"In the lovely vale
Of Esher, where the Mole glides lingering; loth
To leave such scenes of sweet simplicity,"--
was anciently a palace of the prelates of Winchester, built by William
Wayneflete, who held the see from 1447 to 1486. It was a stately brick
mansion, on the bank of the Mole, within the park of Esher.
The Bishops of Winchester occasionally resided at this palace. Cardinal
Wolsey, who was appointed to the see on the death of Bishop Fox, in
1528, gave directions for the repair and partial rebuilding of this
house at Esher, purposing to have made it one of his usual residences,
after he had bereft himself of the palace which he had erected at
Hampton Court, and which he had found it prudent to surrender to his
jealous master. Many interesting circumstances relating to this last
retirement of Wolsey to Esher, on the decline of his favour with the
King, are related by his biographers.
On the 18th of October, 1529, when the Cardinal was at York House,
Westminster (where now stands Whitehall), King Henry sent to him the
Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, to demand the Great Seal, Wolsey being
lord chancellor; and he was ordered, at the same time, to retire to
Esher. The order being unaccompanied by any voucher of authority, the
chancellor refused to obey it; but the King's messenger returning with
his written commands on the following day, the devoted minister
submitted. He then went to Putney by water, and having landed, rode to
Esher.
Wolsey now took up his residence at Esher, where he continued, with a
numerous family of servants and retainers, "the space of three or four
weeks, without either beds, sheets, table-cloths, dishes to eat their
meat in, or wherewithal to buy any: howbeit, there was good provision of
all kind of victual, and of beer and wine, whereof there was sufficient
and plenty enough: but my lord was compelled of necessity to borrow of
Martin Arundell and the Bishop of Carlisle, plate and dishes, both to
drink in, and eat his meat in. Thus, my lord, with his family, continued
in this strange estate until after Hallownetide."--(_Stow._) He then
dismissed a considerable part of his attendants; and Thomas Cromwell,
afterwards Earl of Essex, who was in his service, went to London,
professedly to take care of his interest at court; and having obtained a
seat in the House of Commons, where a bill, of articles of impeachment
against the Cardinal for treason, was brought forward, "Master Cromwell
inveighed against it so discreetly, with such witty persuasions and deep
reasons, that the same could take no effect."
Although the charge of treason was for the present abandoned, Wolsey was
indicted for a _præmunire_, the result of which was, to place him at the
King's mercy as to all his goods and possessions. Whilst his enemies
were thus steadily pursuing their schemes for his destruction, the King
betrayed occasional symptoms of returning favour, sending him gracious
messages, first by Sir John Russell, and then by the Duke of Norfolk;
but it may be questionable whether these demonstrations were not merely
meant to cajole him; for, during the time that he was entertaining the
Duke, Sir John Shelly, one of the judges, arrived at Esher, for the
express purpose of obtaining from Wolsey a formal cession of York House,
the town mansion of the Archbishops. The cardinal hesitated at making
such an assignment of the property of his see, but at length yielded,
yet not without a spirited remonstrance against the conduct of his
despoilers. The acts of insult and oppression to which he was subjected,
at length brought on severe illness, and he was confined to his bed. Dr.
Butts, the court physician, having visited him, informed the King that
his life was in danger; and Henry, as if in a moment of conscientious
regret, sent him "a comfortable message," with a valuable ring, as a
token of regard. Cavendish, in his _Life of Wolsey_, has thus related
the circumstances under which the Royal message was delivered:--
"At Christmas, he [Wolsey] fell sore sick, that he was likely to
die, whereof the King being advertised, was very sorry therefore,
and sent Doctor Buttes, his grace's physician, unto him, to see in
what state he was. Dr. Buttes came unto him, and finding him very
sick lying in his bed, and perceiving the danger he was in,
repaired again unto the King. Of whom the King demanded, saying,
'How doth yonder man; have you seen him?' 'Yea, sir,' quoth he,
'if you will have him dead, I warrant your Grace, he will be dead
within these four days, if he receive no comfort from you shortly
and Mistress Anne.' 'Marry,' quoth the King, 'God forbid that he
should die. I pray you, good Master Buttes, go again unto him, and
do your cure upon him, for I would not lose him for twenty
thousand pounds.' 'Then must your Grace,' quoth Master Buttes,
'send him first some comfortable message as shortly as possible.'
