CHAPTER FOUR REPRESENTING STATUS

Members in the portraits in red

Introduction

Figure 4:1 Unknown artist, The Hill Family, c. 1590, oil on stone, St Luke's Church, Ullingswick, Herefordshire

When John Hill of Nether Court in Ullingswick, Herefordshire died in 1590 his wife Elizabeth erected a portrait on a stone panel on the south wall of St Luke’s Church in his memory (Fig. 4:1). It shows the dead man lying on his funeral monument in the typical attitude of prayer, surrounded by his wife and their family of two living sons and a daughter as well as two dead infants lying swaddled on the ground. Dominating the portrait is a prominent coat of arms, not her husband’s, rather they were the arms to which she herself

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was entitled and she used the text above the image to draw attention to her connection with the illustrious Cobham family stating:

Here lieth the body of John Hill gentleman heir to John Hill gent of the Nether courts who married the eldest daughter one of the co-heirs of Hugh Brooke esquire of Long Ashton in the county of Somerset: lineally descending from the house of the Lord Cobham & had by her three sons & two daughters: these arms came by her and he departed the life the third day of February in the XXXXIII year of the reign of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth Anno Domi 1590 upon whom the Lord have mercy ¹

By emphasising this distinguished pedigree Elizabeth was demonstrating her awareness of the agency which portraits had to proclaim status and was using this one to promote her children’s place in the social hierarchy. In this she was typical of the many socially aspirant gentry families who commissioned portraits in order to engage in the highly competitive battle for status which raged in the English provinces in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.²

This chapter debates the complex relationship between the evolving practices of

portraiture on the one hand and the ways in which status was represented, on the other. This meant that in the earlier part of the period, before about 1640, families like the Hills

represented their collective identity through the language of heraldry, while in the later part of the period naturalistic likeness dominated family portraiture with an emphasis on refined life style, gesture and demeanour.³ These representational practices evolved less in response to complex developments in the ideals of gentle status which, as discussed in the

1 It was usual for wives to use their husbands’ coats of arms combined with their own, although occasionally as here they were represented by the arms of her natal family: Karen Hearn, ‘Heraldry in Tudor and Jacobean Portraits’, in Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare's England, ed. Nigel Ramsay (Donington, Lincolnshire:

Shaun Tyas, 2014), p.225.

2 See Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500-1700 (Hampshire and

London:Macmillan, 1994), pp. 1-47; Ian W. Archer, ‘Up and Down the Social Ladder in Elizabethan England’, in Elizabeth I & Her People, ed. by Tarnya Cooper with Jane Eade ; (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2013), pp. 20-25.

3 Bronwen Wilson, ‘The Renaissance Portrait: From Resemblance to Representation’, in The Renaissance World, ed. by J. Jeffries Martin (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 452-80.

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Introduction, remained relatively stable, than to a change of emphasis by artists and patrons and fluctuations of taste and fashion.⁴

The hundred years between about 1540 and 1640 were what Robert Tittler describes as a

‘malleable moment’ during which material culture responded to rapid social transformation.⁵ He asserts that the gentry:

… strove for and flaunted the recognised attributes of gentility: the reputation for honour, lineage, and service; the possession of wealth, family arms, office, and material

possessions of the appropriate quantity and quality. No wonder, then, that the need to articulate the fruits of that exercise also found frequent expression in the possession of material objects. In this fraught environment, the portrait – along with the country house, the funeral monument, the coat of arms, and other such signifiers – became an important expression of family lineage, personal identity, and social standing.⁶

The act of commissioning a portrait was itself to engage in an elite practice, allowing family members to ‘perform’ high status, something seen for example in the elite sports of hunting and hawking associated with the boys in the Lucy family portrait and the fine costumes of their sisters (Fig. 2:15). Format and scale were also ways of proclaiming high status, for example the full-length, near life size of the portrait of Sir Edward Pytts and his grandson (Fig. 3:4) mimics aristocratic portraiture of the period in what Joanna Woodall calls a ‘traditional idealising format which combined with mimetic or naturalistic likeness to personalise social authority and elevate the status of the sitter’.⁷ There were other ways in which portraits celebrated status, for example through the quality and value of materials and the ability and fame of the artist.

