Dean of
Wimborne a year later, and rose in time to the high rank of
Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, and played an important part in
history in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary. She erected this lovely
chantry as her last resting-place, wishing to lie after her troublous
life in this quiet spot, but it was not so to be. Her son, by the
publication on the Continent of a violent attack on Henry VIII.,
incensed the king to such an extent that he laid his hands on all the
kindred of the Poles he could find in England; some were tried and
executed, others attainted without trial, among them the Countess of
Salisbury, who was at the time over seventy years of age. She refused to
lay her head upon the block, and the headsman hacked at her neck as she
stood erect; her body was not allowed to be buried in the chantry which
she had erected for herself,--so far did the spite of Henry go,--but she
lies among the ambitious and unfortunate, the aspiring, and unsuccessful
of many a sect and party in the cemetery of St Peter's Chapel in the
Tower. Hers was an ill-starred race. Her grandfather was slain at
Barnet, 1471; her father murdered by his brother Edward IV., 1478; her
own brother, the Earl of Warwick, imprisoned by Henry VII., and
subsequently beheaded on Tower Hill, 1499; her eldest son, Lord Montagu,
was executed for high treason; and Margaret herself met a like fate on
May 27, 1541.

[Illustration: THE SALISBURY CHANTRY.]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE SALISBURY CHANTRY.]

Her chantry is built of Caen stone, and the decoration is of Renaissance
character. It is conjectured to be the work of the Florentine sculptor
Pietro Torrigiano, who died in the prison of the Inquisition in Spain in
1522. He was engaged on Henry VII.'s tomb in Westminster, and other
works ordered by Henry VIII. at Westminster and Windsor, from 1509 till
1517; and if this chantry at Christchurch is his design the date must
lie between these two years. Two four-light windows with battlemented
transoms look out on either side; to the west of these two doorways
lead, one to the presbytery the other to the north aisle; on the east
wall are three canopied niches, beneath which an altar stood or was
intended to stand; the ceiling is richly carved with fan traceries and
bosses; the latter have been mutilated--by order, it is said, of Henry
VIII. A letter from the King's Commissioner thus describes the work
done:--"In thys churche we founde a chaple and a m