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314 THE SUSSEX COAST
It is locally credited with having contained 365 windows and 52 chimneys, but this in one form or another is an exceedingly common claim. For instance, De Foe tells us of Salisbury Cathedral—
" As many Days as in one year there be, So many windows in one Church we see; As many Marble Pillars there appear, As there are Hours throughout the fleeting Year; As many Gates as Moons one Year do view : Strange Tale to tell, yet not more strange than true."
The son of the builder, Sir Richard Fienes, married the Dacre heiress and became a peer. To the second Lord Dacre of the Fienes family, who died in 1534, there is a magnificent monument between the chancel and the north chapel of the church; it is canopied with ornately cusped arches and adorned with the elaborate niches and panelling characteristic of late Perpendicular detail, singularly free from the Renaissance influence usually found at so late a date. The nobleman and a son who died before him have recumbent effigies side by side, their feet on alaunes. The next Lord Dacre when on a poaching expedition killed a man, and, tried before Lord Audley of Walden, was executed, but, to the disappointment of various greedy courtiers, the strict entail prevented the estate (after which Camden tells us they gaped) from lapsing to the Crown. It brings home how completely the Commonwealth struggle of the seventeenth century was a contest of principles rather than of classes to realise that Francis, the Lord of Dacre of that day, took the Roundhead side.
In days gone by a ghostly drummer in one |
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