Chapter X: Part 10

Nor are these the only memorials of the frail Rosamund, whose history is one of the most interesting in our stock of legendary lore. About two miles north of Oxford, near the river Isis, there are some remains of the famous Nunnery of Godstow, from which, we are told, "there is a subterranean passage to Woodstock." It was about the end of the reign of Henry I., that this Nunnery was founded, at the instigation of Editha, a pious lady of Winchester. Assisted by benefactions, Editha finished a convent for Benedictine Nuns, in 1138; and King Stephen and his Queen were present at the consecration. Editha was Abbess here; and the lands given were confirmed by grants of Stephen and Richard I. When Prince Henry arrived in England, in 1149, to dispute his title to the crown with Stephen, he happened to visit the Nunnery of Godstow, where he saw Rosamund, the daughter of Lord Clifford; she was not a nun, but boarded in the convent.

Fair Rosamund--_Rosa Mundi_, the Rose of the World--was the second daughter of Walter de Clifford, the son of Richard and grandson of Ponz. Richard is mentioned in the Domesday Survey as holding lands in the counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Wilts, Worcester, and Hereford. Walter de Clifford, by his wife Margaret, had four children:--Lucy, first married to Hugh de Say, and subsequently to Bartholomew de Mortimer; Rosamund, Walter, and Richard. Of Rosamund's early life we have no particulars. Local tradition affirms that Canyngton, about three miles from Bridgewater, was the place of her birth, and that within the walls of its priory she received such education as the age afforded. That, as the daughter of a powerful lord, she was entrusted to the care of some religious sisterhood for nurture, both of mind and body, we have no doubt, though the old chroniclers are silent on the subject. The art of embroidery would appear to have been one of her accomplishments, for the venerable Abbey of Buildwas long possessed among its treasures a magnificent cope, which bore witness to the taste and skill of its fair embellisher. Of her first acquaintance with Henry II., and the mode and place of her introduction to him, no details have been preserved. Probably she was known to him from her earliest years. Nor have we any reason to suppose that, according to some modern versions of the sad story, a broken vow added its shadow to a life whose record is sufficiently gloomy without this additional darkening of woe. Not a hint of her having been a nun do the chroniclers give us; and, had such been the fact, full use would have been made of such an aggravation of her offence. Her royal lover was one of the most unscrupulous of mankind, and for his many enormities he was notorious. His affection for Rosamund, however, such as it was, was constant. In order to protect her from the vengeance of the Queen, he removed her successively to various places of greater or less security. But the most famous of all, and with which her name is more than with all others associated, was her retreat at Woodstock. It was here that Henry built a chamber, which Brompton describes as of wondrous architecture--resembling the work of Dædalus; in other words, a labyrinth or maze. A manuscript of Robert of Gloucester, in the Heralds' Office, says that--

"Att Wodestoke for hure he made a toure,
That is called Rosemounde's boure,"

the special intent of which was to conceal her from her royal rival. The internal decorations of this abode were as much attended to as its means of escaping external notice. The Abbot of Jorevall describes a cabinet of marvellous workmanship, which was one of its ornaments. It was nearly two feet in length, and on it the assault of champions, the action of cattle, the flight of birds, and the leaping of fishes were so naturally represented, that the figures appeared to move.

Rosamund did not long occupy the retreat that royal though guilty love had created for her. She died in 1177, while yet without a rival in the King's affections, and, as it would appear, of some natural disease. In after times the injured Queen Eleanor had the credit of discovering her place of concealment, by means of a clue of silk which the King had incautiously left behind him; and which enabled her to thread the intricacies of the path, and of gratifying her revenge by obliging her rival to drink from her hand a cup of poison. That the Queen discovered the abode of Rosamund is possible; and it may have been that the shock of the meeting, and the unmeasured language which her Majesty is said to have employed, were too much for the poor victim of her womanly and natural displeasure. It is only fair, however, to say that the Queen's part in the entire transaction is not alluded to in the older writers, and is probably the fiction of more modern times.

Rosamund was buried in the first instance before the high altar in the Church of Godstow Nunnery, which was probably selected from its neighbourhood to Woodstock, and which henceforward enjoyed a goodly number of benefactions in memory of her and for the health of her soul. The body was wrapped in leather, and then placed in a coffin of lead. Over the whole Henry built a magnificent tomb, which was covered with a pall of silk, and surrounded by tapers constantly burning. This occurred in the lifetime of her father, for he gave to the nuns of Godstow, in pure and perpetual alms, for the health of the souls of Margaret his wife and of Rosamund his daughter, his mill at Franton, with all appurtenances, a meadow adjacent to the same called Lechtun, and a saltpit in Wiche. Walter, his son, confirmed the gift. Osbert Fitzhugh added to this the grant of a saltpit in Wiche, called the Cow, pertaining to his manor of Wichebalt.

Indeed, Walsingham goes so far as to say, though incorrectly, that the Nunnery of Godstow was actually founded by King John for the soul of Rosamund. It is not unlikely that a chantry was founded by that king for the object stated, but the foundation of the house was beyond question the work of a much earlier period.

