Church Monuments

Stratford-upon-Avon & St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Warwick on the River Avon in Warwickshire. Stratford is close to the UK's second largest city, Birmingham. Stratford in Warwickshire is also often confused with Stratford in the London Borough of Newham some 100 miles away. Stratford has Anglo-Saxon origins, and grew up as a market town in medieval times in Olde England.

The town Stratford is the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Near to the town are several other properties associated with Shakespeare: Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, the former home of Shakespeare's wife, Mary Arden's House, the former home of his mother, and farms and buildings at Snitterfield, the former home of his father.
Shakespeare's hometown and also the nearby surrounding shire counties of Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, Blenheim Palace and the Cotswolds to the south, Worcester and the Malverns to the west, Warwick Castle and Henley in Arden to the north are all within an hour's journey.

The 1694 the church, along with much of Warwick, was devastated by the Great Fire of Warwick. The nave and tower of the building were completely destroyed. Rebuilding took ten years, and in 1704 the renovated building was completed.

The Collegiate Church of St. Mary is the parish church of the town of Warwick, England. It lies in the centre of the town just east of the market place. The church dates back nearly 1000 years and was founded by Roger de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Warwick in 1123. In addition to founding the church, de Beaumont established the College of Dean and Canons at the church. The only part of the Norman church that survives is the crypt. From 1102 to 1238, the former Benedictine priory in the city was the seate of the early Bishops of Coventry (previously known as Bishops of Chester or of Lichfield). It was, afterwards, one of the two seats of the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield until the Reformation of the 1530s when Coventry Cathedral was demolished and the bishop's seate moved to Lichfield, though the title remained as Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry until 1837, when Coventry was united with the Diocese of Worcester.

The chancel vestries and chapter house of the church were extensively rebuilt in the 14th century by a later Earl of Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp in the gothic style. His descendants built what is officially called the Chapel of Our Lady, but commonly known as the Beauchamp Chapel.
It contains the effigial monuments of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.

Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382 – April 30, 1439) was the son of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, and Margaret, daughter of the 3rd Lord Ferrers of Groby. Soon after reaching his majority and taking responsibility for the earldom in 1403, he had to defend against a Welsh invasion led by Owain Glyndwr, which he drove off. He spent much of the next decade fighting the French in the Hundred Years' War. In 1419 he was created Count of Aumale, part of the king's policy of giving out Norman titles to his nobles. Henry V's will gave Warwick the responsibility for the education of the infant Henry VI.
Lollardy first faced serious persecution after the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381. Immediately upon going public, Lollardy was attacked as heresy. At first, Wyclif and Lollardy were protected by John of Gaunt and anti-clerical nobility, who were most likely interested in using Lollard-advocated clerical reform to create a new source of revenue from England’s monasteries. Among those opposing it was Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury. King Henry IV passed the De heretico comburendo in 1401, not specifically agaist the Lollards. Although English translations of the Bible had existed for hundreds of years, the Middle English translation published under the direction of John Wyclif in the 1380s, known as Wyclif's Bible, was the first to gain widespread acceptance and use. The Constitutions of Oxford, established in 1409 by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, were further punitive measures intended to punish heresy in England that grew in large part out of the De heretico comburendo.
Sir John Oldcastle, a close friend of King Henry V escaped from the Tower of London and organized an insurrection, which included an attempted kidnapping of the king. The rebellion failed, and Oldcastle was executed. Oldcastle's revolt made Lollardy seem even more threatening to the state, and the persecution of Lollards became more severe. A variety of other martyrs for the Lollard cause were executed over the following century, including Thomas Harding who died at White Hill, Chesham, in 1532, one of the last Lollards to be persecuted.


The Collegiate Church of St. Mary is the parish church of the town of Warwick, England. It lies in the centre of the town just east of the market place. The church dates back nearly 1000 years and was founded by Roger de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Warwick in 1123. In addition to founding the church, de Beaumont established the College of Dean and Canons at the church. The only part of the Norman church that survives is the crypt. From 1102 to 1238, the former Benedictine priory in the city was the seate of the early Bishops of Coventry (previously known as Bishops of Chester or of Lichfield). It was, afterwards, one of the two seats of the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield until the Reformation of the 1530s when Coventry Cathedral was demolished and the bishop's seate moved to Lichfield, though the title remained as Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry until 1837, when Coventry was united with the Diocese of Worcester.
	The chancel vestries and chapter house of the church were extensively rebuilt in the 14th century by a later Earl of Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp in the gothic style. His descendants built what is officially called the Chapel of Our Lady, but commonly known as the Beauchamp Chapel. It contains the effigial monuments of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.