4 For example: Tarnya Cooper and Maurice Howard, ‘Artists, Patrons and the Context for the Production of Painted Images in Tudor and Jacobean England’, in Painting in Britain 1500-1630 : Production, Influences and Patronage ed. by Aviva Bunstock, Tarnya Cooper, Maurice Howard, and Edward Town (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 5-28; Tarnya Cooper, Citizen Portrait : Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales, ed. by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, (New Haven, Conn. ; London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2012);Robert Tittler, Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England, 1540-1640, (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012); Robert Tittler, ‘Social Aspiration and the Malleability of Portraiture in Post-Reformation England: The Kaye Panels of Woodsome, Yorkshire, c. 1567’, Northern History, 52 (2015), pp. 182-99.

5Ibid., p. 277.

6 Ibid. p.278.

7Joanna Woodall, (ed.), Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 2.

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Woodall draws attention to strategies for depicting ancestry through identification with eminent predecessors.⁸ In portraits this could be through reproducing physiognomic likeness between generations, as for example in the portrait of Walter Raleigh and his son (Fig. 2:11) or, particularly before about 1640, through the inclusion of heraldry in portraits. This was sometimes combined with genealogical displays such as family trees to create an illusion of distinguished lineage, seen for example in the Towneley family portrait (Fig. 5:3). It is important to notice that, particularly before about 1640, among the inherited virtues which could be articulated through portraiture was piety, signifiers of which are commonly found in portraits which also include heraldry to celebrate a family’s specific values and religious ideology; this will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Five.⁹ Pious references become less popular after about the mid seventeenth century, replaced by references to humanist virtues, bodily balance and assurance (see below).¹⁰

After about 1640 heraldry disappeared from portraits replaced, as Heal and Holmes claim, by images of individuals who ‘… could combine political leadership and intelligent financial management with courtesy, magnanimity and cultural sophistication in daily living.’¹¹ Sir Thomas Lucy, whose family portrait is described above, is sometimes seen as the ideal of this kind of man, ‘a model of learned gentility … also a passionate rider and huntsman’.¹² As discussed in Chapter One shifting models of gentility were accompanied by changes in artistic styles and methods as artists trained in heraldic schools were replaced by continentally trained artists with new methods of depicting gestures and poses more

naturalistically and the body itself became a signifier of status. Families understood how the dynamic nature of portraits and other material forms could be harnessed to display more than

8 Ibid.

9 Signifiers of piety include prayer books and bibles, depictions of the dead and dying, crucifixes, figures in postures of prayer and inscriptions which include prayers.

10 Archer, ‘Up and Down the Social Ladder’, p. 20.

11 Heal and Holmes, The Gentry, p 276.

12 Ibid., p. 292.

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likeness, becoming images which embodied their status, values and authority.¹³ Portraits conferred legitimacy on families who aspired to high status, whether this was through long and distinguished lineage, piety or the virtues and attributes of civility. The case studies which follow interrogate a number of portraits which use heraldry to display rank; these are followed by another group of portraits which emphasis the values of ‘civility’.

13 Harry Berger Jr, Fictions of the Pose: Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance, (Stanford, California:

Stanford University Press, 2000).

146 a. Heraldry

During the hundred years or so of Tittler’s ‘malleable moment’ status was defined chiefly by lineage, which was seen as the conjunction of blood and tenure and was the chief determinant and legitimisation of high status at that time.¹⁴ The principal visual language of lineage was heraldry which could: ‘… sum up claims to distinction and nobility, noble achievements, marriages and blood lines and collective claims to honour’.¹⁵ The study of heraldry was a subject of intense interest among English elites, and led to an explosion of heraldic displays in houses and churches by the late sixteenth century.¹⁶ Whether such claims were fictional or real, heraldry could assist the leap of imagination which placed families among their county’s social elite, playing an important part in reinforcing intergenerational memory becoming a constant presence to reconstruct and reconfigure past achievements.¹⁷ The visual elements in heraldry were condensed images which described individual family members, their marriages and achievements, through the repetition of colours, patterns and motifs. Importantly, these elements had the ability to create fictional, mythic, chivalric and

14 Heal and Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales,), p.22; Richard Marks and Ann Payne (eds), British Heraldry from Its Origins to c.1800, (London: British Museum Publications Ltd for the Trustees of the British Museum and the British Library, 1978); Richard Cust, ‘Heraldry and Gentry Communities in Shakespeare's England’, in Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England, ed. by Nigel Ramsay (Donington, Lincolnshire:

Shaun Tyas, 2014), p. 191; Richard Cust, ‘Catholicism, Antiquarianism and Gentry Honour: The Writings of Sir Thomas Shirley’, Midland History, 23 (1998), pp. 41-70; Cust, ‘William Dugdale and the Honour Politics of Stuart Warwickshire’, in William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1685, ed. by Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 89-108; See also: Richard Cust, ‘The Material Culture of Lineage in late-Tudor and early-Stuart England’, in Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling, David Gaimster (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (London : Routledge, 2016), pp.247-274, Richard Cust, 'Heraldry and Gentry Communities in Shakespeare's England', in Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare's England, ed. by Nigel Ramsay (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas, 2014), pp.