Rosamund's remains, however, were not allowed to occupy their sepulchre in peace. Fourteen years after their solemn commission to this sacred place of interment, Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in a visitation of his diocese, came to Godstow. After he had entered the church, and performed his devotions, he observed the tomb occupying its conspicuous position before the high altar, adorned as already described, and forthwith asked whose it was. On being informed that it was the grave of Rosamund, whom Henry, the late king, had so dearly loved, and for whose sake he had greatly enriched this hitherto small and indigent house, and had given lands for the sustentation of the tomb and the maintenance of the lights, he imperatively commanded the nuns to take her out of the church, and to bury her with other common people, as the connexion between her and the King had been base; and to the end that the Christian religion might not be vilified, but that other women might thus be deterred from similar evil ways.

In obedience to the bishop's mandate the tomb was removed from the church, and erected in the chapter-house. It bore the following epitaph, containing the obvious play upon the lady's name, and declaratory of the unhappy contrast which death had effected:--

"Hic jacet in tumba Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda;
Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet."

This tomb remained, an object of interest and respect, until the dissolution of the house. It was then destroyed, and a stone was discovered within it, bearing the simple inscription, "TUMBA ROSAMUNDÆ." The bones were found undecayed, and on the opening of the leaden coffin which contained them, "there was a very swete smell came out of it." Another eye-witness described it as having "enterchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and green, and the picture of the cup out of which she drank the poyson given her by the Queen, carved in stone." A stone coffin, said to be that of Rosamund, was still to be seen at Godstow when Hearne wrote his "Account of some Antiquities in and about Oxford," but this was regarded by him as a "fiction of the vulgar."[63]

In the "French Chronicle of London," 1259-1343, one of our earliest records compiled in illustration of the History of the City of London, under 1262, we read another version of this legend: "In this year the Queen was shamefully hooted and reviled at London Bridge, as she was desiring to go from the Tower to Westminster; and this, because she had caused a gentle damsel to be put to death, the most beauteous that was known, and imputed to her that she was the King's concubine. For which reason the Queen had her stripped, and caused a bath to be prepared, and then made the beauteous damsel enter therein; and made a wicked old hag beat her upon both arms, with a staff; and when the blood gushed forth, there came another execrable sorceress, who applied two 'frightful toads' to her breasts, which they sucked until all the blood that was in her body had run out, two other old hags holding her arms stretched out. The Queen, laughing the while, mocked her, and had great joy in her heart, in being thus revenged upon Rosamonde. And when she was dead, the Queen had the body taken and buried in a filthy ditch, and with the body the toads.

"But when the King had heard the news, how the Queen had acted towards the most beauteous damsel whom he so greatly loved, and whom he held so dear in his heart, he felt great sorrow, and made great lamentation thereat:--'Alas! for my grief; what shall I do for the most beauteous Rosamonde? For never was her peer found for beauty, disposition, and courtliness.' He then desired to know what became of her body. He caused one of the wicked sorceresses to be seized, and had her put into great streights, that she might tell all the truth as to what they had done with the gentle damsel.

"Then the old hag related to the King how the Queen had wrought upon the most beauteous body of the gentle damsel, and where they would find it. In the meantime, the Queen had the body taken up, and carried to a house of religion which had 'Godstowe' for name, near Oxenforde; and had the body of Rosamond there buried, to colour her evil deeds And then King Henry began to ride towards Wodestoke, where Rosamond, whom he loved so much at heart, was so treacherously murdered by the Queen. And as the King was riding towards Wodestoke, he met the body of Rosamond, strongly enclosed within a chest, that was well and stoutly bound with iron. And the King forthwith demanded whose corpse it was, and what was the name of the person whose dead body they bore. They made answer to him, that it was the corpse of the most beauteous Rosamond. And when King Henry heard this, he instantly ordered them to open the chest, that he might behold the body that had been so vilely martyred. Immediately thereon, they did the King's command, and showed him the corpse of Rosamond, who was so hideously put to death. And when King Henry saw the whole truth thereof, through great grief, he fell fainting to the ground, and lay there in a swoon for a long time before any one could have converse with him.

"And when the King awoke from his swoon he spoke, and swore a great oath, that he would take full vengeance for the most horrid felony which, for great spite, had upon the gentle damsel been committed. Then began the King to lament and to give way to great sorrow for the most beauteous Rosamond, whom he loved so much at heart. 'Alas! for my grief,' said he, 'sweet Rosamonde, never was thy peer, never so sweet nor beauteous a creature to be found: may then the sweet God who abides in Trinity, on the soul of sweet Rosamond have mercy, and may He pardon her all her misdeeds: very God Almighty, Thou who art the end and the beginning, suffer not now that this soul shall in horrible torment come to perish, and grant unto her true remission for all her sins, for Thy great mercy's sake.'

"And when he had thus prayed he commanded them forthwith to ride straight to Godstowe with the body of the lady, and there had her burial celebrated in that religious house of nuns, and there did he appoint thirteen chaplains to sing for the soul of the said Rosamond, so long as the world shall last. In this religious house of Godstowe," says the Chronicler, "I tell you for truth, lieth fair Rosamond buried. May very God Almighty of her soul have mercy. Amen."[64]

The history of this unhappy lady, of whom the reader now possesses all that can be gathered from olden sources, and more, perhaps, than can be accepted as true, was a favourite subject of Mediæval romance; and all kinds of embellishments were imported into the story in order to impress a salutary caution against any imitation of the heroine. The story of her being poisoned by Queen Eleanor is of comparatively modern invention. A long ballad of forty-eight verses has been founded upon this piece of strange history.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] From a paper, by the Rev. Thomas Hugo, read to the Somerset Archæological Society.

