The North Chapel
The north chapel of the chancel is called the Mannock Chapel not only because it is dominated by the splendid monument to Sir Francis, first baronet, who died in 1634, but because his family vault lies below its floor. The existing timber floor was taken up for renovation in 1965, which revealed that the pillar between the chapel and the choir was resting on the very weak south wall of the vault, which contained the remains of four adults and one child in wooden coffins lined with lead. The vault was cleared, a wall built in it to halve its size, and the space between this wall and the south side filled with rubble and concrete to provide a stable base for the pillar. The remains were then reinterred, the wood of the coffins having been removed to be burnt in case of dry rot.. The floor was replaced using old stone setts and the large mediaeval memorial slabs found beneath the old flooring of the church in various places. In the late 15th century the altar, which stands on Purbeck marble paving, was dedicated to Our Lady of Pity, which has led to the chapel sometimes being called the Lady Chapel. The piscina (the alcove to the right of the altar) is 13th century, so must have survived from an earlier church. The north window, which is considered worthy of note, is by Clayton & Bell in 1910 and shows the Adoration of Kings and Shepherds, while the east window of the Adoration of the Infant Jesus is by J B Capronnier of Brussels in 1869 (it may be noted that the green-clad angel on the left has two starboard wings!). His father was a porcelain painter in the Sevres factory, hence possibly the “painted porcelain” appearance of the glass. This and his other window on the south side are the only examples of his work in Suffolk and are regarded as important, not least as a contrast to the English work of the same era. He exhibited at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851. In 2013 the altar rail was installed at the expense of the Rev. and Mrs.John Fowler, who also gave the set of chairs: all of this work was executed in local-grown English oak by Mr.Dylan Pym of Polstead.
The tomb of
Sir Francis Mannock
The monument was fortunately not vandalised by Dowsing’s men, possibly because Sir Francis was not displaying a “superstitious attitude”, such as his hands in prayer. The effigy is in alabaster, probably by Nicholas Stone, and the impaled arms of ladies marrying family members are, in a clockwise sequence from the top, Saunders, Seckford, Waldegrave, Heneage (centre bottom), Fetch, Pary, and Brackley. Mannock is not a common name, and is first recorded in the reign of Henry IV (1399-1410) in connection with Giffords Hall, Withermarsh Green, a beautiful and secluded Tudor mansion 3.5km northeast of Stoke. The brasses on the floor commemorate Sir Francis’ grandfather, also Francis: his image and those of his two wives have disappeared, but there are two images of his children, on the right a son and five daughters by his first wife, on the left a son and three daughters by his second. The other large brass is for Dorothy Saunders, Sir Francis’ wife.
The family remained Roman Catholic after the Reformation until it died out with the death of Sir George in 1787 as a result of a coach accident, when he was on his way to Rome to resign his priestly orders. In 1596 William, who has a brass tablet on the wall, forfeited two thirds of his estates for recusancy – refusal to attend the services of the Church of England. However, in 1625 his son Francis was granted a full pardon and two years later was created a baronet (an hereditary knighthood) for financing “30 men at arms for three years for the Plantation of Ireland.” An English Catholic subsidises a British Protestant king, Charles I, to suppress Irish Catholics in Ulster to permit colonisation by Scottish Protestants! This did not prevent Francis’s estates being sequestered again, a penalty which was not lifted until 1658 under the Commonwealth.
Thus it may be wondered how it came about that Sir Francis II was able to erect his father’s splendid memorial in the church he refused to attend, and furthermore a church whose Vicar was one Thomas Mott, a noted and fervent Puritan who in 1662 was dismissed for failure to recognise the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. The answer almost certainly lies in the fact that the owner of Giffords Hall was the “impropriator”, or “lay rector” of Stoke and Nayland churches, whereby its owner was responsible for the maintenance of the chancels of both: this charge was redeemed by Colonel Tabor in 1927 in the sum of 781 pounds, 18 shillings and 10 pence, which was invested with the Diocesan Board of Finance and still pays small sums annually to Stoke. This would have given Francis the whip hand when dealing with Mott, quite apart from the fact that his father must have been a respected local landowner and employer.
There is another twist to this tale. In the 1520s Tendring Hall in Stoke was the residence of Lord Edmund Howard, third son of the second Duke of Norfolk, and not only a man with no visible means of support, but a gambler and a spendthrift too. Sadly, his daughter Catherine, born about 1523, caught the eye of Henry VIII (having been paraded before him by the ever-ambitious Howards), was married to him in 1540 as his fifth wife, and was beheaded for treason (adultery) in 1542. One of the young men accused of being involved with her was Henry Mannock, son of George of Giffords Hall, whose estate shared a boundary with that of Tendring Hall. While he was a Howard retainer employed to teach Catherine music, it seems very likely that they had known each other socially before he was taken on. Also involved was his cousin Edward Waldegrave of Smallbridge Hall, 6 km southwest of Stoke on the way to Bures, in other words another local young man of good family known to the Howards. Both men were fortunate not to suffer any penalty, and both appear to have been allowed to disappear from the record.
Dorothy Saunders,
Sir Francis’ wife.
The Mannock
Coat of Arms