For 150 years Bletchingley Place was a substantial double courtyard manor house facing south on the road that runs at right angles to Brewer Street. Place Farm preserves the entrance to one of its courtyards.
Its first two aristocratic owners met their deaths at the hands of Henry VIII and it was the home of a former queen before falling into ruin in the seventeenth century.
In the early part of the sixteenth century Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham built a substantial modern manor house known as Bletchingley Place. It was probably on the site of the old de Clare manor house as the foundation trenches contained medieval artefacts.
The manor house is properly and newly bilded, with many lodgings and offices. The hall, chapel, chambers, parlours, closets and oratories be newly ceiled with wainscot roofs, floors and walls
Edward had little time to enjoy his new residence. He was a threat to Henry VIII because he was one of the greatest peers of the realm, with a strong Plantagenet bloodline and arguably a better claim to the throne than the King. Combined with his immense wealth and strong connections to many members of the aristocracy, this attracted Henry’s suspicion.
In 1521 Buckingham was placed in the Tower of London, indicted for treason. The accusations were highly specific and included trying to bribe the King’s guard with expensive cloth, appointing unauthorised officers to build up a private retinue and most damningly, having treasonous conversations about the royal succession.
Henry personally questioned the witnesses. One was Buckingham’s private chaplain and chancellor, Robert Gilbert. Gilbert said he had heard Buckingham speaking to his son-in-law George Neville in the long gallery at Bletchingley Place, claiming that he possessed a sealed document showing he had a legally superior claim to the throne and ‘imagining and compassing the death of the King’.
Sir Thomas More complained that the key evidence of an active plot by the Duke against Henry was hearsay from servants who had been bullied to extract false confessions.
Go with me, like good angels, to my end;
And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me,
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,
And lift my soul to heaven
In 1522 Henry gave Bletchingley Place to Sir Nicholas Carew, his childhood friend and master of the horse. He had served as a Surrey grand juror in the indictment of Buckingham.
Carew already had a number of neighbouring manors including his ancestral home of Beddington Manor in Wallington.
Carew spent most of his time at court but he did stay at Bletchingley Place to enjoy the hunting grounds at North Park and South (or Great) Park, to the east of the village.
You can find out more about the parks at https://www.bletchingleyhistory.org.uk/Places/#Hunting%2BParks.
Carew was a religious conservative who resented Anne Boleyn’s influence over the King and conspired with the reformist Thomas Cromwell to bring her down. In late 1538, Cromwell was forced by King Henry to move against his former ally. Carew’s downfall was puzzling but he was by now out of favour with Henry (possibly over something as trivial as a game of bowls with Henry which turned sour, as his family believed). Henry had moved against the remaining Yorkist claimants to the throne, who he collectively called the ‘White Rose Group.’ He thought they would usurp his infant son and put the exiled Cardinal Pole (a genuine threat) on the throne in his place. Carew was religiously aligned to the group and when his letters privately expressed sympathy for their members were found he was executed in 1539.
Following the annulment of her marriage to Henry in July 1540 Anne of Cleves was given Bletchingley Place as well as other residences at Richmond Palace, Hever Castle and Penshurst Place. Although Richmond Palace was the higher status residence, contemporary letters and state papers refer to Bletchingley as her ‘usual residence.’ It was distant enough to give her some privacy but near enough to London to remain connected to political life and visit the court.
It was her main home for the next seven years. She had a comfortable and independent life here as the ‘King’s Beloved Sister,’ funded by her substantial annual pension. Documents held at the Folger Shakespeare Library document her day-to-day interactions with her steward, Sir Thomas Cawarden, about supplies, meat, ale, and livestock to maintain the Bletchingley household.
Anne learned to dance and speak English. She actively engaged in the courtly pastimes of the elite, frequently hunting in the estate's extensive deer parks and entertaining high-profile guests.
She remained on good terms with the King and became friends with his daughters Mary and Elizabeth. She even went for the Christmas festivities at Hampton Court in January 1541, dancing with her former lady in waiting, Katherine Howard.
