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The Fabric of Piety: Aristocratic Women and Care of the Dead, 1450–1550

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Barbara J. Harris
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 308 - 335
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2009

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References

1 Almack, Richard, “Kedington alias Ketton, and the Barnardiston Family,” in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaelogy and Natural History (1864–74), 4:123–82, 131 and noteGoogle Scholar; SirPevsner, Nikolaus B. L. and Harris, John, Lincolnshire: Buildings of England (Baltimore, 1964), 254Google Scholar; Weever, John, Ancient Funeral Monuments (London, 1631), 733Google Scholar; Reverend King, Richard John, Handbook for Travellers in Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (London, 1892), 154Google Scholar.

2 Lincolnshire Notes and Queries: A Quarterly Journal 2 (1891): 287. The notes described the brass as being located on the pavement in the chancel, partly covered by the altar, and much injured.

3 Reverend Turnbull, William Hogarth, SS Peter and Paul Kedington: A Notable Church in East Anglia (London, 1934)Google Scholar, Henry E. Huntington Library (HEH), Esdaile Papers, box 17. Reprinted from the Journal of the British Archaeological Association 35, pt. 2 (1931): 1–34, with some additional matter.

4 Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, 287.

5 Visit by author, June 2003.

6 At some point the year 1520 was chiseled in incorrectly; she actually died in 1526; the date was not filled in when Weever visited the church in the seventeenth century.

7 Almack, “Kedington and the Barnardiston Family,” 132. Edward Goate, esquire, who married a female descendant, Mary Barnardiston, removed the window and reinstalled it in his manor house, Brenteleigh Hall, in the eighteenth century.

8 See, e.g., Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 29, 34–35Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (London, 1992), 131–34Google Scholar, and The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (London, 2001), 77; Finch, Jonathan, Church Monuments in Norfolk before 1850: An Archaeology of Commemoration (Oxford, 2000), 69Google Scholar.

9 According to Catherine E. King (Renaissance Women Patrons [Manchester, 1998]), the role of women in commissioning tombs, chapels, and hospitals was much more restricted in Renaissance Italy than in Yorkist and early Tudor England.

10 Kemp, Brian, English Church Monuments (London, 1980), 13, 59, 64Google Scholar. Kemp singles out seven tombs commissioned by women as outstanding examples of surviving Gothic monuments—the tombs of Thomas West, eighth lord de la Warr (d. 1525), at Broadwater, Sussex; of Sir Richard Knightley (d. 1534) at Fawsley, Northamptonshire; of Thomas Manners, first earl of Rutland (d. 1543) at Bottesford, Leicestershire; of Sir Fulke Grevill (d. 1559) at Alcester, Warwickshire; of Sir Thomas Giffard (d. 1560) at Brewood, Staffordshire; of Francis, earl of Huntington (d. 1560) at Ashby-de-la Zouche, Leicestershire; and of Sir William Petre (d. 1572) at Ingatestone, Essex.

11 See, e.g., Finch, Church Monuments, 70; Lewellyn, Nigel, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000), 272Google Scholar; Meale, Carole M., “The Manuscripts and Early Audience of the Middle English Prose Merlin,” in The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance: Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in Memory of Cedric e. Pickford, ed. Adams, Alison, Diverres, Armel H., Stern, Karen, and Varty, Kenneth (Wolfeboro, NH, 1986), 92–111Google Scholar, and Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge, 1993); Gibson, Gail McMurray, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1989), 82–83Google Scholar; Erler, Mary, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar; Goodall, John A., God's House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth-Century Almshouse (Burlington, VT, 2001)Google Scholar; Hicks, Michael, “Chantries, Obits and Almshouses: The Hungerford Foundations, 1325–1478,” 79–98, “The Piety of Margaret Lady Hungerford,” 99–118, and “St. Katherine's Hospital, Heytesbury: Prehistory, Foundation, and Re-foundation, 1409–79,” 119–32, all in his Richard III and His Rivals: Magnates and Their Motives in the Wars of the Roses (Rio Grande, OH, 1991)Google Scholar; Jones, Michael K. and Underwood, Malcolm G., The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), 72, 203–31, 232–50Google Scholar; Jones, Michael K., “Colleyweston: An Early Tudor Palace,” in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Williams, Daniel (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987), 129–41Google Scholar; and Coulstock, Patricia, The Collegiate Church of Wimborne Minster (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993)Google Scholar.

