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.
GRAVE STONES.
At the same time came in common use the humble grave stone laid flat with the pavement, sometimes with an inscription cut round the border of the stone, sometimes enriched with costly plates of brass, as every person who has examined our cathedral and parish churches cannot fail to have observed. But either avarice, or an over zealous aversion to some words in the inscription, has robbed most of these stones of the brass which adorned them, and left the less room for certainty when this fashion began. Earlier than the fourteenth century very few have been met with, and even towards the beginning of that century it is thought they were but rare. Mr. Lethieullier says that one was produced at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, dated 1300.[[65]] Weever mentions one in St. Paul’s for Richard Newport, anno 1317, and gives another at Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, which he by mistake dates 1306, the true date being 1356. Upon the whole, where we have not a positive date, it is hardly probable that any brass plate met with on grave stones can be older than 1350, and few so old, but from about 1380 they grew into common use and remained so even to the time of king James the first. Only after the reign of Edward the sixth we find the old gothic square letter changed into the roman round hand and the phrase Orate pro anima universally omitted.
Towards the latter end of the fourteenth century a custom prevailed likewise of putting the inscription in French and not in Latin. These inscriptions are generally from 1350 to 1400, and very rarely afterwards. John Stow has indeed preserved two, which were in St. Martin’s in the Vintry, dated 1310, and 1311.
The late editor of the Antiquities of Westminster affirms (from what authority he does not say) that stone coffins were never or rarely used after the thirteenth century.[[66]] If this assertion had been correct we should have had an æra from whence to go upwards in search of any of those monuments where the stone coffin appears, as it frequently does, but there is reason to doubt the accuracy of this author’s statement.
As Grecian architecture had a little dawning in Edward the sixth’s time, and made a further progress in the three succeeding reigns, we find, in the great number of monuments which were then erected, the small column introduced with its base and capital, sometimes supporting an arch, sometimes an architrave, but every where mixed with them, may be observed a great deal of the Gothic ornaments retained, as small spires, ill carved images, small square roses and other foliage, painted and gilt, which sufficiently denote the age which made them, though no inscriptions are left.