Part 16

[30] The fertility and other natural advantages of “the vale,” and, we may believe, its picturesque beauties also, in remote times, determined the ancient nobility of Staffordshire to make it their chosen seat. This, and a lower portion of the river, are adorned with that graceful bird the swan. Ingestre, and the neighbouring royalties, have had “games of swans” immemorially. Amongst the distinguishing marks on the beaks of the birds used in 1785 in the several royalties adjoining the Trent, enumerated by Dr. S. Shaw, we find that of “Earl Talbot, Ingestre; two notches on the right side.”

[31] Walter Chetwynd, Esq., of Ingestre, the celebrated antiquary, was the son of Walter Chetwynd, Esq., and married Ann, daughter of Sir Edward Bagot, Bart., August, 1658. He introduced the learned Dr. Plot, from Oxford, into Staffordshire, to write its Natural History. Dr. Plot exhibits in his work (1686) a Plan of Ingestre Hall, and gives an account of the rebuilding of Ingestre church by his patron.

The first person who undertook to write upon the history and antiquities of Staffordshire was Sampson Erdeswick, Esq., of Sandon, near Ingestre, venerandæ antiquitatis cultor maximus, as Camden describes him; _i. e._ an eminent encourager of venerable antiquity. He died in 1603, and was buried under a handsome monument, having his effigy, “cut to life,” erected by himself in his lifetime, in Sandon church. His MS. papers fell into the hands of Walter Chetwynd. This latter gentleman obtained in addition the collections of Mr. Ferrers, of Baddesley, and of William Burton, the Leicestershire historian, and brother of the Anatomist of Melancholy. To these he added very large collections of his own. All these MSS., upon the repairing of Ingestre Hall, were put in a box, for safety, by the Rev. James Milnes, rector, and were unfortunately lost. They were, however, subsequently found at Rudge; but continued in obscurity, till rediscovered at Ingestre, when they were placed in the hands of Dr. Stebbing Shaw, the learned and indefatigable historian of the county, whose premature decease unhappily interrupted his elaborate work. There is a good portrait of Walter Chetwynd, Esq., the antiquary, by Lely, at Ingestre Hall.

[32] One member of the Talbot family, Charles Talbot (son of the Lord Chancellor), who died in 1733, made the tour of Europe with Thomson, the author of the “Seasons,” to whom Lord Talbot was a liberal patron and kind benefactor.--His poem on “Liberty,” which was conceived during their travels, opens with an affectionate tribute of sorrow to the memory of his friend.

“O my lamented Talbot! while with thee, The Muse gay roved the glad Hesperian round, And drew th’ inspiring breath of ancient arts; Ah! little thought she, her returning verse Should sing our darling subject to thy shade! And does the mystic veil from mortal beam Involve those eyes, where every virtue smiled, And all the father’s candid spirit shone? The light of reason, pure without a cloud; Full of the generous heart, the mild regard; Honour disdaining blemish, cordial faith, And limpid truth that looks the very soul.”

Thomson also composed a poem “To the memory of Lord Talbot,” which is equally creditable to the Chancellor and the Poet, and reflects great honour on Lord Talbot’s family, to whom it is addressed.

[33] The village of West Bromwich is remarkable as the birthplace of Walter Parsons, porter to King James I., who appears to have been equally distinguished for extraordinary strength and equanimity of temper. His stature was but little above the common size; yet such was the prodigious power of his arm, that he could easily “take up two of the tallest yeomen of the guard and carry them where he pleased, in spite of their attempts to free themselves from his iron grasp.”

[34] Over the entrance of the Porch leading to the Great Hall from the Court Yard, is a shield cut in stone, with these seven quarterings:--

1. Tollemache, Argent, a Frett Sable. 2. Joyce Argent on a Chevron Gules, 3 escallops, Or. 3. Joyce Or, a Lion rampant, Azure armed Gules. 4. ---- Gules, a Fesse between 3 buckles, Or. 5. Visdeliea Argent, 3 Wolves’ heads, couped Gules. 6. Curzon Ermine a bend checky, Argent and Sable. 7. Peche Argent, a Fesse between 2 Chevrons Gules.

[35] During the lifetime of this Earl, old English hospitality was kept up in a most primitive style, whenever he was residing at the Hall. The tenants and tradesmen employed by his Lordship were allowed to visit the Hall whenever they pleased, and many yet living remember with grateful pleasure the entertainment afforded them there.

[36] The exception should, however, be made in favour of General Thomas Tollemache. In the Church, there is a sarcophagus of white marble, in which stands, upon a pedestal, a bust, and behind it an obelisk of reddish marble, surrounded by military trophies. On the face of the sarcophagus is this inscription:--“Thomas Tollemache, Lieutenant-General (descended of a family more ancient than the Norman Conquest,) second son of Sir Lionel Tollemache, Bart., by his wife, Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart in her own right. His natural abilities and first education were improved by his travels in foreign nations, where he spent several years in the younger part of his life, in the observation of their genius, customs, politics, and interest; and in the service of his country, abroad in the field, in which he distinguished himself to such advantage by his bravery and conduct, that he soon rose to considerable posts in the Army. Upon the accession of King William III. to the Throne, he was made Colonel of the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, and soon after advanced to the rank of Lieutenant-General. In 1691, he exerted himself with uncommon bravery in the passage over the river Shannon, and the taking of Athlone, in Ireland, and in the battle of Aghrim. In 1693, he attended the King to Flanders; and at the battle of Landen, against the French, when His Majesty himself was obliged to retire, he brought off the English Foot with great prudence and success. In 1694, he was ordered by the King to attempt the destroying of the harbour of Brest in France; but on his landing at the head of six hundred men, he was so much exposed to the enemy’s fire, that most of his men were killed, and himself shot through the thigh, of which wound he died a few days after. Thus fell this brave man, extremely lamented, and not without suspicion of being made a sacrifice, in this desperate attempt, through envy of some of his pretended friends; and thus failed a design, which, if it had been undertaken at any time before the French were so well prepared to receive it, might have been attended with success, and followed with very important effects.”

[37] These rhymes are curious and interesting, and possess sufficient merit to justify our devoting to them the space necessary.

I.

Baptized Lyonel Tollemache, my name, Since Norman’s conquest of unsoyled fame, Shews my descent from ancestors of worth; And that my life might not belye my birth, Their virtues’ track, with heedful steps I trod: Rightful to men, religious towards God.

Train’d in the law, I gain’d the bar and bench, Not bent to kindle strife, but rather quench; Gentle to clients, in my counsels just; With Norfolk’s great Duke, in no little trust; Sir Joyce his heir was my fair faithful wife, Bentley my seat, and seventy years my life.

II.

Heir of my Father’s name, surname, and seat, Lands, goods, and goodness towards small and great; By Heaven’s dear blessing on my best endeavour, In his fair footsteps did I well persevere; Amongst the best, above the most admir’d, For all the parts my race and place requir’d.

High sheriff of Suffolk once, of Norfolk twice, For both approv’d, right, gentle, just and wise; Frank house, frank heart, free of my purse and port Both lov’d, and loving towards every sort; Lord Wentworth’s daughter was my lovely Pheer, And fourscore, six less, lived I pilgrim here.

III.

My stile and state (least any question should) My Sire and Grandsire have already told; My fame and fortune not unlike to theirs, My life as fair as human frailty bears; My zeal to God, my love to ev’ry good, My Saviour knows, his saints have understood.

My many virtues moral and divine, My liberal hand, my loving heart to mine, My piety, my pity, pains and care, My neighbours, tenants, servants, yet declare. My gentle bride Sir Ambrose Jermyn bred; My years lack five of half my grandsire’s thread.

IV.

Here, with his father, sleeps Sir Lyonel, Knight, Baronet, all honours worthy well; So well the acts of truth, his life exprest His elders’ virtues, and excell’d their best; His prudent bearing in his public place, Suffolk’s high sheriff twice, in sixteen years space.

