Over the past decade, Dr Turner has published a number of articles and a short book on the Sheldon family and the tapestries and tapestry workshops associated with their name. She has also made a number of important discoveries in this specialist field. In particular, using her expertise in cartography, she has shown that the 1590s Sheldon tapestry maps were not based exclusively on Christopher Saxton's maps,Footnote 1 as had been previously thought, but were based on several sources and were unique in depicting a number of houses and estates associated with the Sheldon family, their relations and friends.Footnote 2 She has also shown that the Warwickshire tapestry map now in the Warwick Museum belongs to the 1590s series and is not one of the tapestries rewoven in Charles ii's reign, as had been previously thought.Footnote 3
Dr Turner has also built on the earlier work of Barnard and Wace and HeffordFootnote 4 to show that a considerable number of Flemish weavers were active in England (mainly in London) during Elizabeth i's reign, though very little archival evidence is extant about most of them beyond records of their births, naturalization, deaths and wills, so that in some cases it can only be assumed that they had workshops.Footnote 5
Earlier writers on Sheldon tapestries in the 1920s and 1930s – notably John HumphreysFootnote 6 and Barnard and Wace – attributed a number of the Elizabethan and Jacobean tapestries that had been discovered at that time, and earlier, to tapestry workshops set up by the Sheldon family not in London, but at Barcheston, in Warwickshire, and Bordesley, in Worcestershire. In her more recent articles, Dr Turner has re-examined the evidence for this and come to different conclusions, some of which this note will now consider in more detail.
In the opening paragraph of her paper in the Antiquaries Journal,Footnote 7 Dr Turner says that some sixteenth-century tapestries that have been called Sheldon ‘were regarded as products of a workshop whose existence was inferred from the terms of the will of William Sheldon (d 1570) and the testimony of a seventeenth-century antiquary’. Parts of the will ‘were interpreted as evidence for the establishment of a tapestry-weaving venture at Sheldon's manor house of Barcheston … This was an unusual proposition in a country with no earlier indigenous tapestry-weaving tradition … The name itself is anomalous because the Sheldon family – gentry and not merchants or craftsmen – played no part, other than providing premises.’
The existence of a tapestry manufactory at William Sheldon's manor at Barcheston does not only rely on inference or on the interpretation of his will, even though that very detailed will is of considerable importance (relevant extracts of the will and its codicil take up three pages of Barnard and Wace's paper in the 1928 volume of Archaeologia),Footnote 8 not least because it has no parallel amongst the wills of the Flemish émigrés in London. A close reading of Sheldon's will and the codicil to it, both of 1570, clearly show that Sheldon had already started a tapestry manufactory at Barcheston before his death – probably soon after he purchased the manor there in 1564. It is recorded that Henrick Camerman, an arras-maker who came to England from Brussels in June 1564, worked for Sheldon for six years before moving to London in 1570 to work at the Great Wardrobe.Footnote 9 There is also archival evidence showing that Sir John Talbot, from Staffordshire, ordered a tapestry from Barcheston in 1568.Footnote 10 In his will Sheldon urges Richard Hicks, ‘the only author and beginner of this Art [tapestry weaving] within this Realm’, who was the manager of the manufactory at Barcheston, to continue his tapestry-weaving work.
Dr Turner argues that Barcheston was mainly an apprentice school for tapestry weavers. That was clearly one of its main purposes, as set out in Sheldon's will. But another was to continue the production of tapestries. Furthermore an apprentice school would require a number of masters – indeed Dr Turner has discovered the names of further weavers associated with BarchestonFootnote 11 – and the masters and apprentices would have produced a considerable number of tapestries over the forty-plus years the manufactory was in operation.
Dr Turner calls into question the existence of a second manufactory at Bordesley, in Worcestershire, near to Sheldon's house at Beoley, where the Sheldons are buried. She states that ‘on the strength of three words in the will, Barnard suggested a second workshop had been established there [at Bordesley]’.Footnote 12 She goes on to say that Barnard's suggestion is hard to substantiate as there was neither house nor village or parish at Bordesley. It may indeed have been a small place, about which we now have scant detail, but it is not credible that William Sheldon would have invented the existence of such an operation in his last will and testament. Nor is one of the men mentioned in Sheldon's will, Thomas Chaunce, likely to have described himself ‘of Bordesley’, if that was not the case.Footnote 13 We can safely assume that Sheldon tapestries were woven at Bordesley in addition to Barcheston, even if we cannot now attribute any work specifically to that manufactory.
