Part 18

The naked, bloody, dirt-begrimed corpse of the last King of the White Rose, having been picked out from amongst the slain, was thrown contemptuously over the back of a horse,--"like a calf,"--head hanging down on one side and legs on the other, behind a pursuivant of arms called _Blanc Sanglier_, being the officer called after Richard's own badge, the _White Boar_, or _Boar argent_, doubtless so done in derision, and sent off to Leicester, and the battered, blood-stained helmet-crown of the Plantagenet usurper was lifted from the mud and placed upon the head of the Tudor invader.

But had fortune favoured Richard a little further, so that he could have got within weapon's length of his adversary, the untoward fate that befell him, may have been Richmond's instead, and a different chapter altogether substituted as to the future sovereignty of England.

In common with the associates of conquerors, the adherents of the first Tudor king got their due proportion of rewards and honours at his hands, and Sir John Cheney was not forgotten.

The first distinction he received was conferred a short time before Henry's coronation, which took place in October, 1485. Three of the king's highest adherents received patents of nobility, and twelve others were created Knights-Banneret; among these Sir John Cheney stood second on the list. He was also soon after created a Knight of the Garter, being the two hundred and thirty-seventh in the succession, and Dodsworth says, "it was on St. George's Day preceding the coronation, and that he sat at the first table in the right aisle of St. George's Hall, Windsor." At the end of the first Parliament, toward the end of the year, the king called him to his Privy Council.

But the most considerable honour yet awaited him, which took place in 1487, when by writ of summons dated the first of September in that year he was raised to the dignity of a Baron, and summoned to Parliament as such from that period to the 14 October, 1495. He held the office also of Royal Standard-Bearer to Henry VII.

In 1487, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, "a man of talents and enterprise, nephew to Edward IV., Richard III., and Margaret, widow of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy," Henry's uncompromising and implacable enemy, accompanied by Francis, Viscount Lovel (who had been Lord Chamberlain to Richard III.) Fitz-Gerald, Earl of Kildare, the redoubtable Martin Swartz, with a large contingent of veteran Germans, and Irish, having crossed over from Ireland, landed on the fourth of June at Fourdrey in Furness in Lancashire. There they were joined by Sir Thomas Broughton, and the English adherents, and with this motley army was Lambert Simnel, and his tutor Richard Simons the Oxford priest; they marched into Yorkshire, and thence bent southward to Newark. Henry had assembled as numerous an army as he could muster and marched to Nottingham, but was not in sufficient force to give his antagonists battle. There he was reinforced by the Earl of Derby and a body of troops, and also by Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Strange, Sir John Cheney, "and other knights and gentlemen at least three score," bringing with them large additional forces. The king succeeded in occupying Newark before the Earl of Lincoln could reach it, and advanced to East-Stoke, about three miles south of Newark. Here the determined battle of Stoke took place on the sixteenth of June; the Germans fought with great determination, but the Earl's forces were totally routed and all their leaders, except Lord Lovel, slain, fighting to the last sword in hand.

Lord Lovel is reported to have escaped, and his fate has been enshrined in a halo of romance. By some he is said to have been killed in the battle, by others "that he fled and swam over the Trent on horseback, but could not recover on account of the steepness of the bank, and so was drowned in the river." But there is also this remarkable story of his disappearance,--

"On the 6th of May, 1728, the present Duke of Rutland, related in my hearing, that about twenty years there before, in 1708, upon occasion of new laying a chimney, at Minster Lovel, there was discovered a large vault or room under ground, in which was the entire skeleton of a man, as having been sitting at a table, which was before him, with a book, paper, pen, &c., &c., in another part of the room lay a cap all much mouldered and decayed. Which the family judged to be this Lord Lovel, whose exit, has hitherto been so uncertain." (Banks.) While another account adds, "that the clothing of the body, seemed to have been rich; that it was seated in a chair, with a table and mass-book before it; and also that, upon the admission of the air, the body soon fell to dust." (Gough.)

