A Judge and Judgement: the Tomb of Sir Thomas Fleming

The main reason for this post today is the tomb of Thomas Fleming, who died on August 7, 1613: he was judge in the trial of Guy Fawkes in 1606. He and his wife are entombed in the church of St Nicholas, North Stoneham in Hampshire. According to the wikipedia article, the inscription reads:

In most Assvred Hope of A Blessed Resvrection, Here Lyeth Interred ye Bodie of Sir Thomas Flemyng, Knight, Lord Chief Jvstice of England; Great Was His Learning, Many Were His Virtves. He Always Feared God & God Still Blessed Him & ye Love & Favour Both of God & Man Was Daylie Upon Him. He Was In Especiall Grace & Favour With 2 Most Worthie & Virtvovs Princes Q. Elizabeth & King James. Many Offices and Dygnities Were Conferred Upon Him. He Was First Sargeant At Law, Then Recorder of London; Then Solicitor Generall to Both ye Said Princes. Then Lo: Chief Baron of ye Exchequer & after Lo: Chief Jvstice of England. All Which Places He Did Execvte With So Great Integrity, Justice & Discretion that Hys Lyfe Was Of All Good Men Desired, His Death Of All Lamented. He Was Borne at Newporte In ye Isle Of Wight, Brough Up In Learning & ye Studie Of ye Lawe. In ye 26 Yeare Of His Age He Was coopled in ye Blessed State of Matrimony To His Virtvovs Wife, ye La: Mary Fleming, With whom He Lived & Continewed In that Blessed Estate By ye Space Of 43 Yeares. Having By Her In that Tyme 15 Children, 8 Sonnes & 7 Davghters, Of Whom 2 Sonnes & 5 Davghters Died In His Life Time. And Afterwards In Ripeness of Age and Fulness of Happie yeares yt Is to Saie ye 7th Day of Avgvst 1613 in ye 69 Yeare Of His Age, He Left This Life For a Better, Leaving Also Behind Him Livinge Together With His Virtvovs Wife 6 Soones & 2 Davghters.

The memorial is called "the floating Flemings" as Thomas and Mary are depicting resting on their bent elbows. Their surviving children are depicted kneeling and praying beneath their parents--but we know they are not praying for the souls of their departed parents! More on the judge and his judgement of Fawkes here, from the parish website. The image is sourced from wikipedia commons under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Constable's "Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows"--"Dangers Past"?

Richard Cork writes about John Constable's 1829 painting of "Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows" in this weekend's The Wall Street Journal:

Widely admired by John Constable's friends as his finest painting, "Salisbury Cathedral From the Meadows" has now been saved for the U.K., bought from the children of the late Barclays Bank director Lord Ashton of Hyde. The price with tax concessions amounts to £23.1 million ($35.5 million), and the rescue package includes £15.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This dramatic canvas, now on view at Tate Britain, will travel among several major museums across the U.K.

Unlike Constable's spirited little oil sketches, the Salisbury Cathedral painting is a large, carefully designed and vigorously handled canvas he worked on for several years. When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831, it was accompanied by a quotation from James Thomson's poem "Summer," which refers to a "danger past" before describing how "a glittering robe of joy…invests the fields and nature smiles revived." Yet the painting is far from joyful; it is one of Constable's most turbulent images. . . .

Devoted to the Anglican Church, Constable was worried about its future. So Salisbury Cathedral is not allowed to dominate this painting in a smug, triumphant way. The largest form confronting us here is the ancient tree on the left, and it seems shaken by the impact of the storm. It may even be in danger of falling into the impenetrable darkness beyond, where a small church tower and houses look threatened by the black sky.

No wonder the dog isolated in the muddy foreground stares back at this tree. It must be wondering where the storm will strike next. Lightning flashes to the left of the cathedral spire, and the man in the wooden cart looks hunched, as if bracing himself for another apocalyptic downpour. The three horses pulling his cart through the water appear burdened by their task. Directly behind the cart, a tiny cottage is being smothered by a tangle of foliage growing over its vulnerable white wall and orange roof. As for the withered stump of a willow on the far right, it is perilously close to the water's edge.

And what were the dangers faced by the Anglican Church in 1829, that Constable should depict such a great Gothic cathedral under a cloud? Catholic Emancipation, of course. Compare the 1829 image of the cathedral (at the WSJ site) to this 1825 view, in which the cathedral is much more substantial (even though the cows in the foreground are a little distracting):

Source: Wikipedia commons

 

This painting of "Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds", features the current Bishop of Salisbury, John Fisher and his wife on the left--the bishop commissioned the painting and then requested a copy with a brighter sky behind the cathedral.

English Baroque

The Wall Street Journal featured this story about St. Mary Woolnoth,  "one of six London churches designed between 1712 and 1733 by the English Baroque architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662-1736)," in connection with an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts:

Wedged into a triangle where Lombard Street meets King William Street, around the corner from the Bank of London, St. Mary Woolnoth, when finished in 1716, stood alone in a newly cleared area, a bold effect that later centuries reversed. Hemmed in now by its City of London neighbors and blackened by traffic exhaust, it can almost vanish against its surroundings in the gray afternoon light. Tourists of architecture are often reduced to stopping by a Starbucks, imbedded in the church's eastern flank, to ask directions to the entrance.


Once you are able to assess it from street to steeple, however, the structure becomes hard to ignore. From the chesty thrust of its rusticated facade, to the outward curve of the pediment, to an entablature of three blind square windows crowned by six Corinthian columns (repeated inside) and capped with a pair of squat balustraded turrets, the exterior manifests Hawksmoor's unorthodox interpretation of the classical tradition.


