The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West. W. H. Hamilton Rogers
in arrear, "ad completionem cantarie de Biry." (Oliver.)
A glance into the chancel, although five centuries have flown, brings us face to face with the Founder and his wife. There—marvellously preserved—humbly postured on one knee, his glowing tinted proportions, amid the crimson interlacery, and quarrels of pale-pencilled leaflets, that fill the east window, arrayed in gilded chain-mail, silver genouillères and sword-hilt, with the armories of his race, the dark bend and gleaming horse-shoes traversing both ailette and surcoat. In his raised hands he bears the offering of a grand church, having three spires, and over his head runs a legend that apparently reads "(SYR) E WILL'S FERREYS ME FECIT." Fronting him in the adjoining light, with hands uplifted in prayer, kneels his wife Matilda Carminow, in snowy wimple and cover-chief, pink boddice and sleeves, with the broad bend of her husband's arms embroidered on her golden robe. The inscription above her head, seems to be confused and undecipherable. Studding the borders of the lights, interspersed among other ornaments, are the arms of Ferrers and Carminow, and a grand escutcheon similarly charged, and encircled with beautiful green-foliaged ornament occurs below.
Thus much for the history of the foundation of the arch-presbytery as depicted in the window; immediately beneath on the north side of the altar, upon a raised tomb of plain character, rest the recumbent effigies of the Founder and his wife, carved in stone, and habited almost exactly in duplicate of the figures limned on the glass above. Over them rises a beautiful pyramidal canopy, cusped below, flanked by pinnacles rising from the ground, the whole richly foliaged and finialed. In the upper spandrels are angels swinging censers.[5] But the peculiarity of this memorial consists in the lower portion of the canopy being cut through the wall, and opening to the side-chapel or chamber that adjoins the chancel on that side, where its elevation is repeated, as in the church, but with much less ornament.
In the transept, which appears to be coeval with the chancel, in the east wall is a piscina, and the moulding immediately adjoining, marks the position of an altar that once had its position there. In a recess beneath a finely moulded arch at the north end under the window, is the effigy of a knight in chain-mail and surcoat, with shield, and hands grasping his sword, cross-legged—the head raised and supported on a large bascinet-shaped helmet. The legs are destroyed to the knees, and of the lion on which his feet rested, only the paws remain. This figure is of contemporary date with the Founder in the chancel, with great probability is a Ferrers, and may represent his father, who was on the bede-roll of the foundation.
Here concludes our notices of the memorials of Ferrers, the first of the influential families Blanche Willoughby represented. Our next care, will, if it may be, to note any traces of the equally antient race that succeeded them at Beer, and gave to her, her maiden name of Champernowne.
One only, humble but characteristic, remains, now ousted from its original position in the pavement of the church, to the yard outside, where it must speedily pass to decay. It is a flat stone, on which is incised a Calvary cross on degrees, having at the intersection the Sacred Heart rayonné, inscribed with the Sacred Monogram. Below is this inscription—
Hic iacet Roger Champnow'e Armiger
cui' a'i'e p'p'cietur de' ame'
This was the eldest brother of John Champernowne, to whom he succeeded at Beer, and uncle to Blanche Willoughby. Roger died 14 November, 1422.
Following these, our investigations naturally carry us on to note such remembrances of Willoughby as occur in the sacred edifice. There are several, actual and inferred, but our jottings must be stayed for the present, as the first memorial to that noble race is found elsewhere—and our steps will return here after a while to conclude them.
Again we have recourse to our little craft, and crossing the bright Tamar, land on the Cornish side, and thence by a circuitous and winding lane of considerable length, find ourselves on the high road about halfway between the old half-maritime, half-inland borough of Saltash, and the equally antient half-mining, half-agricultural borough of Callington. As we steadily climb the gentle but continual ascent that leads to the old tinners' town, a grand and varied prospect surrounds us. Immediately in front looms the immense pyramidal mass of Hingston Down and Kit Hill rising over it, in all near eleven hundred feet above the tidal marge of the blue sea that gleams behind us, its crest garnished with many a tall chimney stack, the out-growth of that glamour of wealth so invincibly dear to the Cornishman's heart, that is always coming, but so seldom arrives, and whose witchery has been handed down from countless generations even long before old Leland's foot passed over it, and he made note of it as "being a hy hylle, and nere Tamar yn the easte part, baryn of his self, yt it is fertile by yielding of tynne both by water and dry warkes." Hence the distich,
"Hengston Down well yrought,
Is worth London Town dear ybought,"
but whose smokeless chimneys now stand as the witness-ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of buried treasure sunk aforetime within its vast bosom, yet nevertheless rich to a degree in mineral wealth, and boundless resource of granite and clay of the finest quality, from which considerable returns have been made. To the right in the far distance rise the shadowy tors of Dartmoor in successive range, melting back and merging into the grey realms of cloud-land. On the left, clear cut into the bright evening sky, appears the magnificent boldly outlined mass of the Caradons, behind which the sun has just dipped, and a blue ærial haze of singular beauty and varying density, stretches down their side and unites them to the broad valley beneath. We pass the skirt of Viverdon Down, an immense common, susceptible of better cultivation, but now a fastness for game only, and rough food for young animals; albeit gay in its appointed season with wealth of heather and gorse, and, if neglected by man, glorified by the unseen touch of the Infinite—
"How full of love must He
In all things be,
Who strews with beauty e'en the waste and wold
Who gives the moorland lark
His purple heath-bower dark;
The mountain bee, his wilderness of gold."
Quietly continuing our way, a short distance further brings us to the apex of the ascent, and as we begin to descend, before us is the 'tynner's towne' of Callington, with its granite-built, expressively-pinnacled church tower rising well above the clustering houses that surround it.
Here, at Callington, Lord Willoughby de Broke held another large property by right of his wife as a descendant of Ferrers, and also at South-Hill, as being himself the representative of the family of Stafford. Lysons says—
"The manor of Callington was in the Ferrers family when the market was granted in 1267 by Henry III.; Joan daughter of Martyn Ferrers, brought it into the Champernowne family, Lord Willoughby de Broke became possessed of it by marrying their heiress. It appears that he occasionally resided, and that he died, at the Manor-house of Callington, for he directed in his will he should be buried in the church of that parish in which he should die. From Willoughby it passed by successive marriages to Paulet, Marquis of Winchester (who married his grand-daughter Elizabeth), Dennis, Rolle, Walpole, and Trefusis. At Southill, two-thirds of the great manor or franchise of Callilond or Kalliland, to which the church of Southill is appendant, which belonged formerly to the baronial family of Stafford, and passed by a coheiress to Willoughby Lord Broke, and now vested in Trefusis."
Where the Manor-house mentioned by Lysons was situate cannot now be determined, but it is surmised to have been a building, which has long wholly disappeared, and was called Chickett-Hall, that formed Lord Willoughby de Broke's residence at Callington, and where he presumably departed this life. He was patron of the important benefice of South-Hill, and in its daughter church of Callington he was buried. But according to Sir R. C. Hoare he died at Wardour Castle, Wilts, which he had purchased.
Lord Broke made his will 19 August, 1502, and "ordered his body to be buried in that parish wherein he should happen to die appointing that part of the issues and profits of Mitton and Kelmesham, &c., Co. Worcester, and the Manors of Helmingham, Thorpe-Latimer, Skredyngton, Heckington, Ledynghall and Swynehead in Com: Lincoln (then lately belonging to Lord Latimer) should be employed, by the space of twenty years next after his decease, to the finding of a priest to sing in the parish church of Hoke in Com: