Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
New Bridge,
Map: Fyfield
A pleasant road leads away from New Bridge southward into Berkshire; broad and firm enough and with just sufficient ascent to make you square your shoulders at it and march. At the top of the hill there are glimpses of an almost complete circle of splendid landscape. Fyfield lies a mile east at the cross roads, so hidden amongst its immemorial elms that you are within it before you are fully aware. The church of St. Nicholas is a handsome little structure mostly in the Decorated style of modern rebuilding, having most unhappily been burnt out in 1893. Some of the old walls, however, still remain. On the north side is the Golafre chantry founded in 1442, with a recumbent effigy of John Golafre, the founder, in plate armour; the first man ever called esquire, says Fuller. Beneath him lies a skeleton horrible Death, only the more grimly fascinating for its marvellous workmanship. There is a quite appreciable number of examples of these memorials known, one of which is that of the Duchess of Suffolk in Ewelme church. The common people of Lysons' day called it "Gulliver's tomb," and declared the top figure shewed the man in youth and vigour, and the lower one in his old age. The Golafre family settled here in the early part of the fourteenth century. The first Sir John was buried in Fyfield in 1363; Thomas, the next heir, in 1378, and a second Sir John, by whom the chantry was founded, in 1441; though some say Thomas was buried amongst the Dominicans by Folly Bridge. The latter Sir John was twice sheriff of Oxford, in 1399 and again in 1413; and helped, with Thomas Chaucer who is said to have designed it, to erect the lovely cross at Abingdon which stood for over two hundred years until Waller (as I said) destroyed it the third day after his repulse at New Bridge, in what looks like a fit of spite; he hired stonemasons to saw it down. This same Sir John was chosen by King Richard II to convey to chivalric Froissart the royal souvenir of a silver goblet filled with a hundred nobles. And now lies here, with the mocking Death beneath him. He, like his neighbour Sir Peter Besils, was actively interested in the building of the bridge at Abingdon.
Both the effigy and the skeleton are much mutilated "the roof fell in on Gulliver" during the fire; so also is a mural tablet to George Dale, principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, from 1587 to 1591.
This chantry not only maintained its proper priest. but served also to support five poor men. In addition to housing each bedesman received eightpence a week in cash, equal to over six shillings in modern money, an annual suit of livery, and a quarter of coal. The yearly income was £20 1 5s. ; of which the priest received about a third. More than two thousand of these chantries were abolished at the Dissolution. Stow comments: "It was (sayeth mine author) a pitifull thing to heare the lamentation that the people in the country made for them; for there was great hospitalitie kept among them, and as it was thought more than ten thousand persons, masters and servants, had lost their livings by the putting downe of those houses at that time. " And in Aubrey's Collections you may read: "Before the Reformation there were no poors-rates, the charitable doles given at religious houses, and church-ale in every parish, did the business. In every parish there was a church-house. Here the housekeepers met and were merry, and gave their charity. The young people came there too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc. There were few or no almshouses before the time of King Henry the Eighth. In every church was a poor-man's box, and the like at great inns. "
Poorhouses were directed from the ninth century and earlier, under a canon called but not really Nicene, to be established in every cathedral city, not "for cowherds and swineherds, but for infirm and poor persons, and of the same lordship. " Indigent relatives of the clergy might honourably participate; but no present or harvest work was to be stipulated for in return. The ancient feud between the seculars and regulars sprang partly from the monks, as "Christ's poor," insinuating themselves into first a share, and then the entire possession, of these ecclesiastical charities. And not one single instance can be traced, says the Victoria History of Oxfordshire, of the dispensing of bread and money being continued as a charge upon the properties by those to whom they fell. All was seized with the monasteries and the estates; and the distress must have been terrible. So Blind Ignorance, in Percy, gazing upon a ruined abbey, chants in broad Somerset:
Chill tell thee what, good vellowe,
Before the vriers went hence,
A bushel! of the best wheate
Was zold vor vourteen pence
And vorty eggs a penny,
That were both good and newe
And this che zay my self have zeene,
And yet ich am no Jewe.
