John Tame

According to his near contemporary the antiquary John Leland (d.1552), John Tame "came out of the house of Tame of Stowel" and "The elder house of the Tames is at Stowell, by Northleche in Gloucestershire". The Tames of Stowell were wool merchants and cloth dealers, already well established in the early 15th century. John Tame (d.1500) was one of the two sons of John Tame of Stowell, the other son being Richard Tame who went to Calais or the Netherlands to conduct the foreign branch of the family's wool trade. The parish of Stowell in the Cotswold Hills is one of the smallest in Gloucestershire. The manor of Stowell, within the parish, was inherited by the senior line of the Tame family long after the Tames of Fairford rose to prominence, when Thomas Tame (died c. 1545), a sheep breeder, inherited it from his mother Agnes Limerick, daughter and heiress of Thomas Limerick (d.1486) of Stowell, and husband of William Tame.

John Tame was a merchant of the City of London, and according to the Gloucestershire historian Ralph Bigland (d.1784), served as Sheriff of the City of London. In 1492, soon after the siege of Boulogne (1491), Tame, presumably sailing under letters of marque, captured a vessel bound for Rome from the Low Countries. It is stated by Neale (1846) that the captured ship was carrying a beautiful set of twenty-eight stained-glass windows, intended for a present to the Pope and that Tame brought the glass, and the workmen who were accompanying it, to England, and in order to display it fittingly, decided to rebuild the parish church at Fairford "on a plan of costly magnificence, suited to the beautiful windows which he intended thus to consecrate to God." This task he commenced in 1493. However it is now believed that the glass was in fact made at Westminster by the Flemish glazier Barnard Flower (d.1517), glazier to King Henry VII (1485-1509), and thus the story of the glass having been seized from a foreign ship is inaccurate.

Acquires Fairford

In 1479 John Tame, together with the Cirencester lawyer and clothier John Twynyho (d.1485), had obtained a lease of the demesne of the manor of Fairford from King Henry VII, to whom the manor had temporarily reverted during the minority of Edward Plantagenet (1475-1499) (later 17th Earl of Warwick), son of George, 1st Duke of Clarence, 1st Earl of Warwick (d. 1478) by his wife, the heiress of Fairford, Isabel Neville. Isabelle Neville was one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (d.1471) "The King-Maker" by his wife Anne Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick (d.1492), who inherited Fairford on the death of her niece Anne de Beauchamp (d.1449), daughter of Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick (d.1446), whose mother was Isabel le Despenser (d.1439). John Tame (or his son) memorialised these noble families which had been connected with the manor of Fairford (de Clare, Despencer, Beauchamp) by the inclusion of their armorials (together with those of Tame) on the tower of Fairford Church.

Tame also acquired the manor of Rendcombe, Gloucestershire, by grant from the Crown, to which it had reverted after the attainder of the Earl of Warwick. His son Sir Edmond Tame rebuilt Rendcombe Church. In 1497 John and his son Edmond Tame levied a fine of land in Hatherop, an adjacent village. John Tame died before he had completed the rebuilding of Fairford Church, which task was finished by his son Edmund.

John Tame's business headquarters were at Cirencester, and his great wealth derived from the production and sale of wool, which came from his vast flocks of sheep for the grazing of which he secured large tracts of land. Amongst the many bequests in his will were those to four of his "head shepherds" at various places.

Fairford Church, built by John Tame, consecrated in 1497. Viewed from south-east

"Great West Window", Fairford Church, depicting the Last Judgement and related scenes. One of the 28 magnificent Fairford stained glass windows installed in his church by John Tame

John Tame built Fairford Church purposely for the reception of his stained glass, and thus the design is "necessarily somewhat cramped". Twenty-eight stained glass windows survive, considered amongst the best in England of the period. The church was consecrated in 1497 by the Bishop of Worcester, within whose diocese lay most of Gloucestershire at that time. It consists of a chancel, nave, a tower between them, and two aisles, which extend without any external break to about half the length of the Chancel. According to Neale "This arrangement, necessary to secure the required number of windows, somewhat injures the effect of the exterior, and makes the distinction between chancel and nave less marked than might have been wished". The entire length is a hundred and twenty-five feet, and the breadth is fifty-five feet. The fittings of the church are of the most beautiful and costly character. The Chancel is furnished with fourteen elaborate misereres, and a Rood-screen, and lateral parcloses of exquisite design and in remarkable preservation. The whole floor is paved in chequers of blue and white marble; and the roof of every part is excellently carved wood, with good corbels both for the principal and secondary rafters. The north aisle is the manorial chapel of the Tames and of their successors as lords of the manor of Fairford. The Tower is the principal feature on the exterior: its plan is square, the

edges however being taken off and adorned with niches. There is a pierced embattled parapet, with four angular pinnacles. There are four heraldic shields on the greater string course, in bold relief. That on the western side is charged with the arms of Tame; that on the north bears: Quarterly, first and fourth, a bend; second and third, a fret (Despencer, Earl of Gloucester). On the south is Chequy, a chevron (Newburgh, arms borne by Thomas de Beaumont, 6th Earl of Warwick and later quartered by Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick); and on the east Three chevronels for de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who all at some time owned the manor of Fairford. There is an elaborate south-western porch, with a parvise over it. This has been since thrown open to the church, and is furnished with a projecting gallery, which serves as a pew.

