Just a few months later, Thomas died, and was buried at the Kytson family’s mausoleum in Hengrave Church. Mary’s dilemma is immortalised in the engravings on Thomas’ monument there:
Memoria sacrum
Of Thomas Darcy, here the body ly,
Only heire maile of Chiches Barony,
By Mary, heire of Kitson family.
With D’enshire Fitz’s heire he wedded was,
But she from earth him issueless let pass.14
The Baron’s devious plan had failed, and the house and all his titles were passed to his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Savage, married to the Baron’s eldest daughter. In due course, Thomas Savage became Viscount Savage, with the title passing down to his sons and heirs, while the Barony of Darcy of Chich became extinct.
So Mary found herself twice widowed and somewhat disgraced by her failure to produce an heir in time, thereby destroying the Darcys’ prospects. Mary was soon returned to Lady Hatton’s house in London, like an uncompensated faulty gift. Lady Hatton must have felt sorry for the poor girl, and tried her best to find a more suitable match.
The many sons of the Earl of Suffolk, who were neighbours of the Darcy family, showed promise. The eldest boy, Theophilus, was the ideal candidate – but he had just married Elizabeth Home. The younger brother Thomas was considered, but he went on to marry Elizabeth Cecil in 1614.
Looking down the list of the remaining sons, Charles, just twenty-two and knighted that year, heir to the family’s estates in Shropshire, seemed a very good candidate. The Howards were attracted to the prospect of a wealthy heiress. The Earl of Suffolk, struggling to finance his grand building plans, had just been forced to sell his London residence when Mary came onto the market.
In October 1612, Mary duly found herself married off to Sir Charles Howard and on her way to Audley End in Saffron Walden, now in Essex. As it would turn out, Lady Hatton had made a very poor choice.
THE HOWARDS OF SAFFRON WALDEN
The Earl of Suffolk, Charles Howard’s father, had had a long career as a privateer. As Lord Thomas Howard, he had commanded the Golden Lion in the attack on the Spanish Armada.15 A favourite of Queen Elizabeth, he was sent with a fleet of ships in 1591 to the Azores to waylay the Spanish treasure fleets as they left America. His ship was one of the first to arrive at the Azores, and during the long wait for the remainder of his fleet he was forced to land to allow his sick men to recover and for repairs to be made. However, his ship were barely back in the water when they spotted a Spanish fleet approaching – not the few treasure ships they were expecting, but a substantial Spanish force that had been despatched to destroy Howard’s fleet. Most of his fleet escaped just in time, all except the Revenge, captained by the fleet’s Vice-Admiral, Sir Richard Grenville. Grenville’s ship the Revenge was some distance from the other ships and decided to break through the Spanish forces, but after a long fight, Grenville was forced to surrender. The ship was destroyed and Grenville was mortally wounded in the fight, dying a hero’s death and becoming a legend.
Subsequently, Howard fought in other successful privateering ventures, much to the favour of Queen Elizabeth, and was knighted, then created Baron Howard de Walden and subsequently Earl of Suffolk. Howard’s finances were always in a perilous state, despite his support from Queen Elizabeth. He was a man who liked to spend money on land, good dowries for his daughters and extensive building programmes, including the construction of Audley End, his extensive palace near Saffron Walden, then in Suffolk, now in Essex. It was at that time the largest private house in England, and is now renowned as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. The refurbishment was reputed to have cost £200,000 between 1603 and 1614.16 King James himself stayed at the house twice, and joked that the house was too large for a King, but it might do for a Lord Treasurer.
The Howard’s fortunes would not last long. When James came to the throne, Thomas Howard was one of the few of Queen Elizabeth’s favourites who seem to have managed to keep his position in court. In 1605, it was Thomas Howard who first examined the cellar under Parliament to uncover the Gunpowder Plot, and was one of those commissioned to investigate and try the plotters. In 1614, Thomas Howard inherited the Earl of Northampton’s house at Charing Cross and began construction of an expensive new wing, while his wife set about building Charlton Park on the estates she had inherited. Thomas was appointed Lord High Treasurer the same year, a position that provided him with the opportunity to seek out the finances he needed, though his methods were not strictly legal.
