A Journey Through Tudor England (33 page)

‘I fear they will both dwell in the Tower awhile, for the Queen hath vowed to send them thither.’

G
awsworth Hall is, by anyone’s estimation, one of the most beautiful buildings in Cheshire, if not the whole of England. A half timber-framed manor, it was built by the Fitton family between 1480 and 1600 on the site of a Norman house (the Fitton family had lived on the site of Gawsworth Hall since 1331). The original Tudor mansion was probably significantly larger, moated and enclosed a courtyard. Gawsworth Hall also has a story to tell: it was the birthplace and home of Mary Fitton, a maid-of-honour to Elizabeth I, who became infamous in 1601 for her scandalous behaviour.

Gawsworth is a rare example of a structure that is almost entirely Tudor. For the most part, the ceilings are untouched; the fireplaces are original; even the views over the park and garden wall built by Mary’s father, Sir Edward Fitton, have not changed since Mary’s day: it is almost just as she would remember. The major differences are that in the early eighteenth century, the Great Hall
was significantly reduced in size and several rooms were demolished, but what remains is authentic. Two superbly carved decorative items deserve particular attention: the overmantle in the library, dating from 1580; and the plaster frieze of Tudor roses, birds and flowers, dating from 1540, in the Gold Room.

At some point between July 1596 and early 1598, Mary, not yet twenty years old, was sent to Elizabeth I’s court to become one of her maids-of-honour. The maids were Elizabeth’s companions in all things: they were professional friends whose talk brightened her days. She looked for intelligent and accomplished women, and ones with talents such as sewing, playing cards and making music, which they would use to entertain her.

Mary’s father worried — rightly, as it would turn out — about her virtue, and commissioned William Knollys, comptroller of the royal household, to look out for her. Knollys promised Sir Edward that he would play ‘the Good Shepherd & will to my power defend the innocent lamb from the wolvish cruelty and fox-like subtlety of the tame beasts of this place’. But William Knollys abrogated his responsibility as a chaperone. He became the wolf himself, falling headlong in love with Mary, though he was already married and she was thirty years younger than he. (It has been suggested that Knollys was Shakespeare’s inspiration for the foolish servant Malvolio, with his yellow cross-garter’d stockings, in
Twelfth Night
.)

The court learned of his infatuation and Mary enjoyed a degree of celebrity. In 1600, when William Kempe, the clown of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s theatre company, dedicated his
Nine Dayes Wonder
to ‘Mistress Anne Fitton, Maid of Honour to the most sacred Maid Royal Queen Elizabeth’, it is certain that he meant Mary. Mary’s lot was not entirely happy, though. She suffered from melancholy, crying, insomnia and hysterical fits — a condition known at the time as ‘suffocation of the mothers’ (the
womb). She was also unable to marry, as Sir Henry Wallop, one of her father’s debtors, retained the money for her marriage portion.

Mary perhaps thought to swing fortune for herself. In the summer of 1600, she became mistress to William Herbert, second son of the Earl of Pembroke [see S
HAKESPEARE
’
S
B
IRTHPLACE
]. By January 1601, her pregnancy by him could no longer be disguised.

For the ageing Queen Elizabeth, it had become increasingly difficult to pretend that it was she, the sun, her courtiers sought, instead of her younger maids, the stars, that surrounded her. An incident like this provoked impassioned fury. She had put Ralegh and Bess Throckmorton in the Tower a few years earlier for marrying without her permission [see S
HERBORNE
C
ASTLE
] but Mary Fitton had gone one further: she had become pregnant without even marrying first. It was a huge scandal. Nor would William Herbert, newly Earl of Pembroke himself, consent to wed her. A letter from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew on 5 February 1601 reports the news:

There is a misfortune befallen Mistress Fytton, for she is proved with child, and the Earl of Pembroke being examined confesseth a fact but utterly renounceth all marriage. I fear they will both dwell in the Tower awhile, for the Queen hath vowed to send them thither.

In fact, Mary got off rather lightly. Pembroke was sent to Fleet Prison for some weeks, while Mary was put under the supervision of Lady Margaret Hawkins and gave birth to a son, who died very soon afterwards.

That, and her shame in society, was punishment enough. Mary’s father took her home, back to Gawsworth. Yet, Mary had not learnt her lesson. She found herself a new lover, and only later married first Captain William Polewhele, and then John Lougher,
with whom she had several children. Pembroke, meanwhile, married Lady Mary Talbot, co-heiress of the Earl of Shrewsbury, fourth husband to Bess of Hardwick [see H
ARDWICK
H
ALL
].

The scandal had an impact on Gawsworth itself. Sir Edward had intended to build a garden there to rival the great houses of the kingdom and had, at tremendous cost, planted avenues of lime trees, built a wall in the tiltyard and enlarged his lakes, in preparation. He had hoped to win the honour of his sovereign’s visit, but after 1601, this was not to be.

