TABLE TOMB.
To the cross-legged monument it is highly probable, says Mr. Lethieullier, succeeded the table tomb, with figures recumbent upon it, with their hands joined in a praying posture, sometimes with a rich canopy of stone over them, sometimes without such canopy, and again, some very plain without any figures. Round the edge of these for the most part were inscriptions on brass plates, which are now too frequently destroyed.
The table monument, however, came in more early than Mr. L. supposes.
The most ancient monument of this kind that is extant, in England at least, of the sovereigns of this kingdom, is that of king John, in the choir of Worcester Cathedral.[[64]] His effigy lies on the tomb, crowned; in his right hand he holds the sceptre, in his left a sword, the point of which is received into the mouth of a lion couchant at his feet. The figure is as large as life. On each side of the head are cumbent images, in small, of the bishops St. Oswald and St. Wulstan, represented as censing him.—This monarch died in the year 1216. His bowels were buried in Croxton abbey, and his body, which was conveyed to Worcester from Newark, was according to his desire, buried in that Cathedral.