248 A HUMOROUS DEFENCE CH. IX Then Winchcomb, my trade hath proved nothing worth. . 'twas a merry world with me, for indeed before tobacco was there planted, there being no kind of trade to employ men, and very small tillage, necessity compelled poor men to stand my friends by stealing of sheep and other cattel, breaking of hedges, robbing of orchards and what not." And so the surreptitious industry went on, and in Yorkshire, lingered on till the Act of George the Third in 1782. CHAPTER X SUDELEY CASTLE is a private residence, and not accessible to strangers, but the late Mrs. Dent's Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley have made both its history and its treasures familiar to all who are interested in the history of the county. When the Dents came into possession about the middle of the last century, the castle was in the ruined condition to which it had been reduced in the Civil War, and such portions as remained habitable had been converted into a village inn. The new owners conceived the idea of restoring it to something of its former grandeur, and so successfully has the work been accomplished that Sudeley is now one of the finest baronial houses in Gloucestershire. The whole of the northern quadrangle has been restored, while the southern one, containing the hall with its magnificent oriel, remains a ruin. At the same time, the parish church, which adjoins the castle on the east side, was again made serviceable: it had been defiled and defaced by the soldiers of the Parliament in 1643, and had remained in a neglected and ruined state ever since. Sudeley has been exceptionally fortunate in having so competent and so zealous a guardian as Mrs. Dent; her interest in all that bore upon the history of the castle and its belongings never flagged, and her active support was always to be counted on in any attempt to discover or preserve the historic relics of the neighbourhood. Besides compiling the Annals, she conducted a local periodical called the Winchcombe and Sudeley Record, CH. X SUDELEY 251 in which she brought together many stray particulars concerning the history, folk-lore, and customs of the country side. In any undertaking tending to promote the public welfare she was always foremost, and, from all I have heard, her loss must have been deeply felt throughout the neighbourhood. From the White Hart the road descends abruptly to the Isbourne, and rises more gently on the other side to the modern gatehouse of the castle, inscribed with the hospitable legend "Amicis Quaelibet Hora." The ancient dame, the keeper of the gate, who has grown grey in the service of the family, will conduct you to the church, and show you the beautiful tomb erected by the Dents to the memory of Queen Catherine Parr. And here I must pause, for the reader will naturally ask, what brought the last wife of the six times wedded monarch so far from courts and camps, to lay her bones on a cold hillside of the distant Cotswold. Thus, then, it was Sudeley, for the best part of a century a royal manor, had been granted to Thomas Seymour, the destroyer of abbeys, and, as Froude styles him, the hard landlord, the tyrannical neighbour, and the oppressor of the poor. Here he made his country house, and here he brought his bride, the widow of his late master. Poor Catherine, however, did not long survive to taste the joys of Sudeley, or to repent of her latest marriage. In less than two years she was dead, and her body was buried in the church. Her tomb was destroyed at the desecration of the church, and the very spot was forgotten. At last, in 1782, a search was made and a leaden coffin discovered, the inscription on which left no doubt as to its identity: this inscription has been reproduced on the modern tomb, beneath which the coffin is now deposited. I have said that Sudeley, before it was granted to Seymour, was a royal manor. A story told by Leland explains how it passed into the King's hands. Originally erected in the reign of Stephen, the castle was rebuilt from its foundations in Henry the Sixth's time by Ralph, Lord Boteler of Sudeley, into 252 SUDELEY CASTLE CHAP. whose family the estate had passed by marriage. Ralph was a notable sea-captain, and one of the towers he built at Sudeley is said to have derived its name, Portmare, from that of a French admiral taken prisoner by him. He was a staunch Lancastrian, and when Edward the Fourth came to the throne he was summoned to London and forced to surrender his estate. Leland hints, however, that it was the attractions of Sudeley rather than any suspicion of treasonable conduct that influenced the King in this matter, for as Ralph was ascending the hill on his way to London, he turned to take a farewell look at his home, and said "Sudeley Castle, thou art the traitor, not I." Again a royal demesne on the attainder and execution of Seymour, a few years later it became for more than a century the seat of the princely house of Chandos. This was the most glorious period in the annals of Sudeley. The family of Brydges was one of the most powerful in the western midlands: its matrimonial connections were extensive and influential, and its manors were distributed over four counties. Sir John Brydges, who had distinguished himself in the wars of Henry VIII., was one of the most energetic supporters of Queen Mary, and in 1554 he was rewarded with the grant of Sudeley and raised to the peerage as Baron Chandos. The castle soon became famous for its magnificence and hospitality : Edmund, the second lord, was "a generous friend, a noble housekeeper, and a bountiful master": Giles, the third lord, entertained Elizabeth on one of her progresses with the splendour to which she was used. The genius loci was not forgotten. On her entrance to the castle an old shepherd presented her with a lock of wool, and made her a speech commending his calling and the ancient industry of Cotswold to her royal favour. Next day there was an "entertainment," in which Apollo and Daphne, in the guise of shepherd and shepherdess, played the principal part, and nothing but the inclemency of the weather prevented the performance of a |