There is one final story that circulates about Mary Fitton. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was suggested that she was the mysterious ‘dark lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets, described in Sonnet 127 by the lines:

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir

And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame …

It is an intriguing idea, and has some logic, as scholars have tentatively identified William Herbert as the beautiful young man of Shakespeare’s sonnets, who was engaged in a love triangle with the poet and the dark lady [see S
HAKESPEARE
’
S
B
IRTHPLACE
]. Yet, Shakespeare’s mistress was black-haired, sallow-skinned and dark-eyed. Were it not for the fact that Mary Fitton had very pale skin, brown hair and grey eyes, it is a suggestion that might have been worth entertaining.

‘The Speare of Destinye, whose Ruler is Knowledge.’

L
ittle Moreton Hall is a spectacularly beautiful example of the sort of decorative timber-framed architecture that was fashionable for the homes of the sixteenth-century gentry. Of course, many of these half-timbered manor houses have not survived the fire risks of five centuries, nor would all have been as imperfectly perfect as Little Moreton. This endearingly crooked house is an outstanding masterpiece of Tudor craftsmanship and tells us much about the aesthetic tastes and, even, world-view of the Tudors.

Despite its evident beauty, this is not a grand house and was not owned by nobility. It was built by three or four generations of the Moretons, a family of prominent local landowners in Cheshire, about whom we know relatively little. Though it looks all of one piece, its construction covers the whole of the Tudor period, from extensions in the early sixteenth century; the addition of a northwest wing in 1546; and the early Elizabethan south range, through to the bake and brewhouses of the early seventeenth century. It has been little altered since.

Moated for security, the house is three storeys high with a chevron and diamond patterned exterior of ornamental oak
panelling filled with white wattle-and-daub. The black and white scheme is Victorian, however: the oak beams would have originally been untreated and allowed to fade to silver, while the wattle-and-daub would have been painted ochre. The windows are also patterned and contain 37,000 leaded panes of glass.

The oldest part of the house is the east wing, dating from around 1450 and upgraded by William Moreton I in 1504—8. An essential feature of any medieval house, the Great Hall was part of this early construction, but was extended into the great gabled bay window in 1559. It still retains two pieces of the original furniture mentioned in the 1563 inventory of William Moreton II’s possessions: a long refectory table and a ‘cubborde of boxes’, which probably held spices.

The Withdrawing Room also has a piece of original furniture — the ‘greate round table’ (actually octagonal) — probably made to fit the 1559 bay window. The plasterwork of the overmantle testifies to the room’s Elizabethan additions: it is of Elizabeth I’s arms, supported by the lion of England and the dragon of Wales.

The interior decorations of the parlour are particularly notable. In 1976, Georgian wood panelling was removed to reveal wall paintings dating from around 1580. The top frieze of biblical scenes, chiefly of the story of Susanna and the elders, was partially obscured by the subsequent lowering of the floor of the room above, but the painted
trompe d’œil
-style panelling is an unusual feature that was in fashion from around 1570 to 1610, and has by chance been preserved. If you look carefully, you can pick out the wolf’s head crest of the Moretons.

The south range and gatehouse were started in 1563 to create guest lodgings, but the most striking feature here is the Long Gallery. Wonderfully wonky, and sixty-eight feet in length, this indoor exercise space — for walking, tennis or bowls — with its
almost continuous windows, would have been an extraordinary and luxurious room at the time it was built.

If this gives a taste of Tudor living, so too does the irregular nature of the Upper Porch Room (the plaster coat of arms above the fireplace
is
perpendicular, despite appearances) and the Garderobe Tower. The lack of glazing in the garderobes (lavatories) means the towers are still as cold and windy as they would have been in Tudor times, while the drop for effluent into the cesspit of the moat — to be used as fertiliser — is evident. The garderobes even have their original seats.

The house is not only a testament to Tudor architecture but also to temperament and sensibilities. The plasterwork figures and inscriptions at either end of the Long Gallery attest to the Elizabethan preoccupation with learning. One end proclaims: ‘The Wheele of Fortune whose Rule is Ignoraunce’; the other: ‘The Speare of Destinye, whose Ruler is Knowledge’. Given that the female figure is pictured holding a globe, and that these are quotations from the 1556 book
The Castle of Knowledge
by Robert Recorde, we can conclude that the knowledge of the plasterworker was not sufficient to avoid a rather comical malapropism, and that he mistook ‘sphere’ for ‘speare’!

There are also inscriptions in the cobbled courtyard on the front of the bay windows: ‘God is Al in Al Thing: This windous whire [these windows were] made by William Moreton in the yeare of oure Lorde, M.D.LIX’; and underneath: ‘Rycharde Dale Carpe[n]der Made Thies Windous By the grac of GOD’.

The Tudors knew that they lived under God, and the very design and decoration of their homes declared this.