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Painted heraldic panels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Extract

The object of this paper is to invite opinions on the purpose of a certain type of heraldic panel which is akin to the hatchment but is, in fact, quite distinct from it. The writers also wish to enlist help in recording further examples, whether lost or surviving, and to urge the preservation of the latter. They also desire to establish the number of cases where a monument of a permanent nature to the same person, as is commemorated by a panel can be found in the same church or churchyard; the only instance of a panel and corresponding memorial, other than the nineteenth-century examples at Lindfield, traced by the writers so far is in Salisbury Cathedral (see p. 83).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1955

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References

page 68 note 1 This heraldic term has been corrupted to give us the word ‘hatchment’.

page 68 note 2 The form as we know it is, however, clearly shown in the painting of the church of St. Bavo, Haarlem, by Gerrit Berck-Heyde, 1638–98, in the National Gallery, London. See below for further observations on continental heraldic panels and hatchments.

page 69 note 1 Illustrated in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, vol. i (1952), pl. 25Google Scholar.

page 69 note 2 Illustrated in J. Charles Cox, English Church Fittings, Furniture & Accessories (1923 ed.), p. 179, and in K. A. Esdaile, English Church Monuments, 1510 to 1840 (1946), p. 40.

page 69 note 3 Described by Sir William Parker in his History of Long Melford (1873), p. 139, as ‘a curious hatchment’. See also below, p. 87.

page 69 note 4 Information on this example received from the Rev. A. M. Somers, vicar of Great Oakley, and his churchwarden.

page 69 note 5 Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. v.

page 69 note 6 The term must, we think, be used here in the sense of a shield of arms—a targe—such as is shown in the illustrations of the funeral procession of Sir Philip Sidney, 1586, in the Catalogue of the Heralds' Commemorative Exhibition, 1484–1934 (1936), pl. xv, and in James Dallaway, Inquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England (1793) opp. p. 259. For a detailed description of another important funeral, see Thomas Innes of Learney, ‘Processional Roll of a Scottish Armorial Funeral, stated to have been used for the obsequies of George, 1st Marquess of Huntly, 1636’, with its invaluable illustrations, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. lxxvii, pp. 154–73.

page 70 note 1 Except, perhaps, in the case of the panel at Stoke Bruern referred to below.

page 70 note 2 For example, the helm and crest, surcoat and shield, over the tomb of Sir Thomas Smyth, Bt., died 1668, at Theydon Mount, Essex.

page 71 note 1 Bayley, T. D. S., Pebmarsh Church, Essex (1946), p. 29Google Scholar.

page 72 note 1 Jackson, T. G., Wadham College (1893), p. 89Google Scholar. Orders of procession and ceremonial for funerals of persons of high rank frequently occur in print, but Joseph Edmondson's treatise ‘On Funerals’, occupying 20 folio pages, in his Complete Body of Heraldry (1780), vol. i, is amongst the most exhaustive, John Gough Nichols, the editor of The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563 (1848), includes some useful notes on funerals of various classes in his Introduction (pp. xx–xxxii), and he regards Edmondson's work as ‘very ill digested’. While he considers the ‘scocheons’–often supplied in quantity—as the lowest type of heraldic ensign allotted for funerals, he suggests that they were the prototypes of modern hatchments. ‘Originally made’, he says, ‘of some perishable material, and fastened up in the churches, they were required to be painted on panel, in order to last longer.’ Machyn is believed to have been a furnisher of funeral trappings. Mrs.Ellis, L. B., in her ‘Royal Hatchments in City Churches, with some Remarks … on the Use at Funerals of Hatchments, Escutcheons, Hearses, and Majesty Scutcheons’, in Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, New Series, vol. x (1948), pp. 2440Google Scholar, gives some valuable information and important sources for further study.

page 74 note 1 Mrs. Esdaile also refers to hatchments in old Dutch churches in Holland, in Colombo, at the Cape, and in the East and West Indies. In checking other references in Mrs. Esdaile's book quoted above we find, on p. 76, that she agrees with our suggestion that painted heraldic panels ‘had degenerated into the coach painters’ hatchments which adorn so many of our churches’.

page 74 note 2 Cf. with the description of Archbishop Juxon's funeral above.

page 75 note 1 See Le Maire, O., ‘Cabinets d'armes malinois’, in Le Parchemin (1936)Google Scholar.

page 75 note 2 See also Puckle, Bertram S., Funeral Customs, Their Origin and Development (1926), p. 128Google Scholar, and the professional remarks of Mr. Mould, the undertaker, on the use of feathers at funerals in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), chapters 19, 25.

page 75 note 3 Dated 1888, and finely engraved by Lorenz Ritter.

page 75 note 4 We wish to take this opportunity of recording our thanks to Mr. London for all the invaluable expert help which he has so generously given in the course of preparing this paper, particularly in its final stages.

page 75 note 5 Banners and standards on poles were carried in English funerals in the sixteenth century and allowed to remain in churches until they decayed. See Nichols's, J. G. Introduction to The Diary of Henry Machyn (1848), p. xxxi.Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 Information supplied by the Rev. J. F. Williams, M.A., F.S.A., to whom the writers tender their grateful thanks for bringing this and other examples of painted heraldic panels to their notice. As this particular panel is so disfigured, the blazon of the arms is open to correction.

page 76 note 2 See Visitation of Cheshire, 1580 (Harl. Soc, vol. xviii, 1882, pp. 7879Google Scholar).

page 76 note 3 Ed. Venn, Cambs. Antiq. Soc., 8vo publications no. xxv (1891).

page 76 note 4 Rodolph Dod does not occur in the Visitation of Hertfordshire, 1634 (Harl. Soc, vol. xxii, 1886, p. 50Google Scholar), where there is a brief pedigree of Dod of Bennington giving an Edward Dod as son and heir of Thomas Dod of Great Boughton, co. Chester, but any doubt about the identity of the person commemorated by the panel is cleared up by Venn in his Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College, vol. i, p. 313, where he gives an account of Edward, son of Rodolph Dod of Shocklach, Cheshire, and quotes the mutilated verses at the bottom of the panel.

page 78 note 1 More elaborate varieties, in the form of triptychs, are to be found at Besford, Worcestershire, Burford, Shropshire, and Lydiard Tregoz, Wiltshire (illustrated in Country Life, vol. cxv, p. 2102; vol. cxvi, p. 211; and vol. ciii, pp. 727–9 respectively), but these were never connected with funeral ceremonies any more than this example at Willingale Spain, but they all have some features which are common to the main group of painted heraldic panels.

page 79 note 1 Thanks are, due to the Rev. J. F. Williams, M.A., F.S.A., Mr. H. J. Butcher, and Mr. G. W. Johnson for information.

page 79 note 2 Barratt, S. G. R. (ed.), A Short History of Totteridge (1934), pp. 125–6Google Scholar.

page 80 note 1 See Toke, N. E., The Hatchments in the Churches of Canterbury, pp. 7286Google Scholar, with notes of some which have disappeared. This reference was supplied to the writers by Mr. A. A. Dibben, M.A., to whom thanks are due.

page 83 note 1 On the monument to Richard Board on the E. wall of Massets chancel in Lindfield church, this lady is described as Sarah, daughter of Francis and Ann Dalby. The arms of Board impaling Dalby are also on the monument, and we are unable to explain why the Russell arms appear on the octagonal panel; no mention of a Russell marriage is in Comber, J., Sussex Genealogies—Ardingly Centre (1932), pp. 1925Google Scholar.

page 83 note 2 This epitaph is incorrectly given in Harris, James, Copies of the Epitaphs in Salisbury Cathedral, Cloisters, and Cemetery (1825), p. 42Google Scholar.

page 83 note 3 See The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury and the Abbey-Church of Bath (1719), pp. 90–91.

page 84 note 1 Christopher Gardiner and Elias Odell.

page 84 note 2 Illustrated in Charles Haskins, The Ancient Trade Guilds and Companies of Salisbury (1912), opp. pp. 243, 160, and described on pp. 253–4 and 219 respectively. The photographs in Haskins and in The Festival Book of Salisbury (ed. F. Stevens, 1914) are rather clearer than the actual panels. The Bakers' panel is also described in Salisbury Museum Catalogue (1870), p. 46. Our thanks are due to the Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral, to Mr. H. de S. Shortt, M.A., F.S.A., and to Miss Beryl Thompson for assistance in connexion with the Salisbury panels.

page 84 note 3 Information ahout these two panels kindly supplied by Miss Beryl Thompson and forwarded to the writers by Mr H. Stanford London, F.S.A.

page 85 note 1 See also p. 72, n. 1.

page 86 note 1 R. W. Ketton-Cremer, M.A., F.S.A., in an Introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition, ‘East Anglia and the Netherlands’, held at Norwich, June–Sept. 1954.

page 86 note 2 Not described in detail in this paper, as in the opinion of Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, Lord Lyon, this panel has no connexion with funeral customs, and further comment before exhausting all possible lines of inquiry to establish its true purpose would be premature.

page 86 note 3 The artist seems to have been in trouble over his Latin; he obviously intended Virescit, but misspelt it and over-painted a correction which makes the word almost unintelligible. His use of funere following post is also wrong: the phrase should read Virescit (or? Vivat) post funera virtus. The names Siles is also wrong; the man concerned was Giles Smith, rector of Scampton, Lines., who was buried there 31 Oct. 1622.