Leicester himself, and after him his brother
Ambrose, died childless, and the patronage of the Hospital passed to
their sister Mary, who married Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst. Thence it
has descended to Lord de L’isle and Dudley, the present representative of
the Dudleys and the Sidneys.
The entrance is by a stone gateway bearing the inscription “Hospitivm
Collegiatvm Roberti Dvdlei Comitis Leycestriæ 1571.” The great Dudley’s
picturesque buildings deserve to be better kept, for they are among the
daintiest examples of highly enriched half-timbering in England. Passing
beneath an archway with a sundial overhead, you enter a small quadrangle
with a quaint staircase on one side, and gables with elaborate pierced
verge-boards looking down upon the scene. The famous Warwick badge of
the Bear and Ragged Staff surmounts the finials and lurks under the
eaves, in frequent repetition, together with the Porcupine, that of the
Sidneys. On the further side, over the windows of the Master’s Lodge, is
the painted inscription, “Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear God;
and honour the King,” a quadripartite injunction which we may confidently
affirm, no man ever yet observed. Our own—but much more other
people’s—natures will have to be very greatly amended before we are
prepared to “honour all men.”
You pay sixpence to be shown over the Hospital, and one of the twelve
bedesmen acts as guide to the buildings and the very miscellaneous
collections accumulated in them. Nowadays the “blue gown” has become
black, and the Bear and Ragged Staff badge is in silver, instead of
embroidery. A welcome change has come over their headgear. Instead of
the more or less rusty silk hats they wore during the greater part of the
nineteenth century, they have now a “beefeater” hat similar to those worn
by the Tower warders in London, but wholly in black. The bedesmen no
longer dine together as once they did, but each separately in his own
quarters, because they could not always obey the injunction to “love the
brotherhood,” and grew cantankerous in company, and quarrelled; but here
is still the kitchen they have in common, containing many other things
one does not expect to find in kitchens; an odd assortment, a Malay kris,
a Russian helmet from the stricken fields of the Crimea, an oak cabinet
from Kenilworth Castle, and a framed piece of needlework said to have
been executed by Lady Robert Dudley, whom “historians” will persist in
styling either by her maiden name, Amy Robsart, or else by the title of
Countess of Leicester, she having died or been murdered many years before
her husband became an Earl. Perhaps we had better emphasise the word
_said_. Beneath that framed piece of needlework is a Saxon—more or less
Saxon—chair. A piece of Gibraltar rock, polished, is a further item
displaying the catholicity of taste displayed here, together with the
muskets with which the inmates of the Hospital were armed when the
Chartist rising was supposed to threaten the security of Warwick.
[Picture: Leicester’s Hospital: One of the Brethren]
The banqueting hall, a surviving portion of the old Guild buildings, very
greatly needs restoration. It has been grossly used and subdivided, the
Minstrel Gallery having been taken out of it in order to provide a fine
additional room for the Master’s residence; the Master being, of course,
a clergyman with a fine fat stipend: the person who has the very best of
it at Leicester’s Hospital. In this once-beautiful banqueting hall, with
its noble roof of Spanish chestnut, whitened with age, James the First
was entertained by Fulke Greville in 1617. Coal-bins and wash-houses now
subdivide it.
Flights of stone stairs lead up from the Hospital over the West Gate and
into the chapel, a fine spacious building where the twelve old men have
to attend every week-day morning at ten o’clock and listen to the
perfunctory service read by the Master. In addition to this spiritual
treat, they attend service at the parish church on Sundays. There is
nothing to say about the interior of the chapel; it was “restored” by Sir
Gilbert Scott, and so there would not be.
For dulness and pretentious ugliness combined, the town of Warwick would
be difficult to match; and the ugliest and dullest part of it is that
main street called Jury Street, stretching between the West Gate and the
East. The ugliness is due to the great fire of 1694, which destroyed a
great part of the town and necessitated a rebuilding at a period when
architects were obsessed with the idea of designing “stately” buildings.
What they considered stately we nowadays look upon with a shudder and
style heavy and unimaginative.
