EWELME, OXFORDSHIRE St. Mary I. Thomas Chaucer, Esquire, and M.S. I CC ewe 1436 his wife Matilda London: "B" series1

Effigies of Thomas Chaucer, Esquire, lord of the manor, patron of the church, and son of Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1434), in armor, and his widow Matilda (Maud), [daughter and coheir of John Burghersh of Ewelme], 1436, with four shields (restored) and chamfer inscription (restored). On an altar tomb in the South Chapel.

The fine memorial to Thomas and Matilda or Maud Chaucer is especially interesting, both because Thomas was the son of Geoffrey Chaucer of Canterbury Tales fame and because at the feet of each effigy is a unique mythological beast. To the viewer's left, Thomas Chaucer is represented as clean-shaven and wearing the full armor of the early part of the fifteenth century. His pointed basinet with its relatively small opening for the face rests on a rather high plate gorget that protects the neck. At the shoulders are jointed spaudlers; on the upper arms, plain rerebraces; at the elbows, onion-shaped couters; on the forearms, vambraces; and, on the hands, jointed mitten gauntlets with peaked cuffs. Oblong besagews, with two parallel lines engraved vertically down their center, shield the armpits. Below the globular metal breastplate is a fauld or skirt of nine overlapping hoops, and to it on the right hip a misericorde or dagger is attached. A transverse belt with a design of quatrefoil-filled circles supports perpendicularly on Thomas's left side a long sword with a scabbard decorated at the top with a quatrefoil and "tear drop" design. The leg-harness is typical: cuisses of plate surround the thighs; poleyns with one large pointed lame cover the knees; fitted greaves protect the legs; and, pointed and jointed sabatons with rowel spurs attached at the insteps are on the feet, which rest on a couchant unicorn2 that faces to the viewer's left. The beast was taken from the crest of Roet, Thomas's maternal grandfather.3 To the right, Matilda or Maud Chaucer is represented as wearing widow's weeds: wimple, pleated barbe, and veil on the head; over a kirtle of which only the sleeves are visible, a plain gown with tight bodice, fairly close-fitting sleeves, and long, full skirt; and, a mantle, here fur-lined and attached across the breast by a cord to two decorative brooches, its tasseled ends held together by a cord slide near the waist. Couchant at her feet is a double-tailed lion, which has been taken from the family's coat of arms. In each corner of the stone slab is a shield. That in the upper left displays the arms of Roet, since Thomas Chaucer discarded his father's arms to adopt those of his

1Kent, p. 95; Norris, II, 315, figure 114. Kent suggests that the brass itself was engraved c1440. 2A couchant beast lies on its stomach with front legs out and back legs under the body. 3Norris, I, 93.

mother's family: Gules, three Catherine wheels Or.4 In the upper right are the arms of Burghersh, Matilda's family: Argent, a chief Gules, over all a lion rampant queue fourchee Or.5 On the lower left shield, the arms of Roet impale those of Burghersh, and on the lower right, Roet quarters Burghersh.6 In addition to these four shields, there are fourteen more on the side of the altar tomb, plus two at one end and four at the other.7 A chamfer inscription on the tomb (like the shields, restored) does not appear on the Hamline rubbing. According to one of the late sixteenth visitations, Thomas Chaucer, Esquire, a patron of the Ewelme church, died on 18 November 1434, and his wife Maud passed away on 27 April 1436. Hence the brass was laid down after her death. The tomb itself was probably completed in late 1438.8 The effigy of Thomas Chaucer is 38 3/4" (98.4cm) high, and that of Maud, his wife, 37 1/2" (95.3cm). Each shield measures 4 7/8" x 5 7/8" (12.4cm x 14.9cm). Though there has been some controversy about Thomas Chaucer's paternity, it is generally held that he was the son of Geoffrey Chaucer and Phillipa Roet and was born in 1367. Thomas's mother, Phillipa, not only came from a prominent family (her father was Guyon King of Arms,), but her sister Katherine Roet Swynford was long mistress and later wife of the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and father of King Henry IV. Obviously to Thomas, it was his mother's family rather than his father's that was the more important and so he adopted their arms and apparently their crest. Thomas was made Constable of Wallingford Castle in 1399, seven times represented Oxfordshire in Parliament, and in 1414 was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. He married Matilda (Maud), the daughter and co-heir of Sir John Burghersh, who, on Sir John's death, succeeded to the Manor of Ewelme.9 Thomas and Maud Chaucer had one daughter, Alice, who through her three marriages was to align herself with some of the great families of England and herself end as a Duchess. Her first marriage, however, was never consummated, for her affianced husband, Sir John Phelip, died in 1415 before Alice was of marriageable age. That year, Thomas Chaucer bought Donnington Castle, built in 1385 by Sir Richard Abberbury, as part of Alice's dowry, and though Alice did not now get it, on her father's death many years later in 1434, she did inherit it, Ewelme Manor, Hook Norton Manor, and other lands.10 Around 1425, Alice married (it was the first real marriage) Thomas Montacute, the Earl of Salisbury, but he was slain by a cannon ball at the siege of Orleans on 3 November 1428, just before having to face Joan of Arc. The marriage brought no children, and in 1430, Alice married William de la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk, and created

