Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present Part 18

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 Mediaeval 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 Archaeological 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Ess.e.x, 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 _praemunire_, 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 Sh.e.l.ly, 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 a.s.signment 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.

b.u.t.ts, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.u.t.tes, his grace's physician, unto him, to see in what state he was. Dr. b.u.t.tes 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, 'G.o.d forbid that he should die. I pray you, good Master b.u.t.tes, 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 b.u.t.tes, '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 G.o.d 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 b.u.t.tes, 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 appet.i.te, 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 Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 const.i.tute 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."

n.o.ble 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 princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.sociated 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 ingrat.i.tude: 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 circ.u.mstances he would be unfit for solitude: the glory and the gaze of the mult.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+ne: 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script Wolsey is spoken of by his double t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sage 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 acc.u.mulation 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 dest.i.tute as many have supposed, and that he had carried with him a very large quant.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstance which the Trevelyan ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script, "upon an obligation to be repaid agayne," "on this side of Cristinmas next c.u.mming;" 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 pet.i.tions 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 dest.i.tution. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAYNFLETE'S TOWER, ESHER PLACE.]

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 a.s.sisted 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 compa.s.sion 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 c.u.mbrous 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 un.o.bserving 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 n.o.bility then were; their loads of plate, their hangings of arras, the ponderous plenty of their tables, and the useless acc.u.mulation, 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 n.o.bility 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 G.o.d. 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: