Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  Eventually, the record says, “ The one use of the inventory was to let the world know what my Lord Arundel lost and what these rebels gained”.

  So Lady Arundell at least preserved intact the castle itself, and the ruin to be seen today is the result of the second siege described in Edmund Ludlow’s memoirs. Ludlow had been left in charge of the castle for the Parliament, and he says he “had resolved to run all hazzards in the discharge of that trust which I have undertaken”. This siege was a far longer process than the first one and it is described with considerable self-glorification, and finally it tells how Lord Arundell, besieging the castle from outside, was at last compelled to demolish the greater part of the building himself in order to save it from continuing to act as a stronghold of the rebels.

  “The brave and beautiful Lady Blanche Arundell”, as she is called in Gardiner’s History of the Great Civil War, died at Winchester in 1649, her son Henry, the third Lord Arundell, having already succeeded his father in 1643. When the war was over, he built the house against the south bailey wall of the ruined castle, and this was the family home till 1776, when the architect, James Payne, completed the new Wardour upon which he had been working for about six years for the eighth Lord Arundell. It had a fine site and is a very good example of the classical building of the period; it has a splendid chapel and many treasures and objets d’art.

  The fourth Lord Arundell kept the earliest pack of foxhounds of which there is any record, between 1690 and 1700, and memoranda exist to prove that they occasionally hunted from Wardour Castle and from Breamore. They remained in the family until close on 1746, when the sixth Lord Arundell died and left them to his nephew, the Earl of Castlehaven. In 1792 the pack was sold to the celebrated Hugo Meynell of Quorndon Park in Leicestershire.

  After the passing of the Test Act in 1643, Catholics were relegated to the obscurity of private life, till the sixteenth Lord Arundell showed himself worthy of the family tradition of heroism and patriotism, for which he gave his life in 1944.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WILTON HOUSE

  THE grandeur of Wilton Abbey was on the wane when Henry VIII presented it in 1541 to William Herbert, whom Aubrey, writing nearly two hundred years later, was to describe as merely “a mad, fighting young fellow”; but Henry knew what he wanted out of people, and he knew how to get what he wanted. He had a wide circle of acquaintances, most of whom had already played their part in national life during the unsettled days after the Wars of the Roses. Herbert had commanded the English army at the Battle of St Quentin, and Henry knew him also to be a good business man. He was, and he was an astute politician as well; but in the present day his importance in the history of Wilton lies chiefly in the fact that he and the family which he founded here were many of them of great architectural taste. William Herbert did not actually take possession of Wilton until the spring of 1544, and in the meantime his friend Hans Holbein died in 1543. William had already pulled down most of the abbey buildings and, according to tradition, had invited Holbein to design a house for him. The famous painter and designer did not live to see the house which, it is believed, was completed in the 1550s. The ground plan of Wilton remains today as it came out of the mind of Holbein, and the first Wilton House can still be seen in a sketch made by the scribe who in 1566 wrote out the “ Survey of the lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke”. This somewhat crude drawing gives a completely recognisable impression of the house as it is today. In spite of several fires, the strong original conception has held its own. It was in the Holbein house that “Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother” created what Aubrey called a “College, there were so many learned and ingeniose persons. She was the greatest patronesse of witt and learning of any lady in her time.” Beneath the exquisite Holbein porch, now set up as a casino in the park, there passed many poets and artists, among them being, as well as Sidney himself, Spenser, Massinger, Marlowe, Daniel, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Isaak Walton and George Herbert. Greatest of all, William Shakespeare, it is said, came here himself, and the play As You Like It was first performed in the old house. There was a wonderful library, which consisted mostly of French and Italian romances in the days of Philip Sidney and his sister, and the first two Lord Pembrokes had already collected many fine pictures, which were unfortunately destroyed in the fire of 1647. Before this the south front of the house had been rebuilt by the de Caux brothers, who made the enormous formal garden facing this façade. The fire of 1647 had hardly ceased to smoulder before Inigo Jones was on the spot, ready to create what is still one of the grandest of English houses. The suite of seven state rooms is still practically as he left it, though, like his predecessor Holbein, he did not live to see his house completed. It was finished by Webb, his pupil, and there can still be seen at Wilton six of the working drawings which show the harmony between the two men. Their joint explanatory notes are most revealing. Between the years 1800–15 the effect of Wyatt’s period as architect in chief was as disastrous as any fire. He pulled down quite half the rooms, including the magnificent banqueting hall, said to be as noble as the one at Whitehall. The seven state rooms, which open out of each other and form part of the east and the whole of the south front and which were designed to show off the Van Dyck portraits and other famous pictures, still contain the carving, plaster work and gilding as left by Inigo Jones and Webb. These rooms are a supreme triumph of team work between the architects and the painters of the ceilings, Edward Pierce, Thomas de Critz and others, all of whom have here risen to the height of their powers. The great family picture by Van Dyck of Philip, the fourth Lord Pembroke, with his second wife, his children, son-in-law and daughter-in-law, occupies practically the whole of one end of the room, and over the mantelpiece is a charming group of three of the children of Charles I. On each side of it are Van Dyck’s portraits of the third and fourth Earls, “the incomparable pair of brethren” to whom Shakespeare’s first Folio was dedicated, and above the doors at the west end of the room are portraits of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. This “ Van Dyck Room”, as the Double Cube might as truly be called, in a way makes the Wilton pictures into a collection, for no picture here is an individual. Every one falls into the general scheme.

