Part 13
The principal remaining apartment—and of this we give an illustration—is at the top of that portion of the building which overlooks the valley. It is called the “Giants’ Chamber,” taking its name from the two colossal figures in Roman armour, which they term _Gog_ and _Magog_, in raised plaster-work over the fire-place. This pargetting is bold in the extreme, and in very high relief, and the two figures, between which is a remarkably free and artistic winged figure with a bow, must have had a wondrous effect as they frowned down upon the gay throng assembled in olden times on the rush-strewn floors. The room, which has been wainscoted, is 55 feet 6 inches in length, 30 feet 6 inches in width, and 24 feet 6 inches in height; and of it Bishop Kennett thus speaks: “That old house has one room in it of such exact proportion, and such convenient lights, that it has been thought fit for a pattern of measure and contrivance to the most noble Blenheim.”
In other apartments, pargetting of the same general character as distinguishes the rooms in Hardwick Hall itself is to be seen over the fire-places. In one place a figure or two; in another, animals of the chase; in a third, a moated and fortified building; in another, armorial bearings; and in yet another, the same motto—now from the dangerous state of the walls and floors not discernible—which occurs on the fine old table described in our last—
“The redolent smell of eglantyne We stagges exault to the devyne”—
will be noticed, and all of the highest order of workmanship. Of the moated and fortified building just alluded to, we give an engraving on our initial letter, and beneath it, we have added the arms of the present noble house of Cavendish.
We have, on a previous page, spoken of the marvellous aptitude for business, and the careful attention to even the minutest details of expenditure, &c., evinced by the Countess of Shrewsbury, and we purpose now to make this a little more evident by giving some particulars of the erection of Hardwick Hall built by her.
The Hall, as it now stands—for it is, in every essential part, just as the countess left it—was, it is thought, commenced about the year 1576, and finished in 1599. The book of accounts of the wages paid is very curious and interesting, and gives the names of all the various wallers, ditchers, stone breakers, labourers, &c., with the gardeners, thatchers, moss-getters, &c., employed by the countess between January, 1576, and December, 1580. The accounts are made up every fortnight during that time, and all the items are carefully ticked off with a cross by the countess, and each fortnight’s accounts signed by her. Of one of the signatures we have engraved a fac-simile: it reads—“thre ponde hyght pence. E. SHROUESBURY.”
Of the items of which this fortnight’s accounts, amounting only to £3 0_s._ 8_d._ are composed, we copy the following:—
“This fortnight work begane one Munday beinge the xxjth of January, viz.:—
George Hickete xj days v_s._ vj_d._ his mane xj days iij_s._. viij_d._ and his boy xj days iij_s._ viij_d._ Robert bucknail vj days ij_s._ his mane vj days xviij_d._”
In the park are some remarkably fine old oak and other forest trees, round which almost countless herds of deer may be seen browsing. Some of these trees are of gigantic size, of considerable girth, and of great beauty. Our engraving on page 139 gives a distant view of the Hall, with some of these fine trees in the foreground.
HAULT HUCKNALL (Haute Hucknall, as it is called in the early registers, and Ault Hucknall, as it is now not unfrequently spelt) is the parish in which Hardwick Hall stands; and it is therefore necessary, especially as the two places are intimately connected in more ways than one, to say a few words about its church and monuments. The church, which is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, formerly belonged to the Abbey of Beauchief, but was, with the impropriate rectory, granted in 1544 to Francis Leake, from whom it passed to the Cavendishes, and now belongs to the Marquis of Hartington. The church contains some interesting remains of Norman and of Early English work, among which are the aisle under the tower, the window in the west end of the north aisle, and the old plain font,—the font now in use having been brought here from Bamford Church in the same county. In the south wall of the chancel is a pretty little piscina, and there are aumbries in the north aisle and in the Hardwick Chapel. At these places it is supposed altars formerly stood, and one of the altar-stones, with the five crosses emblematic of the five wounds of our Saviour, may be seen forming one of the paving-stones of the floor near the altar-rails. The porch has a vaulted stone-roof, and in the nave are remains of wall-paintings.
Some portions of an elegant carved-oak screen which formerly separated the Hardwick Chapel from the south aisle are still preserved, as are also several of the original massive oak benches. In the east window of the Hardwick Chapel, as shown in our engraving, the stained glass represents our Saviour on the cross, with the figures of the Virgin Mary and of St. John, &c. There are also some kneeling figures, and the arms of Hardwick and of Savage.
