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VII. Ightham Mote: Politics and Architecture in Early Tudor England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

David Starkey
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Abstract

Ightham Mote in Kent is one of the most beautiful of English country houses; it is also one of the most important. It stands at the foot of a steep hill, four-square and surrounded by the moat that gives it its name. Directly from the water rises the picturesquely irregular exterior. Most of the lower courses and the whole west or gatehouse front are of Kentish ragstone; much of the upper storey, however, is half-timbered. This mixture reveals the chief fact in the history of the house. It is a late medieval building, extensively remodelled in the early sixteenth century (pl. LII).

The works were carried out by Sir Richard Clement, a minor Tudor courtier (pl. LIII a), and they embody his political and social ambitions with remarkable faithfulness. At the same time, the clarity of Clement's statement reflects back on his own society and raises important questions about the nature of both early Tudor art and politics and the relationship between them. I begin by tracing Clement's career to the time of his purchase of Ightham Mote; then the rebuilding of the house is described and its decorations placed within the context of the early Tudor court style; finally, the possible political significance of the style is explored, partly in terms of its origins and partly through an account of Clement's later career as a Kentish gentleman.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 107 , 1982 , pp. 153 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1982

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References

Notes

1 Public Record Office, London [hereafter cited as PRO]: STAC 2/18/321.

2 Full details of Henry VII's Privy Chamber and Clement's place in it are given in Starkey, David, ‘The King's Privy Chamber, 1485–1547’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge: 1973), pp. 13–63, and in particular, 52–4.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 70.

4 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H., 21 vols. and addenda (London: 1862–1932) [hereafter cited as LP], II ii, 2735 (early 1536), IV i, 1939/8 (c. 1520).Google Scholar

5 Myers, A. R., The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), p. 127.Google Scholar

6 Cf. LP IV i, 1939/8.

7 LP II ii, p. 1485, Addenda I, i, 96.

8 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII, 3 vols. (London, 1898–1956), III, no. 328.Google Scholar

9 Catalogue of the Muniments belonging to G. C. W. Fitzwilliam, Esq., preserved at Milton, compiled by I. H. Jeayes, 4 vols. (Northamptonshire Record Office, reproduced by the Historical Manuscripts Commission [National Register of Archives]: March 1957) [hereafter cited as Fitzwilliam MSS.], I, nos. 1424, 1430, 1431.

10 LP Addenda I i, 96.

11 Fitzwilliam MSS., II, nos. 1291, 1292.

12 LP II i, 495, 695, and see n. 21 below.

13 LP Addenda I i, 96.

14 Fitzwilliam MSS., II, nos. 1293, 1433.

15 A good summary of the pre-Tudor history of the house is given in Newman, J. A., Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 330 ff.Google Scholar

16 Conway, A. E., ‘The Maidstone sector of Buckingham's rebellion’, Arch. Cantiana, xxxvii (1925), 100, 108–9.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols. and index (London: 1767–1832), VI, 273a.Google Scholar

19 Kent County Record Office, Maidstone: Selby MSS (Cat. Mk. U947), T2/1, Bundle A, deed dated 5th July 1518.

20 Loc. cit., indenture dated 21st December 1518.

21 Loc. cit., indenture dated 10th March 1521. The indenture describes the purchaser as Richard Clement ‘of Milton in the county of Northampton’.

22 It should perhaps be stated at this point that in the absence of any building accounts etc., which are most unlikely to turn up, the rebuilding of Ightham Mote can only be dated by the internal evidence of the badges used in its decoration. And that fixes the reconstruction no more narrowly than to 1509–1529. That means in theory that the works could just have well been carried out by Edward Haute between 1509 and 1518 as by Sir Richard Clement between 1521 and 1529. But rebuilding on such a scale would be a strange activity for the last owner of a declining family, whereas the traditional ascription of the work to Clement is supported (as the text shows at length) by every circumstance of his career. The ascription is further reinforced by the many parallel cases of the rebuilding of country houses by owners old and new as what could be described as political rites de passage-cf. Girouard, Mark, Life in the English Country House (New Haven and London, 1978), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Boutell, Charles, Handbook to English Heraldry (London, 1914), pp. 220ff.Google Scholar

24 Salvini, Roberto and Grohn, Hans Werner, L'Opera Pittorica Completa di Holbein il Giovane (Milan, 1971), nos. 89A and 91.Google Scholar

25 Cf. Trapp, J. B. and Herbrüggen, Hubertus Schulte, The King's Good Servant: Sir Thomas More 1477/8–1535, catalogue of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (London, 1977), nos. 26 and 27.Google Scholar

26 Charles Quint et son Temps, catalogue of an exhibition at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Gand (Ghent, 1955), cat. no. 433, pl. 129.

