A visit to St George's Chapel Windsor

Today I went on an excursion organised by the Oxford University Heraldry Society to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle - my first visit to the castle for over fifty years.

We had a fairly early start from Oxford, as we were booked in at the Chapel for 10.30. So up betimes and off to Summertown in North Oxford for my lift to Windsor. Being between other roadusers travelling times we made good progress. The jorney took us through Slough, and this, my first visit, brought home to me what Betjeman wrote so long ago about it - "Come kindly bombs and fall on Slough/ It isn't fit to live there now"...

On arrival at the King Henry VIII gate of the castle it was a slightly disconcerting sign of the times to be met by the usual attendants plus a policeman armed with a serious looking gun. Nevertheless the welcome to our group was very friendly and we had two of the Military Knights to acts as guides to the chapel and to the Garter plates of the Knights of the Garter in their stalls in the choir.

 The choir of St George's Chapel

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The banners of the Knights of the Garter

Image: Wikipedia 

The tour of the Chapel enabled me to see things I recalled vividly from my previous visit, plus things I had missed, such as the Beaufort chantry with the tomb of the first Earl of Worcester and, in the south choir aisle, the onetime home of the Cross Gneth, plus things that are not always accessible, such as the Rutland chapel with the tomb of Lord and Lady Roos and the brass of her parents Anne Duchess of Exeter, sister of King Edward IV  and King Richard III, and her second husband Sir Thomas St Leger. The chapel is full of  tombs and memorials of interest to anyone with a sense of history and genealogy - you almost fall over deceased monarchs - there are ten sovereigns buried in the chapel.

The earliest surviving Garter plate, which is of Sir Ralph Basset, together with those of later Knights 

Image;stgeorges-windsor.org

The tour of the stalls with the Garter plates was a rare opportunity to get a close view of this amazing collection. To view them all would take an age, but our guide, who has complied a new cross-referenced list of the plates, pointed out those of the first Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, of Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major amongst Prime Ministers, whilst the array of foreign royalty was amazingly rich. Starting with Charles the Bold of Burgandy and Emperor Maximilian I along the way - and we had to keep moving forward through the lines of the range of stall beneath the Knight's ones, I spotted, inter alia, numerous Portuguese monarchs down to King Manuel II, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Emperor Haile Selassie,King Ferdinand I of Romania, King Charles X of France, and some other French Kings' plates could be seen in the further distance. There were two plates from the fourteenth century - though possibly not originally in the Chapel - and several of participants in the events of the Wars of the Roses.

I was a little disappointed that some of the most recent plates, such as those of the Earl of Wessex and of the Duke of Cambridge, had abandoned the traditional medieval French for English in their inscriptions - by contrast Lady Thatcher's stall plate was, for all her supposed Euro-scepticism, in traditional French.

After our tour we came out by the Dean's cloister and went for buffet lunch in the basement - the Dungeon - of the Curfew Tower, before having a tour of the Archives of the Chapel and Order. These included displays of early fifteenth century account rolls of the Dean and Chapter with the earliest references to the Garter plates, records of nominations by the Knights to fill vacancies - a practice which durvived until the time of Queen Victoria's widowhood - and which survived in an early sicxteenth century manuscript recovered by chance in London from the clearance of a private collection and returned to King George VI, and plans of the stalls and their plates.

We also were shown items from the library of the Chapel, including a Caxton, and finally the permanent display of treasures, including the illuminated Black Book commissioned by King Henry VIII about 1534-5, and which was on show at the Greenwich exhibition about him in 1991, and has group portraits of the King surrounded by the Knights of the Garter, including Emperor Charles V, King Francis I, King James V and King Ferdinand I.

 

The Black Book of the Garter

The Black Book, named after its black velvet binding, is the first surviving register of the Garter. It was begun in 1534 when Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn. However it incorporates material from earlier registers (which are now lost) dating to the reign of Henry V. The text is in Latin and it contains statutes, an account of the foundation of the Order and the record of ceremonies and elections. It is finely written and richly illuminated in the Flemish style. There are representations of the founder of the order, Edward III and his wife Philippa along with Henry V.

The pages depicted here are on the reign of Henry VIII and the ceremonies of the Order for 1534. Above left, Henry VIII is surrounded by twenty-five knights in the robes of the Order; bottom left and right, the knights in armorial surcoats, process to chapel where, above right, the three junior knights arrive.

