A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted
houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book
village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A
gruesome happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious
epitaph.
Leaving West Dean we drove up the narrow and quiet Cuckmere valley,
the smooth green hills rising steeply on either side and so preserving
its seclusion to this present day. So quiet the valley seemed that the
throbbing of our engines sounded reproachfully in our ears, as though
a motor-car had no business to disturb its slumbrous tranquillity. We
felt like trespassers! A snug and friendly little valley it is, through
which the road and river run in close company. The Cuckmere is but a
toy river; I should not have called it a river but that it is so marked
on my map, and on its banks I saw a man with a gun shooting into the
water. He was shooting fish, he said! I have never seen such sport
before.
Passing the hamlet of Litlington we caught a glimpse, on the other side
of the valley, of ancient Alfriston, a little village that calls itself
"the capital of the downs," and its modest flint-built church "the
cathedral of the downs." So, by title, the unimportant assumes the
rôle of the important. A village becomes a capital, a country church a
cathedral, and a stream a river. One might imagine this was the land of
Lilliput!
Of Alfriston a halting couplet runs:
Poor parson, poor people,
Sold their bells to repair their steeple.
But that, I take it, was a long while ago--if it ever was, for I have
heard similar couplets of many other places; a few may possibly have
some foundation in fact, but I doubt the rest, and in some, alas, the
word "drunken" is substituted for "poor"! After the Alfriston people
had sold their bells, tradition, that unreliable jade, avers that the
bell of a ship, wrecked on the coast, was purchased to take the place
of the lost peal, and by the side of the ancient pilgrims' hostel in
the same village stands a ship's figure-head in the shape of a boldly
carved lion, fierce of countenance, said to have come from the same
ship that provided the bell; this, as long as the oldest inhabitant can
remember--and what memories these oldest inhabitants have--has rejoiced
in a coat of brilliant vermilion, hence the local saying, apropos of
what I know not, "As red as the Alfriston lion." Such, at least, were
the tales told to me, and many were the tales I heard as I travelled on.
Leaving the valley and the lonely downs regretfully behind, we entered
upon a level country, and crossing the main Lewes road we proceeded
straight forward into a tame land of flat fields. The scenery was
featureless and void of interest, but I was in search of a moated
house, so the quality of the scenery was a detail. A friend had told
me of this house just before I started on the journey, and had kindly
given me a written introduction to its owner, who by happy chance I
found at home. So, learning from my map that I was passing close to
the place, I determined to see it, if possible. Even with the aid of
my map I had some difficulty in discovering the object of my search.
Claverham, to give the moated home its title, stands within a few
hundred yards of the road, yet so hidden by trees that no casual
passer-by would dream of its existence. Thus many good things, though
close to his way, may be missed by even the keenest observer, unless he
has some hint of them and their whereabouts. I had gone this stretch
of road once before and with open eyes, and yet had not discovered
Claverham.
A moated house is a graphic reminder of old times when every
Englishman's house was in reality, not in words, his castle. Early in
the seventeenth century Sir Edward Coke laid down the dictum that "the
house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress," a dictum
that passed into a law proverb, "Jura publica privata domus." In
those benighted days there were no land taxers, or sanitary or other
inspectors to demand entry into an Englishman's home. What, I wonder,
in olden times would the master of his house have said to a sanitary
inspector who demanded admission thereto? Perhaps it would not so much
have mattered what he would have said as what he would have done to
him--with a deep moat so handy.
The very sound of the words "moated" or "haunted house" was as romance
to my ears when I was a youth, and the sound has lost little of its
glamour and suggestion of mystery since that long ago, for over such
ancient homes there always seems to brood an abiding air of mystery. In
my search after moated and haunted houses, many a ballad in building,
many a romance in stone, seeming more like an artist's or a poet's
dream than a happy reality, and many a legended home in remote places
have I discovered--for a romantic spot is the mother of legends. In the
troublesome days gone by the dwellers in a moated house must have felt
a delightful sense of security with the drawbridge up and the outer
windows iron-barred. Even to-day, when staying in a moated house, have
I felt the sense of security that a moat affords. So much for sentiment.
