Hampton Court/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
HAMPTON COURT AND THE CHURCH
1. Wolsey's chapel and his train of Churchmen: Cavendish's description.—2. Henry's alterations: the Royal pew: present condition of the chapel :Wren's work: historical associations: baptism of Edward VI.: funeral of Jane Seymour: the preachers: James I.: the destruction at the Rebellion: William and Mary: the King keeps his hat on: the early Hanoverian neglect: the Queen's private chapel.—3. The religion of the Palace: the Hampton Court Conference: the introductory discussion: James's knowledge of theology: the assembly on Monday: the "Turkey gowns:" the Catechism :the translation of the Bible: the part played by James himself: his judgment on the Conference: the later history of religion in the Palace.
I
Built by a great ecclesiastic and adorned with a chapel, which, much as it has been transformed, is still to-day a dignified and stately memorial of its founder, it is natural that Hampton Court should have an interest for churchmen. In this regard, even more than in others, it presents a series ofdetached episodes. During the three centuries and a half the chapel goes on with its quiet homely household services, varied from time to time as the Church varied its rules or royal influence made itself felt in different directions, and sharply broken across by the distinct divergence of the Commonwealth. But certain episodes stand out in its ecclesiastical history, such as the gorgeousness of Wolsey, or the theological interests of the first Stewart king of England.
Wolsey, with all his sees and all his dignities,supported an ecclesiastical establishment of corresponding grandeur; Cavendish seems to glory in its magnificence.
"Now I will declare unto you the officers of his chapel, and singing men in the same. First, he had there a Dean, a great divine and a man of excellent learning; a Sub-dean, a Repeater of the quire; a Gospeller, a Pisteller; of Priests ten; a Master of the children. The seculars of the chapel, being singing men, twelve; singing children,ten, with one servant to attend upon the said children. In the Revestry, a yeoman and two grooms: over and besides divers retainers that came thither at principal feasts. And as for the furniture of his chapel, it passeth my capacity to declare the number of the costly ornaments and rich jewels that were to be occupied in the same continually. For Ihave seen in procession about the hall forty-four of very rich copes of one suit worn, besides the rich crosses and candlesticks, and other necessary ornaments to the furniture of the same. Now shall ye understand that he had two cross-bearers, and two pillar-bearers: and in his great chamber and in his privy chamber all these persons; first, the chief Chamberlain and Vice Chamberlain; of Gentlemen ushers besides one in his privy chamber, he had twelve daily waiters; and of Gentlemen waiters in his privy chamber he had six; and of Lords nine or ten, who had each of them two men allowed them to attend upon them, except the Earl of Derby, who had allowed five men. Then had he of Gentlemen, of cup-bearers, of carvers, of sewers, both of the privy chamber and of the great chamber with Gentlemen daily waiters, there forty persons; of yeomen ushers he had six; of grooms in the chamber he had eight; of yeomen of his chamber he had forty-six daily; he had also of almsmen some more in number than other sometime, there attending upon his board at dinner. Of doctors and chaplains, beside them of his chapel which Irehearsed before, he had in number daily attending sixteen: a clerk of his closet. Then had he secretaries two, two clerks of his signet; and four counsellors learned in the law."
Such was the magnificence of the Cardinal's ecclesiastical retinue.
II
The accounts of the years 1535 and 1536 contain details as to the cost of the carved oak stalls, of the chapel door, the windows, paving, the carved roof, and the men working their "owre tymes and drynkyng tymes" to finish the font for the baptism of Edward, Prince of Wales.
Then Henry added to what Wolsey began. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish his work in the chapel from that of his great minister, but it is at least clear that the situation, general design, and proportions were Wolsey's, and that the King, here as elsewhere, showed very little originality in his work.
One of the most interesting features of the chapel is the large royal pew, which forms the west gallery, and closely resembles the pew found in so many domestic chapels of great houses. It is approached through the "haunted gallery," down which it is said that Catherine Howard's ghost still wanders, trying to intercept the King as he goes to the devotions which had so small an effect on his life.
Henry VIII. put painted glass in all the windows, and then or later a picture of the Crucifixion was hung over the high altar.
The chapel, owing to a recent restoration which has opened several of the Perpendicular windows, long disguised by a semi-classical barbarism, now resembles in some measure what it was when Henry VIII. had completed the roof. The fan tracery, with long pendants gorgeously decorated with angels, and gilded bosses, makes one of the most splendid Tudor roofs still in existence. Evelyn in 1662 speaks of it as "excellently fretted and gilt." Restoration here, too, has been at work, and the figures that support the corbels on the walls are evidently of Wren's design. But the general effect is that of a not unharmonious blending of late Tudor gorgeousness with the solid comfort in pews, and pillars, and panels of the age of Wren and his followers.
The proportion of the work, and the domestic character which it was evidently the design of Wren that it should bear, has unfortunately been recently much spoiled by the addition of somewhat mean seats up the centre, which was intended to have been a wide free space, for processions and groups at royal weddings and the like. Purists would endeavour to restore the chapel to its state under Wolsey, or at least under Henry VIII., but a wider sympathy should preserve so beautiful an example of the taste of our nearer fore-fathers in church matters from destruction. There are not too many of the "Queen Anne" chapels in existence; we could better spare some better things. And the chapel at Hampton Court,like that at Trinity College, Oxford, should be suffered to endure without further "restoration" as a valuable memorial of an interesting epoch in ecclesiastical art.
The chapel is interesting, too, from the scenes that have taken place within its walls. There Edward VI. was christened with great pomp, his sister Mary standing godmother. The high altar was "richly garnished with plate and stuff," and the font of solid silver gilt was set up on a stage in front of it. The long procession passed through great part of the palace. A few days later the coffin of Queen Jane Seymour rested there before it was taken to Windsor. When King Edward himself was king, he sat long hours in the chapel listening to the dreary sermons of the prolix ministers of the day. Protestant Dissenters may feel a special interest in a chapel in which doubtless John Knox and John Howe have preached. Mary restored allthe splendour of pre-Reformation ritual,and Elizabeth diminished little of its gorgeousness. The pomp with which she set about her devotions is described in another chapter, from the diary of Leopold von Wedel, one of those Pomeranian lords whom Meinhold has immortalised.
In the chapel few changes were made under James I. and his son. The unhappy marriage of Buckingham's idiot brother took place there, and from time to time many of the great Caroline divines occupied the pulpit. In 1645, when Parliament took possession of the Palace, the altar was destroyed, the pictures taken away, and the beautiful glass of Henry VIII.'s
day broken to pieces. Mr Ernest Law suggests that some railings of carved oak (now in the "Horn Room") are remnants from this destruction.[1] If this is not so, they are at least work of Charles II.'s day, removed to make way for the present rails, which suit with the pillars and canopy-work over the altar.
Chapel Court
very happily with William's life, and his taste in it did not agree with that of the historical Church of England. He would wear his hat in Hampton Court chapel, and his wife must needs turn out the fiddles and flutes and bass viols from the service. They set themselves against the old customs. They would not touch (and the Jacobites said they could not) for the King's evil; and so the quaint and solemn office was laid aside till "good Queen Anne" succeeded.
Anne had not her brother-in-law's delight in destruction; she contented herself with redecorating the whole, and adding the carving now at the top of the panels, the delicate designs of which are from the hand of Grinling Gibbons. At the same time the royal pew assumed its modern aspect of decorous comfort, and the ceiling above it received the painted cherubim who support the crown over the initials of Anna Regina. A new organ too was added, which with some changes still survives. A later restoration of the roof in 1847 cannot be remembered without suspicion; but on the whole, we may be thankful that the chapel bears such clear marks of its history. The Tudor and Stewart sovereigns had been content to worship, often daily, in church like their subjects; but the Hanoverians were accustomed to take their religion more easily, and under the Georges there appears the quaint little private chapel for the Queen, still pointed out, and filled now with the most inappropriate pictures (as indeed it is said to have been in George II.'s day), in which the chaplains read the service while the Queen in her "bathing-closet" next door, according to the witticism of Lord Hervey, would cry to her lady-in-waiting, "Shut a little that door; those creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak."
III
Religion, we are bound to admit, has not, at least since Wolsey's day, been a very obtrusive factor in the life of Hampton Court Palace; yet it has been none the less real for that, and, slight though the ecclesiastical interest of the house may be, it is famous in the history of the English Church for the Conference which first made clear the irreconcilable division between the Church of England, adhering in its formularies to the doctrine and discipline of the undivided Church, and the dissenting bodies who desired an absolute break with the past. The Conference met on Saturday, January 14, 1604, in response to James's proclamation of October 24, 1603, in which he promised to consider the complaints that had been put before him by the so-called Millennary petition, and to take cognisance of the state of the Church. On the evening of the 13th James saw some of the bishops in his private chamber, and the next day the King met the bishops in a solemn conclave. It was proposed that the King, assisted by several bishops and learned divines, should hear the complaints which were to be made by ministers who desired further changes in the Church, and should express his opinion as to what concessions it might be well to offer to tender consciences or irritable minds. The Archbishop Whitgift of Canterbury, himself not a little of a Calvinist in doctrine, attended, and with him were Bancroft, Bishop of London, a man of more liberal views; Tobie Matthew, Bishop of Durham, an Oxford scholar of fame and a singularly able administrator, who had also defended the English Reformation with learning and adroitness against the Jesuit Edmund Campion; Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, the renowned author of "The Perpetual Government of Christ's Church;" Bishops Rudd of St. David's, Babington of Worcester, Watson of Chichester, Dove of Peterborough, Robinson of Carlisle. Eight Deans were summoned—Montague, Dean of the Chapel, and the Deans of Christ Church, St. Paul's, Worcester, Salisbury, Chester, Windsor, and Westminster, with Dr.Field and Dr. King. Four clergy only represented thePuritan position—Reynolds, whom his friends regarded as the "oracle of his time for acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, councils, and fathers," Sparkes, Chaderton, and Knewstubbs.