He married Alice Twynyho (d. 20 December 1471) a daughter of John Twynyho (d.1485), a lawyer and cloth merchant of Cirencester who had acquired the lease of Fairford in partnership with John Tame, whose monumental brass survives in Lechlade Church, Gloucestershire. By his wife he had progeny as follows:

• William Tame, eldest son, disinherited by his father;
• Sir Edmund I Tame (d.1534) of Rayton, second son and heir, a courtier and Knight of the Body of King Henry VIII, knighted by King Henry VIII in 1516, Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1505 and 1513, and father of Edmund II Tame. He was Steward of Cirencester Abbey and lived in a large mansion house in the market place of Cirencester. He married twice: firstly to Agnes Greville (d.1506) (by whom he had four children) a daughter of John Greville of Milcote, Warwickshire and a sister of Sir Edward Greville and a descendant of William Greville (d.1401) of Chipping Campden, "the flower of the wool merchants of all England"; secondly to Elizabeth Tyringham, a member of the Tyringham family of Tyringham in Buckinghamshire, without progeny; He completed the rebuilding of Fairford Church and also rebuilt Rendcombe Church. He is commemorated by two different monumental brasses in Fairford Church, which duplication is unique in the county of Gloucestershire.
• Thomas Tame, a priest, parson of Castle Eaton (alias Castleton) in Wiltshire, in which parish the Tames held land.
• Eleanor Tame, who married and survived her husband;

John Tame died in the year 1500, seised of Fairford and Rendcombe. By his will dated 1497 he assigned £240 to found a chantry in Fairford Church but later used the money to buy land in Castle Eaton, Wiltshire, for its endowment.

Chest tomb, "Founder's Tomb", of John Tame (d.1500), St. Mary's Church, Fairford. Viewed from within the Tame Chapel

1846 drawing of ledger stone of John Tame

Photograph of ledger stone of John Tame

The monument to John Tame in Fairford Church consists of a chest tomb on the north side of the chancel (the most usual burial-place for a founder), under the arch which opens into the north aisle or Tame Chapel. Over the chest tomb is an elaborately carved wooden parclose screen in the form of a Tudor arch, spanning the length of the monument, and supported by corbels in the form of angels bearing open books. The length of the Purbeck Marble slab on top is six feet nine inches; the breadth, three feet seven inches; and the height, three feet six inches. The north and south, the longer, sides have each three heraldic shields, in circular panels; on both, from east to west, the shields display the following arms: (1) Twynihoe, (2) Tame, (3) Tame impaling Twynihoe. The west displays the arms of Tame. On the ledger stone on top of the chest tomb are various monumental brasses, set into the slab, the main ones showing John Tame and his wife standing facing each other. Above John Tame are sculpted in relief into the marble the arms of Tame: Argent, a dragon vert, a lion azure crowned gules, combatant. The shields were originally enamelled in colours, but few traces remain: the dragon, however, is clearly vert, and his tongue gules. Above the figure of his wife Alice Twynyho are similarly sculpted the arms of Twynyho: Argent, a chevron between three lapwings sable. The two arms are impaled in the two similarly sculpted shields, one at the feet of each brass figure. It is remarkable that the wife should be represented with so old a face, since her death preceded her husband's by nearly thirty years. Her dress is peculiarly simple and elegant, with the exception of the wired head-dress, which is "of an early and unpleasing form". The ledger line is inscribed in Latin and English, unusually with lettering designed to be read from the outside instead of in the usual way, as follows:

Orate pro animabus Joh(an)is Tame Armigeri et Aliciae uxoris eius quidem Joh(an)es obiit octavo die mensis Maii anno D(o)m(ini) millensimo quingentensimo et anno regum regis Henrici Sept(im)i sextodecimo et predicta Alicia obiit vicesimo die mensis Decembris anno Domini mill(ens)imo CCCC septuagesimo primo quorum a(n)i(m)abus propicietur Deus. Ffor Jh(es)us love pray for me I may not pray nowe pray ye with a Pater Noster & an Ave that my paynes releisid may be (which may be translated as: ""Pray for the souls of John Tame Esquire and Alice his wife, which John died on the eighth day of the month of May in the year of our Lord the 1500th and in the year of the reign of King Henry the seventh the 16th, and the aforesaid Alice died on the twentieth day of the month of December in the year of our Lorde the 1471th on the souls of whom may God look on with favour")

Below the two figures is repeated in verse the words almost identical to the final inscription on the ledger line:

"Ffor Jh(es)us love pray for me,

I may not pray nowe pray ye,

With a Pater Noster & an Ave,

That my paynys releisyd may be".