Claverham disappointed me, though the fault was mine in expecting
too much. To cherish an ideal and trusting to find it is to court
disillusion, and a seasoned traveller like myself should not have
fallen into this error. The unexpected always charms, when it has the
power to charm, more than the expected. "Oft expectation fails, and
most oft there where most it promises," says Shakespeare, whom it is
the privilege of all Englishmen to quote. The chief delight of travel
lies in the surprise of the unforeseen, and the discoveries we make
for ourselves of interesting places and beauty-spots: being unprepared
beforehand for such revelations, no ideals have been formed. So the
unknown attracts and becomes oftentimes memorable.
[Illustration: HAUNTED!]
I always picture a moated house as a building grey with years, perhaps
in parts a little ruinous and creeper overgrown, with ivied casements,
a bent and mossy or lichen-laden roof, and with oftentimes a ghost
thrown in. Such a house without its ghost seems incomplete to me.
Now Claverham, excepting for one possibly original chimney and a
lichen-laden roof, conformed in no way to my picture, for the house
has been so altered and rebuilt that the greater part of it, though
not of to-day, is comparatively of yesterday and not of centuries ago.
The wide and weedy moat, enclosing nearly an acre of ground, is there
as of yore, but the chief interest of the place is in its history.
Still Claverham is picturesque: a pleasant, retired, and wholly
delightful abode in the summer-time; in the winter--well, it was not
winter-time then. Portions of the interior are quaint, especially the
black oak-beamed and plastered hall that with its ingle-nook gives
one a genuine old-world greeting. The beams of the hall are of the
original building, and so, we were told, was the wide ingle-nook of
the dining-room; the crane, fire-back, and andirons of this fireplace,
though ancient, are doubtless of more recent date.
This is the history of Claverham in brief as told me by its present
possessor. The house was originally built in 1307; according to Volume
XIV. of the Sussex Archaeological Society, the manor of Claverham
"in 12 Edward II. was in the possession of Nicholas de la Beche. This
personage appears to be identical with the Sir Nicholas de Beche who,
according to a wardrobe account dated 27th March, 1311, participated
with Sir Humphery de Littlebury and Sir Thomas le Latimer in the reward
of twenty pounds for the singular service of _dragging the King out
of bed on Easter Monday_." So at any rate my visit there unearthed
a curious bit of ancient history. The manor shortly afterwards came
into the possession of a member of the then famous Fiennes family, a
descendant of one of the Norman warriors who had come over with the
Conqueror. A successor of his afterwards built Hurstmonceux Castle and
went to live there in 1422, but Claverham was retained by the Fiennes
until about 1600. My host told me that his father remembered when
there was still a drawbridge over the moat; now where the bridge was
is an embanked approach to the house, doubtless more convenient, but
infinitely less romantic. So, here and there, these picturesque relics
of the past disappear. A portion of the building was so old that it
tumbled down some few years back. My host considered that the house was
never really fortified in the sense of being able to resist a regular
siege, but was rather intended to withstand a raid, or a sudden attack
by the robber bands which infested the country; the moat, too, served
the further useful purpose as a protection against wolves and other
wild animals which at the time had free range over the unenclosed
and wooded country around. To-day it serves as a fence to keep out
straying sheep and cattle from the fields, so that the tree-shaded and
pleasant garden it encloses can be enjoyed in as much peace and privacy
as though it were walled about; at the same time the moat does not
interrupt what view there is.
Leaving Claverham we drove along a narrow lane that ended in a fair
main road, and this took us for a space alongside of the wide Laughton
Level, over which sea of waving grasses, once mere marshland, is to
be had perhaps the best and most comprehensive panorama of the South
Downs, ranging as it does almost from Beachy Head to close upon Lewes.
