Even such is Time, which takes in trust our Youth

, our Joys and all we have. ..

Ralegh

        Around the end of the 15th century a family named Node was holding land in Stevenage and nearby. It is not clear how they came into possession of these holdings, and neither have I been able to discover their degree of kinship with George Nodes who, by the time of the Dissolution, was farming lands at Shephall. The historian Clutterbuck has George as a son of William Nodes of Barking in Essex, with two brothers, John and William. The Essex branch has a family tomb at Loughton.

        George and his brother John were royal servants, and on the brass from his tombstone (now on the walI of the sanctuary in St. Mary's) he is recorded as being Sergeant of the Buckhounds to Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queens Mary and Elizabeth. The following details of his career are from a paper read by a member of the East Herts. Archaeological Society when they visited Shephall in 1934.

        In 1524 George was serving as a Yeoman of the Guard at a salary of 6d a day. In 1526 he became valet of the crown and three years later, Sergeant of the Buckhounds, a post for life with wages and board worth 15d a day. In 1533 he obtained the Keepership of Okeley Park, Gloucestershire, with a fee of 40s a year, together with profits out of Berkley Manor and lordship. In 1542 he was granted the manor of Shephall, Aston and Stevenage for the sum of ₤197.14s.8d. He was involved with the army mustered in 1544 to invade France and capture Boulogne.

        Also in St. Mary's chancel is the brass tablet from the tomb of his wife Margaret, daughter of John Grimston of Oxborough, Norfolk. There was no issue of the marriage and at George's death the manor came to Margaret with reversion to his nephew Charles. George left small sums of money to Shephall church and to the poor of each of the parishes of Shephall, Benington, Knebworth, Aston, Datchworth and Codicote. After remembering his brothers, nephews and friends with token sums he left £10 each to two natural daughters, who contested the will to no avail. They were Jane Kimpton and Joan Chapman. George had already settled a messuage called Copidhall on Jane and her husband William. Joan had married Thomas Chapman and had two sons, Thomas and George who, in 1599, gave up their interest in the manor. (it is now generally accepted that this George Chapman was the great playwright and translator of Homer; the house where he lived near the top of Tilehouse Street in Hitchin is marked by a blue plaque.) When Margaret Nodes died in 1582, among her many bequests were ₤3 to Thomas Chapman's daughters, of Hitchin, and £3 to Jane Kimpton for her daughters. Also 'to every soul of poor folk at Shephall, one bushel of wheat, one pitcher of milk, one store of wool'. Charles, George Nodes' nephew, held the manor till his death in 1593; his daughter Ann married Thomas Feilde of Tewin.

        Charles' son George was to be lord of the manor for fifty years. He married Helen Docwra of Hitchin. The Docwras were an ancient family with connections with the Knights of St. John; there is an old house in Bancroft, Hitchin, known as the Brotherhood House, which has links with the family. Helen lived until 1658, when it was recorded in Shephall burial register that 'She was buried in the chancel of Shephall on the north side of her husband, she was going on ye 80 years'. Her burial slab is now in the churchyard, having been moved out at some later date, the arms of Docwra just discernible. In her long life she experienced much gladness and much sadness. Married before she was twenty, she lost her first two babies, but three sons and a daughter survived. Her daughter married William Boteler, later to become Sir William, of Biddenham, a distinguished parliamentarian in the Civil War. The eldest son Charles married Jane, daughter of Simeon Brograve of Hammels, near Braughing; they had two children, a son who died in infancy and a daughter, also Jane. Their mother died young, and Charles then married another Essex lady, Frances Pert, who gave him three sons and a daughter. Helen's younger sons George and John both married; George lived in London and John founded a century of Nodes at Southill, near Bedford, where there are several memorials in the church. The second George, Helen's husband, died in 1643 during the Civil War.

        Charles became Lord of the Manor and in 1646 served as Sheriff of Hertfordshire. Another son was born in 1651, but in the same year Charles died. At the time of his death he was negotiating the marriage of his daughter Jane to Augustine, son of Sir Richard Earle of Craglethorpe, in Lincolnshire. Jane had already received ₤1000 in her grandfather's will, and she was to receive ₤2000 when the marriage took place. The eldest son, George, would inherit the manor of Shephall and its lands; the second son, Edmund, then only seven years old, was left farms in Bedfordshire. The baby daughter Elizabeth had a dowry of ₤2000 and his new-born son was to have ₤3000 when he was 21. But the best laid plans ... Jane did marry Augustine, but in 1654 tragedy overtook the family. Jane and her husband died within a month of each other. Jane's stepbrother George, who had become Lord of the Manor at the age of 11 when Charles died in 1651, also died. Baby John had only lived a few months, so Charles' only remaining children were Edmund, now ten, and Elizabeth. His widow Frances married Edmund Feilde, a cousin of her husband, who had been named in Charles' will as one of the administrators of the estate, and into whose care Charles had commended his wife and children. Grandmother Helen lived through all this, dying in 1658-1 but tragedy had not finished with Frances. In 1663 the Revd. Stafford Leventhorpe recorded in the burial register 'Edmund Nodes, ye only remaining sonne and heir of Charles Nodes, Esq., died April 15th 1663 aged 19, and was buried ye night after in ye chancel of this church.' The last child, Elizabeth, married Charles Fane, third Earl of Westmorland, but there was no heir as the earl was succeeded by his halfbrother.

