No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
A presentation drawing and wall monument (1951) at Wollaton, Notts., erected in memory of Sir Henry Willoughby, can be associated with the Southwark stone-carving workshops on the basis of stylistic evidence. This casts new light on the patronage of Sir Francis Willoughby, builder of Wollaton Hall (1588), who commissioned the monument, and emphasizes the importance of London as a centre of high-quality works of art. Finally, the description of a group of contemporary tombs, linked by a distinctive motif, opens up the possibility of a specific attribution, perhaps to the workshop of Richard Stevens.
1 The drawing is catalogued as Middleton (hereafter Mi) F4/4 in the Manuscripts Department of the University of Nottingham Library. It measures 45 by 39-5 cm. and is coloured in. red, black and gold to indicate ranee (columns, fillets and details), touch (plaque) and gilt (rosettes and details). The monument, which has been restored and repainted, is located on the north chancel wall of St Leonard's Church, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire.
2 Mi F 4/2. The text of the inscription on the tomb reads as follows:
Henricus Willughby Armiger, et Anna uxor eius
Henrici Grey, Ducis Suffolciae soror,
Hie foeliciter in Domino Obdormiunt
IIIe obit in bello contra Rebelles in Norfolcia 1548*
IIIa occubuit anno Salutis nostrae 1546
Tres Liberos Susceperunt
Thomam, qui obit sine prole superstite
Franciscum Willughby Equitem auratum, et
Margaretam nuptam Mathaeo Arundell, Militi
Optimiis Parentibus
Franciscus filium, maeroris [sic] et amoris ergo
Hoc monumentum posuit. 1591
The date of Willoughby's death is incorrect; he died in 1549. The text is reproduced in Thoroton, J., Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (London, 1677), 1, 226Google Scholar.
4 See Historical Manuscripts Commission (hereafter H.M.C.), Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (1911) (hereafter Middleton), 421–51,Google Scholar esp. 432, and Mi A 57, f. 22 and passim; Mi A 64, 66, 69. For Gower, See Strong, R., The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (London, 1969), 167–84, andGoogle ScholarGoodison, J. W., ‘George Gower Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth’, Burlington Mag. xc (1948), 261–4.Google Scholar Sir Francis Willoughby's activities as a patron and the history of Wollaton Hall are covered in detail in Friedman, A. T., ‘Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family in the Sixteenth Century’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1980Google Scholar.
4 For Smythson and his co-workers, see Girouard, M., Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (London, 1983), passimxsGoogle Scholar.
5 Hardwick is treated fully ibid., ch. 4. See also Stallybrass, B., ‘Bess of Hardwick's buildings and building accounts’, Archaeologia, lxiv (1913). 347–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 See Girouard, M., ‘The Smythson Collection’, Architect. Hist, v (1962), 90Google Scholar(I/25.2-7) and passim.
7 According to Bess's will of 1601, the tomb was already finished. She died in 1608. See Girouard, , op. cit. (note 6),Google Scholar 1/6; 30. Other examples among the Smythson drawings in the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, are I/5; II/39 and II/40; as Girouard noted in his catalogue, I/22 is probably a survey drawing and not an original design.
8 Girouard, , op. cit. (note 6), 38–9;Google Scholar and op. cit. (note 4), 88-90.
9 Ibid. 87, 88, 146-7; Stallybrass, , op. cit. (note 5), 356Google Scholar.
10 Girouard, , op. cit. (note 4), 97, 146–7Google Scholar and figs. 49, 50, 83, 84. The Wollaton chimney-piece does not reproduce the Serlian model exactly. I wish to thank Mr Brian Playle, Assistant Director for Museums, City of Nottingham, and the Director of Wollaton Hall, for providing me with information about the materials used in the Great Hall chimney-piece. His help with this and other research has been invaluable.
11 Cassandra, , Chandos, Duchess of, The Continuation of the History of the Willoughby Family, ed. Wood, A. C. (Eton, Windsor, 1958), 67–8.Google Scholar See also Mi LM 27, f. 72.
12 Chandos, , op. cit. (note 11), 68Google Scholar; Mi LM 27, f. 72.
13 The obelisks with the arms of the Willoughby and Littleton families (representing Sir Francis and his wife) have been reversed left and right; this is probably the result of a twentieth-century restoration. For the heraldic devices of the families, see Marshall, G. W. (ed.), Visitation of Nottinghamshire in 1569 and 1614, Harleian Soc. (London, 1878), 145–9, andGoogle ScholarButler, A. T. (ed.), Visitation of Worcestershire, 1634, Harleian Soc. (London, 1938), 61–4Google Scholar.
14 See Whinney, M., Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830 (Harmondsworth, 1964), chs. 2 and 3Google Scholar; Mann, J. G., ‘English church monuments 1536-1625’, Walpole Soc. xxi (1933), 1–22; andGoogle ScholarEsdaile, K., ‘The part played by refugee sculptors 1600-1750’, Proc. Hug. Soc. iii (1949), 254–62Google Scholar.
15 Clifton died in 1587; the monument was erected by his second wife, whose death date is left blank. See Chatwin, Philip, ‘Monumental effigies of the county of Warwick (Pt. III)’, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans, xlvii (1922), 136–68, andGoogle ScholarGodfrey, J. T., Notes on the Churches of Nottinghamshire: Hundred of Rushcliffe (London, 1887),Google Scholar ‘Clifton’. The tomb is illustrated in Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire, 2nd edn. (Harmondsworth, 1979),Google Scholar fig. 65; the tombs of Thomas Fermor (1582) at Somerton, Oxfordshire, and Sir Humphrey Bradbourne (d. 1581) at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, also by the Royleys, are illustrated in Mann, , op. cit. (note 14),Google Scholar figs, xa, xb, and xiib. The Royleys' contracts for the Fermor tomb and for the John Shirley monument (1585) at Breedon, Leicestershire, are reproduced in Crossley, F. H., English Church Monuments A.D. 1150-1550 (London, 1921), 32–33, andGoogle ScholarShirley, E. P., Stemmata Shirleiana (London, 1873), 76–8Google Scholar.
16 The Fermor tomb cost £20; the Shirley tomb £22. By contrast, the tombs of the 3rd and 4th Earls of Rutland (with two effigies on each) at Bottesford, Leicestershire, cost £100 apiece. For the Rutland Monuments, see Manners, Lady Victoria, ‘The Rutland Monuments in Bottesford Church’, Art J., 1903, 269–74, 289-95. 335-39Google Scholar.
17 For Clifton's visits to Wollaton Hall, see Middleton, 456, 457.
18 A similar pattern in patronage is described by Llewellyn, Nigel in his ‘John Weever and English Funeral Monuments of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, 2 vols., unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1983.Google Scholar I am grateful to Dr Llewellyn for sharing his notes on the Wollaton monument with me.
19 Mi A 60/1.
20 See H. M. C., Rutland, 1, 124, 220Google Scholar; IV, 388-9, 393. A French edition of Machiavelli's, Discorsi (1576)Google Scholar inscribed with the name of Edward, 3rd Earl of Rutland, was included in the sale of the Wollaton Library at Christie's in June 1925 (Lot no. 426). For the family history, see Stone, L., ‘The Manners Earls of Rutland’, in Family and Fortune (Oxford, 1973), ch. 6Google Scholar.
21 The relevant documents are calendared in H. M. C., Rutland, iv, 396–9,Google Scholar 402 and 404-5. Various accounts and contracts relating to the Manners family tombs are reproduced and discusssed in Manners, , op. cit. (note 16). For the Johnsons, seeGoogle ScholarEsdaile, K., ‘Some fellow citizens of Shakespeare in Southwark‘, Essays & Studies, n.s. v (1952), 26–31,Google Scholar and her ‘Notes on three monumental drawings from Sir Edward Dering's Collections in the library of the Society of Antiquaries’, Arch. Cant, xlvii (1935), 219–34.Google Scholar The General Secretary and the Librarian of the Society of Antiquaries very kindly gave permission for me to study the drawings mentioned in that essay and to obtain photographs of one of them.
22 See Mi A 70 (205), f. 8r, which records a payment of i8di. to John Steele on 28th August ‘for serving the masons in the church 3 days’. Further, the draft of the inscription in Sir Francis's hand (Mi F4/4) includes the date 21st June.
23 Mi A 60/5, 60/6 and 60/7; H. M. C., Rutland, IV, 404–5.Google Scholar Matthews's work is discussed in Friedman, , op. cit. (note 3), 154–6Google Scholar.
24 The drawings are in the collection of Lord Gage at Firle Place. See note 28 below.
25 The problem is discussed by Kemp, B., English Church Monuments (London, 1980), ch. 3, esp. 67–70.Google Scholar For drawings of tombs in a similar style by an unknown workshop see ‘The Lumley Inventories’, Walpole Soc. vi (1917–1918), pls. IVa, IVb and p. 15Google Scholar.
26 Whinney, op. cit. (note 14), 16Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 19-21. Steven's will, P. C. C. Harington 72,Google Scholar is dated 1592; his death occurred the year before the Hatton tomb was set up. See Esdaile, K., English Church Monuments 1510 to 1840 (London, 1946), 47–8Google Scholar.
28 The Wriothesley tomb (illustrated in Pevsner, , Hampshire, fig. 50)Google Scholar is discussed by Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 21), 26–7.Google Scholar The relevant documents, including a bond signed by Johnson in which he agrees to complete the work for £300, are in the Hampshire Record Office. Mr Whittick of the East Sussex Record Office very kindly confirmed this information and helped me obtain photographs of the Gage drawings in the Collection of Lord Gage at Firle Place, Sussex. The Gage monuments are attributed to the Johnsons on the basis of these three drawings. They are described by Mrs Davidson-Houston, C. E. D., ‘Sussex monumental brasses’, Sussex Arch. Soc. lxxvii (1936), 130 ff., and byGoogle ScholarEsdaile, , ‘The Gage Monuments, Firle’, Sussex Notes & Queries, ii (1928-1929), 175–7Google Scholar(where the sketch for the John Gage brass is reproduced), and ‘The Gage Monuments at Firle and their author’, Sussex Notes & Queries, viii (1940), 162–4.Google Scholar The sketch for the John Gage tomb chest is reproduced in Country Life, cxvii (17th Feb. 1955), 484Google Scholar; this reference was kindly supplied by Mr Whittick.
29 Rowse, L., Raleigh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), 196,CrossRefGoogle Scholar describes a diary entry recording a purchase of a chimney-piece from ‘Garret the marble-carver of Southwark’ for £60. For Hatfield see Stone, L., ‘The building of Hatfield House’, Arch. J. cxii (1955). 127Google Scholar.
30 For Colt, see D.N.B. and Whinney, , op. cit. (note 14), 19–21.Google Scholar The Salisbury tomb is illustrated ibid., pls. 12 and 13.
31 The Colt drawings are discussed and reproduced in Harris, J., A Catalogue of British Drawings in American Collections (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1971), 76–8.Google Scholar The contract is reproduced in Whittaker, T. D., Loides and Elmete (Leeds, 1816), 322–3Google Scholar.
32 Kemp, , op. cit. (note 25),Google Scholar fig. 67 illustrates the Bishop Cotton tomb of 1621 in Exeter Cathedral which has an achievement of similar design. In the spandrels of this monument are personifications of Time and Transience derived from the Hatton tomb of 1593 (p1. Lxxivb). These also appear on the Denny tomb (see note 36 below) of 1600 by B. Atye and I. James, a former pupil of Stevens.
33 For Stevens, see Cust, L., ‘Foreign artists of the Reformed Religion working in London from about 1560 to 1660’, Proc. Hug. Soc. vii (1901-1904), 45–82,Google Scholar and Returns of Aliens, Hug. Soc. Pubs. 10 (1900-1908), pt. 1, 465Google Scholar; pt. 2, 209, 292, 331, 378, 414; pt. 3, 362. Mrs Esdaile has suggested that he worked with the Johnsons, although there is no secure evidence for this; see her English Monumental Sculpture since the Renaissance (London, 1927), 121Google Scholar.
34 The contract is quoted in ‘The Notebooks of George Vertue’, Walpole Soc. xxiv (1935-1936), 143.Google Scholar The monument is illustrated and discussed by Chancellor, F., The Ancient Sepulchral Monuments of Essex (London, 1890), pl. xv and pp. 33–4Google Scholar.
35 P.C.C. Leicester 82.
36 I strongly suspect that the carver of the rather crude Puckering effigies was Isaac James, Steven‘s former pupil, or Bartholomew Atye, his co-worker. These two were responsible for the Denny tomb at Waltham Abbey, Essex of 1600, where the carving of the effigy is very close, and the Thomas Lucy tomb at Charlcote, Warwickshire, 1601. See Fowler, R. C., ‘The Denny Monument in Waltham Abbey Church’, Essex Arch. Soc. xvi (1923), 57–9, andGoogle ScholarFairfax-Lucy, A., Charlcote and the Lucys (London, 1958), 104–5.Google ScholarLlewellyn, , op. cit. (note 18), 55,Google Scholar also links James to the monument of Lady Bridget Russell (d. 1600), second wife of the 2nd Earl of Russell (John Lord Russell's father) through the patronage of Lord Norris, for whose tomb in Westminster (after 1606) James is known to have been responsible; see Esdaile, K., ‘A Westminster Abbey puzzle: the Norris Monument traced to Isaac James’, Country Life, cvii (17th Feb. 1950), 464Google Scholar.
37 For Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and widow of Sir Thomas Hoby, see D. N. B., ‘Russell’; Chamberlaine, John, Imitations of Original Drawings by Hans Holbein (London, 1792),Google Scholar ‘Lady Hoby’; and Meads, D. M., The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby (Boston, 1930), 13–32Google Scholar.
38 The text of the inscriptions is given in Dart, J., Westmonasterium (London, 1742), 1, 114–15Google Scholar.
39 Mi 1/13/4.
40 The high inflation rate in these years, as well as the increased demand for works of art, pushed prices up. For a summary of the economic situation, see Palliser, D. M., The Age of Elizabeth (Harlow, 1983), 130–60.Google ScholarStone's, Nicholas ‘Notebooks’ (Walpole Soc. vii (1918-1919))Google Scholar record that he charged £35 for a simple mural monument with a half-length bust in 1615.
41 See note 28 above.
42 See Smith, R. S., ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton 1500-1643’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Nottingham, 1964Google Scholar; and his ‘A woad-growing project at Wollaton in the 1580s’, Trans. Thornton Soc. lxv (1965), 27–46.Google Scholar For Sir Francis Willoughby‘s debts after his death in 1596, see British Library, Lans-downe, LXXXIV, 106.
43 Mi F 10/2 and Middleton, 155-6. I am very grateful to Rabbi Neil Kominsky of Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel, Harvard University, for translating the Hebrew and discussing the inscription with me.
44 This is, of course, noted with displeasure by Weever, J. in his Ancient Funerall Monuments (London, 1631), 10–11.Google Scholar He also decries the representation of fashionable clothes and ‘heathen gods and goddesses raised out of the dust with all their whirligiggs’. Nigel Llewellyn will shortly publish statistics documenting this rise in tomb production, a trend which he described in a lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in October 1983.
45 1 am grateful to Judith Hurtig, who is preparing a monograph on Stone, for suggesting that this point be emphasized.
46 Nicholas Stone, who had trained with Isaac James, maintained a workshop of five men besides himself in the 1620s to 1640s. See Fryer, A. C., ‘Monumental effigies sculptured by Nicholas Stone’, Arch. J. lxix (1912), 229–75, and hisGoogle Scholar‘Nicholas Stone's school of effigy-makers’, Arch. J. lxxi (1914), 75–85.Google ScholarStone's, ‘Notebooks’ (see note 40), 42,Google Scholar reveal that he carved both tombs and chimney-pieces.