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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2012
This paper claims the heraldry of the twelve tribes of Israel as a distinct iconographic invention in post-Reformation England. It is argued that the theme became popular during the reign of King James, a period usually regarded as iconophobic. Little-studied examples of church wall-painting are understood in relation to analogous bible illustrations and writings which have been ignored by historians of this period. The depictions of the twelve patriarchs themselves, part of a ‘Laudian’ beautification of Burton Latimer church in the 1630s, during the incumbency of Robert Sibthorpe allows exploration of the shifting meanings of this Reformation subject.
1 The works of Jonathan Swift, D. D. dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, ed. John Hawkesworth, London 1755, iii. 35.
2 Charles Cox, The churches of Derbyshire: the hundreds of High Peak and Wirksworth, London 1877, 482.
3 Works of Jonathan Swift, iii. 35.
4 Charles E. Keyser, A list of buildings in Great Britain and Ireland having mural and other painted decoration, of dates prior to the latter part of the sixteenth century, with historical introduction and alphabetical index of subjects, London 1883, pp. lxxxvi-lxxxvii, 49, 87, 104, 123, 262; E. Clive Rouse, Discovering wall paintings, Tring 1968, 44; E. Croft Murray, Decorative painting in England, 1537–1837, London 1962–70, i, plate 47. There is an exceptionally informative and perceptive discussion of wall-paintings in Burton Latimer church in Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, New Haven–London 1997, 210–11.
5 No mention is made of the patriarchs or the Israelites in standard medieval iconographic surveys, such as John B. Friedman, Medieval iconography: a research guide, New York–London 1998; Louis Réau, Iconographie de l'art crétien, Paris 1956; or Iconclass: an iconographic classification system/H. van de Waal; completed and edited by L. D. Couprie with E. Tholen, G. vellekoop, Amsterdam 1973. These volumes mention only a series of the patriarchs painted by the Spanish artist Zurbaran in about.1640; they too are devoid of heraldry. See the National Gallery, Zurbaran: Jacob and his twelve sons, London 1994. By the late sixteenth century several series of prints of the patriarchs were being produced in the Netherlands, but none include their heraldry. For these see Veldman, Ilja M. and de Jonge, H. J., ‘The sons of Jacob: the twelve patriarchs in sixteenth-century Netherlandish prints and popular literature’, Simiolus xv (1985), 176–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Merritt, J. F., ‘Puritans, Laudians, and the phenomenon of church-building in Jacobean London’, HJ xxxxi (1998), 935–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547– c. 1700, Oxford 2007, ch iii; Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The parochial roots of Laudianism revisited: Catholics, anti-Calvinists and “parish Anglicans” in early Stuart England’, this Journal xlix (1998) 620–49Google Scholar.
7 Peter Sharp in 1628, quoted in Walsham, ‘Laudianism revisited’, 628.
8 Notes and Queries (6th ser. xii [12 Sept. 1885], 315–7th ser [1 Jan 1886]) contains various contributions on the shields of the twelve tribes, initiated by a query about the Swift poem's reference. Contributors noted that at St Nicholas, Glatton, Hunts, there had been a singing gallery across the tower arch which included three large panels with Israelite heraldry; St Mary's Whittlesey, Cambridge, had the shields painted in black outline, in the nave clerestory area, and with text below; Hargrave church in Northampton had the patriarchs themselves. Finally the editors note ‘Many other similar records have reached us’, which suggests that far more examples of the theme survived in parish churches in the late nineteeth century.
9 John Speed, The genealogies of the Scriptures, according to every familie and tribe: with the lyne of our sauior Iesus Christ obserued from Adam, to the blessed virgin Mary: gathered and contriued by Iohn Speed, London 1610 (RSTC 23039c). With variations in the title, Speed's genealogy went through more than sixty printings between 1610 and 1642. From 1611 the genealogy was also required to be inserted in every copy of the King James Bible: The testamentes of the twelve patriarches the sonnes of Jacob: translated out of G[reek]e into Latine by Robert Grosthed, sometime bishop of Lyncolne, and Englyshed by A. G. with the testament of Jacob their father: prefixed and briefly gathered out of Genesis. 48. 49., London 1574 (RSTC 194657). Many editions through the seventeeth century included the figurative woodcuts derived from a 1552 Ghent edition by Joos Lambrecht: R. Sinker, A descriptive catalogue of the editions of the printed text of the versions of the testamenta xii patriarcharum, Cambridge–London 1910.