The Black Book shows the impact of the Reformation as in later admissions, various decorations of the Order that are depicted have been mutilated and wiped out to eliminate ‘superstitious’ elements.

Image and text :little-miss-sunnydale on Flickriver.com 

As well there is  in the display the Red Book, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I, and the Blue Book from the reign of King Charles I. Also on display were a tally list of votes in the papal conclave of 1676 - how that got to Windsor is unknown - and handwritten nominations by several seventeenth century Knights, including the future King James II.

This was fascinating day out, and I am very grateful to the organisers for arranging it. If any reader gets the chance to have such a tour I warmly recommed doing so. In any case Windsor is so rich in fascinating things to see that any visit, or indeed repeated visits, is definitely something to do.




    

The Battle of Hexham

Today is the 550th anniversary of the battle of Hexham in 1464. This Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians resulted in the end of the ule of part of northern Northumberland by the supporters of King Henry VI. The Lancastrians, led by Henry Beaufort Duke of Somerset, had been defeated with ome losses at the battle of Hedgeley Moor on April 25th and the battle at Hexham finished them as a group - probably more were beheaded after the battle than died in combat

There is an online account of the earlier battle here , and another discussion - perhaps more scholarly, from the US based Richard III Foundation - at Hedgeley Moor.

The battle at Hexham is again covered online at  Battle of Hexham and by Luminarium at  The Battle of Hexham (May 15, 1464). The Richard III Foundation piece about the battle, again with more recent scholarship, is at the site Battle of Hexham.

An article about new interpretations of the battle from the local newspaper the Hexham Courant can be seen at  Debunking myths about the real Battle of Hexham, and the website of a re-enactment group The Beaufort Companye has a useful illustrated feature on the battle at The Battle of Hexham - Beaufort Companye

As I wrote above the result of the battle was the capture and summary decapitation of the Lancastrian leadership, most notably the 28 year old Duke of Somerset. He was beheaded the same day in Hexham market place, and buried in the adjacent Augustinian monastery. Technically a priory it is now known as Hexham abbey, and is treasure-house of medieval ecclesiastical art. A plaque in the Market Place commemorates his death.

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The new Oxford DNB life of him by Michael K. Jones can be read here, and there is another useful biographical article about him here. Although by no means always successful as a military commander Somerset had shown himself a resourceful and determined figure, and indeed jouster, whilst still managing in 1462-3 to make his temporary peace with King Edward IV, before heading north to raise the border area for King Henry.

His death meant that his younger brother Edmund (b.1438) succeeded to the leadership of the Beaufort connection and claim until his execution after the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, a battle in which their youngest brother John (b.circa 1455) had been killed. With them ended the legitimate male line of the Beauforts. Any claim they might have to the throne - notwithstanding King Henry IV's formal denial of it - now resided with their cousin Lady Margaret Beaufort, and her son, Henry Tudor Earl of Richmond.

However Duke Henry had left an illegitimate son, Charles Somerset, born about 1460 to his mistress Joan Hill. Under the rule of King Henry VII and King Henry VIII Charles married a south Wales heiress and rose to become Baron Herbert and in 1514 Earl of Worcester, as well as a Knight of the Garter. There is an introductory account of him here, and Jonathan Hughes' comprehensive Oxford DNB biography can be read here. He died in 1526 , leaving his titles and estates to his son and his descendants. Prompted to the Marquessate of Worcester by King Charles I they hoped to regain the Duchy of Somerset. The revival of the Seymour title to that in 1660 frustrateds that plan, so in 1684 the Somersets became Dukes of Beaufort - an elegant solution to patronymics and titles for the lineal descendants of those Beauforts Dukes of Somerset.

Today the title is held by the eleventh Duke, who is thus in direct male line of decent from John of Gaunt, the progenitor of the Beauforts. The late Duke in his memoirs pointed out the strong family resemblance of his father to King Henry VIII, and he, the tenth Duke, in his youth and as a young man certainly had a strong resemblance to the quintessential Plantagenet image. In the portrait and effigy of the first Earl of Worcester there is not only that cast of features but maybe some idea of what his father and uncles, of whom no portraits survive, looked like.

 

  Charles Somerset (c.1460–1526), by an unknown sculptor. 
Effigy on his tomb at St George's Chapel Windsor

Image:Oxford DNB

Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester, son of Henry, Duke of Somerset - a posthumous portrait

Image:Wikipedia