The original Decorated sedilia and handsome piscine may still be seen in the church, and in the windows is some quite admirable flowing tracery. An altar tomb upon the north wall, familiarly known as the "Gorgon tomb," opens a most romantic history. It has neither brasses nor inscription; you may see the grooves in the stone whence they have been torn; but it is the resting-place of Lady Katherine Gordon, the White Rose of Scotland, daughter of the second Earl of Huntley. She was given in marriage about 1496 by her cousin, James IV of Scotland, to Perkin Warbeck, in whose pretensions to the English throne the Scottish king at first strongly believed, and towards whom he seems to have acted with much nobility to the very end. After her husband's lack of courage, or of fortune, at Taunton, and subsequent surrender at Beaulieu, she herself was captured and "brought to the king, Henry VII, in an honourable manner, on account of her noble birth. " Having "addressed a few words of sympathy to her, called forth no less by her beauty and youth, than by her tears and affliction, he caused Perkin to repeat to her the confession he had already made"; a confession possibly invented, and extorted almost certainly, only under fear of death. After his execution in 1499 Lady Katherine was provided for by the gift of the manor of Fyfield, on condition that she should not leave England except with royal consent. She then married Sir Matthew Cradock of Cardiff, having obtained the king's permission to reside in Wales. When he died the inscription written up over his tomb in Swansea ran "Here lieth Sir Mathie Cradok and Mi Ladi Katerin his Wife. " She however eluded him; and is believed to have married twice more; first James Strangeways and then Christopher Ashton, the former probably, the latter certainly, of Fyfield. Strangeways comes before Cradock in some accounts, By her will in 1537 she desires her "bodie to be buried in the parishe church of Fifeld aforesaide in suche place as shal be thought necessarie and mete by the discretion of my husband."
The great further point of interest is that by her wedding with Warbeck she became, however dubiously, prospective queen of England. So also was an heiress of the Golafre family, reputedly buried here though I could not hear the certainty, the wife of that John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, whom Richard III before his defeat and death on Bosworth field had designated his successor. It is indeed an interesting hold upon history this Berkshire village possesses two queens manquées.
The only hitches in the Gordon story are that in the Additions and Corrections in Lysons' Berkshire a bald statement occurs that it was a sister of Lady Katherine who married Perkin Warbeck; and also that the lady does not mention Warbeck in her will, for a perhaps obvious reason, however; although she names the other three. The will reads, after the usual Latin invocation and the date: "I Lady Katherin Gordon, Wife of Xpofer Assheton of Fyfelde, sometyme Wife unto James Strangwis late of Fyfelde aforesaide deceased [and executrix of his will] And also late Wife unto my dere and welbelovyd husband Sir Mathew Cradock of Cardiff in Wales deceased [and executrix of his will also], bequethe my soule" etc. And it is curious to note that Sir Mathew, in his own will, refers to his wife as "Dame Katherine Cradocke otherwise Dame Kateryne Gordon. " However, as I say, she may for an obvious and very sufficient reason have suppressed all reference to her first husband: having married him as "Prince Richard of England" she would not acknowledge his private deceit and public imposture by styling him Perkin Warbeck; and to refer to him as Prince Richard of York would be high treason. Possibly it may have been in consequence of some doubt in their minds as to the lady's identity that the present descendants of the Gordon family refused, as I understand, to assist in the renovation of the tomb after the fire. John Ford, in his tragedy Perkin Warbeck, published in 1634 within a century of her death, depicts Lady Katherine as "the very embodiment of sweet and devoted womanhood," staunch and affectionate to her unfortunate husband to the last.
Cath. Oh, my loved lord can any scorn be yours
In which I have no interest? My life's dearest,
Forgive me I have stayed too long for tendering
Attendance on reproach yet bid me welcome ...
War. Report and thy deserts, thou best of creatures,
Might to eternity have stood a pattern
For every virtuous wife. . .
Cath. Be what these people term thee, I am certain
Thou art my husband, no divorce in Heaven
Has been sued out between us ...
Or we will love or let us die together.
The south porch is very original and attractive with its high graceful pinnacles at the sides and centre. Close by a sort of rockery has been made of an ancient font, in the bowl of which a shrub is growing. There is a built up Norman doorway on the north side.
On the west outer wall is an inscription, the first part of which seems worth reproducing.
Interr'd beneath this stone does lie
A Maid of pure simplicity,
Of comly Form, of manners mild,
In sense mature, in Love a child
The Softtness of the Female kind
Smil'd in her Looks, and Spake her mind.
O ever good and dute'ous Maid
Where is thy Art of pleasing fled?
Thy native Art, thy simple Skill,
Instructive now, delighting still!
Say, lovely SUSAN, gentle Maid!
Where are thy soft endearments fled?
The poet then degenerates into classicalities, with which you will very contentedly dispense.
A fine fourteenth century manor house stands near the churchyard, always in the style of Yarnton and Northmoor, but hardly perhaps their equal in beauty. It was originally the work of the first Sir John Golafre. The village is first heard of as Fifhide in 956 under King Edwy, being then granted to the great monastery at Abingdon, which eats up so many of us little places. It was Fyvehide in Domesday, that old record of sworn declarations made by juries in every hundred of the land. You must not fail to see the extremely well done signboard of the White Hart.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
New Bridge,
Map: Fyfield