His zeal to God, and towards ill, severity; His temperance, his justice, his sincerity; His native mildness towards great and small, His faith, his love to friends, wife, children all, In life and death; made him belov’d and dear, To God and man, happy in Heaven and here.

Happy in soul and body, goods and name; Happy in wedlock with a noble dame, Lord Crumwell’s daughter; happy in his heir, Whose spring of virtues sprouts so young and fair: Whose dear affection, to his founders debtor; Built them this tomb, but in his heart a better.

[38] Hengrave is called in Domesday Book “Hemegretha.” In several ancient deeds it is variously spelt Hemegreth, Hemegrede, Hemegrave, and Hengrave.

[39] This information we condense, chiefly from a costly volume in quarto, published by the late John Gage, Esq., F.S.A., entitled “The History and Antiquities of Hengrave.”

[40] His portrait, by Holbein, is among the family portraits at Hengrave. It is that of a fine portly citizen, with a stern, but intellectual, countenance. He was Sheriff of London in 1533 having been previously knighted. His mercantile transactions were principally carried on “at the cloth fairs or staples holden at Antwerp, Middleburg, and other places in Flanders, by the Merchant Adventurers, to which company he belonged.” His wealth must have been enormous, for he purchased estates in the counties of Suffolk, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Nottingham.

[41] It is said that Sir George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William Hervey, each solicited at the same time the hand of the wealthy heiress; and that, to keep peace between the rivals, she threatened the first aggressor with her perpetual displeasure; “humorously telling them that, if they would wait, she would have them all in their turns--a promise which the lady actually performed.” Her first husband was Sir George Trenchard, her second Sir John Gage, and her third Sir William Hervey. She left issue only by her second husband.

[42] Several documents relative to “the raising of Hengrave” are still preserved. Among others, is the contract with John Eastowe, the mason, to “macke a house at Hengrave of all manor of mason’s worck,” &c. &c. “The said John must have for ye sayd worck, and finishing thereof, iic. li. (£200), to be paid, x li. when he begins the foundacyon thereof, and afterwards always as xx li. worth of worke is wrought by estymacion.” The plasterer’s contract is for £116 “of lawful money of Ingland.” Among other items are these--“For a lode of tymber, vi s.;” “The glasyar, for making of all the glass wyndowes of the manour place, with the solar, and for xiii skuttchens with armes, iiii li.” (four pounds.)

[43] Burnet gives a character of the first Earl of Dysart by no means flattering. “He was well turned for a Court; very insinuating, but very false; and of so revengeful a temper that rather than any of the counsels given by his enemies should succeed, he would have revealed them, and betrayed both the King and them. He had one particular quality, that when he was drunk, which was very often, he was upon a most exact reserve, though he was pretty open at all other times.”

[44] The Duchess of Lauderdale was one of the “busiest” women of the busy age in which she lived. Burnet insinuates, that during the life-time of her first husband “she had been in a correspondence with Lord Lauderdale that had given occasion for censure.” She succeeded in persuading him that he was indebted for his escape after “Worcester fight” to “her intrigues with Cromwell.” “She was a woman,” continues the Historian, “of great beauty, but of far greater parts. She had a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and an amazing vivacity in conversation. She had studied not only divinity and history, but mathematics and philosophy. She was violent in every thing she set about; a violent friend, but a much more violent enemy. She had a restless ambition, lived at a vast expense, and was ravenously covetous; and would have stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends.” Upon the accession of her husband to political power, after the Restoration, “all applications were made to her; she took upon her to determine everything; she sold all places; and was wanting in no methods that could bring her money, which she lavished out in a most profuse vanity.”

[45] Lysons, writing more than half a century ago, describes the furnishing of the Mansion in terms which suit exactly to describe its present state. “It is,” he says, “a curious specimen of a mansion of the age of Charles the Second. The ceilings are painted by Verrio, and the rooms are ornamented with that massy magnificence of decoration then in fashion. The furniture is very rich; even the bellows and brushes, in some of the apartments, are of solid silver, or of silver filigree. In the closet adjoining the bed-chamber, which was the Duchess of Lauderdale’s, still remains the great chair in which she used to sit and read; it has a small desk fixed to it, and her cane hangs by the side. The furniture of the whole room is such that one might almost fancy her Grace to be still an inhabitant of the house.”