12 Daybell, James, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), 166–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 Davis, Natalie, “Boundaries and the Sense of Self,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Heller, Thomas C., Sosna, Morton, and Wellberry, David E. (Stanford, CA, 1986), 53–59.Google Scholar

15 Literary critics have pursued similar arguments. See, e.g., Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), 1–6Google Scholar; Low, Anthony, Aspects of Subjectivity: Society and Individuality from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare and Milton (Pittsburgh, 2003), 184–85Google Scholar; David Aers, “A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists; or, Reflections on Literary Critics Writing the ‘History of the Subject,’” in Culture and History, 1350–1660: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writings, ed. David Aers (Detroit, 1992), 177–202.

16 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 131–32; Haigh, English Reformations, chap. 1. For a dissenting view, see Finch, Church Monuments, 69–77.

17 Vale, M. G., Piety, Charity and Literacy among the Yorkshire Gentry, 1370–1480, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, Borthwick Papers, no. 50 (York, 1976), 9–10Google Scholar; Saul, Nigel, “The Religious Sympathies of the Gentry in Gloucestershire, 1200–1500,” in his Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society 98 (1980): 103–4Google Scholar; Knight, Mark, “Piety and Devotion among the Warwickshire Gentry, 1485–1547,” in Dugdale Occasional Papers, no. 32 (Hertford, 1989)Google Scholar; Brown, Andrew D., Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 1995), 112–16, 125–27Google Scholar.

18 Among scholars focusing on particular monuments, see, e.g., Saul, Nigel, Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and Their Monuments, 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), 8–9Google Scholar; Llewellyn, Nigel, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000), 15, 274Google Scholar; Norris, Malcolm, “Later Medieval Monumental Brasses: An Urban Funerary Industry and Its Representation of Death,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and Dead, 1000–1600, ed. Bassett, Steven (Leicester, 1992), 184–209, 184Google Scholar. Among historians of religion, see Marshall, Peter, Belief and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002), 33–34, 286–293; and Brown, Popular Piety, 254Google Scholar.

19 For a more extended discussion of this point, see Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford, 2002), 6–7Google Scholar.

20 The figures in this paragraph were based on original research published in Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 15–16, 127–29.

21 Twenty-two men left the choice of their burial place to their executors or said that they wanted to be buried wherever they died; the remaining 105 did not leave directions about their place of burial in their wills at all.

22 Reverend Cox, John Edmund, ed., Annals of St. Helen's Bishopsgate (London, 1876), 236–37, 249–50Google Scholar.

23 Elizabeth Brandon, will, 1497, The National Archives (TNA): Public Records Office (PRO), PROB 11/11/9. All of the PROB 11 documents at the Public Records Office are wills.

24 Goodall, God's House at Ewelme; Dame Elizabeth Frowick, will, 1516, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/18/13.

25 Blomefield, Francis, Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk …, 2nd ed., 11 vols. (London, 1805–10), 1:331Google Scholar; SirPevsner, Nikolaus B.L., North-West and South Norfolk: The Buildings of England (New York, 1962), 2:320Google Scholar.

26 Reverend Bennet, Doctor, “The College of S. John Evangelist of Rushworth,” Norfolk Archaeology 10 (1888): 279, 297Google Scholar.

27 French, Katherine L., The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), 87Google Scholar.

28 John Tyrell, will, 1540, Essex Record Office (ERO), D/DP F294; Brown, O. F., The Tyrells of England (Chichester, Sussex, 1982), 122Google ScholarPubMed.

29 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 115; Sheingorn, Pamela, The Easter Sepulchre in England(Kalamazoo, MI, 1987)Google Scholar; Heales, Alfred, “Easter Sepulchres: Their Object, Nature and History,” Archaeologia 42 (1869): 263–308Google Scholar; Finch, Church Monuments, 74–75.

30 French, People of the Parish, 189.

31 Blair, John and Ramsey, Nigel, eds., English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products (London, 1991), 35Google Scholar; William, Lord Hastings, will, 1481, HEH, Hastings Manuscripts, HAP folder 4, box 12.

32 Trivick, Henry H., The Craft and Design of Monumental Brasses (New York, 1969), 98Google Scholar.

33 Finch, Church Monuments, 37, 51.

34 Saul, Death, Art, and Memory, 227–28; Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 35–42; Macklin, Herbert W., The Brasses of England (London, 1907), 2Google Scholar. For a dissenting view, see Trivick, Craft and Design of Monumental Brasses, 17.