In 1546 Henry had granted the reversion of Bletchingley Place to Sir Thomas Cawarden, meaning he would inherit after her death. However, two months after Henry died, Cawarden persuaded Edward VI’s Privy Council to force Anne to move to her less convenient residence at Penshurst to allow Sir Thomas to move in early.
Cawarden was supposed to pay Anne a yearly rent of £33 until her death but as his papers show, he consistently failed to settle his accounts and behaved aggressively in other ways, illegally felling timber in Bletchingley’s South Park without Anne’s permission and clashing with her gamekeepers.
An agreement to pay the rent was eventually formalised in a lease agreement which Anne signed, ‘Anna the Dowghter of Cleves,’ in 1555. Anne granted Sir Thomas the right to rent Bletchingley Manor and South Park for £33 a year until he inherited on her death, two years later. This is the lease agreement with a close-up of her signature.
Anne had survived six uncertain months of marriage to lead a full and happy life. Holinshed’s Chronicle, memorialising her after her death, called her ‘A lady of right commendable regard, courteous, gentle, a good housekeeper and very bountiful to her servants.’
Sir Thomas Cawarden rose from obscurity, the son of a clothworker. By 1540 he had the King’s confidence, a trusted gentleman of the privy chamber and keeper of the royal manor of Bletchingley. Later he became the Master of the Revels in 1544 and was an early patron of English drama.
As a Protestant, he was in favour during Edward VI’s short reign and he removed much of the furniture, carvings, rood screen and other ‘idolatry’ from the Church of St Mary the Virgin and had it carted to his theatrical headquarters at the dissolved Blackfriars Monastery to reuse in theatrical performances. He also took fittings from St Ann’s Chapel at Blackfriars to decorate his house at Bletchingley. A list of “moneye payd for stuf” in the move includes a payment for carting ‘the great altar stone to Blachynglye.’
Cawarden was lucky to survive the start of Mary I’s reign as he was implicated in the succession crisis after Edward’s death, receiving instructions to supply equipment to the Tower from supporters of Lady Jane Gray. He was suspected of being a supporter of Wyatt’s Rebellion against Mary six months later in 1554 and arrested at Bletchingley Place. In a search of the property enough weapons were found to equip 450 men but he successfully pleaded innocence and was back at his official duties two months later. He claimed to have spent £2000 on this personal arsenal and despite years of petitioning he never recovered most of it.
Despite being implicated in yet more plotting to rob the Exchequer and replace Mary with her sister Elizabeth in 1556, Cawarden managed to survive until her eventual death in 1558. There was never sufficient evidence to convict him but the Privy Council did manage to break him financially. He spent periods in prison or under house arrest at his Blackfriars property. Fighting lawsuits against the churches whose property he had plundered added to his financial woes and when he died the following year he was in massive debt. His table tomb can be seen in the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Bletchingley.
In 1560 Thomas Cawarden’s indebted heir sold Bletchingley Place to Lord William Howard, 1st Baron Effingham. Lord William’s principal home was Reigate Priory which Henry VIII gave him in 1541 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He served four monarchs in various official capacities, conducting several diplomatic missions and commanding the fleet as Lord Admiral.
His trickiest moment was when he was sentenced to life imprisonment under Henry VIII for concealing the sexual indiscretions of his young niece, Katherine Howard. He was pardoned two months later after her execution. As Lord Admiral he met Philip II of Spain on his arrival in England in 1555. He died at Hampton Court Palace in 1573 and was buried at Reigate.
William’s more famous son, Charles Howard of Effingham, was educated with his cousins at Reigate Castle by John Foxe, the famous author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. As an adult, he lived at Bletchingley Place as his main home before he inherited the family’s wider estates. He became Lord Howard of Effingham following his father’s death, and Lord High Admiral in 1585.
Howard is best known for commanding the fleet in 1588 when Philip II of Spain launched the Spanish Armada. He was rightly deeply suspicious of Spanish intentions during the Anglo-Spanish peace negotiations that took place immediately before the invasion. He wrote a strongly worded letter to Elizabeth on 23 June:
‘For the love of Jesus Christ, Madam, awake thoroughly, and see the villainous treasons round about you, against your Majesty and your realm, and draw your forces round about you, like a mighty prince, to defend you.’
