The scene now shifts from Newton to the neighbouring parish of Stogursey or, as modern research has taught us to write it, Stoke Courcy. In this parish is Fairfield House, a handsome Elizabethan mansion in which the Alfred Jewel was preserved for a quarter of a century, from the time of its discovery in 1693, until it was given to the University of Oxford in 1718[50].
About the time of Henry II the lands of ‘Ferfelle’ were severed from those of Honibere, and erected into a separate estate.
By-and-by the name slid into a new form, conveying a new idea. The new name into which it merged is one that has been freely propagated both at home and in the colonies, with pleasing associations of soft and gently undulating landscape suggestive of homely scenery and a sheltered situation. Very different is the connotation of the name in its documentary form. In ‘Ferfelle’ we can see only some outlying ‘remoter fell,’ such as would be little visited save for uses of summer pasture. In Collinson’s picture of the mansion, which is here reproduced, while the foreground seems to justify the modern name, the hills and hanging woods at the back of the house seem to bear out the more primitive signification of an outlying mountain fell. And probably this was also the idea which originally gave name to the well-known mountain in Westmoreland over Grasmere.
FAIRFIELD HOUSE.
After a succession of owners of various names this new estate came (14 Edw. I) into the possession of William de Vernai, who had married the sole daughter and heiress of the previous proprietor. For nearly three hundred years there was always a Vernai at Fairfield. In 12 Edw. IV the Vernai of that day (the fourth of the name of William) had a licence to build a wall and seven round towers about his mansion-house at Fairfield, and to enclose two hundred acres of ground for a park. ‘The tomb in the Vernais isle in the fine old Priory church of Stoke Courcy, with an image of an armed man lying thereon, belongs to this William Vernai’ (Collinson).
Fairfield had come into the family of Vernai by an heiress, and at length it passed in the same manner to the family of Palmer. Hugh de Vernai left one only daughter, and she was called Elizabeth, after the great queen, who was her godmother. On the death of her father her wardship was granted to Sir Thomas Palmer, of Parham, in the county of Sussex, Knt.; to whose only son, William, she was afterwards married. Soon after this marriage, Sir Thomas Palmer pulled down the old house, and began the present mansion, which was completed by his grandson (also Sir Thomas Palmer, Knt.), who inherited Fairfield in 1587. This proprietor was not a keeper at home. In 1595 he was with Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins in the expedition to Porto Rico, and afterwards commanded a ship at the taking of Cadiz, where he was knighted. He was one of the most considerable persons in the Court of Queen Elizabeth; but on the accession of King James he resolved to spend the remainder of his days beyond the seas, and accordingly, in the year 1605, he went with the earl of Nottingham into Spain, where, as he was providing a settlement for his family at Valladolid, he died of the small-pox, and was there buried.
William Palmer, his son and heir, was a man of learning, and chose to live in London, and he was, in the time of Charles I, fined a thousand pounds by the Star Chamber for disobedience to the king’s proclamation, which required all persons of estate to reside and keep hospitality at their country houses.
His brother Peregrine, who succeeded him, went as a volunteer to the Palatinate wars, and was afterwards an officer in the Swedish army. As soon as the royal standard was set up he repaired to Nottingham, and faithfully served King Charles in the commissions of major, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel of horse, being present at the battles of Edgehill, Marston Moor, Cropredy Bridge, and Naseby. He died in 1684, having married Anne, the daughter of Nathaniel Stevens, in the county of Gloucester, Esq., and he was succeeded in the estate by his eldest surviving son, Nathaniel, who is reported in the Philosophical Transactions as the possessor of the Alfred Jewel in the year 1698[51]. He served in several parliaments for the boroughs of Minehead and Bridgwater, and for the county of Somerset. The first recorded possessor of the Alfred Jewel died in 1717. He was succeeded by his son Thomas, who resided at Fairfield, where he lived a studious life, investigating the antiquities of his country. His manuscript is preserved at Fairfield, and it was a valuable source of information to Collinson, the historian of Somerset. It is from this source we learn that the Jewel was ‘dug up,’ an expression which seems to justify the inference that it was not accidentally lost, but purposely buried[52]. It was he who, in 1718, gave the Alfred Jewel to the University of Oxford.