190-203; Robert Tittler, Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England, 1540-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter Six, pp. 102-124; Robert Tittler, 'Early Stuart Chester as a Centre for Regional Portraiture', Urban History, 41 (2014), pp. 3-21; Archer , 'Up and Down the Social Ladder’.

15 Richard Cust, 'William Dugdale and the Honour Politics of Stuart Warwickshire', in William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1685, ed. by Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2009), p. 96.

16 Nigel Llewellyn, ‘Claims to Status through Visual Codes: Heraldry on Post-Reformation Funeral Monuments’, in Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. by S. Anglo (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), pp. 145-60;

17 Astri Erll, ‘Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies’, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 42 (2011), p. 306.

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heroic pasts which served as models for subsequent generations, reinforcing a family’s sense of itself as deserving of privilege and fostering a sense of belonging.

While the significance of heraldry in early modern portraits of married couples and individual sitters has been the subject of scholarly debate, far less attention has been paid to its place in the portraits of family groups.¹⁸ This is a surprising omission considering the close association between family portraiture and heraldry in the vocabulary of lineage; this omission will be addressed here, where it will be argued that while the use of heraldry in all contexts had a common purpose, which was to construct an elite identity for the family, a close study of its use in family portraits can reveal subtler and more complex functions. This part of the chapter will begin by exploring some general themes and then focus more closely on portraits of the Kaye and Cornewall families of Yorkshire and Shropshire respectively, drawing particular attention to the ways in which heraldic imagery combines with other details to legitimise high status and speculating on some of the ways in which these portraits might have been used and viewed.

Heraldic imagery was not confined to the families of the aristocracy and upper gentry and was often part of decorative schemes in the homes of the minor gentry and middling sort.¹⁹ Most portraits which display heraldry, particularly where it appears in portraits of minor families, demonstrate the traditional styles and techniques of early native portrait painters. In the Hill portrait for example, the coat of arms is depicted with care, using strong bright colours while the rest of the portrait is a crude, near monochrome rendering of the family scene. This draws attention to the fact that the principal mode of representation in

18 Karen Hearn, ‘Heraldry in Tudor and Jacobean Portraits’, in Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England, ed. by Nigel Ramsay (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas, 2014), pp. 220-35; Robert Tittler, Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England, 1540-1640 (Oxford University Press, 2012)., pp. 102-124; Tarnya Cooper, Citizen Portrait: Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 31-35.

19 T. Hamling, ‘"Wanting Arms": Heraldic Decoration in Lesser Houses,’ in Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England, ed. by Nigel Ramsay (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014).

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Elizabeth Hill’s portrait was emblematic and constrained by the skills and materials available to the provincial painter she commissioned. Coats of arms were prominent in portraits of royal and aristocratic sitters throughout the late medieval and Tudor periods and was a practice adopted by ambitious families lower down the social scale by the first half of the sixteenth century. Portraits of Lady Anne Aldersley and her children of c. 1560 (Fig. 1:1), the family portrait of the Kaye family, known as The Woodsome Panels of 1567 and The

Triptych Memorial to the Cornewall Family of 1588 are examples (Figs 4:2 and 4:3). Among

the latest family portraits to include heraldic imagery were the Holme Family portrait of 1628 (Fig.2:4), the Double Portrait of Mary, Lady Bowes and her son Thomas of 1630 (Fig. 4:4) and the portrait of Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of his Wife of 1635 (Fig. 6:3).

Figure 4:2 English School, The Woodsome Panels, 1567, oil on panel, The Tolson Museum, Kirklees, Yorkshire

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Figure 4:3 Melchior Salabos, Triptych Memorial to the Cornewall Family (open), 1588, oil on panel, St Mary's Church, Burford, Salop

Figure 4:4 English School, Double Portrait of Mary, Lady Bowes, aged 24, and her Eldest Son, Thomas, 1630, private collection.

