THE SEPULCHRAL BRASSES OF LINCOLNSHIRE
By the Rev. G.E. Jeans, M.A., F.S.A.
I propose in this paper to establish the point that Lincolnshire has not hitherto been given sufficient credit among antiquaries in general for its share in the great national treasure of monumental brasses. Brasses are in themselves among the most beautiful and the most durable of monumental records. They can reproduce details of armour and costume with a delicacy which is scarcely possible in the most sumptuous stone or marble monuments. The great majority are of such convenient size that they can be rubbed on a single large sheet of paper; and, unlike altar-tombs, can be studied all at once. And furthermore, for these and other reasons, brasses have long attracted a special body of devotees among antiquaries, some of whom will rub and record a brass with loving zeal, while they will hardly look at the church which contains it, or at any of its other records in tomb or window. Thus it may be that our brasses have been better examined and figured than any other form of monumental effigy.
Nevertheless, I may claim to have shown in my list of Lincolnshire brasses, republished from Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, that a good deal still remained unexplored in this and, therefore, probably in other counties. Brass-lovers (no convenient single name has yet been invented) have naturally turned to the counties where brasses are to be found in almost every church, such as Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent, or the northern and eastern ring of London; and the best of these have been splendidly illustrated in different forms by J.S. Cotman, the artist (1819), Mr. E.M. Beloe, the Rev. E. Farrer, W.D. Belcher, and others. None but casual single illustrations of the Lincolnshire brasses have been published. But I should think that none of those who saw Mr. William Scorer’s magnificent collection of rubbings of them, at the meeting of the Archæological Institute at Lincoln in July 1909, could doubt the claim of Lincolnshire to a much higher place than has been generally granted hitherto among the counties of brasses. The great long series in Boston Church, and the glorious, though fearfully maltreated, one in Tattershall Church were seen on that occasion in situ, and there is another great display in the county at All Saints’, Stamford, besides the many instances of one noble brass, or sometimes two, as at Spilsby and Gunby St. Peter’s. One of the most learned and accurate brass-lovers I have ever met, the late Rev. C. G. R. Birch, told me that in his opinion Lincolnshire, in the proportion of valuable brasses to the whole number remaining, stood perhaps first among the counties.
I will now place the brasses under different categories to show how well Lincolnshire would come out in a County Championship in almost every class.
First would come the series, say of not less than six, in a single church. These are of course rare everywhere. Even in a county so overflowing with brasses as Norfolk, only about half-a-dozen churches would be able to qualify. Lincolnshire, as I have just said, has three. That in Tattershall Church is beyond all doubt one of the finest series in England, in spite of its heartrending maltreatment. There are seven brasses here, of which no less than four are of the first rank, namely, the great one of Lord Treasurer Cromwell, those of his two nieces—Joan, Lady Cromwell, and Matilda, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby—and the brass of a Provost of the College. Besides these there are two interesting brasses of priests and one of a civilian, 1411. Every brass in this noble set deserves study.
Next comes Boston, which, as being almost the greatest of English ports in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, having a special connection with the Low Countries, and being one of the great centres of merchant guilds, must at one time have been among the richest in England in this kind of memorial. Here there are no less than seventeen brasses, including what are little more than fragments, ten of which are effigies or the remains of figure brasses. Two of these, those of Walter Pescod and his wife and the unnamed priest of about 1400, are of the first rank, and exceedingly valuable for the figures of saints in the canopy shafts of the former and the orphreys of the latter.
All Saints’, Stamford, has eight brasses, six of which are with effigies, one very fine and all interesting.
We turn now to the earliest brasses, which are of course very valuable. The first period in most books is taken to be the reigns of the first two Edwards, 1272-1327; and of this period there are only nineteen or perhaps twenty in all England, of which Lincolnshire has two, at Buslingthorpe and Croft. Everybody knows that the premier brass is Sir John d’Aubernoun’s at Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, because that is dated 1277. But the extremely interesting half effigy of Sir Richard de Boselyngthorp, unfortunately not dated, is certainly not much later than Sir John d’Aubernoun, and, as I suggested and Mr. Macklin agrees, may be even a little earlier. Buslingthorpe is a very remote church, and there is no rectory house near, so it is to be hoped that some special care is taken about this precious monument. The one at Croft is somewhat similar, but is generally regarded as from ten to twenty years later.
