We are fortunate that so many monuments have survived because they inform us about the social, religious and economic circumstances of past eras and the ways in which our ancestors not only dealt with death, but also about how they wished to be remembered. The term ‘monument’ covers a diverse range of artefacts such as monumental brasses, incised stone slabs, effigies, tomb chests and grave markers.
Monumental brasses provide an interesting source of evidence for the styles and fashions of the past, or at least of the clothes worn by that minority who could afford to be commemorated in this way. The earliest memorial brasses date from the thirteenth century and often depicted a family group. The people they commemorate were usually represented on life-size plates with incised lines, surrounded by architectural and heraldic inscriptions and accessories such as coats of arms, religious emblems and scrolls with biblical texts. Memorial brasses reached their peak of artistic excellence in the fourteenth century and then declined through neglect and destruction from the sixteenth century.
These brass plates have survived better than wooden effigies or painted wooden boards and can be found in many London churches including some fine examples in St Helen’s Church in Bishopsgate, which has monumental brasses of Sir William Pickering, a faithful soldier; Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange and Sir John Crosby, a successful City merchant. A brass plate in a stone frame to John Stow (1625–1605), the author of the Survey of London, is in St Andrew Undershaft. St John the Baptist Church in Croydon has numerous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century memorial brasses while St John the Baptist in Hillingdon has the brasses of Lord John L’Estrange (d. 1479) and his wife Jacquette who was the aunt of the two princes who died in the Tower. The London Brass Rubbing Centre is based in St Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Trafalgar Square and has ninety replica brasses. Southwark Cathedral contains only one brass, which was erected during the Commonwealth (1649–1660) and is dedicated to ten-year-old Susannah Barford. The charming epitaph reads: ‘This world to her was but a tragedy play, She came and sawt, dislikt and pass’d away.’
The impact of the religious changes during the Reformation in the sixteenth century wreaked much damage and destruction to the fabric of churches including their memorial brasses and tombs. An Act of Parliament in 1550 ordered the destruction and defacing of carved or painted church images and, although it tried to exempt ‘any image or picture set … upon any tomb in any church, chapel, or churchyard’, this was often ignored. During the reign of Edward VI (1547–1553), London churches suffered a great deal of iconoclastic damage, losing many of their altars, paintings, relics and virtually all their statuary. Some opportunists saw the potential for making money out of these materials, especially the metal which was particularly valuable. Not surprisingly, large quantities of brass in churches were stripped away and sold. At St Leonard in Shoreditch in the 1580s the vicar Meredith Hammer ‘plucked up many plates fixed on the graves, and left no memory of such as there had been buried under them.’ The churchwarden at St Andrew in Holborn gained 36 shillings from a hundredweight of copper taken from the tombs and gravestones. Gravestone plates from St Mary Aldermary were sold for £3 13s and metal from monuments was selling at 3 pennies per pound at All Hallows, London Wall. Two centuries later in 1732, the pickings from coffins still proved to be tempting. In Bow Church vault the gravedigger of Aldgate and his assistant helped themselves to lead and plate from a coffin and sold it to a Robert Moore in King Street who gave them ‘the rate of nine shillings and four-pence a hundred for it.’ They had previously sold coffin handles and lead.
The impact of the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century, killing as it did up to 30,000 of the city’s population of 70,000, intensified the ways in which death was thought about as well as the manner in which it was portrayed. There was a greater emphasis on the macabre and morbid images of Death as the destroyer who was often depicted as a skeleton with a spear attacking the living. The fifteenth-century monk, John Lydgate, wrote in his poem, Death’s Warning, ‘my dreadful spear that is full sharp … Doth yow now lo, here thys manace.’ This image of death endured over the centuries and can be seen in many illustrations and sculptures such as the monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale and her husband (d. 1731) in Westminster Abbey, which contains an elaborate representation of death preparing to throw his spear. The figure of death looming over its victim is shown in a painting in Westminster Abbey. This late thirteenth-century image portrays a young man on his deathbed with death waiting at the bedpost.