  The house also contains a fine portrait of the first Lord Pembroke, and many pictures by Reynolds, Beechey, Lawrence, Wilson, Scott, Lambert and others of the English School, while there are superb examples of Rubens, Tintoretto, Claude, Mabuse, Van der Goes, Hals, Honthorst, Van der Velde and Rembrandt, to mention only a few of the better known.

  The Double and Single Cube rooms contain furniture, upholstered in red velvet, designed by William Kent and other eighteenth century craftsmen, magnificently adapted to the decoration of the walls, and throughout the house are found fine cabinets, tables and mirrors by Chippendale.

  The grounds contain many specimens of the garden architecture in which the eighteenth century excelled. Chief of these is the famous Palladian Bridge built by Henry, the architect earl, and Roger Morris in 1736-7. Placed about the park are buildings by Chambers and some of the Arundel marbles. Mazarin’s collection of busts still stands in the house on their original pedestals, while his gems and intaglios which were bought by Thomas, Lord Pembroke, are now also there again. They disappeared for about a hundred years, after being secretly deposited in Child’s Bank by the beautiful Lady Pembroke whom Reynolds painted. She wisely suspected that the next heir to the earldom would sell these if he could get his hands upon them. He did not, and they are now safely at Wilton again.

  LONGLEAT

  Longleat was built on the site of a small priory of Black Canons, which was founded about 1270. It was a humble little place, and when it was bought by Sir John Thynne in 1540, the price he paid was only £53. But he saw its possibilities. The Black Canons had evidently possessed some taste for the splendour which was afterwards to spring up on the piece of ground formerly occupied by their cells. This splendour was displayed in their vestments, which are described in a Latin inventory
printed by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Among these was a robe of light red, figured over with birds in darker red; a gown of white silk worked in with birds in gold; a scarlet chasuble powdered over with stags in gold; and a cape of green velvet covered with griffins. The new owner of Longleat was an intimate friend of, and coadjutor to, the Protector Somerset; and because of this connection he was able to buy a good deal more property beyond his original purpose, and so built up the estate of Longleat almost as it is today. The actual building is also due to a certain extent to Thynne’s connection with the Protector, for this must have brought him into contact with that illusory but magnificent architect, John of Padua, who some people say never existed. Why this should be I know not, for in 1544 Henry VIII sent for one John of Padua from Italy and made him “The Deviser of his Majesty’s Buildings”. In a deed which still exists, the Deviser was given a stipend of two shillings a day, and at the King’s death the Duke of Somerset continued this salary. He also appointed John of Padua to be architect of the original Somerset House in the Strand, which while it existed was always said to be like Longleat. It is fitting that a great house in a style hitherto unknown in England should be designed by an architect equally unknown. Longleat was not in the anglicised Italian style later invented by Inigo Jones and completely at home in our countryside; it remains an Italian palace of the Renaissance. Seen from a distance, one is struck by the simplicity of the ground plan, a vast square with no obvious ornamentation. As one approaches, the splendour of the palace shines out from the elaborate enrichment of its surface: its many windows set between pilasters, and separated by the entablatures of the various orders which are carried in courses along the whole front.

