Church Monuments in South Wales, c. 1200-1547 9781783272648, 1783272643

Table of contents :
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction: South Wales from the Thirteenth to the Early Sixteenth Century 1
1. An Overview of Welsh Monuments 14
2. Patrons and Subjects: The Social Status of those Commissioning and Commemorated by Monuments in South Wales 38
3. Materials, Production and Supply 65
4. Spirituality and the Desire for Salvation 119
5. Secular Concerns 140
6. Afterlife 166
Conclusion 188
Bibliography 193
Index 205

Citation preview

CHURCH MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES, c.1200–1547

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BOYDELL STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE ISSN 2045–4902 Series Editors Dr Julian Luxford Professor Asa Simon Mittman This series aims to provide a forum for debate on the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. It will cover all media, from manuscript illuminations to maps, tapestries, carvings, wall-paintings and stained glass, and all periods and regions, including Byzantine art. Both traditional and more theoretical approaches to the subject are welcome Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editors or to the publisher, at the addresses given below Dr Julian Luxford, School of Art History, University of St Andrews, 79 North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK Professor Asa Simon Mittman, Department of Art and Art History, California State University at Chico, Chico, CA 95929-0820, USA Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume

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CHURCH MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES, c.1200–1547

Rhianydd Biebrach

THE BOYDELL PRESS

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© Rhianydd Biebrach 2017 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2017 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 264 8 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements ix List of Abbreviations x Introduction: South Wales from the Thirteenth to the Early Sixteenth Century

1 An Overview of Welsh Monuments 2 Patrons and Subjects: The Social Status of those

Commissioning and Commemorated by Monuments in South Wales

1 14

38

3 Materials, Production and Supply 4 Spirituality and the Desire for Salvation 5 Secular Concerns 6 Afterlife

166

Conclusion

188

65 119 140

Bibliography 193 Index 205

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates

plates appear between pages 54 and 55

I Monument of Roger de Berkerolles (d.1351) and Katherine Turbeville, St Athan (Glamorgan) II Detail of effigy of Thomas White (c.1500), Tenby (Pembrokeshire) III Effigy of unknown knight (1340s), Llansannor (Glamorgan) IV Brass of Wenllian Walsche (d.1427), Llandough (Glamorgan) Figures 1 Tomb of Arnold Butler (d.1540/1) and Sycill Monington, St Bride’s Major (Glamorgan) 87 2 Plaque depicting the Instruments of the Passion, tomb of ‘St Dyfrig’, Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 88 3 Detail of effigy of a lady of the Turbeville family, Coity (Glamorgan) 89 4 Detail of monument of William ap Thomas (d.1445) and Gwladys Ddu (d.1454), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 89 5 Tomb of Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 90 6 Tomb of Maurice de Londres, Ewenny Priory (Glamorgan) 90 7 Effigy of a knight (possibly Morgan Gam [d.1241]), Margam Abbey Stones Museum (Glamorgan) 91 8 Bishop Anselm (d.1247), St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 91 9 Detail of effigy of Bishop Gower (d.1347), St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 92 10 Bishop John Morgan (d.1504), St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 92 11 Tomb of Archdeacon John Hiot (d.1419), St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 93 12 Detail of cadaver monument, Tenby (Pembrokeshire) 93 13 Effigy of Eva de Braose (d.1257), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 94 14 Tomb of Laurence de Hastings (d.1349), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 94

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ILLUSTRATIONS

vii

15 Detail of effigy of Payne de Turbeville (d.c.1318), Ewenny Priory (Glamorgan) 95 16 Detail of monument to John Penrice and Margaret Fleming (c.1400), Oxwich (Glamorgan) 95 17 David Mathew (d. before 1470), Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 96 18 Detail of effigy of Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 96 19 Tomb of Sir Thomas Morgan (d.1510), Llanmartin (Monmouthshire) 97 20 Monument to Sir William Mathew (d.1528) and Jenet Henry (d.1530), Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 97 21 Tomb of Christopher Mathew (d. after 1530) and Elizabeth Morgan (d.1526), seen from the Lady Chapel, Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 98 22 Detail of effigies of Walter and Christina Aubrey, Brecon Cathedral (Breconshire) 98 23 Cross slab to Mathew Voss (d.1534), Llantwit Major (Glamorgan) 99 24 Effigy of civilian, St Hilary (Glamorgan) 100 25 Effigy of lady, Trellech (Monmouthshire) 100 26 Semi-effigial slab of Isabella Verney (d.1417), Tenby (Pembrokeshire) 101 27 Detail of effigy of a lawyer, Coychurch (Glamorgan) 102 28 Cross slab to David Smyt, Brecon Cathedral (Breconshire) 103 29 Tomb-chest of John White (c.1500), Tenby (Pembrokeshire) 103 30 Monument said to commemorate St Dyfrig, Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 104 31 Early-fourteenth-century knight, Upton (Pembrokeshire) 105 32 Civilian effigy in Merthyr Mawr churchyard (Glamorgan) 106 33 East end of tomb-chest of William de Berkerolles (d.1327) and Phelice de Vere, St Athan (Glamorgan) 106 34 Effigy and tomb surround at Stackpole (Pembrokeshire) 107 35 Detail of effigy attributed to Rhys Gryg, but bearing the Talbot arms, St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 107 36 Fragments of cross slabs displayed at Ewenny Priory (Glamorgan) 108 37 Detail of effigy of a knight, Llangennith (Glamorgan) 109 38 Canopy angel, tomb of ‘St Teilo’, Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 110 39 Virgin and Child, tomb of ‘St Teilo’, Llandaff Cathedral (Glamorgan) 111 40 Virgin and Child, east end of tomb-chest of Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469), Abergavenny Priory (Monmouthshire) 112 41 Saints on the tomb-chest of Bishop Gower (d.1347), St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 113 42 Detail of effigy of Arnold Butler (d.1540/1), showing crossed legs, St Bride’s Major (Glamorgan) 113

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43 Coped slab of a lady, adapted to form the monument of a cleric, Llantwit Major (Glamorgan) 114 44 Effigy of a prior, Monkton Priory (Pembrokeshire) 115 45 Remains of an effigy of a knight, Monkton Priory (Pembrokeshire) 116 46 Detail of robbed out brass matrices, Monkton Priory (Pembrokeshire) 116 47 Effigy of priest showing iconoclastic damage, St David’s Cathedral (Pembrokeshire) 117 48 Remains of effigy of a knight, Llandough churchyard (Glamorgan) 118 Map Distribution of monuments in south Wales

29

Graphs and Tables Graph 1 Chronological distribution of south Wales monuments Graph 2 Chronological distribution of effigial monuments in the Severnside region Graph 3 Monument types Graph 4 The status of patrons from c.1200 to c. 1540 Graph 5 Clerical monuments Graph 6 Monuments of the nobility and upper gentry Graph 7 Monuments of the lower and sub-gentry Graph 8 Sources of stones used in south Welsh monuments

24 26 39 41 43 47 58 68

Table 1 Location of monuments in south Wales by religious institution

34

All plates and figures are © Rhianydd Biebrach. The author and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I

owe a huge debt of gratitude to many people who have contributed in one way or another to this book’s long and difficult genesis. I must first thank my doctoral supervisor and friend Deborah Youngs for nurturing my interest in the Middle Ages in general and monuments in particular. Her help and encouragement have been greatly appreciated. My friends and colleagues in the Church Monuments Society deserve special mention. Several of them have given invaluable feedback on chapters in this book, and I have learned so much from the wider membership during informal conversations at various Society events over the last ten years. My particular thanks go to my erstwhile co-editor Paul Cockerham, Sally Badham, Nigel Saul, Brian and Moira Gittos, Philip Lankester, Mark Downing and Sophie Oosterwijk, as well as to Jean Wilson, Cameron Newham and Kelcey Wilson-Lee. Their knowledge of monuments is of encyclopaedic brilliance and they have shared it with me with the utmost generosity and patience. I must also thank my medievalist ex-colleagues at Swansea University, Matthew Stevens, Ralph Griffiths, Dan Power and John Law, and especially Maddy Gray at the University of South Wales. So much of this book would have been impossible without the expert geological input of Tim Palmer, who has given up his time on a number of occasions to accompany me on field trips in Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire. He has been unfailingly generous with his help and advice and I am only sorry that I have proved to be such an obtuse student. I would also like to thank the key-holders and incumbents of the churches mentioned in this book for allowing me to gain access and giving permission for me to reproduce photographs of the monuments here. This book is dedicated with love and thanks to my mother, and to Tom, Edward and James. The publishers acknowledge the generous financial support of the Marc Fitch Fund and the Francis Coales Charitable Foundation in the production of this volume.

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ABBREVIATIONS

BL CCL CIPM CPR FSA ICBS NLW RCAHMW SPAB TNA

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British Library Cardiff Central Library Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem Calendar of Patent Rolls Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries Incorporated Church Building Society National Library of Wales Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings The National Archives

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INTRODUCTION: SOUTH WALES FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY

T

his book is the first large-scale study of the medieval funerary monuments of south Wales, an area blessed with an eclectic, but largely unknown, monumental heritage. Ranging from plain and decorated cross slabs at one end of the design scale to richly carved effigial monuments on canopied tomb-chests at the other, there is plenty to repay the attentions of the historian. As a group, the monuments closely reflect the turbulent history of the southern March of Wales, its close links to the West Country and its differences from the ‘native Wales’ of the north-west. As individuals, they offer fascinating insights into the spiritual and secular concerns of some of the leading families of the southern March, many of whom we otherwise know little about. Church Monuments in South Wales offers a much-needed Celtic contribution to the growing corpus of literature on the monumental culture of late-medieval Europe, which, for the British Isles, has been dominated hitherto by English studies. Recent research, most notably in Nigel Saul’s study of the Cobham brasses and his survey of medieval English monuments, as well as in the scholarly journal Church Monuments, has demonstrated that the study of funerary sculpture is a multi-disciplinary subject enabling a view of the spiritual, social, political and cultural lives of the late-medieval gentry and aristocracy which can rarely be achieved through documentary evidence alone.1 In the last few decades a paradigm has been established for the history of the stylistic development, production and patronage of the funerary monument up to the Reformation. However, Church Monuments in South Wales shows that in many ways the story of this unique part of the British Isles is substantially different to that of the better-studied English regions, such as East Anglia, the Midlands and Yorkshire, and is therefore a timely

1 Nigel Saul, Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and their Monuments, 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), and English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009).

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INTRODUCTION

reminder that our understanding of British monumental culture as a whole is still skewed towards the richer and better-populated areas – a shortcoming which this book aims to address. Church Monuments in South Wales provides a comprehensive illustration and explanation of the monumental culture of this region at a time of great social change. It focuses heavily on the social groups who commissioned and were commemorated by funerary monuments, and how their changing fortunes, tastes and pre-occupations moulded the distinctive attributes of that culture as an organic product of its time and place. Medieval Wales was a disunited land. From the end of the eleventh century its separate, and often warring, kingdoms came under attack from Anglo-Norman barons pressing in across the border and along the coasts. For much of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was internecine warfare as Anglo-Norman hegemony was established, lost and won again, and the power of individual Welsh princes – notably those of Gwynedd and Deheubarth in the north and west – waxed and waned. By the end of the thirteenth century a form of stability had been achieved. In the north and west – formerly Pura Wallia, now the Principality following Edward I’s final conquest of 1284 – the English crown subdued the native royal dynasties and established direct royal government. In the south, and along the border with England, a very different situation had emerged. This was the March, a patchwork of independent, autonomous lordships, conquered by Anglo-Norman adventurers acting largely outside royal control but with the crown’s approval. Taking over the powers of the ousted Welsh princes, each Marcher lord held sovereign power in his own territory: the March was a land where the king’s writ did not run. It is not the purpose of this chapter to provide a full account of Marcher society and its creation, but it is necessary to establish those aspects of the March’s social, cultural, religious and economic character that formed the preconditions for the patronage and production of the monuments to the dead that were erected there.2 2 There is an extensive literature on medieval Wales and the Marches; the following list is not exhaustive therefore. For general overviews of the period see: A.D. Carr, Medieval Wales (London, 1995); R.A. Griffiths, Conquerors and Conquered in Medieval Wales (Stroud, 1994); David Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge, 1990), and R.R. Davies, Age of Conquest: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987). The Marches are explored in more depth in: Max Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier 1066–1283 (Cambridge, 2010); idem, The March of Wales 1067–1300: A Borderland of Medieval Britain (Cardiff, 2008); R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978). Parts of south Wales not falling in the March, largely in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, are covered in R.A. Griffiths, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government. 1. South Wales 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972), while regional studies are found in: R.A. Griffiths, T. Hopkins and R. Howell, eds, Gwent County History, 2: The Age of the Marcher Lords c.1070–1536 (Cardiff, 2008); R.F. Walker, ed., Pembrokeshire County History, 2: Medieval Pembrokeshire (Haverfordwest, 2002); T.B. Pugh, ed., Glamorgan County History, 3: The Middle Ages (Cardiff, 1971). Several smaller studies have focused on the relationships between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Normans within Wales, the March and the wider region: R.A. Griffiths, ‘After Glyn Dŵr: An Age of Reconciliation?’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 117, 2001 Lectures (Oxford, 2002),

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THE CREATION OF THE MARCH As the Romans had discovered long before them, the Anglo-Norman adventurers of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries were quickly able to bring the low-lying coastal plains and river valleys of Gwent and Glamorgan under at least nominal control, but the mountainous hinterland proved to be a different matter. The first priority of the invaders was to establish castles. William fitz Osbern, earl of Hereford, built at least four between 1067 and 1071 at Chepstow and several other locations just across the border into Wales. The motte at Cardiff seems to have been established in about 1081, the same year that William I himself progressed through south Wales to St David’s, and exacted fealty from the prince of Deheubarth, Rhys ap Tewdwr. Rhys’s death at the hands of the Normans in 1093 inaugurated a more aggressively expansionist phase and prompted a series of assaults and campaigns designed to strengthen and extend Norman influence beyond the lowland bases.3 The likes of fitz Osbern were now supplemented by more obscure men with military reputations and fortunes to make. One such was Robert fitz Hamo, the conqueror of Glamorgan, and with him came a host of lesser men and their followers, bent on carving out their own smaller parcels of land. In lowland Glamorgan families such as the Turbevilles of Coity, the de Londres of Ogmore and the St Quintins of Talyfan established dynasties that were to be the effective rulers of the local area, in some cases for centuries to come. Further north, the lordship of Brecon was created by Bernard de Neufmarché in the 1090s and that of Abergavenny by Hamelin de Ballon in the same decade. Anglo-Norman gains continued in Henry I’s reign (1100–35). Castles and bases were established throughout previously independent Deheubarth (a princedom roughly covering modern Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire), and the settler hold on southern Glamorgan and Gwent was consolidated. A royal base established at Carmarthen was used as a springboard for attacks on the surrounding areas of Kidwelly, Laugharne and Gower.4 Henry’s death in 1135, however, and the resulting civil wars in England, allowed the Welsh to claw back many of these territories, much of Cardiganshire being recovered by the sons of Gruffydd pp. 139–64; Matthew Griffiths, ‘Native Society on the Anglo-Norman Frontier: The Evidence of the Margam Charters’, Welsh History Review, 14 (1988–89), pp. 179–216; R.A. Griffiths, ‘Medieval Severnside: The Welsh Connection’, in Welsh Society and Nationhood: Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams, ed. R.R. Davies, R.A. Griffiths, I.G. Jones and K.O. Morgan (Cardiff, 1984), pp. 70–89; Rees Davies, ‘Race Relations in Post-Conquest Wales: Confrontation and Compromise’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (London, 1975), pp. 32–56 and Glyn Roberts, ‘Wales and England, Antipathy and Sympathy 1282–1485’, Welsh History Review, 1 (1960–63), pp. 375–96. 3 Max Lieberman, ‘Anglicization in High Medieval Wales: The Case of Glamorgan’, Welsh History Review, 23, i (2006), pp. 1–26; J. Beverley Smith, ‘The Kingdom of Morgannwg and the Norman Conquest of Glamorgan’, in Glamorgan County History, ed. Pugh, pp. 1–43, at p. 11; Davies, Age of Conquest, p. 33. 4 Davies, Age of Conquest, pp. 36–7.

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INTRODUCTION

ap Cynan of Gwynedd. Even in areas where Marcher control remained relatively tight, such as lowland Glamorgan, there was always the threat of a Welsh raiding party descending from the uplands, such as those which menaced the newly established Cistercian abbeys of Margam and Neath,5 and in 1158 the lord of Senghennydd, Ifor Bach, mounted a daring attack on Cardiff Castle in which he captured the earl of Gloucester, his wife and son. By c.1200 the Norman hold on the lowlands, especially of the southeast and in the environs of castles, was firm, but the same cannot be said for the uplands which constituted the greater part of the territory claimed by the Marcher lords. In Deheubarth the native dynasty of Dinefwr had experienced a resurgence of power under the Lord Rhys at the end of the twelfth century, and in Glamorgan the Welsh lords of the upland commotes of Senghennydd, Glynrhondda, Meisgyn and Afan also remained in possession until the thirteenth century, acknowledging only nominal overlordship by the invaders. The thirteenth-century expansion of the princes of Gwynedd, although temporarily threatening to the hegemony of the Marcher lords, initiated the final phase of conquest, however. In Glamorgan the upland commotes were finally taken into the hands of the de Clares, who began work on the great concentric fortress at Caerphilly in the 1260s, a full two centuries after the first Norman stronghold had been established at Chepstow.6 The process of conquest had not been a smooth one, but by the fourteenth century it had virtually come to an end and, aside from small adjustments such as the creation of the lordship of Raglan in 1465 for Sir William Herbert, the political geography of the March remained relatively stable until its abolition in 1536.7 The piecemeal and complex process of conquest and settlement had resulted in an equally complex system of government and administration. The biggest lordships, such as Pembroke, Gower, Glamorgan and Brecon, had become kingdoms in miniature, with their own independent administrations and machinery of justice, complete with courts, stewards, sheriffs, receivers, treasurers, constables, chanceries and auditors.8 In the lowlands a manorial system like that prevailing in 5 As Anglo-Norman foundations Neath and Margam Abbeys maintained a complex relationship with the local Welsh. The evidence is largely lacking for Neath, but there are a number of Welsh names among those that granted lands to Margam in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: see Walter de Gray Birch, A History of Margam Abbey (London, 1897) and idem, ed., Penrice and Margam Abbey Manuscripts (London, 1893). Even so it appears that the monks themselves were of settler origin, and Welsh names are not found amongst them until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: F.G. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales (Cardiff, 1977), pp. 48–9. 6 Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 87–9; Walker, Medieval Wales, pp. 30–3. 7 The Marcher lordships, many of which were now in crown hands, were abolished by the Acts of Union in 1536. The Acts brought the March politically and judicially into line with England and the rest of Wales, dividing the region onto shires, introducing English common law, and allowing the representation of Wales in the House of Commons for the first time. 8 Davies, Age of Conquest, p. 283.

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lowland England had taken root, together with a system of knight’s fees, boroughs and baronies that also would have been familiar across the border. These areas, owing to their English systems and largely English immigrant population (as well as Flemings in southern Pembrokeshire), were known as Englishries. Conversely, the Welshries were situated in the hills, and continued to operate along the old Welsh administrative lines of cantref, cwmwd, swydd, gwestfa and maenor. Increasingly, from the fourteenth century, the Marcher lords operated as absentee landlords, necessitating the employment of local officials generally drawn from the more prominent advenae (settler) families, such as the Stradlings of St Donat’s, although the uchelwyr (Welsh landed families) were not totally excluded from local government.9 The employment of Welshmen became more common in the fifteenth century, and families such as the Herberts of Raglan owed their rise in great measure to the favour of the Marcher lords they served. The singular nature of the creation and development of the March expressed itself in a number of ways, and helped to form the particular character of the region’s monumental commemorative patterns.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS, ETHNIC IDENTITY AND CULTURE The density, dispersal and ethnic heritage of the populations of south Wales had an inevitable and marked impact on the geographical distribution, origins and styles of their monuments. The areas of thickest settlement were found around the coasts and on the areas of best farming land, approximating to southern Pembrokeshire and Gower, the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal flats and river valleys of Monmouthshire. Here was a fairly dense network of nucleated rural settlements and, although medieval Wales was not well urbanised, there were a number of respectably sized towns, founded as Anglo-Norman boroughs, many of which were coastal or riverine ports, such as Pembroke, Haverfordwest, Tenby, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Usk and Chepstow.10 As chapter one will demonstrate in greater detail, it is in the churches of these small villages and towns, rather than in cathedrals and monasteries, that the majority of the surviving medieval monuments are located. Descriptions of Marcher society as a ‘melting pot’, containing a ‘cosmopolitan people of

Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 201–7. As a royal borough Carmarthen was not part of the March, but it is included in this study as it was an important town in south Wales and contains a small number of important monuments. For Welsh towns see: Helen Fulton, ed., Urban Culture in Medieval Wales (Cardiff, 2012); Spencer Dimmock, ‘Reassessing the Towns of Southern Wales in the Later Middle Ages’, Urban History, 32 (2005), pp. 35–45; Ian Soulsby, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Chichester, 1983), and Ralph Griffiths, ed., The Boroughs of Medieval Wales (Cardiff, 1978). 9

10

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INTRODUCTION

diverse origins’,11 suggest a land where the prevailing relationship was one of intermingling and co-operation. While this is true to a certain extent, levels of integration differed across space and time, and the March could also be a place of ‘racial cleavage’, where the settler communities ‘protected, fostered and promoted their English identity vociferously and defiantly’.12 In this the Welsh experience was, at least initially, somewhat different from that of Ireland, where Anglo-Norman settlers were quicker to adopt Irish culture and speech, to the continual disapproval of the English authorities. Alien settlement of the Welsh March in the wake of conquest began as early as the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the south and east the settlers came from the borderlands of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire and across the Bristol Channel from Somerset and Devon; southern Pembrokeshire was settled by Flemings so densely that its character was ‘totally and permanently transformed’.13 The thirteenth-century development of upland Welshries and lowland Englishries reflects the geographical dispersal of the differing groups at this period as well as the prevailing atmosphere of mutual suspicion. On the whole the inhabitants of the Welshries were not servile and could be relatively lightly touched by Anglo-Norman overlordship, although they were expected to render ‘cymmorthau’ (levies or dues). They were subject to Welsh law and inheritance customs, and were ‘in no doubt about their cultural affinity with the inhabitants of native Wales’.14 As previously noted, the Englishries developed along manorial lines, largely tenanted by a dependent peasantry of English/Anglo-Norman/Flemish origin, and this inevitably involved some displacement of the native inhabitants. Place-, field- and personal-name evidence indicates the density and character of immigration. Two-thirds of Welsh place-names ending in the English ‘ton’ are found in Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire,15 and the charters of the Cistercian abbey of Margam eloquently illustrate the complex nature of the ethnic mix in this area. Margam Abbey was situated at a point where Anglo-Norman and Welsh populations and control co-existed in sometimes uneasy proximity, being cheek-by-jowl with both the settler coastal borough of Kenfig and the native upland lordship of Afan. Although the charters granted to the abbey show an intense level of English settlement on the coast and in the Vale of Glamorgan (roughly corresponding to the area south of the modern A48 between Cardiff and Bridgend), there was still a noticeable Welsh presence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

Lieberman, March of Wales, p. 69; Griffiths, ‘After Glyn Dŵr’, p. 139. Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 316; idem, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), p. 145. 13 Davies, Age of Conquest, p. 99. 14 Lieberman, March of Wales, p. 69. 15 Davies, First English Empire, p. 154. 11

12

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while the lords of Afan themselves were frequent benefactors of the abbey (if not consistent in their affections).16 The later medieval period saw a blurring of these lines of division. In the fourteenth century the lords of Afan became increasingly Anglicised, even to the extent of ditching their traditional Welsh patronymics and taking the surname ‘de Avene’, as well as adopting the English use of heraldry, a custom unfamiliar to the Welsh prior to c.1350.17 Nor were the Welsh averse to adopting English law and inheritance customs if they were seen to be more advantageous than native practices. For Welsh freeholders of a particularly ambitious stamp the fifteenth century was a time of increasing possibilities as opportunities opened up in the land market and in seigneurial administrations. Successful families such as the Dwnns of Kidwelly began to look and act more like gentry in the English fashion, while the Herberts of Raglan moved comfortably in the English aristocratic milieu into which they were launched from the 1450s. The cultural exchange was not all one way, however. In Glamorgan the demographic collapse of the mid fourteenth century led to Welsh migration from the Blaenau (uplands) to the Bro (vale), and increasing intermarriage, especially amongst the prosperous freeholders and gentry, led to a ‘recymricization’ of this part of the March.18 The Herberts were prolific patrons of the bards, a class of professional poets at the centre of Welsh cultural life, but the same men also sang to the Stradling, Basset and Fleming families, whose names belie their non-Welsh roots.19 In the latter part of the fifteenth century the cultural differences between Welsh and advenae, especially in the case of the gentry, were becoming ‘blurred to the point of extinction’.20 In the towns, moreover, often seen as bastions of English settler privileges and discriminatory against the Welsh in the very fact of their existence, the extent of Welsh involvement from the fourteenth century has been highlighted by recent research. By 1300, following a prolonged period of population expansion, the creation of suburbs drew in inhabitants from the surrounding countryside, and virtually all Welsh towns contained at least some Welsh burgesses.21 By the fifteenth century, even the poets were

Griffiths, ‘Native Society’, p. 192, pp. 208–9. Davies, ‘Race Relations’, p. 54; Michael Powell Siddons, The Development of Welsh Heraldry, 2 vols (Aberystwyth, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 5, 263. The coat they adopted was based on that of their overlords, the de Clare lords of Glamorgan. 18 Lieberman, ‘Anglicization’, p. 21, 23; Glanmor Williams, Renewal and Reformation: Wales c.1415–1642 (Oxford, 1993), p. 95. 19 G.J. Williams, ‘The Welsh Literary Tradition of the Vale of Glamorgan’, in Glamorgan Historian, vol. 3, ed. Stewart Williams (Cowbridge, 1966), pp. 13–32, at p. 18. 20 Williams, Renewal and Reformation, p. 97. 21 Matthew Frank Stevens, ‘Anglo-Welsh Towns of the Early Fourteenth Century: a Survey of Urban Origins, Property-Holding and Ethnicity’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Fulton, pp. 137–62, at pp. 137–8. Stevens’ analysis of the ethnicity of tenants and taxpayers in the period around 1300 reveals some surprising results: in Llawhaden, in heavily immigrant southern Pembrokeshire, 21% of the taxpayers were Welsh, with 38% the figure for the 16 17

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heaping praise on towns and town living, one – in a fit of hyperbole to which they were frequently prey – likening Brecon to Constantinople.22 Ralph Griffiths has stressed the closeness of the ties between southern Wales and south-west England at the end of the Middle Ages. These links had been noted in the sixteenth century by the antiquary John Leland, who coined the term ‘Severnside’ to describe the cultural homogeneity of the region, but they reach back much further than this period, fostered by the co-possession of the earldom of Gloucester and the lordships of Glamorgan and Newport from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.23 Not only was there a large volume of trade across the Bristol Channel, described in more detail below, but there were also families with lands and businesses on both shores, such as the Walsches of Llandough and the Whites of Tenby. Reflections of this unity can be seen in concrete form in the medieval church architecture of Cardiff and Bristol, while the same master mason may have been employed to work on Caerphilly Castle and Tewkesbury Abbey in the 1320s.24 It can certainly be seen in the style and origin of many of south Wales’ monuments. As chapter three will later make clear, these shifts in status, power and levels of integration between English and Welsh, as well as the proximity and influence of the English West Country, left indelible marks on the development of monumental culture in southern Wales.

THE ECONOMY AND TRADE Marcher society was overwhelmingly peasant in character and the economy of south Wales was heavily dependent on agriculture.25 Arable and mixed farming prevailed where soil, terrain and climate allowed, while the rearing of livestock, primarily sheep and cattle, was carried out on a large scale in the uplands. The Cistercian abbeys maintained vast flocks of sheep on the hillsides and drew a large proportion of their income from wool, before disease severely reduced sheep numbers at the end of the thirteenth century.26 From the fourteenth century the Cistercians’ place as woolproducers was taken by the Marcher lords themselves, the Bohun lords

cathedral town of St David’s. Other figures for the towns of south Wales range from 11% (New Carmarthen) to 100% (Llandeilo): Table 6.1. 22 Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘Who Were the Townsfolk of Medieval Wales?’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Fulton, pp. 9–18, at p. 14. 23 Griffiths, ‘Medieval Severnside’, passim. See also, idem, ‘After Glyn Dŵr’, and Conquerors and Conquered, pp. 1–10. 24 Griffiths, ‘Medieval Severnside’, pp. 82–3. 25 Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 392–3. 26 In 1250 Margam Abbey contracted with Ghent merchants for forty-two sacks of wool, and was selling wool to London merchants two years later. In 1291 the abbey’s flock numbered 5,245, bringing an estimated revenue of £139 6s 8d, while nearby Neath Abbey had 4,897 sheep, worth £130 13s 4d: Cowley, Monastic Order, pp. 86–8.

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of Brecon maintaining over 3,000 sheep on their Marcher lands by 1370.27 Although sheep were notable generators of wealth in the medieval period, the inhabitants of south Wales do not seem to have reaped the financial rewards of the wool to anywhere near the same extent as their counterparts in places such as East Anglia and the Cotswolds. A study of Welsh fulling mills has suggested that the Welsh cloth industry was ‘varied and vital’, Glamorgan and Monmouthshire being at its centre up to the beginning of the fourteenth century, but the capital was held, and the profits reaped, by the monasteries and the lords, with only a few private entrepreneurs involved.28 It will be seen further in this study that the failure of the Welsh economy to sustain a sizeable wealthy class of clothiers, wool merchants and other small businessmen is of some significance in explaining some unusual features in the development of its monumental culture, especially in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Welsh towns similarly lagged behind many of their English counterparts in terms of size, wealth and commercial activity. Cardiff ’s population in 1300 was possibly about 2,000, with over 400 burgage tenements; most Monmouthshire towns contained 150–300 burgage tenements and Carmarthen’s population probably did not exceed 1,500 souls, while others, like Wiston in Pembrokeshire, were little more than villages.29 In the more easterly parts of the March the neighbouring English towns of Hereford and Bristol drew much trade from over the Welsh border and acted to a large extent as the economic capitals of the region. Many of the most significant Welsh towns were ports, their ships trading largely along the Bristol Channel, and particularly with Bristol itself. In the later fifteenth century Bristolian vessels were calling in at Neath and Swansea en route for La Rochelle, and the sizeable Welsh merchant community at Bristol, drawn from right across south Wales, was exemplified in the naming of one of the city’s quays as the Welsh Back. Well before this the Dundry stone that was exported from Bristol to south Wales in enormous quantities was having a profound impact on the built environment of the southern Welsh coastal region, as well as its monumental landscape.30 Bristol, then, was a major Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 117. R. Ian Jack, ‘The Cloth Industry in Medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review, 10 (1980–81), pp. 443–60, passim, quote on p. 459. 29 Matthew Griffiths, ‘Very Wealthy by Merchandise? Urban Fortunes’, in Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales, ed. J. Gwynfor Jones (Cardiff, 1989), pp. 197–235, at p. 204; Paul Courtney, ‘Urbanism and “Feudalism” on the Periphery: Some Thoughts from Marcher Wales’, in Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contrasts, Contacts and Interconnections, 1100–1500, ed. Kate Giles and Christopher Dyer (Leeds, 2007), pp. 65–84, at p. 69. Spencer Dimmock, in his 2005 study of Welsh towns, advises that it may be necessary to revise upward the estimate of Wales’ late-medieval urban population to c.15– 20%: Dimmock, ‘Reassessing the Towns of Southern Wales’, p. 36; figures for Carmarthen and Wiston: Helen Fulton, ‘The Impact of Urbanisation in Medieval Wales’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Fulton, pp. 1–8, at p. 4. 30 Griffiths, ‘After Glyn Dŵr’, pp. 152–3; idem, ‘Medieval Severnside’, pp. 75, 77–9, 85–7; idem, Conquerors and Conquered, p. 7. 27

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market for south Wales, but the evidence of Tudor Cardiff suggests that the Welsh did not draw full commercial advantage from the relationship, the export and import trade being carried on in English and European vessels, rather than in native ships.31 Historians of the late-medieval economy of south Wales are united in stressing the devastating and sustained consequences of the dual calamities of plague and revolt from the middle of the fourteenth century. The plague reached Abergavenny, Carmarthen and elsewhere in south Wales in March 1349 and its effects can be clearly traced in the records of the lordly administration. In 1307 the lord of Glamorgan had received an annual revenue from Cardiff of £101 11s 1d. In 1349, the year the plague hit, this crashed to £51 19s 6½d and was showing no signs of recovery by 1375 when it had in fact dropped still further to £47 1s 5d.32 The plague visitation of 1361 was almost as severe and in Caldicot thirty-six out of forty customary tenants had died by 1362.33 Long after demographic and economic recovery should have begun, Wales was still in a state of decay, and this prolonged depression was largely a consequence of the added calamity of the Glyn Dŵr revolt. From 1403 to 1408 the Duchy of Lancaster possessions of Kidwelly, Brecon and Ogmore returned no revenues, while the entire lordship of Skenfrith had been so wasted that the tenants had to live in the castle.34 The material destruction was devastating and widespread. Towns and mills were particularly targeted; in the lordship of Ogmore a mill and the castle were damaged and the countryside became significantly depopulated, while mills in the lordship of Gwynllwg had still not been repaired by 1435, over twenty years after the revolt had finally fizzled out. In 1425 the borough of Monmouth owed a total of £391 in arrears, and as late as 1491–92 Cardiff ’s revenues were still little over half their early-fourteenthcentury value, at £60 11s 6d.35 It is possible, however, that the south-east was more badly affected than further west and north, since burgage rentals in Haverfordwest, Carmarthen, Tenby, Swansea and Brecon rose in the

Griffiths, ‘Very Wealthy by Merchandise’, pp. 217–8. Carr, Medieval Wales, p. 100; John Stuart Corbett, Glamorgan: Papers and Notes on the Lordship and its Members (Cardiff, 1925), pp. 164–8. 33 R.R. Davies, ‘Plague and Revolt’, in Gwent County History, ed. Griffiths, Hopkins and Howell, pp. 217–40, at pp. 222–3. 34 Robert Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1: 1265–1603 (London, 1953), pp. 168–9. 35 R.R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyndwr (Oxford, 1995), pp. 278–80, 317; D. Huw Owen, ‘Wales and The Marches’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 3: 1348–1500, ed. Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 92–106, at p. 99; Tony Hopkins, ‘The Towns’, in Gwent County History, ed. Griffiths, Hopkins and Howell, pp. 115–41, at p. 123; Corbett, Glamorgan: Papers and Notes, pp. 164–8. Interestingly, Richard Suggett has suggested that the apparent absence of evidence for hall-houses dating to before 1400 can be ‘tentatively attributed’ to the destruction of the revolt: Suggett, Houses and History in the March of Wales: Radnorshire 1400–1800 (Aberystwyth, 2005), p. 26. 31

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fifteenth century.36 Nevertheless, on the whole south Wales experienced widespread and prolonged demographic collapse and economic dislocation from the mid fourteenth century until well into the fifteenth and, as will be demonstrated in greater depth in chapters two and three, the consequences of this for the patronage and production of commemorative monuments were far reaching.

