ALL SAINTS. Flint and stone dressings. Thick short W tower with diagonal buttresses, battlements, and a spike. Short nave with aisles and clerestory, lower chancel. C15 arcades with octagonal piers with finely moulded capitals and double-hollow-chamfered arches. C15 tower arch. The S chancel chapel has an arcade like the nave, the N chapel a somewhat later arcade with stone pier of four attached shafts with four hollows in the diagonals. The only indications of pre C15 architecture are the C13 Piscina in the chancel wall and the Dec two-light W window of the N aisle. - PULPIT. First half C17, with book rests on three sides of the hexagon and tester. Elaborately carved panels and even more elaborately carved back. - SCREEN. In the tower arch, C15, much renewed. - REREDOS. Alabaster, designed by Joseph Clarke, 1878. - STAINED GLASS. W window Clayton & Bell, 1894; N aisle Queen Victoria Memorial Window, 1901, Clayton & Bell; W window Powell, 1908; in the S aisle one window (Mary and Martha), Ward & Hughes, 1876. - MONUMENTS. Edmund of Langley, late C14 tomb-chest with a display of heraldry instead of artistic genius. There are thirteen alabaster shields in all. - Sir Ralph Verney and wife (?), c. 1500, recumbent effigies on a tomb-chest decorated with shields in richly cusped fields. - Brass to John Carter d. 1508 with wives and children. - Unnamed Brasses to two ladies, c. 1500 and c. 1600. - Large epitaph to Mary Elizabeth Crawford d. 1793, signed by Bonomi (inv.) and Westmacott (sculp.). Long inscription and above small medallion with weeping putto and garlands.
King’s Langley. A king’s place indeed, and Shakespeare’s. Every king of England from Henry III to Richard II would know it well, and still on the hill we find a fragment of their royal palace with the garden that comes into Shakespeare. Tragic memories it has of the fall of a king and the death of a king’s friend. From this palace Edward II rode to the wedding of Piers Gaveston at Berkhamsted, and when his wild day was over, and the barons had wrought their vengeance on the Gascon knight, the king brought his body to King’s Langley and stood by mournfully while his friend was laid here in a grave now levelled and unknown.
It was a grievous hour for the young king, for his favourite, though unworthy of a king’s friendship, had been everything to him, and Edward had loaded him with honours, made him Earl of Cornwall, and given him great estates. The barons hated him, for though he was artistic and witty he was insolent and rapacious beyond all precedent, and his influence on the king was wholly bad; it brought the country to the verge of civil war. In May 1312 Edward and Gaveston parted for the last time, Edward to take refuge at York, Gaveston to a stand siege in Scarborough Castle. At the end of three weeks he was driven to surrender and was carried off to Warwick, where he was tried and beheaded. Friars took care of his bones for two years, and in 1314 Edward brought them to King’s Langley and gave them a rich burial here.
Edward III’s fifth son was born at the palace in 1341 and there were great rejoicings in the village over this baby, Edmund of Langley, who grew up to become our first Duke of York, great-grandfather of our first king of the house of York, Edward of the White Rose. Edmund fought in France and Spain with his elder brothers, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, but he was easy going and preferred the time spent in the country here. Three times he served as Regent while Richard II was abroad, and during the third regency his nephew Bolingbroke put himself on the throne.
Shakespeare gives a picture of this kindly old man, whose life began and ended here, where his tomb still flaunts the royal arms. He also set one of his most pathetic scenes in “the Duke of York’s Garden,” in which Richard II’s (fictitious) queen overhears the gardeners saying that Richard has been deposed, and says:
Gardener, for telling me these news of woe,
Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow.
The gardener looks after her sadly as she turns away in tears:
Poor Queen! so that thy state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
I ’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen.
We looked at the broken wall and the rough field in which it stood, and it seemed to us that the poor queen’s curse was still upon the land; but we came again and found a crop of little houses growing up with their own gardens, the gaunt broken stones from the king’s palace in their midst.
When kings lived in this palace, friars lived close by at the friary, which is now a school. The children have a medieval barn for a playground, and sleep in long dormitories under fine old timber roofs, with coloured tiles from the priory church embedded in the window seats. Below is another long room beautiful with low arched windows, and in the garden are many carved stones from the vanished church.
When this friary was suppressed, the tomb of Edmund, Duke of York, was moved from the church of the monks to the village church of All Saints, where it rests today with the arms of England and France, of princes and nobles, carved on its alabaster sides, a grand array still, though many of the 20 shields are missing. Close by it is the stone which may have covered the tomb before it was moved, and if so the silhouette on it of a missing brass must represent the duke’s first wife, Isabel of Castile. Shakespeare sets her in a passionate scene when their son’s plot to murder Henry IV is discovered by the old duke, who is revealing the plot to the king when the mother comes thumping on the locked door:
Speak with me, pity me, open the door,
A beggar begs who never begged before.
But it is of another and more tragic spectacle that we are reminded here, the last sad scene of all. Shakespeare has given it an immortal setting, the closing scene of his Richard II at Windsor Castle, when Sir Pierce of Exton, who has foully murdered Richard at Pontefract, brings him in his coffin to Bolingbroke:
EXTON. Great king, within this coffin I present
Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.
BOLINGBROKE. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head and all this famous land.
Exton. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.
BOLINGBROKE. They love not poison that do poison need,
Nor do I thee.
The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word nor princely favour :
With Cain go wander through the shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.
Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe,
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow;
Come, mourn with me for that I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent:
I ’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand:
March sadly after; grace my mournings here;
In weeping after this untimely bier.
It was here, at King’s Langley, the place he had known in his happier days, that Bolingbroke laid King Richard, though Henry V removed him and laid him in the dazzling glory of Westminster Abbey, beside the tomb of Edward the Confessor.
In the Church of this place of royal memory are stone figures of Sir Ralph and Lady Verney, who died at the close of the 15th century when this church was new. Sir William Glascocke, one of Charles II’s judges, has another tomb, and there are several brasses of the 16th century. One shows John Garter and his two wives, both wearing broad-brimmed hats and ruffs, and with them a crowd of children, four sons and five daughters to one wife, five sons and four daughters to the other. Another brass shows a little lady of the 15th century, very small and simple in contrast with the woman below her, whose elaborate portrait in Elizabethan dress is engraved on the back of an older Flemish brass.
One other memorial holds us, the stone on the floor to little Mary Dixon, who was buried here in 1632, “being then but three years of age, to whose sweet remembrance (we read) I.B. for the love she bore her here dedicates herself and this.” Then the mysterious I.B. adds:
Affection only consecrates this stone
That it should melt when I forbear to moan.
The chancel walls, like the piscina, are 700 years old, but most of the church (its aisles, the chapels, and the tower) was made new in the 15th century and much restored in the 19th. It has a fine 16th-century chest, and a canopied oak pulpit 300 years old, with many a dragon lurking in its deep carving. There is beautiful modern carving in the marble reredos.
The pleasant village street, with a raised side-walk and an ancient cottage among the houses, leads on to Apsley Mills, where paper has been made for over a century; it was one of the first mills in England where paper was made in a continuous sheet, a device which made possible the enormous editions of our newspapers. The high bank of the road by the mills has been made into an attractive rock garden as a memorial to those men who left the mills to go to the Great War and did not come home again. One of the most remarkable men of last century was associated all his life with these mills, Sir John Evans, who devoted his spare time to research into the antiquity of man, and made a great reputation as an antiquarian, a geologist, and an authority on ancient British coins.
It was a grievous hour for the young king, for his favourite, though unworthy of a king’s friendship, had been everything to him, and Edward had loaded him with honours, made him Earl of Cornwall, and given him great estates. The barons hated him, for though he was artistic and witty he was insolent and rapacious beyond all precedent, and his influence on the king was wholly bad; it brought the country to the verge of civil war. In May 1312 Edward and Gaveston parted for the last time, Edward to take refuge at York, Gaveston to a stand siege in Scarborough Castle. At the end of three weeks he was driven to surrender and was carried off to Warwick, where he was tried and beheaded. Friars took care of his bones for two years, and in 1314 Edward brought them to King’s Langley and gave them a rich burial here.
Edward III’s fifth son was born at the palace in 1341 and there were great rejoicings in the village over this baby, Edmund of Langley, who grew up to become our first Duke of York, great-grandfather of our first king of the house of York, Edward of the White Rose. Edmund fought in France and Spain with his elder brothers, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, but he was easy going and preferred the time spent in the country here. Three times he served as Regent while Richard II was abroad, and during the third regency his nephew Bolingbroke put himself on the throne.
