academic, and civil-while those sacred to ladies show costly robes, pearl embroidery, and vestments powdered with ornaments so extravagantly as to prove that fashion then, as now, entertains no sympathy with taste; but the meddling with monuments thus complained of weakens faith—since the vital essence which renders history valuable is truth, of which the mainspring is a free discussion of all reliable means—nor does she even despise the evidence to be drawn from vain marbles. This, however, does not interdict the exercise of scepticism on costly preservatives of infamous characters. Every inducted disciple of Linus will agree with Bishop Hall, that-- Small honour can be got with gaudie grave, A rotten name from death it cannot save. The greater pompe procuring greater shame, Yet, under all the disadvantages, there is a mine of information to be still worked in our monumental remains; and surely every good subject ought to be interested in the preservation of all the memorials of our illustrious dead, for the satisfaction and instruction of the living. Unhappily this has not been the case, especially in recent times; and, although we must angrily deplore the wanton mutilations of consecrated places, and the desecration of churches by the puritanical hordes of Cromwell, we are wrong in supposing that they were the only Vandals who injured our country, and tarnished its character by such spoliation. Ignorance and prejudice, to be sure, may have been more to blame than malice prepense or desire of gain, but in either case the motive can be no palliation of the public injury. Even in our own tolerant times, what flagrant assaults (archæologically speaking) have been waged against public decency and feeling, by men of respectability and pretension to good education! In my last letter I alluded to the wanton destruction of the Felbrigge* monument at Playford, an act which a valued correspondent informs me was "perpetrated by the ipsis manibus of two clergymen; no ploughman, street-sweeper, or marine-store dealer would have done such a thing." And, in a recent letter from Mr. Albert Way, that energetic antiquary says: "When I offered, some twelve or fifteen years ago, to have the figure and canopy of the founder of Playford Church, which had been most violently torn from its resting-place, made good at my own expense, the incumbent declined to permit anything of the kind to be done." The excuse was truly iconoclastic, that, "if the brass of Sir George were fixed up in the chancel, it would distract the attention of his hearers during the service!" Were not the bellicose lion and unicorn of the royal arms also liable to this barbarous objection? It will readily be conceded that many churches have been exceedingly well attended to—as Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire, St. Mary's in Warwick, and a few others—but they almost form exceptions to the general rule: instances of callous neglect, or reckless remodelling, are common over the length and breadth of the land, to an extent which would astonish the respective actors themselves. Two or three unquestionable facts will illustrate this: and the deeds, without perpetrators' names, will show that personality is not the object of our remarks. Sir George Felbrigge, founder of the church, was esquire of the body to Edward III. He was knighted in the Scotch wars in 1385, and died in 1400. In a later letter to me, Mr. Way observes-" Loose broken brasses in church chests are very apt to go astray. I made a long pilgrimage to Mildenhall, Suffolk, in 1836. There was a noble brass there of life size, which I knew only by the drawings of Mr. Kerrich, now in the British Museum. To my vexation the sexton only produced the feet-a fine pair of sollerets resting on a lion. He assured me that he had seen the head, and another piece about twenty inches long, within two months-but he supposed the ringers had stolen it, or that some gentleman from the Great House,' who had been looking at the head, had taken a fancy to it. Had this grand figure been fixed anywhere, or even screwed up against the wall, it had not thus fared with one of the most curious engraved memorials in the Eastern Counties. It seems to have been perfect in 1829.”—Another intelligent correspondent, Mr. H. W. King, in a letter of last September, is indignant at the spoliation which the churches in Essex have undergone; in one of which, Downham, he actually saw a fine old helmet-torn apparently from Judge Raymond's tombbeing used as a mortar hod. He endeavoured to raise a hue-and-cry respecting the robbery of brasses from Chingford church, also, about two years ago: and his wrath is both warmly and justly excited by the treatment of the mortuary memorials of Admiral Haddock and his family at Leigh. This is the more galling, as my late worthy friend Admiral Otway, passing the spot and seeing the monumental tablet of so celebrated a brother-officer lying in fragments, requested it might be replaced at his cost; but it was not done. On this insult to the meritorious dead, Mr. King thus indignantly perorates: "We have traced the Haddock family, with some interruptions, from the reign of Edward III. till the commencement of the 19th century. For nearly five hundred years the successive descendants have been born at Leigh, and their remains have found a last resting-place in that church and the church-yard. We may well believe that, irrespectively of the feeling which has induced men in all times and all nations to desire that their bones should rest in the sepulchre of their fathers,' the Haddocks might very naturally wish that their remains should repose among a sea-faring people, by the sea-side, and upon an eminence overlooking