Welcombe—Snitterfield—Warwick—Leicester’s Hospital—St. Mary’s Church and the Beauchamp Chapel.

The distance between Stratford and Warwick is eight miles, and the road, the broad highway, runs direct. It is an excellent road, but for those who do not care overmuch for main routes, however beautiful, in these times, a more excellent way, for a portion of the journey at any rate, is by Snitterfield. You turn off to the left from the tree-bordered main road at a point a mile and a half from Stratford, well in view of the lofty obelisk on the hillside at Welcombe which was built in 1873 to perpetuate the memory of the obscure person, a certain Mark Phillips, who had erected the mansion of Welcombe Lodge in 1869. Without the aid of this monument he would by now have been completely forgotten; but it is 120 feet in height and prominently visible from amazing distances, and so its object is attained. Not perhaps exactly in the way originally intended, for being in a district where most things are associated in some way with Shakespeare, it is generally supposed to be one of them, and when the disappointed stranger finds himself thus deluded, he usually reflects upon Mark Phillips in the most scathing terms.

Up at Welcombe are those Dingles already referred to. The way to Snitterfield takes you uphill, past lands that once belonged to Shakespeare, and by a pond which is all that is left of the lake of Snitterfield Hall, a mansion demolished in 1820. Here the road has reached a considerable height, commanding beautiful views down over the valley of the Avon at Hampton Lucy and Charlecote.

Leicester’s Hospital, WarwickSnitterfield village is embowered amid elms. The church is a rustic building in the Decorated style, with seventeenth-century pulpit and enriched woodwork of the same period furnishing the altar-rails. Here the Rev. Richard Jago was vicar for twenty years, dying in 1781. His duties did not bear heavily upon him, and he occupied most of his time in writing a long poem, “Edgehill, or the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralised,” a published work which no one ever reads, the prospect of moralising held forth on the title-page scaring the timid. His vicarage remains, and on its lawn are still the three silver birches planted by his three daughters. There are some beautiful lime-trees and an ancient yew in the churchyard. No relic of Henry Shakespeare, William Shakespeare’s uncle, or of his father or grandfather, who lived at Snitterfield, now remains.

The road now trends to the right, and, steeply descending, regains the main route into Warwick. The town of Warwick looms nobly before the traveller approaching from the west. The broad level highway makes direct for it, and over the trees that border the road you see, as a first glimpse of the historic place, the lofty tower of St. Mary’s church, rising apparently an enormous height, and looking a most worshipful specimen of architecture. On a nearer approach it sinks into less prominence, and, passing through an old suburb, with a porch-house on the right, formerly the “Malt-Shovel” inn, the West Gate of the town, with its chapel above it, takes prominence.

Leicester’s Hospital: The CourtyardThe West Gate is one of the two surviving ancient gateways of Warwick and leads steeply up into the town beneath a rude-ribbed arch of great massiveness, based sturdily upon the dull red sandstone rock. It is a very picturesque and in every way striking composition, and if it were not for the even more picturesque scene provided by Leicester’s Hospital, just within the gate, would be often illustrated. But the nodding black and white gables of that almshouse effectually attract the greater notice. The West Gate, with the chapel above, dates from about 1360. Nowadays it is almost only the curious visitor who passes through the long, tunnel-like arch, gazing with astonishment at the sudden outcrop of rock on which the building stands, and at the ribbed stone roof supporting the chapel. A roadway has been made to the right of the gate, through the town walls, and the traffic goes that way by choice, obscuring the ancient defensive function and importance of this entrance to the town. A chapel also occupies the like position over the East Gate, and shows that the people of Warwick prayed as well as watched.

The Leicester Hospital, so-called because founded by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, looks down with admirable effect from its elevated position on the left hand, as you come up into the town; but it would look even better if it were properly kept. It very urgently needs a thorough overhauling, not in the necessity for any structural repairs, but with the object of treating the buildings in a sympathetic and cultured way. There is a vast difference between photographic views of what is called, in the Wardour Street way, “Leycester’s” Hospital, and the actual effect of looking upon the place with one’s own eyes. The Hospital, in fact, looks very much better in photographs than it reveals itself to the disappointed gaze: simply because those responsible for the upkeep of it do not understand how to treat the old timbers, and have smeared them over with black paint.

