They were imported into England in rectangular plates of the required thickness. When the plates were manufactured in England, they were very much thinner, and consequently more liable to injury; so that though they are not nearly so old as the earlier brasses, they are yet in a much worse condition. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries brasses were manufactured in great quantities, and the work gave employment to many people. It is probable that the engravers worked in guilds established in London, Norwich, Ipswich, and Bristol. The figure was drawn (generally in a recumbent position, with the hands in the attitude of prayer) upon the flat brass plate, and then the lines of the armour, the folds of the drapery, and the features, etc., were deeply cut into the metal. After these lines had been engraved, the whole figure was cut out of the plate just as a child cuts out a figure from a picture. A brass consisted of the following parts: (1) The figure or figures; (2) heraldic devices and armorial bearings on shields; (3) mottoes or epitaphs; (4) other subsidiary figures or ornaments (angels, canopies, etc.). In the English brass each of these elements was cut out separately and placed in position upon a stone slab. The outline was then marked round each, the brasses were lifted off, and the stone cut away in the portions thus marked out, to a depth equal to the thickness of the brass. The plates were then placed in position in this stone matrix, the surfaces of the brass being level with the surface of the stone, and each piece was fastened down by means of metal screws. In a number of cases, part or even the whole of the brasses on a slab have disappeared, but the empty matrix clearly shows the general form of the missing parts. (Fig. 1.) We have in England a few magnificent brasses of a different kind that were manufactured and engraved entirely in Flanders or North Germany, and they are known as Flemish brasses. The great difference between the English and Flemish brasses is that in the former the figures were cut out of the rectangular sheets of metal, and the lines of the drawing were bold and few in number as was compatible with clearness; whereas in the latter the brass was kept in a rectangular form, and the whole plate was engraved as the plate of a picture might be. The figures were incised upon a background which was entirely filled in with diapered ornaments and suitable heraldic devices and patterns, while the inscription was engraved around the edge of the plate. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the inscriptions on all brasses were in Norman French; in the fifteenth century they were in Latin; and in the sixteenth century in English.