[46] The ministry, popularly known as the Cabal, came into power at the latter end of the year 1667, when Clarendon was turned out of office, and impeached by Parliament. That minister had raised a host of enemies at Court, by preserving a state and decorum foreign to their reigning habits. Evelyn says, “He kept up the form and substance of things in the nation with more solemnity than some would have had. The Parliament had accused him, and he had enemies at Court--especially the buffoons and ladies of pleasure--because he thwarted them, and stood in their way.” There were, however, grave charges brought against him as Chancellor, and he was obliged to fly the kingdom, dying an exile in France about seven years afterwards. The ministry that succeeded him consisted of five noblemen, the initials of whose names formed the word _Cabal_, to which their actions in many instances too well answered. These noblemen were Sir Thomas Clifford, first commissioner of the Treasury, afterwards Lord Clifford and high treasurer; the Earl of Arlington, secretary of state; the Duke of Buckingham; Lord Ashley, chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury and lord chancellor; and the Duke of Lauderdale. During the ascendancy of these ministers, Charles grew more reckless than ever. As none of them possessed the power Clarendon had of restraining him, he became much more despotic, treated Parliament more contemptuously, and allowed himself to become the pensioner of the French king.

The passing of the Test Act in 1673 first disunited “the Cabal,” on which occasion Clifford, the Popish lord treasurer, resigned his staff. Soon after the Prorogation of Parliament, on the fourth of November in the same year, the King took the great Seal from Shaftesbury, and gave it to Sir Heneage Finch, as Lord Keeper. The other members of the Cabal ministry, Arlington, Buckingham, and Lauderdale, were in seeming odium at court; and Clifford was unexpectedly succeeded by Sir Thomas Osborn, who was created Lord Treasurer and Earl of Danby; he became in effect prime minister, and the Danby administration was in many respects more iniquitous than that of the Cabal.

[47] “Manuscripts and other rare documents illustrative of some of the more minute particulars of History, Biography, and Manners, from the reign of Henry VIII., to that of James I., preserved in the muniment room of James More Molyneux, Esq., at Loseley House, in Surrey. Edited by Alfred John Kempe, F.S.A., 1836.” This curious and very interesting volume contains many singular documents, “connected with passages in history and biography, with the entertainment of the Court, with the internal regulations of the magistracy, and in some instances with the minor relations of domestic life”--affording very considerable help to arrive at correct ideas and just estimates of the state of society and political government in the 16th and early part of the 17th centuries. The editor intimates that the manuscripts were discovered in the muniment room at Loseley, “of which the key had been lost, and its existence disregarded during an interval of 200 years.” One of its earliest documents is a summons to Christopher More, to come to London to welcome Anne of Cleves, with six servants in his company, to ride amongst other gentlemen in “cotes of black velvet, with cheines of gold about their neckes, and with gownes of velvet or some other good silke for their chainge.”

[48] “In 1511, a dispute arose between the college on the one part, and the mayor, burgesses, and parishioners on the other, as to the liability of their respective bodies to repair the transepts and tower, with the bell and other appurtenances belonging to the latter. By consent of the parties, the point at issue was referred to the arbitration of Thomas, Earl of Arundel, and Robert Sherburne, Bishop of Chichester; and an award was soon after published, by which the burthen was equally divided between the college and the town. To the former, the duty of repairing the south transept, commonly called ‘_the chancel of the parish_,’ was assigned; to the latter, the obligation of attending in the same manner to the north transept; while the expense of upholding the tower, and the emoluments to be derived from the use of its bells, were thenceforth to be shared equally by both.”

[49] At the suppression, it was endowed with a yearly revenue of 263_l._ 14_s._ 9_d._

[50] By this Thomas Fitz-Alan and his wife Beatrix was founded a hospital called “Maison Dieu,” for the maintenance of as many poor as the revenues with which it was endowed, would support. At the Dissolution, these were valued at 42_l._ 3_s._ 8_d._ per annum.