The Earl of Suffolk then made the terrible mistake of trying to undermine the rising power of the Duke of Buckingham, favourite of the King, and Buckingham’s revenge was absolute, referring Howard’s financial misdealings to the King. In 1619, Thomas Howard and his wife were arrested, prosecuted, brutally humiliated in court, and found guilty on all counts of corruption. Imprisoned, they were forced to pay a fine of £30,000. They couldn’t afford it.
Buckingham was magnanimous to his defeated rival and did manage to retrieve some of Thomas Howard’s status, and his freedom; he then married off Howard’s youngest son Edward to Buckingham’s own niece to secure the deal. Thomas Howard, the Earl of Suffolk, never again rose to high office. He died in Charing Cross in London in 1626 and was buried near his precious estate at Saffron Walden.
* * *
It is said that Mary married Charles Howard at Clun Castle on the Welsh borders. Charles had inherited the castle in Shropshire from his grandmother, so his full title was Sir Charles Howard of Clun. Clun Castle itself was a ruin in the wilderness even in the seventeenth century, though it was probably seen as a romantic place for the wedding – at least, Charles was trying to start the marriage off with some fine sentiments. It wouldn’t last.
On 21 September 1613, at Audley End, Mary had her first child, a girl called Elizabeth17, but little more is heard of the girl subsequently and it is thought Elizabeth died very young. Her second daughter, Mary, was probably born at one of the Fitz houses in London, probably the grand house in Lewisham, south of the Thames.
It is uncertain when Mary first returned to Devon, but Charles was soon selling off large portions of woodland from her estates in Lewisham and Hornacot to fund his father’s grand schemes.18 Just like her first husband, Charles Howard was quick to survey her Devon estates with the prospects of further sales, requiring the assistance of her steward, George Cutteford, to do so. These were ominous portents.
By the time Mary returned to Fitzford, with Charles Howard, she already had a plan. Inspired by Lady Hatton’s independence, and with the full support of her grandfather and the Courtenay family, she would soon reclaim control over all of the Fitz estates for herself. For her plan to succeed, however, she would require the full co-operation of the steward, George Cutteford. But how would she persuade him to co-operate?
Notes
1 Radford, 1890, and very well retold in Dacre, 2010.
2 Radford, 1890, p. 71. Mrs Radford suggests a slight variation to the story here. In Tavistock there used to be ‘old hollow ways’, frequently used for riding in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Apparently these old paths became uncomfortably hot in summer. Riding home in June 1599, Nicholas Slanning dismounted and left his servant to take the horses down these old hollow ways, while Nicholas strolled across the cooler meadows.
3 In 1597, influenced by his personal involvement in the North Berwick witch trials, the man who would be crowned King James I published his book Daemonologie, in support of witch hunting, advocating the most severe punishment for these ‘slaves of the Devil’.
4 It seems King James I convened Parliament only four times during his reign. The 1605 session was marred by the Gunpowder Plot. In 1604, 1610 and the so-called ‘Addled’ Parliament of 1614, James argued with Parliament over money, the last Parliament dismissed after just eight weeks. James then ruled without Parliament until 1621.
5 Radford, 1890. It is said, on hearing that Sir John Fitz was wounded, the E
arl of Northumberland sent his chaplain to assist the wounded man. The Chaplain subsequently, it is believed, published the Bloodie Book of John Fitz anonymously in 1605.