There before us they stretched, bare and rounded to the sky, in their
long and lordly array of golden greenery fading into grey: miles
and miles of glorious greenery as beheld under the summer sunshine,
only broken here and there below by the pale-blue shadows of their
shallow recesses. From that distance and point of view, the downs
that day looked almost mountainous; it was this view that caused
Gilbert White to describe the South Downs as "that majestic chain of
mountains"--perhaps a somewhat exaggerated description, but serving
to show how impressive the downs may appear under certain conditions,
for Gilbert White was not given to employ grandiloquent language. It
is the impression that a scene makes upon the traveller that profits,
not the vulgar record of mere height, for there is a grandeur of form
and colour as well as of size, and for grandeur of rolling form I know
nothing to compare with the South Downs seen from afar.
Then, rounding a spur of the hills, we descended into ancient and
homely Lewes, "sweetly environ'd by the daisied downs": a town,
according to Cobbett, of "clean windows and pretty faces" (I am glad
that Cobbett found something during his Rural Rides to admire in his
own country, for he was generally on the grumble). We left Lewes by a
main road leading northwards: hemmed in as the town is by the downs,
there was no other road to take except the one to Brighton, and to
Brighton we were not minded to go. Presently we struck a byway to our
right which brought us to Barcombe, a village of no interest; after
this we found ourselves in a tree-bordered lane of the delightful Devon
type, and this we followed for several winding miles.
At one spot we dropped down to a sheltered and wooded hollow where
we espied a lonely, half-timbered, and rambling farmstead, such as
painters put in their pictures--pictures that the wealthy man of taste
hangs on the walls of his mansion purely for the pleasure of looking at
them, though I am afraid few men realise the subtle charm of such old
buildings until an artist has translated it on paper or canvas. They
see their beauties through other eyes, for there is an art in seeing
and discovering beauty not cultivated by the many. I was tempted to
take a photograph of this ancient farmhouse, but could only secure a
poor end view owing to the slope of the ground and obstructing trees.
It would have made a delightful water-colour sketch, only had I stopped
to sketch every pleasing spot by the way, my journey might have been
prolonged to the winter. I had no trouble in finding subjects for the
brush or camera; I came upon them in endless succession. So does rural
England abound in beauty. My trouble was what to select out of the
profusion of good things presented to me. I felt like one going through
a vast picture-gallery of lovely landscapes, only the landscapes were
real and living, and so the more delightful.
[Illustration: A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD.]
The old-fashioned, age-mellowed farmsteads built in the spacious
days gone by, when every yard of ground and inch of space was not
considered, what pleasantly familiar features they form in the
landscape, with their suggestion of contentment, and you come upon them
everywhere. Familiar, and essentially English, but how unobtrusive they
are, they seem like a natural growth and truly to belong to the soil;
remove them from the countryside, and the eye, perhaps hardly knowing
why, would feel that there was something missing. Times of late years
have not been prosperous for the agriculturist, and I noticed during
the journey at more than one picturesque and pleasantly situated old
farmhouse a board displayed with "Apartments to let" thereon. From a
passing glance they appeared very desirable quarters for those who love
retirement, quietude, and purely rural surroundings.
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." Probably in more prosperous
times farmers would not dream of letting lodgings, but now here is
an opportunity offering for hard-worked paterfamilias (whose purse
is limited, and who is in search of pure air, change of scene, and
fresh surroundings for his youngsters) to spend his holiday in the
real country far from crowds, where the children are free to wander
over the fields, romp in the meadows, climb trees, play at haymaking,
go a-blackberrying, a-bird-nesting, or whatever rural doing may at the
moment take their fancy, when not intent upon watching the constant,
interesting, and varied life about a farmstead.
A holiday in a farmhouse, how delightful and restful is the thought
of it to the town-tired man; what a refreshing and complete change it
spells from the usually dull and dear seaside apartments, with the
everlasting pier, the noisy band, or the inevitable nigger minstrels
on the beach by way of insistent entertainment! At a farmhouse of
the right and good old-fashioned sort you may obtain fresh fruits
and vegetables from the garden, milk direct from the cow, real thick
country cream, butter that you may see churned, home-cured bacon
and perchance hams, to say nothing of newly-laid eggs, such as are
unobtainable in cities. This is no fancy statement; I write from
actual experience. The thing is, of course, to find the right sort
of farmhouse and the farmer willing to take in lodgers, for though
existing they naturally require discovering, or recommending by
those who know them. For the busy man this detail of discovery does
present a difficulty; to me driving haphazard about the country it
presented none, as such desirable quarters, situated in pleasant spots,
discovered themselves from time to time as the journey progressed.