THE CHURCH The intensity of Norman and English settlement described above also left its mark on the infrastructure of religion. Prior to the Norman incursions, south Wales, like the rest of the country, had ill-defined diocesan and parochial boundaries, and a network of clas churches, with their married priesthood and heritable property, had developed instead of Benedictine monasticism. The settlers soon began to impose a more familiar and canonically acceptable structure. By the end of the thirteenth century the parochial system, often coinciding with the knight’s fees, was almost fully established in the two southern dioceses, while the bishops themselves were obedient to Canterbury despite periodic attempts to claim independence. Benedictine priories, sheltering in the protection of the castles, were also quick to spring up, a total of thirty-one being founded in south Wales between 1066 and 1272.37 The revenues of these foundations were donated to English and Continental houses: Brecon was founded as a cell of Battle Abbey; Ewenny belonged to Gloucester, and Pembroke to St Martin of Séez, for example. Unsurprisingly, these houses identified themselves – and were identified by the local Welsh populations – with the AngloNorman establishment, and consequently faced hostility from the natives,38 as the curtain walls, battlements and loopholes of Ewenny Priory baldly demonstrate. The arrival of the Cistercians in the twelfth century further reinforced the ‘alien’ nature of the monastic landscape of south Wales. Tintern, founded by the Anglo-Norman lord of Chepstow in 1131, was colonised, like the slightly later foundations at Margam and Neath further to the west, by English and French monks, and was ‘isolated and withdrawn’. On the other hand, Llantarnam and Whitland were Welsh foundations, with Welsh sympathies and personnel, while the friars, who began to

36 Dimmock, ‘Reassessing the Towns of Southern Wales’, pp. 36–7. Dimmock noted a decay of burgages in Haverfordwest after the 1450s, however. 37 Glanmor Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation, 2nd edition (Cardiff, 1976), pp. 2, 16 and 18; Davies, First English Empire, p. 164. 38 Williams, Welsh Church, p. 349; and see F.G. Cowley, ‘The Church in Medieval Glamorgan. 1, The Church in Glamorgan from the Norman Conquest to the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century’, in Glamorgan County History, ed. Pugh, pp. 87–135, at p. 96, for Gilbert Foliot’s letter to a south Wales priory on the subject.

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arrive in the towns of southern Wales from the mid thirteenth century, also managed to gain the support of the Welsh as well as the settler population.39 As chapter one will demonstrate, although many monuments are, or were, located in cathedrals and monastic houses, it was the parish church which claimed the burials of the majority of the population, especially so for the gentry from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century, and it is here that we can expect to find a large percentage of the monuments. Although there are some sizeable and imposing parish churches in south Wales, often found in the towns (such as St Mary’s, Haverfordwest, St Mary’s, Tenby, St Peter’s, Carmarthen and St John’s, Cardiff), rural parish churches, even in the wealthier lowlands, tend to be small and rather plain, with carved details confined to fonts, relatively simple window tracery and nave capitals. There are some notable surviving exceptions to this, such as the magnificent fourteenth-century stone reredos at Llantwit Major. Many of the upland churches and chapels, however, such as St John’s, Aberdare, are low, barn-like structures, almost entirely devoid of decorative stonework, as well as surviving monuments. The Welsh Church was poor and under-endowed, but there is evidence of substantial local investment and rebuilding in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Throughout south Wales towers and porches were being added or restored, some with beautiful carved details, such as at Newton Nottage, near Porthcawl.40 Benefactors of churches may have been afforded burial and commemoration within their walls, and so it is important for our purposes to try to establish who was paying for these improvements, although this information is not always easy to come by. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it is possible to closely link particular families with the rebuilding or extension of their parish churches and with the monuments they contain; examples include the Turbevilles at Coity, the Berkerolles at St Athan and the Stackpoles at Stackpole. In some cases testators requested burial and commemoration in the churches they helped to beautify (see chapter four), but such documentary evidence is unfortunately rare, and is in any case confined to the end of the period under consideration here. In Monmouthshire it appears that most church building programmes of the

Williams, Welsh Church, quote at p. 19, p. 21. Neath was founded as a Savigniac house by Richard and Constantia de Granville in 1129, and was absorbed into the Cistercian order in 1147; Margam was founded by Robert, earl of Gloucester, in the same year. Whitland was originally founded by Bernard, bishop of St David’s, but later came under the patronage of the Lord Rhys. See the Monastic Wales website: http://www.monasticwales.org/site/36 [accessed 16 July 2013]. 40 Robert Scourfield, ‘Medieval Church Building in Pembrokeshire’, in Pembrokeshire County History, ed. Walker, pp. 587–606, at pp. 600–3; Madeleine Gray, ‘The PreReformation Church’, in Gwent County History, ed. Griffiths, Hopkins and Howell, pp. 337–45, at p. 337; L.A.S. Butler, ‘Medieval Ecclesiastical Architecture in Glamorgan and Gower’, in Glamorgan County History, ed. Pugh, pp. 379–415, at pp. 401–5. 39

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late Middle Ages were usually a communally funded effort,41 and there is no reason to think that things were substantially different elsewhere. The monumental landscape of south Wales was heavily influenced by the conditions outlined in this introduction. Demographic changes, settlement patterns, wealth and geography shaped the fundamental contours of this landscape, dictating where, when and to whom monuments were erected, while the finer details of ethnic and cultural orientation, trade links and social and religious ties gave it a distinctive texture and colour. The rest of this book will build up this picture in depth.

41

Gray, ‘The Pre-Reformation Church’, p. 337.

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he monuments of south Wales fall generally within the mainstream insular traditions of monumental design and production (themselves influenced by those of France) which developed in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. However, the fundamental characteristics of southern Welsh society outlined in the previous chapter had a shaping effect on the monumental culture of the region, giving it a distinctive flavour compared to that found in other parts of the British Isles. This chapter will take both a wide and a long view of this culture, beginning with a survey of the historiography and documentary evidence available to the historian. It then moves on to focus on changing levels of interest in monumental commemoration across the chronological span of the period, which are compared to the patterns familiar from English studies and considered in the light of demographic change. The physical distribution of the surviving material evidence across the region is then examined, and its relationship to settlement patterns and the dispersal of ethnic groups is assessed. The focus is then narrowed to consider institutional location.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF WELSH MONUMENTS The medieval monuments of Wales, in contrast to those of England, have been largely neglected until relatively recently. Even though this is so, it is important to acknowledge that a good beginning on their systematic study was in fact made in the nineteenth century. In 1869 a plea was made in Archaeologia Cambrensis, the journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, for the greater study of the monumental remains of Wales, and of Glamorgan in particular. The author claimed that ‘there are a great many monuments, incised slabs, coffin-lids, etc. to be found in the parochial churches of this county…. All these remains ought to be engraved and published, and a most interesting volume would be the result.’1 Encouraging 1 H. Longueville-Jones, ‘On the Study of Welsh Antiquities’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Third Series, 15 (1869), pp. 78–86, p. 348.

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as this attitude would appear to be from the modern researcher’s point of view, this was a time when the study of Welsh memorial sculpture, in common with that of England, was rooted in the antiquarian tradition, and consequently the majority of the nineteenth-century articles on monuments published in Archaeologia Cambrensis concern themselves with descriptive details of heraldry, genealogy, armour and dress and are lacking in what we would consider to be scholarly analysis.2 Other entries are little more than lists.3 In this, however, the authors followed the approach taken to the study of monumental remains of all kinds current at that time, and in that sense they contributed significantly to the related processes of recording and describing. In addition to this, some of these early studies describe details which have since either disappeared, or monuments which have been (sometimes inappropriately) restored. It is possible to argue that more was published on Welsh monuments in Archaeologia Cambrensis from the 1840s to the first decades of the twentieth century than through any other medium at any time before or since. Even so it is difficult to appraise the value of this contribution to the modern scholar. As has already been indicated, the articles are lacking in the rigorous analysis expected in modern studies, and the authors, like most of their contemporaries, were often all too ready to accept traditional identifications and stories attached to the memorials. In addition their dating of military effigies was reliant on now outdated opinions of the development and dating of armour; late-twentieth-century revisionist scholarship has led to the dates of some military effigies and brasses being changed by as much as fifty years.4 It would be difficult to argue persuasively that our understanding of Welsh monuments has been greatly enhanced by the nineteenth-century contributions to this and other journals. However, the detailed collation of information this body of work represents did establish a general chronological framework for the development of monumental commemoration in Wales, and was the necessary precursor to more analytical scholarly approaches which involved making close stylistic links between effigies and the recognition that different monuments may have been the product of certain schools or workshops with identifiable characteristics (although this is difficult to establish with southern Welsh examples).5

2 Classic examples of this approach can be seen in S.W. Williams, ‘Some Monumental Effigies in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 7 (1890), pp. 182–93, and G.T. Clark, ‘East Orchard Manor House’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Third Series, 15 (1869), pp. 63–78, which contains detailed descriptions of the Berkerolles tombs at St Athan. 3 See in particular Mrs Thomas Allen, ‘A List of Effigies in South Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 10 (1893), pp. 248–52. 4 I am grateful to Sally Badham for this point. 5 John W. Rodger’s ‘The Stone Cross Slabs of South Wales and Monmouthshire’, Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society, 54 (1911), pp. 24–62, although not exhaustive, remains the best published survey of the region’s cross slabs.

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The twentieth century saw great developments in the historiography of the medieval monument, which developed from the antiquarian collecting and classifying impulse into a fully-fledged academic discipline that fostered recognition of the value of monuments to the study of various aspects of medieval society, religion and culture. This change was based largely on studies of English and Continental examples, however, and Welsh monuments found their way into these formative discussions generally only in tangential ways, if at all, meaning that the most up-to-date methodologies have only relatively recently begun to be applied in a Welsh context. Harry Tummers’s omission of Welsh examples from his study of thirteenth-century secular effigies illustrates the unfortunate consequences of this neglect and was reasoned thus: ‘not only because these effigies are mostly lagging behind the mainstream of stylistic development in England, but also because most of them have recently found their historians’.6 These comments may be criticised as ill-founded. Most thirteenth-century effigies in south Wales can be shown to be thoroughly up-to-date with English styles and in many cases they are in fact mainstream products of West Country origin and therefore no different to those he included in his study. That Tummers, a Dutch art historian, does not seem to have been aware of this is no doubt attributable to the fact that so few of them had at that point (1980) generated much scholarly interest outside Wales. Tummers’s other observation, that many had recently found their historians, must refer primarily to archaeologist Colin Gresham’s Medieval Stone Carving in North Wales: Sepulchral Slabs and Effigies of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Cardiff, 1968), one of only two monographs to have been published on Welsh monuments prior to the present work. Gresham’s account is an important, but undervalued, contribution to the historiography of the monumental effigy in general, and is still the best account of the native monumental traditions of the north. However it neglects the south entirely and recent research has demonstrated that it is in need of some refinement.7 The other study, J.M. Lewis’s Welsh Monumental Brasses: A Guide (Cardiff, 1974), is more of a catalogue than a scholarly work and underestimates the number of Welsh brasses, some of which are only known from antiquarian sources which he did not consult. Apart from these considerations, the broad assumptions underlying both of these works are now in need of updating in the light of the significant advances that have taken place in the study of memorial monuments in the last forty years. Happily, research by Sally Badham, Claude Blair, Phillip Lindley, Brian and Moira Gittos and the present author on Welsh effigies and by Professor Madeleine Gray on cross slabs is now moving things along. 6 Harry Tummers, Early Secular Effigies in England: the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 1980), p. 5. 7 Brian Gittos and Moira Gittos, ‘Gresham Revisited: A Fresh Look at the Medieval Monuments of North Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 161 (2012), pp. 357–88.

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Badham’s account of south Wales’s minor effigial monuments underlines the extent to which these have been ignored hitherto and illustrates the kind of attitude to which Tummers and other scholars have unwittingly fallen prey, commenting that ‘the impression created by the literature is that there was a dearth of minor effigial monuments in [the south Wales] area, but this is far from true’. Blair’s and Lindley’s research on the important collection at Abergavenny has made these tombs the most fully known and understood of all Welsh monuments, while Peter Lord’s survey of the artistic and material culture of medieval Wales has included a wide range of effigies and other monuments, which he uses to locate Wales within the broader cultural trends of Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe and taps into the appreciation that the monumental effigy in particular was a part of gentle culture and a form of social display.8

SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES The only contemporary written references to the monuments of south Wales are contained in wills, the shortcomings of which for evidence of this kind are well known.9 Wales, moreover, is a country for which very 8 Sally Badham, ‘Medieval Minor Effigial Monuments in West and South Wales: An Interim Survey’, Church Monuments, 14 (1999), pp. 5–34, quote on p. 5; Claude Blair, ‘The Wooden Knight at Abergavenny’, Church Monuments, 9 (1994), pp. 33–52; Phillip Lindley and Carol Galvin, ‘New Paradigms for the Aristocratic Funerary Monument around 1300: Reconstructing the Tomb of John, Second Baron Hastings (1287–1325) at Abergavenny Priory, Monmouthshire’, Church Monuments, 21 (2006), pp. 58–93; Lindley, ‘Two Fourteenth-Century Tomb Monuments at Abergavenny and the Mournful End of the Hastings Earls of Pembroke’, in Cardiff: Architecture and Archaeology in the Medieval Diocese of Llandaff, ed. J.R. Kenyon and D.M. Williams (Leeds, 2006), pp. 136–60; Lindley, Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England (Donington, 2007); Rhianydd Biebrach, ‘“Our Ancient Blood and Our Kings”: Two Sixteenth-Century Heraldic Tombs in Llandaff Cathedral’, Church Monuments, 24 (2009), pp. 73–88; Biebrach, ‘Conspicuous by their Absence: Rethinking the Lack of Brasses in Medieval Wales’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 18, i (2009), pp. 36–42; Biebrach, ‘Patronage, Production and Plague: Effigial Monuments in Fourteenth-Century Glamorgan’, in Monumental Industry: The Production of Tomb Monuments in England and Wales in the Long Fourteenth Century, ed. Sally Badham and Sophie Oosterwijk (Donington, 2010), pp. 114–35; Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments in Llandaff Cathedral’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 159 (2010), pp. 221–40; Biebrach, ‘Commemoration and Culture: the Monuments of Abergavenny Priory in Context’, in Anatomy of St Mary’s Priory Church, Abergavenny: Essays in Honour of Jeremy Winston, ed. George Nash (Oxford, 2015), pp. 139– 46; Madeleine Gray, ‘Piety and Power: The Tomb and Legacy of John Marshall, Bishop of Llandaff 1478–96’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 162 (2013), pp. 339–49; Peter Lord, The Visual Culture of Wales: Medieval Vision (Cardiff, 2003). 9 See, for example, Clive Burgess, ‘Late Medieval Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered’, in Michael Hicks, ed., Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 14–33; R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), p. 297; Robert Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 12–18; Malcolm Vale, Piety, Charity and Literacy among the Yorkshire Gentry 1370–1480 (York,

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few medieval wills survive. Just over 200 of Welsh interest from the period up to 1541 were located by Glanmor Williams for his study of the Welsh medieval church,10 which although likely to be an underestimate, is considerably fewer than survive for many English counties and even some cities.11 A further shortcoming is that they are overwhelmingly post-1500 in date, coinciding with a time when the commissioning of monuments had dropped drastically from its height at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and very few of them request or refer to monuments – something they have in common with English wills. Four of the Welsh wills that do so were made by members of the Herbert family of Monmouthshire, and none describes the desired monument in any detail, but nonetheless they are of significant value as the monuments of two of the testators (the earl of Pembroke and Sir William Herbert of Troy) no longer exist.12 Other testators who are known to have had effigial monuments did not make testamentary provision for them, either because the monument was already arranged, or it was the later action of family or executors. Robert Walsche (d.1427) of Llandough (Glamorgan) and Langridge (Somerset) made extensive testamentary provision for his soul, but his will contains no reference to his brass, which until recently lay in the chancel of Langridge church.13 John Marshall, bishop of Llandaff (d.1496), sought, and received, burial near the altar steps in Llandaff Cathedral, but the effigy that now occupies the space is not mentioned in his extensive will,14 and the testament of Arnold Butler (d.1541) [Fig. 1] is similarly silent on the matter of the imposing and unusual tomb that commemorates him and his wife at St Bride’s Major.15 Despite the odd flash of light, therefore, testamentary 1976), p. 8; Peter Heath, ‘Urban Piety in the Later Middle Ages: The Evidence of Hull Wills’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Barrie Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 209–34, at p. 213; Christine Carpenter, ‘The Religion of the Gentry of Fifteenth-Century England’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 53–74, at p. 57; Sally Badham, Seeking Salvation: Commemorating the Dead in the Late-Medieval English Parish (Donington, 2015), pp. 2–5. 10 180 of these were proved in the PCC, fifteen are taken from the bishops’ registers surviving for St Asaph 1536–40, and thirteen are to be found among the Hereford wills: Williams, Welsh Church, p. 288. Those which contain bequests to religious houses are listed in ibid., Appendix C, pp. 564–8. 11 Peter Heath, for example, consulted 355 Hull wills from 1400–1529 in his study of the pious practices of the city’s late medieval population: Heath, ‘Urban Piety in the Later Middle Ages’, p. 211. 12 William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d.1469), who requested his tomb in two wills, made before and after the battle of Banbury: CCL, MS 5.7, fols 56–8; TNA, PROB 11/5, image ref.: 305; Sir William Herbert of Troy (d.1524): TNA, PROB 11/21, image ref.: 203; Charles Somerset, earl of Worcester and lord of Gower and Chepstow (d.1525): TNA, PROB 11/22, image ref.: 132. The tomb of the earl of Pembroke was located at Tintern Abbey together with other Herbert monuments. It is not known whether that of William Herbert of Troy was ever erected. 13 TNA, PROB 11/3, image ref.: 105. The brass has been stolen. 14 TNA, PROB 11/10, image ref.: 363. 15 TNA, PROB/28, image ref.: 366. The Butler tomb at St Bride’s Major (c.1540) is remarkable as Arnold Butler’s effigy has crossed legs. See chapters four and five for further

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evidence sheds little light on the true level of interest in monumental commemoration among the inhabitants of south Wales. The most voluminous and valuable documentary sources for the study of the monuments of south Wales are those produced by antiquarian and amateur observers from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. They consist generally of published and unpublished surveys and church notes, tour journals and letters. Part of their value lies in the clues they give to the original, and post-medieval, appearance and location of monuments, but more importantly they are our only sources of information for the significant number of monuments which have since been lost. A shortcoming of this collection of evidence, however, is its limitation to a few ‘honey-pot’ sites: the cathedrals of Llandaff and St David’s and the ex-monastic churches at Brecon, Abergavenny and to a lesser extent Ewenny and Margam, to the detriment of the smaller parish churches, of which we know virtually nothing but where the majority of the surviving monuments lie. The earliest references are from the sixteenth century and are provided by Lancaster Herald William Fellows, the Glamorgan antiquary Rice Merrick, Thomas Churchyard and an unknown commentator, possibly George Owen of Cemais, whose observations on St David’s Cathedral are appended to Browne Willis’s early-eighteenth-century published survey.16 Fellows, who made an official visitation of south Wales and Herefordshire in 1531, was concerned with monuments only insofar as they contained heraldic information and consequently it is not always clear which monuments he actually saw. However, he certainly saw those of the Herbert earls of Pembroke (d.1469) and Huntingdon (d.c.1490), and of Sir George and Sir Walter Herbert in Tintern Abbey, all of which have now disappeared. Fellows’s contribution therefore cannot be dismissed even though he does not give details of the monuments themselves.17 Rice Merrick, born in the 1520s and so old enough to remember the effects of the Reformation on local churches and possibly their pre-Reformation appearance, has been described as the first Welsh antiquary,18 and his Morganiae Archaiographia, written c.1578, was an early contribution to the new genre of county studies.19 He was in contact with other local antiquaries, such as Sir Edward Stradling of St Donat’s, and was meticulous in citing his authorities. He corroborates the existence of the tomb of Sir William Fleming at Cardiff Greyfriars, alluded to by Fellows, and adds that it was made of wood, a

discussion of this tomb. In addition to these effigial monuments is the inscription brass to Adam Usk (d.1429), unusually in Welsh, in Usk church: TNA, PROB 11/3, image ref.: 153. 16 Browne Willis, A Survey of the Cathedral Church of St David’s (London, 1717). 17 Visitations by the Heralds in Wales, ed. Michael Powell Siddons (London, 1996), pp. 37–45. 18 Carr, Medieval Wales, p. 10. 19 Rice Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, A Book of the Antiquities of Glamorganshire, ed. Brian Ll. James (Barry, 1983), pp. xi–xxiv.

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material known to have been used in the construction of only two other medieval monuments in the region, at Abergavenny and Brecon.20 Interestingly, Merrick’s account of Fleming’s tomb indicates that it was located near that of his erstwhile captive at Cardiff Castle, the rebel leader Llywelyn Bren (d.1318), and both these monuments were destroyed at the Dissolution.21 Why he should have singled out the recently lost tombs of Fleming and Llywelyn Bren is not clear – it is hard to believe that theirs were the only ones that had existed in the friaries of Cardiff – yet Merrick’s position as a near-contemporary observer of the destruction is compelling. Churchyard’s poetical account of the monuments at the priories of Abergavenny and Brecon, like Fellows’s, concentrates on armorial details, but has been crucial in helping to reconstruct their former appearance as well as other items, such as stained-glass donor windows, associated with them.22 The value of George Owen’s (if it was his) account similarly lies in the confirmation he gives of the existence of episcopal brasses and other forms of monument, which were to be vandalised within a few decades of his description and entirely disappeared within the next two to three centuries.23 For Llandaff Cathedral, we have an intriguing account from the dangerous Civil War period, when monuments elsewhere were being targeted by Parliamentarian troops. The royalist soldier and antiquary Richard Symonds (1617–60) encountered Llandaff Cathedral, Abergavenny Priory and other Welsh churches on his marches accompanying Charles I on his visit to Wales in the summer of 1645.24 Although his interest in tombs was more focussed than either Fellows’s or Merrick’s, he had neither the latter’s local knowledge, nor the leisure to consult local documents to provide a context for his observations. Some of his comments have the air of having been made in haste and this seems to have led him into error on occasion. He noted ten monuments in all at Llandaff Cathedral, although there were certainly more at that time, and he seems to have totally invented an unusual-sounding effigy of a naked, mitred bishop, which is 20 The effigy of Lord Hastings, c.1325 at Abergavenny Priory, and the lost monument thought to be that of Reginald de Braose at Brecon Priory. The triple-decker wooden Games monument at Brecon, of which only one effigy now survives, is a later sixteenth-century product. 21 Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, p. 59. Fleming had been sheriff of Glamorgan during Bren’s revolt. 22 Thomas Churchyard’s The Worthines of Wales, 1587 (London, 1876). Phillip Lindley has dealt thoroughly with the antiquarian accounts for Abergavenny Priory, which also include the Diary of Richard Symonds, two mid-seventeenth-century anonymous descriptions, a heraldic visitation of 1683, a description by Richard Gough and a description by Edward Blore, 1872: Lindley, Tomb Destruction, chapter 6. See also, Octavius Morgan, Some Account of the Ancient Monuments in the Priory Church, Abergavenny (Newport, 1872), and Biebrach, ‘Commemoration and Culture’, pp. 150–3. 23 Such as Bishop Vaughan’s brass, for which see below. 24 Diary of Richard Symonds, ed. C.E. Long, Camden Society, Old Series, 74 (London, 1859).

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not mentioned in any other source. Perhaps he here confused and merged into one a more conventional effigy of a bishop and the cadaver effigy in the north aisle, to which he does not otherwise refer. While Symonds’s account is neither full nor completely reliable, it is significant because it is our only account of Llandaff Cathedral’s monuments from the seventeenth century and shores up the huge gap between the very partial evidence of William Fellows in 1531 and the much more detailed published survey and other notes by Browne Willis in the early eighteenth century. As such, it forms a crucial piece in the jigsaw of evidence about the site.25 The eighteenth-century antiquary Browne Willis (1682–1760), a founder-fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, published surveys of every English and Welsh cathedral except Carlisle, containing plans and elevations and comments on the state of the fabric of the buildings as well as their contents.26 In south Wales, he gained much of his information via frequent correspondence with local antiquaries such as James Harris of Llantrisant, Francis Davies of Llandaff and most importantly William Wotton, then living in Carmarthen, as well as visiting the area himself on several occasions.27 His Survey of St David’s has already been noted, but probably of greater value is his Survey of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff, which described the building and its contents as it stood in 1717 and is the most informative source we have for the position and condition of the monuments of Llandaff Cathedral prior to the radical mid-eighteenthcentury ‘restoration’ and erection of John Wood’s ‘classical temple’ within the walls of the medieval structure, which involved the displacement – and possibly resulted in the loss – of a number of memorials. As such it affords us the fullest picture we have of the monuments as they would have existed at the end of the medieval period.28 Willis’s papers, preserved in the Bodleian Library, contain further information in the form of correspondence and his own notes made on a visit to Glamorgan and Monmouthshire in 1722, after the publication of his Survey.29 He was one of very few antiquaries to visit some of Llandaff diocese’s parish churches prior to the upsurge in activity after the foundation of the Cambrian Archaeological Association in the 25 Symonds, Diary, pp. 213–15. He also visited what he refers to as ‘Cardiff church’, which was probably St John’s, but recorded only a large donor window in the north aisle, and St Fagan’s where he notes only the arms of de Clare in the east window: p. 215; p. 218. 26 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29577 [accessed 17 June 2012]. 27 J.P. Jenkins, ‘From Edward Lhwyd to Iolo Morgannwg: The Death and Rebirth of Glamorgan Antiquarianism in the Eighteenth Century’, Morgannwg, 23 (1979), pp. 29–47, at pp. 32–3, p. 36. 28 Browne Willis, A Survey of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff (London, 1719). Llandaff Cathedral underwent a long process of extreme decay and partial (ultimately unsuccessful) rebuilding before it was thoroughly restored in the mid nineteenth century, and as such its medieval monuments were under great threat over a prolonged period of time. This is discussed in more detail below. 29 Bodleian Library, Willis MSS. The archive consists of many bound volumes of letters, plans and church notes. The majority of the information on Llandaff Cathedral and a few other local churches is contained in vols 36, 38, 42, 66, 104 and 106.

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mid nineteenth century. The churches at Coity, Merthyr Mawr, Llantrisant, St Athan, Flemingston, Llantwit Major, Ewenny and Llandough (which he seems to have confused with nearby Llanblethian) all have effigies which he remarked upon, revealing the existence of at least two which have since been lost and occasionally illuminating some dark corners.30 It was to be another hundred years before accounts of similar value to those of Symonds and Willis appeared, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but here again it was the honey-pot sites which attracted much of the attention. William Coxe’s Historical Tour through Monmouthshire, first published in 1801, gives accounts of Abergavenny Priory and Tintern Abbey, as well as noting monuments at Christchurch, Caldicot and Newport,31 while Theophilus Jones’s History of the County of Brecknock (1809) provides a valuable account of Brecon Priory as it existed in 1800.32 Richard Fenton’s Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire is an essential source alongside those of Owen and Willis for understanding St David’s Cathedral, and it also gives more than usually wide-ranging coverage of the other churches in the diocese, supplemented by John Treble’s contemporary description of Tenby.33 Two of the most informative antiquarian sources for Llandaff Cathedral are the closely contemporary tour journals of Sir Richard Colt Hoare FSA (1758–1838) and the drawings of John Carter FSA (1748–1817), which form a mutually complementary body of material.34 The value of Carter’s detailed and mostly accurate drawings cannot be overestimated, but Hoare’s written evidence is more problematic. He did not always identify the monuments he described, nor did he note their locations as a matter of course, but a further issue is his apparent naivety when it came to interpreting, rather than merely describing, what he saw. In 1802, for example, he saw the effigy of a bishop (probably that now known as ‘St Dyfrig’) which was accompanied by ‘a Shield or [tablet] on which are carved Several instruments for building, such as ladders, hammers etc.’ from which he concluded that ‘This Bishop probably repaired or built the Cathedral.’35 What he actually saw, but misinterpreted presumably as a result of unfamiliarity with the Catholic iconography, was a plaque depicting the Instruments of the Passion [Fig. 2].36 Llandaff Cathedral was not the only church visited by Hoare. In 1793 he 30 Bodleian Library, MS Willis 42, fols 268r–83v. He also visited Monmouth parish church in the diocese of Hereford. The lost monuments are discussed below. 31 William Coxe, A Historical Tour through Monmouthshire (reprinted Brecon, 1904). 32 Theophilus Jones, A History of the County of Brecknock (reprinted Brecon, 1909), vol. 1. 33 Richard Fenton, A Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire (London, 1811); John Treble, An Account of Tenby: Containing an Historical Sketch of the Place (Pembroke, 1811). http:// archive.org/details/anaccounttenbyc00trebgoog [accessed 24 April 2012]. 34 Tour Journals of Sir Richard Colt Hoare: CCL, MS 3.127, vol. 2 (1802), vol. 3 (1793), vol. 6 (1797); John Carter’s Sketchbook: BL, Add. MS 29,940. 35 CCL, MS 3.127, vol. 2, fol. 62. 36 He also mentioned two monuments of monks, one of which must be a misinterpretation of the effigy of a priest or bishop, the other a semi-effigial slab of a civilian; CCL, MS. 3.127, vol. 2, fol. 61, fol. 63.

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was at Margam Abbey, and commented on the medieval and contemporary buildings there, but failed to mention the effigy of the knight now located in the abbey’s Stones Museum.37 In 1802 he visited Abergavenny Priory, Ewenny Priory and Neath Abbey. The sources discussed in this section form the body of our written evidence for the medieval monuments of south Wales. It is not a large corpus of information and has a major weakness in that it is generally silent on those tombs, especially cross slabs, which lay in the parish churches away from the ‘tourist attractions’ of the cathedrals of Llandaff and St David’s, the priories of Abergavenny and Ewenny and the abbeys of Tintern and Margam. It is tempting – and frustrating – to speculate what lost details Symonds and Carter et al. could have recorded of the effigies in the region’s parish churches had they seen them. But although our sources have substantial flaws, their value should not be underestimated; they are spread thinly but cover a broad period of time, from the visitation of William Fellows in 1531, to the early-nineteenth-century accounts of Carter, Hoare and Fenton, and encompass the mid seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries between, thus providing snapshots of the region’s monuments as they changed over time. This is particularly the case for the cathedrals, and this chronological breadth enables us to see through and beyond the successive periods of dilapidation, restoration and repair that have occurred at Llandaff in particular since the sixteenth century, allowing us to see it, and its contents, in a form other than its current, essentially nineteenth-century, state.

CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW Achieving an accurate picture of the chronological spread of the monuments of south Wales from c.1200 to c.1540 forms the starting point for several of the arguments developed in this book. It makes possible a long view of trends in commemorative practice and levels of artistic patronage which is not only valid in its own right, but can also contribute significantly to our understanding of the wider cultural and spiritual activities of the south Wales elite. Graph 1 excludes cross slabs unless reasonably precise dates are known for them, in which case they have been included among the figures for the dated monuments. The bulk of the region’s cross slabs appear to date from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, but it is difficult to be more precise than this.38 Most of the region’s surviving effigial monuments can be CCL, MS 3.127, vol. 3. This pattern broadly agrees with what has been observed in northern England. Here, as in south Wales, cross slabs were in use from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries (although this period can be extended into the seventeenth century in Wales), with the late thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries being the time of peak production: Aleksandra 37

38

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GRAPH 1  CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SOUTH WALES MONUMENTS

assigned a date with reasonable certainty, however. Those which have been lost and are now known only from antiquarian descriptions are less easy to categorise, and they account for the majority of the sixty-four ‘uncertain’ examples recorded in the graph, as do some cross slabs which are so fragmentary or idiosyncratic in design as to make them difficult to date with any confidence. In most cases, however, these ‘uncertain’ monuments can probably be given a pre-Black Death time-frame.39 The clearest trend observable from this data, then, is that, although there was some interest in monumental commemoration in the first half of the thirteenth century, production surged in the century between c.1250 and the onset of the Black Death. In contrast, the second half of the fourteenth century suffered a dramatic slump in patronage, which only deepened in the first half of the fifteenth, followed by something of a resurgence from about 1450. This pattern is unexpected. In England the market for monumental commemoration widened considerably during the later Middle Ages, spreading down the social scale as production costs declined.40 The monumental brass and alabaster industries fostered this trend in the fifteenth century. Brasses in particular were highly adaptable in terms of size and price, while the high levels of production of alabaster slabs and tombs also allowed a greater range of social groups to aspire to this form of commemoration and the monuments of civilians and lesser clergy become increasingly common. Additionally it may be supposed that monuments McClain, ‘Cross Slab Monuments in the late Middle Ages: Patronage, Production and Locality in Northern England’, in Monumental Industry, ed. Badham and Oosterwijk, pp. 37–65, see Figs. 4 and 8, and pp. 48–52. 39 There are two reasons for this assumption. Some antiquarian descriptions of military effigies refer only to a ‘cross-legged knight’, or a ‘crusader’, indicating that the effigy is likely to date from between c.1250 and c.1350. Furthermore, as the majority of the datable monuments were produced in this period it must be the case that many of the undatable ones will be from this period too. 40 Laurence Stone, Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1955), pp. 178–9; Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 57–9.

