A wonderful collection of tombs—A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare—A leper's door—Relics—Manufacturing the antique—Curiosity shops—The Golden Chapel—"The Great Bell of Tong"—White Ladies Nunnery—The grave of Dame Joan—Boscobel and its story—A tradition about the "Royal Oak."

Externally Tong church strikes the rare and happy note of individuality; however beautiful our country churches may be, those in the same county of the same period are but too apt to repeat familiar forms; there is no freshness about them to attract. Now Tong church is an original conception, original without being strange, and it possesses the excellent and pleasing merit of good proportion. Its central tower is octagonal, rising from a square base, with the four corners of its base tapering off to the octagonal above; the tower is crowned by a graceful steeple with spire lights, which spire lights "are perhaps nearly unique." The roof of the church has manifestly been purposely kept low, the better to reveal its embattled parapets and pinnacles. Thought is apparent everywhere in its design. It is a cathedral in miniature, and a beautiful miniature too. At the west end of the building stand the crumbling arches of its former college, and in the churchyard is a cross that marks the plot of ground set apart for the burial of unbaptized children, to me a fresh feature of a churchyard.

The interior of the church, with its many truly magnificent altar-tombs, proved vastly more noteworthy and interesting than I expected; the clerk, too, was both interesting and well-informed, and evidently took a pride in the building. He did not go round conveying information in a parrot-like and irritating fashion as some clerks do, as though repeating guidebook-gathered information learnt by heart, and glad to get it done. The tombs are all exceedingly beautiful and well-preserved; they have happily survived the Puritan's rage and the church-wardens' era undamaged. The effigies on them of the noble lords and brave knights of old provide an object-lesson as to the wearing and to the details of ancient armour; those of their ladies reveal the elaborate dresses worn in days of yore, and the changing fashions of head-gear, all so faithfully rendered one could almost reconstruct the armour and renew the dresses from the sculptured stone. The oldest tomb (for they were all pointed out to me in due chronological order) is that of Sir Fulke de Pembruge (who is represented in chain armour of the period of the Crusades), with Dame Elizabeth his wife by his side; though the clerk said "some antiquaries who have examined the tomb have thrown a doubt as to whether the effigy of the lady is really that of the knight's wife, from the fact that the base of the tomb below her effigy has undergone alteration and is not quite in keeping with the other part. It has even been suggested that possibly the effigy may have been removed from elsewhere and placed there for convenience, in careless past days." In truth, to do such a monstrous thing would have needed very careless days indeed. Still, in times past stranger things were done in the name and under the cloak of church restoration. I learnt that Sir Fulke predeceased his wife some years, and I formed a theory, satisfactory at any rate to myself, that quite possibly this Sir Fulke de Pembruge had first been buried beneath a single altar-tomb, and that some years later his wife might have been laid by his side, and this would account for the slight difference in the details of this under portion of the tomb, which has manifestly been added at a little later period. Quite a plausible explanation it seems to me; then wherefore seek for a more improbable one?

There were several other stately tombs to various members of the Vernon family, who owned not only the Castle of Tong, but also Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, hallowed now by the story of Dorothy Vernon. Each mail-clad image of the noble house,

With sword and crested head,
Sleeps proudly in the purple gloom
By the stained window shed.

Sir Henry Vernon, who died in 1515, the founder of the Golden Chapel and the donor of the Great Bell of Tong, has a very elaborate tomb adjoining the chapel; both his effigy and that of his wife are coloured. But the most magnificent monument of all is that of Sir Thomas Stanley, who, by the long inscription on it, we learn, "married Margaret Vernon one of the daughters and cohairs of Sir George Vernon of Haddon in the Covntie of Derbie, knighte." His wife's effigy lies beside his. This tomb is of considerable interest because a verse attached to it, the clerk informed me, is said to have been written by Shakespeare. Sir William Dugdale, the antiquary (born 1605, deceased 1686)—I note how long lived antiquaries often are—declares positively that it was written by Shakespeare and by no one else. Now Sir William Dugdale is no mean authority. This is the verse:

Not monumentall stone preserves our fame,
Nor sky aspyring piramids our name.
The memory of him for whom this stands
Shall outlive marble and defacers' hands.
When all to Tyme's consumption shall be geaven,
Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven.

