Bisham Priory in former days—perhaps owing to its connection with the Montacutes, Earls of Salisbury—was the burial-place of several distinguished men, whose monuments once adorned the priory chapel, but have disappeared since it became a dwelling-place. The following list of such interments is testimony to the perilous life led by the aristocracy of those days:—“Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, who died at the siege of Orleans in 1428; Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick, beheaded at York in 1460; Richard Neville, ‘the king-maker,’ killed at the battle of Barnet, 1470; his brother John, Marquis of Montague, killed at the same battle; and Edward Plantagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, beheaded in 1499, for attempting to escape from confinement.” “The paths of glory lead but to the grave” was a true saying in the days of old. Between the foeman’s sword on the one hand and the headsman’s axe on the other, a goodly proportion of our nobility came to untimely ends.
The Hobys rest in the parish church. This is beautifully situated close to the riverside. Grand old trees cast their shadows on its graveyard and overhang the walk by the brink of the Thames. The grass-grown plot studded with graves is almost merged with the trim garden of the rectory, the flowers in which brighten the view and pleasantly vary the greens of the foliage and of the grassy meadows. These, too, are bright enough in spring-time, when they are dappled with its golden flowers, before the taller herbage of summer has begun to wave in the soft wind.
The tower of Bisham Church—the part most conspicuous from the river—is of very early date—a rude and rather curious piece of Norman work, which may be older than the days of Stephen, when the Templars first came to Bisham. The body of the church is also picturesque, but it has been so greatly restored—even to rebuilding—of late years that it is no easy task to separate old from new. At the present time its most interesting features are some of the monuments of the Hoby family, especially those to the two brothers mentioned above. The widow of the second brother, Thomas, had the bodies of both brought back to England for burial at Bisham; and being a lady learned even for those days, when people did not, as in later times, suppose that a woman made the better wife for being as ignorant as a scullery-maid, she wrote them an epitaph in three languages. The concluding lines on her husband’s monument appear to express a willingness, under certain circumstances, to be consoled even for the loss of such a paragon:—
“Give me, O God! a husband like unto Thomas,
Or else restore to me my husband Thomas!”
She seems to have considered that the first part of her prayer was granted, as the second could hardly be expected, for before the year was out she married Sir Thomas Russell. But on the whole the interior of Bisham Church will not detain the visitor for long; he will care rather to linger in the churchyard and its neighbourhood. It is pleasant to pass up and down by the riverside under the shadow of the trees, to gaze upon the noble sweep of the Thames, and over its fertile valley plain, to seek some quiet spot which commands a view of the grey walls of Bisham Priory and the beautiful trees in its park. Even the village is in keeping with the rest of the scene, and is brighter and prettier than is usual, and this is saying much; for though, as a rule, English cottages cannot compare in picturesqueness with many that we see on the other side of the Channel, the frequent poverty and monotony of their design is often atoned for by the creepers which blossom profusely on the walls, and the flowers which make the strip of ground in front one living posy. But in Bisham not a few of the cottages are picturesque. For some reason or other, partly, perhaps, owing to the absence of mechanical industries, the towns of the south and west of England are commonly, and the villages almost always, more attractive than in the north, and this disparity, as regards the latter, becomes still more marked when we cross the border; for a Scotch village often attains to the extreme limit of dreary ugliness.
GREAT MARLOW, FROM QUARRY WOODS.
Turning aside from the woods of Bisham and sweeping away yet farther into the broad valley plain, the stream of the Thames brings us to the quiet market-town of Great Marlow. A suspension bridge crosses the river, and the gardens and houses on either side afford many scenes of quiet and homelike beauty. Just below it are a weir and a mill, not without a certain picturesqueness; and from a distance the spire of the church, rising from among groups of trees, enhances the attraction of the scene. In this little Buckinghamshire town, before the railway approached its outskirts, life must have passed peacefully, not to say sleepily; and even now, as it lies off the main line, it does not strike us as a place for over-stimulation of the nervous system. The river, during a considerable part of the year, would still be almost as fit a scene for a poet’s musing as it was when Shelley resided in the town, and wrote the “Revolt of Islam,” spending much of his time dreamily floating in a boat upon the Thames. The most conspicuous feature in Great Marlow, as has been already said, is its church, which stands near to the river and the bridge. Unfortunately, it is one of those where “distance lends enchantment to the view.” The present building was erected in the year 1835, on the site of an older one. Whatever this may have been, it could hardly have been so ugly as the present structure. The style may be called Gothic—that is to say, the architect had in his mind some of the English parish churches of the thirteenth or fourteenth century; but it is the Gothic of what we may call the pre-Victorian revival, and about as like what it supposed to imitate as the “English as she is spoke” of the ingenious Portuguese is to our mother-tongue. Efforts have been made, and we believe will continue to be made, to improve it. For instance, the church was constructed for galleries; these have been pulled down—at some inconvenience, we should think, if a fair proportion of the population goes to church; and the interior has been divided by means of the usual arches into a nave and aisle. These, as they come to an end before they reach the roof, have at present a rather forlorn aspect, and, as there is no particular merit in their design, scarcely justify their existence. It is intended, we are informed, to rebuild the whole structure piecemeal; but as the original fabric appears to be in no danger of premature decay, it is a question whether it would not have been better to accept its ugliness, and employ the very large sum which must be expended before the work can be completed for other and more directly useful purposes. The church, however, is not wholly without interest, as it contains one or two “curiosities.” Of these, one is a portrait of the “Spotted Boy,” the work of Coventry, in 1811. The lad was one of Richardson’s “exhibits,” and died at Great Marlow. He was a negro, but was mottled with white patches on body and hair—as if he had been imperfectly operated on with soap after the manner of the advertising placards. In fact, he was a parallel example in the human race to Barnum’s famous white elephant. The picture might by some be deemed more appropriate to the walls of Madame Tussaud’s galleries than to those of a church; nevertheless, so long as it is there, it should be hung where it can be seen. At the present time, the removal of the gallery staircase has resulted in “skying” it most effectually. A good instance of modern mediæval absurdity may be seen in a monumental brass erected to the memory of a lady who died so recently as 1842; for in the inscription the words charitie and mercie occur as written. More interesting, and in its way quaint, is the monument to a doughty Englishman, Sir Myles Hobart, who once represented Great Marlow in Parliament. He was a steadfast opponent of the Court party in the troublous days before the Great Rebellion, and, on one occasion, with his own hands locked the door of the House during the reading of a protest against certain illegal taxes. For this he was, of course, imprisoned; but it is pleasant to read that the Long Parliament voted a considerable sum to his family as an acknowledgment of his services and a compensation for his sufferings. A bas-relief indicates the manner of his death, which was the result of an accident. His horses ran away down Holborn Hill, upsetting the coach, and fatally injuring their master.