  Although successive owners have made a good many alterations in the house, its main character is unchanged, and must remain so.

  Sir John Thynne began the building of Longleat in 1566, and it was finished thirteen years later. The original Dutch garden was made for the first Viscount Weymouth (1682–1714) and an engraving of it exists by Kip. It is thus described by Mr Jackson:

  “Groves and long avenues, with vistas and artificial mounds, were planted; the original leat was widened at intervals into fish-ponds all rigorously angular; flower beds were described in chequered and geometric figures; the very gooseberry and currant bushes in the kitchen garden were drilled to grow in squares or parallelograms, trimmed up as stiff and stately as lords and ladies at the court of the Hague. From the front door of the house, a long raised terrace, on a level with the highest step, projected forward to the entrance gates.”

  Fifty years later this fashion was extinct, and the third Lord Weymouth called in “ Capability” Brown to make an English garden in the new style. Most of the planting at Longleat is still the result of this capable man’s work.

  In spite of the grandeur of the house, the most interesting room in Longleat is still the long simple library at the top of the house called Bishop Ken’s Library. It has a wonderful atmosphere of simplicity, learning and piety. Lord Weymouth had been at Oxford with the Bishop, who in 1697 fell into disfavour as a non-juror and was deprived of his bishopric of Bath and Wells. Lord Weymouth then welcomed him at Longleat for his life, and in memoirs of the time there are wonderful pictures of the old Bishop in his retirement, surrounded by visitors including the most interesting people of the day. It has been said that the books in Bishop Ken’s Library were all brought there by the Bishop himself, but this is not so. His host was also a great book-lover and already had a fine library of his own. When Ken died, his executor, William Hawkins of Sarum Close, wrote to Lord Weymouth that by his will, “ now in my custody (and which I shall copy from) he gives to your Lordship all his books of which your Lordship has not the duplicates, as a memoriall of his gratitude for the signall and continued favours … the remainder of his books are bequeathed in several”.

  Bishop Ken’s Library does indeed contain many of the most precious possessions of Longleat, although they didn’t all come from the Bishop. They include many original manuscripts connected with the history of Wiltshire and of the country as a whole, some magnificent illuminated and other handwritten books; but most of the priceless printed first editions are in the library downstairs. Bishop Ken’s Library was examined and catalogued by Canon Jackson in the last century, and his own description of his manner of working and of its consequences must be copied here.