[64] Translated from the Anglo-Norman, by H. T. Riley, M.A. 1863.

CARDINAL WOLSEY AT ESHER PLACE.

In one of the loveliest and most picturesque vales of the county of Surrey, there exists, to this day, a fragment of Esher, or, as it is termed in old records, Asher Place, the last place of retreat where Wolsey fell,--

"Like a bright exhalation in the evening."

Here,--

"In the lovely vale
Of Esher, where the Mole glides lingering; loth
To leave such scenes of sweet simplicity,"--

was anciently a palace of the prelates of Winchester, built by William Wayneflete, who held the see from 1447 to 1486. It was a stately brick mansion, on the bank of the Mole, within the park of Esher.

The Bishops of Winchester occasionally resided at this palace. Cardinal Wolsey, who was appointed to the see on the death of Bishop Fox, in 1528, gave directions for the repair and partial rebuilding of this house at Esher, purposing to have made it one of his usual residences, after he had bereft himself of the palace which he had erected at Hampton Court, and which he had found it prudent to surrender to his jealous master. Many interesting circumstances relating to this last retirement of Wolsey to Esher, on the decline of his favour with the King, are related by his biographers.

On the 18th of October, 1529, when the Cardinal was at York House, Westminster (where now stands Whitehall), King Henry sent to him the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, to demand the Great Seal, Wolsey being lord chancellor; and he was ordered, at the same time, to retire to Esher. The order being unaccompanied by any voucher of authority, the chancellor refused to obey it; but the King's messenger returning with his written commands on the following day, the devoted minister submitted. He then went to Putney by water, and having landed, rode to Esher.

Wolsey now took up his residence at Esher, where he continued, with a numerous family of servants and retainers, "the space of three or four weeks, without either beds, sheets, table-cloths, dishes to eat their meat in, or wherewithal to buy any: howbeit, there was good provision of all kind of victual, and of beer and wine, whereof there was sufficient and plenty enough: but my lord was compelled of necessity to borrow of Martin Arundell and the Bishop of Carlisle, plate and dishes, both to drink in, and eat his meat in. Thus, my lord, with his family, continued in this strange estate until after Hallownetide."--(_Stow._) He then dismissed a considerable part of his attendants; and Thomas Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, who was in his service, went to London, professedly to take care of his interest at court; and having obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where a bill, of articles of impeachment against the Cardinal for treason, was brought forward, "Master Cromwell inveighed against it so discreetly, with such witty persuasions and deep reasons, that the same could take no effect."

Although the charge of treason was for the present abandoned, Wolsey was indicted for a _præmunire_, the result of which was, to place him at the King's mercy as to all his goods and possessions. Whilst his enemies were thus steadily pursuing their schemes for his destruction, the King betrayed occasional symptoms of returning favour, sending him gracious messages, first by Sir John Russell, and then by the Duke of Norfolk; but it may be questionable whether these demonstrations were not merely meant to cajole him; for, during the time that he was entertaining the Duke, Sir John Shelly, one of the judges, arrived at Esher, for the express purpose of obtaining from Wolsey a formal cession of York House, the town mansion of the Archbishops. The cardinal hesitated at making such an assignment of the property of his see, but at length yielded, yet not without a spirited remonstrance against the conduct of his despoilers. The acts of insult and oppression to which he was subjected, at length brought on severe illness, and he was confined to his bed. Dr. Butts, the court physician, having visited him, informed the King that his life was in danger; and Henry, as if in a moment of conscientious regret, sent him "a comfortable message," with a valuable ring, as a token of regard. Cavendish, in his _Life of Wolsey_, has thus related the circumstances under which the Royal message was delivered:--

"At Christmas, he [Wolsey] fell sore sick, that he was likely to
die, whereof the King being advertised, was very sorry therefore,
and sent Doctor Buttes, his grace's physician, unto him, to see in
what state he was. Dr. Buttes came unto him, and finding him very
sick lying in his bed, and perceiving the danger he was in,
repaired again unto the King. Of whom the King demanded, saying,
'How doth yonder man; have you seen him?' 'Yea, sir,' quoth he,
'if you will have him dead, I warrant your Grace, he will be dead
within these four days, if he receive no comfort from you shortly
and Mistress Anne.' 'Marry,' quoth the King, 'God forbid that he
should die. I pray you, good Master Buttes, go again unto him, and
do your cure upon him, for I would not lose him for twenty
thousand pounds.' 'Then must your Grace,' quoth Master Buttes,
'send him first some comfortable message as shortly as possible.'
'Even so will I,' quoth the King, 'by you. And therefore make
speed to him again, and ye shall deliver him from me this ring for
a token of our good-will and favour towards him; (on which ring
was engraved the King's image within a ruby, as lively counterfeit
as was possible to be devised.) This ring he knoweth very well;
for he gave me the same; and tell him that I am not offended with
him in my heart nothing at all, and that shall he perceive, and
God send him life, very shortly. Therefore, bid him be of good
cheer, and pluck up his heart, and take no despair. And I charge
you come not from him until ye have brought him out of all danger
of death.' And then spake he to Mistress Anne, saying, 'Good
sweetheart, I pray you at this my instance, to send the Cardinal a
token with comfortable words; and in so doing it shall do us a
loving pleasure.' She being not minded to disobey the King's
earnest request, _whatever she intended in her heart towards the
Cardinal_, took incontinent her tablet of gold hanging at her
girdle, and delivered it to Master Buttes, with very gentle and
comfortable words and commendations to the Cardinal."