Wall paintings in English medieval churches dealt with various themes about death although very few such paintings still exist in London’s remaining churches. Paintings served as messages and stories. One morality tale entitled ‘The Three Living and the Three Dead’ originated in Flanders and came to England where it became a popular theme in fifteenth-century paintings and murals on church walls. The story was about three kings who, while out hunting, came across three corpses. The corpses castigated the kings for their preoccupation with pleasure and worldly things. Their words of warning, which were shown in text scrolls, read: ‘as you are, we once were; as we are, so shall you be’. As with similar tales, the message of the paintings was to be prepared for death and subsequent Judgement. Other illustrative messages appeared in the fourteenth century during the Black Death in the form of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Danse Macabre (Dance of Death). The Danse Macabre personified the figure of Death leading dancers in a slow, stately procession. Such images helped people to express and share their grief as well as reminding each other that death is not only inevitable, but also the common denominator of all humanity.
The most famous Dance of Death in England was painted on the walls of the cloister at Old St Paul’s Cathedral and it influenced other images of the dance in England after 1430. The author of the text which accompanied the image was the monk and poet, John Lydgate, who had been greatly impressed by seeing the famous Danse Macabre in the Churchyard of Holy Innocents in Paris in 1426. Lydgate made a translation of the text which was then included in the famous series in Old St Paul’s. The painting, by an unknown artist, was destroyed in 1549 when the cloister and tombs were pulled down on the orders of the Duke of Somerset and only the poems by Lydgate were preserved. Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), the English caricaturist, produced a variation on the Dance of Death between 1814 and 1816. In traditional depictions of the Dance, Death does not care for the social position, or for the wealth, sex or age of the people it leads into its dance. Rowlandson’s illustrations are rather different; his emphasis is on the activities of daily life and events rather than the view that all will die equally in front of Death.
Effigies of the deceased – stone, wooden, plaster or marble – developed from the twelfth century in England, although again this form of monument was reserved for the elite. One of the earliest in England was the marble effigy on the tomb of Abbot Gilbert Crispin of Westminster (1085–1117) in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey. Temple Church off Fleet Street has nine effigies including those of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke and his sons dressed in full knightly attire. Marshall went to the Holy Land as a crusader between 1183 and 1186 where he first encountered the Knights Templar, although he did not join the order until a few months before his death in 1219. The medieval effigies in Temple Church mostly display the crossed legs which may or may not signify their Crusader status. In Southwark Cathedral there is a wooden effigy of a knight of 1280, one of less than a hundred such effigies in Britain.
The use of effigies as additions to funerary monuments became established by the late thirteenth century. The first recorded use of an effigy appears in 1327 for the burial of Edward II at what was then Gloucester Abbey. It was intended that the corpse of a monarch would be displayed during the funeral procession. However, given the time that sometimes elapsed between death and the funeral, the corpse was often so decomposed that an effigy was used instead. The significance of the occasion with the monarc
h dressed in elaborate clothes and holding the orb and spectre was to impress upon those in attendance the majesty and the mystique of kingship.
Artists attempted to provide as close a likeness of the deceased as possible with the effigy or ‘representation of the body.’ This likeness was further improved during the fifteenth century when masks were taken of the deceased immediately after death. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, effigies were being made out of wax and they accompanied the funeral procession. Sometimes effigies were produced many years after the death of the person, an example being that of Elizabeth I which was remade in 1760. The final public figure to be honoured in this way was Nelson in 1806 whose waxwork was the last to be placed in Westminster Abbey. This was not a funeral effigy, however, as Nelson was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral and the waxwork was used more as an attraction for visitors.
From the late thirteenth century onwards funeral effigies of a deceased monarch would be embalmed, dressed in the coronation robes before being exhibited while lying in state, and then during the funeral service and the procession. This custom continued for over three centuries until after 1660 when the effigy no longer accompanied the royal funeral. Excellent examples of effigies can be found in the Museum in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey. Eighteen life-size waxen images including Elizabeth I, Charles II, Queen Anne and King William III and Queen Mary II, as well as non-royal figures, can be seen. These waxworks were modelled while the subjects, in the case of royalty, were still alive in order to obtain the best possible likeness and were dressed in their own clothes and with their own accessories. The Westminster effigies were made for every monarch over four centuries of British history and were carried on top of their coffins as they made their last journey through the streets of London. At the funeral of Henry VIII, the effigy carved by Nicholas Bellin lay on top of the coffin which was ‘wonderful richly apparelled, with velvet, gold, and precious stones of all sortes.’ The effigies were skilfully crafted works of art. There is a marked difference between the wooden manikin carved for the burial of Edward III in 1377 and the elaborate model made of Charles II where artisans made a skeleton from wood and iron wire and then fleshed it out with straw sewn into a canvas skin. The effigy was dressed in the King’s clothes and decked out with wig, sword, jewellery and plumed hat.
The Reformation witnessed a diminution of religious imagery and a growing secularism, particularly in relation to images and ritual. This was reflected in paintings that portrayed the deathbed scene, which became a popular theme in Reformation Europe and Britain. An example of this is Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed, by Van Dyck (1633) in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Venetia Stanley (1600–1633), the wife of the diplomat and author, Sir Kenelm Digby, was celebrated for her beauty. She had been the subject of a great deal of scandal, having being the mistress of Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset. After nine years of marriage to Digby, she died suddenly. It was rumoured that she had drunk her husband’s ‘viper wine’, a concoction reputed to preserve beauty. Her husband wrote of the painting:
This is the only constant companion I now have ... It standeth all day over against my chaire and table ... and all night when I goe into my chamber I sett it close to my beds side, and by the faint light of candle, me thinks I see her dead indeed.
Another deathbed scene is the painting by an unknown artist of the Memorial Portrait of Sir Henry Unton (1596) in the National Portrait Gallery which depicts the life of Unton culminating in his death and burial.
Unlike the limited survival of medieval tombs, around 5,000 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tombs in England have survived, although many of those in London were destroyed in the Blitz. Many fine sculptors and masons emerged in this period, such as Nicholas Stone (1586–1647) who has been described as a leading master mason and the single most important carver of funerary monuments in early Stuart London. He was apprenticed to Isaac James, a London mason, and later went to work under the sculptor Hendrick de Keyser in Holland. Stone returned to London and settled in Southwark and in 1619 he was appointed as master mason to James I, and then to Charles I. He designed many fine tombs including the effigy of Queen Elizabeth.
In death as in life status was important and the rich and wealthy were keen to display their past social rank through elaborate tombs and memorials. London churches and cathedrals contain many ornate tombs to the famous as well as the less famous. The elaborate medieval canopied tomb of John Gower (1325–1408) is located in the north aisle of Southwark Cathedral. Gower is credited with being the first English poet as well as a friend of Chaucer’s. A recumbent effigy of Gower, with his head resting on copies of his three greatest works, adorns the tomb. However there were many who exaggerated their own importance and were determined to outdo their betters by having a more flamboyant monument. The rise of a wealthy merchant class from the sixteenth century produced men who were keen to portray themselves with shows of commemorative ostentation which they thought would impress the living. However, these efforts raised eyebrows in some quarters. One critic of this particular trend was the poet and antiquary John Weever (1576–1632), who had travelled extensively abroad and eventually settled in Clerkenwell. In his Ancient Funeral Monuments (1631) he commented: ‘for some of our epitaphs more honour is attributed to a rich Tradesman or gripping usurer, than is given to the greatest Potentate.’ Examples of this flamboyance can be seen in some of the tombs in Westminster Abbey. The well-to-do and vain could buy the right to be buried there, a practice which continued until the mid-nineteenth century. A visitor might be forgiven for thinking they are viewing the monument of a well-known national figure of heroic status rather than a memorial dedicated to the vanity and wealth of a rich merchant.
