“Have grace, ye men, and ever pray
For the sowl of John and Jone Grenway.”
These marks of parentage are merely what one would expect, but the walls have other symbolism, some of which demands comment. In two compartments of the upper cornice are to be found the arms of Courtenay and an eagle rising from a bundle of sticks. These devices are repeated on a larger scale over the archway, with the addition of the arms of England. The eagle montant, to borrow a term from falconry, is understood to typify the mythical phœnix, and may be regarded as alluding to the vicissitudes of that illustrious and ever-resurgent family.
The arms of England present no difficulty. They are to be explained by the marriage of William Courtenay, 10th Earl of Devon, with Katherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., her elder sister Elizabeth being the consort of Henry VII. Miss Strickland, by the way, records a quaint incident in connection with a tournament held at the wedding of Prince Arthur, when “Lord William Courtenay (brother-in-law of the Queen) made his appearance riding on a red dragon led by a giant with a large tree in his hand.” What time the almshouses were building Katherine de Courtenay was actually resident at Tiverton Castle, and she was buried, in 1527, with immense pomp in the Earl of Devonshire’s chapel, which was destroyed by the Puritans, and is believed to have stood on the north side of the chancel in St Peter’s Church. In her honour was erected that large achievement in the centre of the porch, consisting of Courtenay and Rivers quarterly, impaling quarterly, 1st France and England quarterly, 2nd and 3rd Burgh, 4th Mortimer. It is surmounted with the Courtenay badge before-mentioned, and the supporters are St George and a woman.
It would be incompatible with the limits of this work to enter upon a minute description of all the charming imagery of this beauteous chantry. Much of it speaks for itself, but it may be as well to put the reader on his guard against a false blazoning of one of the coats of arms, which displays what looks suspiciously like a tiara. It may possibly be permissible to use the term, but subject to the understanding that we have here nothing to do with any papal insignia. The three clouds radiated in base, each surmounted with a triple crown, are for the Drapers’ Company; just as the Barry nebulée; a chief quarterly, on the 1st and 4th a lion passant guardant, on the 2nd and 3rd two roses, are for the Merchant Venturers of London. Attention may also be drawn to a series of sermons in stones, or small sculptures illustrating the chief events in the life of our Lord; on account of the height at which they are ranged, they might easily be passed unnoticed.
Viewing the decorations generally, we cannot but observe that the place of honour is assigned to the Courtenays; and, probably on the strength of this fact, Harding speaks of the Marquis of Exeter as Greenway’s great patron. In this he may be mistaken, since, on the death of her husband, the Lady Katherine succeeded to the manor of Tiverton, and doubtless exerted much influence in the town and county during the sixteen years of her widowhood. This brings us to the stately home in which, more than anywhere else, those sorrowful years were spent.
Due north of St Peter’s churchyard, from which only a wall parts them, are the precincts of Tiverton Castle whereof there exist somewhat extensive remains in varying degrees of preservation. This was for several centuries one of the chief residences of the Courtenays, and in the Middle Ages was a strong place of arms. On the west is a precipice, which runs down sixty feet sheer to the River Exe and secured the castle on that side; in other directions it had towers and turrets, and ramparts and moats, and all that military science then knew in the way of elaborate fortification. Two of the towers yet stand—a square and a round, while the ivy-covered ruin, which is detached from the rest of the buildings, at the south-west angle of the castle grounds, is supposed to represent the oratory or chapel. From its position it was evidently distinct from the Earl of Devonshire’s Chapel, mentioned above, and must have been a private sanctuary reserved to the household.
The castle is stated to have been built by Richard de Redvers or Rivers, who was an Earl of Devon in his time—about 1106; it came into the possession of the Courtenays on the extinction of the Redvers family in 1274, when Hugh de Courtenay, great-grandson of Mary de Redvers, succeeded to all their estates. His immediate predecessor was Isabella de Fortibus, born Redvers, who is credited with the gift of an ample stream of water known as the Town Lake, a section of which, enclosed between paved banks, may be observed in Castle Street. She, of course, was not a Courtenay; and it is with these rather than with other possessors of the castle that we are mainly concerned. As, with brief intervals, they were the ruling element in the town for a period of three centuries, it is natural to inquire what manner of men were those great lords, and how it went with the neighbourhood when they were uppermost.
With their emblems around us, and with the odour of sanctity investing the places where those emblems appear, there is a palpable danger of attributing to the Courtenays a larger measure of piety than is at all their due. Of him who is called sometimes the Good, sometimes the Blind Earl, no word of censure may be spoken; and as for the husband and descendants of Katherine—William, Henry, Edward—their tragic fates evoke that infinite compassion for which the blood of the innocent cries always, and never in vain. Even the guilty Courtenays were not devoid of redeeming qualities; they were stout warriors, and loyal to their king. Yet two of the race, father and son, both of them named Thomas, were the authors of a felon deed—a deed as black as any that soils the pages of history, or swells the calendar of crime. To all appearance the plot was hatched in Tiverton, and Tiverton yeomen were the willing, or unwilling, instruments of the scandalous theft, the inhuman murder. The whole may not be told here; let what follows suffice.
On Thursday, October 23, 1455, Nicholas Radford, sometime “steward” of the Earl of Devon, now an old man and a justice, was dwelling in God’s peace and the king’s in his own place at Upcott, in the parish of Cheriton Fitzpaine. The same day and year came Sir Thomas Courtenay, eldest son of the earl, with a body of retainers to the number of ninety-four, armed with jacks, sallets, bows, arrows, swords, bucklers, etc., who beset the house at midnight, and with a great shout fired the gates. Naturally at that hour Radford, his wife, and his servants, were in bed, but awakened by the sudden commotion, the good old man opened his window, and demanded whether there were among them any gentlemen.
“Here is Sir Thomas Courtenay,” answered one of the yeoman; and almost at the same moment the knight called out to him, “Come down and speak with me.”