The invalid _was_ comforted by the seeming kindness of his tyrannical master, and recovered. In his last letter from Esher, which was addressed to Stephen Gardiner, one of his secretaries, he prays him to help him and relieve him in his miserable condition, and remove him from this moist and corrupt air: dropsy had overtaken him, with loss of appetite, and sleep; "wherfor," says the letter, "of necessyte I must be removyd to some other dryer ayer and place, where I may have comodyte of physcyans," &c. Wolsey subsequently obtained permission to remove from Esher to Richmond, where he remained until his journey into Yorkshire, a few months previous to his death, which took place at Leicester Abbey, on the 29th of November, 1530.

When Henry VIII. had resolved to constitute Hampton Court an honour, and make a chace around it, he purchased several neighbouring estates, and, among them, Esher. A survey of the manor, early in the reign of Edward VI., shows there to have been here a mansion-house, sumptuously built, with divers offices, and an orchard and garden; and also a park adjoining, three miles in circuit, stocked with deer.

We shall not trace the future possessors of Esher Place. The natural undulations of the ground would seem to have required but little improvement from the conceptions of Art. Yet Kent, the landscape-gardener, "the inventor of an art that realizes painting," was employed by the Right Hon. Henry Pelham, a leading statesman in the reign of George II., possessor of the estate; and the artist and patron have thus been inseparably connected with

"Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love."

Noble fir and beech plantations cover the swelling heights of Esher; and there are fine oaks and elms, together with a remarkable holly-tree, the girth of which is between eight and nine feet. There are also several small ornamental buildings in the park; but the principal one in picturesqueness and historic interest, is the old brick tower, which formed part of "Asher Palace," when this estate belonged to the see of Winchester. It also constituted the central division of the mansion of the Pelhams, but was judiciously left standing, when the modern additions, by Kent, were pulled down by Mr. Spicer, who purchased the estate in 1805, and erected a new mansion upon a more elevated site. In Mr. Pelham's time, the mansion consisted of little more than the Tower, or Gate-house, to that in which Wolsey had resided, and to which Kent's additions were much inferior, proving, as Walpole remarks, "how little Kent conceived either the principles or graces of Gothic architecture."

The erection of this Tower has been attributed to Wolsey, whose name is associated with several architectural works; but there is inferential evidence to show that he did not erect the Tower at Esher. Although nominated to the bishopric of Winchester in the autumn of 1528, he was not installed until April in the following year (and that by proxy), at which season he was too deeply engaged in the affair of the King's divorce, to have time for extensive building. The only _distinct_ notice which has appeared to connect Wolsey's name with any architectural works at Asher Palace, is where Cavendish speaks of the removal to Westminster (Whitehall), of "the new gallery which my lord had late before his fall newly set up at Asher;" and "the taking away thereof," he continues, "was to him corrosive--the which discouraged him very sore to stay there any longer,--for he was weary of that house at Asher, for with continual use it waxed unsavoury."

In the form and character of the Tower itself are also indications of an earlier period than that of Wolsey; and this well-built structure may be assigned to the days of Bishop Wayneflete, who preceded the Cardinal in his possession of the see by about eighty years, and is known to have erected "a stately brick mansion" and "gate-house" in Esher Park. The Tower is luxuriantly mantled with ivy, which was planted by a son of Mr. Spicer, whilst yet a boy. The interior comprises three storeys; but the apartments are small and much dilapidated. There is, however, within one of the octagonal turrets, a very skilfully-wrought _newel_, or geometrical staircase, of brick, in excellent preservation; and in the roofing of which the principles of the construction of the oblique arch, (a supposed invention of modern times) are practically exhibited.[65]

There is, on the Esher estate, another structure, which is popularly associated with Wolsey's name. This is a small building, of flints and rude stones, with a central recess and stone seat; and at the foot a refreshing spring, called _Wolsey's Well_. It is most probable that this little edifice was raised by Mr. Pelham, as the _buckle_, a part of his family arms, is sculptured upon a stone over the middle arch, and also the initials, H. P. The seat is more properly named "the Travellers' Rest." Wolsey spent some weeks at Esher, a prey to his fears and mortified ambition. As might be expected, the world, that had paid him such abject court in his prosperity, deserted him in this fatal reverse of his fortunes. Wolsey was not himself prepared for what he conceived to be base ingratitude: it surprised and deceived him; and the same pride, unsupported by true dignity of character, which made him be vainly elated with his recent grandeur, made him now doubly sensitive to the humiliations of adversity. Under any circumstances he would be unfit for solitude: the glory and the gaze of the multitude being the breath of his nostrils, the calm contentment of private life was to him a sound of no meaning. What, then, must have been his feelings in this first hour of his misery? Baffled in all the schemes of his ambition, disgraced before his rivals, abandoned by the world, and forsaken by his royal master, his heart was not yet sufficiently chastened by affliction to seek for consolation in its only true source--religion; but still clung, with the despair of a lover, to the hope of the royal mercy. His letters to Gardiner, whom he had the merit of bringing forward from obscurity, and who, excepting his other secretary, Cromwell, of all his followers, alone retained grateful respect for their benefactor in his fallen fortunes, bespeak the agony of his feelings. They are severally subscribed, "With a rude hand, and sorrowful heart, T. Cardlis Ebor. _miserrimus_," and are scarcely legible, from the excitement under which they seem to have been written.

