Reformation and After
At the reformation, King Edward VI's Commissioners (who were seriously impeded by
storms and the flooding of the river Blythe - a circumstance some attributed to Divine
Vengeance) found a parish church in a poor way, with an old altar cloth, threadbare
vestments and cheap communion vessels of latten*. The three bells they found may have been
melted down as instruments of superstition, for new bells were
provided in Queen Elizabeth's reign.
| The font, and the stained
glass heraldic windows with their splendid scrollwork (now lost) date from the
late seventeenth century. Perhaps they were funded by the pension paid to Jane Lane (died
1689), wife of Sir Clement Fisher (died 1683) by a grateful King Charles II. The pension
was granted for her part in his rescue after the Civil War Battle of Worcester, when she
carried Charles behind her on her horse, disguised as a maidservant. The glass looks to
have been cut down to fit the present window. It may have been brought from the old church
of St James, Great Packington, when that was rebuilt in the 1780s, since it seems to match
a description of glass in that church in the 1730 edition of Dugdale's
Antiquities of Warwickshire. The font perhaps came from St James' also.
The first photograph shows the Arms of Fisher impaled Digby (a Fleur-de-Lys). The
second shows the arms of Fisher impaled (?)Dilke (a lion) and Digby. John Fisher, son of
John Fisher of Dottell Shropshire and Anna Steventon of Dottell, and a successful London
lawyer, purchased the Great Packington estate in 1545 after the Dissolution of the
Monasteries. He paid £626, which may have been a reduced price because of Kenilworth
Abbey's sitting tenant. However Fisher was able to hasten his occupation of the property
by shortly marrying the tenant's widow Katherine Wheeler. She was a daughter of Sir Thomas
Digby. Was her mother a Dilke? The Fisher/Digby arms can still be seen on the Fisher
monument in Great Packington church.
The bell turret was also reclad around this time,
and we know that the bells were much in use because the Churchwardens' Accounts are full
of references to purchases of lubricating oil for the bells, and special payments to
bellringers.
|
Photographs 1978 by Mr Hawkes,
courtesy WCRO
|
* a hard alloy of copper and zinc, used
also for memorial brasses.
Arms of Fisher
Argent, a chevron vair between three demi-lions rampant erased gules.
Arms of Digby: Azure a fleur de lis argent. |
 |
Church plate
Elizabethan
silver chalice
A tapering beaker-shaped bowl with a band of hit-and-miss decoration divided into four
parts by hourglass-shaped curves, on a tall circular stem with a round pressed knot and
domed foot which seems to be a later addition. Maker's mark: a rose. Height 6.25
inches, diameter 3.5 inches, base 2 5/8 inches, depth of bowl 2 3/4 inches. Weight 4
ounces 6 dwt.
Similar chalices by the rose maker, who probably worked in Coventry, are preserved at Lower
Shuckburgh (1574) (right) and Harbury (1576), while others without a
mark but attributable to him exist at Long Itchington (1587), Haseley, Wolford, Bubbenhall
and Radford Semele.
Elizabethan silver paten
A domed paten-cover on knobbed foot with a band of hit-and miss ornament in four
divisions, inscribed on the foot '+1606+'. No maker's marks. Height 1 inch, diameter 3.5
inches, base 7/8 inch. Weight 1 ounce 10 dwt.
These items are now kept in the strong-room at Packington Hall.
From Church Plate of Warwickshire, Diocese of Coventry, by Sidney A. Jeavons
FSA, 1963, still obtainable from The
Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society.
