Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 116 Possibly the tomb of two Dukes of Suffolk. See the text. Sometimes incorrectly referred to today as a plague, it was a most contagious disease, which visited the English population in summer five times between 1485 and 1551, and then disappeared never to return. At the time this was called the ‘English sweat’ (it was almost unique to England) or sweating sickness. It started with flu-like symptoms, then profuse sweating, followed by death within 72 hours from lung congestion. The population feared it more than bubonic plague, as sweating sickness was invariably fatal. In the summer of 1551, the sweat broke out near London and the widowed Duchess of Suffolk immediately took her sons Henry Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, aged 15 and his brother Charles, 14, to Cambridge where Henry had been studying at St John’s College. Upon arrival they learned that the sweat had broken out there too. So they continued to flee, this time westwards and on 10 July they stopped overnight, visiting their friend Lady Margaret Neville, then resident at Buckden Palace. But it was too late. Henry was already ill and he died on 11 July. Thus the dukedom passed immediately to his younger brother Charles, who was by now quite feverish. Poor Charles died within half-an-hour of his brother; and his peerage, according to the Guinness Book of Records , was the shortest-lived in English history. Now, these were no run-of-the-mill gentry. They were half-uncles of Lady Jane Grey. And, in acknowledgement of his seniority, Henry Brandon had carried the orb at Edward VI’s coronation. Hasty arrangements were made to inter them and contemporary records show that they were laid to rest in the prime nave position, just before the chancel. However, nineteenth century records, and popular history, say that these young dukes are buried beneath an old tabletop tomb in the churchyard. So which is right? Perhaps both stories are, we may never know. There is research yet to be done, but here is one theory. The spot where the boys were originally buried is now occupied by the remains of the very influential Green family. When the family came to bury Sarah Green in October 1778, they may have found the previously unmarked remains of the dukes and, rather than lose their new prime position, the Greens arranged to re-inter the boys outside in a suitable tomb. The tomb selected probably dates to around 1520, thirty years before the boys died, and the Greens had to ‘cut & shut’ it, with blank insertions in the ornate sides, to accommodate the dukes. The top is sealed with an even earlier abbot’s slab, his staff still visible today. This theory would appear to fit the known facts, but any more information would be most welcome. Whatever the truth about the boys’ final resting-place, young Charles Brandon put Buckden into the record books. Bishop Barlow and the King James Bible James I came to the throne on Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603, and in 1608 he appointed to the see of Lincoln, William Barlow, a one-time chaplain to the late queen and one of the translators of the King James Bible (he presided over the team translating the Epistles). Barlow actively opposed the excesses of the Puritans and spoke out against them at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604; this was to bring him many enemies among the Presbyterians, and they didn’t forget … Like many bishops, Barlow was fond of Buckden and, when he died here on 7 September 1613, he was buried beneath a fine tomb on the north side of St Mary’s chancel, in accordance with his wishes. During the Civil War in 1642, however, Puritans wrecked his tomb and the effigies on it in order to settle their 38- year-old grudge. The later Bishop Thomas Barlow (no relation), when re-using some of William’s tomb for his own memorial in 1691, condemned these despoilers in his epitaph as ‘fanatics’. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with the restoration of communion to the laity, new communion vessels were required and perhaps we should thank William Barlow for the church’s earliest chalice, bearing a London silver hallmark of 1607. There is a pattern of bishops donating communion vessels to St Mary’s and it would be gratifying to think of this one as his. It is a classic yet simple cup belonging to the year when Shakespeare wrote two of his best known tragedies, King Lear and Macbeth .