Friday 7 July 2017

Kimbolton

St Andrew, open, is a vast and rather resplendent building which offers something for everyone: a stunning location, an interesting exterior and an interior full of interest.

ST ANDREW. The W tower is a fine piece, early C14 throughout, including its broach spire - see the details of the three tiers of lucarnes. The W portal has thin shafts with deep mouldings between them, and each group of mouldings has ballflower. The W window and the bell-openings have Y-tracery. At the top of the tower itself is a frieze of small heads. Perp S aisle and handsome S porch with, at the entrance, openwork tracery spandrels and on the side walls wide blank arches enclosing the (now blocked) small windows. The N aisle is Perp too, but the clerestory is still Dec and has handsome figured stone corbels as the roof supports inside. The chancel S wall is of brick, probably of 1748, but inside in the N wall is a blocked late C13 window with formerly intersecting tracery. The chancel arch matches such a date. The N and S chapels, however, are Perp, and both have their original roofs with carved figures. The nave roof is original too. The oldest feature of the church is the arcades. Four bays. The S arcade has round piers and arches of one chamfer and one slight chamfer, i.e. early C13. The N arcade with alternatingly round and octagonal supports has a little nailhead in the capitals and a big nailhead hood-mould. The arches are of one chamfer, one slight chamfer, and a third chamfer. So that may be later C13. However, the NW respond is earlier than either arcade. With its single fleur-de-lis like leaf motifs it looks c.1200. The tower arch has three continuous chamfers, which suggests c.1300, and that agrees with the external evidence. - FONT. From Little Stukeley. Very large and very uncouth. Consequently called Saxon, though more probably C12. No decoration at all. - SCREENS. The screen to the S chapel is uncommonly good. It has broad ogee-headed divisions with tracery above. Four of the panels of the dado have PAINTINGS of c. 1500. Note the mannered elegance of St Edmund. - The screen to the N chapel is a little simpler. - SOUTH DOOR. With C14 tracery. - SCULPTURE. Small group of the Virgin and Child with the Baptist. White marble, by P. Romanelli, 1859. It is a copy after Raphael’s Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. - ST AI NED GLASS. In the S chapel one small complete figure; in the N chapel E window a few bits; C15. - PLATE. Large Cup, late C16, with engraved scenes of Daniel in the lions’ den and Habakkuk guided in the air by an angel; Cup of 1655 ; Almsdish of c.1660 with repoussé flowers and leaves; Paten C17; Silver-gilt Flagon 1750. - MONUMENTS. First Earl of Manchester d. 1642. Standing wall-monument with the impressive conceit of a marble table with an arched front but angle columns, a black top slab, and on it a white marble cushion with an inscription. Against the back wall, and as though quite a separate monument, the commemorative inscription flanked by two black columns. A third column stands on a bracket above and is crowned by a helmet with crest.* - To the l. and r. of this identical cartouches to his two wives: c.1658. The fleshy, gristly details are characteristic of the date. - Many tablets, the best to George Montagu d. 1780, signed J. Wilton, very sparse and elegant, with an urn on top. Put up by Frederick Montagu. - Consuelo Duchess of Manchester; 1912. White marble relief in the schiacciato technique, very Paris-Salon in style. She is seen surrounded by clouds and reaches up to two angels.

* Over the monument is a CEILURE, apparently ex situ (GMCH).

Font

Henry Montagu 1642 (2)

S chapel glass (2)

KIMBOLTON. Who could come and not be stirred by what has happened here? Here sleeps Sir Walter Raleigh’s judge, the man who doomed the founder of the British Empire, and here died the first unhappy queen of our royal Bluebeard, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Ferdinand and Isabella who sent Columbus to find America, a proud, defiant queen of whom no ill can be said.

We come to it by lovely country by the river Kym, delighted by the red roofs of the street that leads from the green, by the castle gate, to the noble church which has stood 600 years. It has a 13th century arcade with handsome pillars, a clerestory and a tower with a lofty spire all 14th century, and a 15th century porch.

We see the graceful spire long before we reach it. It has charming windows and a row of tiny faces peeping from the cornice. The beautiful doorway to the tower is set under four pairs of shafts and an arch with rich ornament. There are two doors which have been opening and shutting since Henry the Eighth was having his imperious way, and one as old as Agincourt. The door has still its ancient nails and tracery, though it bears the marks of bullets that riddled it in the Civil War, Cromwell’s bullets in Cromwell’s country.

Hanging from the chancel walls are the gloves and funeral helmets of the Montagus. One of them bought Kimbolton Castle in the year the Mayflower sailed, and his descendants have owned it since. He was Henry, Earl of Manchester, remembered in history as the man who sent Sir Walter Raleigh to the block. Here he sleeps.

Here sleep also, in elaborate monuments with cherubs holding shields, two of the five wives of the second earl; he was Edward, one of Cromwell’s generals at Edgehill and Marston Moor, who lived to welcome Charles the Second back. There is a monument with two angels to the 8th Duchess of Manchester, who was laid here in our time, and the chapel has a splendid window glowing with saints and martyrs in memory of William Montagu who died in 1890. Another window has Christ blessing the children.

