CHAPTER 32
Iwas intrigued by the paradoxical situation in which the Sidney family now found itself. Having been close to the Crown for generations, it seemed as though Sir Robert Sidney was definitely out of favour with the Queen. It was true that she had had her reservations in the past with regard to Sir Philip Sidney, even banishing him from the court for a while for challenging the Earl of Oxford, his superior, to a duel over the use of a tennis court. However, his brother Robert was a much less flamboyant character, and she must have known him all his life. Why, then, the snub? Was it just that now her favourite, Robert Dudley, was dead she couldn’t bear to call another Robert by the title ‘Leicester’, or was it something else? Sensing that there was indeed a mystery here, I decided to do some investigations of my own, my first port of call being the village of Penshurst.
Little did I realize that this would put me onto a new path and ultimately lead to a new understanding of the Rosy-cross and its connection not just with Wales but with the deepest, most esoteric secret of Christianity itself: the expectation of a new messiah.
It was with some difficulty that I eventually found the entrance to Penshurst Place. What lay before me was an enormous house, with fantastic gardens and echoes of Hampton Court. To call Penshurst impressive would be an understatement.
The connection with Hampton Court was no accident, as Henry VIII, who is most closely associated with that palace, also made use of Penshurst. Indeed, he stayed there while courting his second wife, Anne Boleyn, the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Standing in the Great Hall, a wonderful space that has been used as a location in many movies, it was easy to imagine him sitting at table, gorging on venison and throwing the bones to his dogs. Upstairs was also impressive, with its library, billiards room, corridors and drawing rooms. What astounded me most, though, was a dining room, the walls of which were hung with pictures of the family.
Leaving the house, I walked to the village church where generations of Sidneys lie buried. The entrance was on its south side, hidden behind several 12th- or 13th-century cottages. Held together by ancient oak beams, they were, surprisingly, still occupied; indeed, one of them seemed to be in use as a post office, a notice of opening times still attached to an ancient post box. The antiquity of these buildings, which framed an enclosed passageway leading from the main road to the church, added to a sense of the mysterious. They seemed to be designed to distract attention from a church containing such a big secret that nobody even knew it existed.
This feeling was heightened further when, having entered the church itself, I walked over to the bell tower. This was attached to the western end of the church, but what was of interest here was not the bells, hidden from view anyway, but rather two memorial stones attached to the walls. One of these was a version of a ‘tree cross’ with what should have been a wheel around its upper section, except that the quadrants of its circular design had been transposed to opposite corners. The effect was to give the impression of a secret or reverse wheel cross, a type I had never seen before.
On the opposite wall was an even more remarkable stone, which appeared to be part of the lid of a sarcophagus. It featured a floriated cross with the ends of its limbs trifurcated. Hidden behind the cross was the figure of a woman, her eyes shut and hands joined in an attitude of prayer. Wearing what appeared to be medieval dress – perhaps from the 14th or 15th century, judging by her appearance – she was positioned in such a way that the central crossing of the floriated cross was placed exactly over her heart. This figure, I discovered, is known locally as the ‘Lady of Penshurst’.
Figure 5: Lady of Penshurst
What was also interesting was that the design of this elaborate cross had been taken and used as a motif throughout the church. It was featured in a stained-glass window, on the altar cloth, and above all on the portable cross that is carried in procession before the priest at the start of services. From the evidence all around me, it was clear that the design on this coffin lid was considered significant. I couldn’t help thinking that this was not just because the Lady of Penshurst stone had artistic merit. I suspected that it symbolized something important, something which only those ‘with the eyes to see’ would understand.
I left the bell tower and, at the back of the church proper, came upon a baptismal font. Unusually for such an object, it was brightly painted, gaudily so. According to a booklet I picked up, the font dated from the 15th century. If this is true, then it is quite likely that the Sidney brothers, Philip and Robert, and their sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, were all baptized in it. What struck my attention, though, was that it had four shields carved on it, and one of these was very similar to the plaques in Llandaff Cathedral. Like them, it carried a representation of the implements used at the Crucifixion. Was this a universal motif in England as well as in Wales? As I had not come across it before, I didn’t think so. Certainly, it seemed odd to have a design associated with the Crucifixion emblazoned on a baptismal font, an object not associated with Jesus’ death but rather his baptism in the Jordan. It seemed very odd, and I began to suspect that this design also concealed a deeper mystery than was obvious to the casual viewer.
Leaving the font, I walked up the central aisle of the church towards the high altar. Here, I found myself at the entrance of a side chapel that, like the Mathew Chapel in Llandaff, had once been the private preserve of the Lords of the Manor. In this case, this meant the Sidney family, and here there were a number of tombs and other monuments belonging to them. Some of these were highly ornate, dating from the 18th century when the family’s fortunes were riding high.
My attention, however, was drawn to a much simpler affair, which also appeared to be the oldest of these tombs. It stood against the outside wall of the church, made mostly of white limestone, although with a large, black horizontal slab covering the lower portion. A long inscription indicated that it had originally been set up in honour of Sir Henry Sidney, the founder of the Penshurst dynasty, but it seemed to have served as a family mausoleum for several subsequent generations. Placed on it were various heraldic badges, but my attention was immediately drawn to one of these showing two coats of arms impaled together. The dexter or right-hand side of this shield was emblazoned with the arms of Sidney: azure (blue) background emblazoned with a pheon d’or (golden broad arrow). It was, however, the second coat that startled me, for clear as day, here were depicted the arms of Iestyn ap Gwrgan, argent three chevrons gules.
This was not the only place in the chapel where the arms of Iestyn were on display. The ceiling, which looked as though it had been repainted fairly recently (actually during church restorations carried out in 1966), featured what looked like grapevines. However, the fruits of these vines were not bunches of grapes but rather heraldic shields. I recognized several of the arms on these shields as belonging to prominent Welsh families. Again, one bore the arms of Iestyn and another the arms of Sidney.
It was clear that the ‘vines’ represented the Sidney family tree, the many shields symbolizing the families with which it was related through marriage. Clearly, someone had married a descendant of Iestyn ap Gwrgan. This raised the question: how had a member of the Sidney family, who lived in Kent, come to meet and marry someone who was entitled to make use of the arms of a Welsh king? Who was she and when did this happen?
Actually, it didn’t take much research to work this out, but in doing so, I found clues to the origins of the mysterious memorial stones at the back of the church (the inverted wheel cross and the Lady of Penshurst). It also answered another enigma: after Robert Dudley’s death in 1588, why had Queen Elizabeth I been so reluctant to pass on his titles to his nephew Robert Sidney? Granted, this nephew was a sister’s son and not a brother’s, in which case inheritance of the titles would have been automatic. But even so, Robert Sidney was not just Dudley’s nephew but the surviving son of Mary Dudley, who, at great cost to her own health, had nursed the Queen through smallpox. Add to this the long military career of her husband, Sir Henry Sidney, who had served the Crown in Ireland as well as in Wales, and it seemed odd behaviour, even for Queen Elizabeth, that she should fail to reward the Sidney family with Leicester’s titles. The mystery of the Sidneys was getting deeper by the minute.