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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
The undocumented memorial (pl. XIIa) to Richard Paget (d. 1636) and his two children in St Mary's, Skirpenbeck, some 12 miles east-north-east of York, has hitherto received little or no attention from scholars, other than a brief mention by Nikolaus Pevsner and a flawed description and conjectural attribution by K. A. Esdaile. Yet its form and its remarkable inscriptions, combined with a puzzling incongruity ofexecution, present the art historian with a number of intriguing problems. Among these are questions relating to its design and construction, the date of its erection, and the style and possible authorship of its ingenious commemorative verses. Detailed consideration is given to such matters in another paper by the writer, however, a brief résumé of them may be helpful before discussion of the wider questions raised here: the iconography of the monument and its relationships both with others of the period and with contemporary opinions.
1 ‘Patchet, Richard. Adm. sizar (aged 15) at Caius, July 2, 1600. S. of William (1549), B.D. B. at Skirpenbeck, Yorks.. School, York. Died June 17, 1636. Buried at Skirpenbeck.’ Alumni Cantabri-gienses. From the Earliest Times to 1751, Venn, J. and Venn, J. A., (eds.), Part I, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1922-1927), III (1924), 296.Google Scholar
2 Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: and the East Riding (London, 1972), 343.Google Scholar
3 Esdaile, K. A., ‘Sculptors and sculpture in Yorkshire, pt. Ill’, Yorkshire Archaeol. J. 36 (1944-1947), 155.Google Scholar
4 ‘A Paget Memorial’, ch. I-III, unpublished M.A. dissertation, Fine Art Department, Universify of Edinburgh, 1989Google Scholar . Paper based on the above to be published in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal.
5 Giudici, /Martin, , ‘Sculpture Conservation Report’, 1988, unpublished (pers. comm.).Google Scholar
6 Ibid.
7 The faculty of 1895 authorizes church restoration and the resiting of the memorial. Archives of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York.
8 The Will of Richard Paget, February 1636. Archives of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York.
9 Venn, and Venn, op. cit. (note 1), 1, 25 (William Dealtry), in, 295 (Nathaniel Paget).Google Scholar
10 Kemp, B., English Church Monuments (London, 1980), 102.Google Scholar
11 On altar tombs, children might be represented in relief round the sides, playing the same role as medieval'weepers ‘. Alternatively, they might kneel - on the tomb-chest itself in smaller scale than their parents, although united in the same space (popular c. 1550-1610), Whinney, M., Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830, second edition (London, 1988), 228Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., 242.
13 Mann, J. G., ‘English church monuments, 1536-1625’, Walpole Soc. 21 (1932-1933), 17.Google Scholar
14 Esdaile, K. A., English Church Monuments 1510-1840 (London, 1946), 122.Google Scholar
15 Mercer, E., English Art, 1553-1625 (Oxford, 1962), 247Google Scholar , discusses how far concern with the human figure existed in England even before the development of a sophisticated Renaissance taste with Charles I, but how the ‘virtuosi’ naturally became catalysts in its development.
16 Kemp, , op. cit. (note 10), 106.Google Scholar
17 Ibid., 166.
18 Ibid., 70 and 181.
19 Ibid., 172. The inclusion of bats' wings is noted here as a baroque development, most used in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
20 Ibid., 70.
21 Ibid., 72.
22 Whinney, , op. cit. (note 11), 251Google Scholar . The motif cannot be designated as having originated in sculpture or in painting.
23 Kemp, , op. cit. (note 10), 94.Google Scholar
24 Addleshaw, G. W. O. and Etchells, F., The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (London, 1948), 95–8.Google Scholar
25 Mercer, , op. cit. (note 15), 239, n. 3.Google Scholar
26 The introduction of curtains to standing wall monuments with recumbent effigies, as at Langton (pl. XIVb) cannot be seen in the light of this concept, but should be linked to the simulation of the catafalque mentioned above, or even possibly as a reference to the four-poster bed (freestanding ‘tester’ monuments resemble these two parallels even mor e closely). However, as with all such motifs, any original purport could be forgotten, and curtains may appear in some instance s as simple decorative conceits, employed because of fashion and devoid of symbolism.