In spite of Sir William Dugdale's assertion, most people are of opinion that this verse is not of sufficient merit to warrant Shakespeare's authorship; still, to me at least, it appears equal to the well-known and much-quoted epitaph that the poet composed for himself, which is inscribed over his grave in Stratford-on-Avon church. Truly there is the difficulty of dates to be considered. Now when Sir Thomas Stanley died Shakespeare was but twelve years old; however, as frequently was the case, the monument might not have been erected until some few years after Sir Thomas Stanley's death, and again the verse may not have been written then. It may be that the verse, which is apart from the inscription, was an after-thought, placed there at a little later time. Therefore, as far as dates are concerned, there is nothing impossible in Shakespeare having composed the verse when a young man. Here is a promising matter for antiquaries to dispute about!

Next the clerk called my attention to the fine old fifteenth-century stained glass of the west window, found some years back under the floor of the church, presumably placed there for safety from the Puritan fanatics. Also he pointed out the boldly carved royal coat-of-arms set up against the north wall of the church "to celebrate the capture of Napoleon Bounaparte." Then he showed me the old Collegiate Choir stalls, on one of the panels of which is a very curious and cunningly conceived carving representing the Annunciation; at the base of the panel is shown a vase with lilies growing from it, and these are so contrived to subtly suggest the Crucifixion where the flowers expand. A quaint and poetic conception cleverly carried out. "A carving quite unique," the clerk told me; certainly I had seen nothing like it before. I wonder how the medieval carver got his inspiration?

Next we inspected the Golden, or the Vernon Chapel, built in 1510, a copy on a smaller scale of the Henry VII. Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The fan-vaulted roofing of this is very fine, and both the roof and walls still plainly show traces of gilt and colouring. In a niche in the west wall and under a richly carved canopy is the figure of Sir Arthur Vernon represented as preaching, this Sir Arthur Vernon being "a priest of the College." During the restoration of the church his brass was discovered beneath the floor of the chapel, though why it should have been floored over I cannot imagine; now it has been recovered and exposed for all men to read who know the Latin tongue. The original altar stone (of rough sandstone with five crosses on it) has also been recovered from the floor, and has been returned to its former rightful position, suitably elevated, at the east end of the chapel, and above it is a faded fresco of the Crucifixion. On the south wall is also a quaint brass to Ralph Elcock—Cellarer of the College.

Next we went to the vestry, and I noticed that the door entering to it had three large round holes in the top. According to the clerk this door was originally an outer one and known as the lepers' door, the holes being for the use of lepers to observe the service from the churchyard. I have come upon lepers' or low-side windows galore, but never upon a so-called lepers' door before. As, for reasons already given, I do not believe in lepers' windows, it naturally follows I could not agree with the clerk that this was ever a lepers' door. More probably, I thought that the holes were merely made in the door to afford an outlook from the vestry into the church, but that explanation was too simple to satisfy the clerk, it robbed the door of its romance. In the vestry is preserved a library of rare old tomes, also a richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestment said to have been worked by the nuns of White Ladies. Amongst the treasures of the church is a tall and richly chased silver-gilt and crystal cup, given by Lady Eleanor Harries in 1625, but the cup itself is of very much older date and is probably of foreign craftsmanship. What was the original purpose of this I cannot say; possibly it was a monstrance—it could hardly have been intended for a Communion cup.

Since I was at Tong I have heard that an American collector had offered a large sum for this cup, £800 I think I was told. I am glad to say that the church authorities forbade its sale. "England," as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "is one vast museum," but even the vastest museum, if continually deprived of its treasures, must become depleted in time. As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. Of late I was informed that Shakespearian relics are booming, and those of Charles I. run a close second, and the trade is a profitable one, for the prices of these "rare" articles are high, or they would not be considered genuine. Perhaps this explains where all the old furniture comes from, and the store of ancient things one finds, now that motorists scour the land, displayed conveniently to catch the eye of the passer-by in countless village curiosity shops; also the growth of these shops, and why their stores never grow less. A short time ago it came to my knowledge that a lady consulted an authority on old china as to the genuineness of a dessert service she had purchased on the understanding that it had "been in one family for over two centuries," whereupon the lady made the unwelcome discovery that the factory in which it was produced only opened in 1850!

