Part 17
Within one hundred and fifty years after the erection of the priory church, another sacred edifice was required for the growing population around; and Bishop Stapeldon, on Friday, October 29th, 1311, consecrated one in honour of the Virgin Mary, for the use of the parishioners. The present chancel and north aisle of Plympton St. Mary Church are portions of the church then dedicated, the great body of the church, as we now see it, having been re-built in a later age and style. It was situate “_infra cemeterium prioratus_”; and, as a mark of subjection, the parishioners were required to assist at divine service in the conventual church on the feast of its dedication, and to receive the blest palms there on Palm Sunday, and walk in the solemn procession of that day. This obligation was sanctioned by Archbishop Courtenay, when he made a visitation of the diocese of Exeter in 1387, and confirmed by Pope Boniface IX. For some neglect of this ancient custom Bishop Lacy expressed his high displeasure, and enjoined its strict observance in the future.
In Plympton St. Mary parish there were several chapels, subject to the priory—one at Newnham, another at Hemerdon, and a chapel attached to a lazar-house, of which there are now no remains. Sutton or South-town, now part of Plymouth, belonged to the priory of Plympton. “In the priors’ court there the portreve of the commonality was elected and sworne into office by his steward, and the markets, the instruments of punishment, and the assize of provisions belonged to him.”
Those were not exactly the “furzy down” days of Plymouth; but it was quite an insignificant place at that time, compared with its more wealthy neighbour, Plympton. Its great market, in fact, was Plympton. As Plymouth grew into more importance, as a naval as well as fishing station, and as the inhabitants became more influential, they naturally became anxious to obtain independence and the right of self-government, with municipal privileges. Accordingly, the inhabitants petitioned the king and parliament to be incorporated as early as 1412, and the answer to the petition was, “Let the petitioners compound with the lords having franchises before the next parliament, and report to them of their having made an agreement.” As a matter of course, the prior and convent at first opposed their views, but when the inhabitants succeeded, in 1439, in obtaining the royal licence and an Act of Parliament, which constituted them a corporation, under the title of the Mayor and Commonalty of the Borough of Plymouth, it was time for the prior and convent to come to terms with the reformers; and animated with an excellent feeling, they addressed a petition to Bishop Lacy, representing that it would be desirable to convey to this municipal body certain lands, tenements, franchises, fairs, markets, mills, and services, which they had possessed therein from time immemorial, and praying his consent to dispose of them. In January, 1440, as bishop and patron, he directed a commission to the archdeacon of Totnes to hold an inquisition, and to report to him the verdict of the jury. Accordingly, a public inquisition was held in the nave of the priory church of Plympton, on the 7th of January, the gates of the monastery, and the doors of the church, being thrown wide open for all comers to enter. That was a memorable day for the young town; and no doubt many Plymouthians flocked to the priory, anxious to know the award. The jury being sworn, found that the premises of the priory, within Sutton-Prior, had in part been burnt by a hostile descent from Brittany; that the yearly rental of the lands and tenements there was £8; of the courts, fairs, and markets, 60_s._; and the clear profit from the mills something more than £10 yearly; that the offer by the mayor and corporation of the yearly fixed pension of £41 for the premises aforesaid was deemed by the prior and convent a satisfactory compensation, and that they were willing to accept the same; and the jury concurred in recommending such alienation and sale on such terms.
The parish church of St. Andrew, in Plymouth, continued an appendage to the priory nearly until the dissolution of the house. Its perpetual vicar, William de Wolley, became a professed religious at Plympton; and on resigning this benefice, the prior and convent granted, November 23rd, 1334, to Bishop Grandisson, the nomination of an incumbent, saving, however, their yearly pension of sixty marks. The bishop nominated Nicholas de Weyland, a canon of Plympton, December 23rd.
The chapel of St. Katherine on the How also belonged to the priory; but the following list of chapels appendant to this house will give some idea of the immense patronage which it enjoyed:—SS. Mary and Thomas, Plympton, Brixton, Wembury, Plymstock, Saundford-Spiney, Egg Buckland, Lanhorn (or Lanherne), Tamerton, Maristowe, Thrushelton, Uggeburgh, Exminster, Islington, Newton, Stoke-in-Teignhead, Blackhauton, Bratton, Meavy, St. Just, Petertavy, etc.; and the tithes of these places were appropriated to the priory for the promotion of hospitality and charity.
Two subordinate priories or cells depended on Plympton priory—St. Mary de Marisco, commonly called Marsh Barton, in Alphington parish, and the cell of St. Anthony in the deanery of Powder, in Cornwall.
Most of the churches appendant to the Plympton priory have the parvise over the south porch, as at both the Plympton churches and at Ugborough. Here were probably deposited books written by the monks in their hours of study—missals with rich borders, as well as writings of a more secular character; and possibly the preaching monks tarried in these chambers between the hours of divine service.
