1622. “Mr. Robert Washington was buried March ye 11th.”
——. “Mrs. Elisabeth Washington widow was buried March ye 20th.”
Of a minister in this church we have an amusing notice in Evelyn’s Memoirs, where the following contrast is found, under date of August 18th, 1688: “Dr. Jeffryes Jessop], the minister of Althorp, who was my Lord’s chaplain when Ambassador in France, preached the shortest discourse I ever heard; but what was defective in the amplitude of his sermon he had supplied in the largeness and convenience of the parsonage-house.”[42]
Less than a mile from the church is the famous seat of the Spencers, surrounded by a park of five hundred acres, with one of the gates opening near the church. Bordering on the churchyard are oak-trees which were growing at the purchase of the estate in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Evelyn was often here, a delighted visitor. On one occasion he speaks of “the house, or rather palace, at Althorp.”[43] Elsewhere he describes it as “in a pretty open bottom, very finely watered, and flanked with stately woods and groves in a park.”[44] An engraving by the younger Luke Vorsterman, a Dutch artist, attests the attraction of the place at this time.
One feature of the park excited the admiration of Evelyn, and at a later day of Mrs. Jameson, who gives to it some beautiful pages in her “Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad.” It is a record of the dates when different plantations of trees were begun. While recommending this practice in his “Sylva,” Evelyn remarks, “The only instance I know of the like in our own country is in the park at Althorp in Northamptonshire, the magnificent seat of the Right Hon. the Earl of Sunderland.”[45] Here are six of these commemorative stones. The first records a wood planted by Sir John Spencer, in 1567 and 1568; the second, a wood planted by Sir John Spencer, son of the former, in 1589; the third, a wood planted by Robert Lord Spencer, in 1602 and 1603; the fourth, a wood planted by Sir William Spencer, Knight of the Bath, afterwards Lord Spencer, in 1624. This stone is ornamented with the arms of the Spencers, and on the back is inscribed, Vp and bee doing and God will prosper. In this scenery and amidst these associations the Washingtons lived. When the emigrant left, in 1657, the woods must have been well grown. Not long afterwards they arrested the attention of Evelyn. The fifth and sixth stones were never seen by the Washingtons, or by Evelyn. They were set up in 1798 and 1800, by George John, second Earl Spencer, who planted trees as well as amassed books.
The Household Books at Althorp show that for many years the Washingtons were frequent guests. The hospitality of this seat has been renowned. The Queen of James the First and Prince Henry, on their way to London in 1603, were welcomed there in an entertainment, memorable for a Masque from the vigorous muse of Ben Jonson.[46] Charles the First was at Althorp in 1647, when he received the first intelligence of those approaching pursuers from whom he never escaped except by the scaffold. In 1695, King William was there for a week, and, according to Evelyn, “mightily entertained.”[47] At least one of the family was famous for hospitality of a different character. Evelyn records that he used to dine with the Countess of Sunderland,—the title then borne by the Spencers,—when she invited fire-eaters,[48] stone-eaters, and opera-singers, after the fashion of the day.[49]
The family was early and constantly associated with literature. Spenser, the poet, belonged to it, and dedicated to one of its members, Alice Spencer, “the Ladie Strange,” afterwards Countess of Derby, his “Tears of the Muses.” For the same Alice Spencer Milton wrote his “Arcades,” while Sir John Harrington celebrated her memory by an epigram. The Sacharissa of Waller was the Lady Dorothy Sydney, wife of the first Earl of Sunderland, third Lord Spencer, who perished fighting for King Charles the First at Newbury. I do not dwell on other associations of a later day, as my object is simply to indicate those which existed in the time of the Washingtons.
“The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the ‘Fairy Queen’ as the most precious jewel of their coronet.” Thus wrote Gibbon in his Memoirs,[50] and all must feel the beauty of the exhortation. This nobility may claim another illustration from ties of friendship and neighborhood with the Washingtons. Perhaps hereafter our countrymen will turn aside from their travels to visit the parish church of Brington, in reverence for a spot so closely associated with American history.