27 Whinney, , op. cit. (note 11), 246.Google Scholar
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 13.
30 Esdaile, K. A., op. cit. (note 3), 154Google Scholar . For a bibliography of Edward Marshall, see Whinney, M. and Millar, O., English Art 1625-1714 (Oxford, 1957), 112Google Scholar . A successful London sculptor of Fleet Street and Fetter Lane, Marshall joined the Masons' Company in 1626/7, becoming Master in 1650, and Master Mason to the Crown in 1660.
31 Esdaile, K. A., op. cit. (note 14), 33Google Scholar . i.e. Stone and Marshall developed the form to its full potential.
32 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 3), 154.Google Scholar
33 However, Esdaile, ibid, does link the Langton monument to others at Hitcham, Berks. (1624), Etchington, Wilts., and Canterbury Cathedral (1634) and Northbourne, Kent (1629)-all of which are similar, although none can be firmly attributed to Edward Marshall. It is interesting that Hutchinson (in Pevsner, , op. cit. (note 2), 302Google Scholar ) links Langton with the monument to Sir Henry Griffith (d. 1645) at Burton Agnes, Yorks. At least the last three above mentioned memorials were erected to a pattern of great similarity in basic form, carving of figures and drapery-they may well have originated from the same shop, or, if not, from the same basic design.
34 It may be significant that these features of th e Marshall angels are shared by the grou p mentioned in note 33, and closer study might produce further reasons for linking them with Marshall's authorship.
35 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 14), 53.Google Scholar
36 Indeed, Bristol schools had sent work as far as Cumberland and the East Riding in th e fifteenth century ( Esdaile, K. A., English Monumental Sculpture since the Renaissance (London, 1927), 2)Google Scholar , and Mann, J.G., op. cit. (note 13), 20Google Scholar , notes that the West Country school was particularly strong at a later date. Adam White (pers. comm.) writes that if the Paget memorial was carved by a Yorkshire mason, interaction with a Bristol or Bath school would be unlikely because of the distance involved, and so a common source would be more credible.
37 Llewellyn, N., John Weever and English Funeral Monuments of the 16th and 17th Century (unpublished London, 1983), 11, 27Google Scholar . Camden, W., Reges Regina Nobiles et alij in Ecclesia Collegiata B Pedri Westmonesterji sepulti vsque ad annum 1600 (London, 1600, et seq.)Google Scholar.
39 Dekker, T., The Gull's Horn Book (1609), McKerrow, R. B. (ed.) (London, 1905), 69.Google Scholar
39 Death dates were 1656,1660 and 1657. However, if the Paget memorial was constructed at the latter end of the possible bracket of c. 1630-c. 1660, then an influence by the Bentley monument would be feasible, if unlikely, since Richmond is remote from central London, and therefore less visited.
40 Torre, J., MS Add. York Minster Archive.Google Scholar
41 Whinney, , op. cit. (note 11), 22.Google Scholar
42 Torre, MSS York Minster Archive, 331Google Scholar , includes a sketch of the Sheffield monument which curiously depicts two inwardly kneeling effigies. The drawing is cursory and inaccurate, and he contradicts it by describing the figures as ‘half portraitures of baron and feme with Ruffs about their necks: he being in armour.’