  “I was one day very busy working by myself in arranging papers in the Old Library, at the top of Longleat House, and I happened to be trying to fasten together two sheets of a pedigree which had parted company. All tables being covered with piles of papers, I laid it on the floor. Old vellum that has been rolled up close for perhaps 200 years, is, I must assure you, a very obstinate and rebellious article to deal with. So, having gummed together the edges of the two sheets, kneeling with one knee on one corner, the other knee on a second corner, and one hand on a third, I wanted a weight to keep down the fourth. I was within a yard or so of the bookshelves, but I was afraid to get up from my position, because, if I had, my pedigree would most certainly have sprung up after me. So, looking out for some shabby old volume that would take no great harm by a tumble on to the floor, I spied one without any binding, I gave a desperate jerk, could just hook it with the tip of my forefinger, and down it came. As it came down, a loose leaf flew out to a distance. I did not look to see what the book was till it had done its duty. I then examined it, and found it was a small French Bible, having the motto of the Seymour family, ‘Foy pour devoir’, written at the top of the title page, and the name ‘E. Hertford’, written at the bottom. On picking up the loose leaf, I found that the little book was actually the very Bible used by the Earl of Hertford and Lady Katharine Grey in the Tower of London; and on the loose leaf were written by the Earl the entries of the births of the two sons, Edward Lord Beauchamp, and Thomas Seymour; followed by a truly pathetic prayer, in French, for God’s blessing on them, and that Queen Elizabeth’s heart might be moved to have pity on the poor parents.”

  Among the many curious old Wiltshire papers at Longleat is a collection of documents relating to Wulfhall which had descended to the Duke of Somerset through the marriage of his ancestor with the heiress of the Esturmy family. Here can be found a complete account of the establishment of a great lord of the time—number of servants, wages of each and many prices. There is also a record of the arrangements made for the marriage of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, which took place in the great barn at Wulfhall, and also a detailed account of the King’s visit there after her death and shortly before his next marriage. All these Somerset papers naturally came into the hands of John Thynne through his connection with the Seymour family. There is also a touching letter from Queen Mary to Sir John Thynne when her bridegroom, Philip of Spain, was on the point of arriving in England. She says she does “much desier to have him both at his landing and in all other places of his passage well and honorably used and enterteyned as to the estate of so great a Prince, and the propinquitie of bloud and straite alliaunce betwene us apperteynith”.

  Although Philip was naturally expected to land at Southampton or Portsmouth, the Queen, “ yet doubting how the winde and wether may serve and that therefore it may chaunce him to land at Bristow or in some other our portes in the west countrey”, prays Sir John to be ready to meet him accompanied by other “personages of honour”, and to take order that “things necessarie for him and his trayne may be supplied in all places as honorably as may be”. These anxious arrangements were not called into effect, as Philip landed at Southampton.

  Some of the most interesting of these Wiltshire papers describe the local arrangements made to meet the Spanish Armada in 1588. These were issued by the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir John Danvers, and preparations against this invasion were very detailed.

  For instance:

  “Give direction for the mustering and exercising in martial feats of arms such as were last year trained and reduced into bands.

  To take a
view of the horsemen, and appoint Captaynes over them allotting to everie captayn a cornett, which cornetts are to be clad in cassocks of one colour.

  To appoint certain carriages for victualls and other necessary things for everie one of the severall bands, as also carriages for the pioneers.

  To see the beacons erected and well-kept.

  That especiall care be likewise had to discern all Papists and other suspected persons.

  It shall also be necessary that an oath be administered as well to the trained souldiers as to the captaynes.

  Two thousand men are ordered to be ready at an hour’s warning, to go either from London, or wherever else may be appointed.

  They make sure account Englande is to be theirs, and without fighting; surely their hope is upon treason (which God forbid).”

  There are careful instructions as to the charge of the beacon on Cley Hill; and the different branches of the service were each provided with their own weapons. Pitt carefully studied these regulations when planning the defence of England against Napoleon, and they are also particularly interesting in view of war preparations in this county in 1938. None of these engagements came off.

  There are many papers at Longleat about the adventures of that romantic creature Lady Arabella Stuart; and there is also a curious document dated 1686 concerning the pedigree of the first Duke of Marlborough. With it is a letter from the Duke himself, saying that he had been slandered by a paper called the Observator, written by some “rogue who is set on by Lord Havershame, if I can’t have justice done for me, I must find some friend that will break his, and the printer’s bones, which I hope will be approved on by all honest Englishmen, since I have served my Queen and country with all my heart”.