This Hospital or Almshouse occupies the site of the ancient united religious and charitable guilds of Holy Trinity and St. George-the-Martyr, with some of their surviving buildings. These united fraternities had numerous activities. They supported the priests who served in the chapels over East and West gates, and contributed towards the keep of others in the parish church; being also largely responsible for the maintenance of the great bridge, now and for long past in ruins, which carried the Banbury road across the Avon, in front of Warwick Castle. They also supported eight poor persons of the Guild. In common with all other religious, or semi-religious institutions, the Guild was dissolved in the time of Henry the Eighth, and its buildings were granted by Edward the Sixth to Sir Nicholas le Strange, from whom Dudley acquired them; or, according to another version of these transactions, Dudley had a gift of them direct from the town of Warwick, to which the Guild had voluntarily transferred its property. This gift to the magnificent Dudley, the newly-created Earl of Leicester and possessor of vast wealth and power, was not for his own personal advantage, but for the purpose of helping him to establish an almshouse, which he at once proceeded to do, in the interest of “twelve impotent persons, not having above £5 per annum of their own, and such as either had been, or should be maimed in the warrs of the Queen, her service, her heirs and successors, especially under the conduct of the said Earl or his heirs, or had been tenants to him and his heirs, and born in the Counties of Warwick or Gloucester, or having their dwelling there for five years before; and in case there happen to be none such hurt in the Warrs, then other poor of Kenilworth, Warwick, Stratford super Avon in this county, or of Wootton under Edge or Erlingham in Gloucestershire, to be recommended by the Minister and Churchwardens where they last had their aboad; which poor men are to have Liveries (viz. Gowns of blew cloth, with a Ragged Staff embroydered on the left sleeve) and not to go into the Town without them.”

Leicester and his magnificence, and all the direct lineage of the Dudleys have disappeared long ago. Leicester himself, and after him his brother Ambrose, died childless, and the patronage of the Hospital passed to their sister Mary, who married Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst. Thence it has descended to Lord de L’isle and Dudley, the present representative of the Dudleys and the Sidneys.

The entrance is by a stone gateway bearing the inscription “Hospitivm Collegiatvm Roberti Dvdlei Comitis LeycestriÆ 1571.” The great Dudley’s picturesque buildings deserve to be better kept, for they are among the daintiest examples of highly enriched half-timbering in England. Passing beneath an archway with a sundial overhead, you enter a small quadrangle with a quaint staircase on one side, and gables with elaborate pierced verge-boards looking down upon the scene. The famous Warwick badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff surmounts the finials and lurks under the eaves, in frequent repetition, together with the Porcupine, that of the Sidneys. On the further side, over the windows of the Master’s Lodge, is the painted inscription, “Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear God; and honour the King,” a quadripartite injunction which we may confidently affirm, no man ever yet observed. Our own—but much more other people’s—natures will have to be very greatly amended before we are prepared to “honour all men.”You pay sixpence to be shown over the Hospital, and one of the twelve bedesmen acts as guide to the buildings and the very miscellaneous collections accumulated in them. Nowadays the “blue gown” has become black, and the Bear and Ragged Staff badge is in silver, instead of embroidery. A welcome change has come over their headgear. Instead of the more or less rusty silk hats they wore during the greater part of the nineteenth century, they have now a “beefeater” hat similar to those worn by the Tower warders in London, but wholly in black. The bedesmen no longer dine together as once they did, but each separately in his own quarters, because they could not always obey the injunction to “love the brotherhood,” and grew cantankerous in company, and quarrelled; but here is still the kitchen they have in common, containing many other things one does not expect to find in kitchens; an odd assortment, a Malay kris, a Russian helmet from the stricken fields of the Crimea, an oak cabinet from Kenilworth Castle, and a framed piece of needlework said to have been executed by Lady Robert Dudley, whom “historians” will persist in styling either by her maiden name, Amy Robsart, or else by the title of Countess of Leicester, she having died or been murdered many years before her husband became an Earl. Perhaps we had better emphasise the word said. Beneath that framed piece of needlework is a Saxon—more or less Saxon—chair. A piece of Gibraltar rock, polished, is a further item displaying the catholicity of taste displayed here, together with the muskets with which the inmates of the Hospital were armed when the Chartist rising was supposed to threaten the security of Warwick.

Leicester’s Hospital: One of the BrethrenThe banqueting hall, a surviving portion of the old Guild buildings, very greatly needs restoration. It has been grossly used and subdivided, the Minstrel Gallery having been taken out of it in order to provide a fine additional room for the Master’s residence; the Master being, of course, a clergyman with a fine fat stipend: the person who has the very best of it at Leicester’s Hospital. In this once-beautiful banqueting hall, with its noble roof of Spanish chestnut, whitened with age, James the First was entertained by Fulke Greville in 1617. Coal-bins and wash-houses now subdivide it.