Shakespeare gives a picture of this kindly old man, whose life began and ended here, where his tomb still flaunts the royal arms. He also set one of his most pathetic scenes in “the Duke of York’s Garden,” in which Richard II’s (fictitious) queen overhears the gardeners saying that Richard has been deposed, and says:
Gardener, for telling me these news of woe,
Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow.
The gardener looks after her sadly as she turns away in tears:
Poor Queen! so that thy state might be no worse,
I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
I ’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen.
We looked at the broken wall and the rough field in which it stood, and it seemed to us that the poor queen’s curse was still upon the land; but we came again and found a crop of little houses growing up with their own gardens, the gaunt broken stones from the king’s palace in their midst.
When kings lived in this palace, friars lived close by at the friary, which is now a school. The children have a medieval barn for a playground, and sleep in long dormitories under fine old timber roofs, with coloured tiles from the priory church embedded in the window seats. Below is another long room beautiful with low arched windows, and in the garden are many carved stones from the vanished church.
When this friary was suppressed, the tomb of Edmund, Duke of York, was moved from the church of the monks to the village church of All Saints, where it rests today with the arms of England and France, of princes and nobles, carved on its alabaster sides, a grand array still, though many of the 20 shields are missing. Close by it is the stone which may have covered the tomb before it was moved, and if so the silhouette on it of a missing brass must represent the duke’s first wife, Isabel of Castile. Shakespeare sets her in a passionate scene when their son’s plot to murder Henry IV is discovered by the old duke, who is revealing the plot to the king when the mother comes thumping on the locked door:
Speak with me, pity me, open the door,
A beggar begs who never begged before.
But it is of another and more tragic spectacle that we are reminded here, the last sad scene of all. Shakespeare has given it an immortal setting, the closing scene of his Richard II at Windsor Castle, when Sir Pierce of Exton, who has foully murdered Richard at Pontefract, brings him in his coffin to Bolingbroke:
EXTON. Great king, within this coffin I present
Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.
BOLINGBROKE. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head and all this famous land.
Exton. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.
BOLINGBROKE. They love not poison that do poison need,
Nor do I thee.
The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word nor princely favour :
With Cain go wander through the shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.
Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe,
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow;
Come, mourn with me for that I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent:
I ’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand:
March sadly after; grace my mournings here;
In weeping after this untimely bier.
It was here, at King’s Langley, the place he had known in his happier days, that Bolingbroke laid King Richard, though Henry V removed him and laid him in the dazzling glory of Westminster Abbey, beside the tomb of Edward the Confessor.
In the Church of this place of royal memory are stone figures of Sir Ralph and Lady Verney, who died at the close of the 15th century when this church was new. Sir William Glascocke, one of Charles II’s judges, has another tomb, and there are several brasses of the 16th century. One shows John Garter and his two wives, both wearing broad-brimmed hats and ruffs, and with them a crowd of children, four sons and five daughters to one wife, five sons and four daughters to the other. Another brass shows a little lady of the 15th century, very small and simple in contrast with the woman below her, whose elaborate portrait in Elizabethan dress is engraved on the back of an older Flemish brass.
One other memorial holds us, the stone on the floor to little Mary Dixon, who was buried here in 1632, “being then but three years of age, to whose sweet remembrance (we read) I.B. for the love she bore her here dedicates herself and this.” Then the mysterious I.B. adds:
Affection only consecrates this stone
That it should melt when I forbear to moan.
The chancel walls, like the piscina, are 700 years old, but most of the church (its aisles, the chapels, and the tower) was made new in the 15th century and much restored in the 19th. It has a fine 16th-century chest, and a canopied oak pulpit 300 years old, with many a dragon lurking in its deep carving. There is beautiful modern carving in the marble reredos.
The pleasant village street, with a raised side-walk and an ancient cottage among the houses, leads on to Apsley Mills, where paper has been made for over a century; it was one of the first mills in England where paper was made in a continuous sheet, a device which made possible the enormous editions of our newspapers. The high bank of the road by the mills has been made into an attractive rock garden as a memorial to those men who left the mills to go to the Great War and did not come home again. One of the most remarkable men of last century was associated all his life with these mills, Sir John Evans, who devoted his spare time to research into the antiquity of man, and made a great reputation as an antiquarian, a geologist, and an authority on ancient British coins.
No comments:
Post a Comment