But the weirdest building in the town is that parish church of St. Mary
whose tower looks in the distance so stately. There were once ten
churches in Warwick and there are now but two. St. Mary’s was almost
entirely destroyed in the great fire, in consequence of the frightened
townsfolk storing their furniture in it, for safety. The church itself
was not threatened, but some of the articles hurriedly placed in it were
alight, and thus it shared the fate of much else.
The rebuilding of St. Mary’s was completed in 1704, as an inscription on
the tower informs us. I think those who placed that inscription here
intended a Latin pun, a play upon the name of Queen Anne and the word
anno, for “year”; for thus it runs: “Annaeauspiciis A° memorabili 1704.”
One scarcely knows which is the more deplorable, the building or the pun;
the first, probably, because not every one can see the play upon words,
but the tower is an outrage impossible to escape.
The bulk and loftiness of it are majestic, but its classic details in a
Gothic framework have a curious effect on the beholder. They seem, those
unhallowed pagan alcoves, mounting stage by stage toward the skies, like
some blasphemous insinuation. The nave and transepts, rebuilt at the
same time, are, oddly enough, not nearly so offensive, and it is rather a
handsome as well as imposing interior that meets the stranger’s gaze. It
may be that it seems so much better because, warned by the outside, one
expects so much worse. That familiar ornament in classic architecture,
the “egg and dart,” is an incongruous detail when worked into the
capitals of columns in which the Gothic feeling predominates, and it
sounds quite shocking when described; but here it comes with a pleasing,
if scarcely ecclesiastical effect in this fine and well-proportioned
interior.
[Picture: The Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick]
The chancel of St. Mary’s, together with the chapter-house on the north
side of it and the Beauchamp Chapel on the south, escaped the fire, and
remain uninjured to this day. It is possible to peer through the locked
iron gates of the chancel from the nave, which is the only portion of the
church that is to be seen without payment, but to see the chapter-house,
and the Beauchamp Chapel, to descend to the crypt and to mount the tower,
you must pay and pay and pay again. The clergy in all the wide radius of
the Shakespeare Country have the keenest scent for sixpences, and would
make excellent business men. Better business men than clergymen, for all
I know. They have long since learnt to charge and to keep their doors
locked until their charges are satisfied; and none understand the
business better than those who have the keeping of St. Mary’s at Warwick.
But, when you have paid for this and for that and for t’other, and are
resting and reading, and possibly making notes in the nave, it is gross,
I say, and offensive and blackguardly to be followed up and spied upon
and to be asked if you are sketching! “Because if you are it will be
half-a-crown.” I will now leave this unsavoury subject, wishing the
clergy and churchwardens of St. Mary’s more enlightenment and the people
they employ better discretion.
The chancel, or choir, founded by Thomas Beauchamp, twelfth Earl of
Warwick, who died 1369, is a stately Perpendicular work, with the
altar-tomb of the founder and his wife Katharine, who died the same year,
in the middle. His armoured effigy, with crosses crosslet displayed on
the breastplate, rests its feet upon a bear, and at the feet of his wife
is a lamb. He holds his wife’s hand.
Around the tomb, in niches, are small figures representing members of the
family, thirty-six in all. In a grave near by, unmarked by any monument
or inscription, lies William Parr, brother of Katharine Parr, last and
surviving wife of Henry the Eighth. He was created Marquis of
Northampton, and died in 1571, sunk to such poverty that no money was
forthcoming to bury him. A few years later, Queen Elizabeth found a
trifle, and he was decently interred, but no one ever thought it worth
while to mark his resting-place.
Passing the greatly-enriched Easter Sepulchre in the north wall, the
Chapter House is entered by a corridor. In the centre of this building
stands the enormous monument to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who was
murdered by his man-servant in 1628. “Delaying to reward one Hayward, an
antient servant that had spent the most of his time in attendance upon
him,” says Dugdale, “he received a mortall stab in the back by the same
man, then private with him in his bed-chamber at Brooke House in London,
30th Sept. ann. 1628, who, to consummate the tragedy, went into another
room, and, having lockit the dore, pierced his own bowells with a sword.”
The crypt is the oldest part of St. Mary’s, with Norman pillars. It
contains the old ducking-stool for scolding women.
