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.