Old worm-eaten oak from old houses pulled down and from old churches being restored is utilised in making careful copies of ancient Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture, so the wood of these is old enough and genuinely worm-eaten. I recently visited a village, through which motorists frequently pass, where there is a large curiosity shop literally crammed with "genuine" ancient furniture mostly made yesterday, but the copies I saw were so good and had such a look of ancientness as to deceive many an innocent purchaser. Two "monks' tables" were on sale there, suits and bits of rusty and knightly armour, made I fancy, in spite of the easily obtained rust, not more than a dozen years or so ago in Germany, where they do the thing very well, old sun-dials, old dressers, Elizabethan chairs, early water-clocks and bracket clocks of the Cromwell era, and I know not what else; all most cleverly reproduced even to the signs of wear—done by a wire brush, I believe—and the cutting of initials and dates of centuries past on tables and chairs. A gentleman who had been to Japan told me that he discovered a craftsman there who was most clever in reproducing old brass Cromwell clocks, works and all, even to the English makers' names and ancient dates upon them; these were sent over to England, and he showed me one that he had purchased, and so skilfully was the original imitated, even to the presumed wear of the works, that I was astounded at the cleverness of the fraud.

But to return to the vestry of Tong church, said the clerk to me, "Have you heard of the Great Bell of Tong?" I had not till he mentioned it. I waited for him to tell its story that I knew was coming. I have forgotten how much he declared it weighed, but I believe it was considerably over two tons. "It takes three men to start it," he went on, "but when once started one man can keep it going. It was presented to the church in 1518 by Sir Henry Vernon. It is only rung on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit-Sunday, and St. Bartholomew's Day, on the birth of a child to the Sovereign and an heir to the Prince of Wales, or when the head of the Vernon family visits Tong."

Dickens confessed that it was to Tong church that he brought Little Nell with the schoolmaster in the Old Curiosity Shop, and this is how he describes it: "It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundred years ago, and once had a convent or a monastery attached," referring doubtless to the decayed College, "for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old buildings, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as though they too claimed a burial-place, and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men."

Leaving Tong I got amongst narrow winding lanes in my search after White Ladies, and a rare difficulty I had in discovering that remote spot. "It's not a good country for strangers to find their way about in," exclaimed one old body of whom I asked direction, and I quite agreed with her, it was not. I kept on asking for White Ladies of any one I saw, but the lanes were very deserted and I met few people on them, and their answers to my queries were none too clear. Indeed they reminded me in indirectness of a reply that a Shropshire gentleman assured me he once received from a villager. He was asking the villager how long her father had been dead, and she said quite calmly, "If he had lived till to-morrow he would have been dead a week." Country folk, for some inexplicable reason, never seem capable of giving a plain answer to the simplest question. They appear to love to go round it, perhaps because they like to talk. After all I really think I should have missed White Ladies, for it is hidden from the road and only reached by an ill-defined footpath through a wood and then over a field, had I not been bold enough to call at a farmhouse where I received clear instructions how to find the ruins. Fortunately they were not very far off, "only about a mile farther on," so I could not well go astray, for I had only to follow the lane till I came to "a little wicket at the corner of the wood." I was glad of it, for I felt weary of wandering without arriving anywhere.

What is left of White Ladies Nunnery consists almost wholly of its despoiled Norman church, if church be not too dignified a term for so small a building, roofed now only by the sky and paved with rough and tangled grasses, the foot of its walls being fringed with flourishing weeds. There are few architectural features of note about the building except its ornamented north doorway and its rounded Norman windows, the carving of this doorway being little the worse for the weathering of centuries. The ruins stand silent and solitary in a large meadow, and around the meadow stretch deep woods for far away, and beyond the woods are distant hills, that day faintly outlined in palest blue against the sky; these woods are the relics of the once famous forest of Brewood. It is a lonely spot to-day, and must always have been a lonely one; its only approach is by a lane, and then over the quiet fields. There solitude dwells. Close to the ruins once stood the old half-timber hall of the Giffards (an old print I have seen represents this as it was in 1660—a low, rambling, and most picturesque building surrounded by walls, and with a quaint gabled gate-house in front), of which now not a vestige remains. Thither came Charles II., fleeing in hot haste from the fatal battle of Worcester—fatal to the Royal cause at least, for Cromwell called it his "crowning mercy." It is always so, to the victor the battle is a triumph, the God of Hosts is with him. Is it not recorded that Cromwell once exclaimed to his troopers whilst crossing a river, "Trust in God," followed quickly by "but keep your powder dry"?