Flights of stone stairs lead up from the Hospital over the West Gate and into the chapel, a fine spacious building where the twelve old men have to attend every week-day morning at ten o’clock and listen to the perfunctory service read by the Master. In addition to this spiritual treat, they attend service at the parish church on Sundays. There is nothing to say about the interior of the chapel; it was “restored” by Sir Gilbert Scott, and so there would not be.

For dulness and pretentious ugliness combined, the town of Warwick would be difficult to match; and the ugliest and dullest part of it is that main street called Jury Street, stretching between the West Gate and the East. The ugliness is due to the great fire of 1694, which destroyed a great part of the town and necessitated a rebuilding at a period when architects were obsessed with the idea of designing “stately” buildings. What they considered stately we nowadays look upon with a shudder and style heavy and unimaginative.

But the weirdest building in the town is that parish church of St. Mary whose tower looks in the distance so stately. There were once ten churches in Warwick and there are now but two. St. Mary’s was almost entirely destroyed in the great fire, in consequence of the frightened townsfolk storing their furniture in it, for safety. The church itself was not threatened, but some of the articles hurriedly placed in it were alight, and thus it shared the fate of much else.

The rebuilding of St. Mary’s was completed in 1704, as an inscription on the tower informs us. I think those who placed that inscription here intended a Latin pun, a play upon the name of Queen Anne and the word anno, for “year”; for thus it runs: “Annaeauspiciis A° memorabili 1704.” One scarcely knows which is the more deplorable, the building or the pun; the first, probably, because not every one can see the play upon words, but the tower is an outrage impossible to escape.

The bulk and loftiness of it are majestic, but its classic details in a Gothic framework have a curious effect on the beholder. They seem, those unhallowed pagan alcoves, mounting stage by stage toward the skies, like some blasphemous insinuation. The nave and transepts, rebuilt at the same time, are, oddly enough, not nearly so offensive, and it is rather a handsome as well as imposing interior that meets the stranger’s gaze. It may be that it seems so much better because, warned by the outside, one expects so much worse. That familiar ornament in classic architecture, the “egg and dart,” is an incongruous detail when worked into the capitals of columns in which the Gothic feeling predominates, and it sounds quite shocking when described; but here it comes with a pleasing, if scarcely ecclesiastical effect in this fine and well-proportioned interior.

The Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick

The chancel of St. Mary’s, together with the chapter-house on the north side of it and the Beauchamp Chapel on the south, escaped the fire, and remain uninjured to this day. It is possible to peer through the locked iron gates of the chancel from the nave, which is the only portion of the church that is to be seen without payment, but to see the chapter-house, and the Beauchamp Chapel, to descend to the crypt and to mount the tower, you must pay and pay and pay again. The clergy in all the wide radius of the Shakespeare Country have the keenest scent for sixpences, and would make excellent business men. Better business men than clergymen, for all I know. They have long since learnt to charge and to keep their doors locked until their charges are satisfied; and none understand the business better than those who have the keeping of St. Mary’s at Warwick. But, when you have paid for this and for that and for t’other, and are resting and reading, and possibly making notes in the nave, it is gross, I say, and offensive and blackguardly to be followed up and spied upon and to be asked if you are sketching! “Because if you are it will be half-a-crown.” I will now leave this unsavoury subject, wishing the clergy and churchwardens of St. Mary’s more enlightenment and the people they employ better discretion.

The chancel, or choir, founded by Thomas Beauchamp, twelfth Earl of Warwick, who died 1369, is a stately Perpendicular work, with the altar-tomb of the founder and his wife Katharine, who died the same year, in the middle. His armoured effigy, with crosses crosslet displayed on the breastplate, rests its feet upon a bear, and at the feet of his wife is a lamb. He holds his wife’s hand.

Around the tomb, in niches, are small figures representing members of the family, thirty-six in all. In a grave near by, unmarked by any monument or inscription, lies William Parr, brother of Katharine Parr, last and surviving wife of Henry the Eighth. He was created Marquis of Northampton, and died in 1571, sunk to such poverty that no money was forthcoming to bury him. A few years later, Queen Elizabeth found a trifle, and he was decently interred, but no one ever thought it worth while to mark his resting-place.

