Part 4 (1/2)
The other bra.s.s, of 1609, has a portrait of Ann Sewell in Jacobean costume, kneeling, with an epitaph in which she is described as ”a worthy stirrer up of others to all holy virtues.”
A doorway leads to a priest's chamber over the porch, sometimes incorrectly spoken of as the Cappers' Chapel. It is still used for the annual meeting of the Company, but is inaccessible to the public.
The next chapel eastwards is St. Thomas', belonging until 1629 to the Cappers' and Feltmakers' Company. In 1531 they were a.s.sociated in its maintenance with the Woollen Cardmakers who had founded it in 1467 and had after declined in importance. Leland, as we have seen records also the decay of the Cappers' industry. A large eighteenth-century monument conceals the original doorway from the porch. The eastern part of the south aisle as far as the screen formed another chapel as the dilapidated piscina in the south wall shows. The organ is now placed in the first bay of the chancel aisle, the whole aisle having once formed the Mercers' Chapel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SWILLINGTON TOMB.]
Where the altar once stood are now steps descending to the sacristies.
On the right of the window is the statue of St. Michael brought hither from the tower (p. 32). The finely carved corbel on which it stands was discovered among rubbish in the recess below. Three altar tombs now stand against the south wall. The eastern has the rec.u.mbent effigies of Elizabeth Swillington and her two husbands. The inscription (translated) runs: ”Pray for the soul of Elizabeth Swillington, widow, late the wife of Ralph Swillington, Attorney General of our Lord King Henry VIII, Recorder of the city of Coventry, formerly the wife of Thomas Ess.e.x Esq: which said Elizabeth died A.D.
15...” She died after 1543. The side and ends have arcaded panelling containing s.h.i.+elds of arms. At the west end is a realistic representation of the Five Wounds. The effigy of Thomas Ess.e.x is in armour, that of the Recorder in official robe and chain. The head of each rests on a helmet, and the lady wears the ”pedimental” headdress of Tudor fas.h.i.+on. The arcading is purely Renaissance in detail though the general treatment is mediaeval. The figures are in dignified repose, wholly free from the later affectations of the Elizabethan school yet evidently individual portraits. The second tomb dates from 1640. The top is far too heavy for the little Ionic pilasters below.
The third, traditionally called Wade's tomb, probably belongs to John Wayd, a Mercer, who lived in Coventry in 1557, but no inscription remains.
There are seven s.h.i.+elds of arms on the side, nearly all defaced, a motto ”Ryen saunce travayle,” and nine images in low relief which present quaint studies of early sixteenth-century costume.
The matrices of bra.s.ses are still visible in several parts of the church. Sir James Harrington, writing in the reign of James I, tells a curious story of their loss:
The pavement of Coventry church is almost all tombstones, and some very ancient, but there came in a zealous fellow with a counterfeit commission, that for avoiding superst.i.tion, hath not left one pennyworth nor penny breadth of bra.s.s upon all the tombs, of all the inscriptions, which had been many and costly.
The last monument that need be mentioned is upon the wall over ”Wade's tomb.” Twenty-six verses of eulogy follow these opening lines:
An Elegicall epitaph, made upon the death of that mirror of women Ann Newdigate; Lady Skeffington, wife of that true moaneing turtle Sir Richard Skeffington, Kt., and consecrated to her eternal memorie by the unfeigned lover of her vertues, Willm.
Bulstrode, Knight. (She died in 1637, aged 29).
The present organ was built by Henry Willis and erected in 1887. It is a four-manual and pedal instrument and has fifty-three stops.
The old organ on which Handel played more than once, stood on a raised platform at the west end. It was the work of Thomas Swarbrick of Warwick, a German by birth, in 1733. He also built those of Trinity Church, St. Mary, Warwick, Lichfield, St. Saviour Southwark, Stratford-on-Avon, and Amsterdam.
The best of the ancient gla.s.s now remaining has been collected into two windows, one on either side of the apse. Much was brought from the clearstory where six windows on the south and all save one on the north side still have panels made up of a mosaic of fragments with portions here and there of which the subject is intelligible. From what remains in the tracery we may gather that there was a row of eight angel figures filling the s.p.a.ces immediately over the lights. Some of these or similar ones, are now in the apse. They are represented as covered with feathers and standing on wheels and each holds a scroll over the head with inscriptions in very contracted Latin. A few less fragmentary pieces may be found, _e.g._, in the north window, Judas giving the traitor's kiss, in the north clearstory the arms of Trenton and Stafford, mentioned and figured by Dugdale, in the south, the figure of a man in a red gown kneeling with a scroll inscribed ”deo gracias” and over his head ”groc(er) de london”--doubtless a donor. Of modern gla.s.s there is a great amount but little worth mentioning save on account of the persons commemorated. One window in the Lady Chapel is a memorial of the Prince Consort and one in the Mercers' Chapel is of interest as a deserved memorial to Thomas Sharp the Antiquary to whose labours all later historians of the city are so deeply indebted. He died in 1841.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALMS-BOX.]
The pulpit is of bra.s.s and wrought iron, the work of Frank Skidmore a native of Coventry who made also the choir screen of Hereford Cathedral and the metal work of the Albert Memorial at Kensington. It was placed here in 1869. The bells, ten in number, now hang in the octagon. They were cast in 1774 and weigh nearly seven tons. The first peal was hung in 1429 and a clock existed in 1467. In 1496 an Order of Leet ordained that ”all manner of persons that will have the bells to ring after the decease of any of their friends, shall pay for a peal ringing with all the bells, _2s._ and with four bells, _16d._, and three bells _4d._”
The six bells were cast into eight in 1674 and the present tenth has the same inscription as the heaviest of the old peal:
I am and have been call'd the common bell To ring, when fire breaks out, to tell.
The chimes, which existed as early as 1465, were restored in 1895, after a silence of ten years, in memory of Lieut.-Col. Francis William Newdigate. Electric lighting has been introduced throughout the church.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: _See_ Fuller's ”Worthies of England.” In 1428 an Act of Leet ordered that no person should dye any wool or cloth with ”a deceitful colour called Masters or Medleys brought into Coventry by a Frenchman.”]
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLY TRINITY FROM THE NORTH.
_From a lithograph--about 1850_.]