Within the ruined walls of the convent church are many ancient tombstones, for it was long a burial-place of Roman Catholic families. The oldest of these doubtless dates from pre-Reformation days, possibly being those of some important ecclesiastic, for it is adorned with foliated crosses beautifully carved, though without inscription as far as I could discover. But, to me, the most interesting tombstone of all bore no ornamentation but was briefly inscribed:

Here lieth the bodie of a
Friend the King did call
Dame Joane but now shee
Is deceased and gone.
Interred Anno Do. 1669.

There Dame Penderel lies.

Boscobel was not far away; I simply followed the lane trustingly, and soon I beheld the great chimney and roof-trees of that ancient and historic house peeping through the trees. I came upon it suddenly and unawares. I was prepared to be disappointed with Boscobel; I always am prepared to be disappointed with historic places, for one gets so worked up with enthusiastic descriptions of them that but too often the reality leaves one cold and disenchanted, for who can romance to order? Where historic events have happened, I demand, perhaps unreasonably, a fitting background. The romantic incident of the stay and concealment of Charles II. at Boscobel calls for a picturesque setting, and there I found it. Boscobel is still, as of old, remote amongst the woods, and suits the story to perfection. Though externally the house has lost somewhat of the patina of age by renovation, yet it impressed me. Had I come upon it unknowingly the very aspect of it with its old-fashioned garden and quaint summer-house would have caused me to stop, for it had that indefinable thing—a look of romance. Never yet have I come upon a house with that special look that has not earned it. A man writes his character on his face; so does an old house.

I did not know whether this storied home would be shown to strangers, but there I found a soft-spoken dame of dignified manner, who not only showed me over it, but told me its tale again so well and so freshly that in its old-world and pleasant panelled chambers the present seemed almost a dream and the past a reality. So strong was the influence of the place upon me that I almost expected to see the faithful Dame Joan appear approaching along one of the dusky passages, or even the hunted king himself. If ever a house were haunted by past presences, that house is Boscobel. I even thought it remotely possible that the grey-haired dame who showed me the place might be a descendant of the Penderels. I confess I had a longing to ask her if she were not of the good old stock, and should have done this but from fear of being disillusioned; but whether she were or no, for the sentiment of the thing, so I pleased to fancy her. Indeed I thought I traced a resemblance in her features to those of faithful Dame Joan Penderel, whose painted portrait I saw hanging on the wall of the ancient oratory, possibly because I looked for it, and you often see what you look for. There can be no mistake about this portrait, for on it the artist has inscribed, as was the custom of the time, both her name and a date, thus: "Dame Penderel—Anno Dom. 1662," though her age at the time he has not recorded as was usual. Full of quiet character and motherly kindness is the face, a pleasure to look upon. Great is the contrast of this portrait with those of Charles II. and Cromwell (apparently excellent likenesses) hanging in the dining-room, for the king's features reveal a weak and pleasure-loving nature, whilst those of Cromwell are determined and austere.

It was a happy time I spent at Boscobel, and I was fortunate to see it alone. I learnt from my guide that the house was built in 1540, so that it was over a century old when the king sought refuge there, and I further learnt that the name Boscobel originated from a suggestion made to John Giffard, its builder, by his friend Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley Court, who had recently returned from Italy; and his suggestion was that the house, being seated in the heart of a forest, should be called Boscobel, from the Italian words bosco bello, meaning fair woods; so it was named. Passing through the hall I was shown first the fine oak-panelled dining-room, where is still preserved the very table that was used by the king. Much as it was then is the room to-day. On its walls hangs a copy of the Proclamation issued by the Parliament at the very time Charles II. was hiding there, offering a reward of £1000 for the discovery of the king, also declaring that it was death without mercy for concealing him. It speaks well for the Penderel brothers, all poor men "of honest parentage but of mean degree" to whom a thousand pounds would have been a fortune, that even when closely questioned by the troopers when searching the house and woods around, each one in turn pleaded ignorance of the king's whereabouts, rejecting the proffered reward and risking death rather than betray their sovereign.

