tower, is a good example of its period. In the vicinity is Sudeley Castle, originally built by Thomas Boteler, Lord Sudeley (d. 1398). By gift of Edward VI. it came into the hands of Sir Thomas Seymour, fourth husband of Catherine Parr; this queen died here and was buried in the chapel. The castle suffered severely at the hands of the parliamentarians in 1644, and remained ruinous until 1837, when a careful restoration was begun. There are a tower of the 14th century, and considerable remains of the 15th, the inhabited portion being mainly of Tudor date. There are flour mills, paper-works and tanneries at Winchcomb.
Excavations prove that there were both British and Roman settlements at Winchcomb (Wincelcumbe, Winchelcumbe). It owed its growth to the foundation of religious houses by Offa and Coenwulf of Mercia in the 8th century. It became a borough in Saxon times, was the chief town of a shire to which it gave its name, and was the seat of government of the Mercian kings. Witenagemots were held there in 771 and 942. Harold, earl of Wessex, was the first overlord. It had become a royal borough by 1087, and was granted by a charter of 1224 to the abbots of St Mary's to be held of the king by a rent of £50. Winchcomb never received a charter and was not incorporated, but as a borough by prescription it was governed by 2 bailiffs and 10 chief burgesses until the corporate body was dissolved by act of parliament in 1883. It was never represented in parliament except by its mitred abbots before the dissolution of the monasteries. There is no trace of the original grant of a fair on July 17 (now held on July 28), but it is mentioned as already existing in a charter of 1221, which changed the market day from Sunday to Saturday. Elizabeth granted another fair on April 25 by charter in 1575. A Tuesday market was also granted under this charter, but the Saturday market only is now held. Both the modern fairs are horse and cattle fairs, but in the middle ages they were centres of the cloth manufacture. Tanning has been a local industry since the beginning of the 19th century, and paper and silk factories were introduced about 1830. Winchcomb took the side of the king in the Civil War and was twice plundered.
See Victoria County History, Gloucestershire; Emma Dent, Annals of Winchecombe (1877); David Royce, Winchecombe Cartulary (1892).
WINCHELSEA, ANNE FINCH, Countess of (1661-1720), English author, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton, near Southampton, was born in April 1661. Five months later her father died, and her mother married in 1662 Sir Thomas Ogle. Lady Ogle died in 1664, and nothing is heard of her daughter Anne until 1683, when she is mentioned as one of the maids of honour of Mary of Modena, duchess of York. She married in May 1684 Colonel Heneage Finch, who was attached to the duke of York's household. To him she addressed poems and versified epistles, in which he figures as Daphnis and she as Ardelia. At the Revolution Heneage Finch refused the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, and he and his wife had no fixed home until they were invited in 1690 to Eastwell Park, Kent, by Finch's nephew Charles, 4th earl of Winchelsea, on whose death in 1712 Heneage Finch succeeded to the earldom. The countess of Winchelsea died in London on the 5th of August 1720, leaving no issue, her husband surviving until 1726.
Lady Winchelsea's poems contain many copies of verse addressed to her friends and contemporaries. She was to some extent a follower of the “matchless Orinda” in the fervour of her friendships. During her lifetime she published her poem “The Spleen” in Gildon's Miscellany (1701) and a volume of Poems in 1713 which included a tragedy called Aristomenes. With Alexander Pope she was on friendly terms, and one of the seven commendatory poems printed with the 1717 edition of his works was by her. But in the farce Three Hours after Marriage (1717) attributed to Gay, but really the work of Pope, Arbuthnot and Gay, she is ridiculed as the learned lady, Phoebe Clinket, a character assigned to Pope's hand. Lady Winchelsea's poems were almost forgotten when Wordsworth in the “Essay, supplementary to the Preface” of his Poems (1815), drew attention to her nature-poetry, asserting that with the exception of Pope's “Windsor Forest” and her “Nocturnal Reverie,” English poetry between Paradise Lost and Thomson's Seasons did not present “a single new image of external nature.” Wordsworth sent at Christmas 1819 a MS. of extracts from Lady Winchelsea and other writers to Lady Mary Lowther, and his correspondence with Alexander Dyce contains some minute criticism and appreciation of her poetry.
Mr Edmund Gosse wrote a notice of her poems for T. H. Ward's English Poets (vol. iii., 1880), and in 1884 came into possession of a MS. volume of her poems. A complete edition of her verse, The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, was edited by Myra Reynolds (Chicago, 1903) with an exhaustive essay. See also E. Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1891), and E. Dowden, Essays, Modern and Elizabethan. Wordsworth's anthology for Lady Mary Lowther was first printed in 1905 (Oxford). Some of her work remains in MS. in the possession of Professor Dowden.
WINCHELSEA, ROBERT (d. 1313), archbishop of Canterbury, was probably born at Old Winchelsea. He studied and then taught at the universities of Paris and Oxford, where he attained celebrity as a scholar, and became rector of the former, and subsequently chancellor of the latter university. He held prebendal stalls in the cathedrals of Lincoln and St Paul's, and was made archdeacon of Essex about 1283. In December 1292 John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, died, and early in the following year Winchelsea was elected as his successor. His consecration, which took place at Aquila in September 1294, was delayed owing to the vacancy in the papacy, but he found no difficulty in obtaining the temporalities of the see from King Edward I. Winchelsea is chiefly renowned as a strenuous upholder of the privileges of the clergy and the authority of the pope, and as a fearless opponent of Edward I. Strengthened by the issue of the papal bull Clericis laicos in 1296, he stimulated the clergy to refuse pecuniary assistance to Edward in 1297; but after the king had pronounced sentence of outlawry against the delinquents he instructed each clerk to decide this question for himself. Personally the archbishop still declined to make any contribution towards the expenses of the French war, and his lands were seized and held by Edward until July 1297, when a somewhat ostentatious reconciliation between king and prelate took place at Westminster. He took some part in the movement which led to the confirmation of the charters by Edward later in the same year, but the struggle with the king did not exhaust his energies. He asserted his authority over his suffragans to the full; quarrelled with Pope Boniface VIII. over the presentation to a Sussex living, and was excommunicated by one of the pope's minions; and vigorously contested the claim of the archbishop of York to carry his cross erect in the province of Canterbury. Before these events, however, the quarrel with Edward had been renewed, although Winchelsea officiated in 1299 at the king's marriage with Margaret, daughter of Philip III., king of France. Joining the barons in demanding certain reforms from Edward at the parliament of Lincoln in 1301, he compelled the king to give way on the main issues; but the indignation which followed the claim of Pope Boniface to be the protector of Scotland, a claim which was supported by Winchelsea, led to the rupture of this alliance. It is probable that one of the reasons which led the archbishop to join in these proceedings was his hostility to Edward's adviser, Walter Langton, bishop of Lichfield, whom he sought to disgrace both in England and at Rome. The king cherished his indignation until his friend Clement V. became pope in 1305, when he made his final move against Winchelsea. Listening to Edward's envoys, Langton and Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, Clement suspended the archbishop, who, after vainly imploring the intercession of the king, left England and journeyed to the papal court at Bordeaux, remaining in exile until Edward's death in July 1307. The new king, Edward II., requested Clement to allow Winchelsea to return to his see. The pope assented, but soon after his return to England early in 1308 the archbishop joined the king's enemies; even demanded the release from prison of his old enemy, Langton, and was one of the “ordainers” appointed in 1310. He assisted the barons in their struggle