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from the earlier centuries were disproportionately affected by loss, re-use and destruction later in the medieval period, making their preponderance in south Wales even more worthy of note.41 In order to throw this data into greater relief it is useful to compare it to statistics from neighbouring English counties with which south Wales had strong cultural, social and economic links, such as Somerset and Gloucestershire.42 Before the differences between the two parts of Severnside are discussed it is important to point out that there are in fact some similarities in terms of monumental culture. Although the churches of south Wales rarely match those of Somerset or Gloucestershire in size and decorative adornment, it is possible to glimpse some clear associations with the monumental effigies found here. The fragmentary remains of a thirteenth-century civilian monument at St Peter’s, Carmarthen, are extremely similar to the one at St James’s, Bristol, even down to the unusual circular brooch or pendant worn at the neck. Other links with Bristol styles come from the recess in the south aisle of St David’s Cathedral which appears to be a simplified form of the distinctive ‘stellate’ recesses used by the Berkeley family at Bristol Cathedral. Furthermore, the undersized effigy of a lady at Coity [Fig. 3] is so similar in appearance to those at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, that they cannot have been produced in isolation from each other. The Carmarthen civilian is a Dundry stone product, no doubt imported direct from Bristol, but the St David’s recess and the Coity lady are carved from local stones, indicating that craftsmen and ideas were on the move between the north and south shores of the Bristol Channel, confirming Rees Davies’s comment that ‘in medieval society the movement of men was the most potent agency of cultural diffusion’.43 These individual comparisons aside, however, it is clear that the monumental culture of south Wales as a whole, in terms of style and appearance, has much more in common with the rest of south-western England than it does with north Wales. Here, both cross slabs and effigial monuments take a distinctive form, rich in surface decoration and tending to the low-relief style of carving. Characteristic features common in the north, such as inscriptions running around the borders of shields, are never found in the south, and all in all the northern product is not easy to confuse with southern examples.

See below. The nature of these ties is explained in more depth in the introduction. The comparative figures have been taken from the relevant Pevsner volumes, but exclude cross slabs: David Verey, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire: The Vale and the Forest of Dean (Harmondsworth, 1970); David Verey and Alan Brooks, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds (Harmondsworth, 1999); Julian Orbach and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (London, 2014); Andrew Foyle and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: North Somerset and Bristol (London, 2011). 43 Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 351. 41

42

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Returning to Severnside, the most fundamental observation to be made regarding levels of effigial commemoration is that the Welsh and English parts are not comparable in terms of outright numbers. In Gloucestershire 161 preReformation effigial monuments of all kinds survive and 213 in Somerset, figures which overwhelm Pembrokeshire’s eighty-seven, Glamorgan’s fiftytwo, Monmouthshire’s thirty, Carmarthenshire’s thirteen and Breconshire’s twelve. These Welsh figures, moreover, are for all known effigial monuments rather than just the extant ones, and even if the cross slabs are added they do not quite reach the levels of the two English counties.44

GRAPH 2  CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF EFFIGIAL MONUMENTS IN THE SEVERNSIDE REGION

Broadly speaking, a general pattern emerges from the data presented in Graph 2. In all counties other than Carmartheshire, Glamorgan and Monmouthshire (where numbers of thirteenth-century monuments are slightly higher than those from other centuries) relatively low levels of effigial commemoration before c.1300 turn into a steep rise in commissions in the fourteenth century.45 Then there is a noticeable downturn in the fifteenth century (considerably less marked in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire than in the other counties). It appears on the graph as though this decline continues into the sixteenth century, but the numbers are artificially low here as they only account for the first four decades, up to c.1540. The most notable difference between the Welsh and English counties, other than the greater overall numbers in England, is that there 44 The totals then read, Carmarthenshire: twenty; Glamorgan: 137; Pembrokeshire: 107; Monmouthshire: seventy-four; Breconshire: thirty-two. 45 It should be borne in mind that it can be difficult to accurately date monuments either side of 1300, and so some early-fourteenth-century examples might have been inadvertently given a late-thirteenth-century date, and vice versa.

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appears to have been a much healthier recovery in the fifteenth century on the English side of the border and Gloucestershire is particularly rich in early-sixteenth-century effigies.46 Examining the figures in more detail, in each county apart from Gloucestershire (at 47.1% of the total for the county) over half the total number of effigies were commissioned in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but this is more marked overall in south Wales. In Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan this early bias is particularly noticeable, with 84.6% of Carmarthen’s effigies datable to before c.1400 and 71.1% in Glamorgan. Pembrokeshire’s figures appear to be less dramatically proportioned than this, with 65.5% of effigies here datable to this period, but these figures are skewed to some extent by the high number (20.6%) of monuments which cannot be securely dated as they are known only from antiquarian accounts. Only Monmouthshire (at 52.3%) and Breconshire (at 58.3%) have a similar profile to that of Somerset, with 58.6% of its effigies datable to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Here again, however, it should be pointed out that the overall numbers of effigial monuments in Monmouthshire and Breconshire are low, at thirty and twelve, respectively, while both have a high proportion (27.5% and 41.6%) of undatable items mostly known from antiquarian literature alone. As the general chronology represented in Graph 2 demonstrates, very few of the Welsh monuments discussed in this paragraph will have been produced in the second half of the fourteenth century, making the clustering of monumental production towards the earlier part of our period even more marked. On the evidence of the dates given for the Somerset and Gloucestershire examples in the Pevsner Buildings of England series, there was also a noticeable falling off in production here after the middle of the fourteenth century, reaching a nadir in the 1380s and 1390s, with eight effigies given this date in Somerset and only two in Gloucestershire. The differences between the Welsh and English patterns become much more pronounced, however, when we move into the fifteenth century. In Wales there are very low levels of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century monuments: twelve (13.7% of the total for the county) in Pembrokeshire, one (7.6%) in Carmarthenshire, twelve (23%) in Glamorgan, none in Breconshire and seven (23.3%) in Monmouthshire. In Somerset and Gloucestershire, not only are the absolute numbers very much higher, they also make up a considerably greater proportion of the total for both counties: Somerset has eighty-seven (40.8%) effigies dated to between c.1400 and c.1540, while Gloucestershire has eighty-three (51.5%). Even more notable in the case of the latter county, as has been indicated above, is that so many, thirty-seven out of eighty-three, can be dated to between 1500 and c.1540. The fifteenth-century slump in patronage observable from this data throughout most of south Wales therefore seems to have been 46

I am including effigial brasses in these calculations.

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much less marked in the English portion of Severnside examined here, and there are clear signs of revival in the English examples from c.1440. The Gloucestershire data in particular suggests that this county experienced a buoyant market for effigial commemoration from c.1500. In searching for an explanation for these fluctuations it is hard to escape the conclusion that the cumulative effects of the various demographic crises of the fourteenth century – of which successive plague visitations seem to have bitten hardest – had an effect on levels of patronage of monumental effigies in all four areas, but that these effects may have been experienced differently across Severnside. Numbers of monuments in south Wales do not revive to the extent that they do in Somerset or Gloucestershire. In Wales, of course, Owain Glyn Dŵr’s revolt contributed further to the economic malaise in the first decade of the fifteenth century, which may account for the failure of Welsh patronage to revive significantly for some time thereafter.47 In contrast, Gloucestershire and Somerset experienced a wool boom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which brought wealth to the area and stimulated artistic patronage of many kinds. Whatever the underlying reasons for the contraction in the Welsh figures at a time when monumental commemoration was flourishing and becoming accessible to an ever greater social mix in parts of England, it is abundantly clear that the accepted history of the development of monumental culture suggested by most English studies does not necessarily hold good for the rest of the country, and that the picture is more nuanced than previously thought. The factors that may have contributed to these differences are explored in chapters two and three.

GEOGRAPHY AND LOCATION THE BROAD PICTURE If there is an element of uncertainty and supposition over the reasons for the distinctive patterns in Welsh monumental culture described in the previous section, explaining the geographical dispersal of monuments throughout south Wales is more straightforward. A glance at the map of the spread of monuments across south Wales reveals a clear pattern of distribution which broadly coincides with coastal areas, the greater navigable river valleys and the lowland plains, corresponding to the location of the main medieval population centres. Significant collections of monuments outside these areas are often due to the presence of an important religious institution, such as Brecon Priory. 47 For Owain Glyn Dŵr’s revolt see Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, and for its effects on the diocese of Llandaff in particular see: Davies, ‘Plague and Revolt’. The question of the effect of plague and revolt on the production and commissioning of monuments in south Wales is considered in chapter three.

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DISTRIBUTION OF MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES

The importance of waterborne transport in dictating geographical spread can be seen particularly effectively in Pembrokeshire, where virtually all the known examples are found in churches situated either along its lengthy, indented coastline or along the banks of the tidal River Cleddau, the western arm of which allowed relatively large vessels access to Haverfordwest. The small scattering of monuments in inland locations, such as at Letterston, St Dogwells and Llantood, are cross slabs, or semi-effigial monuments, and therefore more likely to be of local manufacture, making transport considerations less of an issue. The other notable feature of the Pembrokeshire examples is that, St David’s Cathedral (which is something of an anomaly in the region being not just a cathedral but also a major pilgrimage destination) apart, the majority of the monuments are located in the southern half of the county, below the Landsker line, the invisible linguistic and cultural border dividing the Welsh north of the county from the southern parts thickly settled by the Flemish and Anglo-Normans.48 The Pembrokeshire pattern is echoed in Carmarthenshire, where the county’s few monuments are found in coastal boroughs such as Kidwelly and Laugharne, and in the administrative centre of Carmarthen and nearby Abergwilly, with their easy access to the sea via the River Towy. The unusual collection of cross slabs, semi-effigies and effigies at the abandoned church at Llanfihangel Abercywyn, lying a few miles further in land, is no doubt of local manufacture, and may be associated with the nearby short-lived 48 The marked cultural difference represented by the Landsker has resulted in the wellknown description of southern Pembrokeshire as ‘Little England beyond Wales’.

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AN OVERVIEW OF WELSH MONUMENTS

motte and bailey castle, pointing to a possible origin amongst the area’s early Anglo-Norman conquerors and their followers.49 Moving further to the east, Glamorgan is much richer in evidence, but here the coastal and riverine distribution of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire is not so apparent, and a sizeable proportion of the county’s monuments are found several miles inland, with many of these also being some distance from navigable rivers. Virtually all of these examples, however, are to be found in the Vale of Glamorgan, an area of relatively flat and low-lying fertile agricultural land which was thickly settled by Anglo-Norman incomers from the end of the eleventh century. Their presence can still be glimpsed in the area’s ruined castles and many small, square-towered parish churches, which also house the majority of the monuments. Much of the rest of Glamorgan, like Carmarthenshire, is upland, a region of very few churches of medieval origin, but there are a small number of monuments to be found in some of those that do survive, such as the low-relief effigy of a pilgrim at Llandyfodwg and two distinctive triple-branched cross slabs at Llangynwyd, which may be linked with a pilgrim trail connected with the rood at Llangynwyd and the shrine of the Virgin at Penrhys.50 In Monmouthshire and Breconshire the picture becomes somewhat more complex. In the lowlands between Newport in the west and Chepstow in the east there is a scattering – about as dense as in the Vale of Glamorgan, but not so numerous – of monuments ranging in size between simple cross slabs and double effigies on tomb-chests. The courses of the Usk and Wye rivers seem to determine the siting of a number of others, such as at St Arvan’s on the Wye, in the town of Usk itself and at a number of other small settlements on the Usk river as it descends from Abergavenny in the north down to Newport in the south. Others still are found in more isolated spots, such as at Llanvetherine and Trellech. The presence of five effigies and cross slabs in the latter location seems particularly incongruous in what is now an extremely small rural settlement, but in the thirteenth century Trellech was a considerable urban site by Welsh standards. Further to the north, in Breconshire, apart from at the administrative centres of the Marcher lordships of Hay, Builth and Brecon itself, most of the county’s monuments are cross slabs and therefore probably of local manufacture, sourced close to their intended destination. Llanhamlach and Crickhowell, which both have churches that contain, or contained, effigial monuments, are situated on the main road between the market towns of Brecon and Abergavenny, each of which, of course, boasted a good-sized Benedictine priory.51

49 Lord, Visual Culture, pp. 114–15. These slabs have been given dates ranging from the early thirteenth to the fourteenth century. 50 The popularity of both is attested in the poetry of the later fifteenth century. I am grateful to Professor Madeleine Gray for drawing this to my attention. 51 See chapter three for how proximity to large churches or other buildings may have had an impact on production of monuments.

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Chapter two will appraise in depth the evidence that monumental commemoration, especially of an effigial sort, was largely the preference of the Anglo-Norman and Flemish communities of the southern March, and this observation is an important one in the context of the current discussion. It is clear that explanations of the geographic dispersal of monuments must be seen in the context not only of topography and transport links, but in the way these in turn shaped and subtly interplayed with settlement patterns, ethnic diversity and trading infrastructures. Material evidence, in its most basic sense of what the monuments are made from, plays an important role here. Although it has not been possible to undertake a systematic analysis of the stones used in the manufacture of the monuments across the entire region, enough evidence has been gathered, especially in Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and parts of Pembrokeshire, to indicate that they were sourced locally as well as from more distant centres of production in different parts of England.52 What is interesting here is that imported stones are not necessarily found exclusively next to the coast or along the greater river valleys, nor are local stones always found only at inland or upland sites. Several of the latter, including Caerbwdi, Sutton, Lias and Sudbrook, were in any case quarried in coastal locations, presenting the same logistical problems in transporting them far inland as for imported materials. At St David’s, Tenby, Merthyr Mawr, Llantwit Major and Llandaff, all of which are situated on or near the coast, there are a good number of monuments carved from these local stones, a striking example of which is the purplish Caerbwdi, used in large amounts in the buildings of St David’s Cathedral and town.53 Furthermore, English imports can be found in landlocked Raglan (alabaster monuments now lost), Abergavenny and Monmouth. This suggests that ease of access to adequate forms of transport necessary to bring in a heavy, bulky object sourced outside the immediate locality, although a basic determinant of why monuments are found where they are, may not always be as important a consideration as the presence or otherwise of populations or families who exhibited an interest in monumental commemoration in the first place and were wealthy enough to pay for it, wherever they obtained it from. As the introduction explained, the March’s advenae, settler, element had taken over those parts of south Wales which had the best agricultural and commercial potential and which allowed the establishment of the kind of settlement models familiar to them from their places of origin, such as nucleated villages, a manorial system, defensible boroughs and ports. Inevitably, this required relatively low-lying land suitable for mixed agriculture, navigable rivers and easy coastal access, in other words, the parts of south Wales where the majority of our monuments Discussed in chapter three. Several monuments within St David’s Cathedral are made from the stone, as well some further afield, such as the undersized civilian monument once at Boulston, but now at Uzmaston. I am grateful to Tim Palmer for helping me with stone-type analysis. 52 53

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are concentrated: southern Pembrokeshire, the Vale of Glamorgan and the lowlands of Monmouthshire. Geography, ethnic settlement patterns and transport links are therefore all part of the same picture, and are inseparable in determining the dispersal of commemorative monuments throughout the southern Welsh landscape. In order to understand this picture more deeply, however, it is necessary to take into account other determinants, such as the location of sizeable towns and major religious institutions. As the introduction has already pointed out, medieval Wales had no towns that could compare in size with England’s foremost examples, or even with many of its second- and thirdtier urban centres. Pembroke, Haverfordwest, Tenby, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Trellech, Chepstow, Brecon and Monmouth represented the region’s largest towns – all of which except Chepstow have extant or lost monuments of one sort or another – but in most cases they were still only large enough to be able to boast a single parish church and maybe a priory or friary or two. Given the overwhelmingly rural character of medieval south Wales, therefore, it is surprising that 156 (42.16%) of the 370 monuments recorded in this survey are, or were, in urban churches.54 Fifty-three of these can be accounted for by Llandaff and St David’s Cathedrals, whose urban status may be disputed, but that still leaves 103 (27.83%) situated in a town proper – a percentage which is far in excess of the proportion of town-dwellers in the south Welsh population as a whole.55 Furthermore, although we know of the existence of some monuments formerly located in urban monasteries which have subsequently been lost (and which have been included in the figures), this must under-represent the true level of commemoration in these locations to a considerable extent. Pressure on space in urban parish churches in the post-medieval period, as well as extensive rebuilding and restoration, has resulted in the wholesale loss of floor slabs, which probably included more brasses than we currently know of, while Cardiff lost an entire parish church and its contents to the erosion of the River Taff in the seventeenth century and along with it all knowledge of the monuments it may have contained. In short, the evidence suggests that levels of urban commemoration were high, and that Welsh town-dwellers were far more likely than their country cousins to have commissioned commemorative monuments. How do questions of ethnicity fit into this picture? It is a consistent observation of this book that, where subjects can be identified, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that, before the fifteenth century, the majority of memorials commissioned in south Wales commemorated individuals of non-Welsh origin. It is commonly argued that the populations of Welsh 54 Saul confirms the monumental richness of many English urban churches, most of which has since been lost: Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 52–3. 55 St David’s is, and was, a very small settlement, as was Llandaff, which has only become part of Cardiff in the relatively recent past and was outside the town environs in the Middle Ages.

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towns were largely English/Anglo-Norman/Flemish by descent and that Welsh inhabitants were discriminated against, being prevented from achieving burgess status or high office. This being the case there would have been few opportunities for Welsh men and women to have sought, or been accorded, commemoration in urban churches, yet the latest research suggests that Welsh voices would have been increasingly heard in places such as Tenby, Swansea and Cardiff around 1300, at a time when interest in monumental commemoration was at its height.56 This observation can be confirmed by the existence of Welsh names on the cross slabs which still pave the floor of Brecon Priory (now Brecon Cathedral), but how representative this evidence can be taken to be must be a matter of debate given the absence of any comparators. The unexpectedly high number of urban monuments in this survey may, then, have something to do with the broadly English character of Welsh towns, but there are other, more fundamental considerations, which will be of equal, or greater, importance. Two basic considerations in the decision to engage in any sort of artistic patronage are the availability or otherwise of funds and access to an adequate source of supply, added to which might be a certain sense of cultural awareness. It is to be expected, therefore, that urban dwellers, especially those at the top of the socio-economic scale, being engaged in trade or manufacture, would have had the disposable income and the wherewithal to seek out producers and arrange transport of the finished goods, as well as the broader cultural horizons necessary to instil a sense of the possibilities for social and dynastic investment and display provided by monumental commemoration. Trading networks, along the south Wales coast, with Bristol (explained in the introduction) and even further afield, would have aided the process. That Welsh urban wealth was being ploughed into religious institutions has been shown by Richard Suggett, who has noted that many town churches are not only bigger than rural ones, but were also being provided with new roofs, aisles, screens and towers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,57 so the willingness to invest and the need for material display were undoubtedly there. There are some examples, such as the tombs of the White family at Tenby, which fit perfectly into the scenario presented here: a wealthy and prominent mercantile family of English origin, the Whites erected impressive monuments made from a mixture of imported stones to two of their number in St Mary’s parish church in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Unfortunately there is simply too little known about the patrons of most of the other urban monuments in this study to test whether they too follow a similar pattern. In fact where we do know identities, such as at Abergavenny Priory and the Cardiff and Carmarthen Greyfriars, those who sought burial in these urban churches Stevens, ‘Anglo-Welsh Towns’, pp. 137–8. Richard Suggett, ‘The Townscape 1400–1600’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Fulton, pp. 51–94, at pp. 82–4.

56 57

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AN OVERVIEW OF WELSH MONUMENTS

were not burgesses but aristocratic patrons of the house and members of the local landed elites. In each case at least some of those commemorated were Welsh, rather than English, in origin.58 MONASTERY, CATHEDRAL AND PARISH CHURCH As will have become apparent from the above discussion, the urban houses of the Benedictine monks and the friars attracted the burials of both Welsh and English, rural and urban dwellers in some numbers. But how popular were these institutions in comparison to the houses of other orders, the cathedrals, or the parish churches across the region? Although the two cathedrals can claim fifty-three monuments between them, and the religious orders of all kinds represent a further ninety-one, Table 1 demonstrates that the overwhelming location of choice for the patrons of monuments in south Wales was the parish church, with 226 (61.08% of the total) extant or lost monuments being sited here. Once again, it is important to flag up the likelihood that many more examples housed in monasteries are likely to have been lost after the Dissolution, but there will also have been unknown numbers lost from the cathedrals and parish churches, especially the cross slabs and more minor forms of monument. TABLE 1  LOCATION OF MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES  BY RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION Location

Number of Monuments

Cathedral

53

Benedictine

51

Cistercian

22

Mendicant

13

Tironian

2

Augustinian Canons

2

Knights Hospitaller

1

Parish church

226

Burial in cathedrals and monastic institutions was the privilege of the clergy, although some prestigious lay burials – those of patrons and benefactors – were also found there. The Cistercians at Whitland, Margam, Neath and Tintern housed the graves of a number of the local lay elites, but only at Margam and Tintern is there evidence of the monuments associated 58 Llywelyn Bren at the Cardiff Greyfriars, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his wife Jenet Mathew, as well as Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, at the Carmarthen Greyfriars (now moved to St Peter’s Carmarthen and St David’s Cathedral respectively), and the Herberts, who were at least part Welsh in origin, at Abergavenny Priory. The Whites themselves straddled the two spheres, being also recently possessed of a landed estate and married to Welsh women.

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with them, the number surviving at Tintern and Margam giving a tantalising glimpse of what once must have been sites replete with memorials of different kinds.59 The cathedrals were also sought-after locations and St David’s Cathedral in particular is full of clerical monuments: episcopal, archidiaconal and otherwise; Llandaff has fewer in total, but all six are episcopal. Many cathedrals, such as Exeter and Durham,60 restricted lay burial, and so it is not surprising to see so few non-clerical monuments at St David’s. The size and prominence of the three Mathew tombs at Llandaff tends to give an impression of lay dominance in a relatively small cathedral, but this is somewhat illusory. No lay monuments are known to have been erected there before the mid fifteenth century,61 while we know of at least three additional bishops’ memorials which have been lost. The original balance of clerical and lay memorials at Llandaff is therefore likely to have had much greater weight on the side of the clergy than appears now. For those at the top of lay society, there was an element of choice possible over the place of burial and subsequently over the location of the monument. For the de Londres lords of Ogmore the decision was easy – they had founded the Benedictine priory at Ewenny in 1131, and three of their memorials survive there, the last commemorating the sole surviving heiress, Hawise (d.1274). Hawise had married Payn de Chaworth, lord of Kidwelly, so perhaps her decision to return in death to Ewenny is an indication of her loyalty to established family burial practices. The same sentiments can be observed at Abergavenny, where members of successive lordly families – de Braose/Cantilupe and Hastings – chose to be interred between the mid twelfth and later fourteenth century.62 From the mid fifteenth century the priory was taken over as the burial place of the Herberts, beginning with Sir William ap Thomas in the 1440s or ’50s [Fig. 4] and culminating with Richard Herbert of Ewyas in 1510 [Fig. 5]. Other Herbert monuments, now lost, were erected in Tintern Abbey, an even grander institution. Well before the fifteenth century, the gentry – among whose ranks the Herberts counted themselves prior to their ennoblement in the late 1460s – were showing a marked preference for burial and commemoration in their 59 It is unfortunate that Whitland, a Cistercian abbey of Welsh foundation and patronage, should have been so completely destroyed. In 1271 Maredudd ap Rhys Grug was buried in front of the high altar, and it would have been extremely interesting to know what form his monument took: http://www.monasticwales.org/site/36 [accessed May 26 2016]. 60 David Lepine and Nicholas Orme, eds, Death and Memory in Medieval Exeter (Exeter, 2003), p. 31. I am grateful to Professor Nigel Saul for drawing my attention to the restrictive policy at Durham prior to the Neville burials in the late fourteenth century. 61 The thirteenth-century semi-effigial cross slab of Philip Taverner and his wife may have been brought inside from the cemetery or from a Cardiff church. 62 The earliest monument there is that of Eva de Braose (d.1254), heiress of William de Braose (d.1230). She (or her executors) chose to foreground her Cantilupe marriage by the placing of an unusually large shield displaying the Cantilupe arms over her breast, indicating a need to associate her with her husband’s family, rather than her father’s. For patronal loyalty – and otherwise – to Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries, see Karen Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 112–45.

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local parish churches.63 Given this, should the Herberts’ selection of these venerable monastic institutions be taken as a sign that they had left, or that they were trying to leave, their inferior roots behind? The impression that the Herberts were consciously associating themselves with the earlier dominant local families is reinforced by their choice of Benedictine and Cistercian houses. By the fifteenth century these orders had lost popularity to the mendicants, so their selection was not the ‘fashionable’ option, but whether it was a conservatism born of anxiety, or of confidence, is difficult now to determine.64 In any case they were not alone: an impressive latefifteenth- or early-sixteenth-century canopied wall monument, originally inlaid with several brass images, was erected in the Benedictine house at Monkton, just outside Pembroke. At this point the priory was in a precarious state, monastic life had been suspended between its dissolution in 1441 and 1471, and in 1525 only three monks were resident there.65 Yet, some wealthy member of the local gentry or urban elite saw fit to have an expensive tomb erected in the monastic church: perhaps the prospect of association with the priory’s ancient connections with the earldom of Pembroke may have been too powerful to resist. For those who could not count themselves amongst the clerical and lay elites, however, the parish church was probably the only available option for burial and commemoration. In south Wales, as in England, the rural parish churches are the single most common location of surviving monuments, 165 (44.59% of all monuments) being extant or recorded in rural areas compared with sixty-one in urban sites. The extent to which this is an accurate reflection of the original pattern of dispersal is unclear, however, as we have undoubtedly lost a significant proportion of our urban memorials.66 Although cathedral or monastic burial may have been deemed more prestigious, the parochial option was not necessarily a secondrate one. From the fourteenth century, gentry families chose parochial commemoration as a way of marking their dominance – real or aspirant – in local society. In Saul’s words, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century gentry ‘almost overwhelm’ their parish churches with their presence, a development he puts down to a ‘revolution in the structure and topography of intercession’ in the later Middle Ages, in which the development of flexible arrangements such as the chantry and the obit played a significant

Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 114. See Biebrach, ‘Commemoration and Culture’, for the Herbert monuments. Christine Carpenter has questioned whether the attempted association of rising families with a monastic institution through burial is a sign of status anxiety rather than confidence: Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 231–3. 65 Monastic Wales website: http://www.monasticwales.org/site/10 [accessed 24 May 2016]. The tomb surround still exists. 66 See Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 55–7. 63

64

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role.67 At Cobham (Kent) the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Cobham family stamped their lordship on the church floor in the form of multiple brasses, while at Aldworth (Berkshire) the carved effigies of the de la Beches line the aisles and walls of the nave in an eternal reminder of their status and presence. We occasionally get a sense of this dynastic commemorative strategy in the parish churches of south Wales, albeit on a less grand scale. Chapter five describes the Berkerolles tombs at St Athan, commemorating two – or possibly three – generations of the family prior to its extinction at the beginning of the fifteenth century, while the churches at Coity, St Bride’s Major, Carew, Llangwm, Stackpole, Tenby, Upton and Crickhowell all contain more than one monument to what are thought to be different members or generations of the same family.68 The longest that this commemorative tradition seems to have been continued is about three successive generations (at Stackpole, Carew and Upton), while at St Bride’s Major the two generations of the Butler family which have surviving monuments there are separated by over two centuries.69 While the figures show that parish churches are by far the most common location for south Wales monuments, therefore, only a tiny proportion of them seem to have witnessed a sustained programme of commemoration by the manorial lords or dominant local landowners over a century or so, and single effigies or a collection of anonymous cross slabs are far more typical.

67 For a full discussion see Nigel Saul, Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2017), pp. 157–60, and idem, ‘The Gentry and the Parish’, in The Parish in Late Medieval England, ed. Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy (Donington, 2006), pp. 243–60, at pp. 247–8. The richness of possibilities for intercessory arrangements presented by the parish church has also recently been surveyed in Badham, Seeking Salvation. 68 As ever, caution is necessary in making these assumptions. At St Athan, St Bride’s Major and Coity inscriptions and heraldry make the family links clear, but the lack of these at the other locations means that the relationships are by no means certain and can only be inferred from similarity of forms and dating. For example, it is assumed that the lady of about 1300 and the late 1340s knight at Llangwm represent successive generations of the de la Roche family, who were the local lords, because it is thought unlikely that any other family would have sought, or been accorded, effigial monuments with tomb-chests and canopies in that church. 69 See chapter five for more details.

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PATRONS AND SUBJECTS: THE SOCIAL STATUS OF THOSE COMMISSIONING AND COMMEMORATED BY MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES

T

he inhabitants of late-medieval south Wales had access to a wide range of native and imported forms of monumental commemoration. The nature of this supply was of course important in shaping fundamental aspects of the region’s commemorative culture, but just as crucial was the influence of the demand end of the market, and it is to the patrons of monuments that we must now turn. What kinds of people commissioned and were commemorated by sepulchral monuments in south Wales? How did their status and background dictate the appearance of their monuments? How did the character of this group change over the period, and how did this in turn affect the region’s monumental landscape? Written evidence of the process of commissioning monuments in Wales during this period is scanty. There are no surviving contracts as there are for a small number of English tombs, but a handful of testamentary requests have come to light. As wills are rarely fulsome sources of evidence for the patronage of monuments it is not surprising that these examples are not very forthcoming about the process of ordering a monument, but they at least give us some sense of the social classes that were interested in doing so and, to some extent, the form of monument that was required.1 The lack of satisfactory written evidence is ultimately of little concern to the focus of this chapter, however, as the monuments are themselves sufficient witnesses to the status, and frequently the identity, of those they commemorate. This is not to say that they are foolproof in this respect. As chapter five will demonstrate, monuments were sometimes designed to obscure or enhance the truth about their subjects rather than lay it bare, while the identity of the patrons of many of the surviving anonymous cross slabs must remain lost to us. 1

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This issue is explored in more detail in chapter five.

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GRAPH 3  MONUMENT TYPES

In order to analyse the nature of the patronal group commissioning monuments in south Wales it is necessary first to return to the break-down of monument types outlined in chapter one. Graph 3 (above) indicates the numbers of monuments known to have been erected to clerics, ‘knights’, women and civilian males throughout the period, as well as the small number of others which are either of indeterminate type or depict pilgrims or cadavers. Lost monuments have also been included, as have cross slabs, despite the anonymous nature and difficulty of dating many of the latter. Although it can be difficult to make a cross slab speak to us as eloquently as can be achievable with an effigial monument, this type was commissioned in such numbers in south Wales, especially in the first half of our period, that it is impossible to ignore them. Accordingly, they are represented in the graphs below and will figure in the following discussions wherever it is possible to say something valid about their patronage.2 Using this basic information on the type of monuments they commissioned, it is possible to divide patrons into three main status groups: the clergy; the gentry of knightly status or below; and the lower and sub-gentry class. Owing to their habitual portrayal in vestments, the clergy are by far the easiest group to define and to differentiate according to status: a bishop cannot easily be confused with a parish priest. As a group the clergy feature prominently as patrons, and subjects, of monuments, but it will be shown below that there is significant unevenness in their chronological distribution. In some cases it is easy to place monuments securely within either of the two lay status groupings of upper and lower 2 The numbers of cross slabs included in this survey must be regarded as an underestimate of what still survives, and probably only a fraction of what was originally produced.

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PATRONS AND SUBJECTS

gentry, as when a surviving epitaph allows identification of the individual, or when a monument is particularly elaborate and imposing, or conversely, cheaply made. In most cases, however, a judgement must be based on a range of considerations. The patrons of commemorative monuments, especially those of an effigial nature, were concerned that the deceased should be represented according to their status,3 and it is this convention which allows the identification of even anonymous effigial monuments with a particular social group, if not with a known individual. Therefore, military monuments and those of sumptuously dressed ladies, as well as those of an imposing nature and including additional elements, such as tomb-chests, are taken to be those of the upper gentry of knightly status, or esquires. Taken as a whole, and including the monuments of women and double monuments to husband and wife, recorded in separate columns in the graph, this group appears to constitute the most active patrons of monuments by a considerable margin. This is certainly the case where effigial representation is concerned. If, however, the large numbers of cross slabs, as well as semi-effigies and effigies depicting less elaborately dressed ladies and men in civilian garb, are taken to be those of the lower or sub-gentry – perhaps estate officials or merchants and their womenfolk – then it is this class who appear as the largest patronal group of commemorative monuments in south Wales. There will be, of course, an element of supposition about this: cross slabs engraved with chalices or books have been included with monuments to the clergy, but it is to be expected that many clerics were also commemorated with slabs which did not contain such features, and which therefore have not been included among the numbers for this group. And how should we classify the subjects of those cross slabs which depict weapons, such as that of ‘John’ in Brecon Cathedral showing a battle-axe on one side of the cross shaft, or that in St Mary’s, Brecon, displaying six arrowheads either side of the cross? Did the patrons of these monuments, who were obviously concerned to highlight their subjects’ military (or possibly hunting in the case of the arrowheads) lifestyle, choose a cross slab for reasons of economy or convenience when they might otherwise have opted for something more elaborate, or were the subjects humble men for whom etiquette dictated that an effigial monument was incommensurate with their status? Such concerns warn us that the lower ranks of the clergy and laity are therefore a rather slippery group to manage, but in both cases enough reliable evidence can be gathered to show that there are marked patterns associated with them which draw a sharp contrast with trends observed for the same class of people in England. Ultimately, therefore, these categories are not hard and fast, and the form of a monument cannot always be taken as a foolproof guide to the wealth or position of the patron or subject, as the following discussions will show. 3

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Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 91.

