After a sojourn in north-west Wilts it is refreshing to dip into the
wooded lanes of the Home Counties and see again the red-brick
cottages and homesteads which have such a snug and homely look
after the cold grey stone and glaring chalk roads. For old-world
villages and manor-houses, however, one could not choose a better
exploring g
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round, but not, please note, for the craze of picking up bits of old oak,
judging by what we overheard the very first day we stopped in one of
the most out-of-the-way places of all.
"Anything old inside?" asked somebody at the doorway, having led gently and gracefully up to it so as not to arouse suspicion. "Nothing,"
was the reply. "May I look round inside?" was asked. "No." Then after a pause. "Any other of the cottagers got any old chairs, or china?"
"One or two of them had some, but they sold what they had to Mrs.
—— of ——." " Of course," was the disgusted reply; "she's always first, and gets everything!"
GATE-HOUSE, SPYE PARK.
The conversation gives but an idea of the systematic way that a
crusade for the antique is carried on. If the hunter makes a "find," and the owner will not part, that unfortunate cottager is persecuted until
he or she does part, sooner or later to regret the folly. And, alas!
churches are not even sacred from these sharks. How often have we
not seen some curious piece of furniture mentioned as being in the
church, and, lo! it has vanished—where? And do not the empty
brackets over many an ancient tomb tell a tale? What have become
of the helmets of the ancient lords of the manors? We can quote an
instance offhand. In the fine old church of Bromham, three of the
helmets of the manorial lords, the Bayntons, are still there, two of
them perhaps only funereal helmets, and not the actual casques of
warfare; but there are three if not four vacant brackets which
perchance once supported the envied headpieces with pointed visor
of the fifteenth century. Aloft also are some rusty
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gauntlets, and one of the helmets still bears the crest of the eagle's head. The manor descended from the Beauchamps to the Bayntons,
the last of whom was the nineteenth in descent from Sir Henry
Baynton, Knight Marshal of the household to Henry the Second. His
mother was the eldest daughter and co-heiress of John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester, and Miss Malet the runaway heiress. A recumbent
effigy of Sir Roger Touchet in alabaster (resembling in a remarkable
degree the late Sir Henry Irving as Richard III.) is covered with the carved initials of vandal visitors, not, we may add, only of our own
and fathers' and grandfathers' time, but dating back from the reign of
Elizabeth; so it is comforting to see that our ancestors were as prone
to disfigure monuments in this way as is the modern 'Arry. One of the
initials, I. W., perhaps may be that of the witty and wicked Earl of Rochester, who by repute made Spye an occasional residence,
although the Bayntons certainly held the estate some years after the
Lady Anne, his daughter's death in 1703. The ceiling of the Baynton
chapel is richly carved, and the bosses and brackets show their
original faded colouring of blue and gold. There are also coloured
niches for saints; and on a canopied tomb of Elizabeth Touchet, a
brass of a kneeling figure, and a tablet of the coat of arms is
enamelled in colours. There also is a fine brass of John Baynton in
Gothic armour.