Among the monuments in this interesting church are some deserving especial attention. In the floor of the chancel is a monumental brass, the figure belonging to which is unfortunately lost, commemorative of Richard Pawson, 1536, sometime vicar of the parish, bearing the following inscription in black letter:—
“Orate pro aia domini Ricardi Pawson Vicarii Istius qui obiit die qua Vocavit eū d̄ns post an̄m d̄ni millesimum quingentesimū tricesimū sextum cujus aiē ppicietur deus. A.”
At the east end of the Hardwick Chapel, beneath the window, as shown in the engraving on the next page, is an elegant tomb, of Derbyshire marble, to the memory of Anne, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Kighley, of Kighley, in Yorkshire, and first wife of the second Sir William Cavendish, created, after her death, Baron Cavendish of Hardwick, and Earl of Devonshire. She was the mother of William, second Earl of Devonshire, and Gilbert Cavendish, author of “Horæ Subsecivæ,” Frances, wife of Lord Maynard, and James, Mary, and Elizabeth, who all died young.
The most interesting tomb, however, in this pretty church, is that of Thomas Hobbes, who is best known as “Hobbes, of Malmesbury,” or as “Leviathan Hobbes.”
The monument to this great “philosopher” and free-thinker is a plain slab of stone in the Hardwick Chapel—the raised slab shown on the floor in this engraving—which bears the following inscription:—
CONDITA HIC SUNT OSSA THOMÆ HOBBES, MALMESBURIENSIS, QVI PER MULTOS ANNOS SERVIVIT DUOBUS DEVONIÆ COMITIBUS PATRI ET FILIO VIR PROBUS, ET FAMA ERUDITIONIS DOMI FORISQUE BENE COGNITUS OBIIT ANN^o DOMINI 1679, MENSIS DECEMBRIS DIE 4º ÆTATIS SUÆ 91.
Before speaking of Hobbes and his connection with Hardwick, where he died, it will be well to note that the parish registers of Hault Hucknall commence in the year 1662, and that the entry regarding the burial of Hobbes, for the copy of which we have to express our thanks to the Rev. Henry Cottingham, the respected vicar of the parish, is as follows:—
“Anno Regni } 31 Law. Waine, { James Hardwick, Caroli Sucund } _Vicar_. { Thomas Whitehead, Anno dom. 1679. _Churchwardens_.
“Hardwick | Thomas Hobbs Magnus Philosophus, Sepul. fuit et affidavit in Lana Sepoliendo exhibit. Decem. 6” (or 8).
Thomas Hobbes[28] was born at Malmesbury on Good Friday, 1588, in the year of “the Spanish Armada,” and it is said that his birth was hastened by his mother’s terror of the enemy’s fleet, and that a timidity with which through life he was afflicted was thus induced. He and fear, he was wont to say, “were born together.” His being born on Good Friday has also been turned to account in the way of accounting for his wonderful precocity as a child, and his subsequent intellectual progress. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford, and there made such progress that before he was twenty years old he was taken into the service of Sir William Cavendish, who had a few years before been created Baron Cavendish of Hardwick, as tutor to his sons, Gilbert, who died before attaining his majority, and William, who became second Earl of Devonshire. With the latter young nobleman, who married, as already narrated, Christian, daughter of Lord Bruce, of Kinloss, Hobbes travelled through France and Italy. At his death he left, besides other issue, William, Lord Cavendish, who succeeded him as Earl of Devonshire, and who, at that time, was only in the tenth year of his age. This Lord Hardwick was, as his father had been before him, placed under the tuition of Hobbes, “who instructed him in the family for three years, and then, about 1634, travelled with him as his governor into France and Italy, with the longest stay in Paris for all the politer parts of breeding. He returned in 1637, and, when he soon after came of age, his mother (Christian, Countess of Devonshire), delivered up to him his great houses in Derbyshire all ready furnished.”
With this nobleman (who married Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and was succeeded by his son, afterwards created Duke of Devonshire) Thomas Hobbes remained for the rest of his life. “The earl for his whole life entertained Mr. Hobbes in his family as his old tutor rather than as his friend or confidant; he let him live under his roof in ease and plenty and his own way, without making use of him in any publick or so much as domestick affairs. He would often express an abhorrence of some of his principles in policy and religion; and both he and his lady would frequently put off the mention of his name and say ‘He was an humourist, and that nobody could account for him.’”