'Even so will I,' quoth the King, 'by you. And therefore make
speed to him again, and ye shall deliver him from me this ring for
a token of our good-will and favour towards him; (on which ring
was engraved the King's image within a ruby, as lively counterfeit
as was possible to be devised.) This ring he knoweth very well;
for he gave me the same; and tell him that I am not offended with
him in my heart nothing at all, and that shall he perceive, and
God send him life, very shortly. Therefore, bid him be of good
cheer, and pluck up his heart, and take no despair. And I charge
you come not from him until ye have brought him out of all danger
of death.' And then spake he to Mistress Anne, saying, 'Good
sweetheart, I pray you at this my instance, to send the Cardinal a
token with comfortable words; and in so doing it shall do us a
loving pleasure.' She being not minded to disobey the King's
earnest request, _whatever she intended in her heart towards the
Cardinal_, took incontinent her tablet of gold hanging at her
girdle, and delivered it to Master Buttes, with very gentle and
comfortable words and commendations to the Cardinal."
The invalid _was_ comforted by the seeming kindness of his tyrannical
master, and recovered. In his last letter from Esher, which was
addressed to Stephen Gardiner, one of his secretaries, he prays him to
help him and relieve him in his miserable condition, and remove him from
this moist and corrupt air: dropsy had overtaken him, with loss of
appetite, and sleep; "wherfor," says the letter, "of necessyte I must be
removyd to some other dryer ayer and place, where I may have comodyte of
physcyans," &c. Wolsey subsequently obtained permission to remove from
Esher to Richmond, where he remained until his journey into Yorkshire, a
few months previous to his death, which took place at Leicester Abbey,
on the 29th of November, 1530.
When Henry VIII. had resolved to constitute Hampton Court an honour, and
make a chace around it, he purchased several neighbouring estates, and,
among them, Esher. A survey of the manor, early in the reign of Edward
VI., shows there to have been here a mansion-house, sumptuously built,
with divers offices, and an orchard and garden; and also a park
adjoining, three miles in circuit, stocked with deer.
We shall not trace the future possessors of Esher Place. The
natural undulations of the ground would seem to have required but
little improvement from the conceptions of Art. Yet Kent, the
landscape-gardener, "the inventor of an art that realizes painting," was
employed by the Right Hon. Henry Pelham, a leading statesman in the
reign of George II., possessor of the estate; and the artist and patron
have thus been inseparably connected with
"Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love."
Noble fir and beech plantations cover the swelling heights of Esher; and
there are fine oaks and elms, together with a remarkable holly-tree, the
girth of which is between eight and nine feet. There are also several
small ornamental buildings in the park; but the principal one in
picturesqueness and historic interest, is the old brick tower, which
formed part of "Asher Palace," when this estate belonged to the see of
Winchester. It also constituted the central division of the mansion of
the Pelhams, but was judiciously left standing, when the modern
additions, by Kent, were pulled down by Mr. Spicer, who purchased the
estate in 1805, and erected a new mansion upon a more elevated site. In
Mr. Pelham's time, the mansion consisted of little more than the Tower,
or Gate-house, to that in which Wolsey had resided, and to which Kent's
additions were much inferior, proving, as Walpole remarks, "how little
Kent conceived either the principles or graces of Gothic architecture."
The erection of this Tower has been attributed to Wolsey, whose name is
associated with several architectural works; but there is inferential
evidence to show that he did not erect the Tower at Esher. Although
nominated to the bishopric of Winchester in the autumn of 1528, he was
not installed until April in the following year (and that by proxy), at
which season he was too deeply engaged in the affair of the King's
divorce, to have time for extensive building. The only _distinct_ notice
which has appeared to connect Wolsey's name with any architectural works
at Asher Palace, is where Cavendish speaks of the removal to Westminster
(Whitehall), of "the new gallery which my lord had late before his fall
newly set up at Asher;" and "the taking away thereof," he continues,
"was to him corrosive--the which discouraged him very sore to stay there
any longer,--for he was weary of that house at Asher, for with continual
use it waxed unsavoury."
