EWELME.
THE reader need not fear that we are about to revive the miserable controversy which the title of our article will suggest. The question whether the Crown, acting by Mr. Gladstone, did indeed duly present, according to Act of Parlia-
ment, "a clerk, being a member of the Convocation of Oxford," to the Rectory of Eweline, has been more than sufficiently dis- cussed. The single good result of that discussion, as far as we know, has been that it has probably suggested to some few persons, as it did to the writer, a visit to a very picturesque place, a place which possesses historical associations of a peculiarly vivid and impressive kind.
Ewelme, "the Source of the Spring," for such is the meaning
of the word, is in a district which may be called the Chilterns proper.' Fhis name is sometimes given to a considerable part, if not to the whole, of the great range of chalk hil is which extends from Norfolk to Dorsetshire ; but the real Chilterns, the " Chiltern Hundreds," which pass through the hands of so strange a variety of Stewards, are here, the" half-hundred" of Ewelme being one of the five which constitute that imaginary domain. The range here is bare of the beautiful clothing of beech woods which adorns them in the south-eastern corner of Oxfordshire and in the neigh- bouring county of Buckingham, and has for the most part passed under the plough. Ewelme, consequently, has something of the look of a Down village nestling with its trees in a hollow among bare rolling hills. Its greenery is, however, made more than usually -vivid by the natural feature from which it takes its name. A genuine fountain, bubbling up perennially from the earth, is not a common sight anywhere in England, and among the Chilterns, a waterless country, as its inhabitants know totheircost, it is peculiarly rare. It rises, indeed, in a very unpretending way at the back of a cottager's garden, and might be taken for a water-cress ditch till you see the little swirling eddies where the water bursts out of the soil ; but it is strong and little influenced by drought, and a lover of springs, as any man who drinks the water of water companies may well be, may deem it worthy of a visit, which it might be as well, perhaps, to time for the summer. The village itself, with its broken ground and steep acclivities, dominated by the church and by a stately red-brick mansion in which we recognize the much-disputed rectory, is remarkably picturesque.
It is in the church, of course, that the chief interest of the place centres. Its architecture is not, indeed, particularly fine, being of that late Gothic which does not show to advantage, except in buildings of magnificent dimensions. It is not, •however, wanting in dignity, and it has the look, alas ! very rare in English churches, of being well preserved rather than
restored. But it is for its monuments that it is notable. The first of these that strikes the visitor's eye is the tomb of Thomas Chaucer, rich with gorgeous heraldic blazonry that it surprises us to find connected with the grandson of a trader. The armorial bearings of Beaufort, Barghersh, Montacute, Mohun, and Plantagenet are here to be seen, though Chaucer's connection with some of these houses was of what may be called a posthumous kind. So splendid, indeed, were the alliances of his family, that it was at one time quite within the range of possibilities that a descendant of the earliest of our poets might sit on the throne of England. Thomas Chaucer himself married the heiress of the Burghersh. His own heiress Alice was three times married, each time in an ascending scale of dignity. Her first marriage, if indeed it was more than a betrothal, was to a wealthy landowner, Sir John Phelip ; Sir John Phelip died of a dysentery contracted at the siege of Honfieur, and made way for Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who was killed at Agincourt. At her father's death Alice was a widow, not yet twenty-six years of age, and she shortly afterwards married William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, a cousin of the Nevilles. It was in this third husband of its heiress that Ewelme found its patrones. Its church was erected by him. A curious token of his regard for the unfortunate master whom he served still exists on its walls. Close above the font is a crowned head which, if tradition may be trusted, represents the features of Henry VI. The face bears a strong resemblance to the well- known lineaments of the Plantagenets, though it is somewhat flattened and weakened from the noble type which we see in the Edwards. Another memorial of William de la Pole exists in the- ; almshouse which be and his duchess founded for "two chaplains and thirteen poor men," endowing it with manors of the annual value of £59. The foundation escaped the rapacity of the reforming ! nobles, and still exists, probably a doubtful blessing to Ewelme. Its outward aspect seems to have been little changed, and its. cloisters and quadrangle furnish an interesting specimen of the humbler domestic architecture of the period. Less than two years. afterthe final settlement of the almshouse, Suffolk met with his end, an end remarkably tragical even in those days of blood. One of the curious " Pesten Letters" tells us how, journeying as a banished man to France, he met with a ship called Nicholas of the- Tower (a soothsayer not unwise in his craft had bidden him beware of the " Tower "), and how "he was drawn out of the great ship into a boat, and there was an axe and a stock ; and mea- d the lewdest of the ship bade him lay down his head and he should be fairly ferd with, and die on a sword. And took a rusty sword, and smote of his head within half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet, and his doublet of velvet mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover ; and some say his head, was set on a pole by it, and his men sit on the land by great circumstance and pray. And the sheriff of Kent doth watch the body." Duchess Alice, who was confirmed by the King in all the possessions of her husband, survived him for twenty-five years -- Her alabaster tomb, beautifully preserved, is the most conspicuous object in Ewelme Church. The Duchess lies under a canopy of stone carved with angels and saints, in her mantle of estate, with the rare ornament of the Garter round her left arm, while below,. angels, eight on either side of the tomb, hold shields blazoned with all the heraldic bearings of her house. Bound as she was to the House- of Lancaster, she had turned in good time to worship the rising sun. of York, and had found there an alliance for her son, which was to- turn out as fatal as it was splendid. This son, Duke John, contrived,. indeed, to escape in his own person the perils that followed from his marriage with Elizabeth Plantagenet. Edward IV. held him in high favour, Richard III. nominated his eldest son in the succession to the- throne, and he himself assisted at the coronation of Henry VII.. But the ruin of his house was at hand, and Ewelme was to know the De la Poles no more. The eldest son, the Earl of Lincoln, had' fallen at Stoke, fighting for Latnbert Simnel ; the second, a tur- bulent, unsteady sort of person, was found guilty of murder, fled from England, was pardoned, and returned, and then fled, again. Finally Henry contrived to cajole him into coming back, put him into the 'rower, and left him as a legacy to his successor car much the same conditions as David left Joab to Solomon. The- third son, Richard, fell at Pavia. Those who visited the Ashmo- lean Museum, before it had been improved off the face of the earth, may remember the curious contemporary picture. of that battle, with the prostrate figure and the label attached, Le Due de Susfoc, dit Blance Rose. This was the tragical ending of the De is Poles. Ewelme passed into the- possession of the Crown. Edward VI. gave it to his sister Elizabeth. Just before the melancholy end of the great Queen's reign, we hear that "the Earl of Essex is gone to Ewelme, not without hopes of some further grace shortly." In. 1609, we are told that the "capital mansion of Ewelme," the seat of the De la Poles, "was completely ruined and in decay." Some- remains of it still exist, built up into a more modern edifice.. Whatever celebrity Ewelme has had since the sixteenth century it has owed to its connection with Oxford. King James I., who was fond of endowing in this inexpensive fashion, attached the Rectory to the Regius Professorship of Divinity, and the Master- ship of the Almshouse to the Professorship of Medicine. Ewelme has enjoyed a succession of Rectors always respectable and some- times learned, and on the whole, one is pleased to find, remembers. them with respect. Parliament has now severed the connection,. and Ewelme will henceforth be nothing more than an ordinary country parish, except for the inconvenient distinction of a mansion-like rectory which obviously requires the revenues of a canonry to support it.
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