Taking now the classes of people who are represented in effigies, we may regard them as mainly coming under five heads—knights or noblemen in armour, priests, ladies, merchants, or judges. How does the county come out in these?
Brass of Matilda, Lady Willoughby de Eresby (1460?), in Tattershall Church.
In Knights there is a fairly representative sequence. Beginning with the Buslingthorpe and Croft brasses just mentioned, we have then Sir Henry Redford at Broughton, and Sir Andrew Luttrell at Irnham (fourteenth century); Lord Willoughby at Spilsby; and others at Laughton, Gunby, Covenham St. Bartholomew, South Kelsey, and Holbeach (early fifteenth); Robert Hayton at Theddlethorpe (1424); the grand brass of Lord Cromwell at Tattershall (1455); Henry Rochforth at Stoke Rochford (1470); Sir William Skypwyth at South Ormsby (1482); and several of the sixteenth century, as at Norton Disney, Ashby Puerorum (two), Horncastle, Harrington, and Hainton (a tabard).
In Priests the list is only moderate, but it is headed by the fine one at Boston in the sacrarium (c. 1400), and the grand late one of a Provost at Tattershall, whom I take to be John Gyger (c. 1510). There are two other priests at Tattershall—William Moor (1456) and William Symson (1519). Another interesting brass of a priest is that of William de Lound (c. 1370) at Althorpe in the Isle of Axholme. This was covered up by coats of paint daubed over the altar-tomb on which it was set, so that it was only discovered at the restoration of the church. The brass of a priest in cope (c. 1490), at Fiskerton, is interesting as having been lost, but fortunately re-discovered by Bishop Trollope in a shop at Lincoln. The rest are unimportant.
In Ladies the county would claim high rank if it were only for the beautiful brasses of Lord Cromwell’s nieces and co-heiresses, Joan, Lady Cromwell, and Matilda, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby. Lady Cromwell’s effigy, with long flowing hair kept back by a jewelled bandeau (which looks as if the brass had been engraved before she was married), I regard as the most graceful figure on a brass in all England. Both are fine studies of dress. Their date cannot be accurately fixed, since they are certainly earlier than 1497, the year of Lady Willoughby’s death; but in my list, in Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, I have given reasons for believing that they were engraved between 1460 and 1480. The next finest is of another Lady Willoughby, Margery, who died in 1391; it is in the Willoughby Aisle, now kept locked, in Spilsby Church. There is another effigy of a lady with flowing hair, Elizabeth FitzWilliam, 1522, at Mablethorpe. A fine figure of a lady, c. 1400, was discovered at Gedney in 1890. She was probably of the Roos family, who held the manor. She wears the nebular head-dress, with hair flowing from under it. The only other lady with costume of much interest is one, probably a Skypwyth, at South Ormsby. Ladies represented with their husbands are seldom very elaborately treated as to their costume. About 1480 they had the “butterfly” head-dress, which one would suppose must have been as annoying to their husbands and brothers as the modern lady’s gigantic hat.
Turning now to Civilians, Lincolnshire has several brasses of great merchants, though more might be expected in what was in the Middle Ages one of the chief trading counties with the Continent. The finest of these probably was the great brass of Walter Pescod, 1398, now in the sacrarium of Boston Church, though it has lost the wife’s effigy altogether, the feet of the merchant himself, the inscription (happily recorded by Gervase Holles), and part of the superb canopy. For a study of saints in the smaller figures it is, though out of its true place, now happily placed for comparison with the contemporary priest on the other side of the altar. The next important brass of a merchant is that of William Browne, the founder of the great hospital at Stamford, in All Saints’ Church there, where there are others of the same family also. Simon Seman the vintner, standing on two wine-casks, in St. Mary’s, Barton-on-Humber; and the two Lyndewodes, father and brother of the author of Provinciale, at Lynwode. And if judges are to be counted with civilians, the interesting brass of William de Lodyngton, Justice of the King’s Bench of Common Pleas, in the rebuilt church of Gunby, close to Burgh station, must not be omitted.