        Frances, another lady of character, and Edmund Feilde had their own family. Their eldest son Thomas was knighted at Windsor in 1681, though Edmund did not live to see this. He had died in 1676, but Frances lived another twenty years. They had lived at Stansted, but both were buried in the chancel of St. Mary's, Shephall,with the other Nodes. About 1960 some

rather ugly tiles were removed from the floor of the chancel, exposing many tombstones. Some were damaged but many were laid into the floor of the north aisle. Among them are those of Charles, Frances and Edmund, each with their own arms:

Charles, three trefoils slipped for Nodes

Edmund, with sheaves for Feilde

Frances, with lozenges for Pert, plus trefoils and sheaves for her two marriages.

There also are the burial slabs of the two Lords of the Manor who died so young, George (the third George Nodes) and Edmund.

        It is doubtful whether the next heir, 'Uncle George', to whom the manor then reverted, even managed to take up residence, as he died in 1664. He is buried in the church and there is a monument to his wife Susanna, who died in 1695. This is now at the west end of the north aisle, having been on the north wall of the nave before the aisle was built.

        The house where all these members of the Nodes family lived for so long has been described as an unassuming low building. It seems to have been a typical but rather small Tudor manor house. The earliest picture is a drawing in the Oldfield Collection at the County Record Office, and though this dates from about 1800, presumably the house is substantially the same, perhaps built by George Nodes in the 16th century. In 1664 an inventory gave contents of a dozen rooms and several domestic offices.

        The heir to Shephall in 1664 was yet another George Nodes, the fifth to be Lord of the Manor. He lived from 1636-1697, a period of public and political contention and religious discord. Was he really the paragon of virtue that his memorial by the pulpit in St. Mary's would have us believe? 'He was a tender husband, a careful father, a charitable neighbour, a diligent peacemaker, a loyal subject, [over of the Church, serious and devout and his memory is blessed'. His wife died in childbed in 1682 'having been the mother of numerous offspring'. Three sons and four daughters survived their father, though Mistress Jane died just after he did. Her monument is now in the chancel, but it was at one time in the nave near to that of her parents. Two daughters also died in childbirth; Susan, wife of Samuel Reeve, who later became Rector of Aston; and Frances, who married Ralph Skinner Byde of Hitchin. The memorial to Frances in St. Mary's, Hitchin was restored in the 1970s.

        Another daughter, Elizabeth, married a merchant of London. Her son George Sale was a famous orientalist, one of his literary works being a translation of the Koran which was still in print until quite recently. Elizabeth was buried in St. Mary's churchyard in 1737; her altar tomb under the great yew records that she was the mother of George Sale 'well known in the learned world' and that he died within her lifetime.

        When George Nodes died in 1697 he had become a large landowner; his will reflects the increasing wealth of the Nodes family. It tells of his manors and lordships of Holwell and Langford, his messuages and cottages, houses and farms, lands, meadows, pastures, woods, woodgrounds, tenements and hereditaments with appurtenances situate, lying and being in Holwell, Shillington, Arlesey, Stotfold, Henlow, Astwick, Langford, Clifton and Biggleswade, and also two tenements etc. in the parishes of Bengeo and Standon. His eldest son inherited 'The Manor House or capital messuage called Shephallbury and all my houses etc. I have in the parish of Shephall'. Money, plate, jewels; bills, bonds, specialityes; mortgages and other securities were also left to him. Provision was also made for mourning clothes for the nearest relatives. Alas, this son had no heir. He married Elizabeth Harrington and they have two monuments at the west end of the nave.

        The estate passed to the youngest brother John, who died a bachelor in 1748, and then to his nephew, also named John, who was to be the last of the male line. At the age of 34 he married Katherine Vaslet, and it is probable that they made their home at Shephall Bury with the uncle. At the time of their marriage in 1739, William Hogarth visited the Bury to paint Katherine's portrait. John Nodes died in 1761, and all three of his sons died before their mother and without issue.