In the form and character of the Tower itself are also indications of an
earlier period than that of Wolsey; and this well-built structure may be
assigned to the days of Bishop Wayneflete, who preceded the Cardinal in
his possession of the see by about eighty years, and is known to have
erected "a stately brick mansion" and "gate-house" in Esher Park. The
Tower is luxuriantly mantled with ivy, which was planted by a son of Mr.
Spicer, whilst yet a boy. The interior comprises three storeys; but the
apartments are small and much dilapidated. There is, however, within one
of the octagonal turrets, a very skilfully-wrought _newel_, or
geometrical staircase, of brick, in excellent preservation; and in the
roofing of which the principles of the construction of the oblique arch,
(a supposed invention of modern times) are practically exhibited.[65]
There is, on the Esher estate, another structure, which is popularly
associated with Wolsey's name. This is a small building, of flints and
rude stones, with a central recess and stone seat; and at the foot a
refreshing spring, called _Wolsey's Well_. It is most probable that this
little edifice was raised by Mr. Pelham, as the _buckle_, a part of his
family arms, is sculptured upon a stone over the middle arch, and also
the initials, H. P. The seat is more properly named "the Travellers'
Rest." Wolsey spent some weeks at Esher, a prey to his fears and
mortified ambition. As might be expected, the world, that had paid him
such abject court in his prosperity, deserted him in this fatal reverse
of his fortunes. Wolsey was not himself prepared for what he conceived
to be base ingratitude: it surprised and deceived him; and the same
pride, unsupported by true dignity of character, which made him be
vainly elated with his recent grandeur, made him now doubly sensitive to
the humiliations of adversity. Under any circumstances he would be unfit
for solitude: the glory and the gaze of the multitude being the breath
of his nostrils, the calm contentment of private life was to him a sound
of no meaning. What, then, must have been his feelings in this first
hour of his misery? Baffled in all the schemes of his ambition,
disgraced before his rivals, abandoned by the world, and forsaken by his
royal master, his heart was not yet sufficiently chastened by affliction
to seek for consolation in its only true source--religion; but still
clung, with the despair of a lover, to the hope of the royal mercy. His
letters to Gardiner, whom he had the merit of bringing forward from
obscurity, and who, excepting his other secretary, Cromwell, of all his
followers, alone retained grateful respect for their benefactor in his
fallen fortunes, bespeak the agony of his feelings. They are severally
subscribed, "With a rude hand, and sorrowful heart, T. Cardlis Ebor.
_miserrimus_," and are scarcely legible, from the excitement under which
they seem to have been written.
In chastening verse has our great moralist thus portrayed the proud
Churchman:--
"In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand:
To him the Church, the realm, their pow'rs consign;
Through him, the rays of regal bounty shine:
Turn'd by his nod, the stream of honour flows;
His smile at once security bestows.
Still to new heights his restless wishes soar;
Claim leads to claim, and pow'r advances pow'r;
Till conquest unresisted ceased to please;
And rights submitted, left him none to seize!
At length, his Sov'reign frowns--the train of state
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate;
Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye;
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly.
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried servants, and the menial lord!
With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd,
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.
Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of Kings."--JOHNSON.
Whatever appertains to the record of his appalling fall is treasurable
as an addition to the narrative in our popular histories. A few points
of novelty and interest as regards Wolsey have been derived from a State
manuscript of the reign of Henry VIII., now in the possession of Sir
Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart. F.S.A. a junior member of whose family was
one of the chaplains to Henry VIII.; and through him it may have found
its way to the venerable seat of Nettlecombe, in the county of Somerset,
where this MS. relating to domestic expenses and payments has for some
centuries been deposited.
In this manuscript Wolsey is spoken of by his double title of Cardinal
of York and Bishop of Winchester, in connexion with a payment to him of
one thousand marks, out of the revenues of Winchester. By the above
entry, confirmed by a subsequent passage in Cavendish, it is clear that
this was a pension of 1,000 marks; and that in consideration of the
necessities of the Cardinal, it was to be allowed him beforehand. After
all his pomp and prosperity, after all his vast accumulation of wealth,
after all his piles of plate and heaps of cloth-of-gold, and costly
apparel, Wolsey, in March 1530 (judging only from this entry), was
reduced to the necessity of obtaining a loan of a thousand marks. This,
too, to carry him to his exile at York, whither his enemies had by this
date induced the fickle, selfish, and luxurious King to banish his great
favourite.