the ocean, upon which they had passed the greater part of their lives, and upon which they had won renown. But their sepulchral memorials have well nigh perished. The most ancient monument does not now cover the bodies of those whose names it commemorates; and, while the destroying hand of time has nearly obliterated the inscriptions upon the vaults, the ruder and more destructive hand of man has demolished the mural tablet intended as a more especial, prominent, and enduring memorial of one who had conferred much honour upon his native place and county, and served his country with fidelity and bravery." We need not, however, travel quite so far as Essex for examples of the non-conservation which is here deplored. Having lately read a statement in the work called "England Displayed," published in 1769, that many curious coins and medals, dug out of the ruins of old Verulam, were to be seen in St. Alban's Abbey Church, I was particularly desirous of ascertaining whether any evidences of Cunobeline or Offa were among them; and therefore lost no time in delaying to consult my friend the Rev. Dr. Nicholson, Rector of the Abbey Church, on the subject. In a prompt reply, that excellent antiquary observes" I well remember, fifty to fifty-five years ago, that there were several coins, keys, spurs, a chalice taken out of a coffin, &c., which were in one of the lockers in the presbytery of our Abbey Church; but which have all, with the exception of the spur, disappeared. The spur is from Key Field, where one of our two great battles between York and Lancaster took place. And nothing less could result from the circumstance that, for years, the showing of the church was the perquisite of the clerk, who frequently sent his little fag of a boy to attend the visitors." And, while speaking of our immediate neighbours, it must not be forgotten that the astute authorities of Luton wilfully melted down their old epitaphial metals for the construction of a new chandelier-the which, saith Gough, the feeling narrator, was a "cruel thing." Well may the axiom obtain, from such-like examples, that literary records are more durable than monuments of marble or brass! Every man of wholesome principle warmly regards his natale solum, whether it be in torrid, temperate, or arctic climes; a feeling which combines some of the best affections of human nature. Indeed a strong local interest naturally associates itself with every habitat, whether fertile or sterile; for even the Laplander supposes the bleak district of his birth may have been the site of the Garden of Eden-and so it is written. In recognition therefore of so pleasing an attachment to birth-place, the leading object of Provincial Societies should be to enhance that interest by a careful preservation of its memorials, and disengaging its recollections from doubt. Such is, and ought heretofore to have been, an acknowledged duty; and, although much may yet be done in so good a cause, the delay has been hopelessly ruinous in many instances. It is true that we have had many excellent conservators and topographers, whose doings evince both diligence and taste; yet it is patent that apathy and neglect have been stalking about unmolested, to the premature loss of monuments and muniments, and the degradation of tradition by ignorance. A spirit at present, however, is abroad, which we may hope will arrest the further progress of this disreputable evil: and I again insist that an organic fulcrum of truth will be found in placing greater responsibility on our parish magnates. Nor would such a step be difficult, since all might readily be effected by the churchwarden under the eye of the incumbent; and when once adopted. could be very easily continued. All sculpture, brasses, records, books, registers, arms, relics, and paintings-whether on stucco, wood, canvas, copper, or glass-should be borne on charge by each successive individual, under a stock-taking survey: and a further measure of securing them from danger, and foiling the robbers of the dead, will be found in collecting accurate drawings, plans, and descriptions thereof. Good rubbings of all remarkable inscriptions should be taken, in preference to transcribing them, since there never can be correct copying of such memorials by passing the matter to be copied through the mind. It were also well, if manageable, to institute a due supervision of funereal emblems and epitaphs, in order that the nuisance of turgid little monsters and risible rhymes may be abated. But it is not parish officials alone who ought to be blamed, for the public in general have manifested a stolid indifference the while; and in some individuals this has been carried to an amount almost criminal. For example, about 30 years ago, when a worthy friend of mine was directing some repairs in Turvey Church, on the confines of this county, he wrote to the representative of the Mordaunt property (honours?) respecting the fine family tombs there,—Sir John and the three first barons, with the gallant Earl of Peterborough, two of whom repose under rich open canopies, supported by columns of the Doric order. To this courteous and obliging application, Mr. Higgins received for answer (piget meminisse), that he might mend the roads with them! And who can tell how the earnest intreaty now in hand begging the "improvers to spare Guesten Hall, that very valuable memorial of ancient hospitality at the good city of Worcester, will be met!