In _Knights_ there is a fairly representative sequence. Beginning with
the Buslingthorpe and Croft brasses just mentioned, we have then Sir
Henry Redford at Broughton, and Sir Andrew Luttrell at Irnham (fourteenth
century); Lord Willoughby at Spilsby; and others at Laughton, Gunby,
Covenham St. Bartholomew, South Kelsey, and Holbeach (early fifteenth);
Robert Hayton at Theddlethorpe (1424); the grand brass of Lord Cromwell
at Tattershall (1455); Henry Rochforth at Stoke Rochford (1470); Sir
William Skypwyth at South Ormsby (1482); and several of the sixteenth
century, as at Norton Disney, Ashby Puerorum (two), Horncastle,
Harrington, and Hainton (a tabard).
In _Priests_ the list is only moderate, but it is headed by the fine
one at Boston in the sacrarium (_c._ 1400), and the grand late one of a
Provost at Tattershall, whom I take to be John Gyger (_c._ 1510). There
are two other priests at Tattershall—William Moor (1456) and William
Symson (1519). Another interesting brass of a priest is that of William
de Lound (_c._ 1370) at Althorpe in the Isle of Axholme. This was covered
up by coats of paint daubed over the altar-tomb on which it was set, so
that it was only discovered at the restoration of the church. The brass
of a priest in cope (_c._ 1490), at Fiskerton, is interesting as having
been lost, but fortunately re-discovered by Bishop Trollope in a shop at
Lincoln. The rest are unimportant.
In _Ladies_ the county would claim high rank if it were only for the
beautiful brasses of Lord Cromwell’s nieces and co-heiresses, Joan,
Lady Cromwell, and Matilda, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby. Lady Cromwell’s
effigy, with long flowing hair kept back by a jewelled bandeau (which
looks as if the brass had been engraved before she was married), I regard
as the most graceful figure on a brass in all England. Both are fine
studies of dress. Their date cannot be accurately fixed, since they are
certainly earlier than 1497, the year of Lady Willoughby’s death; but
in my list, in _Lincolnshire Notes and Queries_, I have given reasons
for believing that they were engraved between 1460 and 1480. The next
finest is of another Lady Willoughby, Margery, who died in 1391; it
is in the Willoughby Aisle, now kept locked, in Spilsby Church. There
is another effigy of a lady with flowing hair, Elizabeth FitzWilliam,
1522, at Mablethorpe. A fine figure of a lady, _c._ 1400, was discovered
at Gedney in 1890. She was probably of the Roos family, who held the
manor. She wears the nebular head-dress, with hair flowing from under
it. The only other lady with costume of much interest is one, probably
a Skypwyth, at South Ormsby. Ladies represented with their husbands are
seldom very elaborately treated as to their costume. About 1480 they had
the “butterfly” head-dress, which one would suppose must have been as
annoying to their husbands and brothers as the modern lady’s gigantic hat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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