Dr. Oliver gives the names of thirty Priors of Plympton, from Ralph, the first prior, to John How, the last, who subscribed to the King’s supremacy in 1534. During the administration of some of the priors, the hospitality of the establishment seems to have been unbounded. In consequence of the great confluence of the nobility and their retinues to the priory, the house became overcharged with debt, and Bishop Oldham, after his first visitation of the house, in 1505, authorized the prior, David Bercle,[8] to retire to a distant cell until a new system of economy could be arranged.
Footnote 8:
There is a quaint letter extant of this hospitable prior, which Dr. Oliver gives. It is—
“To his rev’ende broders in Criste, Maister Dene and Maister Chaunter, of Excester, or on’ of theym, this to be delyvd. in goodely haste. Right rev’end broders in Criste, in my most lovynge maner y recomaunde me unto yow p’ynge yow right hartely to be good maisters to a prieste called I. David Neyton, a lovyer of myn’ which trustyth by your favors to be on’ of your vicaryyes in Synte Peters Churche if he be a person’ necessary to occupye a such rome yn your’ sayde churche y p’y yow that he may the rader for my desyre be accepte to the same rome, and he and y shall p’y for the longe contynuance of your bothe prosperyteis, which God p’sve to his pleasur’ and your hartes desyres—Amen. Writyn in haste penultimo die Aprilis by your olde louyer and bedman’.
“DAVID, Prior of Plympton’.”
The refectory was by no means an unimportant portion of the priory. It and the cellar under (which was in charge of a much-envied functionary, known as the cellarer) are the only considerable remains existing of the once extensive monastic buildings at Plympton. Here the monks, according to the seasons, had their one meal or two meals a day; the usual allowance being “one white loaf, another loaf called Trequarter, a dish called General, another dish of flesh or fish called Pitance, three potells of beer daily, or three silver halfpence” for the teetotalers. This is said to have been the ordinary bill of fare, but it was, no doubt, amplified to any extent when the lords and squires were entertained by the prior, and especially when, as in 1348, Edward the Black Prince dined at his hospitable table.
But the time was coming when there would be “no more cakes and ale”—when the prior and brethren would leave the monastery gates, never again to re-enter them; when, with their “occupation gone” (like the stage coachmen and guards of the nineteenth century), they would be lost in the crowd of a bustling world, and never seen or heard of more. There was a dark side to the picture which England then presented; and perhaps the saddest sight was when, on the morrow after the dissolution, the mendicant knocked at the almonry door, knowing no change, and least of all in charity, and for the first time found no bread or alms for him.
The priory remains, though little known, are of considerable interest. Besides the Norman cellar, and the Early English refectory over, there are some scattered remains of the chapel and cloisters. The cellar is sixty-one feet six inches by fourteen feet within, stone-arched, and lighted on the south side by four small semi-circular-headed windows. The masonry is of great thickness; and on the north side and east end, in the width of the wall, is a passage two feet six inches wide, which probably was nothing more than a dry area, though the common notion is that it is the commencement of a subterranean way (now blocked up) leading to the castle, about a quarter of a mile distant. The original entrance to the cellar was by a fine Norman doorway on the south side. It was only after diligent search that I found it, encased with many coats of plaster. There are engaged shafts on each side, and the chevron ornament is carried round the jambs as well as the arch, which latter is formed of alternate voussoirs of grey and green stone.
Above the cellar is the almost perfect outline of the refectory, with its original fire-place, windows, and roof, all of an Early English character. The kitchen, a detached building of the fifteenth century, situated to the east of the refectory, remains in a tolerably perfect state, and the position of the old priory mill is indicated by a modern structure erected about seventy years ago.
Adjoining the mill is the priory orchard, said to be the oldest in England.
At some distance to the north-west of the domestic buildings were the chapel and cloisters, of which some vestiges remain in their original positions, but around them modern walls and hedges have been formed. The bases of a doorway, deeply recessed, having four detached shafts on each side, and beautifully moulded, lead to the supposition that the Priory as a whole was a most important architectural work. I also found several scattered fragments of Early English foliage. No doubt many interesting objects lie buried in the priory lands, and possibly even the tombs of the two bishops Warelwast.
In the Norman and Early English and Decorated work about here we find that granite was never used, although to be obtained in the immediate locality.[9] It was probably rejected, not merely because it was hard to work, but on account of its cold and colourless appearance. Thus, in the Priory and in the most ancient portions of the two churches, _i.e._, the chancels, you will find no dressings or moulded work in that material, but in the beautiful and durable green slate-stone from St. Germans or Boringdon, and in Caen stone; and to give still more artistic effect to their buildings, they used sparingly a close red sandstone, obtained from a distance. There are some rather old-looking houses in Plympton, which are said to be built entirely of stone from the priory, and in one front in particular may be observed this beautiful masonry of the thirteenth century, in green and red, arranged almost like a draught board.