35 Bertram, Fr. Jerome, “Iconography of Brasses,” in Monumental Brasses as Art and History, ed. Bertam, Fr. Jerome (Stroud, 1996), 62–63Google Scholar.

36 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 20, 31–32, 118; Malcolm Norris, “The Analysis of Style in Monumental Brasses,” in Bertram, Monumental Brasses as Art and History, 103–51.

37 On the Culpeppers, see the Culpepper Family History site, http://gen.culpepper.com/archives/uk/places/goudhurst.htm; on the Knightleys, see Victoria County History, History of Northampton (Westminster, 1902), 1:416. Alfred Fryer thinks the head of Sir Richard Choke (d. 1483) at Long Ashton, Somersetshire, was also a portrait (“Monumental Effigies Made by Bristol Craftsmen [1240–1540],” Archaeologia 74 [1923–24]: 1–72, 22). His widow and coexecutor, Margaret (d. 1484), who ordered a memorial stained glass window with her and her husband's portraits in her will, may well have taken the lead in commissioning his effigy (Somerset Record Society, Somerset Medieval Wills, 1383–1500, ed. Frederic William Weaver, 16 [1902], 244). Reverend David Thomas Powell, in Collections for the history of several of the counties of England, vol. 1, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire (n.d., British Library [BL], Add. MS 17,456, fol. 80d), considers the effigies of John, second Lord Mordaunt (d. 1571), and his wives “originall portraits.”

38 Bridges, John, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, 2 vols. (London, 1791), 1:370Google Scholar; Powell, Collections, vol. 1, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, BL, Add. MS 17,456, fol. 184; E. A. Sadler, The Ancient Family of Cockayne and Their Monuments in Ashbourne Church, reprinted from the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 55 (1934): 14–39.

39 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 50–60.

40 ibid., 105.

41 ibid., 35–50.

42 ibid., 118, 275.

43 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, 733–34; the author saw the monument and tablet on a visit to the church on 23 June 2003.

44 Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, 2:69.

45 ibid. Also see Pevsner and Harris, Lincolnshire, 254.

46 Sir Edmund Tame, will, 1532, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/25/17; Sir Edmund referred to her as the person “whom I trust above all other to see this my last will to be performed.”

47 Farmer, Oscar G., Fairford Church and Its Stained Glass Windows, 3rd ed. (Fairford, 1931), 19; copy at HEH, Esdaile Papers, box 15Google Scholar.

48 ibid.Davis, Cecil Tudor, The Monumental Brasses of Gloucestershire (Bath, 1969), 141–43Google Scholar.

49 Farmer, Fairford Church, 19–20, 144–45. Impalement on a shield means dividing it in half to show two complete coats of arms. The husband is on the dexter side, i.e., on the left when it is viewed. Fair, Stephen, A Companion to the English Parish Church (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1996), 276Google Scholar.

50 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 393. The Calvinist Prayer Book of 1552, which omitted all prayers for the dead, including the Office of the Dead and the Eucharist, was the basis for the Elizabethan burial service. It did not expressly forbid prayers for the dead. The Elizabethan Primer of 1559 contained intercessory prayers. Woodward, Jennifer, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Mangement of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570–1625 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1997), 42, 53, 56Google Scholar.

51 “Book of Monuments” or “Book of Daughts” of Sir William Dugdale, Garter King of Arms (b. 1605, d. 1686), 1640–41, BL, Add. MS 71,474, fol. 74d.

52 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuements, 326.

53 See, e.g., Sir Robert Peyton, will, 1550, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/33/27; Sir John Talbot of Albrighton, 1550, “Parishes: Bromsgrove,” in A History of the County of Worcester, vol. 3, 19–33, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43081&strquery=bromsgrove; and Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 30.

54 Hartshorne, Albert, The Recumbent Monumental Effigies in Northamptonshire (London, 1876), 98Google Scholar.

55 Monument of Sir Thomas Giffard (d. 1560) at Brewood, Staffordshire; Arthur Jewers, Monumental Inscriptions and Armorial Bearings in the City of London, vol. 1, 1910–13, Guildhall Ms. 2480, fols. 310, 319.

56 Frederick H. Crossley, “The Post-Reformation Effigies and Monuments in Cheshire (1500–1800),” Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 91 (1939): 108; Frederic Madden, Bulkeley Bandinel, and John Gough Nichols, “Sepulchral Memorials of the Scudamore Family at Holme-Lacey, co. Hereford,” Collectanea topographica et genealogica 4 (1837): 256. Scudamore was a recusant, although a later member of the family conformed. Ian Atherton, “Scudamore Family (per. 1500–1820),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: 2004), online edition, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/71878?docPos=7.

