Letter 193 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, May 30, 1780. (page 250)
I hope you will bring your eggs to a fair market. At last I have got from Bonus my altar-doors which I bought at Mr. Ives's; he has repaired them admirably. I would not suffer him to repaint or varnish them. There are indubitably Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, and Archbishop Kemp. The fourth I cannot make out. It is a man in a crimson garment lined with white, and not tonsured. He is in the stable with cattle, and has the air of Joseph; but over his head hangs a large shield with these arms. * * *(389) The Cornish choughs are sable on or; the other three divisions are gules, on the first of which is a gold crescent.
The second arms have three bulls' heads sable, horned or. The chevron was so changed that Bonus thought it sable; but I think it was gules, and then it would be Bullen or Boleyn. Lord de Ferrars says, that the first are the arms of Sir Bartholomew Tate, who he finds married a Sanders. Edmondson's new Dictionary of Heraldry confirms both arms for Tate and Sanders, except that Sanders bore the chevron erminc, which it may have been. But what I wish to discover IS, whether Sir Bartholomew Tate was a benefactor to St. Edmundsbury, whence these doors came, or was in any shape a retainer to the Duke of Gloucester or Cardinal Beaufort. The Duke's and Sir Bartholomew's figures were on the insides of the doors (which I have had sawed into four panels,) and are painted in a far superior style to the Cardinal and the Archbishop, which are very hard and dry. The two others are so good that they are in the style of the school of the Caracci. They at least were painted by some Italian; the draperies have large and bold folds, and One wonders how they could be executed in the reign of Henry VI. I shall be very glad if you can help me to any lights, at least about Sir Bartholomew. I intend to place them in my chapel, as they will aptly accompany the shrine. The Duke and Archbishop's agree perfectly with their portraits in my Marriage of Henry VI., and prove how rightly I guessed. The Cardinal's is rather a longer and thinner visage, but that he might have in the latter end of life; and in the Marriage he has the red bonnet on, which shortens his face. On the door he is represented in the character he ought to have possessed, a pious, contrite look, not the truer resemblance which Shakspeare drew— "He dies, and makes no sign!"—but Annibal Caracci himself could not paint like our Raphael poet! Pray don't venture yourself in any more electioneering riots: you see the mob do not respect poets, nor, I suppose, antiquaries.
P. S. I am in no haste for an answer to my queries.
(389) Here Mr. Walpole had sketched in a rough draught of the arms.
Letter 194 To Mrs. Abington.(390)
Strawberry Hill, June 11, 1780. (page 251)
Madam, You may certainly always command me and my house. My common custom is to give a ticket for only four persons at a time but it would be very insolent in me, when all laws are set at nought, to pretend to prescribe rules. At such times there is a shadow of authority in setting the laws aside by the legislature itself; and though I have no army to supply their place, I declare Mrs. Abington may march through all my dominions at the head of as large a troop as she pleases. I do not say, as she can muster and command; for then I am sure my house would not hold them. The day, too, is at her own choice; and the master is her very obedient humble servant.
(390) Now first printed.
Letter 195 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1780. (page 251)
My dear lord, If the late events had been within the common proportion of news, I would have tried to entertain your lordship with an account of them; but they were far beyond that size, and could only create horror and indignation. Religion has often been the cloak of injustice, outrage, and villany: in our late tumults,(391) it scarce kept on its mask a moment; its persecution was downright robbery; and it was so drunk that it killed its banditti faster than they could plunder. The tumults have been carried on in so violent and scandalous a manner, that I trust they will have no copies. When prisons are levelled to the ground, when the Bank is aimed at, and reformation is attempted by conflagrations, the savages of Canada are the only fit allies of Lord George Gordon(392) and his crew. The Tower is much too dignified a prison for him-but he had left no other.