In chastening verse has our great moralist thus portrayed the proud Churchman:--

"In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand:
To him the Church, the realm, their pow'rs consign;
Through him, the rays of regal bounty shine:
Turn'd by his nod, the stream of honour flows;
His smile at once security bestows.
Still to new heights his restless wishes soar;
Claim leads to claim, and pow'r advances pow'r;
Till conquest unresisted ceased to please;
And rights submitted, left him none to seize!
At length, his Sov'reign frowns--the train of state
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate;
Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye;
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly.
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried servants, and the menial lord!
With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd,
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.
Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of Kings."--JOHNSON.

Whatever appertains to the record of his appalling fall is treasurable as an addition to the narrative in our popular histories. A few points of novelty and interest as regards Wolsey have been derived from a State manuscript of the reign of Henry VIII., now in the possession of Sir Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart. F.S.A. a junior member of whose family was one of the chaplains to Henry VIII.; and through him it may have found its way to the venerable seat of Nettlecombe, in the county of Somerset, where this MS. relating to domestic expenses and payments has for some centuries been deposited.

In this manuscript Wolsey is spoken of by his double title of Cardinal of York and Bishop of Winchester, in connexion with a payment to him of one thousand marks, out of the revenues of Winchester. By the above entry, confirmed by a subsequent passage in Cavendish, it is clear that this was a pension of 1,000 marks; and that in consideration of the necessities of the Cardinal, it was to be allowed him beforehand. After all his pomp and prosperity, after all his vast accumulation of wealth, after all his piles of plate and heaps of cloth-of-gold, and costly apparel, Wolsey, in March 1530 (judging only from this entry), was reduced to the necessity of obtaining a loan of a thousand marks. This, too, to carry him to his exile at York, whither his enemies had by this date induced the fickle, selfish, and luxurious King to banish his great favourite.

Of Wolsey's subsequent residence at Cawood, we find in this MS. an item to David Vincent, of the considerable sum of 35_l_. 6_s_. 8_d_. (more than 200_l_.), whence we may infer this messenger to have made some stay there, watching the progress of Wolsey's illness, and sending intelligence to the King, who was more anxious for the death than for the life of his victim, in order that he might seize upon the remainder of his moveables. It is quite evident that the Cardinal was not at this period so destitute as many have supposed, and that he had carried with him a very large quantity of plate, of which the King possessed himself the moment the breath was out of the body of its owner. Among the payments for January, 22 Henry VIII., we read in the Trevelyan MS. that two persons were employed for three entire days in London "weighing the plate that came from Cawood, late the Cardinalles." Such are the unceremonious terms used in the original memorandum, communicating a striking fact, of which we now hear for the first time.

It is a curious and novel circumstance which the Trevelyan manuscript has brought to light, that exactly three months before the death of Wolsey, the Dean and Canons of Cardinal's (now Christchurch) College, Oxford, had so completely separated themselves from Wolsey, and from all interest he had taken in their establishment, that, instead of rewriting to him for the comparatively small sum of 184_l_. for the purpose of carrying on their works, they applied to the King for the loan of the money; the entry of which loan is made in this State manuscript, "upon an obligation to be repaid agayne," "on this side of Cristinmas next cumming;" so that even this trifling advance could not be made out of the royal purse, filled to repletion by the sacrifice of Wolsey, without an express stipulation that the money was to be returned before Christmas.

To the credit of Wolsey it must be told, that in the midst of his troubles his anxiety for his new college was unabated, and it is upon record, that, among his last petitions to the King, was an urgent request that "His Majesty would suffer his college at Oxford to go on."[66]

Everything in Wolsey--his vices and his virtues--was great. He seemed incapable of mediocrity in anything: voluptuous and profuse, rapacious and of insatiable ambition, too magnanimous to be either cruel or revengeful, he was an excellent master and patron, and a fair and open enemy. If we despise the abjectness which he exhibited in his first fall, let it be remembered from and to what he fell, from a degree of wealth and grandeur which no subject on earth now enjoys, to instantaneous and utter destitution. He wanted at Esher the comfort which even a prison would have afforded, the very bed on which he slept having been taken from him. We are also to take into account the abject submission which he had long been taught to exercise towards the tyrant,

"Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate."

There are certain circumstances connected with Wolsey's death and interment which are noteworthy. "He foretold to Cavendish that at eight o'clock he would lose his master.... Towards the conclusion, his accents began to falter; at the end his eyes became motionless, and his sight failed. The abbot was summoned to administer the extreme unction, and the yeomen of the guard were called in to see him die. As the clock struck eight he expired."

