Charles G. Harper

CLEWER—WINDSOR—ETON AND ITS COLLEGIANS—DATCHET—LANGLEY AND THE KEDERMINSTERS

Between Dorney and Eton stretches an out-of-the-way corner of land devoted chiefly to potato-fields and allotments bordering the river. Here stands Boveney church, or “Buvveney,” as it is locally styled, a small building so altered at different periods as to be quite without interest. The river glides past, between the alders, that dark, strong current the subject of allusion by Praed in his “School and Schoolfellows”:

A circle of tall elms closely surrounding the church casts a perpetual shade upon the building; Windsor Castle looking down from the opposite shore in feudal majesty upon it and the humble activities of these level fields.

That majestic pile indeed overlooks some remarkably mean surroundings which on close acquaintance derogate strangely from its dignity. Thus, resuming the road on the Berkshire side, from Bray to Windsor, the long, straight, uninteresting miles lead directly to Clewer, a village of disreputable appearance, now, to all intents, a Windsor slum; and what was a rustic churchyard has become something more in the likeness of a cemetery. In the roads, strewn with rubbish and broken glass, dirty children play.

Besides an inscription to “ye vertuous Mrs. Lucie Hobson, 1657,” who was, we learn, “a treu lover of a Godly and a Powerful ministry”—i.e. probably of a preacher who could bang the pulpit and punish the cushions—there is little of interest in Clewer church, with the one exception of a curious little brass plate, inscribed,

Local history tells us nothing of this hero, who apparently did not really shoot himself, as the inscription states, but seems at some period to have won a particularly hard archery contest, which was ever after his title to fame in this locality.

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From Clewer the pilgrim of the roads mounts into Windsor by way of grim and grimy slums, and therefore those who would come to Windsor had by far the better do so by water, from which the slums look picturesque. The view of Windsor, indeed, from the windings of the Thames (Windsor is the Saxon “Windlesora,” the winding shore) is one of the half-dozen most supremely grand and beautiful views in England.

Of Windsor, in Berkshire, and Eton, in Bucks, joined by a bridge that here spans the Thames, I here propose to say little or nothing. To treat of them at all would, within the scope of this book, be inadequate, and to deal with them according to their importance would demand a separate volume. Moreover, to write of them with an airy assurance requires not a little expert local knowledge of the kind to be expected only of those who have made them places of long residence or study.

There was once a man who falsely claimed to have been educated at Eton, and was stumped first ball. They asked him if he knew the Cobbler. “Yes,” he said, “I know the old fellow very well.” Is it an unconscious invention of my very own, or did he further proceed to say that he had often helped the old fellow when he was in low water? At any rate, ’twill serve; and will doubtless divert those who know the “old fellow” in question, whom no one could aid under those circumstances, except perhaps the Clerk of the Weather and the lock-keepers above and below, who, between them, might serve him sufficiently well. Not to further mystify readers overseas, who know not Eton, let it at once be said that the “Cobbler” is an island; and that the famous person who claimed to have known him must be placed in association with the pretended traveller who knew the Dardanelles intimately, had dined with them often, and had found them jolly good fellows.

Eton has for centuries been the public school of all others, where the sons of landed and of moneyed men have been educated into the belief that they and theirs stand for England, whereas, if it were not for the great optimistic, cheerfully hard-working middle-class folk, who found businesses, and employ the lower orders on the one hand, while on the other they pay rents to the landowning and governing classes, there would not be any England for them to misgovern, you know.

Eton is now so crowded with the sons of wealthy foreigners and German and other Jews, learning to be Englishmen (if that be in any way possible), that it is now something of a distinction not to have been educated there, nor to have learned the “Eton slouch,” nor the charming Eton belief that the alumni brought up under “her Henry’s holy shade” are thus fitted by Heaven and opportunity, working in unison, to rule the nation. It is a belief somewhat rudely treated in this, our day, when the world is no longer necessarily the oyster of the eldest sons of peers and landowners. And in these times, when it is said that Eton boys funk one another and fights under the wall are more or less “low,” it is no longer possible that Etonians shall have the leadership in future stricken fields—leadership in finance, possibly, seeing how Semitic this once purely English foundation is becoming; but in leadership when the giving and receiving of hard knocks is toward; no!

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I would, however, this were the worst that is said of Eton College in these degenerate times. That it is not, The Eton College Chronicle itself bears witness. Attention is there called to a custom of “ragging” shops, now become prevalent among the young gentlemen. This, we learn, is carried to such an extent that they will pocket articles found lying about and walk off with them, “for fun.” One of the most “humorous” of these incidents was the disappearance of cricket balls to the value of nearly £1. The assistants at the shop where this mysterious disappearance occurred had to make good the loss; so it will readily be perceived how completely humorous the incident must have been from the point of view of those who had to replace the goods. Were these practices prevalent in such low-class educational establishments as Board Schools, a worse term than “ragging,” it may be suspected, would be given them.

Two miles in the rear of Datchet is Langley, a small and very scattered village which, although unimportant in itself, has a station on the Great Western Railway. The full name of it, rarely used, is Langley Marish, which is variously said to mean “Marshy Langley,” “Langley Mary’s,” from the dedication of the church to the Virgin Mary, or to derive from the Manor having been held for a short period in the reign of Edward the First by one Christiana de Mariscis.