[51] In one of the chapel windows is the figure of a swallow on the wing, which is considered to intimate the original of the name of the castle; “for history and geography,” says Mr. Tierney, “the realms of fancy and romance, have all been explored in order to discover its etymon.” One author has amused himself with a rebus founded on the resemblance between the words Hirondelle and Arundel; and “it is not improbable,” writes Dr. Beattie, “that the migratory bird, here introduced, may have been selected as an appropriate emblem for the chapel window. The conjecture is, at least, as plausible as another that has been advanced; namely, that Arundel is derived from Hirondelle--the name of Bevis’s Horse.”

[52] This Countess of Derby was the daughter of Sir William Morley, K.B., and her mother was a daughter of Sir John Denham, the Poet. On the north side of the Chancel is a marble Monument to her memory. She died in 1752, at the age of 85. She was distinguished by charitable deeds and on her tomb is represented sitting under an oak, relieving poor travellers, and pointing to a building she had founded in the Parish--a Hospital endowed in 1741, as the inscription informs us, “the Alms-houses for the habitation and support of poor aged and infirm women,--the School for the habitation and maintenance of a school-master, and the education of poor boys and girls--the women and children to be chosen out of the parishes of Boxgrove, East Lavant, and Tangmere.”

[53] “This Adeliza,” writes Camden, “was daughter to Godfrey Barbatus, of Lovaine, who had for her dowrie Arundell Castle and all the forfeited lands of Robert de Belismo, the Earle, when the King (Henry the First) took her for his second wife.

“In her commendation, a certaine Englishman in that unlearned age wrote some unlearned verses,” of which these lines are the commencement:--

“When Muses nine thy beauties rare (faire Adeliza Queene Of England) readie are to tell, they starke astonied beene; What booteth thee so beautifull, gold-croune or pretious stone, Dimme is the diadem to thee, the gemme hath beautie none.”

After the King’s death she married William de Albini; “who, taking part with Maude the Empresse against King Stephen, and defending his castle (of Arundel) against him, was, in recompense of his good service, by the saide Maude, the Empresse and Ladie of Englishmen (for this title she used), created Earle of Arundel; and her son, King Henry, gave the whole Rape of Arundel to that William, to hold of him by the service of fourscore and foure knights’ fees and one halfe.” During her contest with Stephen, Maud was lodged in the Castle of Arundel, which the King besieged. The Earl, however--or, it is said, his Countess--by diplomacy, contrived to facilitate the escape of the Empress to Bristol, from which she took shipping, and returned to the Continent.

“A small Chamber, over the inner gate of Arundel Castle, enjoys the traditionary fame of having been her sleeping-room, during her sojourn there. It is a low square apartment, such as the Castellan might have occupied during a siege.” The Bedstead on which the Empress is reported to have slept is still preserved there. “Its massive wallnut posts are elaborately carved, but so worm-eaten that, unless tenderly scrutinized, the wood would be apt to fall into powder in the hands of the visitor.” We have quoted this brief account from Dr. Beattie’s History of Arundel. From the engraving that accompanies it, there can be little doubt that this relic is no older than the reign of Henry the 8th, if so old.

[54] Hutton, in his “History of Birmingham,” states that Sir Lister Holt, taking advantage of his brother’s necessities, induced him to cut off the entail, in order that the estate might pass away from his family. Thus, he adds, “an ancient race, which sprung from the anvil, and sported upon an estate of 12,000_l._ a-year, is now sunk into its pristine obscurity; for its head, Thomas Holt (perhaps Sir Thomas), at this day (1812) thumps at the anvil for bread, in the fabrication of spades--as amiable a man as any of his race; and the only baronet who ever shaped a shovel may take a melancholy ramble for many miles upon the lands of his ancestors, but cannot call a single foot of it his own.”

[55] For the several drawings which accompany and illustrate this account of Aston Hall and the church, we are indebted to Mr. Allen Edward Everitt, an excellent artist of Birmingham.