SANDLEFORD PRIORY, BERKS.
Sandleford Priory was founded for Austin Canons by Geoffrey, 4th Count of Perche, and his wife, Matilda of Saxony, grand-daughter of Henry II. of England, and niece of King Richard Cœur de Lion, and King John, before the year 1205. The town and manor of Newbury, in Berkshire, were bestowed on the first Count of Perche, who accompanied the Conqueror to England. The Priory was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. A dispute arising between the Prior and Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury and Dean of Windsor about 1480, the religious forsook the house, and King Edward IV. allowed the Priory to be annexed to the Chapel of St. George’s, Windsor. In the Ayscough Register, folio 50, will be found an account of irregular and scandalous behaviour of the Prior of that period, which probably was the cause of the disruption. The Priory now formed a parcel of the properties of the Dean and Canons of Windsor, and it is stated by the commissioners of Henry VIII. (vide c. 3, Henry VIII.) to be worth £10 annually.
In the reign of James I. Sandleford was declared to be a separate parish from Newbury, and not subject to tithes which had hitherto been paid to the Rector of Newbury. After this a commutation was made that the lessee of the house paid £8 a year to the Rector of Newbury, and for that sum had a pew in perpetuity. It is stated that after this award the chapel of the Priory was allowed to fall into decay. This chapel was separate from the house, and continued to be so till 1781–2, when Mrs. Montagu employed Wyatt to build her an octagonal drawing-room with ante-chambers, which united the house and the chapel. Long previous to this it was used as a bedroom or bedrooms, and in the Montagu manuscripts Hannah More and others are described as sleeping in the chapel bedroom when the rest of the house was occupied. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the lessees of Sandleford were the Pitt Rivers of Strathfieldsaye, and they were succeeded by the Montagu family as early as 1730, or perhaps earlier. At any rate, at that date Mr. Edward Montagu was resident there, and as his mother, née Sarah Rogers, lived with him (as is shown by a letter of 1733 which I possess), it is possible Mr. Charles Montagu had been lessee before his son. He died in 1721. At what period the chapel was dismantled I have no record, but it may have been done by order of the Dean and Canons of Windsor before their letting it as a residence. Elias Ashmole, the great antiquarian, who died in 1692, describes the chapel as he saw it, and says, “Upon the first ascent of steps towards the high altar lyes a freestone tomb of a knight in mail, cross-legged, with a deep shield on his left arm, and seeming to draw his sword, his feet resting on a dragon. Written on the west wall is a Latin inscription.” In a paper belonging to my uncle, the last Baron Rokeby, it is stated the inscription was “written on the north wall of the chapel, but more anciently on the west wall.”
This was the inscription:—
“Lancea, crux, clavi
Spine, mors quam tolleravi,
Demonstrant qua vi
Miserorum Crimmia lavi
In Cruce sum prote qui peccas
Desine pro me desine, do Veniam
Die culpam, Corrige Vitam.”
As to the monument, it has been stated to have been that of the founder, Geoffrey, Count of Perche; but as he died in France at the siege of Acre, it is more likely to have been his son Thomas, Earl of Perche, who died at the battle of Lincoln in 1217; or else it is quite possible that it might be one of the Earls Marshal of Pembroke, as at the death of Thomas, Earl de Perche, his uncle William, Bishop of Chalons, seems to have claimed the property and sold it to William, 2nd Earl Marshal. Anyhow, not a trace of this monument is now to be found. And it would be very interesting to ascertain if it was removed to the Temple church, where the other Earls Marshal of Pembroke are buried and a very similar monument exists; but this is only my surmise. Behind the chapel, when Mrs. Montagu made her alterations in house and garden in 1780 to 1782 with the designs of Wyatt and “Capability Browne,” a number of skulls and bones were found, and, with the characteristic irreverence of the eighteenth century, were buried in what is now called “Monkey Lane,” near Newbury. The present library was originally the refectory. In 1836 Edward, 5th Baron Rokeby, parted with the lease of Sandleford to Mr. William Chatteris, who eventually, in 1875, enfranchised the property from the Dean and Canons of Windsor, and, dying a widower and without issue, he left Sandleford to his second wife’s nephew Mr. Alpin Macgregor. Mrs. Chatteris was the second daughter of Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, the friend of Nelson. Mrs. Myers, who has a lease of Sandleford now, will not use the chapel as a dining-room. Hannah More, writing in 1784, whilst staying at Sandleford, says, “There is an irregular beauty and greatness in the new buildings, and in the cathedral aisles which open to the great Gothic window (alluding to the east end of the chapel, still all glass), which is exceedingly agreeable to the imagination. It is solemn without being sad, and Gothic without being gloomy.”