Now let us turn our attention to peculiar types of brasses, and see how we stand in these. I will take three interesting types—cross brasses, palimpsests, and brasses of local workmanship.
The Cross is not, I should say, a type that one would wish to be largely extended, as it seems to sacrifice the main object of the brass; but that it is capable of much grace is shown by the beautiful though mutilated cross at Grainthorpe, which stands on a rock in the sea, with carefully drawn fishes of five kinds swimming round it.
Of Palimpsests, or brasses used a second time, there is one of the most interesting in England at Norton Disney. This brass of the Disney family is notable as a very late instance (c. 1580) of armour. The reverse is the larger part of a plate with a long Dutch inscription relating to the founding of a chantry with daily mass in a now destroyed church at Middelburg in 1518. No doubt the brass was soon stolen, together with the endowment of the mass, in the Reformation. But the interest does not end here. Not many years ago it was found that the whole of this brass is in England, the smaller portion having been used again for one of the Dauntesay family, also c. 1580, at West Lavington in Wiltshire. There are several others, including one at Boston, with a lady on each face, and one of Sir Lionel Dymoke at Horncastle, which has a Flemish inscription on the reverse.
Provincial workmanship needs, of course, a good deal of technical knowledge to detect. The immense majority of English brasses were made by London artists, and the only provincial schools seem to have been in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. One small mark usually found in provincial work is mentioned by Haines, namely, that the hands are held apart, one on each side of the breast, as in Lord Willoughby’s brass at Spilsby.
I must here mention two very singular brasses to be found in the county. I do not know of any instance of bodily infirmity commemorated except in the curious brass of William Palmer, 1520, at Ingoldmells. He has beside him a “stilt” or crutch, and in the inscription he is called, “William Palmer wyth yᵉ stylt.”
The brass at Edenham is—or rather was, for it is now taken into the church for safety—quite startling, being formerly on the west face of the tower, forty feet from the ground. It is of an archbishop, and when the Lincolnshire Architectural Society went to Edenham in 1888, and the brass was there described by Bishop Trollope, I remember that much amusement was caused by the episcopal figure looking so much like a rough portrait of the good bishop himself. It may, however, be taken as certain that this is not a sepulchral brass, but part of a representation of the giver of the tower, c. 1500, since the rivets of another brass, the donor kneeling, can be detected on the other side of the west window lower down. It must then be of a saint, and so may be assumed to be St. Thomas of Canterbury. It is, however, well worth mention here.
Lastly, I turn to the inscriptions. There are many rather curious ones dotted about the county, but they are mostly too long to be worth transcribing in full. I will give, therefore, two only, from Wrangle and Lusby.
At Wrangle, on the tomb of John Reed, a merchant of the Staple of Calais, and his wife, is a marginal inscription running round a large slab, which has been broken in parts, but was copied by Marratt. The introduction of the verse part is curiously abrupt, and seems to need some link. It runs: “They for man when yᵉ [winde blows make the mill grin]de. and ev. on thy own soule have thou ”
John Lyndewode and his wife Alice (1419) in Lynwood Church.
In the tiny church of Lusby, close to the battlefield of Winceby, there is a small brass plate on a slab which bears, as far as I can make it out, the date 1555. It has a pretty little inscription in verse as a dialogue between a wife and a husband. It runs:
“My flesh in hope doth rest and slepe
In earth here to remayne.
My spirit to Christ I gyve to kepe
Till I do rise agayne.”
“And I wyth you in hope agre,
Though I yet here abyde.
In full purpose if Goddes will be
To ly down by your syde.”
I hope now that I have sufficiently proved my point as to the great value and interest of the Lincolnshire brasses. Mr. Macklin in his small work, Monumental Brasses, made a kind of tripos for the counties, in which Lincolnshire, though taking honours, only won a third class. In his larger and greatly improved book, The Brasses of England, in “The Antiquary’s Library,” this list disappears, and I should be surprised if he would not now raise the county to his second class. At any rate, some twenty brasses of great importance or fine workmanship, together with many rare or even unique instances of particular types, are amply sufficient to establish a claim to considerable distinction.