Both were west-countrymen also, having been born in neighbouring counties, the one at a village in north Wilts, the other in a little country town in central Dorset.
Stafford saw the beginning of the internecine strife of the Roses, but was called away as their rival pretensions began to assert themselves, and the deadly conflict to thicken.
Morton appeared at the conclusion of the disastrous quarrel, and it was reserved for him to put a stop to the deluge of blood that had been ruthlessly shed for so many years,—computed to have cost a hundred thousand lives,—decimating his native land, and by uniting and neutralizing the contending claims, bring it peace. A statesman-like mission of the first importance, and carried out with such consummate wisdom, that it has been aptly said, "he joined the Roses, that is, he brought about the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster, for that was his doing, and, so far as can now be seen, would not have been done but for him. He made the Tudor dynasty, and his name is buried under his own creation."
So ends our little story,—such are the momentous issues, that fill the mind's eye, amid this rural quietness, as our steps make homeward. Evening is approaching, and leaving the interesting precincts of North-Bradley church, our path back to Trowbridge,—discerned afar by its hood of smoke,—leads through some pleasant meadows by way of Suthwyke. Here we halt for a moment to take a final look at the old place, and first home of Stafford in these parts. If deserted, one after another, by its antient possessors, it now appears shorn of the original dignity that man's transitory occupation once conferred upon it, and of which nothing but a memory remains, Nature, unchanging, still continues to adorn it with her charms, and specially so just at present, for the trees in the orchard that skirts the Court are in full bloom, some of them "white as a sheet with blooth" (as the old Saxon idiom of the west-country peasantry expressively describes it), and others loaded with clusters of variously expanded chalices of all shades of that inimitable pink, the which—for want of other satisfactory description,—we are content to call "apple-blossom."
There, across the moat, lived the first Sir Humphrey,—this we know,—but what voice shall come back from the Past, and point us to the site of the cottage, wherein the future Archbishop—his presumed son—first saw the light? All is silent.
Of the last resting-places of the Staffords of Suthwyke, greater certainty exists, and widely divided are they all in death.
The two successive Sir Humphreys, their wives, and a stray descendant, sleep where stood a venerable monastic church, on the shores of the Atlantic, in southern Dorset; the unfortunate, headless Earl, lies in Glastonbury's great Abbey in central Somerset; but the record of their graves has perished with them. Not so the memorials that perpetuate the memories of the Archbishop's mother and her famous boy. She received honoured burial, presumably amid her native scenes, and, it may be, among her own kindred, here in this little sanctuary in north Wilts; but her distinguished son found sepulture far away in Kent, in the glorious cathedral, whose throne he filled, and among those whose names are entwined with the greatest traditions of the land, and within the precincts of its most sacred place, near where his canonized predecessor meekly met his death at the hands of savage men, and thenceforward named for all time as
"THE TRANSEPT OF THE MARTYRDOM."
Stranger, who through these dim sepulchral aisles,
Strayest in silence 'mid the mighty dead,
Lo, History's tongue here Time's fleet ear beguiles,
Great memories rise at every footstep's tread;—
Entombed in peace, repose, life's tumult o'er,
Two famous prelates from the distant west,
One, Suthwyke's son,—though graven found no more,
Hear thou his erstwhile record, and request;—
Whose dust concealeth thou, O ponderous stone?
Marble declare;—John Stafford was his name;—
In whose seat sat he?—on the Primate's throne,
Illustrious there, from Bath with mitred fame:—
For Chief so great, pray, now from life laid down,
The Virgin born may grant him golden crown."