The entrance to that most gorgeous relic of old St. Mary’s, the Beauchamp
Chapel, which is the principal item in the list of these ecclesiastical
showmen, is on the east side of the south transept. The mortuary
magnificence of the Beauchamps obscures the dedication of the Chapel to
Our Lady, and the generations that have passed since the building of it
between the years 1443 and 1464, and its final consecration in 1475, have
rightly agreed to style it by the name by which it now, and always has
been, popularly known. It reminds one very keenly of the insincere
modern cant phrase which forms the dedication of memorial stained-glass
windows. “To the Glory of God and to the memory of —,” a shabby sop to
the Almighty at which the soul revolts. The very entrance is obviously
proprietary, and shows us that this is really the Beauchamp mausoleum.
[Picture: The Crypt of St. Mary’s, Warwick]
It is a magnificent entrance, a very highly-enriched work in panelled and
sculptured stone, with the Warwick Bear and Ragged Staff on either side,
facing the Beauchamp shield of crosses crosslet. Near it, on the wall,
and green with neglect, is the fine brass to Thomas Beauchamp, thirteenth
Earl of Warwick, who died in 1401, and of his wife Margaret, who died
1406. It seems strange that out of all the money contributed by
visitors, and chiefly on account of the Beauchamp monuments, there cannot
be some small surplus set aside for a restoration of the altar-tomb on
which these figures were placed up to that time when the great fire
destroyed it and much of the church. It is not well that so fine an
example should remain on a wall; the most unsuitable position for a
monumental brass. The Earl, who is given the old original name of the
Norman Beauchamps who came over with the Conqueror—“Bellocampo,” meaning
“fair field”—is in complete armour, which has, besides the crosses
crosslet of the family arms, a decorative border of ragged staves around
his helmet. The Countess is habited in an heraldic mantle of crosses
crosslet.
This Thomas Beauchamp was not so great or distinguished a man as his son,
in whose honour the Beauchamp Chapel was erected.
The Beauchamp Chapel is slightly below the level of the south transept
and is entered down a flight of steps. Photographs give an exaggerated
idea of its size, but scarcely do justice to its beauty and the extreme
richness of its details, still remarkable, although the ancient coloured
glass has been mostly destroyed and the golden images of the altar have
disappeared. It is indeed due to the second Lord Brooke, who although a
partisan of the Cromwellian side during the Civil War, was naturally keen
to preserve the glories of Warwick, that the Chapel was not wholly
destroyed in that age of tumults. Lord Brooke was the son of that Sir
Fulke Greville, first Baron Brooke, to whom James the First had granted
Warwick Castle in 1605, and he no doubt looked upon the Beauchamps as
ancestors, although there was never the remotest connection between that
ancient martial family and his own, the Grevels, or Grevilles, who
descend from the old wool-merchants of the name at Chipping Campden and
elsewhere in the Cotswolds. He adopted them, and took them over, so to
speak, with the Castle; and a good thing too, for these old monuments,
that they had so fortunate an adoption.
The building is in the middle period of the Perpendicular style, that
last manifestation of the Gothic spirit and the feudal ages, and is
elaborately groined in stone. The great Richard Beauchamp, who lies here
in these gorgeous surroundings, directed by will the building of the
Chapel and the erection of his monument. He was the greatest as yet of
his name, and appears to have been perfectly conscious of it, if we may
judge by the state in which he ordained to lie. He was also to prove the
greatest to all time, for although his son Henry who succeeded him at his
death in 1439 was created Duke of Warwick, his career was undistinguished
and soon ended, for he died in 1445. With him ended the long line of his
race.
Richard Beauchamp, fourteenth Earl of Warwick, whose effigy lies here in
lonely magnificence on the altar-tomb he directed to be made, as though
he were too great a personage to have his wife beside him, was holder of
the greatest offices of State of his period. The long inscription round
his tomb tells us of some of these responsible posts—
“Preieth devoutly for the Sowel whom god assoille of one of the moost
worshipful Knights in his dayes of monhode and conning Richard
Beauchamp, late Earl of Warrewik, lord Despenser of Bergevenny and of
mony other grete lordships whos body resteth here vnder this tumbe in
a fulfeire vout of stone set on the bare rooch the whuch visited with
longe siknes in the Castel of Roan therinne decessed ful cristenly
the last day of April the yer of oure lord god A mccccxxix, he being
at that tyme Lieutenant gen’al and governer of the Roialme of
ffraunce and of the Duchie of Normandie by sufficient Autorite of
oure Sou’aigne lord the King Harry the vi., the whuch body with grete
deliberacon’ and ful worshipful conduit Bi See And by lond was broght
to Warrewik the iiii day of October the yer aboueseide and was leide
with ful solemn exequies in a feir chest made of stone in this
Chirche afore the west dore of this Chapel according to his last
wille and Testament therin to rest til this Chapel by him devised i’
his liff were made Al the whuche Chapel founded on the Rooch And alle
the membres thereof his Executours dede fully make and Apparaille By
the Auctorite of his Seide last Wille and Testament And therafter By
the same Auctorite Theydide Translate fful worshipfully the seide
Body into the vout abouseide, Honured be god therfore.”