Previous to the battle another honour was conferred on him,--for among the "Banerettes made by the Kinge at the batell of Stoke besydes Newarke-upon-Trent the IX. day of June Anno Sec'do, whereof the first three wer made before the batell,"--the second name occurring is that of Sir John Cheney. (Metcalfe.)

In 1488 Sir John "received orders with other persons in Hampshire to levy archers for the relief of Brittany then threatened by the French," and in 1492 appears to have accompanied Henry's grand expedition to France, the flotilla being under the command of Lord Willoughby de Broke, as Admiral of the Fleet, and with Lord Daubeney as one of the principal commanders and ambassadors.

Here again money, and not the sword, decided the fortune of war, and it is curious, that one of the articles of this treaty of Etaples should be, that "the king of France (Charles VIII.) should pay the king of England the arrears of the yearly pension of fifty thousand crowns paid by Louis XI. to Edward IV., amounting in all to one hundred and twenty-five thousand crowns, which is twenty-five thousand pounds sterling."

This was the payment of the old debt contracted by the French king in 1475, to Edward IV., who was also to have the English king's daughter Elizabeth for his wife. Now, however, Henry was married to the lady instead, but he did not forget, when opportunity offered, to press for the arrears of the pension, due to her late father. Sir John Cheney was credited with getting a little plunder out of the first transaction in 1475, and it is probable that he did not come empty-handed out of this, the second, although he does not seem to have been one of the English ambassadors chosen to meet the astute Marshal d'Esquerdes.

No further record appears of Lord Cheney's services, and he died without issue in 1496, when the title became extinct. He devised his estates to his nephew Sir Thomas Cheney, of Toddington, Bedfordshire.

Lord Cheney "was the friend, if not the relation of Bishop Beauchamp, for he was appointed one of his executors, and was buried in the Chapel erected by that prelate, in Salisbury Cathedral" (Dodsworth). He now lies under the first arch from the choir, in the north aisle of the nave. The Chapel of this prelate as it appeared before its destruction by Wyatt is thus described in Sir R. C. Hoare's _Modern Wiltshire_,--

"The Beauchamp Chapel as a specimen of art, was in every respect worthy of the builder of the Collegiate Chapel of St. George at Windsor. It was larger than that of Lord Hungerford, and displayed the elaborate and richly ornamented style of the age. It was lighted by three windows to the south, with buttresses between, and a large window at the east end, and was finished with an embattled parapet. The remains of the prelate reposed under a plain marble tomb in the centre, and in the wall on the north side, separating it from the Lady Chapel, beneath canopies of exquisite tabernacle work, were those of his father and mother. An altar tomb in the south-west corner, surmounted also with a florid canopy covered those of Sir John Cheyney, his friend, and one of his executors. The Chapel was divided into two compartments, by an arch, on which were the armorial bearings of the Founder. Round the wall ran a cornice of delicately wrought fan-work and foliage, and the ceiling of carved oak, assimilated perfectly with the rest of the edifice."

Some portions of this "delicately wrought fan-work" is still to be seen among the _debris_ of sculpture remaining in the cloisters. Bishop Beauchamp was younger son of Walter Beauchamp (younger son of John, Lord Beauchamp of Powyke), by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Roche, and brother to William Beauchamp, Lord St. Amand. He is supposed to have been the first Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury in 1450, afterward translated to Hereford; and died 1481.

The effigy of John, Lord Cheney, sculptured in alabaster, is of large size, and the costume is of most interesting military character. He appears clad in complete plate armour, with skirt and collar of mail, and armed with sword and miséricorde. The Garter is around the left leg, and he wears a large dependant collar of S.S., from which hangs, instead of the usual figure of St. George and the Dragon, an unique Tudor jewel, or badge, formed of a Portcullis, on which is super-imposed a Double Rose. Over the armour is the robe or mantle of the Order, fastened across the chest with cordon and tassels. On the left shoulder is embroidered the Garter. The head is bare, and the hair parted in the centre of the forehead, descends in large waves to the shoulders. The fingers and thumbs of both hands are adorned with rings, the feet rest on a lion, and behind the sole of the left foot is sculptured an oak leaf, on the right is apparently a scroll. Angels support the head.