When the Spanish entered the channel, his command of the English fleet was excellent. He relied heavily on the technical expertise of Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins and resisted the temptation of a suicidal assault against the massive Spanish galleons. Instead, he enforced a strict stand-off policy, keeping the wind advantage and harassing the enemy’s rear. As he memorably said, ‘their force is wonderful, great and strong; and yet we pluck their feathers by little and little.’
Howard was later rewarded with the title, First Earl of Nottingham. He settled Bletchingley Place on his eldest son, Sir William Howard, who lived there until his premature death in 1615.
Knowing he was dying of consumption without a male heir, William Howard settled Bletchingley Place on his only child, Elizabeth, rather than his younger brother Charles. His wife Anne, Lady Effingham had a life interest in the estate and managed it aggressively until her daughter’s marriage. This set off a brutal, decades-long family dispute with Charles claiming his brother was mentally incompetent when he made his will. He dragged the Howard family, already in financial difficulties, through the Court of Chancery but his legal efforts failed and Elizabeth did inherit.
Elizabeth married John Mordaunt, later First Earl of Peterborough. He had been brought up a Protestant after being removed from the care of his father, who had been suspected of involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. The Mordaunt family had divided loyalties in the English Civil War. Elizabeth and John supported Parliament but their sons Henry and John fought for the King. Henry was heavily fined by the Commonwealth for choosing the wrong side.
Despite being back in favour after the Restoration, the finances did not improve. Pepys commented in 1667 that the earl's wife complained ‘how they are forced to live beyond their estate and do get nothing by his [Peterborough's] being a courtier.’ Bletchingley Place was neglected and was virtually all demolished in 1670 by the Earl of Peterborough, a few years before the manor of Bletchingley was sold to Sir Robert Clayton.
Today little remains of Bletchingley Place. Archaeological investigations have established that Place Farm was constructed in the 18th century from a 16th-century gatehouse that had been the central portion of the northern wing of the inner court of Bletchingley Place. A large barn to the south-west is a 17th century adaption of the original west wing of the outer court, made from reused Tudor bricks. Granary Cottage opposite incorporates a length of 16th-century wall from the corresponding east wing. The meadow on the west side of the house contains a number of terraces that are probably the remains of ornamental gardens associated with Bletchingley Place.
The other surviving trace of Bletchingley Place is the carved woodwork surround above the stone fireplace in Holbein Hall in Reigate Priory. It was originally built for Henry VIII and installed in Nonsuch Palace in Ewell but was moved to Bletchingley Place for Anne of Cleves. It was moved again to its final home at Reigate Priory by Elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough in 1655.
Sources:
Map: Six Inch Ordnance Survey Map of Ireland, Scotland England and Wales (1888-1915) https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.4&lat=51.25473&lon=-0.09782&layers=6&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
Surrey Archaeological Survey, Place Farm
https://www.surreyarchaeology.org.uk/content/place-farm-bletchingley
Exploring Surrey’s Past
https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/collections/getrecord/SHHER_1226
Portrait of Edward Duke of Buckingham, Magdalene College, Cambridge
Tudor England, (1988), John Guy
The Tudor Nobility, (1992) GW Bernard
Portrait of Sir Nicholas Carew, Hans Holbein the Younger, painted between 1527 and 1528
Thomas Cromwell, A Life, (2018) Diarmaid MacCulloch
Anne of Cleves, Bartholomaeus Bruyn the elder (1495-1555), held by St John's College, University of Oxford
Folger Shakespeare Library, https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/the-mirror-and-the-light/
and https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img60916
Anne of Cleves: The great survivor, https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/anne-of-cleves/
The History of Parliament https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cawarden-thomas-1514-59
Portrait of Elizabeth Howard, 1st Countess of Peterborough, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Mordaunt Biographies
http://www.mordaunt.me.uk/biographies.html#six
Place Farm, (2010) Ian Capper
Fireplace, Holbein Hall, Reigate Priory https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2862766
Fireplace, Holbein Hall, Reigate Priory (2012) Ian Capper 2012.