Once I tried the experiment of spending a month in a farmhouse with my
wife and child, and it proved an unqualified success. In the matter of
cost it was the cheapest holiday I ever took, and no holiday has given
me more real pleasure, or lingers more delightfully in my memory. The
farmhouse in question (I came upon it during a driving tour, and there
I stayed instead of touring further) was situated in wild Wales and
surrounded by beautiful scenery; there were wide and open moors at the
back of it to ramble over, and mountains on the other side to climb,
and not far away was a playful, tumbling little river that provided me
with trout fishing.
Much for my sport I cannot say,
Though, mind, I like the fun;
There have I been the livelong day
Without extracting one.
Still, it was ever an excuse for a delightful ramble alongside the
companionable river, for in the plashing and gurgling of its waters
it almost seemed a living thing. At any unoccupied moment I could
sally forth with my rod by its rocky banks, just as readily as I could
start for a stroll with my stick, though sketching from nature was my
favourite pastime when in a less lazy mood. So time never hung heavily.
Still, perhaps a word of caution may be given: however otherwise
desirable, farmhouse apartments in a purely agricultural country are
apt to prove a disillusion to the elders if they have no resources in
themselves, owing to the want of something more exciting to do than to
watch the slow movements of farming operations. Pleasant surroundings
are an essential, so a hilly country is to be desired; then places of
interest in the neighbourhood may be made the excuse for occasional
excursions, and there are few neighbourhoods where these may not be
found.
The farmer whose apartments I took let them every year, he told me; an
artist and his family had taken them after my term was over, and from
what I gathered the different lodgers practically paid the farmer's
rent--a roundabout way of meeting agricultural depression. Though but
a detail, the farmer sold us what little produce of his we consumed
at full market value or over, yet this was considerably less than the
usual tradesmen's charges, and every little helps. Besides fruit,
vegetables, milk, butter, bacon, home-made jams, and countless eggs,
we purchased fowls in quantities, and occasionally ducks. On fowls,
indeed, we chiefly relied for the table, butcher's meat being difficult
to obtain, and, truth to tell, tough when obtained. The fowls were not
over-plump, not being especially fattened--or crammed, is it? Barn-door
fowls, the farmer called them, as they picked up a good deal of their
substance from the grain scattered about the outbuildings and ricks; so
their food was varied, consequently their flesh, if there was not much
of it, was tender and delicate of flavour.
We had to rely upon ourselves for society, though we did get acquainted
with one stranger, an artist, who had taken up his abode at a homely
little inn some two miles away--an inn that had its uses in that it
provided us with the bottled ale of Bass. We led a self-contained life
and gloried in it. Our bread was home-baked, and I still pleasantly
remember how excellent that bread was, though it had not the white
colour one is accustomed to in the town variety. We had only one baking
a week, but the bread kept sweet and palatable for the whole of that
time; it did not dry hard on the cut surface as bought bread does; it
was made from home-grown wheat ground at a water-mill near by, whose
wheel was turned by the little, useful river--there was the romance of
it. Great long loaves they were, with a generous allowance of crisp,
rocky crust to crumb--loaves to be remembered.
We stepped at once from the door of the house into the country, and
that was the charm of it. Our water came direct from the lonely moors
above, and was beyond suspicion pure and in superabundant supply;
indeed at one end of the large kitchen there was a stone trough for
washing purposes, and along this the water ran day and night; no tap
was ever turned on--there was no tap to turn. Perhaps I was fortunate
in finding such desirable quarters, but on comparing notes with an
artist friend, who took farmhouse apartments in Cumberland, I found he
fared as well as we did. A change in the method of taking a holiday
lends an added zest to it, and those who are tired of expensive
hotels, seaside lodgings, or constant travelling, with the everlasting
packing and squeezing of the sponge, might do worse than try farmhouse
apartments in some pleasant country. If rest be needed I cannot imagine
a more restful form of holiday.