The structure on which the effigy reclines is composed probably of no portion of the original tomb. It partly consists of traceried panels of Purbeck marble, having shields in their centres, on which were formerly brasses.

As has been observed, Lord Cheney was interred in the beautiful Chantry of his friend, Bishop Richard Beauchamp, which was situate on the north side of the Lady Chapel, opposite Lady Hungerford's. The Bishop, who died in 1481, was also buried within it, and according to Leland, with his father and mother on either side of him "in marble tumbes." Wyatt demolished the Chantry, and removed both Bishop and Knight to the nave, and during the confusion of the desecration, the Bishop's tomb appears to have been lost or mislaid, his bones now rest in some one else's, taken from one of the transepts, wherein no remains at all were found. The Knight's tomb, probably formed of Purbeck marble, was too far gone with decay to bear 'translation.'

"In the last repairs," says Dodsworth, "the effigy (Sir J. Cheney's) was removed, and as the original tomb was totally decayed, the present base was formed from part of the ornaments that belonged to the Beauchamp Chapel. His skeleton was found entire, and justified the fame of his extraordinary stature and strength. The thigh bone measured above twenty-one inches, or near four inches longer than the natural size. These bones were enclosed in a box, and entrusted to the care of the writer, until the tomb was replaced, when they were deposited within, and the name of the deceased, with the date of the removal, inscribed on the cover." The act of a true and reverential man.

The substituted tomb of Sir John Cheney's friend the Bishop, is on the other side of the nave.

The arms of Cheney (of Shurland) are recorded as, _Argent, on a bend sable, three martlets or_, quartering, _Azure, five lioncels argent, a canton ermine_,--or according to another authority, _Azure, six lioncels, three, two, one, argent_ (SHURLAND). No arms are visible at Salisbury.

At the death of Lord Cheney, his property devolved to his nephew and heir, Sir Thomas Cheney, son of his brother Sir William Cheney.

The scene of our little history now shifts from the broad chalk downs of south Wilts, to the kindred chalk measures of south-west Bedfordshire, and for a short time intermediately to northern Kent, the original seat of the family of Cheney.

Sir Thomas Cheney, nephew and heir of John, Lord Cheney, K.G., married first Frideswide, daughter and coheiress of Sir Thomas Frowyke, knt., Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. By her he had three daughters: Catherine married to Thomas Kemp, Esq., of Glendich, Kent; Frances, to Nicholas Crips, Esq., son and heir of Sir Henry Crips, knt.; Anne, to Sir John Perrot, knt.; and Margaret, to George Nevill, Lord Abergavenny. (Burke.)

Secondly, he married Anne, daughter and coheiress of Sir John Broughton, knight, of Toddington, Bedfordshire, by his wife Mary daughter and heiress of Thomas Peyvre, lord of the manor of Toddington, by whom he acquired the estate. By her he had one son Henry (afterward Lord Cheney), his successor.

Sir Thomas is described as having been "a person of great gallantry and note in the reign of Henry VIII., accompanied that monarch to the field of the Cloth of Gold, where he was one of the challengers against all gentlemen, who were to exercise feats of arms on horseback or on foot for thirty days."

He was created by Henry VIII. Knight of the Garter, Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Treasurer of the Household. Upon the death of Edward VI., he espoused the interests of Queen Mary, and was called to the Privy Council by Queen Elizabeth in the first year of her reign, which same year he died, 1558-9, and was buried at Minster in Kent.