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GRAPH 4  THE STATUS OF PATRONS FROM C.1200 TO C.1540

Monuments, like their patrons and subjects, are highly variable in form, and marshalling them into any kind of classification system will involve a certain amount of artificiality and untidiness, but in order to analyse and make sense of them, some form of grouping is necessary and helpful. The purpose of this chapter is to use the physical appearance of a monument not as a form of categorisation in itself, but to see beyond it where possible to the status, group and individual identity of the person it commemorates.4 Based on the criteria presented above, the status of the patrons and subjects of monuments in south Wales are summed up in Graph 4. A number of noteworthy patterns appear from these figures. It has long been claimed that in the rest of Britain and on the Continent the higher clergy and laity were the first social groups to enter the market for effigial commemoration in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This also holds true for south Wales, the earliest effigies being those of bishops of Llandaff and St David’s, but if cross slabs are brought into the equation then this chronology is compromised. It will be noticed from Graph 4 that while the knightly classes and nobility dominate the fourteenth century, there is an unexpectedly large number of monuments which can be associated with the lower or sub-gentry in the thirteenth century, of which many are cross slabs. The surviving cross slabs in south Wales, moreover, can be 4 However, some individuals sought to manipulate their image to such a degree as to render them somewhat unknowable by the historian, at least in the absence of epitaphs. The cadaver monuments at Llandaff Cathedral, Tenby and St Dogmael’s Abbey, and the pilgrims at Llandyfodwg and Haverfordwest all fall into this group, and are consequently more difficult to categorise.

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overwhelmingly dated to the thirteenth century.5 The apparent prevalence here of a form of memorial mostly associated with the lower ranks of the clergy and laity at the very beginning of our period would seem to cut across the grain of trends observed elsewhere, and will be discussed below. The clergy and upper gentry and nobility of south Wales commissioned monuments in increasing numbers up to the mid fourteenth century, reaching a peak of activity in the decades around 1300, but their interest waned notably thereafter. The earliest monuments of the upper laity in the region are the richly decorated cross slabs of the de Londres lords of Ogmore at Ewenny Priory [Fig. 6] and from the middle of the thirteenth century effigial lay monuments appear, one of the first being that of a knight at Margam Abbey [Fig. 7]. From c.1450 the upper levels of the laity in particular dominated market demand and the monuments surviving from this period are largely expensive, high-status commissions; cross slabs and other memorials to the lower gentry are much more scarce in the second half of the period compared to their earlier popularity. These patterns will now be examined in more detail.

THE CLERGY The earliest monuments from the period covered by this book are those of the bishops, a group aptly described as the pioneers of effigial commemoration.6 Six bishops’ monuments survive from the first half of the thirteenth century at the cathedrals of Llandaff and St David’s, and although all are relief effigies they differ quite widely in style and execution. The earliest, that traditionally ascribed to Henry of Abergavenny, bishop of Llandaff (d.1218), is stiffly carved in shallow relief from local Lias limestone and is of a style similar to some late-twelfth-century monuments, such as that of Bishop Jocelin de Bohun (d.1184) at Salisbury Cathedral. It appears quite old-fashioned in comparison to the three slightly later Dundry stone monuments to unknown thirteenth-century bishops of Llandaff, which are traditionally named after Dyfrig and Teilo, the cathedral’s founding saints.7 These monuments are the products of master craftsmen and indicate that the early- and mid-thirteenth-century bishops of Llandaff, like their English contemporaries, were in the vanguard of taste in funerary 5 Cross slabs can be very difficult to date, although the almost ubiquitous coffin-shaped slab with variations on a cross fleury can be quite firmly associated with the thirteenth and early fourteenth century (pers. comm. Professor Madeleine Gray and see Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’). 6 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 176. 7 Two of the three (both in the north aisle) are very similar and both have been linked to St Dyfrig in the past. Three bishops of Llandaff may be plausible candidates for the tombs: William Goldcliffe (d.1229); Elias de Radnor (d.1240) and William de Burgh (d.1253). For an in-depth discussion of the thirteenth-century bishops’ monuments at Llandaff see Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments in Llandaff Cathedral’, pp. 221–39.

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GRAPH 5  CLERICAL MONUMENTS

sculpture, commissioning the best West Country products. In St David’s, bishops Iorwerth (d.1231) and Anselm (d.1247) [Fig. 8] opted for local manufacture in Lias limestone, but still in an up-to-date style, and executed by an accomplished craftsman. Llandaff ’s Bishop William de Braose (d.1287) is commemorated by a very similar monument to that of Anselm, in a style by that time at least forty years old. Bishop de Braose was a patron of ecclesiastical architecture, responsible for Llandaff ’s Lady Chapel, so why he should have been commemorated in a rather antiquated style is puzzling. The bishops of Llandaff and St David’s continued to commission monuments into the fourteenth century, by which time more variety was appearing as a wider range of monumental forms gained popularity throughout northern Europe. After Bishop de Braose’s late-thirteenthcentury monument, conventional sculpted relief effigies fell out of favour to a certain extent with the south Welsh episcopacy, only three more that we know of being commissioned between then and the early sixteenth century. The tomb of Bishop Henry de Gower of St David’s (d.1347) [Fig. 9] is the only fourteenth-century survival of this genre, not to be followed until a century and a half later by that of Bishop John Marshall of Llandaff (d.1496)8 and the Renaissance-influenced tomb of Bishop John Morgan of St David’s (d.1504) [Fig. 10]. Others, such as bishops William de Radnor (d.1265), John of Monmouth (d.1323) and John Pascal (d.1361), all of Llandaff, and bishops Robert Tully (d.1481) and Vaughan (d.1523) of St David’s, were commemorated by brasses or incised slabs.9 What is most notable about the 8 For a recent re-evaluation of Bishop Marshall’s tomb and piety see Gray, ‘Piety and Power’. 9 The robbed-out matrix of Bishop Robert Tully, at Tenby, survives. The rest are known only from the accounts of Richard Symonds and Browne Willis. Richard Fenton also noted the possible monuments of Bishop Martin (1296–1328) and Bishop Hoton

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pattern of episcopal patronage in south Wales during this period, however, is that there are no known verifiable examples of any form of monument between that of Llandaff ’s Bishop Pascal in the mid fourteenth century and that of St David’s Bishop Tully in the late fifteenth century. This is an important point and is discussed below as part of the wider phenomenon of the clerical patronage of the region’s monuments. Compared to the bishops, south Welsh abbots and priors have left few examples of monumental sculpture, partly as a result of deliberate destruction after the Dissolution.10 Cistercian abbots in particular were supposed to eschew funerary pomp, hence the modest early-fourteenthcentury cross slab of Abbot Robert of Rievaulx at Margam, although this convention was ignored by the commissioners of the opulent effigy of Adam of Carmarthen, abbot of Neath (d.1289). Abbot Adam was certainly worthy of commemoration as he was responsible for initiating the enlarging and rebuilding of the abbey that went on until the 1320s, and his monument is one of many examples of the commemoration of ecclesiastics who had undertaken building projects.11 Few monuments belonging to the clergy between the rank of bishop or abbot and priest are known for certain. A semi-effigial slab at the entrance to St David’s Cathedral’s Lady Chapel is thought to be that of John de Fekenham (d.1274), cathedral canon and archdeacon of Brecon. Also at St David’s is the tomb-chest of Archdeacon John Hiot (d.1419) [Fig. 11], while the cadaver monument at St Mary’s, Tenby, has been identified as possibly that of another archdeacon of St David’s, John Denby (d.1499) [Fig. 12].12 The remainder of the clerical monuments of south Wales are those of parish clergy.13 Like the bishops, the parish priests of south Wales exhibited a healthy interest in monumental commemoration during the thirteenth and much of the fourteenth century, especially in the hundred years from c.1250 to (1361–89) before 1811, but he did not say what form they took and they have since been lost. Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, p. 86. https://play.google.com/books/ reader?id=UYVRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS. PA125 [accessed 3 May 2016]. 10 Welsh monasteries have survived patchily. While there are substantial architectural remains at some of the Cistercian abbeys such as Tintern, Margam and Neath, the urban friaries have almost completely vanished. 11 The link between building projects and monument production is explored in chapter three. 12 Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield, eds, The Buildings of Wales: Pembrokeshire (London, 2004), p. 472. Lord gives it as that of John Hunden, rector of St Mary’s from 1475 to 1484: Lord, Visual Culture, p. 195. Hunden had also been Bishop of Llandaff from 1450 to 1476. The cadaver tomb at Llandaff is also likely to be that of an ecclesiastic, but no details of him are known. Fenton also noted the monument, ‘enriched with brasses’, of Morgan ap Eynon (c.1389), archdeacon of Brecon, some time before 1811, but this has since been lost: Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, p. 77. 13 Mention should also be made of the small number of monuments which may be to clerics in minor orders. The well-sculpted fourteenth-century monument at Coychurch, near Bridgend, for example, commemorates an individual of fluid identity, dressed in civilian garb but also sporting a lawyer’s collobium and a clerical tonsure (see below, pp. 60–61).

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c.1350, when they commissioned sculpted effigies and cross slabs in some numbers. Due to the anonymity of many surviving cross slabs it is impossible to know how many of them commemorated ecclesiastics, although some, as at Marcross and Llanblethian in the Vale of Glamorgan, are decorated with chalices, making their attribution clear. When it comes to effigial monuments, however, two unmistakeable and remarkable patterns emerge: firstly the Welsh parochial priesthood opted almost exclusively for sculpted monuments and cross slabs rather than brasses or incised effigial slabs; and secondly, they virtually disappeared as patrons after the middle of the fourteenth century. This contrasts profoundly with what has been observed in England where, during the later period, brasses and incised slabs became a common commemorative choice for the lower clergy because of their relative cheapness, so that by the fifteenth century even vicars and chantry priests were able to afford them.14 There is no parallel for this in south Wales: a lost demi-effigy of a priest at St Non’s Chapel, near St David’s, of c.1370 and the damaged mid-to-late-fourteenth-century slab to Philip Resi at Martletwy are rare examples of priestly monuments from this period.15 These distinctive characteristics are undoubtedly a reflection of the deep recession in the native monument industry of south Wales from the later fourteenth century, described in chapter three. Many of the monuments to the financially constrained Welsh parish clergy were necessarily of local manufacture and so when this source of supply dried up few could afford to look further afield. That the lesser clergy were now virtually cut off from effigial commemoration is demonstrated by the fact that the few clerical monuments that survive from the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tend to be those of higher ranks who could afford an import, such as Archdeacon John Hiot whose tomb-chest at St David’s Cathedral is a product of the Dundry quarries. The lack of an affordable and easily obtainable product may account for the paucity of priestly memorials in the later period but, as was indicated earlier, a long hiatus in the patronage of monuments has also been observed for the episcopacy. Here, in contrast to the parish clergy, was a wealthy and geographically mobile class, ideally situated to be able to commission a London-made brass, as English bishops increasingly did from c.1300,16 so why did more of them in south Wales not do so? Although there maybe something to say here about the apparent Welsh aversion to brass as a commemorative medium (discussed further in chapter three), the lack of episcopal memorials between the mid fourteenth and later fifteenth centuries is essentially a consequence of a more prosaic consideration. A sizeable majority of later-fourteenth- and fifteenth-century bishops of Llandaff and St David’s were either translated to other sees or, if they died in office, were not buried in their cathedrals. For this simple 14 15 16

Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 196. Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, pp. 28, 31. Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 181–2.

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reason there were few occasions on which episcopal memorials could have been erected during this period.17

THE NOBILITY AND UPPER GENTRY c.1200–c.1350 Like the higher clergy and their contemporaries in England, the nobility and upper gentry of south Wales exhibited an early interest in monumental commemoration and were avid patrons, particularly in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, of sculpted relief effigies.18 In north Wales the princely families and their followers commissioned decorated cross slabs in some numbers at this period.19 In the south, however, the native aristocracy survived in only an attenuated form. Here, the majority of elite lay patrons were manorial lords and members of other county gentry families, typically of advenae (Anglo-Norman or English settler) stock, who continued to identify strongly with Anglo-Norman or English culture and interests. While levels of wealth could differ enormously within the ranks of the gentry of south Wales, as of England, the class was united to and identified with the nobility above it in the shared participation in the behaviours and codes of chivalry and gentility. The commissioning of commemorative monuments was a typical manifestation of such gentle behaviour.20 These families could afford to patronise workshops from outside the region, and their monuments, although relatively unvarying in form, were commissioned from a range of suppliers in south Wales, the West Country and elsewhere.21 17 Le Neve listed only three bishops of St David’s buried in their cathedral from 1350 to the 1540s: Thomas Fastolf (d.1361), John Morgan (d.1504) and Edward Vaughan (d.1522). The same number of bishops of Llandaff was buried at Llandaff: John Pascal (d.1361), Edmund Bromfield (d.1393) and John Marshall (d.1496). Of these, two-thirds – Morgan, Pascal, Marshall and Vaughan – are known to have been commemorated by monuments: Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541, 11: The Welsh Dioceses (Bangor, Llandaff, St Asaph, St Davids) by John Le Neve, ed. B. Jones (London, 1965). 18 For the emergence of the gentry in the later Middle Ages see for example: Peter Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003) and Maurice Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman: Heraldry, Chivalry and Gentility in Medieval England, c.1300–c.1500 (Stroud, 2002). Due to the fragmented political and ethnic nature of medieval Wales it is not so easy to approach ‘the medieval Welsh gentry’ as a group, but chapters on the knightly and landowning classes of the march have appeared in county histories: R.R. Davies, ‘The Social Structure of Medieval Glamorgan: Bro Morgannwg and Blaenau Morgannwg’, in Glamorgan County History, ed. Pugh, pp. 285–311; R.K. Turvey, ‘The Gentry’, in Pembrokeshire County History, ed. Walker, pp. 360–400. 19 Colin Gresham, Medieval Stone Carving in North Wales: Sepulchral Slabs and Effigies of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Cardiff, 1968) pp. 3–7. 20 Jon Denton has observed of the East Midlands gentry that their gentility was bolstered by the display of ‘gentle symbols’ such as monuments: Jon Denton, ‘The East-Midland Gentleman, 1400–1530’, University of Keele PhD thesis (2006), pp. 4, 9, 44, 212–13. 21 See chapter three for production.

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GRAPH 6  MONUMENTS OF THE NOBILITY AND UPPER GENTRY

The earliest examples from the upper gentry group in fact buck the trend set by later generations. The de Londres lords of Ogmore were typical of the class of patron discussed in this section, being of thoroughly AngloNorman descent and sympathies. In the late twelfth or early thirteenth century a couple of elaborately carved cross slabs, sourced from the Sutton stone quarries lying within the coastal lordship of Ogmore, were commissioned to commemorate Maurice and William de Londres, the midtwelfth-century founders of Ewenny Priory [Fig. 6].22 Their non-effigial design and local manufacture should not be taken as a sign of cost-cutting of course: they predate the earliest English military effigial memorials by a few decades and are the work of a highly competent craftsman, displaying crisply carved lettering, vines and flowers which retain their exquisite detail to this day. Although a small number of other knightly families continued to commission cross slabs, such as that of Roger de Reigny, also at Ewenny Priory, their tastes soon changed in accordance with the fashions of the times. By the middle of the thirteenth century the first examples of what may be considered the typical monumental choice of the lay south Welsh elites throughout the entire period appear: sculpted armoured effigies for men and fashionably dressed female figures for women, often on decorated tomb-chests. As in England, the century between c.1250 and c.1350 saw a flurry of patronage of such memorials and it is clear that the region’s wealthiest and most powerful inhabitants wholeheartedly adopted this increasingly popular aspect of funerary culture. The identities of the patrons, and subjects, of some of these monuments are unfortunately lost to us, but where names are known they read like a 22 For the lordship of Ogmore see Davies, ‘The Social Structure of Medieval Glamorgan’, pp. 285–311.

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roll-call of the leading families of the region: Hastings and de Braose at Abergavenny; de Londres at Ewenny Priory; Turberville at Coity, Ewenny, St Athan and Stackpole; St Quintin at Coity; Fleming at Flemingston and Cardiff Greyfriars; Berkerolles and Nerber at St Athan; Botiler at St Bride’s Major; ?de la Mare at Llangennith; Wogan at St David’s; de Barri at Manorbier; Stackpole at Stackpole; Carew at Carew; Malefant at Upton; de la Roche at Llangwm; Pauncefoot at Crickhowell; and Aubrey at Brecon. In commissioning monuments, these families, and others like them throughout Wales, England and the Continent, sought to underline their domination of local society.23 Many of them, such as the Stackpole, Turbeville and Berkerolles families, were related by marriage, suggesting that the commissioning of military monuments amongst this rather closeknit if geographically dispersed group functioned in part as an expression of cultural and family solidarity, as well as of social dominance.24 The fact that all the identifiable patrons in the period up to c.1350 are from settler, rather than native, families invites comment. Although the Welsh inhabitants of the southern March had been largely ousted from the best lands and positions of authority with the coming of the Normans, they continued to play a part in local society. As has already been noted, in north Wales princely and uchelwyr (Welsh aristocracy and gentry) families were commissioning cross slabs and effigial monuments from the thirteenth century, such as that of Madog ap Iorwerth at Pennant Melangell of c.1315,25 but finding securely identified southern equivalents is not easy. It may be that the southern uchelwyr preferred the cross slabs that were turned out in such great numbers during this period, but which are more prone to destruction, recycling and anonymity. Simple economics and the realities of the power structure of Marcher society are likely to play a part, too. Very few Welsh landowners could command an income equivalent to that of the advenae families listed in the previous paragraph, or sustain their level of social dominance. It is significant therefore that, of the few native clans to retain their lands and political influence after the Norman conquest of south Wales, two families may in fact have commissioned a monumental effigy to commemorate one of their number. The first were the lords of Afan, who were descended from the last Welsh prince of Glamorgan, Iestyn ap Gwrgant, and retained an upland lordship in the Afan valley in the vicinity of Margam Abbey, of which they were benefactors. The exquisitely carved but now badly damaged and worn figure of a knight at Margam is one of the earliest effigies surviving in south See chapters four and five for motivations. Richard Stackpole was married to Margaret Turbeville (both thought to be commemorated at Stackpole), sister of Katherine Turbeville (commemorated at St Athan), who was the daughter of Payn Turbeville (commemorated at Ewenny) and the wife of William de Berkerolles (commemorated at St Athan). See Lord, Visual Culture, pp. 126–9 for the possible links between these tombs. 25 Gresham, Stone Carving, pp. 49, 55–6. 23

24

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Wales, dating from about 1250, and is a classic example of the military monuments commissioned in the period c.1250–c.1350 [Fig. 7].26 Carved from a local stone, but closely comparable to contemporary products of the prolific Dundry quarries near Bristol, it depicts a mail-and-surcoat-clad figure lying flat on his back.27 His left arm is hidden under a long shield held over the left side of his body, his right arm is stretched out by his side, and his legs are loosely crossed, but without any bend at the knee.28 His head and feet have been lost. This rather relaxed pose is enlivened by the precision of the carving as well as a few quirky but accomplished details: his surcoat is parted at the groin and falls in drapes and ripples onto the slab; his right mail gauntlet is thrown off to reveal the bare hand; and at his left side a small wyvern is curled up and chews at the point of the shield. The monument is of a type seen throughout southern Britain and is very similar to an example at Kilfane (Co. Kilkenny, Ireland), where the gauntlet is also thrown off to show the hand.29 The patron of the Margam monument must have been a person of significant financial resources, mobility and cultural awareness to have conceived and carried out such a commission at this date. In order to have earned burial and commemoration at Cistercian Margam the deceased himself must have been a prominent benefactor of the monastic community, and the lords of Afan are the only local family who comfortably fit these criteria. Although the twelfth- and thirteenth-century lords sometimes had a difficult relationship with the abbey, one of them, Morgan Gam (d.1241), was a donor of lands and was afforded burial there.30 Gam’s support of the monastic community at Margam was just one aspect of his family’s deliberate adoption of Anglo-Norman culture during the thirteenth century. This included castle-building, the assumption of heraldic arms and, by c.1300, even a Norman-style name, de Avene.31 It is more than likely, given the family’s wealth, links with Margam and interest in acquiring the trappings of the Anglo-Norman lordly lifestyle, that the Margam knight was commissioned to commemorate Morgan Gam, whose date of death fits well with the date of manufacture of the monument. If this is the case, moreover, it indicates that, as far as monumental practices were concerned, the lords of Afan were in the vanguard of fashion, rather than mere followers of it.

The figure is now in the Stones Museum, but was originally erected in the abbey itself. I am grateful to palaeontologist Dr Tim Palmer of the Welsh Stone Forum for his thoughts on the geological origins of this monument. 28 For the various poses struck by thirteenth-century monuments see Tummers, Early Secular Effigies. 29 I am grateful to Brian and Moira Gittos for drawing my attention to this monument, which is thought to be made of Dundry stone. 30 G.T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae (London, 1886), pp. 78–9. 31 David Crouch, The Image of the Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992), pp. 162, 242. It may be significant that the supporters of the de Avene crest were wyverns as one of these creatures appears on the slab. 26 27

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The second example is the monument of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, better known as Llywelyn Bren (d.1318). A descendant of the Welsh lords of Senghennydd, an upland lordship to the north of Cardiff, Bren was clearly a person of some wealth and education judging by the possessions he left in the safekeeping of the bishop of Llandaff, which included books of French romances. Having held a position within the administration of the lord of Glamorgan, Gilbert de Clare (d.1314), in 1316 he rebelled against the lordship’s custodian, Payn de Turbeville of Coity, but was soon captured and later executed at Cardiff. He was buried at the Greyfriars in the town where he was commemorated by a monument which was destroyed at the Reformation but recorded by Rice Merrick in 1578.32 Merrick did not describe the tomb and it may have taken any form, yet the fact that it was identifiable more than two centuries after its erection suggests it was of substantial form and included an inscription. At least one, and probably two, of the monuments of the period up to c.1350, then, can be shown to have been commissioned by Welsh families. It is significant that they were not mere freeholders as many uchelwyr were, but members of wealthy and powerful clans who not only retained a measure of independence from their advenae overlords, but to a certain extent also participated in their cultural activities, whether it be the reading of Romances or the patronage of monasteries.33 The monuments of the lay elites in south Wales are not just those of men, of course. The first identifiable female monuments in England appear a generation or two after those of the male laity, but the earliest Welsh example is almost contemporary with that of Morgan Gam, described above. This is the effigy traditionally associated with Lady Eva de Braose (d.1257) at Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 13]. Not surprisingly, single female monuments – a popular option until the middle of the fourteenth century when double monuments supersede them – mirror the styles and origins of their male equivalents, being sculpted stone effigies commissioned from a range of producers. The identities of the women commemorated by the relatively high-status monuments (i.e., fully sculpted effigies, rather than incised, cross or semi-effigial slabs) at Newport, Llangwm, Rhoscrowther, Robeston West, Stackpole and Tenby remain unknown. In one or two cases it is possible to speculate – the low-relief early-fourteenth-century monument at Llandow, for example, may commemorate a member of the de Winton family, who were the lords of the manor, while those at Carew Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, p. 24. Two other military monuments are traditionally associated with members of the uchelwyr: at Llantrisant a badly eroded thirteenth-century warrior is identified by a notice in the church as Cadwgan Fawr of Miskin, a descendant of Einion ap Collwyn, but there is no corroboration for this. At St David’s is the supposed effigy of Rhys Gryg (d.1234), a son of the Lord Rhys. The effigy, however, a product of the second half of the fourteenth century, post-dates his death by nearly a century and a half. It could, of course, be a retrospective memorial. 32 33

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and Stackpole are likely to commemorate ladies of those families. A further complication is that we do not know whether these ladies were born or married into the families concerned – a point which is worth knowing when patronal patterns are being worked out. In addition, several of the women commemorated alongside their husbands in double monuments must be thought of as neither advenae nor uchelwyr, but as English, such as Phelice de Vere, a relative of the earl of Oxford, who is commemorated at St Athan. Men of lordly or knightly status displayed their credentials via the use of armour, and costume was also an effective communicator of status for women. Fashionable dress was a minimum requirement and additional details such as fur, headdresses, and mantles gave an impression of wealth, leisure and a gentle lifestyle. The elaborate jewelled headdresses of the later Middle Ages had yet to appear by c.1350, when simple veils were still in fashion, but the beautiful and finely carved fillet worn by the unknown lady at Tenby eloquently communicates her membership of the social elite. Mantles in particular conveyed high status and one appears on the effigy of Lady Eva at Abergavenny.34 c.1350–c.1540 From the middle of the fourteenth century a profound change in the patronage of monuments amongst the Welsh elites was underway. As with the clergy, the number commissioned drastically reduced after c.1350. This is part of a nationwide pattern of economic contraction in the wake of the Black Death, but whereas in England the evidence points to a relatively quick revival of cultural and artistic activity, including the commissioning of monuments,35 the south Welsh market entered a prolonged depression, which only deepened in the first half of the fifteenth century as Wales was buffeted by the Glyn Dŵr uprising.36 A slight recovery in the level of commissions was made from the middle of the fifteenth century, but the breadth of patronage of the period from c.1250 to c.1350 was never to be attained again. As the patronage of high-status monuments in south Wales began a slow recovery from the beginning of the fifteenth century, many of the individuals and families who now entered the market were of quite a 34 The damaged early-fourteenth-century effigy of a lady at Llandow may also depict a mantle. 35 See for example, Sally Badham, ‘Monumental Brasses and the Black Death: a Reappraisal’, Antiquaries Journal, 80 (2000), pp. 207–47, and Philip Lindley, ‘The Black Death and English Art: A Debate and Some Assumptions’, in The Black Death in England, ed. Mark Ormrod and Philip Lindley (Donington, 1996), pp. 136–43. 36 The situation was better in the north, where native production of monuments recommenced in Flintshire from c.1380, but this was also extinguished in the early fifteenth century: Gresham, Medieval Stone Carving, pp. 1, 9, 10.

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different background from those of a century or two earlier, being largely of Welsh blood, or with powerful injections of it, and recent social ascent. Virtually none of the names encountered as patrons and subjects in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries continue to appear in the fifteenth century and beyond.37 Like the Anglo-Norman settlers of an earlier age, however, these Welsh families furthered their careers through service to the crown and Marcher lords and were shrewd operators in the land and marriage markets. The rising fortunes of the likes of the Herberts, Morgans, Mathews, Wogans,38 Perrots39 and Cradocks in the fifteenth century followed the withdrawal of the Marcher lords from the direct government of their Welsh estates, concentrating power in the hands of native and naturalised deputies.40 This was the beginning of many of the great families of the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whose rise was boosted by the accession of the Tudors in 1485,41 and they embraced monumental commemoration with enthusiasm. Some families, particularly the Herberts, sustained this behaviour across several generations; for others, like the Cradocks, it was a more fleeting thing. For the most part, their commemorative tastes were conservative, conformist and expensive, continuing to prefer sculpted monuments over the brasses which were becoming increasingly popular amongst their English counterparts, and showing a liking for imposing double monuments to husband and wife, often of alabaster,42 complete with decorated tomb-chests. Of the twenty-five monuments to members of this 37 The only known example is the Wogan family of Pembrokeshire, but even here it is two different branches of the family who appear before and after the mid fourteenth century. 38 There were several branches of this Pembrokeshire family. The Picton branch was active in the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and Sir John Wogan founded a chantry in St David’s Cathedral in 1302. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the focus shifted to the Wiston branch, and Henry Wogan was steward of the earldom of Pembroke in 1448: Dictionary of Welsh Biography Online: http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-WOGA-PEN-1250. html?query=wogan&field=name [accessed 14 June 2012]. 39 The Perrots were of similar background to the Wogans, with whom they intermarried, being military tenants of the earls of Pembroke from the 1290s, and were part of the county elite by the mid fifteenth century. Although advenae in origin, they did not necessarily identify with English interests later: David Perrot, merchant and burgess of Tenby, was a supporter of Glyn Dŵr: R.K. Turvey, ‘Priest and Patron: A Study of a Gentry Family’s Patronage of the Church in South-West Wales in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1991), pp. 7–19; idem, ‘The Marcher Shire of Pembroke and the Glyndŵr Rebellion’, Welsh History Review, 15 (1990–91), pp. 151–68, at pp. 159 and 161. For an overview of the gentry families of Pembrokeshire in this period see Turvey, ‘The Gentry’, pp. 360–400. 40 This group is described in more detail in the following section on military service, and in chapter five. 41 See Walker, Medieval Wales, pp. 180–1; Roberts, ‘Wales and England’, p. 387; D.H. Thomas, The Herberts of Raglan and the Battle of Edgecote 1469 (Enfield, 1994); Williams, Renewal and Reformation, p. 97, p. 177, and chapters 7–10 for the careers of individual families. 42 Two notable exceptions are the extremely fine early-sixteenth-century Purbeck marble canopied tomb, with several robbed out brass plates, at Monkton Priory, Pembroke, and the imposing tomb-chest with brass effigy of Edmund Tudor, now at St David’s Cathedral, but originally at the Greyfriars in Carmarthen.

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upper gentry group known to have been commissioned between c.1400 and c.1540, eighteen are (or were) sculpted monuments, fifteen are double memorials, eleven are of alabaster, sixteen have (or had) tomb-chests and six are known to have been set within surviving wall-canopies, four of which survive. Their patrons are discussed in more detail below. MILITARY MONUMENTS AND MILITARY SERVICE Nigel Saul has attributed the surge in production of military memorials up to c.1300 in England to the emergence of an ‘increasingly self-conscious knightly or gentry class’.43 This was a process also underway in south Wales. The March was an area which was periodically scarred by raiding or warfare into the fourteenth century and the advenae still occasionally suffered from Welsh attacks, both from within the March and from native Wales.44 Although it is not easy to come by biographical details for many of the individuals commemorated by monuments, it is to be expected that some at least had military experience, either in defending the March against Welsh attack or in the wars waged by the English crown against the Scots, Irish and French.45 The best known of this patronal group are the Hastings family, lords of Abergavenny, whose connections with the court and the chivalric culture emerging there under Edward III easily explain their top-quality monuments as well as their military overtones.46 The wooden effigy of John, second baron Hastings (d.1325), at Abergavenny Priory has been compared to those of Edmund Crouchback and Aymer de Valence (on whose tomb John appears as a weeper) at Westminster Abbey. He was a retainer of the earls of Pembroke and custodian of Kenilworth Castle for a short time, and his tomb-chest features eight military weepers under trefoiled ogee canopies.47 Lawrence Hastings, earl of Pembroke (d.1348), commemorated by a very early example of a straight-legged military effigy at Abergavenny, served with Edward III in Flanders, Scotland, Brittany and Gascony [Fig. 14].48 Lower down the social scale, but still at knightly level, both Payn de Turbeville (d.c.1318) [Fig. 15] and William de Berkerolles (d.1327), Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 208. An eloquent reminder of the continued instability of the region is Caerphilly Castle, begun by the lords of Glamorgan in the 1260s, nearly two centuries after the first Norman incursions into Wales. 45 See Adam Chapman, Welsh Soldiers in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2015) for the involvement of the Welsh in the wars of this period. 46 For the Hastings effigies see: Lindley and Galvin, ‘New Paradigms’; Lindley, ‘Two Fourteenth-Century Tomb Monuments’; and Blair, ‘The Wooden Knight at Abergavenny’. 47 Lindley, ‘New Paradigms’, p. 77. 48 Lindley, ‘Two Fourteenth-Century Tomb Monuments’, p. 137. The identification of the other military effigy at Abergavenny as Sir William Hastings, half-brother of Lawrence, is more tentative and Sir William was a ‘historically obscure figure’: Lindley, ‘Two FourteenthCentury Tomb Monuments’, pp. 151–3. 43

44

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commemorated by military effigies at Ewenny and St Athan respectively, fought against the Glamorgan rebel Llywelyn Bren in 1316, while Bren himself, and his captor Sir William Fleming (d.1321), were also commemorated by monuments.49 For other individuals, such as John le Botiler (d.c.1335), Sir Roger de Berkerolles (d.1351) [Plate I] and Robert de la Roche (d. before 1349), commemorated by military effigies at St Bride’s Major, St Athan and Llangwm respectively, we have no evidence of military activities though they came from knightly families who exercised manorial lordship, held public office and had been settled in the locality for several generations.50 Chivalric references not surprisingly continued to appear on English monuments during the Hundred Years War, typified by the brass of Sir Hugh Hastings at Elsing (Norfolk),51 but this is precisely the period for which we have so few military effigies in south Wales as to make any general observations on their secular iconography and design virtually worthless – a problem exacerbated by the lack of secure identifications for many of them. By the end of the fifteenth century the men commemorated by military effigies in England were increasingly practising ‘cognitive dissonance’ by being depicted in armour even though they may never have worn it in life.52 In 1500, for example, the wealthy Cotswold woolman John Tame, from a social group normally depicted in civilian dress, was commemorated by a military brass at Fairford (Gloucestershire). Saul has observed that some of the grandest late-medieval memorials in England commemorate men who were employed in magnate service,53 a point which also holds true for fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century south Wales, where the majority of the non-clerical monuments of the period are what may be described as ‘grand’. In south Wales, moreover, the link between commemoration in armour and actual military experience remained relatively strong and in only a minority of cases is there evidence that warfare was avoided altogether. The earliest of this group is the monument of a military figure and his wife at Oxwich, thought to represent Sir John Penrice (d.1410) [Fig. 16], who fought and was captured by Owain Glyn Dŵr in 1403.54 Some evidence is tentative: Thomas Basset (d.1423), commemorated by a military effigy at St Hilary, may have served as a man-at-arms in France from 1380– 81;55 David Mathew (d. before 1470) [Fig. 17], commemorated at Llandaff

49 See above for Bren. Fleming’s was wooden. These memorials were destroyed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 50 See Rhianydd Biebrach, ‘Monuments and Commemoration in the Diocese of Llandaff c.1200 to c.1540’, Swansea University PhD thesis (2010), pp. 158–74, and chapter five, this volume, for the Berkerolles monuments. 51 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 216–31. 52 Denton, ‘East-Midland Gentleman’, p. 213; Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 237. 53 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 234. 54 Lord, Visual Culture, pp. 244–6. 55 TNA, E101/39/7.