Besides being a good cook our farmer's wife was skilled in the making
of sundry jams, jellies, ginger-beer, and elderberry wine; of the
last she was very proud, and mulled some for us to bring out its full
flavour--I did not sample it a second time: such wine maketh the heart
sad. One of her concoctions, however, commended itself to me, namely,
a home-made kind of liquor that was fresh and pleasant to my palate
which she called, curiously enough, "Job's Comforter." Who would have
expected such a thing in a remote farmhouse? This is the recipe for
the making of it as given to me: "Get a wide-mouthed stone jar and put
in it as many good lemons as you can; stick as many cloves as possible
into the skin of the lemons, pressing them well in, then place the
prepared lemons in the jar and fill up with unsweetened gin; let the
lemons remain in the gin for two or three days, after this strain the
liquid off, add honey and a little sugar-candy to sweeten according to
taste and to give a smoothness to the liquor, then bottle it." I give
the recipe exactly as given to me. I had some trouble to obtain it,
and should prefer more precise details as to quantities, but these old
housewives are jealous of giving their recipes away. I took a bottle
of this "Job's Comforter" home with me and friends of mine pronounced
it excellent--"as good as Chartreuse" they declared, but perhaps
this estimate was owing to the novelty of the thing. Still, it was
undoubtedly good.
Resuming our journey we followed the lonely lane for a long way without
arriving anywhere, but "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive,"
and we were in no hurry. Still, the longest lane has ending, and ours
ended at a wide, open, elevated space marked Pit Down on the map; this
spot, I afterwards discovered, earned its title from the fact that
there in pits were hastily buried the victims of the plague that once
devastated the villages around, and in one of these villages, Fletching
by name, we shortly afterwards found ourselves. A pretty village it
proved to be of the picture-book sort, as clean and neat as though
it were a Kate Greenaway's drawing materialised. The ancient church
stands in precisely the right spot, around which are grouped, as an
artist might group them, the many gabled houses of the village; the
one thing wanting to perfect the picture was the village green, but
"fortune seldom comes with both hands full." Fletching lies well out
of the beaten track and is only to be reached by winding lanes, so
that I should imagine a motorist is seldom seen there, unless he has
fortunately lost his way to the finding of the village. Even then some
motorists might not realise their good fortune.
I stopped the car in the shade of one of its attractive houses,
when a man approached me, evidently imagining I had come to see the
church, and, desiring to be of service, exclaimed, "The rector will be
delighted to show you over the church; there are a lot of curious old
tombs inside that are well worth seeing. The rectory is just over the
way"--pointing to it--"and I know the rector's at home." I explained
that I had not come to see the church but had merely driven into the
village accidentally. "But you really ought to see it now you are
here," he continued; "the rector takes a great interest in it, and is
always so pleased to show it to any stranger." Fate had brought me to
Fletching, and Fate appeared determined I should see the church. Fate
was kinder than I knew. The man stood there watching me, and after
his civility I felt it would seem ungracious to disappoint him. So to
the rectory I went, though somewhat reluctantly, for it was a fine,
out-of-door day, but I did not wish to hurt the man's feelings.
The grey-haired parson received me most cordially; I might have been a
welcome guest instead of a stranger seeking a favour, but I have always
found that in pleasant places you meet with pleasant people. Pleasant
surroundings surely, to a certain extent, influence the temperament of
man? They affect me, I know, and strongly. "Delighted to show you over
our church," said the parson; "it possesses many features of interest
that you might miss if you went alone." So I put myself under his
guidance, for who should take a more intelligent interest in, or know
more about, a church than its parson? He even appeared very desirous to
show it. A parson's life in a village is often a dull one, and possibly
the occasional meeting with a sympathetic stranger comes as a welcome
relief to his round of monotonous days.
