Читать книгу Nooks and Corners of Old England - Allan Fea - Страница 4

WOTHORPE MANOR-HOUSE.

A few miles to the west of this historic spot are the fine Tudor houses Deene and Kirby: the former still a palatial residence; the latter, alas! a ruin fast falling to decay. Deene, with its battlemented towers and turrets and buttressed walls, is a noble-looking structure, with numerous shields of arms and heraldic devices carved upon the masonry. These are of the great families, Brudenel, Montagu, Bruce, Bulstrode, etc., whose intermarriages are emblazoned in painted glass in the top of the mullioned windows of the hall. Sir Thomas Brudenel, the first Earl of Cardigan, who died three years after the Restoration, was a typical old cavalier after the style of Sir Henry Lee in Woodstock; and in the manor are preserved many of his manuscripts written during his twenty years' confinement in the Tower. In the great hall there is a blocked-up entrance to a subterranean passage running towards Kirby, and through this secret despatches are said to have been carried in the time of the Civil War; and at the back of a fireplace in the same apartment is a hiding-place sufficiently large to contain a score of people standing up. One of the rooms is called Henry VII.'s room, as that monarch when Earl of Richmond is said to have ridden from Bosworth Field to seek refuge at Deene, then a monastery.

KIRBY HALL.

Among the numerous portraits are the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was slain by the second Duke of Buckingham in the notorious duel, and his wife Lady Anne Brudenel, who was daughter of the second Earl of Cardigan. Some time before the poor plain little duchess suspected that she had a formidable rival in the beautiful countess, she was returning from a visit to Deene to her house near Stamford, where her reckless husband just then found it convenient to hide himself, as a warrant for high treason was out against him, when she noticed a suspicious little cavalcade travelling in the same direction. Ordering the horses to be whipped up, she arrived in time to give the alarm. The duke had just set out for Burleigh House with some ladies in his company, and, says Clarendon, the sergeant "made so good haste that he was in view of the coach, and saw the duke alight out of the coach and lead a lady into the house, upon which the door of the court was shut before he could get to it. He knocked loudly at that and other doors that were all shut, so that he could not get into the house though it were some hours before sunset in the month of May."[5] Pepys was strolling in the park and met Sergeant Bearcroft "who was sent for the Duke of Buckingham, to have brought his prisoner to the Tower. He come to towne this day and brings word that being overtaken and outrid by the Duchesse of Buckingham within a few miles of the duke's house of Westhorp, he believes she got thither about a quarter of an hour before him, and so had time to consider; so that when he came, the doors were kept shut against him. The next day, coming with officers of the neighbour market-town [Stamford] to force open the doors, they were open for him, but the duke gone, so he took horse presently and heard upon the road that the Duke of Buckingham was gone before him for London. So that he believes he is this day also come to towne before him; but no newes is yet heard of him."[6] Many blunders have been made in reference to the duke's house of "Westhorp." Some have called it "Owthorp" and others "Westhorpe" in Suffolk, the demolished mansion of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. The place referred to is really Wothorpe manor-house, the remains of which stand some two miles to the south of Stamford and ten to the north of Deene. The existing portion consists of four towers, the lower part of which is square and the upper octagonal, presumably having been at one time surmounted by cupolas. The windows are long and narrow, having only one mullion running parallel across. Beneath the moulding of the summit of each tower are circular loopholes. It is evidently of Elizabethan date, but much of the ornamental detail is lost in the heavy mantle of ivy and the trees which encircle it.

DOORWAY, KIRBY HALL.

That that stately Elizabethan mansion, Kirby Hall (which is close to Deene), should ever have been allowed to fall to ruin is most regrettable and deplorable. It was one of John Thorpe's masterpieces, the architect of palatial Burleigh, of Holland House and Audley End, and other famous historic houses. He laid the foundation-stone in 1570, and that other great master Inigo Jones made additions in the reign of Charles I. The founder of Kirby was Sir Christopher Hatton, who is said to have first danced into the virgin queen's favour at a masque at Court. The Earl of Leicester probably first was famous in this way, if we may judge from the quaint painting at Penshurst, where he is bounding her several feet into the air; but was not so accomplished as Sir Christopher, who in his official robes of Lord Chancellor danced in the Hall of the Inner Temple with the seals and mace of his office before him, an undignified proceeding, reminding one of the scene in one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

GATEWAY, KIRBY HALL.

Kirby must have been magnificent in its day; and when we consider that it was in occupation by the Chancellor's descendant, the Earl of Winchelsea, in 1830 or even later, one may judge by seeing it how rapidly a neglected building can fall into decay. Even in our own memory a matter of twenty years has played considerable havoc, and cleared off half the roof. Standing in the deserted weed-grown courtyard, one cannot but grieve to see the widespread destruction of such beautiful workmanship. The graceful fluted Ionic pilasters that intersect the lofty mullioned windows are falling to pieces bit by bit, and the fantastic stone pinnacles above and on the carved gable ends are disappearing one by one. But much of the glass is still in the windows, and some of the rooms are not all yet open to the weather, and the great hall and music gallery and the "Library" with fine bay window are both in a fair state of preservation. Is it yet too much to hope that pity may be taken upon what is undoubtedly one of the finest Elizabethan houses in England? The north part of the Inner Court is represented in S. E. Waller's pathetic picture "The Day of Reckoning," which has been engraved.

Some three miles to the south of Kirby is the village of Corby, famous for its surrounding woods, and a curious custom called the "Poll Fair," which takes place every twenty years. Should a stranger happen to be passing through the village when the date falls due, he is liable to be captured and carried on a pole to the stocks, which ancient instrument of punishment is there, and put to use on these occasions. He may purchase his liberty by handing over any coin he happens to have. It certainly is a rather eccentric way of commemorating the charter granted by Elizabeth and confirmed by Charles II. by which the residents (all of whom are subjected to similar treatment) are exempt from market tolls and jury service.

A pair of stocks stood formerly at the foot of the steps of the graceful Eleanor Cross at Geddington to the south of Corby. Of the three remaining memorials said to have been erected by Edward I. at every place where the coffin of his queen rested on its way from Hardeby in Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey, Geddington Cross is by far the most graceful and in the best condition. The other two are at Waltham and Northampton. Originally there were fifteen Eleanor crosses, including Hardeby, Lincoln, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Cheapside, and Charing Cross. The last two, the most elaborate of all, as is known, were destroyed by order of Lord Mayor Pennington in 1643 and 1647, accompanied by the blast of trumpets.