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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
banqueting hall remained, which was converted into a manor house.
But if the palace is gone, the church remains as evidence of the magnificence of the Duke's ideas on the
subject of a village place of worship. He seems to have shared the apprehension felt by the Duke in
Disraeli's novel "Tancred," that he might be accused of "under-building his position." In design it is very
like another large church at Wingfield in Suffolk, where his hereditary possessions lay, and where he was
buried after his murder, his body having been given to his widow. The same architect possibly supervised
both, but of the two Ewelme Church is the finer. The interior is especially splendid, for in it are the
tombs of the Chaucers, and the magnificent sepulchre of the Duchess herself, on which her emaciated
figure lies wrapped in her shroud. This tomb of the Duchess Alice is one of the finest monuments of the
kind in England. The other relic of the prosperity of Ewelme under the De la Poles is the hospital and
school they founded. "God's House" is the name now given to it, and it is kept in good repair and used as
an almshouse. The inner court is surrounded by cloisters, and the whole is in exactly the same condition
as when it was built. The higher parts, constructed of brick, were the quarters of the priest and
schoolmaster. The ruin and subsequent murder of the Duke, who adorned and beautified this model
village in the early fifteenth century, took place in 1450. Nearly all France was lost, and in the hopes of
conciliating the enemy, Maine and Anjou were given up by Suffolk's advice. He was accused of "selling"
the provinces, and a number of vague but damaging charges were drawn up against him on evidence
which would not be listened to now in any court or Parliament, except perhaps in a French State trial.
Suffolk drew up a petition to the king, which shows among other things the drain which the French wars
made on the lives and fortunes of the English nobles. After referring to the "odious and horrible language
that runneth through the land almost in every common mouth, sounding to my highest charge and most
heaviest slander," he reminded the King that his father had died in the siege of Harfleur, and his eldest
brother at Agincourt; that two other brothers were killed at the battle of Jargeau, where he himself had
been taken prisoner and had to pay L20,000 ransom; that while his fourth brother was hostage for him he
died in the enemy's hands; and that he had borne arms for the King's father and himself "thirty-four
winters," and had "abided in the war in France seventeen years without ever seeing this land." The King's
favour secured that he should be banished instead of losing his head, for a State trial was never anything
better than a judicial murder. The following is the letter written by an eye-witness to Sir John Paston,
describing what then happened: "In the sight of all his men he was drawn out of the great ship into the
boat, and there was an axe and a stock. And one of the lewdest men of the ship bade him lay down his
head and he should be fairly ferd (dealt) with, and die on a sword. And he took a rusty sword and smote
off his head with half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet and his doublet of velvet
mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover; and some say his head was set on a pole by it, and his
men sit on the land by great circumstance and pray." The writer says, "I have so washed this bill with
sorrowful tears that uneths ye shall not read it." The Countess survived his fall and lived to be great and
powerful once more. Her son became the brother-in-law of sovereigns, and her grandchildren were
princes and princesses.
EEL-TRAPS
Fish and flour go together as bye-products of nearly all our large rivers. The combination comes about
thus: Wherever there is a water-mill, a mill cut is made to take the water to it. The larger the river, the
bigger and deeper the mill cut and dam, unless the mill is built across an arm of the stream itself. This
mill-dam, as every trout-fisher knows, holds the biggest fish, and where there are no trout, or few trout, it
will be full of big fish, while in the pool below there are perhaps as many more. Of all the food fishes of
our rivers the eel is really far the most important. He flourishes everywhere, in the smallest pools and
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