Before entering the building I noticed a little "low-side" or "leper
window" on the left of the porch. The purport of these so-called
"leper windows," so frequently to be found in country churches, has
perplexed many a learned archaeologist, and it seems passing strange to
me why a window so usual should be a subject of such mystery. The once
generally accepted theory was that they were provided for lepers, that
those so unfortunately afflicted might view, from outside the church
and safely apart from the congregation, the elevation of the Host, and
thus participate, to some extent, in the service. But in the case of
Fletching church, and many others, these peculiar windows are so placed
that no one could possibly see the altar from them; moreover, as the
rector remarked, lepers were never admitted into churchyards. So the
leper theory fails. My personal impression is that these windows were
never intended for looking into, but for looking out of the building,
and for this purpose such a small window sufficed. From the number of
leper windows I have inspected, and writing from recollection, I should
imagine that the majority of them are suitably placed for watching the
congregation entering the church, and so might be of service to the
bell-ringers; but that, I take it, would be a secondary consideration
and not the main object of them.
On entering Fletching church my attention was called to the Norman
arches under the tower showing that the building had been originally
Norman. Now, owing to rebuildings and restorations, it is mainly Early
English--the Early English of the Victorian era! On the west wall
is a curious and well-preserved little brass, doubtless formerly on
the floor. The inscription on this, beautifully cut, runs briefly as
follows:
Hic jacet Petrus Denot, glover:
Cujus aie ppicietur Deus. Amen.
The brass is manifestly an ancient one, and the absence of a date is
notable; there is plenty of space for it. Two gloves, crossed, are
shown below. The English word "glover" looks strangely out of place
in the midst of the Latin. Presumably the carver of the inscription,
though doubtless familiar from frequent usage with the usual Latin
employed on the memorials to the dead, its _Hic jacets_, its _Obiits_,
and the rest that goes between, was in a quandary how to render
"glover" in the classic tongue; his limited learning failing him, he
boldly inserted it in English. At least I arrived at that conclusion.
Who was this Petrus Denot, I wondered? The rector knew his story in
part and enlightened me. He was an inhabitant of Fletching, a glover
by trade, and was one of the unfortunates who took a part in the Cade
rebellion; he was captured and hanged, but his body was recovered
by his relations and was buried in the church. I query if that is
the whole of the story, for it seems strange that a tradesman of the
period, to say nothing of his being hanged for treason, should have the
much-sought-for privilege of being buried within the church's hallowed
walls, and honoured with a brass besides. Does the brass being dateless
point to anything? I fancy that there is more in the simple terse
inscription than meets the eye. At one time it appears Fletching was
famous for its gloves made from hogs' skins imported from Holland, and
it is supposed that the plague was conveyed to the village by these
skins, and that brought the industry to an end, and the village nearly
too.
During one of the restorations, when the flooring of the church was
removed, many skeletons were discovered beneath, all in an upright
position--"pointing to Saxon burial," I was told. It may, however, be
remembered that Wordsworth in "The White Doe of Rylstone" alludes to
bodies in after-Saxon days being so buried in a vault at Bolton Priory:
Pass, pass who will yon chantry door,
And through the chink in the fractured floor
Look down and see a grisly sight:
A vault where the bodies are buried upright!
There, face by face, and hand by hand,
The Claphams and Mauleverers stand.
"Possibly you are aware," exclaimed my parson guide, "that Gibbon the
historian rests here in the Sheffield chapel amid the Sheffield family
deceased, for the first earl was a great friend of his." I was not
aware of the fact, but with Cicero I could say, "Non me pudet fateri
nescire quod nesciam." The number of world-famous men is so large, and
grows ever larger as the years roll on, that it is quite impossible
to remember where but a scant few of the more famous of them were
born, or died, or lie buried. What matters it? These details belong to
Fate, not to genius; no genius can command them. So we went to the
Sheffield chapel, which is approached by a narrow passage; facing this
is a plain marble wall impressively devoid of any ornament, but covered
with epitaphs to members of the Sheffield family; in the centre of
these is one, in Latin, to Gibbon. He alone has the honour of Latin,
the rest being in plain English. "Now," said the rector, "I have a
gruesome revelation to make. One evening when at her devotions in the
church a nurse was startled by a loud report coming from the Sheffield
chapel; she fled the building in terror: it afterwards turned out
that the coffin in which Gibbon was laid to rest had burst and a new
coffin had to be made. But this is not a lively subject; let me call
your attention to those stained-glass windows. The glass of these was
removed and buried in the churchyard for preservation during the period
of the Puritan fury; some years ago it was unearthed and now is in its
old place again. So Time brings about its revenge; what one generation
would destroy another would preserve, only the glass being much broken,
the pieces have got sadly mixed so as to resemble a mosaic, but not an
unpleasing mosaic, revealing little of the old design, yet sufficient
to show that the windows were to a royal personage, presumably the Duke
of Lancaster."
