Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/269

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SEPULCHRAL BRASSES.

NOTICE OF INTERESTING MEMORIALS IN NORFOLK AND OTHER COUNTIES.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM DRAKE, M.A.

The Eastern counties contain more numerous examples of sepulchral brasses than any other district of the kingdom, and this fact has often been quoted to warrant the opinion that they were of foreign manufacture, and imported from Germany or Flanders in readiness to be laid down. There are, however, many objections to be urged against this conclusion, and the fact itself may be more satisfactorily explained if it be considered that these memorials were only within the reach of the wealthy, and that the Eastern counties were, in the days when sepulchral brasses were in fashion, the scene of manufacturing wealth and activity: Ipswich, Norwich, Lynn, and Lincoln were great and important cities, when Birmingham and Liverpool were as yet country villages. In Norfolk, especially, the effigies of civilians abound, and Norwich with its numerous churches even now (sadly reduced as the number is) exhibits a collection of sepulchral brasses which attests the wealth of its ancient merchants and the splendour of their civic dress. Many of these have been made known in Cotman's elaborate work on the Sepulchral Brasses of Norfolk, but unhappily, as it would seem, in more than one case only with the effect of inviting the cupidity of the spoiler, since many which Cotman engraved, so lately as 1815, have now disappeared[1]. Among others we may mention two from St. Stephen's, of great interest, figured in plates 17 and 104, and the curious figure of Faith, bearing the brazen bed, from the brass of Galfridus Langley, in the church of St. Lawrence, plate 97. To these may be added the effigy of John Clarke, stolen from St. Andrew's in the memory of the present incumbent, and brasses formerly to be seen in the churches of St. Edmund and St. Mary, now no longer to be found. It is to be hoped that the newly-awakened interest in regard to these ancient relics will reach "the most Catholic

  1. Cotman has given an etching of the fine figure of Robert Attelath, mayor of Lynn, 1370, formerly to be seen in the church of St. Margaret, in that town. Stothard relates that previously to his visit to Lynn in 1813, it had been disposed of by the churchwardens to a person who sold it for five shillings. Memoirs, p. 93. An inscription of this brass is preserved in the collection formed by Sir John Cullum, now to be seen in the print room at the British Museum.