57 These figures are compiled from the same data I used to determine the number of women who built or commissioned tombs. In some cases the chantries were the joint work of couples although the women outlived their husbands.

58 In 1540, Lady Anne Petre founded a chantry for her first husband, John Tyrell, at East Horndon, Essex, and Dame Mary Scrope Jerningham Kingston founded one for her second husband, Sir William Kingston Brown (Tyrells of England, 122; Davis, Monumental Brasses of Gloucestershire, 216–17).

59 John Kingston, will, 1514, BL, Add. MS 42,764, fol. 150 (formerly 296); Susan Kingston, will, 1540, BL, Add. MS 42,763, fol. 41 (formerly 77). Susan was buried at Shaltston, Buckinghamshire, where she lived with her sister and brother-in-law after Syon was dissolved.

60 Harding, Vanessa, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1599–1670 (Cambridge, 2002), 157Google Scholar.

61 Dame Elizabeth Holles, will, 1544, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/30/5. Dame Holles wrote her will in 1544, although she lived for another decade. One of her executors, Sir Andrew Judd, took credit for her benefaction in his will, an error John Stow and other authorities have repeated. However, her descendant Gervase Holles and William Dugdale corrected the misattribution. Cox, ed., Annals of St. Helen's Bishopsgate, 236–37, 249–51; Holles, Gervase, Memorials of the Holles Family (1493–1656), 3rd ser., vol. 55 (London, 1937), 21Google Scholar.

62 Worsely, Dame Anne, will, 1557, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/49/6; Victoria County History, Hampshire, vol. 5, ed. William Page (Westminster, 1912), 176Google Scholar.

63 Victoria County History, Cambridgeshire, vol. 10, ed. Wareham, A. F. and Wright, A. P. M. (Oxford, 2002), 448–49, 456–57Google Scholar. Her foundation still exists, having been rebuilt in 1842 and then again in the 1990s.

64 Fisher, Saint John, The funeral sermon of Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby … with [Thomas] Baker's preface, ed. Hymers, J. (Cambridge, 1840), 104Google Scholar; Green, R., The History, Topography and Antiquities of Framlingham and Saxsted … (London, 1834), appendixGoogle Scholar.

65 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, 834.

66 Coulstock, Collegiate Church of Wimborne Minster, 162, 171–76; Jones and Underwood, King's Mother, 205–30.

67 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 271–72; Harding, The Dead and the Living, 157; Richard Rex, “Monumental Brasses and the Reformation,” Monumental Brass Society Transactions 16, pt. 5 (1990): 377–79.

68 Sir William Drury, will, 1557, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/40/16; author recorded epitaph at Hawstead, June 23, 2003.

69 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, 335, recorded the inscription, which is no longer visible; her son Sir Henry Compton, created Lord Compton, 1572, was her sole executor. Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury, will, 1567, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/49/21.

70 James Lewis André, Notes on Churches, vol. 1, 1848, BL, Add. MS 36,629, fol. 83d (pencil pagination); Macnamara, F. N., Memorials of the Danvers Family of Dauntsey and Culworth (London, 1895), 148Google Scholar.

71 Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Esq., 2 vols. (London, 1826), 2:686; Newman, John, North East and East Kent, Buildings of England (New York, 1987), 345Google Scholar; Belcher, William Douglas, Kentish Brasses (London, 1888), 66Google Scholar.

72 Lady Katherine Grey, will, 1505, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/14/34.

73 Golding-Bird, G., East Grinstead and Its Parish Church, 4th ed. (Cheltenham, 1938)Google Scholar, HEH, Esdaile Collection.

74 Nicholas, Testamenta Vetusta, 2:588–89.

75 Dame Anne Sulyard Bourchier, will, 1519, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/19/32.

76 SirWagner, Anthony, Herald and Heraldry, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1956), 3–4, 25, 65Google Scholar, and Heralds of England: A History of the Office and College of Arms (London, 1967), 106.

77 Marks, Richard and Payne, Ann, eds., British Heraldry from Its Origins to c. 1800, published for the Trustees of the British Museum and the British Library (London, 1978), 13Google Scholar.

78 ibid., 15.

79 Monumental Brass Society Transactions, 2:338; Short Notes on Bromsgrove Parish Church (1926; repr., 1935), HEH, Esdaile Papers, box 10, 4.

80 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England, 148.