10 Michael Bath, Renaissance decorative painting in Scotland, Edinburgh c. 2003, 128–40.
11 Christ's own words justify this: ‘The kingdome of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation, which shall bring foorth the fruits thereof’ (Matt. xxi.43). This, and all subsequent biblical references, are from the 1599 Geneva folio edition (RSTC 2180). For a full discussion on the uses of the Israel trope see Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of Protestant England: religious and cultural change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, London 1988, ch i. See also Thomas Tymme, A preparation against the prognosticated dangers of this yeare, London 1588 (RSTC 24420), A2r, who makes analogy between Israel and England: ‘this litle Ileland our native country may no lesse reioyce that first of all kingdoms in the worlde, it did faithfully receive and publikely professe the religion and Gospell brought unto us by Christ’. William Hampton's St Pauls Cross sermon of 1626, published as A proclamation of warre, London 1627 (RSTC 12741), gives a clear explication of the paradoxes of the Israel parallel.
12 A seventeeth-century example of this way of thinking is George Herbert's poem, The bunch of grapes (1633). He compares his own spiritual life, its joys and sorrows, to the Israelites' travels through the Red Sea, and the wilderness: The complete English poems, ed. John Tobin, London 1991, 119. See also St Paul's words: 1 Corinthians x. 1–11.
13 R. S. Luborsky and E. Ingram, A guide to English illustrated books, 1536–1603, Tempe, Az 1998, 116.
14 Exodus xiv. See also marginal note to Genesis xxxiii.6: ‘Iaakob and his familie are the image of the Church under the yoke of tyrants which for feare are brought to subjection.'
15 John Calvin, The Institution of Christian religion written in Latine by M. Iohn Caluine, and translated into English according to the authors last edition, by Thomas Norton, London 1578 (RSTC 4418), 436v; Collinson, Patrick, ‘Biblical rhetoric: the English nation and national sentiment in the prophetic mode’, in C. McEachern and D. Shuger (eds), Religion and culture in Renaissance England, Cambridge 1977, 15–45’, American Historical Review lxxx (1983), 1151–74Google Scholar.
16 For example, Wolfgang Musculus, Commonplaces of Christian religion, London 1563 (RSTC 18308), iii, fos 208v, 209r. He also uses Christ's words ‘Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devill’ (John vi.70) to demonstrate the difference between those chosen by God (of Israel), and those predestined to be saved (Israel). The marginal note to Rom. ix.6 in the Geneva Bible explains that ‘Israel in the first is taken for Jacob: and in the second for the Israelites’. God's preference for Jacob over the firstborn Esau was a key incident used to illustrate the doctrine of predestination.
17 John Guillim, A display of heraldrie, London 1611 (RSTC 12500), sect. i, ch. i, p. 2.
18 Some of the patriarch devices remained unstable, and at Hartington the eighteenth-century heraldry of Ruben is a mandrake (referring to Gen. xxx.14). Sir Thomas Brown examined rabbinical and Christian scholarship on the heraldry of the patriarchs and found only contradictions in these authors, but he did not doubt that the patriarchs had heraldic devices: Pseudodoxia epidemica, London 1658, bk v, ch. x., pp. 209–11.
19 Gerard Legh, The accedens of armoury, London 1562 (RSTC 15388), fos 24r–v, 37r–v.; Sir John Ferne, The blazon of gentrie, London 1586, (RSTC 10825), 18–22; Edmund Bolton, The elements of armories, London 1610 (RSTC 3220), ch iii, p. 9; Guillim, A display of heraldrie, sect. i ch. i, p. 3.
20 Historical catalogue of the printed editions of the English Bible, 1525–1961, revised and expanded from the edition of T. H. Darlow & H. F. Moule, by A. S. Herbert, London 1968, 115, nos 248–55. Unfortunately nothing is known of the origin of the new frontispiece for this version of the Geneva Bible.
21 Matt. ixx.28, Luke xxii.30.
22 Revelation xxi.12–14.
23 Historical catalogue, 121, no. 271.
24 For discussion of the theme in the title-pages to the 1602 edition of the Bishops Bible and the 1611 King James Bible see Corbett and R. Lightbown, The comely frontispiece: the emblematic title-page in England, 1550–1660, London 1979, 91–7, 107–111. In the engraved frontispiece to the whole King James Bible the architectural structure is understood as the world of the Old Testament, indicated by the figures of Moses and Aaron set in niches. The shields of the twelve tribes appear in the frieze. This structure provides the physical and historical base for seated Apostles and evangelists.
25 Historical catalogue, 289.
26 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bib.Eng.1607 e.1 (2).
27 Matt. i.1–17; Luke iii.22–38.
28 Thomas Phillips, The booke of Genesis; or Christ's genealogie (published together with The booke of lamentation), London 1639 (RSTC 19878.5), 18–27. Phillips gives named examples of false Christs, from the earliest times to Elizabeth's reign.