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I  MONUMENT OF ROGER DE BERKEROLLES (D.1351) AND KATHERINE TURBEVILLE, ST ATHAN (GLAMORGAN)

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II  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF THOMAS WHITE (C.1500), TENBY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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III  EFFIGY OF UNKNOWN KNIGHT (1340s), LLANSANNOR (GLAMORGAN)

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IV  BRASS OF WENLLIAN WALSCHE (D.1427), LLANDOUGH (GLAMORGAN)

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Cathedral, may have seen similar action in 1417 and/or 1421.56 The extensive military career of Sir Hugh Johnys can be in no doubt, however. His brass, at St Mary’s, Swansea, is taken up in large part by an inscription recounting his varied military exploits in the Middle East and Europe under the dukes of Norfolk and Somerset, giving pride of place to his creation as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem in 1441. The dominant family in south Wales during the middle and latter parts of the fifteenth century, the Herberts of Raglan, owed their spectacular rise in great measure to service in war. Their progenitor, Sir William ap Thomas (d.1445), commemorated with his wife Gwladys Ddu in Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 4], served in France under the duke of York during the 1440s.57 His sons, William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d.1469), commemorated by a lost monument at Tintern Abbey, and Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469), commemorated at Abergavenny [Fig. 18], were executed following the battle of Edgecote.58 The extensive military career of Sir Rhys ap Thomas (d.1525), commemorated at Carmarthen Greyfriars together with Edmund Tudor, is well known,59 and several of his contemporaries saw military action under the first two Tudor kings. Sir John Morgan (d.1493), commemorated at Newport, fought at Bosworth and campaigned in France in 1492, while his relative Sir Thomas Morgan (d.1510) [Fig. 19] fought against the pretender Perkin Warbeck in 1497.60 William Mathew (d.1528), commemorated at Llandaff [Fig. 20], was knighted on campaign in France in 1513.61 Most of these individuals also owed their prominence to and demonstrated their loyalty through non-military forms of service, acting as stewards, chamberlains and justiciars of the Marcher lords and the crown, and sitting on commissions and juries. For some of those commemorated by military monuments, civilian service seems to have been the only kind they engaged in. No military activities are known of for Sir Henry Wogan (d.1475), commemorated at Slebech (tomb now kept in the Pembrokeshire county store at Scolton Manor), Mathew Cradock (d.1531) at Swansea, Christopher Mathew (d. after 1531) at Llandaff [Fig. 21], Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510) at Abergavenny [Fig. 5], or Arnold Butler (d.1541) at St Bride’s Major [Fig. 1], yet all were depicted in armour on their tombs. 56 Adam John Chapman, ‘The Welsh Soldier: 1282–1422’, University of Southampton PhD thesis (2009), p. 134. 57 Williams, Renewal and Reformation, pp. 176–7 58 For the careers of the Herberts see Williams, Renewal and Reformation, pp. 190–207 and R.A. Griffiths, ‘Lordship and Society in the Fifteenth Century’, in Gwent County History, ed. Griffiths, Hopkins and Howell, pp. 241–79. 59 For Sir Rhys see R.A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his Family: A Study in the Wars of the Roses and Early Tudor Politics (Cardiff, 1993). The monuments of Sir Rhys and Edmund Tudor are now at St Peter’s, Carmarthen, and St David’s Cathedral respectively. 60 Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 41; idem, ‘Lordship and Society’, pp. 258–60. Sir Thomas Morgan bucked the trend and is commemorated by a non-effigial monument, at Llanmartin. 61 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. R.H. Brodie (London, 1920), vol. 1, ii, p. 1556.

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However, as with many of their English contemporaries referred to above who also practised ‘cognitive dissonance’ in the manner of their commemoration, these men were members of established knightly families of significant local stature. Furthermore, they were active supporters of the regime: Sir Henry Wogan served as steward of the earldom of Pembroke in 1448; Sir Mathew Cradock as steward of the lordships of Gower and Kilvey and constable of Caerphilly Castle; Christopher Mathew as approver of the lordship of Glamorgan in 1515 and deputy sheriff in 1518; and Herbert of Ewyas as gentleman usher to Henry VII.62

DEPARTURES FROM THE NORM Although as a rule it is best to assume that those commemorated by military, elaborate or otherwise high-status monuments were themselves of high rank, it is not the case that those of elite social status in south Wales inevitably commissioned the most expensive and prestigious monuments. As manorial lords, the Turbevilles were of a status group generally commemorated by life-sized carved military effigies, but this did not prevent them from commissioning civilian and cheaply made examples. Their name appears in the inscription around the chamfer of the small and rather poorly carved civilian effigy at Coity63 and on the small (but much more competently made) monument of a lady in the same church [Fig. 3]. Because of their style, size, simplicity, and in the case of the civilian monument, poor workmanship, these effigies may easily be taken to be those of relatively lowly individuals, but the evidence of the inscriptions is incontrovertible. This apparent disjuncture between family status and monument style is also seen in three small (and stylistically similar) effigies of unknown male and female Berkeleys at Berkeley (Gloucestershire), who, like the Turbevilles, could certainly afford, and were ‘qualified’ for, commemoration by full-scale and armoured figures.64 It is sometimes claimed that undersized monuments of this sort represent children. Edward III’s sons William of Hatfield (d.1337) and William of Windsor (d.1348) would have undoubtedly been depicted in armour had they lived to adulthood, like their brother Edward the Black Prince on his tomb at Canterbury Cathedral. Both boys died in infancy, however, and their

62 Dictionary of Welsh Biography, as n. 38 above; Records of the County Borough of Cardiff, ed. J.H. Matthews, 5 vols (1898–1905), vol. 4, p. 533; W.R.B. Robinson, ‘The Tudor Revolution in Welsh Government, 1536–1543: Its Effects on Gentry Participation’, English Historical Review, 103, no. 406 (Jan. 1988), p. 10; idem, ‘Some Welsh Members of Henry VIII’s Household in the 1520s’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 40 (1993), pp. 157–70, at p. 160. 63 This is a fortunate survival as the rest of the inscription is missing or illegible. 64 There are other monuments of this type to the family in the same church.

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effigies, at York Minster and Westminster Abbey respectively, show them as fashionably dressed adolescents.65 The Aubreys of Brecon were another family who eschewed the military memorial for which their status qualified them. The family held the Abercynrig estate in Brecon, and Walter Aubrey may have been the founder of the town’s Dominican priory, in which a monument to himself and his wife Christina was set up in the early fourteenth century.66 It is a large and rather idiosyncratic structure on which Walter is depicted as a civilian, clutching a large crucifix to his chest in a decidedly non-military manner [Fig. 22]. At Pentyrch, the grave of Robert Mathew, brother (or possibly nephew) of the David Mathew (d. before 1470) commemorated by an alabaster military effigy and chantry in Llandaff Cathedral, is marked merely by a cross slab (if rather a beautiful and elaborate one). Robert’s career may not have been as successful as that of his brother, but he could claim gentility by birth and by occupation as he was a lawyer. That Walter Aubrey and the Turbeville individual were commemorated as civilians, while Robert Mathew eschewed effigial commemoration altogether, reminds us that although there were conventions governing modes of representation, the manner of commemoration was ultimately one of patronal choice and consequently there are difficulties and pitfalls inherent in interpreting monuments to unknown individuals, especially when they are of unusual design.

THE LOWER AND SUB-GENTRY The majority of the monuments discussed in this section are the relief effigies of civilians, women depicted in more simple attire or on more crudely made monuments, as well as semi-effigial and cross slabs. Due to their large numbers and anonymity, the latter have not been included in the graph below unless they can be firmly attributed to a member of this class of patrons. 67 65 See Pauline Routh, ‘Yorkshire’s Royal Monument: Prince William of Hatfield’, Church Monuments, 9 (1994), pp. 53–61 for a discussion of these tombs. The significance of small monuments has yet to be satisfactorily resolved and they may represent children, heart or entrail burials, or just be a result of restricted space or funds. See, for example: Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘“A Swithe Feire Graue”: The Appearance of Children on Medieval Tomb Monuments’, in Family and Dynasty in Late Medieval England, ed. S. Tyas and R. Eales (Donington, 2003), pp. 172–92. In south Wales undersized monuments are also found at Trellech, St Arvan’s, Carew and Uzmaston. 66 G.E.F. Morgan, ‘The Vanished Tombs of Brecon Cathedral’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 80 (1925), pp. 257–74, at pp. 271–3. The monument is now at Brecon Cathedral (formerly the Benedictine priory), and the Dominican priory houses Christ’s College. 67 Cross slabs are a woefully understudied commemorative form and the best study on south Welsh examples to date remains Rodger’s ‘Stone Cross Slabs’. Rodger recorded more than sixty whole slabs and fragments from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century and this is certainly a gross underestimate as he does not seem to have visited many churches beyond the Gower, the Vale of Glamorgan, parts of Monmouthshire and Brecon Priory. He

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GRAPH 7  MONUMENTS OF THE LOWER AND SUB-GENTRY

Note: Cross slabs have been included here if there is reason, such as epitaph or symbol, to associate them with the lower gentry. It should be borne in mind that many of the large numbers of cross slabs already alluded to are likely to be also to members of this group although they are not included in this graph. Brasses have been omitted as none are known of.

Although a much greater proportion of the patrons in this group, compared with the upper gentry, are anonymous, two main conclusions can be drawn about them. Firstly, the almost total lack of monuments from the second half of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth is hard to ignore. This does not just apply to effigial monuments: cross slabs may be difficult to date precisely but they can generally be assigned to a particular century and few can be placed in this later period with confidence.68 In England the availability and popularity of monumental commemoration increased as the Middle Ages wore on, so that by the end of the fifteenth century individuals of quite lowly status were in a position to order modest memorials such as small brasses. English patrons also continued to order more expensive sculpted stone civilian memorials, thirty-seven between c.1350 and c.1500 being recorded by Saul.69 The paucity of lower-status monuments in south Wales in the same period therefore constitutes a marked departure from the norm as established by English studies. It is a pattern which has already been observed in the patronage of the parish clergy of south Wales and, to a less marked extent, even in the upper gentry and episcopacy. As with these groups, the disruption caused to the native monument industry by demographic collapse and rebellion after 1348, outlined in chapter three, is of central importance in understanding these patterns. It does not seem, however, that their effects were still being felt so did not include the counties of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire at all. Rodger’s work is currently being brought up to date and expanded by Professor Madeleine Gray. 68 Rodger includes very few from c.1350 to c.1550, although there are some notable exceptions at Brecon Cathedral and Tintern Abbey which are likely to be from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. 69 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 58–9 and 375–8.

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profoundly as late as 1500 and so the question of patronal choice must also be considered. It is a theme to which we shall be returning in chapter five. A second observation is that the variation in monument styles commissioned by this group suggests that they were an extremely eclectic and amorphous set of patrons. Their various modes of commemoration, from fine sculpted effigies on tomb-chests to plain cross slabs, belie a far wider range of wealth, status and sophistication than the relatively homogenous and unvarying military and female monuments of their social superiors. The patrons of the beautiful late-thirteenth- and fifteenth- or early-sixteenth-century civilian effigies at St Hilary and Tenby, for example, would have had much in common socially and economically both with each other and with those commemorated in armour, but virtually nothing in common with the likes of Mathew Voss (d.1534), whose grave at Llantwit Major is marked by the plainest of incised crosses and a crudely executed inscription [Fig. 23]. This eclecticism reflects the increasing late-medieval blurring of social divisions between the landed rural elites and their equally wealthy urban counterparts at the top end of the scale (see the discussion of the White tombs, below), and the desire of those at the bottom to ape the culture and behaviours of those above them. When it comes to effigial commemoration, however, the lower- and sub-gentry classes of south Wales, like their social superiors, preferred fully sculpted memorials over brasses or incised effigial slabs. This was also the case among their English counterparts until the fourteenth century, after which modest brasses and incised slabs were commissioned in increasing numbers, while in north Wales civilian stone effigies were few in number and undistinguished. The reasons for these differences are unclear, but are again likely to be a question of choice and market forces. English studies have categorised the kinds of people who commissioned civilian effigies as the non-knightly, non-landowning, local administrative class who, although they may have been of sub-gentry, non-armigerous rank, were nevertheless wealthy and influential individuals.70 This is certainly the impression given by the person commemorated at St Hilary by a fine late-thirteenth-century effigy carved from Bristol Dundry stone [Fig. 24]. The wealth and status of the individual are communicated not only by the quality and origins of the monument, but by the deceased’s depiction with long gloves of the kind worn for hunting with birds of prey – a sign of his membership of the wealthier classes. He may have been an estate official of the de Cardiff or Basset families, lords of St Hilary, or conceivably a younger son or minor relation. At nearby Llantwit Major a very similar – but less finely carved – monument commemorates a William de Rag… (the rest of inscription is missing, but the name could be Raglan), who has a fur collar as well as long gloves. Although he has not been 70 Tummers, Early Secular Effigies, p. 20; Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 234; pp. 238–47.

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identified for certain, his name places him within the ranks of the advenae settlers of the Vale of Glamorgan. Where other names are known, such as John and Isabella Colmer (d.1376), commemorated by an incised slab at Christchurch, or William and Isemay de Naunton on their semi-effigial slab at Penally, their settler origins are evident. Such may also be the background of the anonymous men commemorated by civilian effigies at Llanblethian, Llantrithyd and Caldicot – accompanied by hounds and daggers – as well as of ‘Elizabet’ at Flemingston and ladies at Trellech [Fig. 25] and St Arvan. It is, of course, much more difficult to assess the status of women than of men without the benefit of an identifying inscription or heraldry. The observer is forced to rely on the elaboration of the costume, the quality and style of the monument and possibly its location. The fourteenth-century lady depicted with an exquisitely carved fillet at Tenby, for example, is best placed among the town’s prosperous mercantile families rather than the landowners of the surrounding countryside. Evidence can be conflicting, however. At Kidwelly a lady of the early fourteenth century is commemorated by a semi-effigial slab accompanied by a fragmentary inscription beginning ‘YSOVDE : DO’. Her name identifies her as a member of the local advenae, while the simple style of the monument suggests a relatively lowly status. However, it is tempting to see ‘DO’ as the beginning of ‘DOMINA’, which would elevate her place in local society considerably. Alternatively, it could be read as ‘Don’, therefore making her an early member of the Donne/ Dwnn family who came to prominence in the fifteenth century. Another semi-effigial slab, at Tenby, a rather late example of the genre from the early fifteenth century, commemorates Isabella Verney (d.1413) [Fig. 26]. The slab is crude and idiosyncratic in design and execution and is likely to be a product of a local non-specialist, yet Isabella was the wife of John Perrot, of a rising Pembrokeshire gentry family. Some patrons and subjects of civilian and other lower-status monuments may have been of gentlemanly rank, even esquires, perhaps with legal training, but convention dictated that they should not be portrayed in armour if – like the man commemorated at St Hilary – their claims to gentility were based on service or occupation rather than the ownership of land and the exercise of lordship.71 This is likely to be the background of the man commemorated by an enigmatic early-to-mid-fourteenth-century civilian monument at Coychurch, the work of a first-class craftsman [Fig. 27]. His costume is that of a fashionable gentleman although his hair is cut in a tonsure and he wears a collobium, the latter indicating his membership of the legal profession. No gentry family is known to have been associated with this village, or with the church, and it has not been possible to come up with a satisfactory identification for this multi-faceted individual, but he may have been connected with the Turbeville family, whose caput at Coity is only a mile or so away. The fourteenth-century Turbevilles embraced 71

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Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 238–47.

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effigial commemoration and it is possible that the Coychurch monument is that of a younger son or member of a cadet branch.72 In the towns monuments of burgesses and merchants were common, but urban memorials have suffered more than rural ones, especially those set up in the friaries, which would have been lost in the Dissolution. This is what happened to the semi-effigial slab of the wife of Michel Rofim, which was dug up during the excavation of Cardiff Blackfriars in the late nineteenth century, and has since been lost again.73 Urban churches also suffered greater pressure on space in later periods, while some, like St Mary’s in Cardiff, have been lost altogether.74 Brecon Cathedral – originally a Benedictine priory and preserved as a parish church after the Dissolution – gives an approximation of what an urban church floor might have looked like in the later Middle Ages and the kinds of people who may have sought commemoration there. A large number and variety of floriated cross slabs have been preserved, although the people whose graves they covered are not always easy to identify. Some are marked only by initials, e.g. the slab of ‘I R’, some have names but no other information, such as John Lewys and Leucu, the wife of Anian ap Madoc of Builth. The horse-shoe and rasps on the slab of David Smyt, however, mark him out as a farrier [Fig. 28]. The lettering on these slabs – a mixture of black letter and Lombardic – suggests a wide date-range, while the names reveal a mixture of English and Welsh inhabitants of the town and its rural hinterland. Beyond these tantalising glimpses it is difficult to go. While south Wales was not the most under-urbanised region of Britain, it cannot be said to have sustained the same level of commercial activity as areas such as East Anglia or the Cotswolds. Consequently there are few monuments remaining which can be certainly identified as those of merchants or burgesses. Philip Taverner, commemorated with his wife on a late-thirteenth-century semi-effigial slab at Llandaff Cathedral (which may have been moved there from one of Cardiff ’s friaries),75 is likely to have been a Cardiff burgess, as was Michel Rofim. The Taverner and Rofim slabs are very modest affairs in comparison to the slightly earlier effigy of an unknown civilian at St Peter’s, Carmarthen. This is an import from Bristol and, although now only a fragment, is almost exactly the same as 72 And see the discussion above on the commemorative choices of the Turbevilles. I am very grateful to Professor Nigel Saul for discussing this monument with me at length. 73 C.B. Fowler, ‘The Excavations Carried out on the Site of the Blackfriars Monastery, Cardiff Castle’, Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists Society, 30 (1897–98), pp. 103–4; H. Conway, ‘The Blackfriars, Cardiff: Recent Excavations and Discoveries’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 6 (1889), p. 102. 74 Situated close to the banks of the River Taff, which were continually eroding, it was eventually washed into the river in the seventeenth century. 75 Lay commemoration is otherwise unknown in the cathedral until the fifteenth century. Cardiff had a Dominican and a Franciscan friary as well as a Benedictine priory, the latter suppressed in the early fifteenth century. Alternatively, it may have been brought in from the cathedral burial ground.

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a monument in St James’s church in the city. Civilian effigies at Laugharne and Kidwelly may also be those of the urban elites, or of men involved in the administration of the Marcher lordships. The only monuments certainly known to be those of merchants are found at St Mary’s church, Tenby, a flourishing port town. An extremely worn fifteenth-century slab, hidden under the carpet in the St Nicholas Chapel, bears a merchant’s mark, and, at the other side of the altar steps, in the chapel of St Thomas, lie the tombs of father and son Thomas (d.1482) [Plate II] and John White (d.c.1500). These latter tombs are highly interesting in themselves and we know much more about the men they commemorate than any others in this group. For this reason they are worth examining in some detail. The White family were prominent merchants in Tenby during the fifteenth century, providing mayors no fewer than twenty-nine times between 1420 and 1498: Thomas White on several occasions including 1457, 1472 and 1481, John for the last time in 1498.76 Of English origin, their pedigree traces them back to a John le Whitt, living in the early to mid fourteenth century. They must have acquired an interest in Tenby by the end of the fourteenth century when William White married Agnes Perrot, daughter of Sir Stephen Perrot of an established Pembrokeshire family. Thomas and John also made local matches: Thomas to Joan (d.1451), daughter of Howel ap Jenkin ap Robert of Nanhyfer, and secondly to Isabella Butler; John to Margaret Phillip (d.1472), and subsequently to Christina, daughter of John Einion of Henllan.77 Nevertheless, like many merchants of the towns and ports of south Wales, they retained strong links with their bases across the Bristol Channel, and in 1477 Thomas White was described as being ‘late of Barnstaple, Devon’ when he was pardoned for failing to answer a plea against him by William Coffyn for a debt of 73s 4d.78 The Whites are celebrated locally for their role in the escape of Henry and Jasper Tudor from Tenby following their defeat by the Yorkists at Tewkesbury in 1471, when Thomas, who is said to have been mayor at the time, supplied the boat which took them to France.79 Tradition has it that they were later rewarded by a grateful Henry VII with lands around the town, and this story continues to be accepted as fact in some circles despite being debunked several decades ago. Thomas White was not mayor in 1471, and whether the story of the boat is true or not, the Whites’ Tenby lands were actually granted to them by Henry Tudor’s enemy Richard III

R.F. Walker, ‘Jasper Tudor and the Town of Tenby’, National Library of Wales Journal, 16, i (1969), pp. 1–19, at pp. 14–15. 77 Francis Jones, ‘White of Henllan’, Pembrokeshire Historian, 5 (1974), pp. 57–78, at pp. 57, 59–61. 78 CPR, 1476–85 (London, 1901), p. 26. 79 I was proudly informed by a parishioner at St Mary’s in June 2012 that ‘this [i.e. Tenby] was where the Tudors began’! 76

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for unspecified services.80 Although this is an interesting snippet of local history, the real point of importance here is what it tells us – and what it does not – about the class of person who was commissioning civilian memorials in the late Middle Ages in south Wales, and the commemorative choices that they made. The Whites moved in several intersecting social circles. They were part of the urban elite yet were related to, and associated with, land-owning families from the local freeholding and gentry classes. Through Christina Einion they acquired an estate of their own, Henllan, and they gained other lands and properties in and around Tenby by royal favour. Although English in origin they married into Welsh families and yet still maintained their connections with the West Country. As Llinos B. Smith has recently observed when describing similar matches, this was not necessarily a case of a union between gentility and trade, but a joining together of ‘dynasties which, in many important respects, shared the same outlook and values’.81 There are further aspects to the Whites’ identity which can only be gleaned from their tombs. Until now it has not been observed by commentators that both Thomas and John were notaries, a class of civil officer used by Church and crown to draw up episcopal registers and diplomatic documents. As with lawyers and ecclesiastics, the monuments of notaries generally show specific items of dress: a mantle, pen and inkhorn suspended from a belt, and a cap and scarf on the left shoulder.82 Neither Thomas nor John has the mantle or inkhorn; the latter has been replaced in both cases by a purse, a common mercantile attribute.83 Both, however, have the unmistakable notary’s cap on the left shoulder and a scarf, which is draped over and down their left sides. That they were keen to communicate this role is also shown by the fact that the scarf and cap are repeated on the alabaster tomb-chests, where both men are shown kneeling with their children at prayer desks. In order to make the reference unavoidable the hats have been enlarged to quite unrealistic proportions [Fig. 29]. Another aspect of the White identity that the tombs bring to the fore is the fact that they and 80 Walker cites the entry, recorded in the Patent Rolls for 1484, of a grant for life to the ‘king’s servant John White the elder of the town of Tenibie […] of all the lands, meadows and pastures by and within the town called “lez Demaynes”, “Fugatif Londes”, “Waterwynshyll” and “Rigons Close” with two windmills called “le waterwynchmylle” with all appurtenances, to hold to the value of £10 yearly, rendering to the king a red rose at the feast of St Peter ad Vincula provided that he sufficiently repair the premises’. There is no record that they received a confirmation of the lands by Henry VII, but they did continue to hold them until c.1506, after which they were leased to a John Lloyd: Walker, ‘Jasper Tudor’, pp. 14–15; quotation from CPR, 1476–85, p. 410. 81 Llinos B. Smith, ‘In Search of an Urban Identity: Aspects of Urban Society in Late Medieval Wales’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Fulton, pp. 19–49, at p. 26. 82 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 287–8. 83 It was not unusual for such monuments to contain only some of the attributes of the notary. No mantle is shown on the brasses of two notaries at St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich, for example, while the brass of Richard Foxwist (c.1500) at Llanbeblig (Gwynedd) depicts him lying naked in bed with the inkhorn and pens to the side.

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their wives were armigerous. The White arms of a chevron between three stags’ heads is repeated on the tomb-chests along with those of Peacock (for Thomas’s mother Elen Peacock, daughter and heiress of Jenkyn Peacock of Laugharne), Butler, Howel, Phillip and an illegible coat,84 while both effigies rest their heads on a peacock and their feet on a hart. In England, especially in the southern and eastern parts of the country, many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century merchants opted for brasses. These were especially popular among the Cotswold woolmen and clothiers such as Thomas Bush (d.1526), who had a brass containing images of woolsacks, sheep and merchants’ marks at Northleach (Gloucestershire).85 The tone of the White monuments is quite different, however, and – despite the civilian costume – they are more akin in their use of stone, alabaster, tomb-chests and heraldry to the monuments being commissioned by the contemporary upper-gentry families of Herbert, Mathew and Cradock, etc. Unlike Thomas Bush, the White family’s status and identity was not based solely on their mercantile and civic activities and service, although these were important. They had acquired land and were moving swiftly into the ranks of Pembrokeshire’s landed elites, two of John’s sons marrying into the Perrot and Herbert families. Every nuance of this complex inheritance is communicated in their tombs.

84 85

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Jones, ‘White of Henllan’, pp. 58, 60, 61. See Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 248–53 for merchant brasses.

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3

I

n the early twentieth century, when monumental effigies began to receive the attention of art historians, it was widely assumed that their production, like that of other high-status consumer items, was an urban phenomenon, and was generally linked to work on major ecclesiastical sites such as Wells, Westminster and York. In the 1920s, Alfred Fryer put Bristol at the centre of the production of freestone effigies found throughout the West Country, which were also exported to locations across southern Wales and into Ireland. This workshop, it was argued, was originally set up by the masons who had worked on the west front of Wells Cathedral in the early thirteenth century, and was said to have continued there until the sixteenth.1 The products of the workshop were held to have certain characteristics, such as the use of Dundry stone and the lengthwise carving of mail down the arms of military effigies. The existence of the Bristol workshop and the supposed homogeneity of its products have since been challenged by Brian and Moira Gittos, who pointed out that Fryer’s geological deductions were not always correct and that examples of lengthwise mail can be found far outside the supposed area of Bristol influence. It is now understood that many sources of monumental production flourished in the West Country during the Middle Ages,2 although it is still true to say that Bristol played a crucial part in the export trade of monuments made from Dundry and some other West Country stones, including across the south Wales coastline. The current understanding of the wider medieval monument industry is that it was highly complex and heterogeneous, sculpted effigies, cross slabs and brasses being manufactured variously in urban workshops, at quarries, at ecclesiastical building sites, by local masons and by itinerant craftsmen.3

A.C. Fryer, Wooden Monumental Effigies in England and Wales (London, 1924). Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Alfred Fryer’s “Monumental Effigies by Bristol Craftsmen”: A Reassessment’, in Almost the Richest City: Bristol in the Middle Ages, ed. Laurence Keen (Leeds, 1997), pp. 90–2. 3 The most centralised form of production was found in the brass and alabaster industries, which were organised into workshops producing monuments which often followed defined stylistic patterns: Malcolm Norris, Monumental Brasses: The Craft (London, 1978), p. 101; Sally Badham, ‘London Standardisation and Provincial Idiosyncrasy: The Organisation and Working Practices of Brass-Engraving Workshops in Pre-Reformation England’, 1

2

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This variety of organisational structures is reflected in the eclecticism of the monuments of south Wales, although it will become apparent in this chapter that this is more a feature of the earlier part of the period. The erection of a commemorative monument was the end result of a complex interrelationship of factors bearing upon both the patron of the memorial and the craftspeople responsible for producing it, and thus was inevitably influenced by the basic market forces of supply and demand. High levels of demand for funerary sculpture fuelled the development of local sources of supply, while the prime constraint on the patron was the level of his or her funds. The level of money available could restrict not only the choice of materials and the elaboration of the memorial, but also the extent to which patrons could exercise choice away from the products of the local area if they wished to.4 The nature of the local supply is also a fundamental consideration. Were there sufficiently capable local masons available, with ready access to a suitable supply of stone, or would patrons have to cast further afield to obtain the necessary materials and manpower? Would the latter circumstance preclude some potential patrons from seeking commemoration in the first place due to lack of funds or opportunities? Over time, the operation of these factors had a major bearing on the nature of regional monumental cultures,5 and this chapter will consider how Church Monuments, 5 (1990), pp. 3–25; Phillip Lindley, Gothic to Renaissance: Essays on Sculpture in England (Stamford, 1995), pp. 26–8; Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004), p. 251. Other than in the brass and alabaster industries, however, monuments are not thought to have been generally produced in an urban environment and in very few cases can large numbers be attributable to a single workshop. Quarryside production, production linked to building work at an ecclesiastical site, and the ad hoc output of local masons are thought to have been more normal. The various methods of monumental production have been outlined most recently in Badham and Oosterwijk, eds, Monumental Industry; Sally Badham, ‘Evidence for the Minor Funerary Monument Industry, 1100–1500’, in Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contacts, Contrasts and Interconnections, 1100–1500, ed. Kate Giles and Christopher Dyer (Leeds, 2007), pp. 165–95; Sally Badham, ‘The de la More Effigies at Northmoor (Oxfordshire) and Related Monuments at Winterbourne (Gloucestershire)’, Church Monuments, 23 (2008), pp. 14–44; Sally Badham and Geoff Blacker, Northern Rock: The Use of Egglestone Marble for Monuments in Medieval England (Oxford, 2009), p. 31, and Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Medieval Ham Hill Stone Monuments in Context’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 165 (2012), pp. 89–121. 4 Tummers maintained that the thirteenth-century transport system was sufficient to supply patrons with whichever stone they wanted as the blocks required for effigial purposes were ‘relatively small in both size and quantity’: Tummers, Early Secular Effigies, p. 16. Even so this ability must have been partly dependent upon economic circumstances, and transport costs could be prohibitive. Despite its prestige and popularity, Purbeck marble, for example, rarely made it into south Wales. Only two monuments are known to be made from it, one of which, significantly, is the tomb-chest of Edmund Tudor, father of King Henry VII, at St David’s Cathedral (formerly at Carmarthen Greyfriars). For medieval transport see J.F. Edwards, ‘The Transport System of Medieval England and Wales: A Geographical Synthesis’, PhD thesis (University of Salford, 1987). Available online at http:// usir.salford.ac.uk/14831/1/D083029.pdf. 5 The commemorative culture of late-medieval Norfolk, for example, is characterised by the monumental brass. Norfolk was a thickly settled and affluent region, giving rise to a numerous patronal group capable of affording a permanent physical memorial. However,

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southern Welsh geology, the import trade with Bristol and the rest of the West Country, and the raw forces of socio-economics combined to create the region’s distinctive commemorative landscape. The chapter will also focus on stone monuments, in particular those of Welsh manufacture, to the exclusion of brass and alabaster, for several reasons: the native monument industry is imperfectly understood to say the least, whereas more has already been published on the circumstances of monument production in the West Country. Furthermore, the production methods and organisation of the brass and alabaster industries are even better understood, and what this book has to say about the few monuments sourced from these producers in south Wales concerns questions of patronal identity and choice which are more logically dealt with in another chapter.

STONE USE IN SOUTH WALES – GENERAL TRENDS South Welsh patrons of commemorative monuments favoured a wide range of producers with their commissions, resulting in the use of several different stones and other materials such as wood, alabaster and brass in varying amounts across the period (Graph 8). In the absence of detailed biographical information about patrons, or of any documentary evidence of the commissioning and production of memorials, petrological analysis can reveal something of the patrons’ socio-economic horizons and cultural awareness as well as the output of various producers to which they had access. Locally sourced monuments of indifferent, or idiosyncratic, quality, such as at St Bride’s (Pembrokeshire), Llanfihangel Abercywyn,6 Colwinston and Trellech [Fig. 25], make radically different statements about their patrons’ status, wealth and ability to access the best producers in comparison with the finely carved imported pieces like the lady at Stackpole, the Hastings effigies at Abergavenny [Fig. 14] and the thirteenthcentury bishops at Llandaff Cathedral [Fig. 30]. But local production did not necessarily mean a second-rate product – as some of the Quarella stone monuments produced in Glamorgan, discussed below, prove – and a study of stone use confirms that patterns of patronage and production in south Wales were complex and moulded by a number of external factors.

due to the lack of good supplies of stone, local output was limited, resulting in a flourishing trade with the London marblers, who could supply a brass to suit every pocket which could be easily transported by water, as well as a home-produced supply of brasses from Norwich. Purbeck slabs are also common in the county. 6 The date and status of the patrons of these monuments are disputed. Brian and Moira Gittos are of the opinion that they may be of twelfth-century date, and therefore likely to be of higher status than is suggested here. I am grateful to Brian and Moira Gittos for giving their views on these monuments and others mentioned in this chapter.

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GRAPH 8. SOURCES OF STONES USED IN SOUTH WELSH MONUMENTS.

A range of materials were used in the sculpting of monuments in south Wales, although the figures presented in Graph 8 represent only the proportion of monuments for which the stone they are made from can be identified, which is just under half. It has only been possible to ascertain the geological source of this number of monuments as so little has been published on this subject for south Wales. In the absence of reliable written guides for use by those with little or no geological training it is necessary for fieldwork to be conducted with the assistance of an expert, which has not always been possible in the present study across such a large area.7 In addition, it is next to impossible to tell what the vast majority of the lost monuments were made from, although this information has been included if it is known and can be relied upon, as is usually the case with brass. The implications of misidentification can be great: if one were to accept a seemingly authoritative nineteenth-century identification of the Berkerolles tombs at St Athan as being made of Caen stone,8 a very fine Continental stone rarely seen outside the south-east of England, our understanding of the commissioning process and the economic capability of the Berkerolles family would be seriously in error, as the tombs in question are in fact made of local Glamorgan freestones. Graph 8 reveals some clear and striking patterns. There is a distinct watershed in material use in the middle of the fourteenth century, with the native stones – used so extensively in the thirteenth and early fourteenth 7 My thanks also go to Jana Horák of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum of Wales for discussions about Sudbrook stone. Needless to say, any errors in identification made in this book are entirely my own. 8 Stephen W. Williams, ‘Archaeological Notes and Queries’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 10 (1893), pp. 271–4.

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centuries – almost entirely disappearing from about 1350. It is probable that the dwindling numbers of cross slabs produced after about 1350 were still produced locally, a late (1530s) example being the extremely crude Lias slab of Matthew Voss at Llantwit Major [Fig. 23]. However, only one carved monument made from Welsh stone has been certainly identified after the third quarter of the fourteenth century, which is the crudely executed cadaver at St Dogmael’s Abbey, carved from Sutton stone – a very late appearance of this limestone in an effigial context. West Country stones, although not as popular as the native products in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, ultimately proved to be more resilient, as they continued to be imported throughout the period. They, too, suffered from the overall collapse of the market after the Black Death and are much less common in the fifteenth century, although they undergo something of a resurgence in popularity in the early sixteenth. Unlike in many parts of southern and eastern England, brass never achieved popularity, being overtaken by alabaster after that material was first used in Wales in the mid fifteenth century.