Even less normal for an Anglican church in the Georgian period is the outward emphasis on the force of gravity rather than any upward possibility of heavenly grace. St. Mary Woolnoth has a threatening mien, as though its fortresslike walls were needed to withstand dangerous pressures.

Hawksmoor is called an English Baroque architect. When I think of the Baroque architecture on the Continent of Europe, I think of the great Catholic churches of "Counter-Reformation" Rome--works by Bernini, Borromini, and da Cortona--works designed to emphasize the grandeur and confidence of Catholicism. English Baroque, as developed by Christopher Wren, was more restrained, evidently, and included elements of classical Palladian architecture. Former slave trader and hymnist John Newton was incumbent at St. Mary Woolnoth from 1780 to 1807 and William Wilberforce attended services there--I wonder if the scenes from the movie Amazing Grace were filmed there.

St. Paul's in The City Closed for Christmas?

Now this is very odd: the Cathedral of St. Paul's in the City of London is closed because the Occupy Wall Street protesters have mistaken its grounds for Wall Street! The protests even interfered with a private wedding:

London's landmark St Paul's Cathedral remained closed on Saturday because of hazards posed by hundreds of protesters encamped in front of it in a demonstration inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Dean Graeme Knowles, a senior cleric, wrote an open letter to protesters asking them to leave the square peacefully, which they have occupied since last Saturday after initially targeting the nearby London Stock Exchange.
"We have done this with a very heavy heart, but it is simply not possible to fulfil our day to day obligations to worshippers, visitors and pilgrims in current circumstances," Knowles said in a statement.

In The Catholic Herald, William Oddie asks an ever odder question: if the cathedral cannot open until after Christmas (if the protests go on so long), will it even matter? even to Anglicans?

The real question is, and I really don’t mean to be gratuitously discourteous or dismissive, what will it actually matter if St Paul’s is closed for such a long time? And (to pre-empt those inclined on these occasions to fall into their usual rut, accusing me of the usual ex-Anglican convert’s Newmanian dismissiveness of Anglican institutions) let me say that I would have asked exactly the same question had I still been an Anglican clergyman. Another way of asking the same question would be to say “what is any Anglican Cathedral actually for?” – though when it comes to St Paul’s, as we shall see, we have to ask the question with particular sharpness.

He goes on to direct his readers to the Cathedral website, where all the statements about the closure of St. Paul's come from the Dean of the Cathedral and one of its Canons.

On our trip to London several years ago, St. Paul's was the second great disappointment--the first time we went it was closed to visitors for an ordination; the second time we went, we really couldn't see anything because of construction inside! Many of the events that would be held in the Cathedral will have to be moved, of course. The shop and restaurant in the crypt will be closed and tourists, at least, will be very disappointed. Poor Christopher Wren!--no one may look about and see his monument (until further notice, at least).

Elizabeth's Favorite Dies

Robert Dudley, lst Earl of Leicester died on September 4, 1588. He was buried in the Collegiate Church of St. Mary's in Warwick, and his second wife planned an elegant memorial to both of them:

Latin: Deo viventium S[acrum]
Spe certa resurgendi in Christo, hic situs est illustrissimus ROBERTVS DVDLEYVS, IOHANNIS DVCIS NORTHVMBRIÆ, COMITIS WARWICI, Vicecomitis INSVLÆ &c filius quintus; Comes LEICESTRIÆ, Baro DENBIGHIE; ordinis tum S GEORGII, tum S MICHAELIS, Eques auratus; Reginæ ELIZABETHÆ (apud quem singulari gratiâ florebat) Hippocomus; Regiæ Aulæ subinde Seneschallus; ab intimis Consilijs; forestarum, parcorum, Chacearum &[c] citra TRENTHAM summus Iusticiarius: Excercitus Anglici â dictâ Reginâ ELIZ: mis[s]i in BELGIO, ab Anno MDLXXXVº ad Annum MDLXXXVII, Locum-tenens et Capitaneus generalis: provinciarum Confederatarum ibidem Gubernator generalis et præfectus; Regniq; ANGLIÆ locum-tenens contra PHILIPPUM II Hispanium, numerosa Classe et Excercitu ANGLIAM MDLXXXVIII Invadentem.
Animam Deo servatori reddidit anno salutis MDLXXXVIII. die quarto Septembris. Optimo et charissimo marito, mœstissima uxor LETICIA FRANCISCI KNOILES ordinis S Georgii equitis aurati, et Regi[n]æ Thesaurarij filia, amoris et conjugalis fidei ergo, posuit.

English: Sacred to the God of the living. In certain hope of rising again in Christ, here is placed the most famous Robert Dudley, fifth son of John, Duke of Northumberland, Earl of Warwick, Viscount Lisle, etc., Earl of Leicester, Baron Denbigh; Knight of both the orders of St. George and St. Michael; Master of the Horse of Queen Elizabeth (with whom he was distinguished with exceptional favor); thereafter Steward of the Royal Household; Privy Councillor; High Justiciar of the Forests, Parks, Chases, etc. on this side of Trent: Lieutenant and Captain-general of the English army sent into the Netherlands by the said Queen Elizabeth, from 1585 to 1587; Governor-general and Commander of the United Provinces of the Netherlands; and Lieutenant of the Kingdom of England against the Spaniard Philip II, when he was invading England in 1588 with a numerous fleet and army.
He gave back his soul to God his savior in the year of salvation 1588, on the fourth day of September. His most sorrowful wife, Lettice, daughter of Francis Knollys, Knight of the Order of St. George and the Queen's Treasurer, placed [this monument] to her best and dearest husband on account of her love and faith as his wife.