29 Hugh Broughton, A consent of Scripture, London 1590 (RSTC 3850), preface, fo.7r. This was true also for the earliest Christians, to justify their faith in Christ, as the inclusion of genealogies in the Gospels confirms. See G. Lloyd Jones, ‘Broughton, Hugh, 1549–1612’, ODNB.
30 Arthur Watson, The early iconography of the tree of Jesse, London 1934, plates xxxvii, xxxviii.
31 An illuminated letter at the beginning of the table of the genealogy of Christ includes Parker's paternal arms impaled with the see of Canterbury. Cranmer's preface is similarly illuminated with a ‘C’ and his arms, and these ‘authorial’ initials suggest that Parker's initial indicates his personal involvement in some way: Clair, Colin, ‘The Bishops Bible 1568’, Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1962), 287–90Google Scholar.
32 Sarah Bendall, ‘Speed, John, 1551/2–1629’, ODNB.
33 Ashley Baynton-Williams, ‘Biography John Speed iii’, Mapforum i/4: http://www.mapforum.com. Speed was licensed ‘to utter, sell, and putt to sale from tyme to tyme to any person/s, taking for the same theis prises following and noe more: for every booke of the said Genealogies and one mappe being printed to be placed in the volume called Large folio – 2 shillings, small folio 18 pence, quarto 12 pence, octavo 5 pence’. There would be not only a 40s. fine for piracy but no Bible without the genealogy was to be issued on pain of forfeiture of the volumes: Francis Fry, A description of the Great Bible, London 1865, 40, citing patent roll 8 James I part 30, no 9. This right was renewed twice and in 1638 Speed's son sold The genealogie to the Stationers' Company for the remarkable sum of £650. The book was clearly considered a money-maker.
34 Lori Anne Ferrell, quoting William Perkins describing his oracular catechism (1600): ‘Transfiguring theology: William Perkins and Calvinist aesthetics’, in Christopher Highley and John N. King (eds), John Foxe and his world, Aldershot 2002. See also her discussion of Speed's diagrams in ‘Page Techne: interpreting diagrams in early modern English “how-to” books’, in Michael Hunter (ed.), Printed images in early modern Britain: essays in interpretation, Farnham 2010, 113–16.
35 Gervaise Markham, The gentlemans academie: or The booke of S. Albans containing three most exact and excellent bookes: the first of hawking, the second of all the proper termes of hunting, and the last of armorie: all compiled by Iuliana Barnes in the yere from the incarnation of Christ 1486: and now reduced into a better method. by G. M., London 1595 (RSTC 3314), 44, 49v.
36 Bibles signed by owners or recording family births, marriages or deaths, exist from the sixteenth century, ‘placing the book in space and time, … [which] marked one's own place in history’: William H. Sherman, Used books: marking readers in Renaissance England, Philadelphia 2008, 76.
37 See, for example, Merritt, ‘Puritans’.
38 Ibid. 950.
39 Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, London 2001, 85–6. She suggests that fees charged by Heralds might be inflated if the applicant's armigerous claims were fragile or bogus.
40 Francis Rollenson, Twelue prophetical legacies: or twelue sermons vpon Jacobs last will and testament, London 1612 (RSTC 21265), 97.
41 For example, visitation articles for Peterborough diocese 1602–29 ask ‘whether doe you knowe of any that use conventicles or meetings for expounding of scriptures, or saying of prayers in private houses or places [or] any that obstinately defend heresies, schismes or false doctrines’: Visitation articles and injunctions of the early Stuart Church, ed. Kenneth Fincham, Woodbridge 1994, i. 141.
42 Guillim, A display of heraldrie, sect. i ch. i, p. 2. This statement mirrors the questions asked by Heralds at their visitations.
43 The heraldry at West Walton is surrounded by flimsy laurel wreaths rather than strap-work framing, so it is not surprising that they are usually dated to the eighteenth century. However it is equally possible that earlier, seventeenth-century frames were over-painted later (of which there is visible evidence), to suit changing taste.
44 This is indicated by churchwarden accounts for Burton Latimer and Prestbury, to be discussed at pp. 28–9, 31 below. In both cases parishioners paid large sums for the wall-paintings, through levies made in the 1630s.
45 Every month, for example in Psalm lxxviii, they would have rehearsed the early history of the Israelites, including the Red Sea episode, as also Psalm cxiv appointed for Easter day, and bible readings through the year.
46 2 Peter i. 13–14: ‘For I thinke it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stirre you vp … Seeing I know that the time is at hand that I must lay down this my tabernacle.’