MONUMENTS MADE FROM WELSH STONES Such was the demand for monumental commemoration in south Wales, as in England, in the century between c.1250 and c.1350 that home-grown production flourished. Welsh workshops and craftsmen turned out cross slabs and sculpted effigies in styles ranging from the highly elaborate to the plain, and in levels of artistry from the crude to the exquisite. For elite families such as the Turbevilles of Coity, the Berkerolles of East Orchard and St Athan, and the unknown patrons of the fine monuments at Tenby and Llansannor [Plate III], there were enough talented craftsmen working the local stones to render the additional effort and expense of ordering an imported product absolutely unnecessary. Unlike that of the north, described by Gresham, the native industry of south Wales turned out monuments in a style familiar throughout much of southern Britain, reflecting the AngloNorman and English cultural orientation of the region’s landed elites. The stones of south Wales are variable in their suitability for sculpture, and those with the best carving qualities are found in Glamorgan, particularly Quarella and Sutton stones, although Lias was frequently used with some success.9 Devonian Old Red Sandstone, with its distinctive orangey-brown hue, is found further to the east, in Monmouthshire and Brecon. At the opposite end of the country, in Pembrokeshire, the most distinctive of the local stones is the purplish (or greyish green) Caerbwdi sandstone, quarried 9 Jana Horák, ‘Geological Sources and the Selection of Stone’, in A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales, ed. M. Redknap and J.M. Lewis, 3 vols (Cardiff, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 47–58, provides useful information on the use of Sutton, Quarella, Lias and other stones in an earlier period.

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on the coast at St David’s and used extensively throughout the cathedral. It is also likely that the pale grey Carboniferous Limestone found in southern Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire was used for many effigies and cross slabs, but it has not been possible to verify the source of the stone used in many of the monuments in this area. A total of seventy effigies, tombchests and cross slabs have been identified as being carved from these native stones, which is certainly an underestimate as it is highly likely that cross slab production was a local affair, utilising materials close at hand (see discussion on pp. 75, 84). PEMBROKESHIRE AND CARMARTHENSHIRE The far west is not particularly well endowed with freestones suitable for carving. The best locally available to medieval masons was Caerbwdi, which is a distinctive purplish sandstone, seen in buildings throughout the town of St David’s, near to which it was quarried. Fine- to medium-grained, it has been described as ‘only barely adequate for carving’ and prone to disintegration,10 but it was used extensively in the cathedral’s monuments, including those of the great builder-bishop Henry de Gower (d.1347) [Fig. 9], at least six thirteenth- and fourteenth-century priests, two cross-legged knights thought to be members of the Wogan family and a number of cross slabs, including that to the physician Silvester. A small civilian effigy now at Uzmaston, but originally at Boulston, is also likely to be made from Caerbwdi. Other stones of Welsh origin found in a monumental context in St David’s Cathedral are Lias (used for the mid-thirteenth-century effigies of Bishops Iorwerth and Anselm [Fig. 8] and the slab of John de Fekenham) as well as a badly eroded Carboniferous Sandstone, used in the mouldings of a tomb recess and for the head of a lady, all that remains of a thirteenthor fourteenth-century effigy. It has not been possible to securely identify the sources of a number of the other monuments in the far south-west, but many of them appear to be made from the same greyish stone, which seems to have been used during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and is likely to be local in origin. Examples are a knight of the de Barri family at Manorbier, a contemporary one at Upton [Fig. 31] and possibly the slightly later military effigies at Llangwm and Stackpole. This stone is characterised by a flaky, slightly ‘creased’ or faulted appearance in places. The monuments are all located within a few miles of each other, lending credence to the theory that they have a common source, given that recent research in the north of the county suggests that local stones tended to be used within a five-mile radius of the outcrops.11 Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century monuments 10 Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, ‘Caerbwdi Sandstone: Its Use Beyond St David’s Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace’, Welsh Stone Forum Newsletter, 9 (March 2012), p. 3. 11 Branwen Hughes, ‘Mapping the Freestones of Medieval Ecclesiastical Buildings in North Pembrokeshire’, Welsh Stone Forum Newsletter, 12 (March 2015), p. 2.

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in Kidwelly and Laugharne also seem to be of a similar pale grey stone, although it may not be the same one as that used at Manorbier and Upton. GLAMORGAN The best part of south Wales as far as the supply of stones with good carving qualities is concerned was undoubtedly Glamorgan. Sutton stone, a white, pebbly and veined limestone of Liassic age, was quarried near the mouth of the River Ogmore, to the south of the modern town of Bridgend. It was prized for its toughness and whiteness, lending itself to both structural and decorative use,12 being employed in Ewenny Priory, Margam and Neath abbeys and the main entrance arch at Newcastle Castle, Bridgend. Sutton was widely exported to other parts of south Wales and was used as far west as Whitland Abbey, Manorbier Castle and St David’s Cathedral. The pebbly inclusions often weather out, leaving a characteristic pitted appearance, but despite this its decorative qualities can be appreciated in the striking Norman chancel arch at Llandaff Cathedral and in a beautiful font, decorated with Norman arcading, which has been discarded in the churchyard at Llantrithyd. At least six effigies in Glamorgan were carved from Sutton stone, as well as the elaborate cross slabs of the de Londres family at Ewenny Priory [Fig. 6] and some fragments at nearby Merthyr Mawr, all produced between the late twelfth and mid fourteenth century and found in churches sited within a few miles of the coastal quarry. It was used for high-status and humble monuments alike, the quality of execution being extremely variable. As a locally available product it was accessible to those of lower social status: three of the six effigies are to anonymous civilians and another, at Llantwit Major, is an older monument adapted to form the memorial of a priest. The discussion, in chapter two, of the patrons of civilian effigies reveals a diversity of socio-economic backgrounds, but those in this group who opted for Sutton memorials seem not to have been able to afford the services of a specialist figure sculptor nor, in the case of the churchyard monument of a civilian at Merthyr Mawr [Fig. 32], may they even have been accorded intramural burial.13 The heavy pitting of the stone used for the worn effigy of a civilian or priest at Colwinston suggests that a rather pebbly, less pure form of the stone was used, which may have been for reasons of economy. The evidence of this patronal group, taken together with the location of 12 It was in early use as a building stone and was also used for tenth-century crosses: Welsh Stone Forum Newsletter, 7 (Feb. 2010), pp. 10–11. 13 This monument now lies in the churchyard and may always have been there. The research of Brian and Moira Gittos has revealed a number of medieval churchyard effigies and other memorials, and it is becoming clear that churchyard monuments were much more common than was previously thought: Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘The English Medieval Churchyard: What Did it Really Look Like?’, in Monuments and Monumentality across Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Michael Penman (Donington, 2013), pp. 31–44.

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many of the monuments in churches within a short distance of the quarry, suggests that Sutton was chosen as a conveniently accessible material, largely being exploited for building purposes and some carved architectural detail, but by masons who were also prepared to turn their hands to occasional monumental production for local patrons, for whom cost was an important factor.14 Despite the fact that it was used for these lower-status monuments, Sutton stone was not in itself regarded as an inferior material. The quarries were situated within the lordship of Ogmore and were therefore the natural choice to source the cross slabs of Maurice [Fig. 6] and William de Londres, lords of Ogmore, at Ewenny Priory. It had already been used extensively in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the fabric of the priory as well as for decorative work at nearby Ogmore Castle, and its visual potential was therefore well appreciated. In the fourteenth century it was deemed fine enough by the de Berkerolles family of St Athan for the construction of two sets of effigies and a canopied tomb-chest to members of the family in their recently established chantry chapel in St Tathan’s church [Plate I]. Here, the quality of the stone selected was very different to the pebbly form used at Colwinston, and is of such purity that, as noted above, it was mistaken in the nineteenth century for fine-grained imported Caen stone. The quality of the workmanship, as would be expected of a monument to a family of this status, is far superior to that seen in the other Sutton monuments, and is the work of a specialist figure sculptor. Less suitable than Sutton for fine or deep carving is Lias, a type of limestone which forms the distinctive stratigraphy of the coastal cliffs of the Vale of Glamorgan; it is also quarried in Somerset, on the opposite shore of the Bristol Channel. It is formed in shallow beds suitable for use as cross slabs, but consequently the effigies made from it have to be low relief or partially incised. Four effigies in Glamorgan have been identified as being carved from Lias, as well as others in St David’s Cathedral and Penally, which may not all have been sourced from the same area. Its use in an effigial context seems to have been confined to the thirteenth century, possibly as a local substitute for the fashionable Purbeck marble, which also had had its heyday by 1300.15 The sculptural qualities of Lias are rather different from Purbeck, however. It has rather a flaky texture, resulting in a tendency to split, which can be seen in the damage to the raised areas on the large semieffigial cross slab at Llandaff Cathedral to Philip Taverner and his wife. This weakness was circumvented on the slab to ‘Elizabet’ at Flemingston, where the body is incised, using simple long, parallel lines, but the head was a raised feature of another material laid into the slab. The depth of the now empty recess indicates that this was not brass, but another kind of stone, The circumstances of production are discussed in more detail below. See F.J. North, Stones of Llandaff Cathedral (Cardiff, 1957) and John Newman, The Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan (London, 1995), pp. 32–5, for further information on the utilisation of these stones. 14 15

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more suitable for the carving of delicate features in high relief. A similar technique has been used on the early-fourteenth-century semi-effigial slab of William and Ismay de Naunton at Penally, Pembrokeshire, and at St Briavel’s, Gloucestershire,16 and was probably employed on the effigy of a lady at St Arvan. The best stone available for monumental purposes in Glamorgan was undoubtedly Quarella, a pale, fine-grained Triassic sandstone, often of greenish hue, quarried in the vicinity of Bridgend and Pyle. It lends itself well to detailed carving and at least seven effigies, as well as a tomb-chest and an unknown number of cross slabs, are made from it. The tomb-chest of Sir William and Phelice de Berkerolles at St Athan [Fig. 33], produced in the 1360s or ’70s, seems to have been the last time this stone was employed for a carved monument in the Middle Ages, although it was far from quarried out and continued to be used in other contexts, such as the decorative detail on the fifteenth-century church porches at Laleston and Newton and a contemporary first-floor fireplace surviving in the ruins of Candleston Castle. Like Sutton, it is sometimes found in the inferior work of nonspecialist masons, the crudely cut figures at Merthyr Mawr and Coity being two examples, but the stone is more readily associated with high-status commissions and fine craftsmanship. At Coychurch there is a fine figure of a tonsured lawyer [Fig. 27]; a mile or so away at Coity it was used to produce a delicate lady of the Turbeville family [Fig. 3]; and at Llansannor a figure of a knight could fairly claim to be among the best medieval effigial sculptures in Wales for the quality of its execution [Plate III]. A lady at Llandow, although of lower relief and less impressive than these figures, seems also to have originally been a finely crafted memorial although its quality has been obscured by extensive damage. The use of Quarella in first-rate products and by families of the calibre of the de Turbevilles and de Berkerolles, who were at the pinnacle of fourteenth-century Glamorgan society, reminds us that local sources of stone, as was seen with Lias and, to a lesser extent, Sutton, were patronised by the local elites, and that many options were available to those who could afford to pay for good quality commemorative sculpture. MONMOUTHSHIRE AND BRECONSHIRE The dominant local stone further east and into the Brecon area is the widely available Old Red Sandstone, used for the monuments of priests at Llanvetherine and Pen-y-Clawdd, those of ladies at Trellech [Fig. 25], and a cross slab at St Mary’s, Brecon, among others. Although this stone was capable of taking exceptionally clear detail, as the church at Kilpeck (Herefordshire) proves, none of the Welsh monuments made from it are particularly fine examples of the tomb-carver’s art. Sudbrook Sandstone, 16

Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, pp. 16–17.

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which outcrops in the cliffs of the Severn Estuary, is found in buildings further to the south and may have been the source of monuments at St Arvans and Christchurch.17

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRODUCTION As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, cross slabs, carved effigies and brasses were produced under a range of circumstances, from the highly standardised near production-line methods of the brass workshops of London, to the long-lived workshops of the alabasterers of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, to quarry-side or building-site production, to the occasional output of a local mason.18 As far as the home-grown monument industry of south Wales is concerned – in contrast to the north – there is nothing to suggest the existence of an established long-term workshop turning out substantial numbers of stylistically similar monuments at any time during the period under review. There is only the circumstantial evidence of superficial similarities between monuments and the use of particular stones at certain times and in certain areas to point us towards what may have been happening. The most promising time for the emergence of local workshops in south Wales is the decades either side of 1300, when the demand for monuments was at its height and a number of high-status military and ecclesiastical building projects were underway across the region. Neath Abbey was rebuilt from c.1280–c.1330, Tintern Abbey from 1269–c.1320, the churches and cathedrals at Abergavenny, Llandaff, St David’s and Brecon were all extensively remodelled and there was construction and reconstruction at Caerphilly and Chepstow castles, to name but a few.19 Furthermore, apart from the short-lived rebellion of Llewelyn Bren in Glamorgan in 1316, the fourteenth century was a time of relative calm in the March, resulting in the most propitious circumstances for the emergence of local workshops capable of turning out stylistically up-to-date and competently executed monuments. Some of the best evidence that this was the case comes from Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire. As has been suggested above, the Sutton and Quarella quarries at Bridgend, Pyle and Ogmore seem to have been the focus of activity in the later thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth. 17 See J.R.L. Allen, ‘Roman and Medieval-Early Modern Building Stones in South-East Wales: The Sudbrook Sandstone and Dolomitic Conglomerate (Triassic)’, Monmouthshire Antiquary, 21 (2005), pp. 21–44, for the characteristics and distribution of Sudbrook stone. 18 For a full exploration of this topic see Sally Badham, ‘What Constituted a “Workshop” and How Did Workshops Operate? Some Problems and Questions’, in Monumental Industry, ed. Badham and Oosterwijk, pp. 12–36. 19 Richard K. Morris, ‘Later Gothic Architecture in South Wales’, in Cardiff: Architecture and Archaeology in the Medieval Diocese of Llandaff, ed. J.R. Kenyon and D.M. Williams (Leeds, 2006), pp. 102–35.

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The known Sutton monuments are difficult to compare stylistically. It is possible that the Colwinston and Merthyr Mawr civilians are products of the same hand, but they cannot be readily compared to those at Llantrithyd or Llantwit Major, and there are no points of contact between these monuments and the de Berkerolles effigies and canopy at St Athan, which are the work of a specialist. The picture that emerges is of an extremely productive quarry near Ogmore-by-Sea (in terms of its overall output of building stone and so on), but one with no trained figure sculptor habitually associated with it. The Colwinston, Merthyr Mawr, Llantrithyd and Llantwit Major monuments were likely to have been produced on an entirely ad hoc basis as necessity dictated, and with varying levels of adherence to prevailing mainstream sculptural fashions – a mode of production that fits in with what has already been described of the limited socio-economic level of the patrons of these memorials. The only exceptions to this are two distinctive cross slabs at Merthyr Mawr, which have virtually identical, rather luxuriant cross heads and deeply cut flowers springing on thinly incised stems from the shaft. These are clearly the work of a single, capable craftsman. Unfortunately there is nothing to link him with other examples in the surrounding area.20 Because it outcrops over a long swathe of coastline, as well as inland, it is not so easy to posit the single quarry-side location for the production of Lias monuments in the way that seems likely for Sutton, and different circumstances may have operated as a result. In at least one case production seems to have been linked with a building project, where Lias was used for the Lady Chapel at Llandaff Cathedral, built by Bishop William de Braose towards the end of the thirteenth century. That his monument, which still lies in the chapel, is also carved from a Lias slab suggests that he took the opportunity to commission his effigy – which looks a little old-fashioned for his date of death in 1287 – while there were masons and supplies of stone on site. The Quarella monuments hint at a different picture, however, and there is a circumstantial basis for supposing that a short-lived workshop producing monumental effigies for the elite local market may have been in operation in the first half of the fourteenth century in the vicinity of Bridgend. The small number of Quarella stone effigies of a very high standard produced at this time are well-modelled, exquisitely detailed and elegant, and were the work of an experienced and skilful figure sculptor. For the de Turbevilles of Coity he produced a small effigy of a lady, lying in a recumbent, praying position, with her head on plump double cushions [Fig. 3]. Her hair is curled up over her ears, which are small, delicate and intricately carved. 20 A similar pattern has been observed in the effigies produced from the Ham Hill quarries of Somerset, which served a localised clientele, most being found within a ten-mile radius of the quarry. Significantly, 25% of Ham Hill effigies commemorate civilians, suggesting that here too the lower classes were limited to patronising the local quarry: Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Medieval Ham Hill’.

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The right knee is slightly bent, lending the figure a just discernible sway. The feet rest on a semi-circular plate, under which is a crouched hare nibbling at foliage. The drapery of her gown falls in thick folds of irregular width from the waist to the feet, where it lies in gentle zigzags, and tiny buttons are just visible on her right forearm. At around 120cm long, the monument’s small size may cause it to be passed over in favour of grander memorials, but a close inspection reveals the skill employed in its execution. This effigy is highly reminiscent of other miniature effigies at Berkeley, suggesting that the craftsman responsible for one was familiar with the work of the others. However, the fact that the Coity lady is carved from a stone indigenous to Glamorgan precludes it from being a West Country import. Close by, at Coychurch, lies another Quarella monument to an unidentified lawyer of the mid fourteenth century [Fig. 27]. Like the lady at Coity he strikes a restful pose. His hands meet in prayer on his chest while, lying on a large flattish cushion supported by angels, his head is inclined slightly to the right to meet the eyes of the viewer. The angels, lying flat against the pillow, turn their heads to look upward, following the gaze of the effigy. The facial features are delicately carved, the upper eyelids indicated by a double line, and the mouth is slightly downturned. At first glance, this monument would seem to have little in common with the Coity lady, and it is true that their differing sizes and forms preclude easy comparison. Yet both have the same confidence of execution and restful, streamlined pose, and both are elevated above the common stock by perfectly rendered details. The Coychurch effigy, for example, also sports a row of tiny buttons down each forearm with even the buttonholes clearly visible. The third member of this group is the finest of all, and roughly contemporary with the other two. Found a few miles further to the east, at Llansannor, it is the figure of a cross-legged, praying, rather languid knight, carved fully in the round, his head lying on a helm and turned outward towards the viewer [Plate III]. He wears the distinctive armour of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, of a type seen in more elaborate form on the effigy of John of Eltham at Westminster Abbey. His ridged bascinet has a pronounced heart-shaped opening for the face.21 The facial features are rather worn, but enough remains of the moustache curling over the edge of the mail to appreciate the delicacy and attention to detail with which it was carved. The feet rest on a large long-eared dog, possibly a greyhound. There is no inscription remaining, nor any heraldry on the shield to aid identification. The evidence of these three monuments indicates that there was at least one first-rate craftsman, with a varied repertoire, in operation in this part 21 This feature has been identified on other effigies of the 1340s and ’50s, particularly in the Gloucestershire and Herefordshire region, such as that at Clehonger: see Badham, ‘The de la More Effigies’, p. 25. It can also be seen on several military effigies in Pembrokeshire, although these are not of the same exceptional standard of workmanship as that at Llansannor.

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of Glamorgan in the first half of the fourteenth century, possibly quarry or building-site based. Although there are no direct comparisons between these monuments that would definitively identify them as the work of the same man, they are similar in several respects, such as the use of Quarella stone, their date of manufacture, the quality of their execution and a shared air of elegant restraint enlivened by the occasional finely observed detail. Unfortunately, there are no other surviving Quarella stone monuments of equal quality to allow further comparison and add weight to this theory. The badly damaged Quarella effigy of a lady at Llandow, about five miles away from Bridgend, is another well-executed piece, but is so different to the main group in its conception that it seems unlikely to be by the same hand. The mason(s) responsible for the Coity, Coychurch and Llansannor group may well have been an itinerant craftsman. Sculptors and other craftsmen producing works of art were more likely to be mobile than other artisans as they relied on patrons for employment and had to be prepared to travel to find it.22 But if this is a single individual in operation, what brought him to the Bridgend area? It is possible that he came in connection with building work initiated by the Turbeville family, lords of Coity.23 Both Coity Castle and the adjacent church, which houses one of the effigies, were undergoing remodelling in the first half of the fourteenth century, using much Quarella stone, and it was also used for the magnificent early-fourteenth-century reredos at Llantwit Major, situated about ten miles to the east, near the coast.24 The nearby village of Coychurch was not associated with a single dominant local family in the medieval period, but its church (which contains the effigy of the lawyer) was also remodelled in the fourteenth century and, lying as it does only a mile or so south of Coity, the Turbevilles may also have had a hand in this. There is no known Turbeville connection with Llansannor, but the family was prolific and had several cadet branches that married into other local clans. In any case, once the craftsman had been brought into Glamorgan he would have been available for hire by whoever could afford him. His stay was not long – nothing comparable to these pieces was produced in the local area after the middle of the fourteenth century – but studies of other workshop outputs, such as the ‘Ingleby Arncliffe’ group

22 Nigel Ramsay, ‘Artists and Craftsmen’, in Age of Chivalry: Art and Society in Late Medieval England, ed. Nigel Saul (London, 1992), p. 55. See also the stylistic links identified between monuments by Nigel Saul in ‘The Early Fifteenth-Century Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law in Flamstead Church (Hertfordshire)’, Church Monuments, 27 (2012) and ‘The Sculptor of the Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law at Flamstead (Hertfordshire): a Sequel’, Church Monuments, 29 (2014). 23 Coity is now a part of Bridgend, lying at its north-eastern edge, but was a separate settlement in the fourteenth century, before the town of Bridgend itself had begun to develop. 24 Morris, ‘Later Gothic Architecture’, p. 103.

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in North Yorkshire, show that workshops could erupt for a brief period of time and operate in a confined area.25 Although it has hitherto been thought unlikely that there was much native production of monuments in Pembrokeshire,26 there is in fact some persuasive evidence that there was a common home-grown source of military effigies supplying local lordly families in the first half of the fourteenth century, probably using stone sourced from the area. Although the differing styles of armour suggest that they may have been produced over a couple of decades, there are enough consistencies across this small group to suggest a common workshop origin, or even the hand of the same sculptor. Three of them, at Carew, Stackpole [Fig. 34] and Manorbier, were first recognised as being part of a distinct group in the early twentieth century,27 but a fourth effigy, at Llangwm, can also be added to the list. Two – at Carew and Manorbier – have slightly earlier forms of armour than the others, of a style datable to the 1320s or 1330s, while those at Stackpole and Llangwm have armour which can be dated to the later 1340s. Three (Carew, Stackpole and Llangwm) have bascinets with central ridges and heart-shaped openings, while there is also a certain similarity in the facial expressions, particularly noticeable in Carew and Llangwm, where the heads incline at a similar angle. Wear precludes more precise comparisons than this, and it is possible that the Stackpole knight’s face has been clumsily recut at a later period.28 At the other end of the figures there are clear comparisons to be made between the legs and footrests. At Llangwm, Stackpole and Carew the legs cross at the knee, left over right, which is unremarkable in itself, but in each case the rowel spurs on the left ankle, their attachments and their angle of connection with the slab are virtually identical. The same is true of the lion footrests, each of which reclines at an angle, as though in the process of being pushed over by the effigies’ feet. This also appears on the Manorbier knight, although the different arrangement of the legs here means that the spur is not so evident. A further similarity between all four of these 25 Ten knights and ladies have been identified as the products of this workshop, which was possibly staffed by masons who had worked on Guisborough priory: Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘The Ingleby Arncliffe Group of Effigies: A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Workshop in North Yorkshire’, Church Monuments, 17 (2002), pp. 14–38. Since this article was published, another has been discovered over the county border in Durham. I am grateful to Brian and Moira Gittos for this update. 26 Robert Scourfield has claimed that ‘the majority, if not all’ of Pembrokeshire’s monuments are made from imported stone and made in places like Bristol and Burtonupon-Trent, an opinion which the evidence presented in this study cannot support: Scourfield, ‘Medieval Church Building in Pembrokeshire’, pp. 587–606, at p. 605. 27 See for example E. Laws and E.H. Edwards, ‘Monumental Effigies in Pembrokeshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Sixth Series, 11 (1911), pp. 199–211. 28 The fine monument of a lady in the same church has also been marred by a later inept ‘restoration’. Mark Downing gives the following dates for these effigies in his Military Effigies of England and Wales, 9: Wales (forthcoming): Carew 1345–50; Llangwm 1345–50; Manorbier 1330–35 and Stackpole 1350–60, although Brian and Moira Gittos think that his dating of the Stackpole knight is too late, an opinion with which the present author agrees.

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sculptures is that their legs appear to be too short in comparison with the rest of the body. The lower legs, which are visible below the surcoat, are well cut and properly proportioned, but in each case there is not enough room between the groin area and the knees to accommodate a sufficient length of thigh, giving an oddly truncated appearance to the lower half of the figures. Significantly, each of the knights lies within a wall recess, likely to be their original position and which they all fit perfectly, suggesting that either precise measurements were sent to the workshop or that the sculptor/s worked on site. The effigies are all located in churches with easy access to water, either on Pembrokeshire’s southern coast or on the banks of the Cleddau and its tributaries, and within less than eight miles of each other. This, as well as the fact that the Stackpole, Carew, de la Roche and de Barri families, members of which the effigies commemorate, were leaders of local society with links across the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea, suggests that the choice of workshop was a positive one, and not something they were limited to by finances or lack of contacts. There is little doubt that these families knew each other and the choice of workshop may have been an expression of a kind of group solidarity – something which was later to be seen in operation amongst the resurgent fifteenth- and sixteenth-century of Welsh origin in their choice of alabaster monuments (see chapter five). Peter Lord has identified a Bristol influence in these monuments. This is understandable at Stackpole, where the recess takes a polygonal shape reminiscent of tomb recesses and doorways at Bristol Cathedral and St Mary Redcliffe [Fig. 34], but there is nothing conclusive to link the effigies with Bristol production or influence.29 His suggestion that the monuments were carved by an itinerant Bristol craftsman is difficult to sustain unless we can accept that he was active in Pembrokeshire over a decade or more, although it is certainly possible that the workshop was staffed by craftsmen trained in Bristol or elsewhere in the West Country.30 The Stackpole tomb also provides persuasive evidence that effigies, tomb-chests and canopies need not have come from the same source. In this case, the effigy cannot have been carved by the same hand that produced the tomb-chest, which is decorated with arcading and weepers which can optimistically be described as inept. The hunched male and female figures are crushed into uneven ogee niches which in turn sprout excrescences that are only barely recognisable as crockets and finials. In contrast the tomb canopy has been produced by an experienced mason familiar with Bristol styles. The stones that the chest and canopy are made from have not been identified, but the wildly different levels of competence with which 29 Lord, Visual Culture, p. 129. As is outlined at the start of this chapter, it is misleading to think of Bristol as the centre of region-wide monumental production. 30 Sally Badham has also pointed out links with sculpture produced at Exeter in the mid fourteenth century, including on the cathedral’s west front: unpublished lecture on Pembrokeshire military effigies given in 1999. I am grateful to Sally Badham for alerting me to these similarities.

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the whole ensemble has been carved indicate that at least two and possibly three different hands, or workshops, were responsible for the production of this monument. The later-fourteenth-century effigy of a lady in the same church is another, less marked example of this practice. Here, the effigy, a West Country import, is of exquisite craftsmanship, with confident modelling and crisply carved details. The chest, on the other hand, while certainly of a superior standard to that of the knight lying on the other side of the chancel, contains weepers which are far less impressively executed than the full-length figure above.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE NATIVE MONUMENT INDUSTRY IN SOUTH WALES IN THE MID FOURTEENTH CENTURY As the above discussion has made clear, the precise circumstances of the production of these locally sourced memorials are difficult to unravel, but they are highly significant to the history of late-medieval Welsh culture and society as they point to a collapse in the production of monuments in south Wales after the middle of the fourteenth century – a collapse which is likely to have been total where effigies are concerned. The monuments at St Athan, Llansannor, Coychurch, Stackpole and Llangwm, made in the 1340s, were among the last to be commissioned in the region for some decades, and were probably the last effigies to be made in south Wales until the very end of the Middle Ages. Few monuments, whether effigies or cross slabs, were even commissioned in south Wales in the second half of the fourteenth century. Only a small number of effigies at Stackpole, St David’s Cathedral, Upton, Oxwich and Abergavenny, as well as a tombchest at St Athan, the lost brass of Bishop Pascall and an incised-slab at Christchurch, can be dated to between c.1350 and c.1400, and the majority of these are likely to be imports. In fact, recovery does not seem to have got underway until the mid fifteenth century, and then the interest was all in imported products. The first reason that suggests itself for this long hiatus is the impact of the plague. The disruptive effects of the plague on art and architecture in general have long been acknowledged, yet the dislocation may not have been total. The work of Phillip Lindley and Sally Badham has shown that, despite the deaths of leading craftsmen, the disruption in some areas was not long-lasting and brasses and sculpted monuments continued to be produced, if in a more erratic manner than hitherto.31 However, Colin Gresham has attributed the long gap between c.1350 and c.1380 in the series Lindley, Gothic to Renaissance, pp. 21–2; Lindley, ‘The Black Death and English Art’; Badham, ‘Monumental Brasses and the Black Death’; Badham, ‘The de la More Effigies’, pp. 36–7.

31

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of north Wales monuments to the plague,32 and it is likely that London was better positioned to withstand the turmoil and continue, albeit in truncated form, its artistic output in a way that the poorer regions were not. Yet even compared to north Wales, patronage of monuments in the south seems to have been disrupted particularly badly. Explicit references to the Black Death and its impact in south Wales are rare, but there is sufficient indirect evidence to prove its severity, with the lowlands, close to the ports and around estuaries, bearing the brunt.33 By 1400 the population of Wales is thought to have been not much more than 200,000,34 and the revenues of the diocese of St David’s declined markedly in the second half of the fourteenth century. Temporalities valued at £333 in 1326 were only worth £190 7s 6¾d in 1377, and even less two years later.35 In Glamorgan, Cardiff seems to have been in decline from the early fourteenth century, suggesting that famine had already started to take its toll before the plague hit. The income derived from the city by the Marcher lords fell by half from 1307 to 1349, and failed to recover its former level before the end of the fifteenth century.36 Archaeological excavations in Cardiff ’s hinterland have indicated that the villages of Cwmciddy, Highlight, Barry, Merthyr Dyfan, Sully and Radyr all showed evidence of shrinkage or desertion in the second half of the fourteenth century.37 Further to the east, it has been estimated that a quarter to a third of the population of Gwent was wiped out in the 1348–49 visitation. The 1361 outbreak was worse on the coast, whereas that of 1369 may have exceeded the severity of 1348–49 in the northerly lordships of Monmouth and Three Castles.38 By 1366 the fifty heads of household at Caldicot had fallen to just eleven.39 But can the dislocation in the production of monumental effigies described above be laid solely at the door of pestilential visitations? In Wales, successive bouts of plague were exacerbated by the devastations of Owain Glyn Dŵr’s rebellion from 1400,40 which Glanmor Williams described as ‘painful, debilitating and long-lasting’.41 There was widespread physical destruction across Wales: castles, towns and other symbols of Gresham, Stone Carving, p. 1. These dates have since been questioned by Brian and Moira Gittos, who have dated several effigies to the 1370s: Brian Gittos and Mora Gittos, ‘Gresham Revisited Again’, Archaeologia Cambrensis (forthcoming). I am very grateful to Brian and Moira for letting me have sight of this article before publication. 33 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Glamorgan – Medieval Non-Defensive Secular Monuments (Cardiff, 1982), pp. 6–7; Glanmor Williams, ‘The Church, 1280–1534’, in Pembrokeshire County History, ed. Walker, pp. 312–37, at p. 318. 34 Lord, Visual Culture, p. 144. 35 Williams, ‘The Church’, p. 319. 36 Corbett, Glamorgan: Papers and Notes, pp. 164–8. 37 RCAHMW, Glamorgan – Medieval Non-Defensive Secular Monuments, pp. 7–8. 38 Davies, ‘Plague and Revolt’, pp. 222–5. 39 Jonathan Kissock, ‘Settlement and Society’, in Gwent County History, vol. 2, ed. Griffiths, Hopkins and Howell, pp. 70–88, at p. 83. 40 For a definitive treatment of the revolt see Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr. 41 Williams, Renewal and Reformation, pp. 27, 29. 32

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seigniorial dominance such as mills were particularly targeted by the rebels, while religious houses suffered at the hands of royal troops, often in retaliation for their support for the uprising.42 The nationwide impact of the revolt may be gauged by the fact that throughout the whole country there is no surviving domestic architecture from earlier than the fifteenth century.43 On a more local level, the lordship of Ogmore, within which the Sutton stone quarries were located, had yielded £382 in revenue in 1382, but nothing was forthcoming between 1402 and 1405. In 1406 a mere £13 18s 7d was collected and the manor was worth only £100 in 1413. Fifteen years later, in 1428, less than half the tenants’ land in Ogmore was occupied,44 and the nearby vills of Sutton and Northdown had been destroyed by the rebellion.45 How this dislocation and depopulation affected the manpower and output of the Sutton quarry is not documented, but presumably the disruption was significant. The impact of plague and revolt would have had a doubly damaging effect, reducing the availability of the quarry’s products as well as restricting the purchasing power of the local population. In north-east Wales, a short-lived Flintshire quarry was identified by Gresham as responsible for a distinctive series of monuments which Brian and Moira Gittos have now dated to the 1370s and ’80s, a decade or so earlier than Gresham’s chronology. So, while the local north Wales industry was able to re-establish itself after the Black Death, this did not last for long, and Gresham assigned its final downfall to a combination of further calamities such as the deaths of the craftsmen and the Glyn Dŵr revolt. He also pointed to the rising popularity of alabaster, which may have undermined the market for the local product, although this is unlikely to have had much of an effect as there are only two alabaster monuments dating from the fifteenth century in the north.46 In the south, however, ‘foreign’ imports did corner the market to the detriment of local output. Of the much lower number of monumental effigies commissioned in the south from the second half of the fourteenth century until the Reformation, only one was manufactured in south Wales.47 All of the others are made from West Country stones, alabaster or brass, indicating that the final collapse of

Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, pp. 278–9. Suggett, Houses and History, p. 26. 44 Williams, Renewal and Reformation, pp. 18–21. 45 RCAHMW, Glamorgan – Medieval Non-defensive Secular Monuments, p. 215. 46 Gresham, Stone Carving, p. 10. I am grateful to Brian and Moira Gittos for pointing this out. The alabaster effigies are at Beaumaris and Penmynnydd. 47 The rather poorly carved cadaver at St Dogmael’s Abbey, which is probably of latefifteenth- or early-sixteenth-century date, and has been identified as being probably of Sutton stone: Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, ‘Sutton Stone at St Dogmael’s Abbey’, Welsh Stone Forum Newsletter, 6 (March 2009), p. 6. It would be misleading to describe the St Dogmael’s cadaver as a ‘local’ product, however, as Sutton was quarried in Glamorgan, a distance of over seventy miles away as the crow flies. Comparison with the fine contemporary examples at Llandaff Cathedral and St Mary’s Tenby highlights the inferior talents of the mason who carved it. 42 43