Hasted (_History of Kent_) has the following notice of this Knight,--

"Sir Thomas Cheney was a man of great account in his time; 7 Henry VII., he was Sheriff of this county, and served in Parliament for it 6 Edward VI., and 1, 2, and 5, Queen Mary. He was elected a Knight of the Garter in the reign of Henry VIII., by whom he was appointed Constable of Queenborough Castle, Governor of Rochester, Warden of the Five Ports, and Treasurer of the Household, in which office he continued in the next reign of K. Edward VI., of whose Privy Council he was one, and at his death, espousing the cause of Queen Mary, he was again made Warden of the Five Ports. Queen Elizabeth continued him Treasurer of her Household, and made him of her Privy Council. He resided at Shurland, the mansion of which he had new built, with great hospitality and sumptuous housekeeping, till the time of his death, which happened in the Tower on Dec. 8, in the first year of that reign, and was buried with great pomp and magnificence in a small chapel adjoining the parish church of Minster in the Isle of Sheppey. He had been twice married, first to Fridwith, daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Frowike, Lord Chief Justice of England, by whom he had issue one son John, married to Margaret, daughter of George Nevill, Lord Abergavenny, and three daughters at length his coheirs, Katherine married to Sir Thomas Kempe, knt., Frances to Nicholas Crispe, Esq., and Anne to Sir John Perrott, knt. His second wife was Anne daughter and coheir of Sir John Broughton of Toddington, in the county of Bedford, knt., by whom he had an only son Henry, who became his heir.

"He was buried in great state in a chapel which had been the Conventual church, adjoining to the north-east part of the parish church of Minster, but his son Henry, Lord Cheney, having on 22 October, 1581, anno 24 Elizabeth, obtained a license to remove the coffins and bones of his father and ancestors from thence, he having sold the materials of the said chapel to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and placed them in the parish church, the coffin of his father was, among others removed, and deposited in the north chancel of it where a handsome monument was erected over him."

Sir Henry Cheney, knt., his only son and heir, was of Toddington. He married Jane, daughter of Thomas Wentworth of Nettlested, Suffolk, created Baron Wentworth in 1529, and Lord Chamberlain of the Household to Edward VI.; by his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Andrew Fortescue, knt.

Sir Henry was created by Queen Elizabeth BARON CHENEY OF TODDINGTON, by Writ of Summons dated 6 May, 1572, and had summons to Parliament from 8 May, 1572, to 15 October, 1586.

Hasted, speaking of this nobleman and his Kentish possessions, narrates,--

"Henry Cheney, Esqr., succeeded his father at Shurland, among his other Estates in this County, and in the third year of Queen Elizabeth he had livery of it with the rest of his inheritance; in the fifth year of it, he kept his Shrievalty for this County at his seat, in which year he was knighted, in the fourteenth year of that reign he was created Lord Cheney of Toddington in the County of Bedford. By his expensive method of living he acquired the name of "_the extravagant Lord Cheney_," and before his death had dissipated the great possessions which his father had left him and died without issue 30 Elizabeth, anno 1587. However, long before his death, having removed to Toddington, where he had built a most magnificent seat, he exchanged the manor and seat of Shurland, with other estates in the neighbourhood of it, with the Queen, and the fee of it remained in the hands of the Crown, till King James I., in his second year granted it to Philip Herbert, younger brother of William, Earl of Pembroke, who the next year was created Lord Herbert of Shurland, and Earl of Montgomery. Sir Thomas Cheney--his father--seems to have had some foreknowledge of his son's future extravagance, for by his last will he devised his lands and manors to his son Henry and the heirs of his body, remainder to Thomas Cheney of Woodley, Esqr., and to the heirs male of his body, upon condition, that he or they or any of them should not alien or discontinue.

"Henry, Lord Cheney was possessed of much land in this parish, which with all the rest of his estates, through his profuse manner of living he was obliged to alienate from time to time.

"The Cheneys bore for their arms, _Argent, on a bend sable, three mullets or_, which coat on their marrying the heiress of Shurland, they bore in the second place. But the Lord Cheney bore his own coat in the first place, and that of Shurland second, and afterwards those of Shottesbroke, Broughton, Beard, Foster, Pevre, Loring, Beaple, Blaine, Manseck, Perrott, Hemgrave, Stonham, Burgat, Barneck, Neame, Engaine, Dawbney, Denston, and Wanston. For his supporters, _Two Thoyes vert, spotted gules and or, collared and chained or_. Sir Thomas Cheney bore for his crest, _on a wreath argent and vert, two horns of a bull argent on the curled scalp or_;--but the Lord Cheney changed it to '_a Thoye passant, collared with a ducal collar or_. Arms of Shurland, _Azure, five lions rampant argent, a canton ermine_, which arms are on the roof of the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral.'"