81 ibid., 146–49; Harding, The Dead and the Living, 172.

82 Finch, Church Monuments, 63.

83 Blomefield, Topographical History of Norfolk, 7:132; Finch, Church Monuments, 75. In 1868, her descendant, Lord Townshend, moved the tomb to the north corner of the chancel in the church he built after fire destroyed the old one. Durham, James A. C., The Townshends of Raynham (Cambridge, 1922), 13Google Scholar.

84 Testamenta Vetusta, 2:686; Newman, North East and East Kent, 345; Belcher, Kentish Brasses, 66.

85 Author's visit to church, June 2003.

86 Dame Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, will, 1548, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/32/1.

87 Blomefield, Topographical History of Norfolk, 1:220.

88 Victoria County History, Oxfordfordshire, vol. 7, ed. Mary Lobel (Oxford, 1962), 220–30.

89 Blomefield, Topographical History of Norfolk, 3:106.

90 Dame Isabell Sapcote, will, 1496, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/10/12.

91 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, 733.

92 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Hertfordshire (London, 1934), 4Google Scholar.

93 Burgess, Clive R., “‘For the Increase of Divine Service’: Chantries in the Parish in Late Medieval Bristol,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (January 1985): 50–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Pevsner, North-West and South Norfolk: Buildings of England, 582.

95 Lady Anne Danvers, will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/24/4; Elias Ashmole, The Antiquities of Berkshire, 3 vols. (London, 1719–23), 2:322.

96 Omerod, George and Helsbury, Thomas, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 3 vols. (London, 1882), 2:614Google Scholar.

97 Halstead, Robert [pseudonym of Henry Mordaunt, second earl of Peterborough], Succinct Geneaologies of the House of Green That Were Lords of Drayton (1685), photographic facsimile (privately printed, 1896), x–xiGoogle Scholar.

98 Cox, John Charles, Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, 4 vols. (Chesterfield, 1877), 3:327Google Scholar.

99 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 127–28, 162.

100 This number is extracted from the 281 female wills that provide the basic data for this article; it includes both women who built tombs and women who did not.

101 Sir William Danvers, will, 1504, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/14/5, and Dame Anne Danvers, will, 1531, PROB 11/24/4; Sir Edward Ferrers, will, 1535, PROB 11/25/29, and Dame Constance Ferrers, will, 1551, PROB 11/34/29; Sir Thomas Willoughby, will, 1544, PROB 11/30/40, and Dame Bridget Reade Willoughby, will, 1558, PROB 11/40/37; and William Parr, Lord Parr of Horton (d. 1547), and Mary, Lady Parr (d. 1555), will [of William Parr], PROB 11/31/6; and [source of epitaph] Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, 1:370; J. W. Clay, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, vol. 6 of 6 vols. (vol. 106 of Surtees Society series [1902]): Sir Thomas Johnson (1542 [date of will]), no. 162 [document number], 203–5 [page numbers], and Dame Isabel Johnson (1552), no. 230, 298; Sir Edmund Knyvett (d. 1539) and Jane Bourchier Knyvett, Lady Berners (1562), Knyvett-Wilson Papers, Norfolk Record Office (NRO), KNY 435 371X9; G. H. Boden, The History of Tong Church, College and Castle, 2nd rev. ed. (Wolverhampton, n.d.); Bindoff, S. T., ed., The House of Commons, 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982), 3:372Google Scholar; Sir Thomas Stanley and Dame Margaret Vernon Stanley: HEH, Esdaile Papers, box 23; J. H. Boden, The History of Tong Church, College, and Castle, 2nd rev. ed. (Wolverhampton, n.d.); and Bindoff, S. T., The Commons, 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982), 3:372Google Scholar.

102 Manners, Anne, Lady Roos, will, 1535, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/22/16; The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, 13 vols. (compact repr. ed.; Gloucester, 1987), 2:215–16, note cGoogle Scholar.

103 Dame Margaret Whittingham Verney (1509), Verney Papers, Camden Society, Old Series, vol. 56 (1853): 37, 39; Victoria County History, Hertfordshire, ed. William Page (Westminster, 1902), 2:147; their descendant, Sir Edmund Verney moved the tomb to Aldbury in 1575.

104 Fleming, Peter, “Scott Family (per 1400–c. 1525),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), online edGoogle Scholar.

