I am grateful to Cameron Newham, Martin Stuchfield and Dirk Visser for their help in providing illustrations, and to Sally Badham for her valuable editorial input.
Notes
1 P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, (1960, transl. 1962, repr. Harmondsworth, 1986), 36. Among medieval historians, criticising Ariès is regarded as flogging a dead horse, but his ideas have proved very tenacious. On the subject of the appearance of children on medieval monuments, see S. Oosterwijk, ‘“A swithe feire graue”: the appearance of children on medieval tomb monuments’, in R. Eales and S.Tyas (eds.), Family and Dynasty in the Middle Ages, (1997 Harlaxton Symposium Proceedings), Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 9, (Donington, 2003), 172–92. 2 E.V. Gordon (ed.), Pearl, (Oxford, 1963), lines 57, 9.
3 This is an example of a so-called ‘kinship tomb’, as discussed in A. McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England
(University Park, Pennsylvania, 2000), esp. 117–32 and fig. 75.
4 For further examples, see J. Page-Phillips, Children on Brasses (1970), e.g. the weepers from the brass of Thomas (d.1483) and Isabel Hampton in Stoke Charity, Hampshire in fig. 19, which do show subtle differences between the couple’s six daughters.
5 J. D. Tanner, ‘Tombs of royal babies in Westminster Abbey’, Journal of the British
Archaeological Association, 16, (1953), 25–40, at 31–32; S. Badham, ‘Edward the
Confessor’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey: the origins of the royal mausoleum and its cosmatesque pavement’, The Antiquaries Journal, 87, (2007), 197–219, esp. 201–06 and figs. 2–3.
6 Tanner, ‘Tombs of royal babies’, 26–28; M. A. E. Green, Lives of the Princesses of
England, 6 vols., (1850), vol. 2, 270–74; M. Howell, ‘The children of King Henry
III and Eleanor of Provence’, in P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth Century
England, vol. 4, Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference 1991,
(Woodbridge, 1992), 57–72.
7 S. Badham and M. Norris, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses from the London Marblers, Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London No. 60, (1999), pp. 62–67.
8 Compare, for example, the children placed on brackets or pedestals on the Corp brass in Stoke Fleming, Devon, on the brasses of Sir Reginald Braybrooke and Sir Nicholas Hawberk at Cobham, Kent, and on the lost brass to Thomas of Woodstock in Westminster Abbey (as recorded in F. Sandford’s Genealogical History
of the Kings and Queens of England (1677), 230).
9 See Oosterwijk, ‘A swithe feire graue’, 190 and pl. 46; S. Oosterwijk, ‘Of tombs and tales ...’, Church Monuments Society Newsletter 22:2, (Winter 2006/7), 16–18. 10 See Oosterwijk, ‘A swithe feire graue’, 183–84 and pl. 43. The double effigy was
not created until 1376 when Edward III ordered John Orchard to carry out some additional work on Queen Philippa’s monument; see H. M. Colvin (ed.), The
History of the King’s Works:The Middle Ages, 3 vols., (1963), vol. 1, 486.
11 Sally Badham, ‘Yorkshire’s royal monument re-visited’, Church Monuments Society
Newsletter, 25:1, (Summer 2009), 12-15.
12 For the Ages of Man, see J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: a Study in Medieval Writing
and Thought (1986, repr. Oxford, 1988); E. Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, 1986); M. E. Goodich, From Birth to Old Age: the Human Life Cycle in Medieval Thought, 1250–1350 (1989); Deborah
Youngs, The Life-Cycle in Western Europe, c.1300–c.1600 (Manchester, 2006). 13 The idea of the perfect age is discussed in M. Twycross, ‘“With what body shall
they come?” Black and white souls in the English mystery plays’, in: H. Phillips (ed.), Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition: Essays in
Honour of S. S. Hussey (Cambridge, 1990), 271–86; see also Oosterwijk, ‘A swithe
feire graue’, esp. 181–82.
14 The literature on medieval maidens and virgin saints is vast. See, for example, A. Bernau, S. Salih and R. Evans (eds.), Medieval Virginities, Religion & Culture in the
Middle Ages (Cardiff, 2003); K. M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester, 2003).
15 F. A. Greenhill, Incised Effigial Slabs: a Study of Engraved Stone Memorials in Latin
Christendom, c.1100 to c.1700 (1976), vol. I, 241, and vol. II, fig. 138a.
16 See P. Lindley,‘Romanticizing reality: the sculptural memorials of Queen Eleanor and their context’, in D. Parsons (ed.), Eleanor of Castile 1290–1990: Essays to
Commemorate the 700th Anniversary of her Death, 28 November 1290 (Stamford,
1991), 69–92.
17 For the brasses at Chenies and Quainton, see W. Lack, H. M. Stuchfield and P. Whittemore, The Monumental Brasses of Buckinghamshire (1994), 37–38 and 177–78; for the Lingfield brass, see N. Saul, Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval
England: the Cobham Family and their Monuments 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), 186
and fig. 33.
18 Page-Phillips, Children on Brasses, fig. 1.
19 See S. Oosterwijk, ‘Chrysoms, shrouds and infants on English tomb monuments: a question of terminology?’, Church Monuments, 15, (2000), 44–64.
A MODEST BRASS EPITAPH on the vestry wall of Walkern church, Hertfordshire, tells a story which connects three religious buildings – Walkern church itself, St Michael’s, Crooked Lane in London, and the Lovekyn Chapel at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. The brass is an example of a palimpsest – that is to say, of one which has been taken up and reused. On the obverse is an inscription to Richard, son of John Humberstone of Walkern, who died in 1581 (Fig. 1). On the reverse is part of an inscription, of which both ends have been trimmed. It commemorates a Londoner, John Lovekyn (d.1368), sometime mayor of the city of London. Lovekyn is known to have been buried in the church of St Michael, Crooked Lane, off Eastcheap, and his brass was originally laid there (Fig. 2).
The wording of the inscription to Lovekyn is of considerable interest. Not only does it shed light on the matter of his personal religion; it also assists in the understanding of his intentions regarding the other institution with which he was associated, the third of our buildings, the Lovekyn Chapel at Kingston upon Thames (Fig. 3).The inscription is composed of three Latin verses and reads:
[Ve]rmibus esca datur Lovekyn caro pulcra [Johannis] [Bi]s fuit hic maior iterum bis Rege jube[nte] [A]nno milleno ter C cum septuageno
The lines may be translated as:
The flesh of John Lovekyn is given, a fine food for worms Twice he was mayor here, twice again at the king’s command One thousand three hundred and seventy
John Stow, the sixteenth-century London antiquary, tells us something of the background to Lovekyn’s brass. In his Survey of
London he records that Lovekyn was originally commemorated in
St Michael’s, Crooked Lane, ‘in the quire, under a faire tombe, with the images of him and his wife in alabaster’. Lovekyn had substantially rebuilt St Michael’s, originally a very small building. However, the fabric was ‘increased’ again (in Stow’s words) ‘with a new Quier and side chappels’ by Lovekyn’s apprentice, executor and eventual successor in his business, Sir William Walworth. At the same time as undertaking this work, Stow adds, Walworth removed Lovekyn’s original tomb monument and replaced it with a marble slab bearing brasses.1
Nigel Saul is Professor of Medieval History, Royal Holloway, University of London.