Footnote 9:
This also applies to the Cornish churches.
The Perpendicular builders were not, as a rule, remarkable for artistic feeling. They saw beauty in size, uniformity, and in the endless repetition of a stereotyped panel; and one can imagine archæologists of the fifteenth century regarding contemporary architects much as we look upon the designers of the glass and iron palaces of the present day. The greater part of the churches of Plympton St. Mary and Plympton St. Maurice are Perpendicular and built of granite, in large blocks, and there is not that sharp and elegant detail in this as in the earlier work.
St. Mary’s is a pretty and picturesque church now; but it was probably more than two hundred years before the granite began to tone down, and the ivy and lichen to cling to it—neither, as a rule, “take kindly,” as the saying is in Devonshire, to granite.
The limits of this paper will not allow of my giving anything like a detailed description of Plympton St. Mary Church. Full justice has already been done this edifice by the late Rev. W. I. Coppard, who was largely instrumental in its being restored. The Early Decorated chancel—with its fine east window and elaborate sedilia and piscina—is one of the best specimens of the period in the county. Not the least interesting part of the church is the south porch and parvise over, which the late Mr. H. H. Treby took most commendable pains to restore. The groining of the porch is admirable, though in the re-dressing and chiselling of the ribs and bosses the original character of the work has been partially impaired. In restorations, much is lost through the desire to see things look fresh and new.
In the Strode, or St. Catherine chapel, is the monument of Sir William Strode, with the effigies of the knight and his two wives:—
Mary, incarnate virtue, soul and skin Both pure, whom death nor life convinced of sin, Had daughters like 7 Pleiades, but she Was a prime star of greatest charity.
And over the knight:—
Treade soft, for if you wake this knight alone, You raise an host, religion’s champion, His country’s staff, right bold distributor, His neighbour’s guard, the poor man’s almoner, Who dies with works about him as he did, Shall rise attended most triumphantly.
The Town Church of Plympton, originally dedicated to Thomas à Becket, but, when rebuilt in the fifteenth century, to St. Maurice, consists of a nave, north and south aisles, and a fine tower at the west end, in the Perpendicular style of the fifteenth century, and a chancel, as at St. Mary’s, of an earlier date, having an interesting sedilia and good decorated window at the east end—speaking of the masonry, and not of the glass, which is extremely bad. The south porch has a vaulted roof and parvise over, as at the other church.
Much has been done of late years towards improving this parish church, but its internal effect is entirely marred by the unsightly plastered roof of the nave, and the close pews or pens. The nave-roof, I find by reference to the vestry book, was re-constructed in the year 1752, after the model of the new roof in Stoke Damerel Church, then recently put up. That was the dark age of English taste. How very dark may be imagined from this plagiarism.
There are memorial windows in this church to members of the Treby family, and monuments to the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Admiral Cotton, and other local celebrities. The following epitaph is the most curious:—
Saml. Snelling, Gent. Twise Maior of this town, he died the 20 Day of Nov. 1624.
The man whose body That here doth lye Beganne to live When he did dye.
Good faith in life And death he proved, And was of God And man belov’d;
Now he liveth In Heaven’s joy, And never more To feel annoy.
The shaft of a large granite cross, probably the market cross, was discovered about forty-two years ago embedded in a wall of the Guildhall, taken down in the course of some alterations.
In the register of this parish are some curious entries. Thus, there is record of a plague which carried off a great number of the inhabitants; and on one occasion forty marriages are said to have taken place in one day, by proclamation, at the Market Cross. This was during the Commonwealth, when the religious ceremony was ignored, and against the entry some stout Royalist or disappointed bachelor has written: “This was the hour and power of darkness.”
We have yet to touch on the politics of the town.
Plympton became a borough town, with the privileges of a market and fairs, by a charter from Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, dated March 25th, 1241. The borough sent members to Parliament as early as the twenty-third year of Edward I.’s reign, and continued to do so until disfranchised in 1832. It was a very respectable constituency of nearly a hundred free burgesses, who were sworn in by the corporation, which consisted of a mayor, recorder, and eight aldermen, called the Common Council.
The Strode influence was great in the town from a very early time, and several members of that family sat in Parliament for Plympton. In Elizabeth’s reign, Sir John Hele, a distinguished lawyer, and at one time King’s Sergeant, was returned for the borough. A little later, Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the great Sir Francis, and successor to the baronetcy, became member. In Charles I.’s reign, Sir William Strode, one of the most distinguished of the great party which then resisted the undue authority of the Crown, and who, with three other members, was committed to the tower by the King, sat in Parliament for Plympton. Another famous member for Plympton was Sir Nicholas Slanning, a staunch Royalist, who distinguished himself, especially, as a brave soldier in the siege of Bristol. Then we have the memorable names of Sir George Treby (ancestor of the late Mr. H. H. Treby) and Sir John Maynard, and at quite a late period in the history of this borough, Lord Castlereagh represented it in Parliament.
