God said let Newton be! and all was light.”
His statue is also in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, so eloquently described by Wordsworth as
“The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.”
Newton is represented standing, and faces to the east, and of the other seated figures in the ante-chapel, which all face north or south, the latest addition and the finest work is Thornicroft’s statue of another Lincolnshire celebrity Alfred Lord Tennyson. This is an admirable likeness; the best view of it is from the east side.
West of Woolsthorpe is Buckminster, just over the border, but remarkable for having once had a beacon on the tower. The circular chimney of the Watcher’s shelter still stands in the north-west angle. At Weldon near Kettering is a lantern fifteen feet high with a cupola put up 200 years ago to guide folk through Rockingham Forest. It is lit now on New Year’s Eve.
From Colsterworth and Woolsthorpe we follow the river to Stoke Rockford, which is wedged in between the parks of Stoke and Easton. Both these manors were once held by the Rochfords and each had a separate church. Now one church serves for both and has a chapel for each manor, one on either side and extending the full length of the chancel. The Stoke Chapel has monuments of John de Neville 1320 and of the family of the present owners, the Turners. The Easton Chapel has a very fine one to the Cholmeleys, 1641, whose descendants still live in the old Elizabethan “Hall” with its triple avenue of limes which reach to the Great North Road. On the other side of the road the house at Stoke Park is also Elizabethan in style, but not in date, being by Salvin. It belongs to Christopher Turner, who also owns Panton Hall, near East Barkwith. The park has many fine trees and some very old thorns. In the chancel of Stoke Rochford is a brass to Henry Rochford, 1470, and on a brass plate this inscription to Oliver St. John and his wife Elizabeth Bygod, 1503:—
“Pray for the soil of Master Olyr-Sentjehn Squier, sonne unto ye right excellent hye and mightty pryncess of Som~sete g~ndame unto ou~ sovey~n Lord Kynge Herre the VII. and for the soll of Dame Elizabeth Bygod his wiff, whoo dep~ted from this t~nsitore liffe ye XII daye of June, i~ ye year of ou~ Lord MCCCCC and III.”
THE LADY MARGARET
Thus Oliver was brother to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, the mother of the King. She made a great mark on the history of her time, which was the fifteenth century. Daughter of the first Duke of Somerset and wife successively of the Earl of Richmond, who was half-brother to Henry VI., and of Henry Stafford, son to the Duke of Buckingham, and of Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, and mother, by her first marriage, of Henry VII., she was a magnificent patron of learning, for she endowed Christ’s College and St. John’s College, Cambridge, and founded the “Lady Margaret” professorships of Divinity both at Cambridge and at Oxford. Oliver’s mother had been the wife of Sir John Bigod, who with his father was killed on Towton field, near Leeds, in 1461, when, after a very bloody fight, the throne was secured to Edward IV., 28,000 Lancastrians, it is said, though this is hardly credible, having been left on the field of battle. Oliver, whom Leland describes as a big black fellow, died at Fontarabia, in Spain, but was buried at Stoke Rochford. It shows of how little account the spelling even of proper names was in the fifteenth century when we find here the brass plate on his daughter’s tomb inscribed, “Hic jacet Sibella Seyntjohn quondam filia Oliveri Sentjohn.” Perhaps there is something after all in the remark I heard a farmer make in the train at Boston: “Well, I reckon it is a clear gift, is spelling. My boy John, he’s nobbut eleven, and he can spell owt, but I’m noä hand at it mysen, and I reckon theer’s a stränge many is makes but a poor job on it.” In the museum at Peterborough there is a notebook of The Lord Chief Justice, Oliver St. John, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, dated 1649, who earned for himself the undying gratitude of his own and all future generations by saving Peterborough Cathedral.