Lord Cheney was one of the peers who sat on the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. He died without issue in 1587, leaving the whole of his remaining property to his widow. He erected a magnificent seat at Toddington, concerning which Lysons adds,--

"Lord Cheney built a noble mansion at Toddington, about half a mile from the church, of which nothing now remains but the kitchen, which is remarkably spacious, having two fireplaces, each twelve feet in width, and a few rooms fitted up as a farm house. The greater part of the building was pulled down by the Earl of Strafford about the year 1745. It appears by an antient plan of the house (in 1802 on a fire-screen at the farm) that it occupied four sides of a quadrangle, at each corner of which was a turret; the north and south fronts were two hundred and ten feet in length, the chapel was thirty feet by twenty-four, the tennis court was sixty-five feet in length, and a marble gallery, fifty-eight."

Thus this fine edifice shared the fate of its predecessor erected by the Peyvres, from whom, through Broughton who married their heiress, Lord Cheney inherited the manor of Toddington, by marrying the heiress of Broughton.

From the dismantled earthly home of the extinct Cheneys to the final one appointed for all, is but the natural sequence of this world's history of human life. The olden possessors of Toddington, successively Peyvre, Broughton, and Cheney, are all gathered together in death, in the south transept of the church. Of them, and the fate of their memorials, a few words.

The Peyvres were an antient family, holding the manor of Toddington, as early as the reign of Henry III. Paulinus Peyvre, Steward of the Household to Henry III., was, says Lysons,--

"a man of mean origin, and when he went to Court, was not possessed of two carucates of land; but by means lawful and unlawful, (as Matthew Paris observes) acquired such wealth, that he soon became possessed of five hundred carucates; a most insatiable purchaser of lands (says the historian) and a most incomparable builder. Not to speak of those in other places, his house at Toddington was like a palace, with a chapel, chambers, and other buildings, covered with lead, which raised the admiration of all beholders. His workmen are said to have received a hundred shillings, and more than ten marks for their wages."

So much for the grandeur of Paulinus Peyvre's mansion, and then the same authority significantly adds,--

"The site of this noble mansion is not known. Near the church at Toddington is a mount called Conger Hill, which seems to have been the keep of a castellated mansion, and there are considerable earthworks near it. This might have been the site of Sir Paulinus Peyvre's mansion. This favourite of fortune died in 1251."

Thus perished the mansion of the Peyvres, and it is curious to reflect, a like fate awaited the noble building erected by their successors the Cheneys. It was Mary, daughter of Thomas Peyvre, sixth in descent from Sir Paulinus, that brought the property to her husband Sir John Broughton, and his daughter and coheir Anne to Sir Thomas Cheney.

The Peyvres are buried in the south transept of Toddington church, which was antiently a Chantry, as there is a piscina in the south-east corner.

Continuing his description, Lysons (writing in 1806) thus speaks of the then shameful condition of the transepts and monuments of this fine old church,--

"In the south transept are some antient monuments of the Peyvres as appears by their arms: one of them was a crusader. In the same transept are monuments of Anne, wife of Sir Thomas Cheney, K.G.--1561,--Henry Lord Cheney, 1587,--and his widow, Jane Lady Cheney, 1614. On each of these were the effigies of the deceased, now much mutilated lying on the ground, mingled with the broken ornaments of the tombs, and the dung of birds and bats. The north transept which was the burial place of the Wentworths is not in a much better condition. The costly monument of Henrietta, Lady Wentworth, the Duke of Monmouth's mistress, who died in 1686, on which her mother who survived her ten years, directed the large sum of two thousand pounds to be expended, and another monument which appears to have been no less costly in memory of Lady Maria Wentworth, who died at the premature age of eighteen, in 1632, are in a state little better than those of the Cheneys. The windows of the aisle being without glass, and the roof much decayed, they are daily receiving much injury, by being exposed, to the ravages of the weather, and the depredations of children."