THE SOUTH CHAPEL OF THE CHANCEL
This chapel, which once held an altar to Jesus, has for several hundred years been the memorial chapel for the families of the owners of Tendring Hall. As a consequence, it shows what the Suffolk Heraldry Society describes as the finest display of heraldry in the Stour Valley, and one of the most interesting sets of brasses in Suffolk. The east window is by Capronnier and shows the raising of the son of the Widow of Nain (Luke 7 vv 11-15). It is recorded by John Weever in his “Funerall Monuments” of 1631 that in this window “are the portraits of Sir John Howard, Knight, and Dame Alice, his wife, daughter and heiress of Sir William Tendring, Knight,” which brought Tendring Hall into the ownership of the Howards. The outstanding Tendring monument is the brass of Sir William III, who was born about 1350 and died in 1408, the last of his line. It is noted for the fact that it appears to be a portrait, with his beard in the style of the time, and not the stylised face of earlier brasses. His armour is described as “an excellent example of the mixed mail and plate period, with chain mail closely fitted round his neck.”
The Tendring
Coat of Arms
Sir William de Tendring III
Brass Memorial
Weever describes the stone being “upon the pavement before the high Aultar”, but there is no record of when it was moved to its present position. The inscription (lost) said he was buried here with his wife, Dame Catherine Clopton, nee Mylde. It is worth pondering on the labour involved in moving this slab of Purbeck marble, probably the largest single,block of stone in the church, from Dorset to London, worked upon there to insert the image, and then brought round by sea and river to Nayland. There was a misapprehension that Sir Willam fought at Agincourt in 1415, but the actual entry in Sir Nicholas Harris Nicholas’ 1832 book on the battle refers to one William Tendrynge, a man-at-arms in the service of Sir William Bourchier, and, apart from the fact we know William Tendring had been in his grave seven years before the battle, it hardly seems likely that a senior knight and major landowner would have been recorded as a common soldier.
The second mediaeval brass whose identity is known is that of Lady Katherine Howard, first wife of Sir John II, later Duke of Norfolk. This monument was installed long after her death in 1465, and shows her dressed after the Tudor fashion of some 70 years later. Her surcoat with the arms of Brotherton (a younger son of Edward III), Howard, Warren and Mowbray shows her to have been a very great lady. Her brass was stolen from the church on 8th May 1971, but fortunately recovered not long afterwards, and with Sir William’s professionally re-fixed in 2002.
The third brass figure, of a woman, is Dame Katherine Mylde, Sir William’s wife, widow of Thomas Clopton. She is described as wearing an unusual version of a Nebule pattern headdress, extremely short and exposing her ears, while her hair falls to her shoulders and is bound in a small net. Her sleeves are fastened with numerous closely-spaced buttons, and her pointed shoes peep from below her gown.
The Howards relinquished Tendring Hall in 1563 with the execution of the 4th Duke of Norfolk (he, a Catholic, had plotted to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and marry Mary, Queen of Scots, also Catholic, and place her on the English throne). The estate was sold to Thomas Rivett, later Sir Thomas, of Chippenham, near Newmarket, sometime Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers of the City of London, and as a supplier of silken cloth clearly high in the favour of the Queen. His daughter Anne was born and brought up in Stoke, and married Lord Henry Windsor in 1586, and it is she who is commemorated in the enormous memorial against the south wall, complete with her third and only surviving son and two daughters (both apparently called Elizabeth?), all of whom have suffered from Dowsing’s attentions: the stone in the floor depicting a baby in swaddling clothes is for her second son John (d.1588), and is the only record of her having had an older first son. She died in 1615, but in her will left almshouses in Stoke and land in Leavenheath to support them, a foundation which is to this day still functioning and run by a village committee. The non-Royal Windsors retain the Earldom of Plymouth.
Katherine Howard's
Brass Memorial
At some date after 1615 the estate was sold to the Williams family, and their memorials are to be seen on all sides, most of them unfortunately under the organ. Sir John Williams was Lord Mayor of London in 1735/1736. However, they became bankrupt, and the estate was bought by Admiral William Rowley in 1750: the last Rowley squire, Sir Joshua, died in 1997.The Rowleys produced five admirals over three generations between 1750 and 1845, but they are not well-known because none of them commanded a fleet or a major squadron in an important action, though they were all extremely actively employed. William was awarded a knighthood of the Order of the Bath in 1753 and died in 1768: his estate was worth £160,000, at a time when the construction of H.M.S.VICTORY had cost £65,000. His son Joshua was created a baronet (hereditary knight) in 1786, and two of his sons, Bartholomew and Charles, and a nephew Josias also became admirals. Josias’ actions eliminated the French threat represented by the Ile de France to trade with India (which included thousands of tons of saltpetre from Bengal, an essential ingredient of gunpowder), and as Mauritius the island became a British possession in 1810. The joint memorial to Admirals William and Joshua was clearly placed after 1815, and Sir William (1761-1832) has allowed family pride to run away with him, because it shows the insignia of the Imperial Military Order of Maria Theresa, the highest military award of the Austrian Empire.
Admiral Sir William Rowley
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
This was in fact awarded in 1814 to his youngest brother Charles (1770-1845), who is not commemorated in this church, for his outstanding service against the French in the Adriatic between 1811 and 1815: he was created a baronet in his own right in 1836, and the current Rowley baronets are his descendants. Bartholomew’s memorial is a duplicate of that in Kingston parish church, Jamaica.
The description of these admirals as, for example, “of the White” baffles many people. Until 1854 the Royal Navy was nominally divided into three squadrons, the Red, White, and Blue, in that order of seniority. On promotion from Captain an officer would become Rear Admiral of the Blue, and could then be further promoted as “of the White” and “of the Red”, and so on as Vice- and full Admiral. This makes it look as if there could be only ten admirals in the Navy, counting the Admiral of the Fleet (a rank reached by Admiral William), but this was not so. At sea you could tell which squadron the admiral belonged to by the colour of the ensign, and the ships under his command flew an ensign of the same colour. However, during the French wars HM ships tended to wear the White Ensign, because at a distance and perhaps masked by sails the fly of a Red Ensign might appear as the red fly of the French tricolour. In 1854 the Red Ensign was allocated to the Merchant Navy (which had been using it since its invention in about 1620), the White to the Royal Navy, and the Blue to the naval reserves and other government ships.
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​There are two things worth noting about the memorials in general: first, the title of Mrs. given to a Williams unmarried daughter; and second, the melancholy toll of the death of multiple children of all families, starting with the unnamed eldest son of Lady Anne Windsor and going through to the Rowleys in the 19th century.
