Chastleton House is a delight for anyone interested in history, let alone 17th Century history. The Jacobean country house near Moreton-in-Marsh in Oxfordshire was built between 1607 and 1612 for Walter Jones (born 1550), whose family’s success in the wool business allowed him to make his fortune from the law – he rose from being the town clerk of Worcester to an attorney to the Star Chamber, the monarch’s secret court of Privy Councillors. There’s a fascinating in-depth biography of Walter and his rise in society here.
The house is a treasure trove of 17th Century stories and artefacts that are all special in their own right, with the whole building a delightful reliquary of faded glory and romantic decay.
The family was supporters of the Royalist cause during the English Civil War and then the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 – so much so that a descendent jokingly referred to them “backing the wrong horse, twice”.
With this in mind, of particular interest during a tour of the house is a series of eleven miniatures of Charles I.
These slides of mica (silica) all bear the same image of Charles I when he was king, yet each has been crudely painted over with different images in order to tell the story of his life.
When juxtaposed against the delicacy of the copied portrait, they have a child-like quality about them: a red cloak and black hat portrays him in his prime as a prince, with his coronation in 1626 represented by a crown and sceptre. In the third slide, he is dressed in armour to portray the years of civil war before bars cover his face to illustrate his time imprisoned in various castles before his trial.
The way the painter has, however clumsily, represented what happens next is ingenious. First, a face appears to the king’s right (the sanguinity of the original portrait making him appear ambivalent to their presence), who appears to be Parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell.
Next, two different faces appear and the king is now holding a document – which could be a montage of the negotiations he conducted with both Parliament and the Scottish or, as the museum’s caption suggests, the reading of the indictment against him during his trial in Westminster Hall in January 1649.
He is then shown being preached to by a man holding a book – possibly the ministrations he received the day before his death – and, in the next slide, the executioner and his large axe appear. Here, Charles is portrayed wearing the two shirts he reportedly wore on the day of his execution, to prevent himself shivvering from the cold.
The next slide shows the executioner, his face covered in loose cross-hatching (his identity remains unknown to this day), holding up Charles’ severed head, the king’s body from the original portrait inexpertly covered over.
The final slide shows Charles made whole again, with a laurel being placed on his head – either in victory or in martyrdom (he was later made an Anglican saint, with his own feast day on the anniversary of his death).
A nearby display briefly explains the different images:
The National Trust Collection site describes it as an “incredibly personal object … made in France during the 1650s” that “would originally have belonged to a Royalist supporter”. Beyond that, we can find no more information – it is a mystery who bought the miniatures, why, and who was the intended recipient.
It is an utterly unique – and gruesome – piece of history that demonstrates the market for curios and mementoes of the ‘martyred’ King among Royalist supporters.
Intensely personal they most certainly are, and to have survived not only time but also the shifting priorities of the families who occupied Chastleton makes them all the more special – a unique glimpse into the political allegiances of a bygone age.
The family’s support for the Royalist cause cost them dear – the heavy fines imposed by Parliament for taking part in Charles II’s failed invasion in 1651 meant grand Chastleton would always be a drain on severely limited resources.
This makes this collection of miniatures even more poignant, a reminder that the family’s steadfast loyalty to the Stuart cause was to be its ruin … although it is noteworthy that when the Stuart ‘Young Pretender’, Bonnie Prince Charlie, invaded England in 1745 and despite being secret Jacobite supporters, the family did not join the rebellion on its march into Derbyshire, perhaps remembering the price they paid the last time they backed “the wrong horse”.