_Provincial workmanship_ needs, of course, a good deal of technical
knowledge to detect. The immense majority of English brasses were made
by London artists, and the only provincial schools seem to have been in
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. One small mark usually found in provincial
work is mentioned by Haines, namely, that the hands are held apart, one
on each side of the breast, as in Lord Willoughby’s brass at Spilsby.
I must here mention two very singular brasses to be found in the county.
I do not know of any instance of bodily infirmity commemorated except in
the curious brass of William Palmer, 1520, at Ingoldmells. He has beside
him a “stilt” or crutch, and in the inscription he is called, “William
Palmer wyth yᵉ stylt.”
The brass at Edenham is—or rather was, for it is now taken into the
church for safety—quite startling, being formerly on the west face of the
tower, forty feet from the ground. It is of an archbishop, and when the
Lincolnshire Architectural Society went to Edenham in 1888, and the brass
was there described by Bishop Trollope, I remember that much amusement
was caused by the episcopal figure looking so much like a rough portrait
of the good bishop himself. It may, however, be taken as certain that
this is not a sepulchral brass, but part of a representation of the giver
of the tower, _c._ 1500, since the rivets of another brass, the donor
kneeling, can be detected on the other side of the west window lower
down. It must then be of a saint, and so may be assumed to be St. Thomas
of Canterbury. It is, however, well worth mention here.
Lastly, I turn to the inscriptions. There are many rather curious ones
dotted about the county, but they are mostly too long to be worth
transcribing in full. I will give, therefore, two only, from Wrangle and
Lusby.
At Wrangle, on the tomb of John Reed, a merchant of the Staple of Calais,
and his wife, is a marginal inscription running round a large slab, which
has been broken in parts, but was copied by Marratt. The introduction of
the verse part is curiously abrupt, and seems to need some link. It runs:
“_They for man when yᵉ [winde blows make the mill grin]de. and ev. on thy
own soule have thou [a minde. that thou givest w]yth thy hande that shalt
thou finde. and yᵗ thou levys thy executors comys far behinde. do for
your slefe whill yᵉ have space. to pray ihu of m̅cy and grace i̅ heuen to
haue a place._”
[Illustration: JOHN LYNDEWODE AND HIS WIFE ALICE (1419) IN LYNWOOD
CHURCH.]
In the tiny church of Lusby, close to the battlefield of Winceby, there
is a small brass plate on a slab which bears, as far as I can make it
out, the date 1555. It has a pretty little inscription in verse as a
dialogue between a wife and a husband. It runs:
“_My flesh in hope doth rest and slepe_
_In earth here to remayne._
_My spirit to Christ I gyve to kepe_
_Till I do rise agayne._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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