4Turner, p. 38. On a red field three gold Catherine wheels are charged. 5Ibid., pp, 38-9. On a silver field with a red upper horizontal band is a gold lion, one paw on the ground, three raised, head forward, and with a double tall. 6Ibid. 7Ibid., p. 39. 8Bolton, p. 11. 9Ibid., p. 1 10Oman, p. 39. As the brass indicates, Maud Chaucer died on 27 April 1436, just about a year and a half after her husband. Duke of Suffolk in 1448. De la Pole was a close adviser to King Henry VI, but his political enemies contrived to get him banished in 1450. He was murdered on the high seas on 2 May as he left England.11 He was then fifty-four, and his and Alice's only son, John, then only eight, became lord of the Manor of Ewelme and the second Duke of Suffolk. Alice survived her husband twenty-five years, dying in 1475. Their son John in 1460 married Elizabeth Plantagenet, whose father Richard of York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield on December 31 of that year. When Richard's son Edward seized the throne, John de la Pole found himself brother-in-law to the monarch and his children in direct succession to the Crown. In favor with Richard III, who succeeded his brother Edward IV, he bore the Sceptre and Dove at the Coronation, and his wife Elizabeth at the Coronation Mass sat at the Queen's right hand.12 The de la Poles contributed much to Ewelme. In 1437, the Duke of Suffolk and Alice got a license to found an almshouse, providing for a corporation for two chaplains and thirteen poor men. According to the statutes, the men were to wear cloaks with a red cross on the breast and had to attend daily mass and the Hours Service in St. John's Chapel. The almshouse, which consisted of thirteen homes around a square courtyard, still exists today, as does the Ewelme School, also founded in 1437 for a grammar master to teach the children of Ewelme "freely without exaccion of any Schole hire."13 Their son, Duke John, built the superb alabaster tomb on which lies the recumbent figure of Alice, and added the heraldic shields on the altar tomb of Thomas Chaucer and his wife.14 Duke John's sons, however, came to untimely ends. When Richard III lost his own son and declared Edward IV's two young sons illegitimate, he declared John de la Pole, the eldest son of Elizabeth Plantagenet and Duke John the presumptive heir, but the young man died in the Battle of Stoke (1487) fighting against the new king, Henry VII. John's younger brother Edward, attainted on rather suspect evidence, spent nineteen years in the Tower of London before finally being beheaded, and the youngest son, Richard, who went into exile, died at the Battle of Paris in 1525, fighting for a foreign cause. Donnington Castle, Thomas Chaucer's dowry for his daughter Alice, was confiscated on the attainder of Edmund de la Pole, and Henry VIII gave it to Charles Brandon when he made him the new Duke of Suffolk, that title and all the Suffolk estates of the de la Poles having been forfeited to the Crown by the end of the fifteenth century.15 For a brief genealogy of the Chaucer and de la Pole families, see the last page.

11Oman, p. 39. 12Bolton, p. 1. 13Ibid., pp. 16-17. 14Ibid., p. 1. 15Oman, p. 40.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolton, Arthur. Guide to St. Mary's Church, Ewelme. Bath: Mendip Press, 1967. Kent, J.P.C. "Monumental Brasses—A New Classification of Military Effigies," Journal of the British Archeological Association, Series 3, 12 (1949), 70-97. Norris, Malcolm. Monumental Brasses: The Memorials. 2 vols. London: Phillips and Page, 1977. Oman, Charles W.C. Castles (1928). New York: Beckham House, 1978. Turner, William Henry, ed. "The Visitations of the County of Oxford, 1566, 1574, 1634," Publications of the Harleian Society, 5 (1871), 1-382.