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the local industry in south Wales may have been due as much to the threat posed by fashionable imports as to the unavailability of the local product. Monumental production must also be set within the wider context of architectural activity, particularly of an ecclesiastical kind. It was noted above that the heyday of the local industry coincided with a flurry of building projects at abbeys, cathedrals, parish churches and castles across south Wales. Conversely, although little is known about the combined effects of plague and revolt on Welsh art and architecture, they have been blamed, along with the financial exactions of the Marcher lords, for a lack of significant architectural activity in south Wales from the later fourteenth century into the early fifteenth.48 Pembrokeshire saw little in the way of church building for a century or so after the Black Death,49 and, although work took place on the castles at Raglan, Cardiff and Newport in the second and third quarters of the fifteenth century, it was not continuous enough to establish workshops of any stability, and there was a lack of major commissions in the larger churches further to the east. This is a point of some importance, as the unavailability of local craftsmen suitably trained in the techniques of figure sculpture may have been one of several factors driving the preference for the few ‘exotic’ brass and alabaster imports seen across the region from the 1420s. The shortage of expertise, particularly in the later fourteenth century, can be seen in the inferior quality of the Quarella tomb-chest of Sir William de Berkerolles, perhaps the result of a patron requesting a copy of an existing family monument, only to be left with the second-rate work of an inexperienced craftsman.50 The Berkerolles and other locally manufactured monuments provide a fascinating material record of the collapse of the flourishing market for effigial commemoration from the middle of the fourteenth century, and the effects of the contemporary crises on the availability of local expertise. Any workshop which might have previously existed, or craftsmen skilled in working the local stone, seem to have been no longer in operation after the middle of the century, and the local production of memorial effigies came to an abrupt end.51 It is probably this collapse that was partly responsible for the notable lack of effigial monuments to civilians and the parish and lesser monastic clergy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It has already been noted in Morris, ‘Later Gothic Architecture’, pp. 111–13. Scourfield, ‘Medieval Church Building’, p. 600. 50 A similar case of a later, less accomplished, mason trying to copy an earlier family memorial is found at Combe Florey (Somerset). Here, two effigies, to Sir John de Meriet and his first wife, were set up in about 1327, and another female effigy, to the second wife who died in 1344, was added later. The second effigy is a clear attempt to emulate the first, but done in a different stone and with less skill: Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Motivation and Choice: The Selection of Medieval Secular Effigies’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 159. It is possible that the poor-quality tomb-chest associated with the military effigy at Stackpole, described above, is a result of the disruption caused to the local availability of competent craftsmen by the Black Death. The effigy is of a style associated with the 1340s. 51 See chapter five for further discussion of the Berkerolles monuments. 48 49

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this chapter that civilian effigies in England continued to be produced until the end of the Middle Ages, and that they were often local products, such as the incised alabaster slabs of the East Midlands. In south Wales, however, the local industry had come to an end, cutting off the supply of relatively cheap sculpted effigial memorials from a class of people who could not afford an imported product. Although not necessarily a second-rate option, an obvious alternative to a carved effigy for the less prosperous potential patron would have been a cross slab. Based on the evidence of the surviving examples and fragments alone, they were extremely popular in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century, easily outnumbering effigial forms of commemoration. Although a systematic stylistic analysis has not been undertaken for the present study, the recent unpublished research of Professor Madeleine Gray, building on the work of John Rodger in the early twentieth century, has identified some common cross slab types associated with different areas and periods, and the evidence suggests that there were masons turning out enough similarly decorated slabs for the local market for these operations to be considered workshops. The two identical fragments at Merthyr Mawr have already been mentioned, and a type particularly associated with Llantwit Major and the Vale of Glamorgan is a cross fleury, the head sometimes encircled, and often with fleur-de-lys or foliage sprouting on curved stems from the shaft. At Brecon, there was a fashion for more ornate cross heads, with the whole design executed in false relief, with the inclusion of symbols or inscriptions [Fig. 28].52 The Pembrokeshire preference was often for plainer styles; stones bearing simply incised, plainshafted crosses with straight-armed heads within cusped circles have been found at Llangwm, Rhoscrowther and Robeston West, forming a little cluster connected by the Cleddau estuary. However, the surviving evidence suggests that just as the manufacture of effigies abruptly died out in south Wales following the Black Death, the production of cross slabs also took a severe downturn, although it did not end completely. It is difficult to date cross slabs precisely, but the presence of black letter script on some of the Tintern and Brecon examples indicates origins in the later fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, while an example at Pentyrch to Robert and Matilda Mathew and their son is likely to date from the second half of the fifteenth century.53 The Tintern and Pentyrch slabs also have similarly designed crosses, with distinctive floriated heads on plain shafts and stepped bases, which may point to a common origin. These are relatively scarce survivals, however, and the much lower numbers of post-plague cross slabs in south Wales have also been noted throughout much of England. In some places, such as Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, this may have been due to competition from brass, but in the Some of these examples are illustrated and discussed in Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’. Robert Mathew belonged to a branch of the powerful Mathew clan, some of whom are commemorated by elaborate alabasters in Llandaff Cathedral, indicating that cross slabs were not necessarily only resorted to by those below gentry status. 52 53

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north, where they were the most common form of memorial, they had also become extremely scarce by the end of the Middle Ages. Aleks McClain attributes this to recession because in West Yorkshire, where the economy was boosted by the textile industry, cross slab production remained buoyant in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.54 It would be stretching the evidence too far to infer from this that the economy of south Wales was so depressed from the later fourteenth century that not even a decent market in cross slabs could be sustained, for, as we have seen, some patrons were able to afford expensive imports, and it is to those that we must now turn.

WEST COUNTRY IMPORTS Of the imported stones, Dundry, quarried near Bristol, is probably the most widely used, in building as well as for monumental effigies, employed locally in the West Country as well as across the south Wales coast and as far west as Ireland. It is a creamy yellow limestone of Jurassic age, with a granular texture made of minute fragments of shells and corals.55 Painswick, another pale and creamy oolitic limestone quarried near Gloucester, was also prized for its ability to take fine detail, and both were in demand for the production of carved ornament as well as high-status monuments. Thirty-four monuments in south Wales have been identified as being produced in the workshops of the West Country, and this is likely to be an underestimate. They include the monuments of the clerical and lay elite as well as of those commemorated in civilian garb. Unlike the civilian monuments made from stones such as Sutton and Quarella, however, which tend to be on the crude side, the West Country civilians are overwhelmingly the products of talented craftsmen. This is particularly the case with the thirteenth-century examples at Carmarthen and St Hilary [Fig. 24] and the White effigies at Tenby [Plate II], produced around 1500. The West Country was also the source of several of south Wales’s finest female, military and clerical effigies, including those at Upton, Stackpole, St David’s Cathedral [Figs 10, 35], Llandaff Cathedral [Fig. 30], Newport and Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 14]. As a source of stone the West Country was remarkably consistent throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and supplies continued in smaller quantities after the production of Welsh-made monuments dried up in the mid fourteenth century. West Country stones suffered as a result of the popularity of alabaster in the later fifteenth century, but were still being imported for high-status monuments, such as those of Bishops Marshall of Llandaff and Morgan of St David’s, right up until the end of our period. The standard of execution could be variable at this time, however: the pedestrian McClain, ‘Cross Slab Monuments in the Late Middle Ages’, pp. 42, 49 and 61. Jeremy Knight, ‘Medieval Imported Building Stone and Utilised Stone in Wales and Ireland’, in From Ringforts to Fortified Houses: Studies on Castles and Other Monuments in Honour of David Sweetman, ed. Conleth Manning (Dublin, 2008), pp. 143–54, at p. 144. 54 55

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modelling of the Dundry stone monument of Bishop Marshall compares highly unfavourably with the Renaissance fluidity and dynamism of Bishop Morgan’s Beer stone effigy and tomb chest [Fig. 10]. Despite this occasional drop in standards, the sustained interest in West Country imports not only reflects the continued dominance of south Wales’s trading links across the Bristol Channel, but also the lack of a viable local alternative to the more distantly situated brass and alabaster workshops. Brian and Moira Gittos’s research into the distribution of Ham stone effigies in south-west England found that 90% are found within a twentyfive-mile radius of the quarries in Somerset, strongly suggesting that they were manufactured at the quarry and transported as finished pieces.56 This is also likely to have been the case with the majority of the West Country monuments found in south Wales. Yet, the fact that Dundry and other stones were imported in large quantities to sites such as St Mary’s Haverfordwest, St Mary’s Tenby, Llandaff Cathedral, Chepstow, Usk, Caerleon and Newport castles from the late twelfth to the fifteenth century57 presents the alternative possibility that some ‘imported’ effigies could have been produced on site by masons utilising unwanted blocks left over from building projects, as long as they were large enough. Stylistic analysis is of importance here, although it is not easily applied to the often badly damaged knights such as those at Ewenny Priory [Fig. 15], Newport and Crickhowell, all of which are West Country imports. Nor do any West Country products appear to have the shortened legs of the Pembrokeshire knights, suggesting they were not worked by this particular group of masons. However, the three thirteenth-century Dundry bishops’ effigies at Llandaff Cathedral were probably completed at a time when that stone, and the West Country masons skilled in working it, were being employed in the church’s rebuilding, and so they could feasibly have been made on site. Moreover, Lindley has suggested that the Painswick tomb-chest of Lawrence Hastings at Abergavenny was completed on site after an initial rough blocking out at the quarry.58 Difficult as it is to draw definite conclusions about craftsmanship and workshop origin from the monuments themselves, the available evidence from south Wales does support the growing consensus that monuments of all types were produced under a range of circumstances, from ad hoc single products to specialist workshops with a recognisable style.

Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Medieval Ham Hill’. Scourfield, ‘Medieval Church Building’, p. 589; Knight, ‘Medieval Imported Building Stone’, p. 145, pp. 151–2. Information on Tenby pers. comm Tim Palmer, via email 26 September 2011. 58 Lindley, ‘Two Fourteenth-Century Tomb Monuments’, p. 147. 56 57

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1  TOMB OF ARNOLD BUTLER (D.1540/1) AND SYCILL MONINGTON, ST BRIDE’S MAJOR (GLAMORGAN)

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2  PLAQUE DEPICTING THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE PASSION, TOMB OF ‘ST DYFRIG’, LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

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3  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF A LADY OF THE TURBEVILLE FAMILY, COITY (GLAMORGAN)

4  DETAIL OF MONUMENT OF WILLIAM AP THOMAS (D.1445) AND GWLADYS DDU (D.1454), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTH­ SHIRE)

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5  TOMB OF RICHARD HERBERT OF EWYAS (D.1510), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

6  TOMB OF MAURICE DE LONDRES, EWENNY PRIORY (GLAMORGAN)

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7  EFFIGY OF A KNIGHT (POSSIBLY MORGAN GAM [D.1241]), MARGAM ABBEY STONES MUSEUM (GLAMORGAN)

8  BISHOP ANSELM (D.1247), ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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9  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF BISHOP GOWER (D.1347), ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

10  BISHOP JOHN MORGAN (D.1504), ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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11  TOMB OF ARCHDEACON JOHN HIOT (D.1419), ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

12  DETAIL OF CADAVER MONUMENT, TENBY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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13  EFFIGY OF EVA DE BRAOSE (D.1257), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

14  TOMB OF LAURENCE DE HASTINGS (D.1349), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

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15 [LEFT]  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF PAYNE DE TURBEVILLE (D.C.1318), EWENNY PRIORY (GLAMORGAN)

16 [BELOW]  DETAIL OF MONUMENT TO JOHN PENRICE AND MARGARET FLEMING (C.1400), OXWICH (GLAMORGAN)

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17 [ABOVE]  DAVID MATHEW (D. BEFORE 1470), LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

18 [RIGHT]  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF RICHARD HERBERT OF COLDBROOK (D.1469), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

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19  TOMB OF SIR THOMAS MORGAN (D.1510), LLANMARTIN (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

20  MONUMENT TO SIR WILLIAM MATHEW (D.1528) AND JENET HENRY (D.1530), LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

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21  TOMB OF CHRISTOPHER MATHEW (D. AFTER 1530) AND ELIZABETH MORGAN (D.1526), SEEN FROM THE LADY CHAPEL, LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

22  DETAIL OF EFFIGIES OF WALTER AND CHRISTINA AUBREY, BRECON CATHEDRAL (BRECONSHIRE)

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23  CROSS SLAB TO MATHEW VOSS (D.1534), LLANTWIT MAJOR (GLAMORGAN)

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24 [ABOVE]  EFFIGY OF CIVILIAN, ST HILARY (GLAMORGAN)

25 [RIGHT]  EFFIGY OF LADY, TRELLECH (MONMOUTHSHIRE)

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26  SEMI-EFFIGIAL SLAB OF ISABELLA VERNEY (D.1417), TENBY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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27  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF A LAWYER, COYCHURCH (GLAMORGAN)

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28  CROSS SLAB TO DAVID SMYT, BRECON CATHEDRAL (BRECONSHIRE)

29  TOMB-CHEST OF JOHN WHITE (C.1500), TENBY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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30  MONUMENT SAID TO COMMEMORATE ST DYFRIG, LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

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31 EARLYFOURTEENTHCENTURY KNIGHT, UPTON (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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32  CIVILIAN EFFIGY IN MERTHYR MAWR CHURCHYARD (GLAMORGAN)

33  EAST END OF TOMB-CHEST OF WILLIAM DE BERKEROLLES (D.1327) AND PHELICE DE VERE, ST ATHAN (GLAMORGAN)

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34 [ABOVE]  EFFIGY AND TOMB SURROUND AT STACKPOLE (PEMBROKESHIRE)

35 [LEFT]  DETAIL OF EFFIGY ATTRIBUTED TO RHYS GRYG, BUT BEARING THE TALBOT ARMS, ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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36  FRAGMENTS OF CROSS SLABS DISPLAYED AT EWENNY PRIORY (GLAMORGAN)

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37  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF A KNIGHT, LLANGENNITH (GLAMORGAN)

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38  CANOPY ANGEL, TOMB OF ‘ST TEILO’, LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

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39  VIRGIN AND CHILD, TOMB OF ‘ST TEILO’, LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL (GLAMORGAN)

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40  VIRGIN AND CHILD, EAST END OF TOMB-CHEST OF RICHARD HERBERT OF COLDBROOK (D.1469), ABERGAVENNY PRIORY (MONMOUTH­ SHIRE)

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41  SAINTS ON THE TOMB-CHEST OF BISHOP GOWER (D.1347), ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

42  DETAIL OF EFFIGY OF ARNOLD BUTLER (D.1540/1), SHOWING CROSSED LEGS, ST BRIDE’S MAJOR (GLAMORGAN)

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43  COPED SLAB OF A LADY, ADAPTED TO FORM THE MONUMENT OF A CLERIC, LLANTWIT MAJOR (GLAMORGAN)

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44  EFFIGY OF A PRIOR, MONKTON PRIORY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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45  REMAINS OF AN EFFIGY OF A KNIGHT, MONKTON PRIORY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

46  DETAIL OF ROBBED OUT BRASS MATRICES, MONKTON PRIORY (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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47  EFFIGY OF PRIEST SHOWING ICONOCLASTIC DAMAGE, ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL (PEMBROKESHIRE)

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48  REMAINS OF EFFIGY OF A KNIGHT, LLANDOUGH CHURCHYARD (GLAMORGAN)

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4

T

he primary motivation behind the commissioning and erection of memorial monuments across medieval Christian Europe was spiritual – the easing of the soul’s path through purgatory, which the monument aimed to effect by soliciting prayers from clergy and passers-by. Such requests were implicit in the very existence of the monument in the first place, drawing attention to the plight of the deceased in an eye-catching and persuasive manner, but they could also be made explicit through elements of the tomb’s design and location. In common with their counterparts throughout Britain and Europe, many medieval Welsh monuments include devotional imagery or inscriptions calling for prayers, or were sited in a spiritually potent part of the church, in the chancel or near a side altar or image. In some cases monuments formed just one part of a wider commemorative scheme that may have included chantries, stained glass and other parts of the church fabric and fittings; as one scholar has recently expressed it, monuments were ‘another vital weapon in the battle for salvation’.1

MEDIEVAL WELSH SPIRITUALITY Two very different forms of written evidence which allow us an (admittedly distorted) view of medieval Welsh popular spirituality as expressed by the individuals themselves, or their proxies, are wills and poetry.2 Both indicate that the Welsh were orthodox and conservative in their religious beliefs, a view confirmed by the material evidence to be gleaned from monuments. Welsh testators were not only entirely mainstream in their interests, they also seem to have been largely unfamiliar with (or uninterested in) the

Badham, Seeking Salvation, p. 17. The wills mentioned in this study were all proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury between the late fourteenth century and the end of the reign of Henry VIII. The data set is overwhelmingly skewed towards the very end of this period. For more details see Biebrach, ‘Monuments and Commemoration’, chapter five. 1

2

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more exotic of the new devotional trends, whether orthodox or heterodox in nature.3 Given this religious conservatism it is not surprising that devotion to the Virgin Mary is a thread running throughout the available evidence, and within Wales as a whole she was more popular than any other saint.4 Testators commended their souls to her and requested burial before her image or in chapels dedicated to her, while several chantries and lights are known to have been dedicated to her. The famous shrine of the Virgin at Penrhys in the Rhondda Valley proved so powerful a draw for pilgrims that it was bringing in £6 per annum just before the Dissolution and Llantarnam Abbey derived one-fifth of its income from offerings there.5 In 1493 Thomas Kemmys, a gentleman of Newport, left a velvet gown to adorn the image in his will.6 There is some evidence of devotion to native Celtic saints: in 1470 Reynborn Mathew gave profits from lands to adorn the shrines of saints Teilo, Dyfrig and Euddogwy at Llandaff Cathedral; Merthyr Tydfil church contained an image of St Tydfil, remembered by Lewis ap Richard in 1521; and a light dedicated to St Barroc burned at Wenvoe parish church.7 On the whole, however, the evidence is firmly in favour of the primacy of the Roman canon as the religious focus of the more wealthy elements of the southern Welsh population. From the fourteenth century a devotional fashion arose around the Trinity, and this seems to have had some impact on the piety of Cardiff residents: a chantry dedicated to the Trinity was established at a time and by persons unknown in St John’s parish church, and a guild of the Trinity was also situated in the town.8 Of greater significance for the history of late-medieval spirituality, however, is the increasingly Christocentric focus to lay piety which has been detected towards the end of the Middle Ages, and there is some evidence that this was experienced in south Wales. Over half the lights paid for by testamentary bequests in the region were placed in locations in the church connected with the Passion or the sacrifice of the mass, such as the high altar, the rood, the sepulchre and before the sacrament. In 1469 the earl of Pembroke asked for the windows of the chapel in which he planned to be buried, at Abergavenny Priory, to be glazed with the stories of the Nativity and the Passion,9 while some time See Williams, Welsh Church, pp. 524–60, for Welsh religion in this period. Williams, Welsh Church, p. 481–2. 5 This is a remarkable figure when it is remembered that Becket’s shrine at Canterbury brought in £16 per annum: Glanmor Williams, ‘Pen-rhys: Poets and Pilgrims’, Monmouthshire Antiquary 20 (2004), pp. 9–15, at p. 11; Jane Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales (Cardiff, 2008), p. 56. 6 TNA, PROB 11/10, image ref. 122. 7 TNA, PROB 11/21, image ref. 21; TNA, E301/74 fol. 3v. 8 The guild’s seal, of about 1450, survives, and is illustrated in Cardiff Records, ed. Matthews, vol. 1, between pp. 260–1. 9 CCL, MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia, fol. 56. The earl later opted for burial at Tintern Abbey. 3

4

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after 1534 Philip ap Howell requested five masses of the Five Wounds of Christ to be celebrated in perpetuity on his anniversary at Llansoy.10 In comparison with some places in England, however, Welsh devotion to aspects of Christ’s humanity and divinity seems somewhat muted. In Kent increased Christocentrism was accompanied by a decline in the devotion to the saints,11 but in south Wales the saints were not ‘pushed out’ in favour of Christ. Interestingly, parts of Kent were suspected to be centres of Lollardy, and its inhabitants seem to have taken readily to reformed theology, while neither of these is true of Wales. The impression given by the wills is reinforced by poetry. It is difficult to overemphasise the importance of poetry, which was produced by a highly trained professional class of poets or bards, in medieval Welsh culture. Written exclusively in Welsh, the works survive in their hundreds for individual poets and take several strictly regularised forms, including praise poetry and elegies for dead patrons. Where religion forms the subject matter, the poems focus on Mary, Christ and the saints as well as the stock practices of late-medieval Christianity, such as pilgrimage and devotion to relics.12 The fifteenth century has been termed the ‘“Golden Age” of Marian poetry in Welsh’, with specific images of Mary, as well as the saint herself, being celebrated. Nine poems refer to the image and well at Penrhys, and Rhisiart ap Rhys (d.c.1510) praised local gentlewoman Katherine Mathew of Radyr for her gifts of wax candles and gold to the shrine and provision of hospitality to the pilgrims.13 A study of the works of Guto’r Glyn, a prolific fifteenth-century poet patronised by many of the leading Welsh families of the day, reveals many references to the saints and Mary in his non-religious works, reflecting the spiritual milieu within which he and his patrons operated. These include popular saints from the Roman canon such as Peter, Christopher and Benedict, as well as native ones such as Teilo, Padarn, Winifred, Beuno and of course David. St Veronica and the Vernicle are mentioned, while there also seems to be an awareness of themes such as the Dance of Death.14

10 This is a rare example of a request for this particular form of devotion. D.H. Williams, ‘Medieval Monmouthshire Wills in the National Library of Wales’, Monmouthshire Antiquary 19 (2003), pp. 113–28, at p. 119. 11 Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion, p. 75. 12 Katharine K. Olson, ‘”Y Ganrif Fawr”? Piety, Literature and Patronage in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Wales’, in The Church and Literature, ed. Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen, Studies in Church History, 48 (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 107–23, at pp. 121–2. 13 Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality, quote at p. 11, p. 197. The wooden image was so popular prior to the Reformation that it was removed as secretly as possible, under cover of darkness, before it was taken to Smithfield to be burned. 14 Katharine Olson, ‘Late Medieval Christianity, Saints’ Cults and Popular Devotional Trends: Guto’r Glyn and Fifteenth-Century Religious Culture in Britain and Europe’, in Gwalch Cywyddau Gwŷr: Essays on Guto’r Glyn and Fifteenth-Century Wales, ed. Dylan Foster Evans, Barry J. Lewis and Ann Parry Owen (Aberystwyth, 2013), pp. 327–74, passim.

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MONUMENT DESIGN CROSS SLABS AND SEMI-EFFIGIAL SLABS A number of aspects of a monument’s design could underscore its spiritual function. In the most basic form of monument, the cross slab, the hope for salvation was encapsulated in the principal decorative device – the cross, symbol of Christ’s bodily sacrifice on behalf of mankind. Cross slabs were the most common form of memorial in England until the thirteenth century,15 as they were in Wales, where they continued to be produced up to and beyond the Reformation. There are sizeable collections of cross slabs in many major south Welsh churches, notably Tintern Abbey, St Illtud’s Llantwit Major, Ewenny Priory [Fig. 36], Margam Abbey and Brecon Cathedral, while they can also be found in ones and twos, fragmentary and intact, in small parish churches across the region. Although they became very much rarer in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the examples from this later period occasionally contain more information about the personal piety of the deceased than any of their more numerous thirteenth- or fourteenth-century equivalents, enhancing the appeal for prayers. The inscription, possibly unique in south Wales, on the cross slab of Jankyn ap Hoell at Tintern Abbey is described on p.000, below. Also at Tintern is another fifteenth-century cross slab which has the additional decoration of fish: a single larger one and three intertwined smaller ones, on either side of the cross shaft. Rodger has interpreted these not as trade symbols (and therefore representing a fisherman) but as a version of the traditional early Christian symbol for Christ, the three intertwined fish symbolising the Trinity.16 It is an interesting suggestion, and again this imagery is not replicated elsewhere on a surviving monument in south Wales. At a number of locations further west, in Glamorgan, a distinctive late design made up of a central cross with two smaller ones branching off at either side is found, which may also be symbolic of the Trinity or of rood loft sculptures where the central figure of Jesus is flanked by Mary and St John.17 The intention may have been to put passers-by in mind of the rood, or of the Trinity, and prompt their contemplation of these holy images while prayers were being offered for the deceased’s soul. Much less common than the cross slab in south Wales, with fewer than twenty-five examples recorded for this study, nearly all of which are in Pembrokeshire, was the semi-effigial slab. Combining a head, and Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 60. Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’, p. 44. 17 Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’, pp. 55–6. The slabs are very late and may even post-date the Reformation. One, at Laleston, has been reused in the eighteenth century. Professor Maddy Gray has suggested that these triple-branching crosses may have been inspired by the rood at Llangynwyd, which became a pilgrimage site in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 15

16

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sometimes praying hands, with the cross, the inclusion of human features brought a greater sense of urgency to the appeal for prayers, especially with the inclusion of praying hands, although this form is rare in south Wales. Cross and semi-effigial slabs therefore, while presenting necessarily fewer opportunities for the display of religious sentiment other than the basic wish for salvation, were occasionally utilised as an expression of the personal piety of the deceased and could be simple and effective reminders of the need for prayers. Unlike most effigial monuments, however, cross slabs were easily recycled into the church fabric (an increasing number in south Wales are being found reused as lintels or steps, for example) or otherwise destroyed or discarded, and these many survivors hint at the very large numbers originally produced and what a common sight they would once have been. For this reason, the patron wishing to stand out from the crowd and ensure a more long-lived presence in the church may have opted for a fully effigial monument. This afforded many more opportunities for grabbing the attention and prayers of the faithful and effectively displaying the individual’s spiritual enthusiasms. EFFIGIAL MONUMENTS: THE EFFIGY The greater visual impact and emotive immediacy of the effigial monument compared to the cross slab is of course achieved by the depiction of the human figure, whose attitude could be manipulated in order to encourage interaction with the living and prompt their prayers. Thirteenth- and earlyfourteenth-century south Welsh effigies, like those of England, display an inventive range of poses to effect this desire. Fourteenth-century knights at Llangennith, Llansannor, Abergavenny, Stackpole, Llangwm and Carew turn their heads towards the viewer in a mute appeal for sympathy which must have been very affecting, the Llangennith knight’s face being particularly gentle and expressive [Fig. 37]. In some cases the figures may have been gazing at devotional images, or at a nearby altar. Examples of this are known in several English churches, such as the tomb of Oliver, Lord Ingham (d.1344) at Ingham (Norfolk), who twists around to look at an image painted on the wall behind him.18 Although there is little firm evidence for the association of tombs and wall-paintings in south Wales, a similar concept to that used at Ingham is employed in a monument at Llandaff Cathedral where a fifteenth-century carved Image of Pity is placed on the underside of an arched recess so that the effigy in the recess would have been able to ‘see’ it.19 The juxtaposition of image and effigy drew 18 The painting is too damaged to tell the subject matter for certain, but it may have been a scene from the life of St Giles: Sally Badham, ‘Beautiful Remains of Antiquity: the Medieval Monuments in the Former Trinitarian Priory Church at Ingham, Norfolk. Part 2: the High Tombs’, Church Monuments, 22 (2007), pp. 7–42, at pp. 22–3. 19 The effigy currently in this recess is that of a thirteenth-century bishop and is not original. For a full discussion of the thirteenth-century monuments and their associated

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attention to the personal piety of the deceased, implicated onlookers in his plight and encouraged the contemplation of Christ’s Passion in a highly effective strategy to elicit prayers for the salvation of the soul. The piety of the commemorated was sometimes evinced in ‘heartholding’ poses, symbolising devotion. In south Wales this is associated particularly with the far west: apart from Eva de Braose at Abergavenny [Fig. 13], all the surviving examples come from Pembrokeshire, at St David’s Cathedral (two), Carew (two) and Bosherston. None of the objects being held, however, are recognisably hearts and they could be other things: Eva’s object looks something like an inverted pear, while the others can be best described as oval in shape. At Bosherston it appears to be a small bird, but this is likely to be later recarving, and they are probably all best interpreted as reliquaries or phials containing holy oil or water. Owing to the full size of most of the monuments (only Eva being less than life size), they are highly unlikely to be marking actual heart burials, which tend to have miniature memorials.20 Whatever the objects are intended to be their sacred and devotional nature is evident and they are likely to be just another decorative device in the repertoire of the inventive commemorative sculptor of the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century. From the second half of the fourteenth century effigies settle down and stiffen into a recumbent, straight-legged, upward-gazing posture. Although this gives a sense of greater detachment from the viewer, the hands now invariably adopted a praying pose, which continues to highlight personal devotion. When combined with religious imagery in the form of supporting angels and saints, this was just as effective in communicating the piety of those commemorated and reminding onlookers of the need for prayers. From the beginning of the fifteenth century a new design of monumental effigy began to appear in Britain, following earlier Continental examples, where the deceased was represented not as alert and awaiting salvation, but as a withered corpse.21 Three such cadaver memorials survive in south Wales, at St Dogmael’s Abbey, St Mary’s, Tenby, and Llandaff Cathedral. The Tenby example [Fig. 12] is thought to represent an archdeacon or bishop of St David’s,22 and as the higher clergy were particularly avid patrons of carvings at Llandaff Cathedral see Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments in Llandaff Cathedral’, pp. 221–39, especially p. 226. 20 An example is at Chichester Cathedral, where a small monument depicts hands holding a heart within a trefoil. 21 For cadaver, or transi, tombs see: Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1973); Pamela King, ‘The Cadaver Tomb in England: Novel Manifestation of an Old Idea’, Church Monuments, 5 (1990), pp. 26–38; Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Food for Worms – Food for Thought: the Appearance and Interpretation of the “Verminous” Cadaver in Britain and Europe’, Church Monuments, 20 (2005), pp. 40–80. Over 170 cadaver monuments of various kinds survive in England, and so Wales is rather poorly endowed with them in comparison. 22 John Denby, archdeacon of St David’s (d.1499): Lloyd, Orbach and Scourfield, Pembrokeshire, p. 472, or John Hunden, who resigned the bishopric of Llandaff in 1476 and was made archdeacon of St David’s: Lord, Visual Culture, p. 195, Fig. 302.

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this monumental sub-genre, it may be supposed that the other two also represent clerics. Once seen as a reaction by patrons and craftsmen to the horrors of the Black Death, the cadaver monument is in fact an expression of the pervasive late-medieval cult of the macabre in northern European art, literature and sculpture. Drawing on the theme of the Three Living and the Three Dead, where three young, rich and carefree nobles are urged to mend their ways after a confrontation with three putrefying corpses, the cadaver monument acted as a memento mori, exemplified by the inscription on the tomb of John Baret (d.1467) of Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk): ‘He that wil sadly beholde one with his ie / may se hys owyn merowr and lerne for to die.’23 The at once pitiful and repellent naked corpse was the antithesis of the standard way of representing the deceased, decked in the trappings of all his or her earthly status: Death, the great leveller, brought all to the same end and a mindfulness of the stark realities of the human condition should bring about a spirit of humility and repentance in the viewer. He or she would be moved by pity to pray for the deceased and shocked into amending his or her own life. None of the Welsh cadaver monuments is of the ‘double-decker’ form favoured by Archbishop Chichele at Canterbury or Bishop Beckington at Wells,24 nor, due to lack of identifications, is it possible to link them to the group of Lancastrian court patrons identified by Pamela King.25 However, the fact that they exist at all in such relatively out-of-the-way spots is an indication of the awareness among south Welsh patrons of some of the more avant-garde European cultural practices. EFFIGIAL MONUMENTS: THE SUPPORTING CAST Additional sacred imagery is included on Welsh monuments in a variety of forms. One of the more common manifestations is in the form of attendant angels at the heads of effigies, which first appeared in the late thirteenth century and continued as a standard feature on effigial monuments until the end of the Middle Ages. In many cases in south Wales the angels simply sit or kneel to the side of the cushion, as if to protect the dead person, but occasionally they are more active, and play a literally supporting role. On the fourteenth-century monument of a lawyer at Coychurch each angel puts one hand to the back of the effigy’s head and grabs his hood with the other, as if to begin the process of lifting him upwards into Heaven [Fig. 27]. Rather energetic angels are found on the monuments of three thirteenthcentury bishops at Llandaff Cathedral: on two they swoop downwards towards the bishop’s head, swinging thuribles; on the other one bears up the Quoted in Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 320. Here the cadaver forms the bottom tier, juxtaposed with the traditional image of the vested bishop lying above. 25 Pamela King, ‘The English Cadaver Tomb in the Late Fifteenth Century: Some Indications of a Lancastrian Connection’, in Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages, ed. J.H.M. Taylor (Liverpool, 1984), pp. 45–55. 23

24

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bishop’s soul, represented by a small human figure, towards Heaven [Fig. 38]. Tomb-chests provide opportunities for additional imagery of this sort, such as the shield-bearing angels and cowled monastic figures found on the alabaster monuments of midlands origin which were popular amongst the gentry of south Wales in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Three of these monuments, to members of the Mathew and Herbert families at Llandaff Cathedral and Abergavenny Priory, also have a figure of a sleeping bedesman under the foot of the male effigy. The solemn poses and attitudes of grief struck by these figures and their manipulation of beads indicating the action of prayer were clear prompts to a similar action in others and designed to form a connection between the onlooker and the (possibly long-) dead occupant of the tomb. The bedesmen beneath the foot were never intended for public view, however. On the effigies of Christopher Mathew and Richard Herbert they are more or less entirely hidden from view against the recess wall, and Sir William Mathew’s bedesman is also difficult to access. In a way this did not matter: the little carvings crystallised prayer into an eternal act, and what human eyes could not see would in any case be visible to God.26 Such figures are, of course, generic in nature and formed part of the standard repertoire of late-medieval tomb manufacturers, but in some cases it is possible to glimpse a more personalised approach which may reflect more closely the personal piety of the individual commemorated. The late-medieval Welsh devotion to the Virgin has been briefly described above and it is reflected in a small number of monuments in south Wales which display Marian imagery.27 One of the earliest of these is the earlythirteenth-century monument, traditionally claimed to be that of St Teilo but more probably that of a contemporary bishop, in Llandaff Cathedral, which contains a small Virgin and Child carving in the apex of the canopy over the bishop’s head [Fig. 39], later disfigured by iconoclasts and further marred by the ill-advised addition of thick gold paint. More visible and expressive are three alabaster panels associated with the Herbert monuments at Abergavenny: the Annunciation, which decorates the east end of the tomb-chest of Sir William ap Thomas (d.1446) and Gwladus Ddu; a Virgin and Child on the east end of the tomb of their son Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469) [Fig. 40]; and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin panel fixed to the back of the tomb of their descendant Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510) [Fig. 5].28 The Virgin is 26 Some other examples of this feature, at Harewood (Yorkshire) and Strelley (Nottinghamshire), are not hidden from view. 27 For Welsh religious iconography see Madeleine Gray, Images of Piety: The Iconography of Traditional Religion in Late-Medieval Wales (Oxford, 2000) and Lord, Visual Culture. 28 The Assumption and Coronation were frequently conflated in late-medieval art: Julian Luxford, ‘The Hastings Brass at Elsing: a Contextual Analysis’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 18, iii (2011), pp. 193–211, at p. 199.

