three beautiful windows; a chamber in the thickness of the south wall
preventing a similar window in that wall. The fireplace is of much the
same general character as the last one, but has the spandrils filled with
foliage, and the place of the roundels is taken by ten panels, ornamented
with foliated tracery, making altogether an exceedingly delicate
architectural composition. Alternating with the treasurer’s purse are
the shields of Bernak, Deincourt, Driby, Cromwell, and Tattershall. In
the thickness of the eastern wall of this floor is a beautifully vaulted
gallery, 38 feet in length, vaulted in five compartments, with diagonal
ribs of brickwork; on the connecting bosses are the shields of Driby,
Tattershall, Deincourt, and Cromwell. It is lit by three fine mullioned
and traceried windows.
The large room on the third floor has very similar windows to the
others, and the fireplace also is very like that in the floor beneath;
but the treasurer’s purse has invaded the spandrils, and the shields
of Deincourt, Driby—one broken and defaced—Cromwell, and Bernak being
separated by small treasurer’s purses, are enclosed in eleven dainty
panels, with different tracery. On this floor in the eastern wall are
two rooms even more richly vaulted than the gallery below, the spandrils
being filled in with quatrefoils of moulded brickwork, enriched with the
shields of Tattershall, Cromwell, Deincourt, and D’Albini (or Beler).
The floors of these great rooms were constructed of timber, and
plastered; each floor resting on four great massive girders of oak, the
upper one having a lead roof. Till a few years ago there were still
four beams remaining _in situ_, but after the castle was struck by
lightning, and one beam was thrown down, the others were taken down to
avoid the chances of any accident. The lightning seems to have struck
the north-east tower (which alone had kept its conical roof), and jumped
across to the western wall, where it tore out the external footings of
one window on each floor, till it reached the ground.
A very noticeable feature of Tattershall Castle is the covered gallery,
well supplied with loopholes, which runs from turret to turret, partly
projecting over the machicolations of the walls, having had above a
parapeted and embattled platform. These galleries upon the machicolations
are not uncommon in the châteaux of France. Visitors to the region of
the Loire will remember good instances of this feature in Langeais,
Azay-le-Rideau, and de L’Islette. A small staircase in the thickness of
the wall of the south-eastern turret continues from the large circular
staircase to the top of the turret. The turrets are battlemented, and
have brick-arched machicolations. They were in Buck’s time apparently
all roofed in with conical spirelets, terminating in fleurs-de-lys.
All these roofs now are gone. In these turrets are fireplaces, for, no
doubt, partly, the warder’s comfort, but also, possibly, for providing a
prompt supply of boiling oil or lead “or something humorous” wherewith
to discomfort the adversary beneath. And both in turrets and elsewhere
in the buildings the necessary garde-robes may be found. The chimney
stacks, on the east side particularly, must have added to the appearance
of the tower, as they were originally considerably higher than they are
now. Excepting the lightning stroke few modern events connected with the
castle have been more interesting than the fall of a lad of nine years
old, on June the 2nd, 1879, from the top wall of the keep to the floor
inside, a distance of 76 feet. He came off with a dislocated hip and
other bruises; but, like Joan of Arc’s 60 feet leap from Beaurevoir, “by
some miracle broke no bone in (his) body.”
It might be mentioned that the fireplaces, which have been rather
minutely described, are believed to have been carefully studied by Pugin
when he was engaged in designing the internal decoration and fittings of
the Houses of Parliament. About four miles north of Tattershall are the
remains of another tower—Tower-le-Moor—of the same date, construction,
and materials as Tattershall Castle. It was probably built by Lord
Cromwell as a hunting-box, and was about 60 feet high. Only one angle of
it exists now; considerably more is seen in Buck’s print of it in 1727.
Since this article was written, the property has been sold to Mr. Albert
Ball, J.P., of Nottingham, who is, I believe, quite sensible of the great
value to the nation of his new possession.