A few fragments of old glass remain that have lost none of their beauty in 500 years; we noticed a star, a sun, and a rose, and a figure in a green robe under a robe lined with ermine. The roofs have some of the finest carving for miles around. On the wall bosses are archangels and apostles, angels and grotesques, and two 15th century screens have elaborate tracery and paintings of St Anne teaching the Madonna to read, Michael standing on a dragon, Edward the Martyr in gorgeous robes, and St Edmund looking rather odd in armour, holding an arrow which has pierced him. The roofs of the south chapel have fine bosses with roses, chalices, flowers, foliage, angels with musical instruments. One of the bosses has two hearts bound together, and there are such things as a mermaid, a group of eight bells, and a man riding a donkey. One of the rarest carvings of all is an angel on a beam, a gracious figure with folded wings and a jolly little  man above it.

There is an almsdish made when Huntingdon’s greatest son was dying, and a cup showing Daniel in the lion’s den, a rare bit of  Elizabethan craftsmanship. The font has been doing service for over a thousand years; it is Saxon.

Kimbolton Castle stands in 500 acres. It was made new 400 years ago and extended in the 18th century, but much of the inner wall, facing a spacious courtyard, belongs to the 16th century. The beautiful rain-water heads are 17th century. The north gate among the trees, and the gatehouse looking down High Street, were the work of Robert Adam of the 18th century. There is in the courtyard a very handsome stone staircase with balustrades of wrought-iron work.

Much impressive craftsmanship has survived the ages here, but it is not in these things that its interest for us lies. One of the saddest rooms in England is its green drawing-room, with portraits by Holbein of Henry the Eighth and his poor Catherine, who loved him more than he deserved. Here is the travelling trunk she brought with her on her last journeys, first from Ampthill to Buckden, where for a week she was at bay with her enemies, and then from Buckden to this castle. She was Queen of England yet she was not queen. She spent some of her last days in this castle. Here for two years she was a prisoner, suffering indignities which shocked all Europe then and shock us even now; and in this castle she died, out of her lord’s way at last, well knowing nothing would please him better.

News for Henry the Eighth

OUR royal Bluebeard was a merry man in January, 1536, for messengers came galloping to Greenwich to tell him that death had at last taken Catherine of Aragon who had for 27 years been his wife. He had now been three years married to Anne Boleyn and was tired of her and wooing Jane Seymour. “God be praised,” he exclaimed on learning that Catherine was no more.

The unhappy Catherine spent the last four years of her life here, friendless, deserted, ill, heartbroken, but not broken in spirit. Here she haughtily refused, though threatened with death, to defer to the decree making her Dowager Princess of Wales and her daughter Mary illegitimate. Threats and cajolery alike failed to shake her. Six times a mother, she had saved only one child, and Mary was kept from her to the end. Her servants were taken from her; she believed that she was being slowly poisoned; she knew that Henry and Anne hoped that Kimbolton would hasten her end.

To the last she persisted that she was Henry’s lawful wife and Queen of England, yet she did not hate her tyrant, neither did she fear him. She learned that poor priests, with Fisher and Sir Thomas More, were dragged to the block for denying the supremacy of the King, but she never faltered.

Shakespeare follows history closely in describing the closing scenes. Her touching speech bespeaking consideration for her servants, and commending Mary and begging him to give her virtuous breeding and a little love for her mother’s sake, was really her will, presented in the form of a petition to Henry, whom she blesses in her final word. And then the end:

Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell,
My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience,
You must not leave me yet; I must to bed;
Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench,
Let me be used with honour; strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
Then lay me forth; although unqueened, yet like
A queen and daughter to a king, inter me.


Catherine desired to be buried in a convent, but she was laid in Peterborough Cathedral. Henry did not pay the bequests which she, dying, had asked him to bestow upon her dependants.

The Judge Who Sent Raleigh to the Block

HENRY MONTAGU played many distinguished parts during his 40 years of public life, but the one scene which lives in the imagination is that tragic one in which as Lord Chief Justice he presided at the second trial of Raleigh. Broken and despairing, the great man, who had been reprieved on the block 15 years earlier, ostensibly guilty of new offences, was charged again with the old. The result was inevitable, and Montagu had to pronounce the melancholy words of doom. He showed nothing of rancorous hatred and discharged his fearful oflice with dignity and humanity.

He was a kindly and witty man, pliant and plausible, liking the popular cause yet supporting James’s assertion of the divine right of kings, and ingeniously defending the legality and propriety of Ship Money for the advantage of Charles, who reposed complete faith in him. His contemporaries considered him an entirely honest man, yet he paid £20,000 as a bribe to Buckingham for the post of Lord High Treasurer. We must judge a man by the moral code of his age, and Montagu was little worse than the best of his fellows.

Born at Boughton, Northampton, about 1563, he entered Parliament in 1601, and after 13 years as Recorder of London was made Chief Justice. He was associated with Bacon in the suppression of Customs abuses, had a foremost share in the investigation of Bacon’s misdoings. To sit in judgment on two such men as Raleigh and Bacon is a misfortune which has fallen to few judges in our history. Speaker of the House of Lords, Lord President of the Council, in sympathy with those who combated forced loans, yet active in enforcing them, Montagu needed all the subtlety of his mind to reconcile his conflicting functions. He was spared the testing time of the Civil War, for he died in 1642, after acting as one of the guardians of the realm during the absence of Charles in Scotland.

Having acquired a moderate fortune, he bought Kimbolton Castle. His son Edward, the Cromwellian Lord Manchester, was at first a potent force in the battles of the Commonwealth winning a great victory over Prince Rupert at Marston Moor.

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