Next a well-preserved piscina was pointed out to me, having a bracket
on the top presumably to support an image, "in which respect this
piscina is almost, if not quite, unique in England." Then in turn
we inspected some of the ancient monuments; reclining on the first
altar tomb were two recumbent alabaster effigies side by side, one
of a beruffled man in armour and warlike of countenance, the other
of his wife. The inscription below runs: "Here lyeth buried the body
of Richard Lache. Coming out of his office of High Sheriff for the
counties of Sussex and Surrey, having no issue of his body living, he
gave all his lands in the county of Sussex unto Catherine his wife,
and made her sole executoress of his last will. In regard whereof
... she of her own account caused this monument to be made, and
herself living, to be pictured lying by him, as you see." Yet this
disconsolate widow consoled herself the next year by marrying the Earl
of Nottingham and lies buried elsewhere! Inconstant woman! Another
fine altar tomb, though minus inscription, is supposed by the coat of
arms remaining on it to be that of Sir Edward Dalyngruge, "who having
amassed a large fortune by war, marriage, and court patronage, obtained
the royal license to build upon the hereditary estate of his wife
the castle of Bodiam." There were also other ancient tombs of lesser
interest, one mutilated but apparently to a crusader and his wife; and
a thirteenth-century slab with only the matrix of its brass remaining.
In the transept I noticed, hung against the wall, two crested helmets,
gilt and coloured, the gilding and colours being much age-dimmed,
with rusty spurs and gauntlets suspended just below: the crests were
those of the Abergavenny family. There were also other features of
interest in the church--a penitent's window, a holy water stoup, and
at a late restoration I learnt that one of the pillars by the chancel
was found to be hollow and to contain the old steps intact leading to
the rood-loft, and at the top of the steps an ancient green chasuble
was discovered, left there in some haste or for concealment, it may be
imagined.
On leaving I asked the rector if he knew of any curious epitaph in the
churchyard. Time, alas! has robbed us of many a one, and worse still,
to my knowledge, certain men placed "in a little brief authority,"
not approving of such levity on sacred ground, have deliberately
obliterated others. "But," said the rector, "if I cannot show you any
quaint epitaph, I can tell you of a singular one I came upon some time
ago in ancient St. Mary's churchyard at Eastbourne; it ran, 'A virtuous
woman is 5/- to her husband.' This puzzled me at first, then I came to
the conclusion that it should read, 'A virtuous woman is a crown to
her husband.' Possibly the carver was an illiterate man, and, being
apparently short of space, substituted 5/- for crown, deeming them
synonymous. But whatever the explanation, that is how the epitaph read."
Fletching church was one of the happy discoveries of the journey;
though much restored it is of more than ordinary interest. There are,
indeed, but few churches of ancient date that have not something
noteworthy to reveal to the traveller; truly they are chapters of
history in stone, and some of them are, in a sense, museums. It is
well worth a wanderer's while to step aside now and then to inspect
carefully and leisurely a country church (carefully, or he may miss
much), especially those in remote spots where a want of pence has
happily restrained the restorer's hand: blessed be their poverty,
I say, for owing to it only needful reparation has been done, so
ancient tombs and brasses have remained undisturbed, and the medieval
craftsman's handiwork has not been improved away, to the joy of every
lover of the never-returning and picturesque past.