On the first day the bishops and five deans alone met the King "in the King's privy chamber, one of the large rooms of Henry VIII.'s suite of state apartments, on the east side of the Clock-court, which were altered in the reign of George II."[2]
The King "propounded six points . . . three in the Common Prayer-Book, two for the bishops' jurisdiction, and one for the kingdom of Ireland. In the Prayer-Book he named the general absolution, the confirmation of children, and the office for private baptism. These three were long disputed between the King andbishops. In the conclusion the King was well satisfied in the two former, so that the manner might be changed and some things cleared. For the private baptism, it held three hours at the least, the King alone disputing with the bishops so wisely, wittily, and learnedly, with that pretty patience, as I think no man living ever heard the like."[3]
James's learning surprised his new subjects. It was indeed his hobby to study and enlarge upon the Fathers and the old divines, and, like most lay students of divinity, he was fascinated with the subject and could never have enough of it. Bilson wrote of his "sharpness of understanding, matureness of knowledge, soundness of reason, firmness of memory, and aptness of speech." The result of the discussion of the first day was the agreement upon certain changes with regard to excommunication, restricting private baptism, marking off Confirmation as a separate sacrament from Baptism, and inserting the words "or remission of sins" in the title of the Absolution at morning and evening prayer.
On Monday the King assembled the whole body, and addressed the "aggrieved sort," asking for their objections. Dr. Reynolds pleaded for the Lambeth Articles, and for alterations in the Thirtynine Articles as they stood. Bancroft burst in with a somewhat ineffectual attempt to pour contempt upon the Puritans by a far-fetched jest: "I conclude you are of Master Cartwright's mind, who affirmed that we ought in ceremonies rather to conform to the Turks than the Papists; otherwise, why do ye come here in your Turkey gowns instead of your proper habits?" The humour of phrase was ill-timed. The stout objectors sat on in their rich gowns, and the King demanded that the objection should be formally answered. Bancroft was more successful in his theology than in his wit. He had little difficulty in persuading the King that it would be rash indeed to tie down the Church of England by the bonds of the Lambeth Articles to a rigid Calvinism such as he had never favoured. James himself would have, he said, Predestination "tenderly handled." Common sense, it would appear, was not out of court in the long theological discussion that followed. Such bitter questions as intention were debated by Dr. Reynolds, and one of the prime points in the controversy between Laud and Fisher twenty years later was touched by the King with a smart onslaught of practical application: "Why, this is like one Master Craig in Scotland, with his I renounce and I abhor, his multiplied detestations and abrenuntiations, which so amazed simple people that they fell back to Popery. You would swell the Book of Articles into a volume as big as the Bible: and I must carry my confession of faith in my table-book, not in my head."
James, shrewd as ever, had hit the weakness of the Puritan contention. Religion, he would say, must needs be a matter which, in its fundamentals, we may carry in our heads: it cannot be for every man to learn a long catena or corpus theologiæ, with its corrections and its qualifications. The King was reaching towards the conclusion which the greatest prelate of the age expressed in after years," Nor will I ever take upon me to express that tenet or opinion, the denial of the foundation only excepted, which may shut any Christian, even the meanest, out of heaven."
Out of the controversies, however, some good did emerge. The Church Catechism was strengthened by the addition of the question and answers on the two chief Sacraments, and it was agreed that the Bible should be newly translated into English. Hampton Court has thus a special claim on the interest of all English-speaking people, for it was there that the plan was made which gave to literature and religion the priceless treasure of the Authorised Version. The High Commission was last touched on—a tribunal which no one really liked, bishops nor lawyers, lay folk nor ministers. It was compared with the Inquisition, and defended, and restricted. And nothing happened, as might have been expected. Besides this came the objections to the cross in baptism, to the surplice, and little matters which seem trivial to us to-day. James again had his flouts and jeers. "You aim at a Scottish Presbytery, which agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil."