In order that the sculptured image of the deceased was as near a likeness as possible, many monuments were built for individuals while they were still alive. The purpose of such memorial was the hope that it would enable the deceased to be remembered for ever. In 1574 Archbishop Sandys in a funeral service at St Paul’s said: ‘All these things, furniture of funerals, order of burying and the pomp … are rather for the comforts to the living than helps to the dead.’ Rememberance, however, is transient and the comment of a seventeenth-century rector, Timothy Oldmayne, was brutally correct: ‘oblivion and neglect are the two principal handmaids of death’.
The development of capitalist society in the eighteenth century facilitated changes in the visual culture of death. New and cheaper production methods allowed the manufacture of coffins and furnishings to be available to a wider market. Southwark became a particular centre for the funerary and commemorative trades. A greater choice of memorials and other funerary items also became available.
Industrial developments contributed to the production and availability of sculptured headstones and outdoor monuments, many of which are among the most visible and impressive displays of death. Anyone who has visited one of the major London cemeteries cannot but be impressed by the decorative gravestones. Prior to the eighteenth century, graveyard monuments were mostly made from local stone if suitable, or from Portland stone. The growth of the canals made possible the utilisation of other types of material such as York stone and granite for the more prestigious tombs.
Some of the most common gravestone symbols were the skull and crossbones, which represented the decaying body; the hourglass indicating the passage of time, a tree stump or truncated pillar symbolic of a life cut short. Other common symbols included an anchor (hope), broken column, cherub, candle (loss of life), arrows, Father Time, scythe (life cut short), torch, urn, willow (grief) and angels in a variety of poses – flying, trumpeting or weeping. Many types of flowers and plants appear including the lily (purity), poppy (sleep), rose (sorrow), ivy (friendship), palm branch (victory), rosemary (remembrance) and laurel (heroism). Many religious themes were chosen such as the Bible or other holy book, chalice, cross, sacred heart (usually in Catholic graveyards), Star of David (symbol of Judaism) and crescent (usually Mus
lim). Animal symbols can be seen on headstones including birds (resurrection), butterflies (short life), lambs (innocence) and lions (courage).
The variety of designs and symbols on headstones provide some insight into the life of the deceased. Trades and occupations are often represented by a variety of symbols. A butcher might have a steel knife or cleaver; a farmer a hoe or a flail; a gardener a rake or spade; a mason a wedge or level; a sailor an anchor or sextant; a shoemaker a leather cutter’s knife; a weaver a loom or shuttle and a smith, a hammer and anvil.
Around the mid-eighteenth century the art, architecture and sculpture of ancient Greek civilisation became increasingly popular. Examples of this movement, which was known as neoclassicism, can be seen in memorial sculptures on tombs and on the walls of cathedrals and mausoleums. Typical imagery included broken columns, a weeping mourner and cherubs. This genre also embraced painting, which was full of ancient gods and classical themes, as can be seen in the Apotheosis of Nelson (1807) by Benjamin West. West influenced other artists such as Scott Pierre Nicolas Legrand to produce a similar painting with the same title. Both are in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Legrand depicts Nelson being received into immortality among the gods on Olympus witnessed by grieving men on the deck of a boat. Neptune, the god of the sea, leans down to support Nelson while above Fame is personified as a female figure holding a crown of stars over Nelson’s head. Other popular themes included Hercules, Minerva and Jupiter.
Images of death were favoured themes of caricaturists who used the figure of Death in humorous and satirical ways. In William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) Satan, Sin and Death (c. 1735) the skeletal figure of Death is holding a blood-smeared arrow. James Gillray (1757–1815), inspired by Hogarth’s painting, did a satirical reworking of this with William Pitt as the devil holding a spear in a power struggle with Chancellor Edward Thurlow and Queen Charlotte. In another Hogarth etching, Death giving George Taylor a Cross-Buttock, Death is fighting the boxer George Taylor (who had a booth at the Adam and Eve in Tottenham Court Road) and getting the better of him.
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