Passing the greatly-enriched Easter Sepulchre in the north wall, the Chapter House is entered by a corridor. In the centre of this building stands the enormous monument to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who was murdered by his man-servant in 1628. “Delaying to reward one Hayward, an antient servant that had spent the most of his time in attendance upon him,” says Dugdale, “he received a mortall stab in the back by the same man, then private with him in his bed-chamber at Brooke House in London, 30th Sept. ann. 1628, who, to consummate the tragedy, went into another room, and, having lockit the dore, pierced his own bowells with a sword.”

The crypt is the oldest part of St. Mary’s, with Norman pillars. It contains the old ducking-stool for scolding women.

The entrance to that most gorgeous relic of old St. Mary’s, the Beauchamp Chapel, which is the principal item in the list of these ecclesiastical showmen, is on the east side of the south transept. The mortuary magnificence of the Beauchamps obscures the dedication of the Chapel to Our Lady, and the generations that have passed since the building of it between the years 1443 and 1464, and its final consecration in 1475, have rightly agreed to style it by the name by which it now, and always has been, popularly known. It reminds one very keenly of the insincere modern cant phrase which forms the dedication of memorial stained-glass windows. “To the Glory of God and to the memory of —,” a shabby sop to the Almighty at which the soul revolts. The very entrance is obviously proprietary, and shows us that this is really the Beauchamp mausoleum.

The Crypt of St. Mary’s, Warwick

It is a magnificent entrance, a very highly-enriched work in panelled and sculptured stone, with the Warwick Bear and Ragged Staff on either side, facing the Beauchamp shield of crosses crosslet. Near it, on the wall, and green with neglect, is the fine brass to Thomas Beauchamp, thirteenth Earl of Warwick, who died in 1401, and of his wife Margaret, who died 1406. It seems strange that out of all the money contributed by visitors, and chiefly on account of the Beauchamp monuments, there cannot be some small surplus set aside for a restoration of the altar-tomb on which these figures were placed up to that time when the great fire destroyed it and much of the church. It is not well that so fine an example should remain on a wall; the most unsuitable position for a monumental brass. The Earl, who is given the old original name of the Norman Beauchamps who came over with the Conqueror—“Bellocampo,” meaning “fair field”—is in complete armour, which has, besides the crosses crosslet of the family arms, a decorative border of ragged staves around his helmet. The Countess is habited in an heraldic mantle of crosses crosslet.

This Thomas Beauchamp was not so great or distinguished a man as his son, in whose honour the Beauchamp Chapel was erected.

The Beauchamp Chapel is slightly below the level of the south transept and is entered down a flight of steps. Photographs give an exaggerated idea of its size, but scarcely do justice to its beauty and the extreme richness of its details, still remarkable, although the ancient coloured glass has been mostly destroyed and the golden images of the altar have disappeared. It is indeed due to the second Lord Brooke, who although a partisan of the Cromwellian side during the Civil War, was naturally keen to preserve the glories of Warwick, that the Chapel was not wholly destroyed in that age of tumults. Lord Brooke was the son of that Sir Fulke Greville, first Baron Brooke, to whom James the First had granted Warwick Castle in 1605, and he no doubt looked upon the Beauchamps as ancestors, although there was never the remotest connection between that ancient martial family and his own, the Grevels, or Grevilles, who descend from the old wool-merchants of the name at Chipping Campden and elsewhere in the Cotswolds. He adopted them, and took them over, so to speak, with the Castle; and a good thing too, for these old monuments, that they had so fortunate an adoption.

The building is in the middle period of the Perpendicular style, that last manifestation of the Gothic spirit and the feudal ages, and is elaborately groined in stone. The great Richard Beauchamp, who lies here in these gorgeous surroundings, directed by will the building of the Chapel and the erection of his monument. He was the greatest as yet of his name, and appears to have been perfectly conscious of it, if we may judge by the state in which he ordained to lie. He was also to prove the greatest to all time, for although his son Henry who succeeded him at his death in 1439 was created Duke of Warwick, his career was undistinguished and soon ended, for he died in 1445. With him ended the long line of his race.