TATTERSHALL CHURCH
There are no indications existing at Tattershall of any earlier church
than the present one, at least above ground—for foundations have been
discovered beneath the south transept floor, which have no apparent
connection with the church as it now is—except perhaps the font, which,
as far as its base and stem is concerned, is of Decorated (_i.e._
fourteenth century) date. That there was an earlier church is certain
for the following reasons. In 1323 Joan de Driby wished to assign,
amongst other items, “the advowsons of the Church of the said Manor
of Tatreshale, &c., to Gilbert de Bernak, parson of the Church of
Tatishale,” &c. “The said church is worth twenty marks by the year.”
Also on the choir steps is the brass of a former steward of Ralph, Lord
Cromwell, _i.e._ Hugh de Gondeby, who died in 1411. And in the will of
the founder, Ralph, Lord Cromwell (of whom there has been much to say in
recording the history of the castle), dated 1451, it is directed that he
was to be buried in the middle of the choir of Tattershall Collegiate
Church, until the said church is rebuilt, and then to be removed and
buried in the middle of the new church, but so that no impediment be
placed in the way of going in or going out to those ministering around
the divine offices in the aforesaid choir. And in Bishop Alnwick’s
visitation of his cathedral in 1440[95] there is mention made of the
erection of the parish church into a collegiate one by the Treasurer of
England. The present building was, in part at least, erected by Ralph,
third Lord Cromwell, as a collegiate church dedicated in honour of the
Holy Trinity. He obtained a licence from the Crown in 1439 to endow it
for the support of seven priests, one of whom was to be the warden, six
secular clerks, and six choristers, and he also founded almshouses for
thirteen poor persons of either sex, to be under the supervision of the
warden of the college. The chaplains were to maintain divine service
perpetually, to pray for the King, alive or dead, and for the souls of
the founder, and of his grandmother, Dame Matilda Cromwell.
In 1519 Bishop Atwater visited Tattershall, and remarked that the
choristers were only taught to sing, whereas they ought also to be
instructed in grammar, and he noticed that the chaplains were in the
habit of dressing like laymen, so he ordered them in future to dress as
priests, according to their statutes. The seal of the college represented
the Trinity in a canopied niche, beneath being a shield of arms, Cromwell
and Tattershall quarterly. The college was dissolved in 1545, and was
granted to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the King’s brother-in-law,
to whom the adjacent castle and manor had come in 1520. The buildings
of this college, which were on the south side of the church, have
disappeared. The almshouses, on the north side of the church, are
probably on their original site.
The church, which is situated about eighty yards east of the castle, is a
large and very spacious cruciform structure of stone (probably Ancaster,
which has weathered well, and looks in many places as though it had been
worked a year or two ago), consisting of nave, with aisles, choir, north
and south transepts, a north porch, doorways in the west and north aisle
of nave, south transept, and door in choir, and western tower. There have
been cloisters on the south side of the choir to which this door gives
entrance, and two porches corresponding to that existing on the north
side, and the other at the south end of the south transept.
It is 180 feet long, the transepts together are 100 feet in length,
the nave 60 feet wide, the chancel 26 feet, and the transepts 20 feet.
Over the entrance to the north porch is a niche for a statue, below a
handsome cross, and above a shield, with the coat of arms of William of
Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, to whom some part of the architectural
design of the castle has been attributed (he is supposed to have finished
this church after the founder’s death), _i.e._ fusilly ermine and sable,
and on a chief sable, three lilies slipped. Over the south porch was a
similar shield according to Holles; in the windows above both porches
was the inscription: “Orate pro anima Radulphi nuper domini de Cromwell
et Tateshall, Thesaurarii Anglie et fundatoris hujus Collegii.” On the
west side of the door of the north porch is a holy water stoup. Over
the east window of the choir is another niche, probably for the Holy
Trinity. The tower has a fine square-headed western doorway beneath a
band of panels containing blank shields, a five-light window above,
then a small square-headed light, and three-light belfry windows. The
parapet is now plain, with crocketed angle pinnacles, which end, below
the parapet, in double angular buttresses, a feature not uncommon in
Perpendicular towers, but not much to be admired—especially here, as it
makes the tower look rather low and squat. There is a staircase in the
south-west angle of the tower, leading also on to the aisle roof. At the
junction of the choir and south transept is a circular turret, in which
is a staircase from the pulpitum or choir screen, up to the transept
and nave roofs: it has been higher, and probably was used, as in so many
other Lincolnshire churches, as a Sanctus bell-turret. The first great
impression gained on entering the chancel is its exceeding lightsomeness,
the window surface is very extensive, compared with the wall space, and
unfortunately, except in the east window, all the coloured glass is gone.
This came about in 1759, from the then Lord Fortescue giving the then
Earl of Exeter the glass from the windows to put in St. Martin’s Church,
Stamford,[96] on condition that the Tattershall windows should be glazed
with plain glass. This condition was not observed for many years, and
the interior of the church, particularly of the choir, suffered terribly
from exposure and neglect. The windows of the nave and transepts, of
four bays, are of good design, as is the clerestory range over nave and
transepts, of three lights, but the north and south transept end windows
are very fine, and of almost identical pattern with those in King’s
College Chapel, Cambridge, except that the latter have five bays, and
Tattershall six, and at Tattershall, throughout all the windows, there is
a complete absence of cusps.
[Illustration: “PULPITUM” OF TATTERSHALL COLLEGIATE CHURCH, FROM THE
EAST.]
The small amount of painted glass that was left has been collected
together in the east window of the choir, where can be recognised the
Treasurer’s badge, and the shield of Tattershall, &c. A few remains exist
of the stalls, which were dated 1424, in an inscription on them, and
their stone quatrefoiled base (similar to that of the stalls in Lincoln
Minster) is now placed in the nave. There are fine sedilia and a piscina
in the south wall of the choir, and angels on the corbels of its roof,
holding shields with instruments of the Passion on them. There are two
interesting wooden pulpits, and a portion of a cornice of wood along
the top of the wall in the nave above the south aisle windows. In the
north transept are now carefully fixed the series of fine monumental
brasses—one to Ralph, Lord Treasurer Cromwell (the founder of the
church), and his wife; to William Moor, second Provost of the College; to
Joan, Lady Cromwell; to Matilda, Lady Willoughby de Eresby; to another
Provost of the College, possibly John Gyger; to William Symson, chaplain
of Edward Hevyn, who was steward to the Countess of Richmond, and who
founded a chantry in this transept, where is a piscina (as there is also
in the south transept). A small brass to the memory of Hugh de Gondeby,
1411, is in the centre of the choir pavement. The fine and interesting
choir screen and loft (pulpitum) is dealt with at length in another
chapter by the writer.
THE SEPULCHRAL BRASSES OF LINCOLNSHIRE
BY THE REV. G.E. JEANS, M.A., F.S.A.
I propose in this paper to establish the point that Lincolnshire has
not hitherto been given sufficient credit among antiquaries in general
for its share in the great national treasure of monumental brasses.
Brasses are in themselves among the most beautiful and the most durable
of monumental records. They can reproduce details of armour and costume
with a delicacy which is scarcely possible in the most sumptuous stone
or marble monuments. The great majority are of such convenient size
that they can be rubbed on a single large sheet of paper; and, unlike
altar-tombs, can be studied all at once. And furthermore, for these and
other reasons, brasses have long attracted a special body of devotees
among antiquaries, some of whom will rub and record a brass with loving
zeal, while they will hardly look at the church which contains it, or
at any of its other records in tomb or window. Thus it may be that our
brasses have been better examined and figured than any other form of
monumental effigy.