There is also evidence that William Sheldon and his son, Ralph, did a great deal more than just ‘provide premises’ for the tapestry weaving. First and foremost William Sheldon had the original concept of setting up such a tapestry manufactory in the small isolated village of Barcheston in Warwickshire. This is all the more remarkable in view of Dr Turner's claim that there was no tradition of such activity in England. In that case, Sheldon himself must have undertaken much of the initial work associated with setting up the business. He must also have recruited the earliest weavers and laid down instructions for what they were to do. All this may have been an ‘unusual proposition’, but it is nevertheless one based on evidence.
His son, Ralph Sheldon, was clearly a well-educated man with an interest in architecture – he built Weston (about 5 miles away from Chastleton) in the 1590s. He must have been the moving spirit in the design of the original set of four tapestry maps in the 1590s, regardless of whether they were woven at Barcheston or elsewhere. Only he could have commissioned and paid for them. Furthermore, Dr Turner's own researches show with considerable ingenuity that the maps record places closely connected with the Sheldons. Not even his loyal lieutenant, Richard Hicks, would have been likely to have the necessary detailed knowledge to do this. It has been suggested that Ralph Sheldon might have been inspired to commission the tapestry maps by having seen the set of tapestries illustrating the Siege of Tunis, which were on show for the celebration of the marriage of Queen Mary to Philip ii of Spain in 1554.Footnote 14
That would have been even less likely if Hicks, the manager of the manufactory at Barcheston and the Queen's arras-maker from 1569, was a Fleming, as Dr Turner is very keen to establish. This proposition was originally put forward by Wendy Hefford of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2002.Footnote 15 She admitted, however, that there was no record of a denization (or naturalization) for Hicks; nor does he appear in surviving parts of the Returns of Strangers for London in those years when he was an arras-maker in the Great Wardrobe.Footnote 16
In fact the strong balance of evidence points to Hicks being English. First, Hicks was a reasonably common name in England at that time. Turner lists a number of places in Warwickshire and Worcestershire where there were Hickes.Footnote 17 There were also Hickes in London – for example, Baptist Hicks, later Lord Campden, who built his great house at Chipping Campden, not far from Chastleton. Perhaps more interestingly, a William Hicks was a leading member of the Weavers' Company in the middle of the sixteenth century.Footnote 18 Was he by any chance related to Richard Hicks (we do not know when or where Hicks was born and brought up)? Secondly, Hicks or Heeks or Hycks ‘resonates’ much more closely with the English Hicks than various Flemish names suggested by Hefford and Turner, such as Ver Eecke, van der Eecken or van der Hecke.Footnote 19 Thirdly, there is nothing in the substantial number of papers relating to Hicks – notably William Sheldon's will and his various property transactions – that give even a hint of his not being English.
Fourthly, there is strong evidence that the key and clear statement by the Oxford antiquary, Anthony Wood, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, that Hicks was sent to Holland to learn tapestry weaving is correct, despite Dr Turner's attempts to discredit it. Wood's statement was certainly based on what his patron, Ralph Sheldon, ‘the Great Sheldon’, had told him during his numerous visits to Weston.Footnote 20 This Ralph Sheldon was himself an antiquary, who bequeathed his important library to the College of Heralds. Like the earlier Ralph Sheldon, he was deeply interested in tapestries and commissioned two large tapestry maps in Charles ii's reign to replace two of the earlier set that had probably been damaged during the Civil War, when the Sheldons had suffered badly.Footnote 21 The younger Ralph Sheldon was likewise involved in the design of the new maps updating some of the detailed family information portrayed on the maps. It is highly likely that the two antiquaries discussed over dinner ‘those fair hangings yt are in ye dining roome at Weston’, which had been woven at Barcheston.