History comes in few places with such vivid reality to the modern person
as it does here. Unmoved, because too often without the mental agility
to perceive the significance of it, we look upon the old royal arms of
England as they were for centuries, until the time of George the Third,
and see the quartering of the Lions of England with the Lilies of France;
that proud boast, an idle pretension long before Calais, the final French
possession of England, was lost, in the reign of Queen Mary. But
standing before the tomb of the great Beauchamp, and reading his sounding
titles, no mere ornamental designations, but the veritable responsible
offices of State, as “Lieutenant-General and Governor of the Realm of
France and the Duchy of Normandy,” we live again in tremendous days. No
tomb of King or Emperor impresses me as does that of this puissant
representative and viceroy of such sovereignty.
Beneath a hooped frame or “hearse” of gilded brass which formed the
support for a gorgeous pall of crimson velvet lies the effigy of this
great soldier and statesman, also in brass, once highly gilt. His bared
head rests upon his helmet and his feet upon a griffin and a muzzled
bear, and the Garter is on his left leg. The arms are raised in the
usual attitude of prayer, but the hands themselves are not joined, as
usual. They are, instead, represented apart, in the priestly pose during
the celebration of mass.
The rich crimson velvet pall that covered the effigy and was lifted for
its inspection by every visitor, was at last removed, on the plea of the
injury it was supposed to be causing the figure, and has now
unaccountably disappeared.
In niches around the altar-tomb are little figures representing his
family, and sons- and daughters-in-law: fourteen in all; such great names
as Henry Beauchamp, his son and successor, with his wife Cicely; Richard
Neville, Earl of Salisbury and his wife Alice; Richard Neville,
afterwards Earl of Warwick and his wife Anne; Edmund Beaufort, Duke of
Somerset, and his wife Eleanor; Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham,
and his wife Anne; John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife
Margaret; and George Neville, Lord Latimer, with his wife Elizabeth.
Against the north wall of the Chapel is the costly and ostentatious
monument of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, rising in lofty stages of
coloured marbles; a vulgar piece of work. The effigies of Dudley and his
wife Lætitia, who survived him forty-six years and died in 1634, are
gorgeously robed and painted in lifelike fashion. The mantle of the
Order of the Garter covers his armour, and the Garter itself is shown on
his leg. It is with surpassing interest that one looks upon the chief of
these figures; that Dudley who came near being King-Consort of Elizabeth,
and died in 1588, at the comparatively early age of fifty-four; the vain
and magnificent creature suspected of the murder of his first wife and
traditionally poisoned by his last, who is said to have given him the
lethal cup he had intended for herself. A long Latin epitaph sonorously
recounts his many titles and honours, with the hardy belief in “a certain
hope of his resurrection in Christ.”
Against the opposite wall is the altar-tomb of that “noble Impe, Robert
of Dudley,” infant son of the last, who died in his fourth year, 1584. A
circlet round the brow of the little figure bears the Leicester badge,
the cinquefoil. Last of the Dudley monuments, is the altar-tomb of
Ambrose, styled the “good Earl,” in tacit contradistinction from his
brother Robert, the wicked one. The good Ambrose was not given length of
days, for he died the year after his brother. He also is shown in armour
and wears a coronet and the Garter. How he was given the post of
“Mayster of the Ordinaunce,” made Chief Butler of England, and was
altogether a personage of many offices, his epitaph tells. With him and
the “noble Impe,” his brother’s infant son, the legitimate race of the
Dudleys died.