And also every poor man now starving in this land;
And while I pray success may crown our King upon his throne,
I'll wish that every poor man may long enjoy his own."
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
FAMILY LIKENESSES.
(Vol. v., p. 260.)
To most persons the discovery by VOKAROS of a family likeness existing between the face on the brass of the Abbess of Elstow, and the portrait of the Marquis of Bristol, after a lapse of three centuries, would probably seem moderately far-fetched; but when this is adduced as "valuable evidence on the disputed point, whether portraits were attempted in sepulchral brasses," a very great demand indeed is made upon our credulity. I have not the means now of referring to the works of Fisher and Rokewode; but I have before me a rubbing of the Elstow brass. Any person tolerably familiar with the subject will at once see that the face of the lady is identical with that which is repeatedly to be found on numerous brass effigies of persons of both sexes at the beginning of the sixteenth century; in fact, it is not very dissimilar to that of the fellow brass of the Abbot at Dorchester, Oxon. If, therefore, we might judge by the likeness, very many brazen-faced gentry of olden time might claim the honour of being ancestors of the noble lord. And so far from its being a disputed point, whether the faces on brasses are attempted likenesses, no one, I think, who has at all studied our monumental brasses, can fail to have come to the conclusion that they were not intended to be portraits. The great proof of this lies in the obvious similarity in the faces of cotemporary figures which have been produced by the same artists, who, probably from their residing in London, and perhaps in a few other places, very rarely had an opportunity of seeing the persons to be commemorated. The instructions forwarded to the engravers would seem to have been confined to the inscription and other details, chiefly the costume, at least if we may judge from the large brasses at Digswell, Herts, and other similar figures. The ready adoption of unaltered palimpsest effigies may also be cited as an additional proof of the likeness being entirely a matter of indifference; and it is not improbable that many brasses were kept ready made, half-length figures of priests for instance; and files of children, all bearing a strong family likeness, may have been engraved, ready to be cut off on the shortest notice, and laid down at so much per foot. The only approach towards a likeness, if it may be termed such, seems to be the distinction between youth and age, and even that was almost wholly neglected in the fifteenth and earlier half of the sixteenth centuries. The foregoing remarks apply chiefly to brasses before the latter end of the sixteenth century; after that period portraits were evidently not unfrequently attempted. Very rare instances, however, before this time, may be found. I may specify the effigy of Nich. Canteys, 1431, Margate, Kent.
Mr. Doyle, in his able painting of Caxton submitting his proof-sheet to Abbot Estney (noticed in "N. & Q." No. 54. p. 398.) has taken the likeness of the Abbot from his brass in Westminster Abbey, which is, I suppose, as good a likeness of the original as any other that can be found; but the members of Queen's College, Oxford, have not been so fortunate. Several years ago, while hunting up a likeness of their founder (Robt. Egglesfield, 1340), they stumbled upon an old brass in the College Chapel, from which a painting and engraving was made purporting to be that of the founder. Recent researches have unfortunately fatally dispelled this illusion, as the effigy in question undoubtedly commemorates Dr. Robt. Langton, who deceased 1518.
H. H.
EARL OF ERROLL.
(Vol. v., p. 297.)
According to Burke's Peerage for 1850, the present Lord Erroll is "the twenty-second High Constable of Scotland; and as such is, by birth, the first subject in Scotland after the blood-royal, having a right to take place of every hereditary honour, which was granted to his lordship's father on the visit of George IV. to North Britain" (in 1822).