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Portraits which include heraldry were mounted on a range of supports including vellum, parchment, board and canvas and displayed in a variety of forms from the parchment roll to the traditional wall hung format. Most portraits were intended for display in domestic contexts although there was also a small number which were displayed in churches.²⁰

Particularly notable for their extravagant use of heraldry is a group of four portraits which take the form of folding panels with central images and side panels, the panels perhaps included to accommodate large quantities of heraldic shields.²¹

The position of coats of arms on the portrait’s surface is highly variable; most

commonly they appear in the top section and on a dark background, associated with the heads of the sitters, as for example in the portrait of Lady Ann Fitton and her children (Fig. 4:5) and that of Sir Hervey Bagot and his third son Hervey (Fig. 4:6).

Figure 4:5 Attributed to Zuccarro, Ann, Lady Fitton with two of her children, Edward and Mary, 1609, oil on canvas, Gawsworth Hall, Cheshire

20 Including: British School, Triptych portrait of the St John family (1615), St Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoze;

Melchior Salabos, Triptych Memorial to the Cornewall Family, 1588, oil on panel; St Mary’s Church, Burford, Salop and Unknown artist, The Hill family, 1590, oil on stone, St. Luke’s Church, Ullingswick, Herefordshire.

21 British School, Triptych portrait of the St John family (1615), St Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoze; English School, The Woodsome Panels, 1567, oil on panel, The Tolson Museum, Kirklees, Yorkshire; Melchior Salabos, Triptych Memorial to the Cornewall Family, 1588, oil on panel, St Mary’s Church, Burford, Salop;

English School, The Holme Family, 1628, oil on panel with carved decoration, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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Figure 4:6 Unknown Artist, Sir Hervey Bagot and his third son Hervey, 1627, oil on canvas, Blithfield Hall, Staffordshire

Sometimes coats of arms occupy a less straightforward place within the picture frame, the portrait of three generations of the Bartholomew family, (Fig. 1:2), for example, displays a coat of arms on a shield held by the oldest son, clearly signalling his role as inheritor and perpetuator of the family name and honour.

The portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family by Rowland Lockey of 1593, (Fig.

4:7) displays two coats of arms above the heads of the figures to whom they relate in the traditional manner.²² Hanging between these is a portrait of Anne More (née Cresacre) (1511-1577), the wife of John More, Sir Thomas More’s son, with her own arms, making this a coat of arms in a small portrait, within a larger portrait. This is a complex layering of images which includes both living and dead family members which serves to unite the portrait’s narrative threads of long lineage, intergenerational virtue and faith beyond the memories of the commissioning generation.²³ The combined use of images of dead relatives, coats of arms and mimetic representations, indicated the continued presence of the dead in the domestic context of the family, constantly rehearsing and reminding younger generations of their place in the family structure, literally keeping them under the eyes of their ancestors. This portrait

22 National Portrait Gallery, ‘Sir Thomas More, His Father, His Household and His Descendants’, (2017) [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01734/Sir-Thomas-More-his-father-his-household-and-his-descendants?search=ap&subj=234%3BBooks+and+libraries&rNo=5, Accessed May 2017].

23 Ibid.

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has a complex provenance and is based on a number of drawings of Sir Thomas More and his household by Hans Holbein, of 1527. It is interesting to note that the original sketch from which the Lockley portrait was probably copied (Fig. 5:1) is dated to 1527, sixty six years earlier but has no coats of arms, these were presumably inserted to suit the requirements of the patron, probably Thomas More II, the grandson of Sir Thomas More.²⁴

Figure 4:7 Rowland Lockey, after Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Thomas More, his Father, his Household and his Descendants, 1593, oil on canvas, NPG

About fourteen family portraits combine mimetic portraits with heraldry while others such as the Towneley portrait includes a decorative family trees hung with shields, the twining branches of a vine on the male side and a rose on the female, all hung with heraldic

24 [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01734/Sir-Thomas-More-his-father-his-household-and-his-descendants#sitter, Accessed July 7^th 2017]; The original painting by Holbein, based on the drawings, was destroyed but remains in copies by Rowland Lockley; another copy, a cabinet miniature is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01734/Sir-Thomas-More-his-father-his-household-and-his-descendants?LinkID=mp03161&role=sit&rNo=0];

In document Facing the family: Group portraits and the construction of identity within early modern families (Page 156-189)