Of Hobbes’s works—of his “De Cive,” his “Leviathan,” his “Elémens Philosophiques de Citoyen,” his “Behemoth,” or his hundred other writings—it is, of course, not here our province to speak; but one of his smaller productions, because of its connection with the family of his noble patron, his “De Mirabilibus Pecci,” may claim a passing word. This is a Latin poem descriptive of the “Wonders of the Peak, in Derbyshire”—the same subject which Charles Cotton, later on, wrote upon in his “Wonders of the Peak”—wherein Hobbes describes a tour which he, with a friend, took on horseback, starting from Chatsworth, where he was residing, and visiting Pilsley, Hassop, Hope, Castleton, Peak Forest, Eldon Hole, the Ebbing and Flowing Well, Buxton, Poole’s Hole, Chelmorton, Sheldon, Ashford, and so back to Chatsworth, quaintly describing all he saw on his journey.
If the earl was attached to Hobbes, he was at least amply repaid by the devotion and fondness his old tutor showed to him and to his family. Indeed, so intimate was the old man with the family of his patron, that whenever the earl removed from one of his houses to another, Hobbes accompanied them, even to the last of his long life. “There is a tradition in the family,” said Bishop Kennett, in 1707, “of the manners and customs of Mr. Hobbes somewhat observable. His professed rule of health was to dedicate the morning to his health and the afternoon to his studies. And therefore at his first rising he walk’d out and climb’d any hill within his reach; or, if the weather was not dry, he fatigued himself within doors by some exercise or other to be in a sweat; recommending that practice upon this opinion, that an old man had more moisture than heat, and therefore by such motion heat was to be acquired and moisture expelled. After this he took a comfortable breakfast, and then went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, the countess, and the children, and any considerable strangers, paying some short address to all of them.” ... “Towards the end of his life he had very few books, and those he read but very little, thinking he was now only to digest what formerly he had fed upon. If company came to visit him, he would be free in discourse till he was pressed or contradicted, and then he had the infirmities of being short and peevish, and referring to his writings for better satisfaction. His friends, who had the liberty of introducing strangers to him, made these terms with them before their admission—that they should not dispute with the old man, nor contradict him.”
Thus lived Hobbes, whether at Hardwick or at Chatsworth, and thus were all his foibles kindly looked upon and administered to, and his life made happy by allowing him in everything—even his attendance on worship in the private chapel, and his leaving before the sermon—to have, literally, “his own way.” In December, 1679, the earl and countess went from Chatsworth to Hardwick Hall, probably with the intention of keeping up their Christmas festivities there, and even at that time the old man—for he was ninety-one years of age—would accompany them. “He could not endure to be left in an empty house, and whenever the earl removed he would go along with him, even to his last stage from Chatsworth to Hardwick; when in a very weak condition he dared not be left behind, but made his way upon a feather bed in a coach, though he survived the journey but a few days. He could not bear any discourse of death, and seemed to cast off all thoughts of it. He delighted to reckon upon long life. The winter before he died he had made a warmer coat, which he said must last him three years, and then he would have such another. In his last sickness his frequent questions were whether his disease was curable; and when intimations were given that he might have ease, but no remedy, he used this expression:—‘I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world at;’ which are reported to have been his last sensible words, and his lying some days following in a silent stupefaction did seem owing to his mind more than to his body. The only thought of death that he appeared to entertain in time of health was to take care of some inscription on his grave. He would suffer some friends to dictate an epitaph, among which he was best pleased with this honour, ‘_This is the true philosopher’s stone_;’ which, indeed,” adds the bishop, “would have had as much religion in it as that which now remains,” and of which we have just given a copy.
As we have already remarked, it is not our business to discuss the political or philosophical principles which Hobbes expressed in his writings: these, both in and after his time, were the subject of much controversy. We may, however, remark that it was well for those who were committed to his tutelage and close companionship, that their minds do not seem to have been corrupted by his avowed rejection, not only of the Christian faith, but apparently of any faith at all in the existence of a Deity. Nowhere—and he had abundance of opportunity in some, at least, of his voluminous writings—does he show any glimmering even of religious belief; and the history of his latest years, and the last expression which proceeded from his mouth, testify to his fear of death, and his dislike to have the subject mentioned in his hearing. A mere materialist would not thus have been “subject to bondage,” inasmuch as the conviction of utter annihilation must remove all ground of apprehension regarding the “something after death.” Hobbes closed his eyes a resolute doubter, if not an actual disbeliever; and no ray of comfort or of hope came to brighten his last moments as he passed into the world of spirits to exchange uncertainty for certainty, the mortal for the immortal.