In an interesting address delivered by the last recorder of the town, Mr. Deeble Boger, on the occasion of the corporation resigning their functions in 1859, it was stated that the borough was “what was called a nomination borough, that is, those two families who had the greatest number of friends, and to whom, from the period of the revolution, the gratitude of the borough was justly due—the Trebys, in whom great interest naturally centred, and the Edgcumbes, who were connected with the borough in the same way—possessed the power of nominating a member, and this nomination consisted in their recommending him for election. This power was subject to one limitation, that the person recommended should be of the same politics as the electors.”
Perhaps the greatest representative the borough ever had was Sir Christopher Wren. It was in May, 1685, that this distinguished architect was elected Member of Parliament for Plympton. How this came to pass, and which of the two great parties he represented, we are not precisely informed, but may easily conjecture, as Plympton was always a Tory borough. No doubt he occasionally thought, though he might not say, with Mercutio, “A plague on both your houses,” for men of science and artists—and he was in a high degree an artist—are seldom very ardent politicians. Still, we know he was a staunch Royalist and Churchman. His father was Dean of Windsor; his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, had been imprisoned in the Tower for nearly twenty years during the Commonwealth; he himself was a Fellow of All Souls’, Oxford, and held a professorship at that University, at an extremely orthodox period. There are other reasons for supposing that he stuck pretty close to the court and government of the day. His father being Dean, and Sir Christopher himself having only the year before been appointed Comptroller of the Works at Windsor, we may readily imagine that he came down to the independent electors of Plympton with a rather strong recommendation from the Dean and Chapter, who were, as they are still, the patrons of the living in this borough. And when he came (always supposing that he did come, and that he did not merely send his respects from London), he was, no doubt, well entertained by the gentlemen of his party in the town, and lustily cheered by the agricultural non-electors, who always exhibited a great deal of enthusiasm under the stimulating influence of an election, and were never heard again to express their sentiments until the next parliament brought down a new member for the eyes of all Plympton—not to say “all Europe”—to gaze upon. Many of the inhabitants, however, who were acquainted with Sir Christopher’s fame, may be supposed to have regarded their representative with admiration and pride. Just nineteen years before, the terrible Fire had devastated the metropolis, and now London was rising like a phœnix from the ashes by his magic wand. Exactly ten years before he had himself laid the foundation stone of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and now the first stage of that great work had been just completed, the choir and its side aisles, and critics, who remembered old St. Paul’s in its Gothic glory, and had seen Inigo Jones defacing and tinkering the venerable fane with his Palladian porticoes and urns, were flocking to the churchyard. The new structure was already too grand and unique not to be commended; but there was yet a quarter of a century’s laborious and incessant work before the top stone could be raised, and the gilded cross could crown the noble dome. The same architect, the same master-builder, and the same bishop, who witnessed the beginning of the great work in 1675, saw its close in 1710.
Sir Christopher Wren, the member for Plympton, was probably the first architect ever returned to the House of Commons. There have been several since then, and their presence in Parliament has no doubt tended to advance public taste, and to further many great and important national works.
The Guildhall was built or, rather, restored in 1696, some years after Sir Christopher Wren represented the town, and it may be safely asserted that he had no hand in designing the present elevation, because, quaint and picturesque though it is, his style is nowhere stamped on it. It is, however, said (with what truth I cannot say) that he was the architect of Plympton House, a large and substantial mansion, with a façade of Portland stone, erected in the reign of Queen Anne for Mr. Commissioner Ourry, of Plymouth Dockyard. It is a plain but costly building, in the then newly-adopted style, with a certain French character about it. The large and broad barred sash windows, with their weights and pulleys, which were novelties at that time, must have greatly puzzled Snug, the joiner of Plympton, who had been accustomed all his days to the old English casements.
The Guildhall has more of the mediæval character about it, with its pillars and arches and covered way, like the Chester Rows, and probably it was intended to have some resemblance to the Guildhall in the county town—a humble but by no means unsuccessful imitation. Thus we follow suit in buildings as in everything else, though the architecture of our towns would, no doubt, be more entertaining if we oftener aimed at originality, and played a card of our own occasionally.[10]
Footnote 10:
Over the Guildhall are the arms, carved in stone, of Sir Thomas Trevor, Knight, and Sir George Treby, Knight. Members of the Treby family were often connected with the corporation of the borough. In 1755 the parishioners at a vestry then held passed a resolution concerning the ringing of the church bells, “George Treby, Esq., and the other gentlemen belonging to the corporation,” being respectfully included in the said resolution.