Cavendish and the bystanders thought Wolsey must have had a revelation of the time of his death; and from the way in which the fact had taken possession of his mind, it is supposed that he relied on astrological prediction.

Mr. Payne Collier observes:[67] "It is unnecessary, as well as uncharitable, to suppose what there is no proof of--that Wolsey died of poison, either administered by himself or others. The obvious and proximate cause of his death was affliction. A great heart, oppressed with indignities and beset with dangers, at length gave way, and Wolsey received the two last charities of a death-bed and a grave, with many circumstances affectingly told by Cavendish, in the Abbey of Leicester."

Wolsey's remains were privately interred in one of the chapels of the Abbey at Leicester, which has long been reduced to a mass of shapeless ruins. The Cardinal had, however, designed a sumptuous receptacle for his remains. Adjoining the east end of St. George's Chapel at Windsor is a stone edifice, built by King Henry VII., as a burial-place for himself and his successors; but this Prince afterwards altering his purpose, began the more noble structure at Westminster, and the Windsor fabric remained neglected until Wolsey obtained a grant of it from Henry VIII. The Cardinal, with a profusion of expense unknown to former ages, designed and began here a most sumptuous monument for himself, from whence this building obtained the name of _Wolsey's Tomb-house_. This monument was magnificently built; and at the time of the Cardinal's disgrace 4,250 ducats had been paid to a statuary of Florence for the work already done; and 380_l_. 18_s_. sterling had been paid for gilding only the half of this costly monument. It thus remained unfinished; in 1646 it was plundered by the rebels of its statues and figures of gilt-copper. The Tomb-house is now in process of decoration as a memorial to the late Prince Consort.

Wolsey had also executed for him at Rome a beautiful marble sarcophagus, but which did not arrive in time for the burial of the Cardinal: it lay neglected for two centuries and three-quarters, when it was removed to the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in it were placed Nelson's remains.

It is scarcely possible to leave the Tower at Esher without saddening thoughts that "lie too deep for tears." Here, amidst "the sweetest solitude" of wood and grove, stands the memorial of the ambitious minister, the powerful favourite, the selfish ecclesiastic, and the victim to tyranny,--yet a tyranny that he had himself assisted both to form and exercise. How troubled were the times which the sight of this structure recals! How painful is the contrast with the scene of peaceful nature around it!--with the refreshing quiet of the wood and glade, and the repose of the water, whereon the nothingness of human glory may be shown in one simple but sublime lesson--the circle that expands into nought. How painful, we repeat, is the contemplation of such contrasts; yet, how fraught with lessons for our happiness! We weep over the fallen fortunes of men, and their abuse of the means entrusted to them for the welfare of their fellow-men; yet what a rebuke do we receive in the reflection that Nature surrounds us with the means of endless enjoyments, while Art, by its subtlety, perverts and corrupts, thus weaning the affections from the beautiful and the pure.

Yet, if "Asher Place" had its vicissitudes in past ages, so too has Claremont--a portion of the same manor--in our own times. Here, in the mansion built for the great Lord Clive, Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Cobourg, half a century since, brought his bride, the fair-haired daughter of England, and lived for a short and blissful period, in all the happiness of conjugal and domestic union, when premature death struck down the Princess and her infant offspring. Here Louis Philippe and his Queen found an asylum, in the year of Revolutions, 1848; and have since gone to their earthly home a few miles distant. Leopold, too, has descended to the tomb, full of years and kingly honours, having received in marriage, in succession, a daughter of the King of England, and a daughter of the King of France.

[_The Life of Wolsey_, by Cavendish, (quoted in the preceding
pages,) is one of the most interesting and valuable specimens of
biography in the English language. Its first merit is originality
in the strictest sense of the word. The writer, one of Wolsey's
gentlemen, and much in his confidence, was not merely a spectator,
but an agent, and in some degree, a sufferer in the scenes which
he describes. In the next place, though he writes from the heart,
there is an air of impartiality in some parts of the work, which
gives them the clear stamp of veracity. Of the hauteur and
insolence of the Cardinal during his elevation, he sometimes
allows himself to speak with asperity. The tender compassion which
rendered him the faithful companion of his fallen fortunes, gives
an amiable and pleasing colour to the latter part of his
narrative. Besides, the cumbrous magnificence of the reign of
Henry VIII., under the great change of manners which two centuries
and a half have produced, is become in its representation to us,
extremely picturesque; and for this part of his undertaking
Cavendish was eminently qualified. He was not one of those
unobserving men, who seem never to apprehend that what is familiar
to themselves will become curious to posterity. He saw with an
exact and discriminating eye, and what he beheld he was able to
describe. In no other work, perhaps, is to be found so minute and
faithful a detail of what the palaces of kings and prelates, and
the houses of the great nobility then were; their loads of plate,
their hangings of arras, the ponderous plenty of their tables, and
the useless accumulation, as we should conceive, of cloth, linen,
&c., which were sometimes exhibited in their great galleries as in
so many warehouses. Add to this, the innumerable links then
subsisting in the great chain of dependence, the haughty distance
of the superior to his immediate inferior, the obsequiousness of
the immediate inferior in return; the young nobility serving in
the houses of the greater prelates like menial servants, and these
prelates themselves as often, perhaps, on the knee to their king
as to their God. All these particulars, acquired from the life by
the writer before us, form so many vivid pictures presented to
the mind's eye, so that ideas become images, and we seem to
behold what we only read of.--See Dr. Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical
Biography_.]

FOOTNOTES:

[65] That the oblique or skew arch is an old invention is attested by the following passage in the _Handbook of Spain_, by Mr. Ford, who resided in that country several years: "Now visit the Alcazar (Cathedral, Seville); but first observe a singular Moorish skew arch, in a narrow street leading (from the cathedral) to the Puerta de Xerez: it proves that the Moors practised this now assumed modern invention, at least, eight centuries ago."

[66] The kitchen was the first building erected by Wolsey in his new College, and has undergone no material alteration either in shape, size, or arrangement. It is a good specimen of an ancient English kitchen.

[67] In a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries, describing the Trevelyan MS.

TRADITIONS OF BATTLE-FIELDS.

It has been frequently remarked that the general decay of local traditions, or the difficulty of obtaining particulars of events, or the sites of the most remembered passages of history, is, year by year, becoming more evident. It might be expected that in the vicinity of great transactions, among a rude and ignorant peasantry, we should find more frequent vestiges of the one memorable action which made their locality famous; yet, it is astonishing to find how often these are completely obliterated.

Much of this falling-off in tradition may be referred to the more rigid test to which it is subjected by means of the printing-press; as well as to the new class of materials for history. For a century or so, the habit had prevailed of receiving implicitly the traditions and records of past times, assuming them to have been substantiated at the date of their publication. This mode of constructing history consisted merely of breaking up and re-arranging the old materials, which have been compared to stereotype blocks. The worthlessness of this mode of proceeding has become apparent; and now the opposite error has come strongly into vogue--that of going back to neglected documents of the same date as the transaction, and, on their evidence, revoking the settled deliberate verdict of past centuries. The vast accession of materials of this kind obtained of late years, is truly surprising. There is likewise another means of verifying the dates, places, and names, of great events: we mean in the visits of archæologists to the sites, and the comparison of the actual localities with recorded details; proceedings of the most pleasurable and intellectual kind.

Nevertheless, the old traditional stock is not yet entirely exhausted. There are no families in the British Islands more ancient than many of those which are yet to be found among our yeomanry and peasantry. Every now and then some proof comes to light of an antiquity of tenure on the part of such families, far exceeding that of the Stanleys or Howards. The Duke of York, for example, ejected from a farm at Chertsey a certain Mr. Wapshott, who claimed lineal and accredited descent from Reginald Wapshott, the armour-bearer of Alfred, who is said to have established Reginald in this very farm. This personage was an example of the tenacity with which tradition might be thus preserved, for his family version of their origin derived them from Wapshott, the warrener, and not the armour-bearer of Alfred.[68]

Again, we have recovered of late a series of instances, which show how few individuals not uncommonly intervene between ourselves and the eye-witnesses of remarkable men or actions. King William IV. had spoken to a butcher at Windsor, who had conversed with Charles II. What is still more remarkable, a person living in 1847, aged then about sixty-one, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127 years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.

This battle was fought in 1513

Henry Jenkins died in 1670, at the age of 169

Deduct for his age at the time of the
battle of Flodden Field 12
--- 157
Peter Garden, the man who heard Jenkins
give his evidence, died at 127

Deduct for his age when he saw Jenkins 11
--- 116
The person whose father knew Peter
Garden was born shortly before 1786,
or 70 years since 70
----
A.D. 1856

In this year, 1856, Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A. showed, as above, that a person living in 1786, conversed with a man that fought at Flodden Field.

We now proceed to narrate a few instances in which the details of early battles have been most successfully investigated and identified.

There is not much myth about the BATTLE OF HASTINGS. On that undulating upland, and in that steep morass, raged on Saturday, October 14th, A.D. 1060, from nine till three, when its tide first turned, as fierce a battle, as real a stand-up fight between the army of England and the great Norman host, as any which has ever decided the destinies of countries. There is no important battle, the details of which have been so carefully handed down to us. How the Conqueror's left foot slipped on landing--the ill omen--and how his right foot "stacked in the sand"--the good omen of "seisin;"--how the ships were pierced, so that his host might fight its way to glory without retreat; and how he merrily extracted an omen for good even while putting on his hauberk the wrong side foremost; how brother Gurth with the tender conscience counselled brother Harold with the seared conscience to stay away from the fray, lest his broken oath to William should overtake him; and how, as they reconnoitred the vast Norman host, the elder brother's heart had failed him, had not the younger one called him scoundrel for his meditated flight; the prayerful eve in the one camp and the carousing eve in the other, "with wassails and drinkhails;" the exploits of valiant knight Taillifer between the lines; how the Normans shot high in air to blind the enemy; and the dreadful _mêlée_ in the "blind ditch Malfosse shadowed with reed and sedge;" and the Conqueror's hearty after-battle meal, when he was chaired among the dying and the dead; and that exquisitely pathetic touch of story which tells how Edith, the swan-necked,--for the love she bore to Harold,--when all others failed to recognise him, was brought to discover his mutilated corse among the slain; and the Conqueror's vow, so literally redeemed, to fix the high altar of the "Abbey of the Battaile" where the Saxon _gonfanon_ fell--all these, and a thousand other minute circumstances of the memorable day, stand out in as clear relief at this distance of time as the last charge of Waterloo, or the closing scene at Trafalgar.