6 Radford, 1890.
7 Fraser, 1984, including p.292, which describes the terms of Lady Hatton’s separation from Sir Edmund Coke.
8 See one fine example of the telling of the story at: http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=756
9 Fraser, 1984, pp. 11 and 12.
10 Radford, 1890, p. 76.
11 Radford, 1890, p. 76.
12 Radford, 1890, p. 76.
13 Watson, 1877.
14 Watson, 1877.
15 There are many excellent biographies of Lord Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk. See Kate Jeffrey’s book Audley End for English Heritage, 1997. Also the Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Howard,_1st_Earl_of_Suffolk
16 Jeffrey, 1997, p. 30.
17 Radford, 1890, p. 78
18 Radford, 1890, p. 78
Chapter Three
Revenge Served Cold
The woman who returned to Fitzford was a very different person from the nine-year-old girl who had been stolen away. Years of forced marriages and anxious separation from her family would have hardened the girl. Probably just seventeen as she re-entered the doors of Fitzford, with all its painful memories, she would have faced the marriage with a sense of foreboding – and with undeclared grievances. Charles could not have had any idea of the appalling events that would unfold.
The parish church at Tavistock.
Charles would have been very pleased with his first views of Fitzford. It was well situated on the edge of Tavistock, amongst pretty meadows and encroaching forests. The woodlands alone were worth a fortune. What it lacked in manicured gardens and modern comforts was more than compensated by its views over the town and the moors beyond. It was a rural idyll that offered pastoral beauty.1
Neighbouring Walreddon Manor offered equal beauty and a significant income. Overlooking two river valleys, where the Walkham River joins the Tavy, known as Double Waters, Walreddon was well-placed within a thriving farming community, with extensive orchards and grazing lands on the edge of Dartmoor.
Walreddon was still occupied by Sir William Courtenay’s agents, the Halses and their cousin George Cutteford. Riding out with Sir Charles Howard, George would have realised how privileged he was, in status and location, as steward of one of the largest estates in the country. Here he was successful, not just in his occupation. Having grown up in the overcrowded and noisy Plymouth docks, he was now bringing up his own family, not in the pitiful tenements of Tavistock, but in the ancient lands of Dartmoor.
There is a vastness distinctive to Dartmoor, a country of undulating hills and moors so far to the horizon that it can seem overwhelming in its emptiness. It has a primeval beauty still, lacking the aspirant decorations of the best of the fine houses, but instead fulfilling that simpler human desire to appreciate the earth as it is. Never mind the centuries of habitation that have forever changed the landscape; the mines, the farms, the wood-burning and wool that have cleared away the forests. Dartmoor is a land that retains its ancient authenticity, a heritage far older than even the Courtenay line.
In seventeenth-century England, ownership of land, the accumulation of acreage, and the splendid structures placed upon it – these were the measure of success. Land was power, influence, the future. Land mattered.
George Cutteford knew all too well the value of land and property. Surveying the Fitz estates with Charles Howard, George would have held secret ambitions to acquire some of that wealth for his family, to become a landowner instead of a land-agent. To be able to bequeath some of that ancient land to his sons became his new objective. Oblivious to his steward’s ambitions, Sir Charles Howard was probably delighted that his new wife had brought him such fine assets.
But what of Mary Howard? Before she was twenty, she had been twice widowed, thrice married, and twice a mother, already grieving the death of her first child. She had experienced and suffered more in ten years than most people endured in a lifetime. With both parents dead, her old acquaintance George Cutteford was the only steady influence in her life – and she clung to him like a drowning child.
Now as a grown woman, she was attractive, flirtatious, clever and manipulative when she wanted to be. George Cutteford found himself not only attracted to the Fitz estates, but also to his employer’s wife. Initially, he refused her advances, acutely aware that he was a man of low status, with his own wife and children to consider.
Between 1605 and Mary’s return to Fitzford, sometime in 1614, George Cutteford had established himself as an attorney in an increasingly Puritan community. George’s wife Grace found her allegiance lay with the Puritan values of Tavistock. Her religious views would, it seems, slowly alienate her husband, while George’s growing attraction to the young Mary Howard would tear him away from his jealous wife.
In the meantime, the Cuttefords would have five children: Eleanor, George, Grace, John and Anne, the eldest boy probably born around 1607 while Mary was still in London. It is possible that George and his family were still living with their Halse cousins at Walreddon, while George worked with Richard Halse to oversee the many Fitz family estates.
