It has an ancient plain Norman arch, at the doorway in the south porch; an antique font, large enough to immerse a child; and a piscina in the Hungate Chapel, which is on the south side; and one or two very narrow lancet-shaped windows on the north side of the chancel, are still remaining.
The tower of Saxton Church appears to have been rebuilt after the Reformation, and, as is said, between two hundred and fifty and three hundred years ago. Several representations of crosses have been cut upon slabs or stones which are built into the tower, and which have evidently been carved in memory of some of the slain, who were buried there; most probably, some Yorkist knights or leaders. Several of the crosses have been transposed and altered, when the tower was rebuilt; and parts of the shafts and pedestals of two or three of those crosses are still visible, and are now placed in different layers of the stone, or in the reverse way to the heads of the crosses, and are imperfect, parts of them having disappeared, and probably they have been cut and been removed. On the south side of the tower there is one of these crosses perfect, or nearly so, and also part of another; on the west side there is one perfect cross; and on the north side, including an imperfect part of one on the adjoining buttress of the tower, there are five imperfect parts of crosses cut upon the stones; there probably are others which have since been built inwards into the wall, and are, consequently, not visible. They have been four or five feet long, and the two which are nearly perfect, owe their preservation apparently to their having been cut on stones of unusual size, and to their not extending, like some others, upon more stones than one. The heads of those two crosses are handsome, and a good deal ornamented. There is a sufficient resemblance amongst the crosses, to show that they were probably all coeval in point of date; but they are certainly not, as Dr. Whitaker supposed, all alike.
Sir John Neville, commonly called John Lord Neville, is said not to have been buried there, but at the chapel of Lead, which is about half a mile from Saxton, and in the parish of Ryther; but there is not any monument to his memory.
At the period when Drake wrote (in 1736), Lord Dacre’s tomb was much defaced, and the inscription was imperfect; he has, however, given it, as follows:—
HIC JACET RANULPHUS DS. DE DAKEE ET —— MILES
ET OCCISUS ERAT IN BELLO PRINCIPE HENRICO VI° ANNO DOM.
MCCCCLXI. XXIX DIE MARTII VIDELICET DOMINICA DIE PAL-
MARUM. CUJUS ANIME PROPITIETUR DEUS. AMEN. [125a]
Dr. Whitaker, however, who had Drake’s work before him when he wrote, gives the following, as the correct inscription, with the defects supplied; and states that less than thirty years before the time when he was writing, he retrieved much more of it, than would have been then possible:—
HIC JACET RANULPHUS DOMINUS DE DACRE ET GREYSTOCKE VERUS MILES QUI
OBIIT IN BELLO PRO REGE SUO HENRICO SEXTO ANNO MCCCCLXI. VICESIMO [125b]
DIE MENSIS MARCII VID’LT., DOMINICA PALMARUM CUJUS ANIME PROPICIETUR
DEUS. AMEN. [125c]
Whichever is the correct version, they, however, both coincide in the main particulars, of its being Lord Dacre’s tomb; that he was a supporter of King Henry VI., and was slain in battle, on Palm Sunday, 1461. From the mention of King Henry VI., it may be surmised that the tomb was not erected until after the death of Edward IV.
Drake mentions, that many years ago, this tomb was violently wrenched open (for it had been strongly cramped together with iron), in order to inter beneath it a Mr. Gascoyne, when the remains of Dacre’s body were found, in a standing posture; and that a fragment of the slab, and a material part of the inscription, were then broken off.
He does not inform us who or what Mr. Gascoyne was, when alive; but whoever he was, whether of a high or low sphere in life, whether he was a gentleman, or some rag-merchant, it evinced bad taste on the part of his relations or representatives, to commit such an act; and perhaps some culpable remissness on the part of the then incumbent of the church, to permit it. Of Lord Dacre’s general character we know little; but from that circumstance, we are at least justified in believing, that, unlike two great leaders of the opposite parties, he was neither perjured like Clarence, nor a murderer like Clifford; that is certainly only negative praise; but we do know that he was at least a nobleman of high rank, consistent in his principles, and one who died a warrior’s death, on the field of battle: circumstances which ought to have preserved his remains from profanation, and ought to have caused us to be spared the disgust and indignation, which we naturally entertain, at the bad taste and bad feeling evinced, in the violation of a soldier’s grave.