Entering the building, a massive Norman nave is seen, singularly like that of Gloucester cathedral, and no doubt designed by the same hand. The same massive but disproportionately lofty columns, with dwarfed triforium and clerestory, proclaim a similar origin. The columns are Fitz Hamon’s work, and the clerestory above, and the stone-vaulted roof are the additions of over two centuries later, when the builders had grown more daring and risked a heavy stone roof in place of the former flat wooden one. Fitz Hamon’s transepts also remain and his choir, in its essentials; although in the same Decorated period which witnessed the addition of the clerestory and stone vaulting to the nave the Norman choir was remodelled. To this period belong the seven windows filled with splendid old stained glass, representing all good benefactors, from Fitz Hamon onwards, praying for heavenly grace, but clinging to their ancient heraldic cognisances of long descent as tenaciously as though the authority of Garter King-at-Arms and all his fellow-kings and pursuivants extended to Heaven, and St. Peter was authorised to admit to the best places only those who could display these patents of gentility. It is glorious old glass, more than much damaged and time-worn, but still splendid in design and colour.
Behind the choir still runs the semi-circular ambulatory, as on the old Norman plan, but the Lady Chapel has disappeared. Here too are some of the ancient chapels formerly clustered about the east end. Here are some mouldering swords, deeply bitten into by Time’s teeth, from the battlefield of Tewkesbury. Fitz Hamon’s chantry is not of his period: it was rebuilt more than three hundred years later; proof that he, and the health of his immortal part were kept in mind, and incidentally showing us that not all gratitude is, as cynics would declare, “a lively sense of favours to come.”
The so-called “Warwick” chantry, built 1422 by Isabel le Despencer in memory of her first husband, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Abergavenny, is in the last, and most elaborated style of Gothic architecture and decoration. There are many other monuments: including the beautiful one of Hugh le Despencer and his wife Elizabeth. Their splendidly sculptured alabaster figures lie there with a calm indifference contrasting with his violent end, for he was executed in 1349, at Hereford. So often did the great nobles of those centuries suffer from the headsman’s axe and with such frequency did they die on the battlefield that it became a matter of pride to declare how rarely they ended peacefully and of old age, in their beds. It was almost a slur upon one’s personal character to pass in this way, when one might in the last resource join some desperate rebellion and be handsomely slain; or at the very least of it, be taken and properly beheaded.
These philosophical and historical considerations bring one, by a natural transition, to the Battle of Tewkesbury, fought in the meadows to the south of the town on May Day 1471. The place where the fight raged fiercest was close by the Gloucester road, in the field still called “Bloody Meadow,” whose name it is understood the town council, in the interests of the rising generation, are keenly desirous of seeing changed to something more respectable.
If you have never been to Tewkesbury, the battle will be a little unreal to you. You may know perfectly well “all about the war, and what they killed each other for,” and you may even be a partisan of either White Rose or Red, and may throw up your cap for those rival Houses of York or Lancaster; but if you have never visited the scene where this great fight raged, it will remain shadowy. But in Tewkesbury town, whose streets are still astonishingly rich in old timbered houses that stood on the morning of that great clash of arms where they do now, it is a vital thing.
It was the last desperate venture of the Lancastrians, stricken to the ground on many an earlier occasion, but always hitherto recovering, to try conclusions again, for sake of right. At Towton, Blore Heath, Hexham, and other places they had been slaughtered, and such victories as Wakefield, in which the Yorkists were decimated, were of no permanent value. Only a month before Tewkesbury they had been signally defeated at Barnet, and their cause apparently broken; but here again the party was re-formed. Queen Margaret, whose devotion and sorrows are among the most pitiful records of history, had come from France with her son, Prince Edward, the young hope of the Red Rose. Gathering a force at Exeter, they advanced towards the midlands, hoping to join hands with Welsh sympathisers. But the treacherous Severn, coming down from those Mortimer borderlands where the White Rose had ever been strongest, proved itself on this occasion the most useful ally of the Yorkists. It was in flood and prevented that junction of the two Lancastrian armies whose combined force might have given them the day and changed the course of the nation’s story.
The Yorkists, commanded by Edward the Sixth, came up from the direction of Cheltenham and found their opponents drawn up on the “plains near Tewkesbury,” as Shakespeare has it, in the Third Part of Henry the Sixth. The battle was lost to the Lancastrians partly through their being deceived by a pretended flight of the troops commanded by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and in a great measure by quarrels among themselves. Their ranks were broken and the battle was continued and ended by fighting and heavy slaughter in the streets of the town. Finally the defeated Lancastrians took refuge in the Abbey church, from which they would have been dragged had not the monks in solemn procession prevented it. Shakespeare adopts Holinshed’s account of the death of Prince Edward.
Holinshed tells us that proclamation being made that a life-annuity of £100 should be paid to whoever brought the Prince, dead or alive, and that, if living, his life should be spared, Sir Richard Crofts brought him forth, “a fair and well-proportioned young gentleman, whom, when King Edward had well-advised, he asked him how he durst so presumptuously enter his realm with banner displayed, whereupon the prince boldly answered, saying, ‘To recover my father’s kingdom and heritage from his grandfather to him, and from him after him to me lineally descended’; at which words King Edward thrust him from him, or (as some say) stroke him with his gauntlet, whom directly George, Duke of Clarence; Richard, Duke of Gloucester; Thomas Grey, and William, Lord Hastings, that stood by, cruelly murdered; for the which cruel act the more part of the doers in their latter days drank the like cup by the righteous justice and due punishment of God. His body was homely interred in the church of the monastery of the black monks of Tewkesbury.”