Effigy with Crossed Legs in the Temple Church, London
6. Then there are some flat stones, lying in the pavement, with inscriptions running round the edge in strange worn letters, with perhaps an ornamental cross also cut the whole length of the stones. These are the cover-stones of the graves where some great baron or land-owner was buried, and they belong to the thirteenth century, and some are even of earlier date. They are called incised slabs.
7. In this same century another kind of cover-stone for a grave came into use, especially in the southern and eastern parts of England. Metal was fixed in the incised slabs, and the portrait of the knight and his lady, the merchant or the lawyer, the bishop or priest was engraved on the metal, showing the person in the kind of dress he wore during life. It is said that there are about 4000 of these brasses still left in England. Some of them have been sadly damaged and worn. They do not all belong to the thirteenth century, as this kind of memorial of the dead was used during several centuries—in fact, well on into Queen Elizabeth's reign, at the end of the sixteenth century. The oldest brass in England, showing a man in armour, is in Surrey, in Stoke D'Abernon Church. Brasses are very valuable, as they show us the kinds of armour and dress worn in particular centuries.
Summary.—There is not much Saxon work left in any of the old churches, but a good deal of Norman work, in round-headed arches and doorways. The Norman period lasted from King William I to King John. Pointed arches then came in, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was much church-building and alteration.
Battered effigies of cross-legged figures in armour belong to this period. Incised slabs were originally the cover-stones of graves. In the thirteenth century brasses came into fashion, and they show us changes in costume, as they were used down to the time of Queen Elizabeth.
[CHAPTER XXIX]
TRACES OF EARLY TIMES IN THE CHURCHES (Cont.)
1. The fourteenth century is covered by the reigns of King Edward II, King Edward III, and King Richard II. The architecture became much more ornamental, and there is a good deal of fine stone-carving. Many beautiful window-heads and doorways belong to this period. A good many aisles were added to the old naves; many of the old Norman towers were rebuilt, and crowned with graceful spires; but the work is not all equally good.
2. There are a great many tombs in the churches in various parts of the country, and much money was spent upon them in this and in the next century. They are raised some two or three feet from the ground; the sides are divided into panels and ornamented with rich carvings and shields of arms, brilliantly coloured and gilded. On the top of the tombs are to be seen effigies carved in stone of the man and his wife, lying on their backs, with hands clasped. The men are usually in armour, and their wives in the dress of the time, with strange-looking head-dresses. Many of the effigies are much defaced and battered, but there are others of them well preserved still. It was in the latter part of the fourteenth century that great attention began to be paid to shields of arms, and heraldry became an important science.
3. But in the middle of the fourteenth century, during the reign of King Edward III, there came a time of great distress. There were the long years of war with France, years of famine and the Black Death. That meant a period of great distress for the country; all classes suffered, and there was much discontent and disorder. These bad times left their mark upon the buildings, especially upon the churches. In some churches work can be pointed out to you which was begun before the time of the Black Death on a grand scale, but finished off in a much plainer manner—apparently years after it was begun. The work had been started, but bad times stopped it, and it had to wait. Those who had begun it never saw it finished, for the pestilence carried them away; and, long afterwards, those who did finish it were not well enough off to carry out the design as it was at first intended.
4. Still, all through these centuries much was spent on the churches, not only by the great nobles, not only in monastery buildings and the cathedral churches, but on the ordinary town and village churches as well.