Not quite ten kilometres to the west-north-west of Bicester in Oxfordshire lies the sleepy village of Steeple Aston. In the church of St Peter & St Paul can be found an imposing monument of marble to one of the early Eighteenth century’s notorious “hanging judges”.

Francis Page, the son of a country parson, was born in either late 1660 or early 1661 in the parish of Bloxham in Oxfordshire. He married first Isabella White in 1685 and, after her death, Frances Wheate (c.1689-1730) in 1705.

He entered the legal profession and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1685 and  was subsequently called to the bar in 1690. His career developed slowly but he became well known in 1705 when he was involved in the famous case of Ashby vs White, engaged as one of the four lawyers of Thomas Wharton, fifth Baron Wharton.

Page was elected to parliament for Huntingdon in 1708. In November 1714 he was made Serjeant-at-Law and by January of 1715 he had been knighted. A week later he was made King’s-Serjeant.

In 1718 he was raised to the judicial bench. It was from this time on that he began to gain a reputation as a brutal judge. Through his treatment of the poet Richard Savage, arrested for the murder of James Sinclair in a drunken quarrel in 1727, he gained the ire of, among others, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Pope and Johnson, and later Savage himself, denounced Page in their works. Pope wrote in his Imitations of Horace:

Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage
Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page

There is, however, evidence that Page was no worse than other judges of his time. His bad reputation seems to have been mainly acquired through making an enemy of the literati of his day.

Richard Duckworth, the late 17th century rector of Steeple Aston church partly rebuilt the chancel in 1686, apparently using stone from the mediaeval chapel on the chancel’s north side. In doing this the chapel was left open to the elements and was blocked off from the chancel by a partition. In 1723 Sir Francis took over the ruined chapel and created a family mausoleum. He installed a monument to himself and his second wife after she died in 1730.

The monument to Sir Francis Page and Frances his wife stands against the north wall of the north chapel. It was commissioned from the sculptor Henry Scheemakers in 1730 and is of outstanding quality. The composition is of light and dark grey and white marble. The judge lies semi-reclining above and behind his wife. He is dressed in full legal robes and wears a wig. She lies propped up on a pillow and holds an open book. The effigies lie on a gadrooned tomb chest. Behind them is a dark grey obelisk. The whole is set in an architectural framework with Corinthian columns surmounted by a broken pediment with urns and top achievement.

Sir Francis Page died at his home in Middle Aston on the 19th of December 1741 and was buried in the family vault at Steeple Aston on the 29th of December.

St Peter’s church, Croft (Yorkshire North Riding) sits beside an ancient bridge over the Tees. It contains an array of unusual items including a sedilia with rustic carvings of figures (one of which may have been influential in the design of Charles Dodgson’s Cheshire Cat), a large 18th century font which would look more at home on the formal lawns of a grand house, and two enormous tomb chests (two of the largest I have ever seen in a parish church). Perhaps the most unusual and striking feature is the family pew in the north aisle.

The pew belonged to the Milbanke family, formerly of Halnaby Hall. Nikolaus Pevsner in the Buildings of England says it dates from before 1680, although I get the feeling it is somewhat later; perhaps early 18th century (the Victoria County History also suggests an 18th century date). It sits on five large wooden Tuscan columns and is equipped with a set of fetching red curtains. One ascends to the pew via a three-stage staircase with fancy twisted balusters.

Behind and underneath the enormous pew is an equally enormous tomb chest surrounded by an iron railing. It has no inscription but sports a funeral helm, sitting rather ill-at-ease on the top, and a series of heraldic shields of the Milbanke family. It is most probably the tomb of Sir Mark Milbanke 1st Baronet (d.1680) or, less likely, to his son Sir Mark (d.1698) who built a large family vault in the church.

The first Sir Mark was created a Baronet on the 7th of August 1661, presumably helped by the fact that his father, Mark Milbanke, had been High Sheriff of Northumberland and had also been instrumental in the restoration of Charles II to the Throne in 1660.

If you visit the church, try tapping on the front columns. You’ll find only the inner two are for structural support; the outer two are hollow and for show only.