George Cutteford’s position meant his daughters would marry well. Eleanor married John Skerrit, a successful local man, probably a farmer. Grace married one of the Radfords from Whitchurch, while Anne found herself married to Thomas Robinson, the land agent and sometimes business partner of the Earl of Dorset.2
Before the arrival of the Howards, Cutteford and his family lived in relative peace in the Tavistock community, regularly worshipping at one of the many meeting houses, slowly improving their lives and planning their futures amidst progressive ideas of non-conformity and Puritan thinking. Mary’s return would destroy it all.
TAVISTOCK IN THE EARLY
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Tavistock had a long history of non-conformity in religious matters. The 2nd Earl of Bedford and Marquess of Tavistock, Sir Francis Russell, was an ardent supporter of religious reform, and the Russell family continued their support of Puritan thinking for many generations, and throughout the English Civil War, though it is unlikely Sir Francis Russell ever lived in Tavistock. The Russell family had an estate at Woburn Abbey, north of Oxford, and had been awarded the old Abbey at Tavistock at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-1500s, and their fortunes had prospered.3
In 1612, the Earl of Bedford granted the vicarage at Tavistock to Edward Eliott, preacher of God’s word4, encouraging Puritan views which would continue with subsequent appointments, including the able Puritan George Hughes, Bachelor of Divinity, in 1638. Hughes, as lecturer at All Hallows in London, had been literally silenced by Archbishop Laud, in Laud’s attempts to attack the rise of Puritan preachers, making Hughes an ideal candidate for the Tavistock post. Hughes in turn would inspire the conversion of Ralph Venning, who became a celebrated Puritan preacher and writer; his works of devotion would run to many editions. Hughes would also inspire his son-in-law, the celebrated Puritan divine, John Howe. The tides turned on them all, however, when, in 1662, King Charles II ordered a final purge of Puritan preachers, and Hughes, Venning and Howe were all ejected from their ministries.
The famous adventurer Sir Francis Drake, born and raised in Tavistock, his father a preacher, had also supported religious reforms. George Cutteford’s family friends, the Maynards, were Presbyterians. The schools established by the Maynards and their associate Elize Hele were at the time non-conformist and independent of the Catholic or Church of England faiths.5
George’s cousin Richard Halse had married the daughter of the Bishop of Exeter, Dr Matthew Sutcliffe, renowned for his controversial writings, demanding reforms in the church and attacking any signs of Catholic rituals. Amongst the Tavistock Puritans, the papist rituals, Church hierarchies and luxurious decor of the Cat
holic Church were unwelcome in their simple and unadorned meeting houses.
However, in 1613, Tavistock was a failing economy. Once the location for Henry VIII’s Council of the West, then a major Stannary town under Queen Elizabeth I, its tin mines were ailing and its fortunes fading under King James I. (Tin mining would flourish again only when the industrial machinery could reach the deeper reserves.) The cloth manufacturing industry alone kept Tavistock afloat during the difficult years.6
Politically too, the town was ailing. Sir Francis Glanville, a wealthy local landowner whose family had made money from the tanning industry, was supposed to represent Tavistock in Parliament, but King James I was never impressed by the concept of a ‘Parliament’ which repeatedly refused to pay off his increasing debts. James therefore called Parliament only a few times in the early seventeenth century and Glanville’s position in the ‘Addled Parliament’ of 1614 lasted barely a few weeks before it was again dissolved by King James.
Tavistock remained unnoticed and unrepresented, feeling rejected and frequently at odds with King James’s pronouncements about the Divine Right of Kings, religious conformity, and his demands for more and more taxes to support his expensive lifestyle.
* * *
Charles Howard’s arrival caused quite a stir for the people of Tavistock. The Howard family were known to be Catholics, although they tended to keep their religious views to themselves, fearing the wrath of successive Protestant monarchs. Charles Howard was also the son of a privateer; his father was famed for his ostentatious spending and unruly behaviour, drinking and womanising being the least of his sins. Charles soon demonstrated a love of gambling and drinking, and the locals must have been worried that they had another ‘John Fitz’ come to terrorise the neighbourhood, but it seems that Charles Howard was a gentleman who terrorised no one.
The Devil Comes to Dartmoor Page 5