Light, too, is thrown by them upon the social conditions and customs of the people, for example, when, during the Wars of the Roses, practically every noble was ranged under one or other of the rival banners, we find there was a great increase in the number of brasses of the middle classes, showing that in the midst of civil strife not only were they unaffected to any appreciable degree, but that the property and wealth of the middle and trading classes were actually on the increase.
The material of which the brasses were made consisted of 60 parts of copper, 30 of zinc, and 10 of lead and tin. This gave a very hard alloy, which would stand very hard usage. It was called latten or laton, and until the reign of Elizabeth was manufactured exclusively in Flanders and Germany—particularly at Cologne, whence they were often termed Cullen plates.
They were imported into England in rectangular plates of the required thickness. When the plates were manufactured in England, they were very much thinner, and consequently more liable to injury; so that though they are not nearly so old as the earlier brasses, they are yet in a much worse condition.
In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries brasses were manufactured in great quantities, and the work gave employment to many people. It is probable that the engravers worked in guilds established in London, Norwich, Ipswich, and Bristol.
The figure was drawn (generally in a recumbent position, with the hands in the attitude of prayer) upon the flat brass plate, and then the lines of the armour, the folds of the drapery, and the features, etc., were deeply cut into the metal.
After these lines had been engraved, the whole figure was cut out of the plate just as a child cuts out a figure from a picture.
A brass consisted of the following parts:
(1) The figure or figures; (2) heraldic devices and armorial bearings on shields; (3) mottoes or epitaphs; (4) other subsidiary figures or ornaments (angels, canopies, etc.).
In the English brass each of these elements was cut out separately and placed in position upon a stone slab. The outline was then marked round each, the brasses were lifted off, and the stone cut away in the portions thus marked out, to a depth equal to the thickness of the brass. The plates were then placed in position in this stone matrix, the surfaces of the brass being level with the surface of the stone, and each piece was fastened down by means of metal screws.