27 Cf. the letter from William Drummond to Ben Jonson, 1st July ‘for all the inscriptions I have been curious to find out far you, the Impresas and Emblemes [are] on a Bed of State wrought and embroidered all with silk and gold by the late Queen Mary … The Impresa of King Henry VIII, a Portculles; the word, altera securitas’—cited in Swain, Margaret, Historical Needlework (London, 1970), pp. 114 and 116.Google Scholar

28 The glaziers have scratched their names and dates on the glass: above, ‘James More [line illegible] glazier March 1793’ and below, ‘W. Baker glazier from Sevenoaks September 1799’.

29 Letters from Dr. Hilary Wayment F.S.A. to the author, 1st and 22nd September 1978.

30 Clement: argent two bendlets wavy sable, on a chief gules three leopard's faces or, within a border compony or and azure.

31 Clement impaling Catesby: dexter for Clement—argent two bendlets wavy sable, on a chief gules three leopard's faces or, within a border compony or and azure; sinister for Catesby— argent two lions passant sable, crowned, armed and langued or.

32 Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Brass rubbing no. E 1205/1925, shelf mark QQ 71.

33 Clement impaling Barley: dexter for Clement—argent two bendlets wavy sable, on a chief gules three leopard's faces or, within a border compony or and azure; sinister for Barley—quarterly: 1. Barley: ermine three bars wavy sable; 2. De La Lee: argent on a cross azure five leopard's faces or (the present heraldic impossibility is a muddled or repaired version); 3. defective; 4. Walden: azure two chevrons or, in chief as many mullets pierced argent (this is a variant of the more usual coat: azure three chevrons or). The full Barley genealogy, on which this identification of the arms is based, is in William Berry, County Genealogies: Pedigree of Hertfordshire Families (London, no date), p. 75.

34 Quarterly, 1. and 4. Dawtry: gules on a bend or three escallops sable; 2. Clement: as above; 3. Uncertain: azure a griffin segreant argent with a chief ermine.

35 Cf. Harrisson, W. R. D. and Chandos, Antony, Illustrated Catalogue of Carvings [in the] Oak Gallery, The Vyne (The Vyne, near Basingstoke, 1979).Google Scholar

36 Details of Compton's career at court are in Starkey, ‘The King's Privy Chamber’, esp. pp. 69 ff., 309 ff. and 367 ff; while a fuller picture of his political and personal importance appears in Starkey, David, ‘Representation through Intimacy’, in Lewis, Ioan (ed.), Symbols and Sentiments (London, New York and San Francisco, 1977), pp. 187 ff.Google Scholar The best description of Compton Wynyates is in Compton, W. B., History of the Comptons (London, 1940), pp. 10 ff.Google Scholar

37 The Roll was exhibited at the British Museum in 1978—Marks, Richard and Payne, Anne (compiled and ed.), British Heraldry from its Origins to c. 1800, catalogue of an exhibition at the British Museum (London, 1978), no. 74Google Scholar, and is fully described in Anglo, S., The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

38 For the use of these terms see Russell, J. G., The Field of Cloth of Gold (London, 1969), p. 144.Google Scholar

39 Hall, E., The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York [The Chronicle] (London, 1809), p. 510.Google Scholar

40 Auerbach, E., Tudor Artists (London, 1954), p. 144.Google Scholar

41 Loc. cit.

42 MS. in the care of T. H. M. Edwards, M.V.O., M.B.E., Esq., entitled ‘The Restoration, Additions and Drainage of Ightham Mote, Kent … 1890–1’ [hereafter cited as ‘Restoration’], pp. 147 ff.

