NORTHAMPTON: MARKET PLACE AND ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH.
Thousands of pairs of mud-boots were despatched hence to the Army in the Crimea; but whence came the brown paper and cardboard boots supplied by contractors to our poor fellows in that mismanaged campaign? Not from Northampton, I trust.
“VOTE EARLY, AND OFTEN”
Of the Northampton Parliamentary elections, famed in the long ago for the bitterness with which they were fought, none are more celebrated than the “great spendthrift election,” waged in 1761 between my lords Northampton, Spencer, and Halifax, for the privilege of nominating a member. The enormous expenses incurred were not the most remarkable thing about this contest, although they were unprecedented; nor was the fourteen days’ duration of the poll a thing unheard of. The really startling feature was the heaviness of that poll. Northampton had not only voted its full strength of 930 electors, but 217 over. A petition followed, and was settled, in the sporting manner of the age, by a toss. Lord Spencer won, and nominated his man—who resided in India.
The old churches of Northampton are very fine, and highly interesting in their several ways. There are four of them: St. Peter’s, St. Giles’s, Holy Sepulchre, and All Saints’. It seems strange, considering how ancient is the distinctive trade, that there is no church dedicated to St. Crispin, the patron saint of bootmakers and cobblers. Of all these churches that of the Holy Sepulchre is the most archæologically interesting; but to most people it is the great church of All Saints, in the Market Square, that stands for Northampton. And rightly so, for it is not merely in the centre of the town, but in a most striking and emphatic position; it is also the church selected by the Corporation for its state attendance of Divine worship, as the fine Mayor’s Chair in it—inscribed “Anno Majoratus 2do Ricardi White, Anno Dom. 1680”—proves; and its curious architectural appearance gives to Northampton a distinct personality among English towns. This is in its present form no mediæval building, but a very remarkable structure of the time of Charles the Second, as we may readily perceive from the statue of him, clad in flowing wig and Roman toga, that surmounts the pillared west front.
Along the entablature above the imposing Ionic colonnade runs the insertion: “This statue was erected in memory of King Charles II., who gave a thousand tun of timber toward the rebuilding of this church and to this town.” The circumstance that made the rebuilding necessary and prompted the gift of timber (which came from the neighbouring Forest of Whittlebury) was the almost complete destruction of the old building in the great fire of 1675, when six hundred houses were also burnt. The tall tower, cased, bell-turreted, and balustraded, is a relic of the incinerated church.
INTERIOR, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
THE TEMPLARS’ CHURCHES
St. Sepulchre’s—properly the “Church of the Holy Sepulchre”—generally known as “Pulker’s Church,” or “St. Pulker’s,” one of the four round churches in England—or five if we may include the round chapel in Ludlow Castle—is ascribed to the influence of the Templars, whose churches were avowedly built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Like the Temple Church and others, it is the nave portion of the building that is circular; the choir and presbytery branching eastwards from it. It is in a massive and gloomy Transitional Norman style, the eight huge pillars surmounted by pointed arches. It is magnificent in its austerity and in the warm golden-brown hue of the stone.