47 For example, the Mildmay chapel, St Leonard's, Apethorpe, has a 1621 figurative east window, the Willoughby chapel at St Chad's, Wilne, has glass of c. 1622, and on the Bluett family pew in All Saints, Holcombe Rogus, are carved Old Testament scenes.
48 In conservation reports by Clive Rouse and Eve Baker, in church guides and other sources, the painting are usually called ‘late Elizabethan’ with later over-painting, but this paper argues against such early datings.
49 Veldman and de Jonge, ‘The sons of Jacob’.
50 Finney P. Corby (ed.) Seeing beyond the word: visual arts and the Calvinist tradition, Grand Rapids, Mi 1999; Andrew Spicer, Calvinist churches in early modern Europe, Manchester 2007; Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer, Public opinion and changing identities in the early modern Netherlands: essays in honour of Alistair Duke, Leiden 2007.
51 Northamptonshire Record Office, 55P/57; J. P. Earwaker, East Cheshire, past and present, London 1880, ii. 180–207.
52 There are however late sixteenth-century examples – uncontroversial because in domestic settings – on plaster fireplaces in Hardwick Old Hall (which use al-antiqua engravings after designs by Heemskerck (Veldman and de Jonge, ‘The sons of Jacob’), and on the hall screen at Burton Agnes, which derive from the Lambrecht woodcuts: Wells-Cole, Art and decoration, 174–5, 265.
53 There are versions in Latin, French, German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Bohemian and Welsh: Veldman and de Jonge, ‘The sons of Jacob’; Sinker, Descriptive catalogue. Matthew Parker gave his Greek manuscript copy, thought to be the one used by Bishop Grosseteste, to Cambridge University.
54 Claire Cross ‘Anthony Gilby c.1510–1585’, ODNB.
55 Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin & Exodum: that is a sixfold commentary upon the two first bookes of Moses, being Genesis and Exodus, Cambridge 1605 (RSTC 25682), 445. He calls The testamentes a forged book.
56 A four-sheet set depicting the patriarchs is listed in the stocks of broadsheet sellers, as were genealogies of Christ: Tessa Watt, Cheap prints and popular piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge 1991, 161, 181, 354–6.
57 Gilby, Testamentes, 1574, fos 2r 4v. In the dedication of the 1560 Geneva Bible, Judah is set as a model to Queen Elizabeth of right and wrong behaviour in a ruler.
58 Christopher Haigh, The plain man's pathway to heaven, Oxford 2007, 219.
59 For example J. Fielding, ‘Robert Sibthorpe, (d. 1667)’, ODNB; Fincham and Tyacke, Altars restored, 177, 179, 187; and Kevin Sharpe, The personal rule of Charles I, New Haven–London 1992, 746, 802, 822.
60 When Plowright, who was also town constable, got into trouble over pressing men for Scotland in 1636 Sibthorpe defended him and took the matter to the Star Chamber: Slater, Victor L., ‘The lord lieutenancy on the eve of the civil war: the impressment of George Plowright’, HJ xxix (1986) 279–96Google Scholar. Christopher Haigh gives examples of parishioners brought before the church court for a variety of misdemeanours, and cites a churchwarden's description of the parish ‘as divided between “the profane sort” and “the devout”’: A plain man's pathway, 69, 167, 211, 219.
61 Northamptonshire Record Office, 55P/57, 6, 9, 11, 13, 22, 30–2, 46, 49, 54–8, 105, 112, 120, 122, 166.
62 Robert Sybthorpe, A counterplea to an apostatoes pardon: a sermon, London 1618 (RSTC 22527), 2; Apostolike obedience: a sermon, London 1627 (RSTC 22525). In the preface addressed to King Charles’ ‘deare and nourceing mother the Church and Common-weale of England’, Sibthorpe writes ‘I know his Majesties Love desireth to have you united and neare unto him, and so much he hath enjoyned us of the Tribe of Levi, to certifie unto you’.
63 M.de Jonge, ‘The testaments of the twelve patriarchs’, in H. F. D. Sparks, The apocryphal Old Testament, Oxford 1984; Luborsky and Ingram, English illustrated books, 624. Luborsky and Ingram claim that ‘In Ghent editions of the 1540s by Joos Lambrecht … marginalia linked the text's prophesies to the advent of the Reformation.’ Such prophesies would have seemed particularly potent to reformers, since they were uttered by the founders of Israel.
64 Gilby, Testamentes, 1574, fo. 2r.
65 Ephesians vi and Colossians iii, iv, were both used widely as sources for appropriate texts addressed to all manner of people.
66 Earwaker, East Cheshire, 180–207.