 The estate was divided between the three daughters. The eldest, Margaret Mary, was the wife of Richard Price of Knebworth-, her sister Sarah, married to Robert Jacques, later conveyed her share to Frances Abell; the other sister, Catherine, unmarried, left her third of the estate to Mrs. Price.

        In 1771 Katherine married Oliver Edwards, a solicitor. She smiles from her oil painting, but there is a word-picture of Oliver Edwards in Boswell's Life of Johnson. Boswell describes how Edwards and the Doctor renewed their acquaintance:

'It was in Butcher Row that this meeting happened. Mr. Edwards, who was a decent-looking elderly man in grey clothes, and a wig of many curls, accosted Johnson with familiar confidence, knowing who he was, while Johnson returned his salutation with a courteous formality, as to a stranger. But as soon as Edwards had brought to his recollection their having been at Pembroke-College together nine-and-forty years ago, he seemed much pleased, asked where he lived, and said he should be glad to see him in Bolt-court.'

On the way:

'Mr. Edwards informed Dr. Johnson that he had practised long as a solicitor in Chancery, but that he now lived in the country upon a little farm, about sixty acres, just by Stevenage in Hertfordshire, and that he came to London (to Barnard's Inn, No. 6) generally twice a week. ...Mr. Edwards expatiated on the pleasure of living in the country' (of which Boswell had no notion).

Edwards went on:

'What? don't you love to have hope realised? I see my grass, and my corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if this frost has not nipped my fruit-trees.'

Boswell reports that on reaching Dr. Johnson's house and seated in his library the dialogue went on admirably. Edwards asked how Johnson lived, saying that for himself he found he required his regular meals and a glass of good wine, and on asking if his host ate supper, and the reply being in the negative, commented

'For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass in order to get to bed.'

At one time in this conversation Edwards uttered the words which have earned him a place in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations:

'You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.'

Boswell records another meeting two or three years later:

'On Friday, April 13 being Good-Friday, I went to St. Clement's Church with him, as usual. There I saw again his old fellow-collegian, Edwards, to whom I said, 'I think, Sir, Dr. Johnson and you meet only at Church. Sir, (said he) it is the best place we can meet in, except heaven, and I hope we shall meet there too'. Dr. Johnson told me, that there was very little communication between Edwards and him, after their unexpected renewal of acquaintance. 'But, (said he smiling) he met me once, and said, 'I am told you have written a very pretty book called The Rambler' I was unwilling that he should leave the world in total darkness, and sent him a set.'

        In an estate book of 1779 Oliver Edwards is listed as tenant of the Mansion House at Sheephall Bury and the Orchard. After his death, Katherine Edwards appeared at the Court Baron of her son-in-law, Richard Price, as was the custom and 'humbly prayeth' to be admitted to her late husband's property. Up to 1926, Copyhold property was transferred by being surrendered to the lord of the manor, who then admitted the new tenant. The name of the tenant was written into the court rolls with a description of the property and listing the previous owners. The Court was held before the steward of the estate and the Homage or Jury of two or three other tenants. Reginald Hine ('Confessions of an Uncommon Attorney') refers to his legal attendance at manor courts early this century:

'...one liked to stand on the steps of the village inn and bawl out the opening of the Court. 'Oyez, Oyez, Oyez all manner of persons who have suit or service to perform to the Lord of the Manor, draw near and give your attendance.. .' Customary freeholders and copyholders came flocking up the street. When the Court was opened there would be the swearing of the homage or jury composed of the more substantial tenants who had to be marshalled at the table according to the dignity and measure of their holdings.'

        Katherine Edwards died in 1803 and was buried in a family grave at Fulham where a tombstone recorded her as the daughter of Louis Vaslet. Today in the centre of Worms am Rhein, West Germany, is a small park with flower beds and fountains, on the site of a disused burial ground. To commemorate its earlier use, the city council left one tombstone laid flat, and because Worms is twinned with St. Albans they chose the stone of a Hertfordshire lady. She was Catherine Nodes de Warburg, heiress of Shephall Bury in Hertfordshire, daughter of Mrs. Price (i.e. granddaughter of Katherine Edwards), wife of Jacques Clement de Warburg. Their daughter, Mlle. Clementine Catherine Nodes de Warburg, when an elderly lady of 87, sold the portrait of her great-grandmother to the Municipality of Geneva, naming her as the Vicomtesse de la Valette. The painting made a brief return to England for the major exhibition of Hogarth's works at the Tate Gallery in the winter of 1971-72.