105 Blomefield, Topographical History of Norfolk, 8:287–88.

106 Complete Peerage (compact repr. ed.), 2:686–88.

107 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 3 (vol. 45 of Surtees Society series): Lady Anne Bigod (1864), no. 78, 226 and note; in 1475, she held the advowson of the church at Settrington and appointed the priest. Reverend Charles Moor, “The Bygods, Earls of Norfolk,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 32 (1936): 172–213, 193.

108 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 4 (vol. 53 of Surtees Society series): Lady Anne Scrope (1869), no. 75, 149.

109 Lady Anne Grey, will, 1558, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/42B/17. Her second husband was Sir Robert Drury (d.1536), and her third husband was Sir Edmund Walsingham (d. 1550).

110 Anne, countess of Bedford, will, 1559, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/42A/42; Lady Anne Petre, will, 1582, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/64/15.

111 Dame Agnes Say, will, 1478, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/6/33. She had no sons.

112 Margery Chamberlain, will, 1557, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/40/33; her fourth husband was Sir Leonard Chamberlain; a wife could write a will only with her husband's permission since she did not exist as a person under the common law.

113 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 5 (vol. 79 of Surtees Society series): Brian Palmes (1884), no. 192, 264; and vol. 6 (vol. 106 of Surtees Society series): Sir Thomas Johnson (1542), no. 162, 203–5, and Dame Isabel Johnson (1552), no. 230, 298.

114 Leland, John, Itinerary, 8 vols., ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Carbondale, IL, 1964), 1:176Google Scholar; Collectanea topographica et genealogica, 4:173.

115 Bridget, Lady Marney, will, 1549, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/33/11. Her second husband was John, Lord Marney (d. 1525).

116 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 4, Lady Anne Scrope (1869), no. 75, 149.

117 Alice, Lady Burgh, will, 1559, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/42A/34; Complete Peerage (compact repr. ed.), 2:242.

118 Reverend H. L. Elliott, “Fitz Lewes, of West Horndon and the Brasses at Ingrave.” Transations of the Essex Archaeological Society, N.S., 6 (1898): 28–59, 39, 44; Dame Jane Fitzlewis, will, 1538, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/25/26 (1535). The brass was moved to Ingrave, Essex, in 1731 to preserve it better. See Web site of the Monumental Brass Society: http://www.mbsbrasses.co.uk/pic_lib/September2003_brass_of_the_month.htm.

119 Dame Mary Jerningham Kingston, will, 1548, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/32/22 (1548); Davis, Monumental Brasses of Gloustershire, 216; Victoria County History, Essex, vol. 6, ed. W. R. Powell (London, 1973), 219; John Strype, Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster … by John Stow … Corrected, Improved and Enlarged … (London, 1720), vol. 2, appendix, 115.

120 Sir William Fitzwilliam, will, 1534, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/25/33; and Dame Jane Fitzwilliam, will, 1540, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/29/10; Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, 2:516.

121 Norfolk Archaeology 3 (1852): 160–62. This is a reprint of the will of Margaret Paston.

122 Isabella Spencer, will, 1558, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/40/32.

123 British Society of Franciscan Studies,The Grey Friars of London: Their History with the Register of Their Convent and an Appendix of Documents, ed. Charles Letherbridge Kingford, vol. 6 of British Society of Franciscan Studies (Aberdeen, 1915), 74; Complete Peerage (compact repr. ed.), 4:381 (Fitzwarren, d. 1516); Maud, Lady Willoughby, will, 1497, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/11/17; Complete Peerage (compact repr. ed.): 12, pt. 2:666 (Willoughby).

124 Finch, Church Monuments, 63.

125 Harris, Barbara J., “A New Look at the Reformation: Aristocratic Women and Nunneries, 1450–1540,” Journal of British Studies 32, no. 2 (April 1993), 89–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Dame Elizabeth Barnardiston, will, 1526, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/22/10; Almack, “Kedington and the Barnardiston Family,” 131n; visit by author, June 2003.

127 Finch, Church Monuments, 77.

128 NRO, Norwich Consistory Court, Corant 9, cited in Finch, Church Monuments, 77.

129 Walter H. Godfrey, ed., Sussex Wills, vol. 2, Sussex Record Society 42 (1936–37), 233.

130 Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, 851.

131 ibid.

132 Finch, Church Monuments, 77.

133 Suffolk Record Society, Chorography of Suffolk, ed. MacCulloch, Diarmaid N. J., vol. 19 of Suffolk Record Society General Series (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1976), 97 (Clopton, d. 1536); Bridget, Lady Marney, will, 1549, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/33/11Google Scholar.

134 Cox, Annals of St. Helen's Bishopsgate.