43 Ibid., p. 149.

44 Ibid., p. 152.

45 Victoria and Albert Museum, London: catalogue no. 125/1890, negative no. 69411.

46 E.g. LP II ii, p. 1495.

47 Loc. cit.

48 The Carden (or Cawarden) connection was first unravelled in Croft-Murray, Edward, Decorative Painting in England 1537–1837, Vol. I, Early Tudor to Sir James Thornhill (London, 1962), p. 18. That the actual source was the Revels store is my own gloss on the fact that the decorations are not painted directly on wooden panels, but on canvas which has been stuck onto panels. The canvas grounds mean that there is a strong possibility that the decorations were originally part of a temporary structure for a court revel or the like. As such they would have passed into Carden's keeping as Master of the Revels, which office he held jointly with the Mastership of the Tents (LP XX i, 465/28). Whence the provenance suggested.Google Scholar

49 Compton, History of the Comptons, pp. 27 ff.

50 A good discussion of all this is in Lander, J. R., Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 1969), pp. 161 ff.Google Scholar

51 Shaw, W. A., The Knights of England, 2 vols. (London, 1906), ii, p. 48.Google Scholar

52 LP V, 119/13; Berry, William, Pedigrees of the Families of the County of Kent (London, 1830), p. ix; PRO: PROB 11/27/23 and PROB 11/40/19; Berry, op. cit., p. 481.Google Scholar

53 Cf. Dictionary of National Biography, sub ‘Catesby’.

54 Metcalfe, W. C., Visitations of Northamptonshire, 1564 and 1618–9 (London, 1887), p. 173.Google Scholar

55 See n. 32 above.

56 Bannerman, W. B. (ed.), The Visitation of Kent, 1530, Harleian Society, lxxiv (London, 1923), 6; LP XV, 498: 31–32 Henry VIII, cap. 79. Anne's brother Henry Barley also married as his second wife another Grey connexion: Anne, widow of Lord Edward Grey (Berry, Hertfordshire Families, p. 75).Google Scholar

57 Nichols, J. G., ed., The Chronicle of Calais, Camden Society, xxxv (London: 1846), 6.Google Scholar

58 C[ockayne], G. E., The Complete Peerage, revised by V. Gibbs and later H. A. Doubleday, 13 vols. (London, 1910–1949), sub ‘Dorset’.Google Scholar

59 Hall, The Chronicle, pp. 517–9, 520, 580–1, 582 etc., and see Starkey, ‘The King's Privy Chamber’, pp. 80 ff.

60 Starkey, op. cit., p. 131.

61 Sylvester, R. S. (ed.), Two Early Tudor Lives (New Haven and London, 1962), p. 5.Google Scholar

62 Dictionary of National Biography, sub ‘Thomas Cromwell’.

63 LP V, 926; VII, 153; X, 236, etc.

64 PRO: PROB II/40/19. Lady Anne had requested that her tomb be erected in Albury, Hertfordshire, where her branch (the senior) of the Barleys had their seat. If it was ever built no trace of it now remains. And even the following, which promises to relate to her ‘on N. wall of N. aisle, three shields detached, and a record of a sixteenth-century charity left by Anne Barley’—Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Hertfordshire (London, 1910), p. 29—Google Scholarin fact commemorates her niece Anne, who married Philip Gunter of London, skinner: Chauncy, Henry, The Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, 2 vols. (Bishops Stortford and London, 1826), i, p. 300.Google Scholar

65 LP VI, 562/i.

66 LP IV ii, 4188.

67 PRO: STAC 2/6/59.

68 PRO: STAC 2/18/321.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 PRO: STAC 2/6/59.

73 Ibid.

74 LP VII, 1251.

75 PRO: STAC 2/18/321.

76 LP XI, Appendix 8.

77 LP XII ii, 1311/28; XIII i, 1519/60, and for his activities as a prominent J.P. see LP XIII i, 318, 483.

78 His will was drawn up on 28th October 1538 and proved on 2nd December following PRO: PROB 11/27/23.

79 Ives, E. W., Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas, The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxvi (1976), 2.Google Scholar

80 Hall, The Chronicle, p. 599.

81 A good brief account of sixteenth-century retaining is given in Williams, Penry, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), pp. 126 ff.Google Scholar

82 For a fine example of heraldic book-binding, see Marks and Payne (eds.), British Heraldry, no. 218. More interesting still, because its badge-work so closely parallels the Ightham chapel ceiling, is the binding of the reissued Household Ordinance of 4th February 1526 (College of Arms, London: Arundel MS. XVII2). The binding, which is certainly original even though at some later stage a seventeenth-century copy of the Black Book of Edward IV has been crudely inserted into it as well, is of leather, richly stamped with the royal arms, ciphers and badges: the portcullis, the fleur-de-lis, the lion rampant and the pomegranate.