Of Wolsey's subsequent residence at Cawood, we find in this MS. an item
to David Vincent, of the considerable sum of 35_l_. 6_s_. 8_d_. (more
than 200_l_.), whence we may infer this messenger to have made some stay
there, watching the progress of Wolsey's illness, and sending
intelligence to the King, who was more anxious for the death than for
the life of his victim, in order that he might seize upon the remainder
of his moveables. It is quite evident that the Cardinal was not at this
period so destitute as many have supposed, and that he had carried with
him a very large quantity of plate, of which the King possessed himself
the moment the breath was out of the body of its owner. Among the
payments for January, 22 Henry VIII., we read in the Trevelyan MS. that
two persons were employed for three entire days in London "weighing the
plate that came from Cawood, late the Cardinalles." Such are the
unceremonious terms used in the original memorandum, communicating a
striking fact, of which we now hear for the first time.
It is a curious and novel circumstance which the Trevelyan manuscript
has brought to light, that exactly three months before the death of
Wolsey, the Dean and Canons of Cardinal's (now Christchurch) College,
Oxford, had so completely separated themselves from Wolsey, and from all
interest he had taken in their establishment, that, instead of rewriting
to him for the comparatively small sum of 184_l_. for the purpose of
carrying on their works, they applied to the King for the loan of the
money; the entry of which loan is made in this State manuscript, "upon
an obligation to be repaid agayne," "on this side of Cristinmas next
cumming;" so that even this trifling advance could not be made out of
the royal purse, filled to repletion by the sacrifice of Wolsey, without
an express stipulation that the money was to be returned before
Christmas.
To the credit of Wolsey it must be told, that in the midst of his
troubles his anxiety for his new college was unabated, and it is upon
record, that, among his last petitions to the King, was an urgent
request that "His Majesty would suffer his college at Oxford to go
on."[66]
Everything in Wolsey--his vices and his virtues--was great. He seemed
incapable of mediocrity in anything: voluptuous and profuse, rapacious
and of insatiable ambition, too magnanimous to be either cruel or
revengeful, he was an excellent master and patron, and a fair and open
enemy. If we despise the abjectness which he exhibited in his first
fall, let it be remembered from and to what he fell, from a degree of
wealth and grandeur which no subject on earth now enjoys, to
instantaneous and utter destitution. He wanted at Esher the comfort
which even a prison would have afforded, the very bed on which he slept
having been taken from him. We are also to take into account the abject
submission which he had long been taught to exercise towards the tyrant,
"Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate."
There are certain circumstances connected with Wolsey's death and
interment which are noteworthy. "He foretold to Cavendish that at eight
o'clock he would lose his master.... Towards the conclusion, his accents
began to falter; at the end his eyes became motionless, and his sight
failed. The abbot was summoned to administer the extreme unction, and
the yeomen of the guard were called in to see him die. As the clock
struck eight he expired."
Cavendish and the bystanders thought Wolsey must have had a revelation
of the time of his death; and from the way in which the fact had taken
possession of his mind, it is supposed that he relied on astrological
prediction.
Mr. Payne Collier observes:[67] "It is unnecessary, as well as
uncharitable, to suppose what there is no proof of--that Wolsey died of
poison, either administered by himself or others. The obvious and
proximate cause of his death was affliction. A great heart, oppressed
with indignities and beset with dangers, at length gave way, and Wolsey
received the two last charities of a death-bed and a grave, with many
circumstances affectingly told by Cavendish, in the Abbey of Leicester."
Wolsey's remains were privately interred in one of the chapels of the
Abbey at Leicester, which has long been reduced to a mass of shapeless
ruins. The Cardinal had, however, designed a sumptuous receptacle for
his remains. Adjoining the east end of St. George's Chapel at Windsor is
a stone edifice, built by King Henry VII., as a burial-place for himself
and his successors; but this Prince afterwards altering his purpose,
began the more noble structure at Westminster, and the Windsor fabric
remained neglected until Wolsey obtained a grant of it from Henry VIII.
The Cardinal, with a profusion of expense unknown to former ages,
designed and began here a most sumptuous monument for himself, from
whence this building obtained the name of _Wolsey's Tomb-house_. This
monument was magnificently built; and at the time of the Cardinal's
disgrace 4,250 ducats had been paid to a statuary of Florence for the
work already done; and 380_l_. 18_s_. sterling had been paid for gilding
only the half of this costly monument. It thus remained unfinished; in
1646 it was plundered by the rebels of its statues and figures of
gilt-copper. The Tomb-house is now in process of decoration as a
memorial to the late Prince Consort.