The late Sir William Molesworth endeavoured to rekindle some interest in Hobbes’s writings by republishing an edition of his works: happily, the attempt was a failure, so far, we believe, as to any extensive sale of the poison contained in them.
Externally, Hault Hucknall Church, although highly picturesque and venerable in appearance, presents not many striking features. The tower, which stands between nave and chancel, was probably terminated by a spire—the upper remaining part being of much later date than the lower.
We have thus described the seat, next in importance to that of Chatsworth, of the long-descended and long-ennobled family of Cavendish. Their principal residence, Chatsworth, we describe and illustrate in another part of this volume.
ARUNDEL CASTLE.
ARUNDEL castle takes high rank among the “Stately Homes of England.” Some of its more prominent features we present to our readers. Of very remote antiquity—for it traces back to a period long anterior to the Conquest; deeply interesting in its historical associations—for it has played a leading part in the principal events of the kingdom; and of great importance in its family connections—for a long line of noble and illustrious names, from the reign of Alfred the Great to our own time, are associated with its history—Arundel stands, a proud monument of England’s greatness, and of the beauty of England’s fair domains.
The manor of Arundel was, it is stated, given in the will of Alfred the Great (“Æthelme mines brother suna thone ham æt Ealdingburnam, & æt Cumtune, & æt Crundellan, & æt Beadingum, & æt Beadingahamme, & æt Burnham, & æt Thunresfelda, & æt Æscengum”) to his nephew, Æthelm, the son of his brother. To Earl Godwine, and to King Harold, it is also stated successively to have passed. At the time of the Norman Conquest the possessions and the earldoms of Arundel, Chichester, and Shrewsbury, were given to Roger de Montgomery, a relative of the Conqueror, and “one of the council which formed the invasion of England, leading the centre of the army in that famous battle of Battle Abbey, wherein the crown accrued to the Norman.” He commanded the entire army of archers and light infantry in the decisive battle; and to his superior skill in military tactics was principally owing the successful issue. To requite him for his valuable services, and place him in a position of advantage, the Conqueror established him at Arundel in all the magnificence of the age. Of his immense possessions, those by which he was immediately surrounded constituted three lordships, ten hundreds and their courts and suits of service, eighteen parks, and seventy-seven manors. He took a prominent part in affairs of state, both in the reign of the Conqueror and in that of William Rufus, and at last entered the monastery at Shrewsbury, which he had founded, and where he died. He was succeeded in his possessions in Normandy by his eldest son, Robert, Comte de Belesme, and in his English earldoms and possessions by his youngest son, Hugh, who led a turbulent life, and met with a premature death at Anglesey, in repulsing the descent made by Magnus, King of Norway, on that island; he was shot from his horse by an arrow, which pierced through his brain.
On the death of Hugh, his elder brother, Robert, came over from Normandy to claim the earldoms and inheritance, to which, on paying a heavy fine, he succeeded. “He was a cruel, crafty, and subtle man, but powerful in arms, and eloquent in speech, and for fifteen years seldom out of rebellion; till at length peace being made between the king and his competitor, he was called to account for all his actions, but shifted away and fortified his castles, which the king (Henry I.) besieged, and forced him to sue for clemency, which was granted; but all his possessions were seized, and himself banished.” He ultimately died in Warwick Castle—the earldoms reverting to the crown.
Before tracing the descent to a later time, a word on the derivation of the name Arundel may not be out of place. It has been conjectured to be derived from various sources. Thus, Hirundelle, from _Hirundo_, a swallow; from the name of a famous horse, _Hirondelle_, which was the favourite of its owner, one Sir Bevis, who is said to have been warder or constable of the castle; from _Arundo_, a reed, which grows in the river; from _Portus Adurni_; and from _Arun_, the name of the river, and _dell_, from the valley along which it flows; as well as from _araf_ and _del_, and other sources.[29]