Taking Dr Turner's various points in turn, it may indeed have been ‘unusual’ to send a craftsman abroad to learn his trade, but it was not unique, as is shown by the case of Benedict Webb, a clothier from Wiltshire, who was sent to Paris, Rouen and into Italy to study foreign cloth-making techniques.Footnote 22 Wood was certainly a gossip on occasion, as was Samuel Pepys, but he was also an important antiquary, diarist and historian, who is still often referred to in footnotes in modern historical works. He may on occasion have irritated his patron, as when he overstayed his welcome on one occasion, but they were obviously close, given the number of visits made by Wood to Weston and the fact that Sheldon put him in charge of his funeral arrangements at Beoley.Footnote 23 Wood certainly lived about a century after the original William Sheldon died, but Dr Turner prefers the evidence of an eighteenth-century antiquary, Tredway Russell Nash, FSA (1724–1811), who fails, however, to make any mention of the key figure at Barcheston, Richard Hicks.Footnote 24 One should remember that historical scholarship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a less precise art than in the twenty-first century.
A careful study of Nash's text, however, shows that it does not contradict what Wood said but can, rather, be taken as complementary to Wood: ‘this William Sheldon first introduced the working of tapestry into England at Barcheston, having at his own expence [sic] brought workmen from Flanders, and employed them in weaving maps of the different counties of England, and other curious pieces, several of which are still in being at Weston.’ Turner has questioned whether Sheldon was first to introduce tapestry weaving into England and has never firmly committed herself on whether the 1590s tapestry maps were made at Barcheston, as Nash states. There were undoubtedly a number of Flemish weavers working at Barcheston as well as English ones over the years under Hicks. The strong balance of probability is that Hicks himself was English, though, and not a Fleming and that he had been sent abroad, as Wood claimed, to learn the art of tapestry weaving in the Netherlands.
It is also worth noting two other instances connected with the Joneses of Chastleton that Dr Turner is not happy with. First, she tries to show that it is unlikely that the Joneses of Chastleton were friends with the older Ralph Sheldon.Footnote 25 Sheldon's new house at Weston was less than 4 miles from Chastleton, not over 10 miles as Turner claims.Footnote 26 It was considerably nearer than the other houses of the gentry in the area referred to by Turner (for example, the Tracys of Toddington or the Fienneses of Broughton Castle). Sheldon was clearly interested in architecture, having built Weston in the 1590s. It was only natural that Jones would have consulted Sheldon about his proposed new house while visiting the village of Chastleton from Worcester, while the house was being built and before he finally moved there. As very close neighbours and landowners it was very likely that they were on friendly terms, despite Sheldon being a Catholic. Dr Turner also seeks to downplay the significance of Mr Sheldon's Chamber at Chastleton,Footnote 27 with the Sheldon arms over a fine fireplace, which is first mentioned in an inventory of 1632 and is still extant there.Footnote 28 Dr Turner suggests that this was just a piece of social climbing, like Walter Jones having put up the arms of Sir Thomas Pope of nearby Wroxton Abbey rather than the arms of his German wife, who took the name of Pope.Footnote 29 If, as Dr Turner argues, the Sheldons and Joneses were not likely to be close friends because of Sheldon's Catholicism, it would follow that it is highly unlikely that Walter Jones would put up his arms as a piece of social climbing.
Conclusion
Dr Turner is correct in showing that there is no archival evidence to prove conclusively that any of the Elizabethan and Jacobean tapestries now extant were woven at Barcheston or Bordesley, even though the unique set of tapestry maps was closely associated with the Sheldon family and Nash clearly states they were woven at Barcheston. But it is equally true that none of the tapestries previously called Sheldon can be associated with any Flemish (or English) weaver in London or, indeed, abroad.
Furthermore, Dr Turner has not been able to prove that any of these tapestries were not part of the Sheldon manufactory. The probability is that some were indeed manufactured at Barcheston and Bordesley, while others were probably made in London and still others in Flanders. The premises at Barcheston were certainly large enough to house the production of the 1590s tapestry maps, which were clearly very closely associated with the Sheldons. Nor can we say where the various tapestries that John Humphreys found at Chastleton were made. Until more archival evidence comes to light,Footnote 30 or until scientific tests are devised that will show the possible origin of tapestries, it seems unlikely that we can with certainty attribute any particular tapestry to any specific workshop.
In conclusion, while throwing more light on the émigré weavers of Elizabethan London, Dr Turner's paper should not be taken as the final word on the significance or even the existence of a tapestry manufactory set up under the auspices of the Sheldon family at Barcheston and Bordesley. The Sheldon manufactory at Barcheston was clearly important for the weaving of tapestries from the 1560s to the early seventeenth century, although it was by no means the only one.
