Brasses are not scattered at random throughout the country. They are met with most frequently in the eastern and home counties. Probably this is because these parts are nearest to Flanders, and the cost of transporting the sheets of brass far inland would be a considerable addition to their cost.
(For those who wish to pursue this subject, Macklin’s Brasses of England (Methuen) and Suffling’s English Church Brasses (Upcott Gill) will be found most useful, as in addition to other matter they contain a register of all brasses known in the British Isles.)
PLATE 28.
(Fig. 1): The despoiled slab of Bishop Beaumont of Durham, about 1335 A.D., showing the matrix for the brass in the slab, and also the form of a canopy brass. The place where the inscription was fixed is shown in the white band just inside the edge. (Fig. 2): The brass of a Notary (name lost), about 1475 A.D., in St. Mary Tower Church, Ipswich. “Notaries wore a plain gown, with an ink-horn and pen-case suspended from the belt, and a scarf and cap on the left shoulder.” (Macklin.) (Fig. 3): The brass of Dame Elizabeth Harvey, Benedictine Abbess of Elstow, Bedfordshire, about 1525 A.D. Figs. 2 and 3 show the actual appearance of “rubbings” of brasses.
HERALDRY.
Heraldry has been called the “shorthand of history,” and “the critical desire for accuracy, which fortunately seems to have been the keynote of research” during recent times, necessitates an inquiry into the history and practice of Heraldry, which played such an important part in the life of the Middle Ages.