I had the good fortune to see Dingley Hall the other day. It was my first visit and I have decided that when I make my millions I’ll buy it, lock, stock, barrel, residents and all. How sad that it is strictly very privately owned and not open to the public!
As Pevsner says in his Buildings of Northamptonshire: “The years between 1550 and 1560 are rare years in English architecture”. That brief period, he suggests, falls between two stools, no longer Henry VIII and not yet Elizabethan. But Dingley demonstrates what history those 10 hidden years can reveal.
Dingley Hall is amazing and such a gem. And the making of this gem, like all rare jewels, is its setting; high and looking out over a breath-taking view of the Welland Valley into Leicestershire.
Thanks to the kindness of Anita Linsell, surely one of the most fortunate people I have ever met, I was able to view for myself something I had known about for a long time, but had never seen. It is possibly one of the rarest examples of Catholic propaganda in England and a statement of high treason to boot!
Some years before Sir Thomas Tresham defied his Protestant overlords by building the Triangular Lodge, Rothwell Market House and Lyveden New Bield here in Northamptonshire, so Dingley’s builder, Sir Edward Griffin, carved inscriptions on his building.
But at Dingley one brief phrase speaks volumes. Inscribed around the main gate to the original courtyard house, are two lines of Latin and English wording. One of the words was enough to have Griffin hanged, drawn and quartered! As you can see from my photograph, it says “God save the King 1560”.
Now this was two years into the reign of Elizabeth I. “The King” referred to is Queen Mary I’s husband, Philip of Spain. Mary had restored the Catholic faith in England following young Edward VI’s brief six-year Protestant reign. Having married Philip on July 25, 1554, to Mary’s anger, Parliament refused to accept him as England’s King.
Mary was livid. She was, after all, England’s first female queen regnant and English common law stated that “in jure uxoris”, everything that belonged to a woman became her husband’s on marriage. That, in Mary’s eyes, meant everything, including her titles. So if she became Queen, he was to become King.
After Mary’s death in 1558, Philip lost all rights to English titles but he even had the sauce to send a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. So to Catholics who were clutching at straws, could Philip, who lived until 1598, still be regarded as King? The alternative was, of course, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. But that’s another Northamptonshire story.
Perhaps what is even more incredible is that Elizabeth I actually visited Dingley in 1566 and rode through the very gateway that bears this treasonable statement. Did they daub the inscription with mud or just hope she didn’t notice it?
We will never know.