Again the common-sense test is applied. Is there reason in taking the judgment upon any science of men who have not shared the subject? "Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up, and say, 'It must be thus;' then Dick shall reply, and say, 'Nay, marry, but we will have it thus.' And therefore, here I must reiterate my former speech, Le roi s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that from me, and if then you find me pursey and fat and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will, perhaps, hearken to you; for let that government be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough, both our hands full. But, Doctor Reynolds, until you find that Igrow lazy, let that alone." And again when Master Knewstubbs, having failed in endeavours to bind his own burden on the back of all others, asked for a toleration some time for "weak brethren," James sharply retorted with questions—"How long should they be weak? Whether forty-five years were not sufficient for them to grow strong? Who they were that pretended that weakness, for we require not now subscriptions from laics and idiots, but preachers and ministers, who are not now, I trow, to be fed with milk, but are enabled to feed others."
Much might be written, and much has been—indeed, too much—on the theological aspects of the Conference which gives Hampton Court a claim to commemoration in the history of the English Church; but two points are enough to emphasise here. It was this Conference which made it clear that, now the Reformation struggle itself was over, the English Church and its prelates and kings had no thought of accepting any changes which should sever them from the old order of the Catholic world. They still followed the Fathers as well as the Bible, and in ceremonies, as in doctrine, would not abandon the old, nor be led into the new straitness of a grim Genevan model. And if this point concerns historians and divines, there is another which is worth noting by the world at large. There is no theologian more vociferous than your layman. Give him free speech and he will never have done. Learning and wit behind him, he will tell his clergy their duty, and teach them their lesson with light heart and long tongue. James delighted in the Hampton Court Conference, for he could say his best and his utmost. And so, when men went away, it was the King's sayings and doings they most thought of. "No bishop, no king,"—and the strange comparison for the Presbyterian system, in which he had been brought up,—and his last words, "If this be all they have to say, I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse."
It was clear, when the Conference was over, that the new King was determined to take the English Church as he found it. "Whereas," says worthy Fuller, "it was hitherto disputable whether the north, where he long lived, or the south, whither he lately came, should prevail most on the King's judgment in Church government, this doubt was now clearly decided. Henceforth many cripples in conformity were cured of their former halting therein, and such as knew not their own till they knew the King's mind in the matter, for the future quietly digested the ceremonies of the Church."[4]
James's own opinion of it all is on record clearly enough. He had already, on January 19, 1604, written to the two Universities warning them not to allow any man to "defend any heresie or maintaine any schismaticall trickes."[5] 'Now, he wrote to the Earl of Northampton:[6] "We have kept such a Revell with the Puritans here these two days as was never heard the like, quhaire I have peppered thaime as soundlie as ye have done the Papists thaire. It were no Reason that those that will refuse the airy sign of the Cross after Baptism should have their purses stuffed any more with solid and substantial crosses. They fled me so from Argument to Argument, without ever answering me directly, ut est eorum moris, as I was forced at last to say unto thaime, that if any of thaime had been in a college disputing with their scholars, if any of thair disciples had answered them in that sort, they would have fetched him up short in Place of a Reply; and so should the Rod have played upon the poor Boys"!
The Conference is certainly a prominent episode in the history of the Palace, and it is one which is not likely to be repeated. The Church now quietly and soberly pursues her course, ministering to the residents of the Palace. Some have of modern times dissented from her worship, but the order of the English Church has never ceased to be followed since the days of Wolsey, with the exception of the period of suppression under the Commonwealth, when Cromwell's daughter, Mary, privately married by the Church, was publicly wedded in the chapel according to the fashion of the Independents. Nor has the sovereign ever failed to provide a royal chaplain and a choir.
The chapel is well cared for. We must hope that it will not undergo further "restoration."
Only the return of the old Caroline altar-rails may be pleaded for.
- ↑ "History of Hampton Court," vol. ii. p. 131.
- ↑ Law, "History of Hampton Court Palace," vol. ii. p. 32.
- ↑ Montague in Nicholls "Progresses of King James I.," i. 314.
- ↑ "Church History," Book x.
- ↑ Strype's "Whitgift," Appendix,p. 238.
- ↑ Ibid., 239. Mr.Gardiner ("History of England,"1603-1642, vol. i. p. 159 note) pointed out the absurd mistake by which this letter has been taken by its editors and by historians, as it was even by Archdeacon Perry in his "History of the Church of England," to be addressed to a Mr. Blake. Blake = black: 'Black Northampton.'