It is usually asserted that the dog appears at the feet of the lady in
monumental brasses as a symbol of fidelity; while the lion accompanies her
lord as the emblem of strength and courage. These distinctions, however, do
not appear to have been much attended to. The dog, in most cases a
greyhound, very frequently appears at the feet of a knight or civilian, as
on the brasses of the Earl of Warwick, 1401, Sir John Falstolf at Oulton,
1445, Sir John Leventhorpe at Sawbridgeworth, 1433, Sir Reginald de Cobham
at Lingfield, 1403, Richard Purdaunce, Mayor of Norwich, 1436, and Peter
Halle, Esquire, at Herne, Kent, 1420. Sir John Botiler, at St. Bride's,
Glamorganshire, 1285, has a dragon; and on the brass of Alan Fleming, at
Newark, 1361, appears a lion with a human face seizing a smaller lion. On a
very late brass of Sir Edward Warner, at Little Plumstead, Norfolk, 1565,
appears a greyhound, a full century after the date assigned by B. H. ALFORD
for the cessation of these symbolical figures.
Sometimes the lady has two little dogs, as Lady Bagot, at Baginton,
Warwickshire, 1407; and in one instance, that of Lady Peryent, at Digswell,
Herts, 1415, there is a hedgehog, the meaning of which is sufficiently
obvious. B. H. ALFORD, in noticing the omission of the dog in the brass of
Lady Camoys at Trotton, 1424, has not mentioned a singular substitute which
is found for it, namely, the figure of a boy or young man, standing by the
lady's right foot: but what this means I cannot attempt to determine;
perhaps her only son.
It may be interesting to add that some brasses of ecclesiastics exhibit
strange figures, not easy to interpret, if meant as symbolical. The brass
at {250} Oulton, of the priest ---- de Bacon, 1310, has a lion; that of the
Abbot Delamere, at St. Albans, 1375, two dragons; that of a priest at North
Mimms, about 1360, a stag; and, still more extraordinary, that of Laurence
Seymour, a priest, at Higham Ferrers, 1337, two dogs contending for a bone.