Sitting just inside Rutland on its northern border with Leicestershire, the village of Teigh possesses one of the most interesting churches in the county, Holy Trinity. The church tower dates from the 13th and 14th centuries but the rest of the original building was swept away in 1782 by the fourth Earl of Harborough (1719-1799). The body of the church consists of a three bay nave with no separate chancel. The pointed windows are original but the tracery in them dates from 1893.

The interior, with its pale pink walls and gently curving duck egg blue plaster ceiling, is dominated by three tiers of pews on each side. These are arranged college-wise, that is, facing each other across the body of the church with a central aisle running east to west. At the west end is a pulpit situated high up and flanked lower down by two reading desks. Framing the pulpit is a mock window painted to look like glazing bars with trees behind them.

The interior is devoid of monuments apart from two slate ledger stones on the west wall. The original 18th century font, an elegant vase of mahogany, was originally fixed to the altar rails (the fixing points are still visible). It was later moved to the interior of a pew on the north side. On my most recent visit it had disappeared; theft or conservation? Left behind is an ugly stone font of 1845 made by the incumbent of that time.

The church was probably designed by George Richardson (?-c.1813). He was originally a draughtsman in the offices of Robert and James Adam and, from 1760 to 1763, went of a Grand Tour with the latter gaining first-hand knowledge of the styles used by Adam. In his later years he published various works but was responsible for few complete buildings. The fourth Earl employed him as the designer for Stapleford church (Leicestershire) in 1783 and he exhibited the design in the same year at the Royal Academy under the title Elevation of a church building at Stapleford, in Leicestershire, for the Earl of Harborough. There is little doubt the Earl also employed him at his two other churches at Teigh and at Saxby (Leicestershire).

The church of St Peter and St Paul at Exton (Rutland) contains some outstanding monuments. The largest and most spectacular of them is to be found on the east wall of the north transept. This is the monument to Baptist Noel, Third Viscount Campden (c.1612-1683). This formidable structure, squeezed in to a space too small to adequately display it, is of white and black marbles and shows the Viscount and his fourth wife, Elizabeth daughter of Montague Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey and his wife Martha. Reliefs on various parts of the monument depict his three other wives and their nineteen children. It was made by Grinling Gibbons, perhaps better known for his carvings in wood.

The massive white marble base features a relief showing six of the children, two sons and four daughters along with his third wife Hester Wotton, flanked by inscription plates of black marble. The inscription on the left gives brief biographical information on Baptist, while that on the right gives the names of his children by his four wives.

Centrally placed on the base is a sarcophagus with a relief of nine children, three sons, three daughters, and three babies, along with his fourth wife Elizabeth, all surrounded by an oval wreath. Upon this is a pedestal surmounted by an urn and flanked by large standing statues of the Viscount and his fourth wife. On the pedestal is a black marble inscription plate recording that the monument was erected by order of Elizabeth and carried out by her third son, John Noel, in 1686.

Flanking the figures are two large truncated pyramids on balled feet surmounted by wreathed urns of black marble and decorated with garlands and two oval wreaths depicting the remaining wives and children. That on the left shows his first wife, Ann Fielding,with three babies while that on the right shows his second wife, Ann Lovet, and one baby.

Above the ensemble is an arch supporting an open pediment upon which are draperies and a shield in a cartouche with the arms of the Third Viscount.

As was the fashion for the age, all of the figures are depicted in Roman dress.

The monument is well-balanced given its size and level of fine detail. The reliefs and garlands are excellent – not surprising given that they are by Gibbons – but the figures, to my mind, are not particularly successful. No doubt it cost a pretty penny.

Baptist Noel was a Member of Parliament for Rutland between 1640 and 1643. He succeeded to the title of 3rd Viscount Campden, 3rd Baron Hicks of Ilmington and 2nd Baron Noel of Ridlington in March 1642/3. During the Civil War he sided with the King and it was during this time that he ordered his house at Chipping Campden (Glos) to be burnt down so as not to be of use to Parliamentary forces. He was subsequently fined £9000 for his support of the King. Baptist Noel died on the 29th of October 1683.

The monuments in Exton church were restored by the Exton Monuments Restoration Fund between 2000 and 2002. The Viscount’s monument apparently cost £49,000 to restore. The work was carried out by the Skillington Workshop of Grantham (Lincs).

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