For the rest, Sheerness to-day is sheerly and frankly ugly, and Cockney, and quite unashamed. The look of it is as though long lengths of the Old Kent Road and the dullest, dreariest purlieus of Camberwell had come down to the sea and forgotten to return. Let us, then, leaving it behind, hasten along the shore, past the obsolete Barton’s Fort and the hideous brick-and-iron73 railed Admiralty range-finders that form abominable eyesores on the beach, and make for Minster. To reach that hill-top village, the woebegone attempted developments of a building-estate styled “Minster-on-Sea,” a place without shape or form, are passed; but, these things left behind, the unspoiled country of Sheppey is entered. The “monasterium,” whence Minster derives its name, was the ancient Priory of St. Saxburga, founded in early Saxon times. The square gatehouse of the nunnery, standing by the church, is all that remains of that religious house, and even this building, fashioned of the most amazing admixture74 of brick, stone, and flint has been wholly secularised and converted into a dwelling-house.
The church is intrinsically interesting for its architecture, its monuments, and its brasses, including the very fine and early brasses of Sir John de Northwode—that knight who, according to the irreverent Ingoldsby, received a black eye from a brickbat at the siege of Shurland Castle—and his wife, Joan, about 1320; but it is far more so as a literary landmark. It is, of course, closely associated with that most engaging among the “Ingoldsby Legends,” the story of “Grey Dolphin,” one of the most genuinely humorous things in literature, which bears reading over and over again, and will remain fresh when the marks of many a later funny fellow have been forgotten. Sir Robert de Shurland, the hero of that story, was a real flesh-and-blood person, who flourished in the thirteenth century and was a very earnest, strenuous, and warlike knight—not at all a farcical person. He went out in the Crusade of 1271, and at a later date was knighted for gallantry at the siege of Caerlaverock. The ladies, it would seem, liked this doughty character. “If I were a young demoiselle,” says an old metrical romance, “I would give myself to that brave knight, Sir Robert de Shurland.”
In the church is the singular tomb of this warrior, with a recumbent effigy not in the least resembling the portrait drawn of him by Ingoldsby, for he is shown to be tall and thin, not short and stockish. Otherwise, the description is exact;75 and it is indeed the effigy of a “warrior clad in the chain-mail of the thirteenth century. His hands are clasped in prayer”—or they would be, had not the arms been shorn off at the elbows—“his legs, crossed in that position so prized by Templars in ancient and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a Soldier of the Faith in Palestine. Close beside his dexter calf lies sculptured in bold relief a horse’s head.” Ingoldsby, you see, together with the antiquaries of his time, thought the cross-legged effigies on ancient tombs invariably indicated that the person represented had been a Crusader. It has since been proved to demonstration that this was not the case, and that this curious pose was only a convention of the age. The horse’s head is shown rising from some strange carving intended to represent waves, and is an allusion to the grant of “wreck of the sea” which the knight had obtained where his manors extended to the shore. This was ordinarily a privilege of the Crown. It gave him property in all wreckage, waifs and strays, and flotsam and jetsam which he could reach with the point of his lance when riding as far as possible into the sea at ebb-tide.
Margaret Shurland, daughter and heiress of this personage, married one William Cheyney. The altar-tomb of their descendant, Sir Thomas Cheyney, Warden of the Cinque Ports in the time of Queen Elizabeth, stands in the church and is a noble monument. He was a remarkable man, for he filled important offices of State in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, and76 Elizabeth, and in all the tragic changes of those changeful times lost neither head, fortune, nor repute. He was Knight of the Garter, Constable of Dover Castle, a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the Household. A man of wealth, he demolished the old castle of Shurland and built in its stead the mansion yet standing, long used as a farmhouse.
The church is intrinsically interesting for its architecture, its monuments, and its brasses, including the very fine and early brasses of Sir John de Northwode—that knight who, according to the irreverent Ingoldsby, received a black eye from a brickbat at the siege of Shurland Castle—and his wife, Joan, about 1320; but it is far more so as a literary landmark. It is, of course, closely associated with that most engaging among the “Ingoldsby Legends,” the story of “Grey Dolphin,” one of the most genuinely humorous things in literature, which bears reading over and over again, and will remain fresh when the marks of many a later funny fellow have been forgotten. Sir Robert de Shurland, the hero of that story, was a real flesh-and-blood person, who flourished in the thirteenth century and was a very earnest, strenuous, and warlike knight—not at all a farcical person. He went out in the Crusade of 1271, and at a later date was knighted for gallantry at the siege of Caerlaverock. The ladies, it would seem, liked this doughty character. “If I were a young demoiselle,” says an old metrical romance, “I would give myself to that brave knight, Sir Robert de Shurland.”
In the church is the singular tomb of this warrior, with a recumbent effigy not in the least resembling the portrait drawn of him by Ingoldsby, for he is shown to be tall and thin, not short and stockish. Otherwise, the description is exact;75 and it is indeed the effigy of a “warrior clad in the chain-mail of the thirteenth century. His hands are clasped in prayer”—or they would be, had not the arms been shorn off at the elbows—“his legs, crossed in that position so prized by Templars in ancient and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a Soldier of the Faith in Palestine. Close beside his dexter calf lies sculptured in bold relief a horse’s head.” Ingoldsby, you see, together with the antiquaries of his time, thought the cross-legged effigies on ancient tombs invariably indicated that the person represented had been a Crusader. It has since been proved to demonstration that this was not the case, and that this curious pose was only a convention of the age. The horse’s head is shown rising from some strange carving intended to represent waves, and is an allusion to the grant of “wreck of the sea” which the knight had obtained where his manors extended to the shore. This was ordinarily a privilege of the Crown. It gave him property in all wreckage, waifs and strays, and flotsam and jetsam which he could reach with the point of his lance when riding as far as possible into the sea at ebb-tide.
Margaret Shurland, daughter and heiress of this personage, married one William Cheyney. The altar-tomb of their descendant, Sir Thomas Cheyney, Warden of the Cinque Ports in the time of Queen Elizabeth, stands in the church and is a noble monument. He was a remarkable man, for he filled important offices of State in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, and76 Elizabeth, and in all the tragic changes of those changeful times lost neither head, fortune, nor repute. He was Knight of the Garter, Constable of Dover Castle, a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the Household. A man of wealth, he demolished the old castle of Shurland and built in its stead the mansion yet standing, long used as a farmhouse.
Comments
Post a Comment