The More Chapel—Holbein—Erasmus—Sir Thomas More’s arrest—Mistress
More—The Duchess of Northumberland—The Gorges—The Stanley tomb—“The
Bird and the Baby”—The Dacre helmet—Sir Thomas More’s ghost.
THE More Chapel was built in 1528 (date on the east pillar) to
accommodate the family and retainers of Sir Thomas More, Lord
Chancellor of England, living in great state at Beaufort House, but not
too proud to act as “server” at the altar of his Parish Church. The two
pillars evidently guarding the front seat of this family pew are worth
careful inspection; the west pillar is said to have been carved by
Holbein while on a visit to More’s house—a visit which lasted several
years. The east pillar is less well executed and may be by another
hand, but both bear the symbolic ornament, dear to the spirit of the
time, introducing coats of arms, crest, punning references to family
names and signs, which develop in hieroglyphics the career of the great
Chancellor. More’s tomb, designed by himself during his imprisonment
in the Tower, is in the south wall of the church, and here we find a
curious surviving reference to his friendship with another celebrated
visitor to Chelsea, Erasmus. In the Latin epitaph cut in slate, which
Sir Thomas prepared for his tomb, a word has been omitted and a space
left. The word is “Hereticks,” whom he declared he hated implacably,
along with “thieves and murderers”; Erasmus found this too sweeping
and begged him to cross out the word. He took his friend’s advice but
forgot to insert a substitute word, and the space remains, a witness
to the tolerance of Erasmus and the sweet reasonableness of the
Chancellor.
Sir Thomas’s favourite motto, “Serve God and be merrie,” is better
known than his pompous Latin inscription, as it deserves to be.
Tradition makes the More Chapel the scene of Sir Thomas’s farewell
message to his wife. On the morning of his arrest, she was waiting for
him after Mass in the family pew; he had been acting as “server” at the
altar, and had been hurried from thence straight to the river and the
Tower.
A young groom, by the Chancellor’s orders, went to his wife with this
message, which the varlet was bidden to repeat exactly in his master’s
words:
“Bid Mistress More wait no longer for Master More, for he hath been led
away by the King’s command.” A smart box on the ear from the insulted
lady rewarded the servant for his literal fulfilment of his lord’s
mandate. “What do you mean, sirrah, to speak of Mistress and Master
More when you name the Chancellor of England and his lady?” but when
the boy persisted in his orders, she began to perceive her husband’s
hidden design and realise that he had fallen from his high estate, and
in this fashion would break it to her. She was his second wife, and
neither beautiful nor very sweet-tempered, but Sir Thomas ever treated
her with the most courteous consideration, joked at her shrewishness,
and complimented her whenever he could. Still we cannot help suspecting
that on this occasion he was a little relieved to send the message of
his downfall by the young groom instead of having to deliver it in
person.
The next tomb of interest in the More Chapel is that of the Duchess of
Northumberland, 1555, mother of thirteen children, of whom Robert Earl
of Leicester, Guildford Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Grey, and Mary,
mother of Sir Philip Sydney, were the most celebrated.
This lovely monument has been barbarously treated: the spirals were
broken off in 1832 to make room for seats and increase the letting
value of the chapel, and its awkward position suggests that it has been
pushed out of its original setting. Several of the brasses have been
wrenched away. Chaucer’s tomb in Westminster Abbey is almost a replica
of what it must have been when whole, and is probably by the same
designer.
The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland succeeded Queen Katharine Parr
as tenants of the Manor House, the Tudor palace in Cheyne Walk: the
Duke and his son Guildford both died on Tower Hill, with the “nine
days’ Queen,” and it is greatly to the credit of Queen Mary I. that she
interested herself in the bereaved Duchess, and restored to her part of
her confiscated possessions. In Elizabeth’s reign the family flourished
again, and there is a minute description extant of the Duchess’s
gorgeous funeral at the Old Church.
But the fact that the More Chapel continued to be the family pew
pertaining to Beaufort House suggests that the Northumberland tomb
was originally in a far more conspicuous position, and was presently
pushed aside to make way for territorial claims. Sir Arthur and Lady
Gorges were at Beaufort House in 1620. He is Spenser’s “Alcyon,” and
the poet’s _Daphnaida_ was an elegy on Lady Gorges’ death. The younger
Arthur, grandson of this pair of Spenser’s friends, is
He who had all the Gorges’ soules in one.
His epitaph is worth spelling out, though it is rather a back-breaking
business, and it is noteworthy that his wife, who perhaps was much
older than himself, and was certainly very much married, prepared the
inscriptions, but omitted to leave orders for the insertion of her own
death-date, which, after considerable preamble, is left out altogether.
Under the east window lies the splendidly ornate monument of the
Stanleys. Sir Robert, whose medallion portrait is supported by the
figures of Justice and Fortitude, married a daughter of Sir Arthur
Gorges. The children, Ferdinand and Henrietta, are dear little people
in stiff Stuart dresses.
Their epitaph beginning,
The Eagle death, greedy of such sweete prey,
With nimble eyes marked where these children lay—
refers to the Stanley family legend of “The Bird and the Baby,” of
which two children-ancestors were the heroes. An eagle hovers over the
tomb.
The helmet hanging incongruously in mid-air has the Dacre crest, and
is not in its proper place here; a helmet exhibited in church often
implies that the wearer fought in the Crusades, but this probably is
part of the heraldic ornament of the great Dacre memorial in the nave.
The inscription to Sir Robert Stanley is really beautiful in the
stately wording and measured metre of the seventeenth century, and is
worth quoting entire:
To say a Stanley lies here, that alone
Were epitaph enough; noe brass, nor stone,
No glorious Tomb, nor Monumental Hearse,
Noe gilded trophy, nor Lamp-laboured Verse
Can dignify this grave, nor sett it forth,
Like the immortal fame of his owne Worth.
So, Reader, fixe not here, but quit this Room
And fly to Abram’s bosom—there’s his tombe,
There rests his Soule, and for his other parts
They are embalmed and shrined in good men’s hearts—
A nobler Monument of Stone or Lime
Noe Art could raise, for this shall outlast Tyme!
“Lamp-laboured verse” is first-rate.
We cannot leave the More Chapel without referring to the controversy,
dear to the antiquarian papers, as to whether the Chancellor’s body
were ever brought from Tower Hill after the fatal July 6, 1535, to be
interred in the church he loved. All tradition and probability point
to this belief; though his head, exposed on London Bridge, and rescued
by his devoted daughter Margaret Roper, was consigned by her to the
keeping of St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury.
Now for another of Mr. Davies’ anecdotes of the Old Church.
Some twenty years ago, a marvellous story ran round Chelsea that
Sir Thomas More’s ghost had been seen to emerge from the south wall
monument and, crossing the sanctuary, disappear into the opposite wall.
The figure was unquestionably that of the Chancellor, for besides
being quaintly dressed, it was without a head—which clinched the
matter. Lady artists, painting in the body of the church, had seen the
apparition steal across the chancel, in the gloaming, and spreading the
news abroad, soon brought half London to inquire into the marvel.
Unluckily Mr. Davies was on guard in his beloved church, and his
explanation was crushingly disappointing. He stationed all would-be
ghost seekers halfway down the middle aisle, and then produced the
ghost—himself—passing from the tiny south door behind the tomb to
the vestry opposite, a shawl drawn over his head and wrapped about his
shoulders, giving the required appearance of headlessness.
Both south door and vestry door within the chancel are now done away
with, and even newspaper reporters have heard no more of the ghost.
NOTES