Nevertheless, I may claim to have shown in my list of Lincolnshire
brasses, republished from _Lincolnshire Notes and Queries_, that a good
deal still remained unexplored in this and, therefore, probably in
other counties. Brass-lovers (no convenient single name has yet been
invented) have naturally turned to the counties where brasses are to be
found in almost every church, such as Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent, or the
northern and eastern ring of London; and the best of these have been
splendidly illustrated in different forms by J.S. Cotman, the artist
(1819), Mr. E.M. Beloe, the Rev. E. Farrer, W.D. Belcher, and others.
None but casual single illustrations of the Lincolnshire brasses have
been published. But I should think that none of those who saw Mr. William
Scorer’s magnificent collection of rubbings of them, at the meeting of
the Archæological Institute at Lincoln in July 1909, could doubt the
claim of Lincolnshire to a much higher place than has been generally
granted hitherto among the counties of brasses. The great long series
in Boston Church, and the glorious, though fearfully maltreated, one in
Tattershall Church were seen on that occasion _in situ_, and there is
another great display in the county at All Saints’, Stamford, besides the
many instances of one noble brass, or sometimes two, as at Spilsby and
Gunby St. Peter’s. One of the most learned and accurate brass-lovers I
have ever met, the late Rev. C. G. R. Birch, told me that in his opinion
Lincolnshire, in the proportion of _valuable_ brasses to the whole number
remaining, stood perhaps first among the counties.
* * * * *
I will now place the brasses under different categories to show how well
Lincolnshire would come out in a County Championship in almost every
class.
First would come the _series_, say of not less than six, in a single
church. These are of course rare everywhere. Even in a county so
overflowing with brasses as Norfolk, only about half-a-dozen churches
would be able to qualify. Lincolnshire, as I have just said, has three.
That in Tattershall Church is beyond all doubt one of the finest series
in England, in spite of its heartrending maltreatment. There are seven
brasses here, of which no less than four are of the first rank, namely,
the great one of Lord Treasurer Cromwell, those of his two nieces—Joan,
Lady Cromwell, and Matilda, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby—and the brass of a
Provost of the College. Besides these there are two interesting brasses
of priests and one of a civilian, 1411. Every brass in this noble set
deserves study.
Next comes Boston, which, as being almost the greatest of English ports
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, having a special connection
with the Low Countries, and being one of the great centres of merchant
guilds, must at one time have been among the richest in England in
this kind of memorial. Here there are no less than seventeen brasses,
including what are little more than fragments, ten of which are effigies
or the remains of figure brasses. Two of these, those of Walter Pescod
and his wife and the unnamed priest of about 1400, are of the first rank,
and exceedingly valuable for the figures of saints in the canopy shafts
of the former and the orphreys of the latter.
All Saints’, Stamford, has eight brasses, six of which are with effigies,
one very fine and all interesting.
We turn now to the _earliest_ brasses, which are of course very valuable.
The first period in most books is taken to be the reigns of the first
two Edwards, 1272-1327; and of this period there are only nineteen
or perhaps twenty in all England, of which Lincolnshire has two, at
Buslingthorpe and Croft. Everybody knows that the premier brass is Sir
John d’Aubernoun’s at Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, because that is dated
1277. But the extremely interesting half effigy of Sir Richard de
Boselyngthorp, unfortunately not dated, is certainly not much later than
Sir John d’Aubernoun, and, as I suggested and Mr. Macklin agrees, may be
even a little earlier. Buslingthorpe is a very remote church, and there
is no rectory house near, so it is to be hoped that some special care is
taken about this precious monument. The one at Croft is somewhat similar,
but is generally regarded as from ten to twenty years later.
Taking now the classes of people who are represented in effigies, we may
regard them as mainly coming under five heads—knights or noblemen in
armour, priests, ladies, merchants, or judges. How does the county come
out in these?
[Illustration: 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.
I must here mention two very singular brasses to be found in the county.
I do not know of any instance of bodily infirmity commemorated except in
the curious brass of William Palmer, 1520, at Ingoldmells. He has beside
him a “stilt” or crutch, and in the inscription he is called, “William
Palmer wyth yᵉ stylt.”