-But be it again remembered that it is the measures, not the men, of which we are speaking. Some of these exposures relate to places beyond our borders; but have the Buckinghamshire authorities done their duty any better? The late shameful demolition of Quarendon Chapel and its interesting historiological monuments, as well as the existing state of many other local structures, and the apathetical neglect of our monumenta vetusta, form a disagreeable reply to that question. Not only has there been a laxity in the higher guardian authorities, but the deputy-assistant officials-down to vergers and sextons-have so slumbered at their posts, that the sacrilegious pilferer has broken the VIIIth commandment in open day, and committed depredations with comparative impunity. It is not that books* and brasses only have unwarrantably disappeared, but old arms and armour-as helmets, corslets, spears, swords, suits of mail, hauberks, and other relics-piously deposited in churches for conservation, have mostly found their course to the knicknackaterian shops of London. Mr. Albert Way, when visiting that noted mart Wardour Street, was credibly informed that a great proportion of the articles there exhibited for sale, had been supplied by chapmen from the Buckinghamshire churches, while those sacred fanes were being repaired, or rather "done up." A relic-loving friend, at once a literary veteran and an elder in the F.S.A. corps, has the walls of a staircase decorated with sepulchral brasses Assuredly this is blameable: though a man of unimpeachable integrity in general dealings himself, he ought to have been aware that he bought them of those who unquestionably must have obtained such relics with the left hand-caitiffs who got them by means "not worshipful." This is saying the least of such dealings morally, but the legal axiom as to receiver and supplier expresses the matter more pointedly. Now and then-albeit very rarely—it is ordered otherwise; for I have heard of a votive sword being replaced in a church near Aylsham, in Norfolk, after having been absent without leave for a considerable time; and my earnest correspondent, Mr. H. W. King, in a letter dated the 23rd of last month, says “The engraving I send herewith represents a magnificent though sadly mutilated brass effigy, about life size, which I fortunately discovered and recovered in the year 1854, after it had been lost thirty years or more. It exhibits Sir John Gifford, who was buried in BowersGifford Church, in the Essex marshes, A.D. 1348. I first learned of its existence from Dr. Salmon's History of Essex, published in 1740; and I also found a notice of it in a manuscript in the Lans downe library (circa temp. Eliz.) On inquiry I found one person who had seen it in situ; but, for the space of ten years, I could gain no further tidings of it. I subsequently ascertained that it had been actually GIVEN AWAY by the churchwarden of the parish, there being a resident rector at the time the sacrilegious robbery was perpetrated. The individual to whom it was thus made over was * It is by robberies from church libraries that so many copies of Fox's Martyrs get into the bookmarket; and, not long since, a copy of the Critici Sacri was offered to Archdeacon Bickersteth, cheap! It was not difficult to opine where it came from. the lord of the manor, who lived some sixteen miles away. On application to this gentleman, he immediately restored the spoil; and I regard it as a most fortunate circumstance that it fell into such hands, for, had it been left to the tender mercies of the churchwarden, I dare say it would have found its way into the melting-pot. I believe that this fine specimen of military panoply, in the best period of medieval art, is now securely preserved in the hands of the present rector; and it will be described in the forthcoming Monumental Brasses of England, by the Rev. Herbert Haines." This account is the more gratifying, inasmuch as it so seldom happens that lost or stolen things of the kind are ever restored to their proper places. We have happily, however, another instance which is even now in the course of operation, and is at once meritorious and graceful: on the 30th of last March the following advertisement was published— SIR, TO THE EDITOR OF THE LEICESTER JOURNAL. Can any of your readers inform me where the brass, with the inscription given below, is taken from? I found it on a broker's stall in our market a few weeks ago: and should be happy to restore it to its legitimate locality. Yours respectfully, Here lyeth bvryed Ye bodie of Rob. THOS. F. SARSON. The last figure in the year is too much defaced to be distinguished. That the heinous desecration of many churches of this interesting county is as much assignable to parochial negligence and individual cupidity as to any other cause or causes, is admitted by their historian, the Rev. W. H. Kelke, in the narratives recently published in our Records. There has been, assuredly, a greedy removal of sepulchral relics and other memorials during the repairs of sacred edifices; nor has the marauding appetite ever yet been satiated. In the church of this parish —Stone—a number of graven brasses, having become loose, were piled up against the wall of the vestry-room; but the present clerk told me that, "after the new roof was put on, he never saw them again." Common cases of sacrilege and coarse theft we know can be punished on conviction; but there are other acts equally offensive to propriety and the strict observance of meum and tuum, which are permitted to pass unscathed. Several years ago, the incumbent of a church in the North built a new house in the country, and flagged his kitchen with tombstones taken from the churchyard. This, in all conscience, seemed to be bad enough; but, as if to out-Herod Herod, the minister of another church, in the same goodly town, took up a number of tombstones from the consecrated place of burial, about two years since, and sold them for eighteen pence and two |
