W is for Wotton
Edward Wotton, First Baron of Marley acquired St Augustine’s Palace as part of the Manor of Canterbury in 1612 and commissioned John Tradescant, famous gardener to the elite, to design extensive gardens on the site. The gardens that formed such a luscious backdrop to the young King Charles’ nuptials with his new Queen Henrietta Maria on her first arrival from France are perhaps evoked in the marvellous Magnolia tree that is currently in bloom near the Fyndon Gate but are also more permanently recalled in the naming of ‘Lady Wootton’s Green’. Margaret was Wotton’s second wife and was considerably younger than him. They married in 1603, the year Wotton was awarded a Baronetcy, and Canterbury remained her favourite residence. Lady Margaret’s attachment to the estate is apparent in her decision to remain at Canterbury as a widow and to retain the Palace on the sequestration of the family estates in the Civil War. It is also possible that the Canterbury gardens inspired motifs for an embroidered box she bequeathed to her cousin for such boxes were frequently exquisitely decorated with embroidered flowers, insects and fruit.
Arguably, the first decade of the seventeenth century had been particularly successful for Sir Edward especially in terms of recognition at the Royal Court. This success is reflected in his status as a literary patron of fashionable writers. Celebrated for his friendship with Sir Philip Sidney, Wotton was acknowledged as a supporter and possible original patron of Samuel Daniel’s translation of Michell Montaigne’s essays (1603) and was patron of George Chapman’s translation of Homer’s Iliad (1609). On his arrival in Canterbury, as A. J. Loomie reminds us, Wotton was a mature statesman heading towards retirement. He was also a secret convert to Catholicism and 1612 marked the beginning of a twelve year period of recusancy during which he failed to attend services at his parish church of Boughton Malherbe, seventeen miles west of Canterbury. It may be that in dedicating his collection of Psalms to Wotton’s son Thomas in 1616, Dean John Boys sought to draw this young man’s father back into the fold. Any suspicion of Sir Edward’s religious affiliation was banished by his shock public declaration of his commitment to Catholicism in 1624.
Despite his absence in life, Sir Edward was to be a prominent presence in Boughton Malherbe Church in death. Lady Margaret arranged for the relocation of the baptismal font which was repositioned under his effigy monument. She also commissioned an inscription that declared their shared status as Catholics; acts which infuriated the church authorities and resulted in a considerable fine. Lady Margaret was to be a widow for twenty years. Her later years at Canterbury, in the Civil War, were by all accounts very difficult. Without a husband or surviving male heir, she appointed two of her servants as her executors, stating that the ‘poverty’ of her ‘condition’ was not worth the attention of a closer family member. Her few bequests reflect the faded glamour of her present state and included two cabinets (full or empty?), an ebony-framed mirror and a damask gown. Margaret instructed her servants to bury her beside her husband whom she described affectionately as her ‘Truly honoured and most dear lord’ and she twice evocatively references her anticipated return to ‘her Mother Earth’.
A visitor to St Augustine’s Palace in the 1630s commented on how the monastic ruins were enhanced by the garden so that ‘those rare demolished buildings [appeared] in much glory and splendour.’ As a former monastic site, St Augustine’s may have been a deliberate purchase which held special significance for this couple in their new-found Catholicism. Retirement to Canterbury perhaps enabled Sir Edward to create a spiritual sanctuary for himself and his wife.
Dr Claire Bartram is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Canterbury Christ Church University.
The University will also be hosting a two-day conference on Canterbury and other UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the world on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 May at Old Sessions House, Longport.