Opening out of one of the panelled sleeping chambers in the upper part of the house is a small closet; a cunningly concealed trap-door in the floor of this gives access to a small hiding-hole, and from this hiding-hole is a secret stairway (or rather was, for it is closed up now) contrived in part of the big chimney-stack; this stairway led down to a concealed door at the foot of the chimney and so out into the garden, forming a way of escape from the hiding-hole should it be discovered. It was down this stairway that Charles II. made his escape into the woods when one of the brothers Penderel (four of whom were keeping constant and tireless watch on the roads around) gave the alarm that soldiers were approaching, and it was deemed safer for the king to hide in the woods than to remain in the house. So selecting a thick-leaved oak, some distance off, with a tall straight trunk that no one could imagine that a man could climb, Charles II. mounted into its upper branches by means of a ladder carried there by the faithful Richard Penderel, who hurriedly carried it back to an outhouse before the soldiers arrived. In connection with the familiar story of the king's hiding in this oak my guide related to me an incident that I had not heard before. It appears that the king took with him into the tree two pigeons in a bag, as had been arranged he should, and that when the soldiers rode past below, he released these pigeons as though the soldiers had disturbed them, this to show that no one could be concealed there. The story of the pigeons is told in a quaint carving on the top of an old oak box that is kept in one of the rooms of the house, and is so far confirmed. The carving gives a bold representation of the Royal Oak in full leaf with the two pigeons flying from it, and the soldiers in search below.

Whilst the soldiers were searching the woods Dame Joan went out ostensibly to gather sticks for the fire; she engaged the soldiers in conversation, and so diverted their attention from the neighbourhood of the special oak where the king was. You may always trust a woman whose heart is in her task to fool any man.

Alone in a field not far from the house and surrounded by an iron railing stands a flourishing and fair-sized old oak, known as the Royal Oak. Though this is doubtless on, or close to, the spot where the historic tree grew, it can hardly be the one in which the king hid; some authorities, however, blinking hard facts, boldly avow their belief in it. Now for these hard facts, though romance suffers thereby, and you may not hint such things at Boscobel, Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, writing in 1713, declares that then the old tree was "almost all cut away by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it," and John Evelyn in his day writes that when he saw it "relic-hunters had reduced the original tree to a mere stump." Moreover, the king in his own account of his hiding said that he got into a tree that had been polled and was very bushy at the top. Now the present oak has never been polled, which is surely sufficient proof that it is not the original one. If I may judge from the various chests and other articles I have seen, and which are said to be made out of the wood of the original Royal Oak, it must have been the largest tree that ever grew; but the wise traveller does not take all such relics seriously. An ancient writer indeed declares that at one time in European churches there were shown to pious pilgrims portions of the true Cross which if collected together would be sufficient to load a big ship. Even the clerk of Tong told me that he owned a large oak chest made out of wood from the Royal Oak, and he is but one of many who own chests that have this reputation, to say nothing of chairs, tables, stools, and countless snuff-boxes, all made, and carved, from the wood of that wonderful tree—the tree

Wherein the younger Charles abode
Till all the paths were dim,

And far below the Roundhead rode,
And humm'd a surly hymn.

Upstairs in the house, beneath what was formerly a cheese attic, is another hiding-place, a dark small hole at the top of the stair and entered by a trap-door in the floor, and here it was that Charles II. spent one uncomfortable night, cheeses being rolled over the trap-door for the better concealment of it. So my guide told me. Now the puzzling thing about this is, why, especially at night when the house was carefully locked and guarded, should it have been thought needful for the king to secrete himself in this cramped place? Surely he might have slept comfortably in bed, for there ought to have been ample time, when the soldiers knocked at the door and the alarm was given, and whilst the door was being slowly opened, for the king to have secreted himself; as it was he spent a most uncomfortable night to no purpose. Now when Charles II. was afterwards sheltered in Moseley Hall and was resting on a couch in a chamber (it chanced to be one afternoon), some soldiers made a surprise visit there, but on the servants rushing upstairs crying "The soldiers are coming," the king found ample time to reach his hiding-place, where he lay concealed in safety till the soldiers departed baffled. It speaks much for the cleverness of the contrivers of the hiding-holes both at Boscobel and Moseley that none of these holes, though carefully searched for, were ever discovered. Still it must have been a very unpleasant experience for the king, hidden away in a dark and dismal hole all the while the soldiers were busily searching the house, not knowing but that he might at any moment be discovered. Indeed, when his host had seen the soldiers safely away and came to release the king, the king exclaimed to him "he thought the time very long"—and little wonder; so might any one in so unfortunate a position. It is said that Charles II. was the last person to be secreted in the hiding-holes at Boscobel. Possibly Boscobel was not so diligently searched as other houses were, owing to its being solely in the care of servants at the time, so less suspicion fell on it.

Boscobel in its woods calls to my mind a saying of that quaint old worthy Thomas Fuller: "It is pleasant as well as profitable to see a house cased with trees. The worst is, where a place is bald of wood no art can make it a periwig."