Nooks and Corners of Old England

by Allan Fea

CHASTLETON.

When Little Compton church had an Independent minister to hold forth to the congregation, the prelate held divine service every Sunday at Chastleton, the grand old home of the loyalist family of Jones. This stately Jacobean mansion is close to Little Compton, but is really in Oxfordshire. It has an old-world charm about it entirely its own; and few ancestral homes can take us back to the days of Cavalier and Roundhead with such realism, for the old furniture and pictures and relics have never been disturbed since the house was built by Walter Jones between the years 1603 and 1630. He purchased the estate from Robert Catesby, the projector of the Gunpowder Plot, who sold the manor to provide funds for carrying on that notorious conspiracy.

The great hall is a noble apartment, with raised dais and carved screen; and the Royalist Joneses looking down upon you on all sides, conspicuous among whom is Thomas Jones and valiant Captain Arthur Jones, whose sword beside him shows the good service he did at Worcester fight. When the day was lost, and Charles was journeying towards Boscobel, the captain managed to ride his tired horse back to Chastleton. But a party of Cromwellian soldiers were at his heels, and his wife had only just time to hurry him into an ingeniously contrived hiding-place when the enemy confronted her, and refused to budge from the very bedroom behind whose panelled walls the fugitive was secreted. But Mrs. Arthur Jones had her share of tact, and in preparing her unwelcome guests some refreshment, she added a narcotic to the wine, which in time had effect. Her husband was then released, and with a fresh horse he was soon beyond danger. The little oak wainscoted chamber and the adjoining bedroom may still be seen where this exciting episode took place. The drawing-room is very rich in oak carvings, and the lofty marble chimney-piece bears in the centre the Jones' arms. The ceiling with its massive pendants is a fine example of the period.[16] The bedrooms are all hung with the original tapestry and arras that was made for them. One of them contains the State bed from old Woodstock Palace; and there are everywhere antique dressing-tables, mirrors, and quaint embroidered coverlets, and old chests and cabinets innumerable containing queer old dresses and coats of the Georgian period, and, what is more remarkable, the identical Jacobean ruffs and frills which are depicted in the old portraits in the hall. Then there are cupboards full of delightful old china, and decanters and wine glasses which were often produced to drink a health to the "King over the water." But of more direct historic interest is Charles I.'s Bible, which was given by the widow of the last baronet of the Juxon family—a grand-nephew of the archbishop—to the then proprietor of Chastleton, John Jones. It is bound in gold stamped leather, and bears the Royal arms with the initials C. R. It is dated 1629, and is full of queer old maps and illustrations, and upon the fly-leaf is written—"Juxon, Compton, Gloucestershire."

Some of the ancient cabinets at Chastleton are full of secret drawers, and in one of them some years ago a very curious miniature of the martyr king was discovered. It is painted on copper, and represents Charles I. with the Order of St. George, and a set of designs drawn on talc, illustrating the life of the ill-fated monarch from his coronation to his execution. They are thus described by one of the past owners of Chastleton: "They consist of a face and bust in one miniature, in a case accompanied with a set of eight or nine pictures drawn on talc, being different scenes or dresses, which are to be laid on the miniature so that the face of the miniature appears through a hole left for that purpose: and thus the one miniature does duty in every one of the talc pictures. These were accidentally discovered some twenty years ago.[17] The miniature was well known, and was supposed to be complete in itself; but one day whilst being handled by one of the family, then quite a child, it fell to the ground, and being in that way forced open at the back, those talc pictures were brought to light. The careful manner in which they had been concealed, and the miniature thereby made to appear no more than an ordinary portrait, seems to warrant the suggestion that they were in the first instance the property of some affectionate adherent of Charles, whose prudence persuaded him to conceal what his loyalty no doubt taught him to value very highly. There is no direct evidence to show that they belonged to Bishop Juxon; nor is there any tradition that I ever heard connected with them. The two concluding pictures of the series represent the decapitated head in the hand of the executioner, and a hand placing the martyr's crown upon the brows."

There are two huge oak staircases running up to the top of the house, where is the old gallery or ballroom, with a coved ceiling of ornamented plaster-work, and above the mullioned windows grotesque monster heads devised in the pargeting.

The grounds and gardens are quite in character: not made to harmonise, as are so many gardens nowadays, but the original quaint cut box hedges and trim walks. The grand old house in the centre with its rusty roof of lichen, and hard by the little church nestling by its side with the picturesque entrance gateway and dovecot, form together a delightful group. Chastleton church contains some good brasses. The tower is oddly placed over the south porch.

A couple of miles to the north, and the same distance beyond, are two other interesting manor-houses, Barton-on-the-Heath and Little Woolford. The former, a gabled Jacobean house, was once the seat of the unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury, who was done to death in the Tower by the machinations of that evil couple, Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his countess. Overbury, it will be remembered, had written the Court favourite's love letters and poems, and knew too much of that guilty courtship.

There are some good monuments to the Overburys in the church: a Norman one with saddle-back tower. Near here is the Four-Shire Stone, described by Leland as "a large bigge stone; a Three-Mile-Stone from Rollerich Stones, which is a very mark or line of Gloucestershire, Whichester (Worcestershire), Warwickshire, and Oxfordshire."

Little Woolford manor-house, the old seat of the Ingrams, is now, or was some years ago, used as a school. It is very picturesque, and its gables of half-timber, facing the little courtyard, remind one of the quadrangle of Ightham Mote. Opposite the Tudor entrance-gate is the hall, with its open timber roof, minstrels' gallery, panelled walls, and tall windows, still containing their ancient painted glass. Barton, which properly should have its ghost, presumably is not so favoured; but here there are two at least,—a certain "White Lady," who, fortunately for the juvenile scholars, does not appear until midnight; and the last of the Ingrams, who has a restless way of tearing about on horseback in the adjacent fields. This gentleman could not die decently in his bed, but must needs, upon the point of dying, rush into the stable, mount his favourite steed, and plunge into the raging tempest to meet his adversary Death. What a pity there are not more educational establishments like this. They might possibly make the pupils less matter-of-fact and more imaginative. But we had almost forgotten a moral lesson that is to be learned from a rude projection in the masonry on the left-hand side of the entrance gateway. This is the oven, which opens at the back of a wide hearth; and here some seventeenth-century I O U's are said to have been found for money lost at play; while some Cavaliers were concealed there in the time of the Civil Wars. But the punishment for gambling was providentially arranged. Some Cromwellian soldiers dropping in at the manor-house, lighted a tremendous fire, and gave the unfortunate fugitives a roasting which they did not readily forget. This is roughly as the story goes; indeed it goes further, for by local report King Charles himself was one of the victims.