Few would give a second glance to the humble little church, with its red-brick tower of typically seventeenth-century type, and with other portions of the exterior quite horribly stuccoed; but to pass it by would be to miss a great deal, for it contains a most curious family pew and parish library. This library, originally containing between 500 and 600 volumes, was given by Sir John Kedermister, or Kederminster, under his will of 1631, to “the town” of Langley Marish. The worthy knight was also builder of one of the two groups of almshouses for four inmates, who were appointed joint custodians of the books. An ancient deed, reciting the gift, says: “The said Sir John Kedermister prepared a convenient place for a library, adjoining to the west end of the said chapel, and intended to furnish the same with books of divinity, as well for the perpetual benefit of the vicar and curate of the parish of Langley as for all other ministers and preachers of God’s Word that would resort thither to make use of the books therein.”

The Kederminsters first settled at Langley in the middle of the sixteenth century, when one John Kederminster, who appears to have been a kinsman of Richard Kydermynster, Abbot of Winchcombe, became ranger of the then royal park of Langley and “master of the games” to Henry the Eighth. He died at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight, in 1558, leaving two sons and three daughters. His son Edmund was father of the John Kederminster who founded the library and initiated other works here. He also was ranger of Langley Park, and was knighted by James the First in 1609, who also conferred upon him the Manor of Langley.

This was a short-lived family, and Sir John died in 1634, a deeply pious but much stricken man, who had lived to see his children, except one daughter, predecease him, and his hopes thus disappointed of the Kederminster name being continued.

As lord of the manor of Langley, and a knight, Sir John Kederminster obviously felt it behoved him to establish himself in considerable state, in the church as well as at his mansion. He therefore secured a faculty granting him the right to construct an “Ile or Chappell”; otherwise, as we may see to this day, a private family pew, in the south aisle, and a parish library to the west of it.

This family pew is perhaps the most curious remaining in England, alike for its construction and for the instructive light it throws upon the lofty social heights from which a lord of a manor looked upon lesser mortals. We have royal pews in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor and elsewhere; but their exclusiveness is not greater than this of the Kederminsters, which is singularly like that of the latticed casements familiar to all who have visited Cairo and other Oriental towns. Yet it is obvious that there was a vein of humility running through Sir John Kederminster’s apparent arrogance; though a rather thin vein, perhaps. Thus he wrote, for the stone closing the family vault under his pew: “A true Man to God, his King, and Friends, prayeth all future Ages to suffer these obscure Memorials of his Wife, Children and Kindred to remain in this Place undisturbed.”

The pew remains in its original condition, looking into the church from the south aisle through very closely-latticed wooden screen-work, elaborately painted, and crested with an open-work finial bearing the arms of the Kederminsters and their connections. The worshippers within were quite invisible to the congregation, but could themselves see and hear everything. Within the pew, the wall-decoration, in Renascence designs, includes many panels painted with the all-seeing eye of God, with the words “Deus videt” inscribed on the pupil. This scheme of decoration is continued over the ceiling.

A passage leads out of this singular pew to the library, on the western side. This is an entirely charming square room, constructed in what was formerly the west porch. It is lined throughout with bookcases with closed cupboard doors, all richly painted in characteristic Jacobean Renascence cartouche and strapwork designs, with the exception of those next the ceiling, which are landscapes of Windsor and its neighbourhood. The inner side of one of the cupboard doors has a portrait of the pious donor: the corresponding door once displayed a likeness of his wife, but it has been obliterated. An elaborate fireplace has a fine overmantel with large central cartouche, semÉe with the Kederminster arms: two chevronels between three bezants, marshalled with those of their allied families. The original Jacobean table still stands in the centre of the room, with the old tall-backed chairs, too decrepit now for use.

Kederminster strictly enjoined the most careful precautions for the due care of the books, of which an old catalogue dated 1638, engrossed on vellum, and framed, still hangs on the wall. One, at least, of his four bedesmen (who are now women) was to be present when they were in use:

“The said four poor persons should have a key of the said library, which they should for ever keep locked up in the iron chest under all their four keys, unless when any minister or preacher of God’s Word, or other known person, should desire to use the said library, or to study, or to make use of any books in the same, and then the said four poor people, or one of them at the least, should from time to time—unless the heirs of Sir John Kedermister, being then and there present, should otherwise direct—attend within the door of the said library, and not depart from thence during all the time that any person should remain therein, and should all that while keep the key of the said door fastened with a chain unto one of their girdles, and should also take special care that no books be lent or purloined out of the said library, but that every book be duly placed in their room, and that the room should be kept clean; and that if at any time any money or reward be given to the said poor people for their attendance in the library as aforesaid, the same should be to the only use of such of those poor people as should at that time then and there attend.”

Clearly, this care has not been always exercised, for the books are now reduced to some three hundred, and those that are left have suffered greatly from damp and rough handling. The books are chiefly cumbrous tomes, heavy in more than one sense, and mostly works on seventeenth-century religious controversies.

Although this library has for long past been either forgotten or regarded merely as a curiosity, there was once a time when the books in it were well used, as would appear from the notes made on the end-papers of a Hebrew and Latin Bible, printed at the office of Christopher Plantin, in Antwerp, 1584. It was one J. C. Werndly, vicar of Wraysbury from 1690 to 1724, who made these notes, and he seems to have been indeed a diligent reader. Thus he wrote:

The last record of his reading appears thus:

The numerals for “thirty-three” appear to indicate his thirty-third reading.

The almshouses on the north side of the churchyard, their front facing the sun, are pleasant with old-fashioned gardens. They were built by Henry Seymour, who in 1669 purchased the Kederminster estates from the son of Sir John Kederminster’s daughter and heiress, who had married Sir John Parsons, sometime Lord Mayor of London. Thus, in less than forty years the Kederminster hopes faded away and the property passed into the hands of strangers.