Wolsey had also executed for him at Rome a beautiful marble sarcophagus,
but which did not arrive in time for the burial of the Cardinal: it lay
neglected for two centuries and three-quarters, when it was removed to
the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in it were placed Nelson's
remains.
[Illustration: WAYNFLETE'S TOWER, ESHER PLACE.]
It is scarcely possible to leave the Tower at Esher without saddening
thoughts that "lie too deep for tears." Here, amidst "the sweetest
solitude" of wood and grove, stands the memorial of the ambitious
minister, the powerful favourite, the selfish ecclesiastic, and the
victim to tyranny,--yet a tyranny that he had himself assisted both to
form and exercise. How troubled were the times which the sight of this
structure recals! How painful is the contrast with the scene of peaceful
nature around it!--with the refreshing quiet of the wood and glade, and
the repose of the water, whereon the nothingness of human glory may be
shown in one simple but sublime lesson--the circle that expands into
nought. How painful, we repeat, is the contemplation of such contrasts;
yet, how fraught with lessons for our happiness! We weep over the fallen
fortunes of men, and their abuse of the means entrusted to them for the
welfare of their fellow-men; yet what a rebuke do we receive in the
reflection that Nature surrounds us with the means of endless
enjoyments, while Art, by its subtlety, perverts and corrupts, thus
weaning the affections from the beautiful and the pure.
Yet, if "Asher Place" had its vicissitudes in past ages, so too has
Claremont--a portion of the same manor--in our own times. Here, in the
mansion built for the great Lord Clive, Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Cobourg,
half a century since, brought his bride, the fair-haired daughter of
England, and lived for a short and blissful period, in all the happiness
of conjugal and domestic union, when premature death struck down the
Princess and her infant offspring. Here Louis Philippe and his Queen
found an asylum, in the year of Revolutions, 1848; and have since gone
to their earthly home a few miles distant. Leopold, too, has descended
to the tomb, full of years and kingly honours, having received in
marriage, in succession, a daughter of the King of England, and a
daughter of the King of France.
[_The Life of Wolsey_, by Cavendish, (quoted in the preceding
pages,) is one of the most interesting and valuable specimens of
biography in the English language. Its first merit is originality
in the strictest sense of the word. The writer, one of Wolsey's
gentlemen, and much in his confidence, was not merely a spectator,
but an agent, and in some degree, a sufferer in the scenes which
he describes. In the next place, though he writes from the heart,
there is an air of impartiality in some parts of the work, which
gives them the clear stamp of veracity. Of the hauteur and
insolence of the Cardinal during his elevation, he sometimes
allows himself to speak with asperity. The tender compassion which
rendered him the faithful companion of his fallen fortunes, gives
an amiable and pleasing colour to the latter part of his
narrative. Besides, the cumbrous magnificence of the reign of
Henry VIII., under the great change of manners which two centuries
and a half have produced, is become in its representation to us,
extremely picturesque; and for this part of his undertaking
Cavendish was eminently qualified. He was not one of those
unobserving men, who seem never to apprehend that what is familiar
to themselves will become curious to posterity. He saw with an
exact and discriminating eye, and what he beheld he was able to
describe. In no other work, perhaps, is to be found so minute and
faithful a detail of what the palaces of kings and prelates, and
the houses of the great nobility then were; their loads of plate,
their hangings of arras, the ponderous plenty of their tables, and
the useless accumulation, as we should conceive, of cloth, linen,
&c., which were sometimes exhibited in their great galleries as in
so many warehouses. Add to this, the innumerable links then
subsisting in the great chain of dependence, the haughty distance
of the superior to his immediate inferior, the obsequiousness of
the immediate inferior in return; the young nobility serving in
the houses of the greater prelates like menial servants, and these
prelates themselves as often, perhaps, on the knee to their king
as to their God. All these particulars, acquired from the life by
the writer before us, form so many vivid pictures presented to
the mind's eye, so that ideas become images, and we seem to
behold what we only read of.--See Dr. Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical
Biography_.]