To these remarks of the Bishop I here add some valuable observations made by Mr. Albert Hartshorne, F.S.A., in a Paper read before the Archæological Institute, {247} and reprinted for private circulation, on “Kirkstead Chapel, and a remarkable monumental effigy there preserved.” He says: “Reared against the south wall at the west end is a monumental effigy in Forest marble, larger than life, of a man in the military costume of the first quarter of the 13th century. He wears a cylindrical helm, a hauberk, apparently hooded, a short surcote, and a broad cingulum. The left arm is covered by a ponderous shield, and he draws a sword in a scabbard. He wears breeches of mail, but the legs, from the knees downward, are missing. The head rests upon a cushion, supported by conventional foliage. The occurrence of a cylindrical flat-topped helm in monumental sculpture is, of itself, sufficiently rare to merit a notice. There are two examples of it at Furness Abbey, two at Chester-le-street, one at Staindrop, and one at Walkern,—seven only in all, so far as appears to be known. They occur in the seals of Hen. III., Edward I., Alexander II. of Scotland, and Hugh de Vere. Actual examples of such headpieces are certainly of the utmost rarity. There is a very genuine one in the Tower, and another at Warwick Castle. Some sham ones were in the Helmet and Mail Exhibition, held in the rooms of the Institute in 1880, and are suitably exposed in the illustrated catalogue of this interesting collection.” “Banded mail,” as it is called, has been one of the archæological difficulties “of the past and present generations, and the late Mr. Burges took great trouble in endeavouring to unravel the mystery of its construction . . . having casts made from the only four then known . . . effigies (with it) at Tewkesbury, Tollard Royal, Bedford, and Newton Solney; but . . . he had to confess, in the end, that he could make nothing satisfactory of it. Here, at Kirkstead, is the fifth known sculptured example of banded mail in the kingdom, and . . . it is the earliest example of all . . . it resembles most the Newton Solney type; but I can throw no light upon the mail’s construction, though I have long considered the subject, and must leave the matter as I found it, twenty years ago, a mystery. If we are to suppose, as the Bishop Suffragan has suggested, that a local lord built Kirkstead chapel, then I am disposed to think, with him, that that lord was Robert de Tattershall and Kirkstead, who died in 1212. The date of that chapel may certainly be of about the same period, namely, a little after the time of St. Hugh of Lincoln, and co-eval with the Early English work of the second period in Lincoln Cathedral. The effigy may very well have been set up to the memory of Robert de Tattershall, a few years after his death.”