Sussex has little occasion to feel humbled by having been the scene of this well-contested field. Whatever the inhabitants of the British isles have since been able to effect for their own greatness and for the happiness of the human race, is attributable in no small degree to the issue of that fight. Thenceforth the Saxon was guided and elevated by the high spirit and far-reaching enterprise of the Norman, and the elements of the national character were complete.[69]

Among the memorials of the conquered must not be forgotten the roll of the companions of the Conqueror, which was installed with great festivity in August, 1862, at Dives, a small town on the seacoast, in the department of Calvados, in Normandy. It was near this town, at the mouth of the Dives, that William and his companions in arms met previous to their embarkation for the subjugation of England. The very spot was already marked by a column erected in 1861, by M. de Caumont, the eminent Norman savant and archæologist; and the fête in August, 1862, was held under the auspices of the same learned gentleman. The commemoration was intended to be international, and a public invitation was given to the English residents in the locality; but, from some unexplained cause or other, no English person attended. Sir Bernard Burke attributes this absence to the announcement being imperfectly made; "for what," he asks, "could more come home to the better and more educated classes of English people than the inauguration of a roll which contains the greatest names amongst us; a roll to which the proudest feel prouder still to belong, and which may be said to form the very household words of our glory--the roll, in fact, of what has since been the best and bravest aristocracy in the universe?"

The fête commenced by a meeting in the Market-hall of Dives, which was characteristically decorated; one of the objects being a large picture of the construction and embarkation of William's fleet, painted from the Bayeux Tapestry. The Dives Roll is deposited within the church, over the principal entrance. It differs from the Battle Abbey Roll in this respect, that the latter is the roll of those who actually fought at Hastings, and the former is the roll of those who assembled for the expedition, and were otherwise engaged in furthering the conquest of England. The roll is printed in the _Bulletin de la Societé des Antiquaires de Normandie_, and in the _Vicissitudes of Families_, third series.

Next are three battles of the fifteenth century: Towton, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth. TOWTON FIELD, supposed to be the most fierce and bloody battle that ever happened in any domestic war, was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster in 1461. On the 29th of March, the armies met at Towton: the Lancastrians were totally routed, and Edward left unquestionably king. The carnage of this terrible field is appalling. Proclamations forbidding quarter were issued before the engagement. Like Leipsic, it reached over the night; but, unlike Leipsic, even the hours of darkness brought no rest. They fought from four o'clock in the afternoon, throughout the whole night, on to noon the next day. Like Waterloo, it was fought on a Sunday. And the accounts of contemporary writers state, in words very like the letters from Mont St. Jean, that, for weeks afterwards the blood stood in puddles, and stagnated in gutters, and that the water of the wells was red. No inaccuracy is more frequent in ancient authors than that of numbers, and generally on the side of exaggeration. But on this occasion we can form a more correct estimate of the carnage by the concurrence of unusually reputable testimonies; and, perhaps, in these times it will give the best idea of it, to say that the number of Englishmen slain exceeded the _sum_ of those who fell at Vimiera, Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo.[70]

TEWKESBURY FIELD has been minutely explored. Mr. Richard Brooke, F.S.A., after narrating, from Holinshed, the circumstances which preceded this memorable battle--from the arrival of Queen Margaret at Weymouth, to the termination of the conflict, and the murder of Prince Edward--points out the field of battle as close to the first mile-stone on the high road leading from Tewkesbury through Tredington to Cheltenham and Gloucester. On the western side of the town of Tewkesbury is the Home-ground, or Home-hill, where once a castle stood; a part of this elevated ground is a field, called "the Gastons," which extends to the first mile-stone, just opposite which, on the eastern side of the road, is a field which has been immemorially called "Margaret's Camp." The battle was, according to tradition, fought on that place, and in the adjacent fields on the southward, as also in those a little eastward of it. In "Margaret's Camp," in the centre is a small circular inclosure, surrounded by a ditch, without hedge or bank, but having some large elm trees growing round its inner edge. This is too insignificant to have been a military entrenchment; but it may have been the place of interment of some of the slain; or is thought to have been formed in comparatively modern times to commemorate the spot where the Lancastrian army was posted. In the field, called "Gup's Hill," Mr. Brooke was told by elderly persons, bones had formerly been discovered.

The old annalists and chroniclers, Mr. Brooke says, have left us much in the dark as to the exact spot near the camp of the Lancastrians where Edward's forces passed the night prior to the battle; but on the morning of the battle, and immediately before it commenced, his army, according both to tradition and probability, took up a position upon some elevated ground adjoining the turnpike-road, and to the southward of and opposite the Lancastrian army. From that position a tract of ground (now fields and closes) slopes downwards, so as to form a depression between it and the spot occupied by the Lancastrians. This tract of ground was formerly called the "Red Piece," and it is now intersected by the turnpike-road, and forms two fields, one on each side of the road, one of which is called the Near Red Close, and the other the Further Red Close. This tract of ground extends to the field called "Margaret's Camp," and it appears almost certain that it was on the southward side of the latter that Edward's forces made their attack.