43 Morrell, J. B., York Monuments (York, undated), 18.Google Scholar
44 Whinney, , op. cit. (note II), 37.Google Scholar
45 Kemp, B., op. cit. (note 10), 77.Google Scholar
46 Pevsner, N., Yorkshire and the West Riding, second edition (London, 1967), 374.Google Scholar
47 Author, op. cit. (note 4).
48 If, as seems likely, the sculptor was a local man, he will probably remain anonymous. Although indigenous sculpture continued in Yorkshire at this time, littl e data survive. Few sculptors’ names appear on the lists of Freemen, suggesting that their yards lay outside the city. However, the Thomas Ventrises Snr. (Freeman in 1615)and Jnr., of Coney Street, York, mus t have bee n held in some regard, as they were heavily patronized by Sir Arthur Ingram between 1620 and 1642 (see Gilbert, C., ‘Newly discovered carving by Thomas Ventris of York’, The Connoisseur 162 (1966), 257–9.Google Scholar ) Others were Thomas Hogges (?), Head Mason at York Minster c. 1630-67 (see Addleshaw, G. W. O. MS Add. 359/6, York Minster Archive)Google Scholar , Thomas Brinsley and Thomas Browne ( Esdaile, K. A., ‘Sculpture and sculptors in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeol. J. 35 (1940-1943), 383)Google Scholar . Only Browne's funerary sculpture is known with certainty, and it is stylistically far removed from the Paget memorial.
Whoever the craftsman, he was probably a mason too, in line with the usual practice of the time, hence the description of Walter Hancock, builder of Andover and also a tomb-maker, as ‘a very skillful man in the art of masonry, in settinge of plottes for buildinges and performing the same, ingraininge in alabaster in other stone or playster’, who was said to have done ‘most sumptuous buildings, most stately tombs, mos t curyous pictures.’ Mercer, E., op. cit. (note 15), 232Google Scholar.
49 Fuller, T., The Holy State and the Profane State, facsimile first edition from 1642, Walten, M. G. (ed.) (New York, 1938) 11, 188.Google Scholar
50 Addleshaw, G. N. O., MS Add. 359/6 York Minster Archive.Google Scholar
51 Weever, J., Ancient Funerall Monuments (London, 1631)Google Scholar facsimile first edition (Amsterdam, 1979), 10. Weever notes that it is the Muses, not the monuments which impart immortality, but he is a firm supporter of decorous and seemly monumental art. Most of his lengthy volume is an antiquarian study of surviving tomb s in England.
52 Fuller, , op. cit. (note 49), 188.Google Scholar
53 Although some aristocrats expressed thei r rank not in extravagant splendour, but rather in sophisticated plainness, as, for example, the Countess of Cumberland's simple black marble slab on four urns at Londesborough, East Riding, by Nicholas Stone.
54 Fuller, , op. cit. (note 49), 189.Google Scholar
55 Weever, , op. cit. (note 51), 11.Google Scholar
56 Llewellyn, , op. cit. (note 37), 1, 72.Google Scholar
57 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 36), 7Google Scholar . Wotton, Sir Henry in Elements of Architecture of 1624Google Scholar.
58 Stannard, D. E., The Puritan Way of Death (New York, 1977), 101.Google Scholar
59 Addleshaw, , op. cit. (note 50).Google Scholar
60 Spelman, H., De Sepultura (London, 1641), 28Google Scholar . A homily where the charging of a fee both for the priest's services and the burial ground is decried in favour of voluntary donations for the funeral rites alone to be hinted at and not demanded.
61 Another William Dealtry was rector there until 1736. Venn, and Venn, op. cit. (note 1), 1, 25Google Scholar.
62 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 14), 138.Google Scholar
63 Llewellyn, , op. cit. (note 37), 113.Google Scholar
64 Ibid., 90.
65 Ibid., 105, quoting from the Irish Journal of 1670 in Nicholas, Camden Society, (1867), 17.Google Scholar
66 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 36), 59.Google Scholar
67 Ibid., 60, quoting from Thoma s Dingley's MS History in Monuments (c. 1680), an antiquarian who chronicled many English tombs.
68 Llewellyn, , op. cit. (note 37), 124Google Scholar , quoting the Life of Sir Philip Sidney (c. 1610) by Fulke Greville, a considerable tom b patron himself.
69 Ibid., 114.
70 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 14), 138Google Scholar , quoting from Fuller's, Worthies.Google Scholar