[52] This Countess of Derby was the daughter of Sir William Morley, K.B., and her mother was a daughter of Sir John Denham, the Poet. On the north side of the Chancel is a marble Monument to her memory. She died in 1752, at the age of 85. She was distinguished by charitable deeds and on her tomb is represented sitting under an oak, relieving poor travellers, and pointing to a building she had founded in the Parish—a Hospital endowed in 1741, as the inscription informs us, “the Alms-houses for the habitation and support of poor aged and infirm women,—the School for the habitation and maintenance of a school-master, and the education of poor boys and girls—the women and children to be chosen out of the parishes of Boxgrove, East Lavant, and Tangmere.”
[53] “This Adeliza,” writes Camden, “was daughter to Godfrey Barbatus, of Lovaine, who had for her dowrie Arundell Castle and all the forfeited lands of Robert de Belismo, the Earle, when the King (Henry the First) took her for his second wife.
“In her commendation, a certaine Englishman in that unlearned age wrote some unlearned verses,” of which these lines are the commencement:—
“When Muses nine thy beauties rare (faire Adeliza Queene
Of England) readie are to tell, they starke astonied beene;
What booteth thee so beautifull, gold-croune or pretious stone,
Dimme is the diadem to thee, the gemme hath beautie none.”
After the King’s death she married William de Albini; “who, taking part with Maude the Empresse against King Stephen, and defending his castle (of Arundel) against him, was, in recompense of his good service, by the saide Maude, the Empresse and Ladie of Englishmen (for this title she used), created Earle of Arundel; and her son, King Henry, gave the whole Rape of Arundel to that William, to hold of him by the service of fourscore and foure knights’ fees and one halfe.” During her contest with Stephen, Maud was lodged in the Castle of Arundel, which the King besieged. The Earl, however—or, it is said, his Countess—by diplomacy, contrived to facilitate the escape of the Empress to Bristol, from which she took shipping, and returned to the Continent.
“A small Chamber, over the inner gate of Arundel Castle, enjoys the traditionary fame of having been her sleeping-room, during her sojourn there. It is a low square apartment, such as the Castellan might have occupied during a siege.” The Bedstead on which the Empress is reported to have slept is still preserved there. “Its massive wallnut posts are elaborately carved, but so worm-eaten that, unless tenderly scrutinized, the wood would be apt to fall into powder in the hands of the visitor.” We have quoted this brief account from Dr. Beattie’s History of Arundel. From the engraving that accompanies it, there can be little doubt that this relic is no older than the reign of Henry the 8th, if so old.
[54] Hutton, in his “History of Birmingham,” states that Sir Lister Holt, taking advantage of his brother’s necessities, induced him to cut off the entail, in order that the estate might pass away from his family. Thus, he adds, “an ancient race, which sprung from the anvil, and sported upon an estate of 12,000l. a-year, is now sunk into its pristine obscurity; for its head, Thomas Holt (perhaps Sir Thomas), at this day (1812) thumps at the anvil for bread, in the fabrication of spades—as amiable a man as any of his race; and the only baronet who ever shaped a shovel may take a melancholy ramble for many miles upon the lands of his ancestors, but cannot call a single foot of it his own.”
[55] For the several drawings which accompany and illustrate this account of Aston Hall and the church, we are indebted to Mr. Allen Edward Everitt, an excellent artist of Birmingham.
[56] Richard de Beauchamp was born on the 28th of January. 1381, and succeeded his father in the Earldom of Warwick in 1401. At the coronation of Henry IV., he was created a Knight of the Bath, being then only 19 years of age. “When scarce more than a youth,” he suppressed the rebellion in Wales, under Owen Glendower, whose standard he took in battle. During the whole of the reign of the fourth Henry, he was one of the most prominent, honourable, and useful “pillars of the state;” and, at the coronation of Henry the 5th, he was constituted Lord High Steward; in 1415, he was declared Captain of Calais, and Governor of the Marches of Picardy: subsequently, he became tutor to the young Prince Henry, and on the death of the Duke of Bedford—14 Hen. VI.—he was appointed Regent of France, and Lieutenant-General of the King’s forces in that realm and the Duchy of Normandy. He died in the Castle of Rouen, April 30, 1439—17 Henry VI. His body was conveyed to England, and deposited in the Church of St. Mary, “in a fair chest made of stone.” until the Chapel was prepared for its reception.
[57] Thomas de Beauchamp died of the pestilence at Calais, on the 13th of November, 1370, at the age of 63. He had retired from public life, but hearing that the English army, under the Duke of Lancaster, lay in camp, perishing from famine and disease, and refused to fight the French, by whom they were surrounded, he instantly embarked for France, where his “bare appearance so alarmed the enemy, that they commenced an instant retreat.” Recumbent figures of the Earl and his Countess—finely sculptured—are laid upon the monument which occupies the centre of the choir. A fine brass of his second son, Thomas, and Margaret, his wife, was preserved from the fire of 1694, and is now placed against the east wall of the transept, and near the entrance to the Chapel. It is a beautiful specimen of the costume of the period, and has been engraved in Waller’s recent publication.