Richard Beauchamp, fourteenth Earl of Warwick, whose effigy lies here in lonely magnificence on the altar-tomb he directed to be made, as though he were too great a personage to have his wife beside him, was holder of the greatest offices of State of his period. The long inscription round his tomb tells us of some of these responsible posts—

“Preieth devoutly for the Sowel whom god assoille of one of the moost worshipful Knights in his dayes of monhode and conning Richard Beauchamp, late Earl of Warrewik, lord Despenser of Bergevenny and of mony other grete lordships whos body resteth here vnder this tumbe in a fulfeire vout of stone set on the bare rooch the whuch visited with longe siknes in the Castel of Roan therinne decessed ful cristenly the last day of April the yer of oure lord god A mccccxxix, he being at that tyme Lieutenant gen’al and governer of the Roialme of ffraunce and of the Duchie of Normandie by sufficient Autorite of oure Sou’aigne lord the King Harry the vi., the whuch body with grete deliberacon’ and ful worshipful conduit Bi See And by lond was broght to Warrewik the iiii day of October the yer aboueseide and was leide with ful solemn exequies in a feir chest made of stone in this Chirche afore the west dore of this Chapel according to his last wille and Testament therin to rest til this Chapel by him devised i’ his liff were made Al the whuche Chapel founded on the Rooch And alle the membres thereof his Executours dede fully make and Apparaille By the Auctorite of his Seide last Wille and Testament And therafter By the same Auctorite Theydide Translate fful worshipfully the seide Body into the vout abouseide, Honured be god therfore.”

History comes in few places with such vivid reality to the modern person as it does here. Unmoved, because too often without the mental agility to perceive the significance of it, we look upon the old royal arms of England as they were for centuries, until the time of George the Third, and see the quartering of the Lions of England with the Lilies of France; that proud boast, an idle pretension long before Calais, the final French possession of England, was lost, in the reign of Queen Mary. But standing before the tomb of the great Beauchamp, and reading his sounding titles, no mere ornamental designations, but the veritable responsible offices of State, as “Lieutenant-General and Governor of the Realm of France and the Duchy of Normandy,” we live again in tremendous days. No tomb of King or Emperor impresses me as does that of this puissant representative and viceroy of such sovereignty.

Beneath a hooped frame or “hearse” of gilded brass which formed the support for a gorgeous pall of crimson velvet lies the effigy of this great soldier and statesman, also in brass, once highly gilt. His bared head rests upon his helmet and his feet upon a griffin and a muzzled bear, and the Garter is on his left leg. The arms are raised in the usual attitude of prayer, but the hands themselves are not joined, as usual. They are, instead, represented apart, in the priestly pose during the celebration of mass.

The rich crimson velvet pall that covered the effigy and was lifted for its inspection by every visitor, was at last removed, on the plea of the injury it was supposed to be causing the figure, and has now unaccountably disappeared.

In niches around the altar-tomb are little figures representing his family, and sons- and daughters-in-law: fourteen in all; such great names as Henry Beauchamp, his son and successor, with his wife Cicely; Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and his wife Alice; Richard Neville, afterwards Earl of Warwick and his wife Anne; Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife Eleanor; Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and his wife Anne; John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife Margaret; and George Neville, Lord Latimer, with his wife Elizabeth.

Against the north wall of the Chapel is the costly and ostentatious monument of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, rising in lofty stages of coloured marbles; a vulgar piece of work. The effigies of Dudley and his wife LÆtitia, who survived him forty-six years and died in 1634, are gorgeously robed and painted in lifelike fashion. The mantle of the Order of the Garter covers his armour, and the Garter itself is shown on his leg. It is with surpassing interest that one looks upon the chief of these figures; that Dudley who came near being King-Consort of Elizabeth, and died in 1588, at the comparatively early age of fifty-four; the vain and magnificent creature suspected of the murder of his first wife and traditionally poisoned by his last, who is said to have given him the lethal cup he had intended for herself. A long Latin epitaph sonorously recounts his many titles and honours, with the hardy belief in “a certain hope of his resurrection in Christ.”

Against the opposite wall is the altar-tomb of that “noble Impe, Robert of Dudley,” infant son of the last, who died in his fourth year, 1584. A circlet round the brow of the little figure bears the Leicester badge, the cinquefoil. Last of the Dudley monuments, is the altar-tomb of Ambrose, styled the “good Earl,” in tacit contradistinction from his brother Robert, the wicked one. The good Ambrose was not given length of days, for he died the year after his brother. He also is shown in armour and wears a coronet and the Garter. How he was given the post of “Mayster of the Ordinaunce,” made Chief Butler of England, and was altogether a personage of many offices, his epitaph tells. With him and the “noble Impe,” his brother’s infant son, the legitimate race of the Dudleys died.