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here flanked by the figures of Richard and his wife Margaret Cradock and their children, who kneel in adoration of the scene, accompanied by shields of their arms. There is a certain neatness to the Marian imagery on these monuments: not only was the priory dedicated to the Virgin, but the iconography of the three tombs, although separated by five or six decades, is complementary and mutually reinforcing. The Annunciation on the earliest tomb (Sir William) and the Assumption/Coronation on the latest (Herbert of Ewyas) form the book-ends of Mary’s life, while the seated Virgin cradling the infant Jesus on the middle tomb (Herbert of Coldbrook) epitomises her central place in Catholic theology and iconography as the mother of Christ. In this scheme the Herbert family’s long-standing devotion to the Virgin is expressed as a facet of their patronage of the priory, and it is tempting to speculate that the two later generations opted for appropriate scenes from Mary’s life as a way of linking the generations together through a shared family spirituality.29 There is little room in this iconographical scheme for Christocentric imagery, making the Herberts seem rather old-fashioned in their devotional interests, but in this they would not have been unusual in Wales, even in the decades leading up to the Reformation. Evidence of the Welsh devotion to the major saints has already been seen through poetry and wills, and this is also expressed in monuments. Occasionally, name saints appear, such as the St Christopher pendant worn by Christopher Mathew (d. after 1531) at Llandaff Cathedral, but in the majority of cases we must assume that the choices made reflect personal spiritual preferences for the saints that would have been prayed to in life. At Tenby the late-fifteenth-century tomb-chests of Thomas and John White contain images of St Catherine and saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist, as well as an archbishop who may be intended for St David, before whom their wives and children kneel in adoration [Fig. 29]. It is noticeable that, where such tomb iconography is found in south Wales, it reflects the Roman canon rather than the Celtic, despite the dedication of many churches to Celtic saints. This is entirely in keeping with what we know of the region’s chantry dedications, as well as the testamentary evidence mentioned above, underlining the thorough integration of south Welsh funerary art and culture into mainstream English practice.30 The White tomb-chests aside, several other monuments contain carvings of saints, but these are not always easy to identify. Figures on the tombchest of Bishop Morgan (d.1504) at St David’s have been so abraded that it is difficult to see what attributes they hold which would mark them out as particular saints. It is possible to make out that four are holding open books, so they may be the four Evangelists. Four out of the six male and two 29 Richard Herbert, who was illegitimate, may also have intended to emphasise his descent from Sir William ap Thomas by continuing his tomb’s Marian imagery. 30 For chantries in the diocese of Llandaff see Biebrach, ‘Monuments and Commemoration’, chapter five, and Madeleine Gray, ‘The Last Days of the Chantries and Shrines of Monmouthshire’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1991), pp. 21–40.

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female saints lining the north side of the tomb-chest of Bishop Gower, also at St David’s, are recognisable. In the second, third, fourth and fifth places respectively are saints Andrew, Peter, Paul and Peter Martyr [Fig. 41]. One of the female saints may be St Catherine – a large object held on her left side has been hacked away – but the others are not so easy to pin down. Catherine also appears in a niche on a tomb surround at Upton, together with St Paul, St Margaret and an unidentified male saint. The inhabitants of late-medieval Wales also shared in the devotional trends of the time in their occasional interest in the increasingly Christocentric focus of popular religion. The imagery associated with the main events of Christ’s life, and in particular his death, was of especial relevance to the salvific purpose of the memorial monument. Perhaps its most subtle, although still direct, expression is found in the IHS monogram on the idiosyncratic semi-effigial monument of Isabella Verney at Tenby.31 Two carved panels at Llandaff Cathedral displaying the Instruments of the Passion are fixed to the tomb-chest of Bishop John Marshall (d.1496) and the back of the tomb-recess of a thirteenth-century bishop in the north aisle [Fig. 2]. It is not certain whether they were originally associated with these monuments (that on the recess wall is undoubtedly much later than the effigy) but they would have perfectly fitted into a decorative commemorative scheme aimed at provoking intercessory prayer. The thirteenth-century bishop’s effigy is more likely to have been originally connected with another image now fixed to the tomb-chest, a contemporary carving of Christ in Majesty, taking the deceased’s hope for salvation, as expressed in the imagery of Christ’s death and resurrection, to its ultimate conclusion. Images of Christ emerging from the tomb are also found on the brass of Sir Hugh Johnys at Swansea (c.1500) and the stone monument of Bishop John Morgan (d.1504) at St David’s Cathedral, the latter carved in a flowing and dramatic Renaissance style which was decades ahead of its time for this part of the British Isles. Probably the most strident and eye-catching manifestation of Christcentred devotion in south Wales is a remarkably early one, found on the early-fourteenth-century tomb of Walter and Christina Aubrey at Brecon Priory [Fig. 22].32 The couple are depicted lying side by side and between their heads is a carving of the Crucifixion, flanked by the figures of Mary and St John the Evangelist. As if to hammer home the Aubreys’ hopes for their salvation, the figure of Walter grasps another crucifix to his chest, which Peter Lord has interpreted as a representation of an actual devotional object

31 Also found within the cross heads on a number of slabs at Brecon Cathedral and Tintern Abbey. 32 The couple were buried in the Dominican friary at Brecon, now Christ’s College, and the tomb was moved to the priory either after the Dissolution or, which is more likely, after the Civil Wars. Stylistically it is of probable early-fourteenth-century date, and apparently once bore the date 1312: Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, vol. 2, p. 70.

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owned by Walter.33 It is unusual to find this kind of iconography so closely associated with the effigies themselves, as opposed to gracing the tombchest or alcove as at Llandaff and St David’s cathedrals, and the Aubrey tomb effectively demonstrates the inventiveness of monument designers in this period. EPITAPHS AND INSCRIPTIONS As the epitaph of John Baret, quoted earlier, demonstrates, inscriptions encapsulated the fundamental purpose of the monument, calling for prayers and God’s mercy for the commemorated. Fewer than half of the monuments in this study have surviving epitaphs and almost all are quite succinct in form.34 The most common style is the ‘Orate pro anima’ or ‘Hic iacet’ type (or their Norman-French equivalents), which merely give the name of the deceased and call for prayers for their soul. Ultimately, all that was needed for the purposes of the prayerful observer was the name of the person for whom they were to pray, and so a minimalist approach was taken in some cases, such as on the cross slab of John Lewys at Brecon Priory and the incised slab of ‘Elizabet’ at Flemingston, which give no more detail than the name of the deceased. Whether the viewers of the slab of ‘I R’ at Brecon would have been able to identify him or her from their initials is a moot point. In some cases the onlooker is reminded of the reciprocal nature of their prayers, presumably to encourage more of them: anyone who prayed for the soul of Joan Fleming at her tomb in Flemingston church was promised forty days off their own time in purgatory. At Tintern, the slab of Jankyn ap Hoell eschews the more conventional ‘Orate pro anima’ requests for prayer for something more urgent and direct. Inscribed in a rather florid script either side of the cross head is the plea ‘Ladi help, Mercy Jhesu’, followed by the deceased’s name.35 The words are a paraphrase of the opening line of the early-fifteenth-century poem ‘Passion of Christ Strengthen Me’ by John Audelay, which continues with the line ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’, followed by successive stanzas which meditate on Jesus’s sacrifice and the intercessory power of his mother.36 Although this is a subject altogether fitting for a memorial, the written formula is not seen elsewhere in south Wales in a monumental context, suggesting that it was a deliberate choice on the part of the deceased or his executors, and may point not only to a familiarity with contemporary devotional literature but also to a sense of personal spiritual succour gained from the poem’s 33 Lord, Visual Culture, pp. 149–50. Lord notes an iconographic parallel in County Meath, Ireland (n. 148). 34 That of Sir Hugh Johnys at Swansea (c.1500) is more fulsome and records details of his successful military career. 35 Illustrated in Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’, plate VIII. 36 Cited in Barry Spurr, See the Virgin Blest: The Virgin Mary in English Poetry (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 25–6.

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ultimately hopeful message, which ends ‘Passio Christi conforta me’. Simple, short prayers containing the name of Jesus are commonly seen on brasses in England, where they often appear in scrolls. The invocation of Jesus’s name was associated with the preaching of travelling friars, and the brevity of the invocation is a feature of contemporary devotional practices, where short statements were held to reach God more effectively than longer, more complex ones.37 This brief text therefore reveals Jankyn ap Hoell to have been a man fully tuned in to the spiritual thinking of the day and certain of how best to effect his desire for salvation. Who was the intended audience for these calls for prayer? The language of inscriptions on English monuments has been studied in relation to audience and the construction of identity,38 but it is difficult to draw any but the most tentative conclusions from the Welsh evidence owing to the low numbers of surviving or recorded examples. Inscriptions, many of which are extremely fragmentary, are known of on seventy-nine – well under a quarter – of the monuments in this survey. Just over half (forty-four) of these are in Latin, twenty-nine are in French, five are English and just one is in Welsh. Over half of the French inscriptions are found in parish churches, which may say something about the importance of the (Anglo-Norman) lay parish community in providing the hoped for spiritual aid, but as far more monuments are located in lowland rural and urban parish churches compared to cathedrals or monasteries, this may just be a reflection of the patterns of geographical dispersal discussed in chapter one. That this is the case is suggested by the fact that the single biggest location of the Latin inscriptions is also parochial, rather than the more exclusively clerical milieu of the monastery. What is really interesting here, of course, is the almost total absence of the Welsh language. Only one monument – unusually an inscription brass – has a surviving Welsh inscription: that of the chronicler Adam Usk (d.1430), in Usk Priory. Composed in the traditional Welsh metrical form of the cywydd, it therefore bears little relation to the more usual formulas found on tombs with their calls for prayers, and instead praises Adam’s achievements in life – ‘a Solomon of wisdom’ – in the manner of the Welsh praise poetry of the period. The audience for this brass was clearly intended to be a Welsh-speaking one, and therefore took a form which would have been familiar to those brought up within Welsh cultural traditions.

Badham, Seeking Salvation, pp. 232–3. See for example, Saul, English Church Monuments, chapter 14, and David Griffith, ‘English Commemorative Inscriptions: Some Literary Dimensions’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Clive Burgess, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 20 (Donington, 2010), pp. 251–70. 37

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LOCATION 39 The spiritual purpose of the monument could also be served by the careful siting of the tomb within the church in order to take advantage of areas of high spiritual potency and activity. Testamentary evidence attests the widespread desire for burial in side-chapels or near altars or images, such as Sir Mathew Cradock of Swansea (d.1531) who requested burial in St Mary’s church in the chapel of St Anne, which he had rebuilt at his own cost.40 Many of the monuments in this study, especially the cross and incised slabs, have been mo ved from their original location – virtually all those in Brecon Priory and Llandaff Cathedral are ex situ, for example – and so it is not possible to assess which positions were most popular. However, a few that have remained in place give a flavour of the spiritual motivations and concerns of the deceased and their executors when choosing the place of commemoration.41 The holiest area of the church was of course the chancel, and particularly the area immediately adjacent to the High Altar, where the mass was performed and the saving power of Christ flowed directly through the officiating priest. This was often reserved as the burial place of clergy or wealthy lay benefactors, seen in rather extreme form at Cobham (Kent), where the brasses of the Cobham family are ranged in rows covering the chancel floor.42 A similar clustering of monuments, especially those of the higher clergy, can be seen around the holiest areas of Llandaff and St David’s cathedrals; four or five medieval bishops’ monuments were placed near the altar rails or in the Lady Chapel at Llandaff in the early eighteenth century.43 At St David’s, Bishops Anselm and Iorwerth in the thirteenth century were buried in a highly spiritually charged area in front of the High Altar and next to the shrine of St David, to be joined by the illustrious brass of Edmund Tudor in the 1530s after it was rescued from the dissolved friary of the Franciscans at Carmarthen. Close by, and in the Trinity and Lady chapels further to the east, are (or were) the monuments of bishops Gower, Vaughan, Martin and Houghton, as well as numerous cathedral clergy and a small number of prominent laity, all jostling for the prime positions. The magnetism of St David’s holiest areas is emphasised by the virtual lack of any medieval memorials in the nave. The only important tomb here is that 39 This section deals with burial location within any given church. The choice of particular types of church, such as abbeys or parish churches, is dealt with in chapter one. 40 TNA, PROB 11/24, image ref. 69. Cradock’s monument was destroyed in an air raid in the Second World War. 41 Christopher Daniell has used testamentary evidence as a guide to preferences in burial location (Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550 (London, 1997)), but wills should not be taken as a foolproof guide to monument location. Not every intra-mural burial was marked by a durable memorial, not every memorial was placed directly over the grave and not every testator was buried in the place they requested. 42 For the Cobham brasses see Saul, Death, Art and Memory. 43 Bodleian Library: MS Willis, 104, fols 3, 8.

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of Bishop Morgan, which is not in situ and was originally much further to the east, close to the pulpitum and the monument of Bishop Gower. In parish churches, most of which are small in the rural parts of south Wales, the take-over of the chancel or other important areas of the church was feasible only if the monuments were flat stones or brasses, as at Cobham, where they did not impede movement or sight. As has already been noted, inscribed slabs and brasses are rare in south Wales, but perhaps this was part of the reasoning behind the commissioning of a brass, rather than the more usual sculpted effigy, for Wenllian Walsche (d.1427) for the chancel at Llandough [Plate IV]. More care was needed when siting a carved effigy, especially if it topped a tomb-chest. At Oxwich a deeper than usual recess was needed in the north chancel wall to accommodate the early-fifteenth-century effigies of a knight and lady, thought to be John Penrice and Margaret Fleming (c.1400), and a tomb-chest was done away with altogether [Fig. 16]. Particular times of the year, as well as parts of the church, were also more holy than others, none more so than Easter. Some patrons sought to make their monuments the focus of the ceremonies of Holy Week by commissioning tombs in the chancel in the place where the Holy Sepulchre was traditionally put on Good Friday, thus linking the burial and resurrection of Christ with the commemorated person’s own hoped for salvation. Saul records a number of English examples of this practice,44 and although no south Welsh monuments can be certainly identified as Easter Sepulchres, this may have been the intention behind the effigy of a priest at Carew, the lower part of whose chasuble is noticeably flat and level as though it was intended as a firm base for an object to be placed upon it.45 The early-sixteenth-century tomb of Thomas Morgan (d.1510) at Llanmartin [Fig. 19] takes the form of a tomb-chest crowded with weepers, probably representing members of the Morgan family, but with an entirely smooth slab on top which has clearly never had any carving, brass or incised decoration upon it. An unusual design in south Wales, this would nevertheless have been an ideal resting place for the Sepulchre. Such a monument would have made Thomas and his family the focus of the prayers of the community at the most holy time of the year.

TOMBS AND ASSOCIATED FORMS OF INTERCESSION Intruding one’s monument into the liturgy in such a fashion was the prerogative solely of the most wealthy and influential families in the Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 163–4. However, Saul dates the use of tombs as bases for the Easter Sepulchre to the fifteenth century, post-dating the effigy at Carew by a century or so: Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 163–4. 44 45

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parish, but it was not the only option for maximising intercession. Where wealth and sufficient local standing allowed, burial chapels could be added to the church, complete with side-altars and images, to house successive generations of the family. In parish churches, this was done by, among others, the Berkerolles family at St Athan, the Morgans at Llanmartin, the Cradocks at Swansea, the de la Roches at Llangwm and the Stackpoles at Stackpole. The Hastings and Herbert families appropriated part of the church at Abergavenny Priory to their own use, as did the Mathews in Llandaff Cathedral and the Wogans in St David’s. Such burial chapels were often the location of chantries, the monument comprising just one element of a grander intercessory strategy. We know nothing of the Berkerolles and de la Roche chantries, the existence of which are inferred from the presence of piscinae and side altars in the burial chapels, but we have more evidence regarding the Cradock and Mathew chantries. Sir Mathew Cradock’s (d.1531) monument in St Mary’s, Swansea, has now gone, destroyed when the town was bombed in the Second World War, but his will explains that the chapel of St Anne, where he chose to be buried, had been ‘newly buldid and edyfyed’ by him. This must have been a restoration rather than a building project from scratch as he later claims that one of his ancestors had built it, and that ‘tyme out of mynde’ land and property in Swansea had been assigned to it to maintain a chantry priest. This chantry he now wanted to reinstate to the value of twenty nobles, which would go towards the priest’s stipend and the continued maintenance of the chantry ‘for evermore’.46 Among the best documented examples of this arrangement in south Wales are the Mathew monuments and chantry at Llandaff Cathedral. The eastern end of the northern aisle of Llandaff Cathedral began its transformation into the Mathew Chapel in the second half of the fifteenth century at a time when lay commemoration was still rare in this particular church.47 Prior to his death some time before 1470, David Mathew established a chantry at an altar there and was later buried in the chapel’s north-east corner, but the remains of the monument covering this burial are now outside the chapel, further to the south-west. The date of the chantry’s foundation is unknown, but it may have been in 1450 when David and his wife Wenllian were granted an indult of plenary indulgence by Pope Nicholas V.48 In 1470 David’s son Reynborn re-endowed the chantry in his will, although he himself was buried at St Mark’s, Bristol.49 The chantry Testament of Sir Mathew Cradock, TNA, PROB 11/24; image ref. 69. Only two other lay monuments exist from the pre-1500 period: those of Lady Audley and Philip Taverner and his wife, the latter of which may have been brought in from elsewhere. The Mathew chapel is now known as the Dyfrig chapel. 48 Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1915), vol. 10: 1447–1455, p. 490. [Accessed online at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/ vol10/pp480-491#highlight-first, 27 September 2016.] 49 TNA, PROB 11/6, image ref. 7. 46 47

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was funded from the income from lands and tenements in Llandaff which Reynborn had inherited from his father, and two cathedral canons, John Wynter and David ap Llywelyn, were enfeoffed with the lands in return for presenting a suitable chaplain to the chantry. The chaplain received £5 14s 10d per annum in return for celebrating mass for David Mathew’s soul three times a week and keeping a free school for twenty poor children of the parish of Llandaff.50 This additional type of employment was rare nationally and particularly so in south Wales,51 and as a charitable act was a deliberate policy aimed at the greatest possible spiritual rewards for David’s soul. The chaplain would also have been expected to take part in the daily services of the cathedral, for the enhancement of which David’s – and Reynborn’s – souls could again expect to benefit. Far from being a separate commemorative arrangement, David Mathew’s chantry should be seen as intimately related to his monument. His tomb-chest is now lost but was originally adorned with male and female weepers bearing shields,52 which are likely to have been family members who also benefited from the prayers of the chantry priest; the priest would have been reminded who to pray for by referring to the monument. Similar arrangements have been demonstrated in a number of much better documented English and Continental examples of these ‘kinship tombs’,53 and may also have been the intention behind the design of tomb-chests at Abergavenny, St Athan, Stackpole and Llanmartin. It is reasonable to suppose that Reynborn Mathew featured as a weeper on his father’s monument and, as the patron of the chantry, benefited from the chaplain’s prayers despite being buried elsewhere. Around sixty years after Reynborn’s death, in the early 1530s, his son Christopher Mathew and his wife Elizabeth Morgan sought burial in the chapel. Christopher and Elizabeth’s monument cleverly exploited design as well as location in order to maximise the spiritual benefits of commemoration. Although there should have been room to accommodate a monument in the chapel proper, their impressive alabaster tomb was inserted under an arch cut through the wall separating the Mathew Chapel from the Lady Chapel, the arch acting as a canopy for the monument [Fig. 21]. The monument was not only visible from both chapels, but in occupying a liminal position between the two drew benefit from the symbolism of the

TNA, E 301/74, fol. 3v. NLW, Milborne MS 2200, however, gives the salary as 106s 11d. Only 8% of the English chantries studied by Kreider included provision for a school: Alan Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (London, 1979). The chaplain of James Walbeef ’s chantry at Llanhamlach was required either to teach children or preach. 52 Willis, Survey of Llandaff Cathedral, p. 25. 53 For the sometimes very close relationship between monument and chantry see: Anne McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England (University Park, PA, 2000), and eadem, ‘The Tomb as Prompter for the Chantry: Four Examples from Late-Medieval England’, in Memory and the Medieval Tomb, ed. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo and Carol Stamatis Pendergast (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 81–9. 50 51

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soul crossing the boundary between earth and the afterlife.54 A squint cut through the eastern end of the arch provided additional visibility from the Mathew Chapel to the altar of the Lady Chapel. As with the majority of alabaster tomb-chests being produced at this time, a row of lay weepers and angels appears on the sides; those visible from the Mathew Chapel bear shields which would have identified them to the chantry priest. As the heir of the lands which had been used to endow his grandfather’s chantry, Christopher would have been able to add his and his family’s names to the ordinances, complemented and reinforced by a tomb placed in such a position as to remind the priest of this additional benefaction. If funds allowed, the tomb-chantry arrangement could be elaborated upon with the inclusion of additional commemorative features, such as windows. The evidence for this in south Wales is now difficult to come by as all the medieval stained glass has been lost, but occasional antiquarian and testamentary references indicate that monuments were sometimes tied in to a wider intercessory scheme in the burial church or chapel. The descriptions by Churchyard and Symonds of the contents of Abergavenny Priory in the late sixteenth and mid seventeenth centuries indicate that it contained both heraldic and figurative glass, including at least two donor windows, commemorating members of the Hastings and Herbert families. By Churchyard’s time the wooden effigy of John, second Baron Hastings, had been removed from its original location and placed underneath a window in the north choir aisle, which portrayed various coats of arms as well as the figures of a knight and his lady: ‘His wife hath there her left arme bare, / It seems her sleeve it was / That hangs about his necke full fine, / Right ore a Purple weede: / A robe of that same colour too, The Ladie weares in deede, /…’.55 Churchyard’s interest in the heraldry rather than figural images means that he gives no details of the window’s design, the attitude of the figures, or whether there were accompanying saints or identifying inscriptions. However, Claude Blair has identified the heraldry, later described in more detail by Symonds, as that of Hastings, Valence, Leybourne and Cantelupe, indicating that the figures in the glass must represent Lord Hastings himself and his wife Juliana Leybourne. No doubt the wooden effigy of Sir John would have originally lain very close to the windowsill and so Blair’s supposition that this part of the church, containing both window and tomb, housed a chantry for the couple is undoubtedly correct.56 In the east window of the Herbert chapel was a donor panel commemorating Sir William ap Thomas and his second wife Gwladys. According to Symonds, this depicted the kneeling figures of Sir William and Gwladys, the former identified by an heraldic tabard, and beneath 54 55 56

For liminal burials see Daniell, Death and Burial, p. 100. Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, p. 60. Blair, ‘The Wooden Knight at Abergavenny’, pp. 41– 2.

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them the inscription ‘Orate pro a’ibus Will’i Thomas militis et Alicie ux’is sue qui istam capellam et fenestram vitrari fecerunt.’57 Like Churchyard, Symonds does not refer to any religious iconography, but the kneeling pose of the donor figures suggests the presence of a saint, the most likely candidate being the Virgin, given the iconography of the couple’s tomb (described above). This spatial, heraldic and iconographic relationship between monument and window has been described by Julian Luxford in relation to the brass of Sir Hugh Hastings (d.1347) in the chancel at Elsing church (Norfolk).58 Here, the ‘tomb-window juxtaposition’ was reinforced by the repetition of heraldic colours in the glass and on the coloured brass of the effigy and, Luxford suggests, by their alignment, the brass positioned so that, at a certain time of day, the window illuminated the monument.59 What was happening at Elsing and at Abergavenny, then, was more than simply a ‘belt and braces’ approach to commemoration. At Abergavenny, it is clear that in the case of the Herberts in particular, the window and the monument were related by more than the fact that they commemorated the same individuals. Spatially, the alabaster figures of Sir William and Gwladys were aligned so that they faced their painted glass counterparts, each replying to the other’s praying pose and tied together by the altar, on an ‘axis of salvation’.60 In 1469 the earl of Pembroke, son of William and Gwladys, requested that the chapel at Abergavenny was to be ‘Glazed with the Stories of the passion of Christ and of the Nativity and the Saints of mine that be in my Clozett at Ragland’,61 a decision made after his capture at Edgecote when he was contemplating his coming execution. Although he was eventually buried and commemorated at Tintern Abbey, there is tantalising evidence from a seventeenth-century account that he, his wife and son were in fact depicted in glass at Abergavenny. According to this description, the east window of the Herbert chapel had ‘Te deum laudamus painted thereon and orate pro animarum [sic] William Thomas and wife William Earle of Pembroke and wife, William Earle of Huntingdon.’62 This is difficult to reconcile with the description of the donor window of Sir William ap Thomas and Gwladys mentioned above, and it suggests that – as with the monuments to which 57 Symonds, Diary, p. 235. An idea of the possible appearance of the window can be gauged from an example from c.1500 at Llangadwaladr, Anglesey, illustrated in Lord, Visual Culture, p. 224. 58 Luxford, ‘The Hastings Brass at Elsing’. 59 Luxford, ‘The Hastings Brass at Elsing’, pp. 198–201, quote at p. 201. If this illumination was intentional it would, of course, have only been possible at a certain time of day and time of year, so we should be wary of reading too much into this relationship. 60 The term is used by Luxford, ‘The Hastings Brass’, p. 198, to describe the alignment of Hugh Hastings’ brass with the font, rood and high altar. 61 CCL, MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia, fols 55–6. 62 Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D 1481, fols 347r–v, quoted in Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 231–2. The earl of Huntingdon is rather a shadowy character. He made his will in 1483 and was buried at Tintern Abbey like his father. His will records no legacies to Abergavenny Priory: CCL, MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia, fol. 74.

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they were related – successive generations added to William and Gwladys’s commemorative schemes at the priory in order to gain maximum spiritual (as well as secular) benefits. It is certainly possible, then, not only that the earl originally chose burial at Abergavenny as a way of tapping into the already powerful familial commemorative scheme there, but also that his testamentary glazing plans went ahead, even if the burial itself did not. ‘Te Deum laudamus’ would be an appropriate script to accompany images of Christ’s nativity and passion, but it is worth pointing out here that this would be a departure from the otherwise Marian focus of family piety. However, William, earl of Pembroke, was quintessentially a man of his time, and this seems to have extended to his religious tastes as well as his political and military career. Ultimately, there is simply not enough evidence to fully decipher the design, chronology and patronage of the Herbert commemorative glazing schemes, but that they were conceived of as part of a holistic approach to intercession, in which the monuments and the prayers of the monks contributed to a greater whole, can be in little doubt.

THE COMING OF THE REFORMATION By the end of the timeframe covered by this study, c.1540, the break from Rome had been achieved, the monasteries had recently disappeared, the shrines were dismantled and pilgrimage and images were being discouraged. But the king himself remained a Catholic and prayers and masses for the dead were still officially seen as efficacious, meaning that the traditional theology and spiritual motivations behind the commissioning of monuments still held good, for the time being. Thomas Capper was burned in Cardiff in 1542 for denying transubstantiation, but the Welsh remained overwhelmingly conservative in their inclinations, and reforming bishops complained of the remnants of ‘superstition’ well into Elizabeth’s reign.63 The Welsh gentry, however, were consistent in their loyalty to the Tudor dynasty and accepted royal policies such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries, from which they saw they could personally benefit irrespective of their private religious inclinations. This, then, was an uncertain time and it is not surprising that the evidence for the active acceptance of reformed belief in south Wales at this point is difficult to come by. Wills dating from around this period illustrate the ways in which Welsh testators remained wedded to the old ways despite the outward acceptance of profound religious upheaval. In 1536 Thomas Philip of Llandyfodwg began his will with a preamble referring to Henry VIII as ‘defendour of the feith … the supreme hed of the Churche of Englande’, after which he dedicated his soul to God and to ‘our blissed lady saint Mary and to all 63

See the examples given in Williams, Renewal and Reformation, p. 312.

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the company of hevyn’ and left legacies to the friars in Cardiff.64 If this represents Thomas Philip’s personal views, rather than those of the scribe, it indicates that acquiescence in changes to the structure of the Church did not necessitate an accompanying wish for doctrinal reform (not to mention a certain short-sightedness where the fate of the religious orders was concerned). 1536 is admittedly early, but the same practices are found in wills dating halfway through the 1540s.65 In wills proved in 1547 and 1548 respectively, John Revell of Carmarthen and Gladys Ieuan of Neath dedicated their souls to God only, but still left legacies for their souls’ health, thereby acknowledging that although it was no longer appropriate to appeal to Mary and the saints, they still held to the belief in purgatory and the efficacy of intercessory prayer.66 How did this religious schizophrenia play out in the monumental sculpture of the time? Unfortunately for our purposes, only two monuments are known of from this period which commemorate individuals with surviving wills, those of Sir William Morgan of Pencoed (d.1541/2) and his wife, and Arnold Butler of Dunraven (d.1541) and his wife [Fig. 1]. Morgan’s tomb was lost in the nineteenth century and we have no record of its appearance beyond the barest details,67 but the Butler tomb at St Bride’s Major does survive, presenting a valuable opportunity to compare the expression of religious sentiment at a sensitive time on paper and in stone. In his will, Arnold Butler’s dedication of his soul was conservative and traditional, to God, Mary and the saints. He gave a number of legacies to local churches and for the repair of bridges in Cardiff and Llandaff, but he asked for no prayers in return, nor did he request any masses for his soul. At the end of the will, however, he appointed his wife Sicyll his sole executrix and charged her with the disposal of the remainder of his goods ‘as she shall thinke best for the welthe of my soule’, making it clear that Butler did not reject purgatory and that, in fact, he remained a convinced Catholic.68 Butler’s failure to request intercessory services may have been the result of circumspection, but he may have already arranged them in life, the charge given to his wife possibly hinting at a prior agreement between the pair. As TNA, PROB 11/25, image ref. 414 See, for example, the wills of William Philipp of Llansoy, proved in September 1545, TNA, PROB 11/30, image ref. 375, and Howell ap John of Grosmont, proved in June 1545, TNA, PROB 11/30, image ref. 321. 66 TNA, PROB 11/31, image ref. 533; TNA, PROB 11/32, image ref. 252. 67 Provided in Joseph Bradney, History of Monmouthshire (London, 1932) 4(ii), p. 220. The tomb is mentioned in the will, where £20 was allocated for a tomb, or a chapel, and more if it could be afforded. Sir William did not explicitly request any prayers, but the intention behind the tomb/chapel plus extras is sufficiently clear to indicate his belief in purgatory and the power of intercessory prayer: TNA, PROB 11/29, image ref. 122. 68 TNA, PROB 11/28, image ref. 366. It may also be significant that Butler appointed Sir Edward Carne as his overseer. Sir Edward died twenty years later in Rome, where he had been on a diplomatic mission, and the family, whose seat was at Ewenny, were prominent recusants into the seventeenth century: http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-CARN-EDW-1500.html [accessed 4 October 2016]. 64 65

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the couple’s imposing tomb is not mentioned in the will, perhaps this was how she saw fit to interpret his wishes. The spiritual tone of this tomb in some ways mirrors the quiet conservatism of the will. Lying in a deep window embrasure, it is late medieval in its appearance, conforming to the usual design of recumbent praying effigies on top of a decorated tomb-chest and surrounded by an elaborately carved canopy. In a break from tradition, the outer, male, figure is not accompanied by angels at his head, although they do appear supporting the cushion of his wife, who lies further in, next to the window. The two male and two female (secular) weepers kneel and pray in a conventional sixteenth-century style. At each end of the tomb-chest, forming the corners, are tall pedestals topped by small figures in voluminous, looping drapery. These have lost their heads, and although they do not appear to have been angels, they may have been saints, but this cannot be confirmed. A discussion of this tomb in chapter five will remind us that the Butlers were addressing pressing dynastic concerns in its design, but that does not preclude an additional subtly expressed spiritual message. Unlike the will, which was a private document with a restricted audience, the Butlers’ tomb, like all others, was conceived as an outward-facing declaration of personal concerns, and so caution was necessary in the communication of beliefs and practices which were gradually becoming targeted by royal policy. Thus, the religious symbolism is kept to a minimum: the supporting angels are not at the front of the tomb where they would be most visible, but sheltered at the back; the two accompanying saints – if that is what they were – small and concealed among elaborate tabernacle work, allowing the chest to be dominated by secular figures. If this commission was indeed the work of Sycill Butler, she successfully maintained the overall feel of spiritual neutrality achieved by her husband’s will, which nevertheless still hints at the underlying continuation of traditional beliefs.

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ommemorative monuments are, by their very nature, explicit about the status and general social identity of the people who commissioned or are represented by them. But whoever the patron might be, whether the deceased, family members or executors, the extent of his or her creative involvement must be a matter of conjecture in the absence of documentation.1 To what extent did patrons expect to be able to influence or direct the final appearance of the monument in order to obtain a bespoke memorial, or were they happy to have an ‘off-the-peg’ product that merely complied with the general requirements of gender, vocation and social status? There is evidence for both extremes of creative input in south Wales, and for a range of attitudes in between.

PATRONAL INVOLVEMENT, STATUS, IDENTITY AND CHOICE PATRONAL INVOLVEMENT There are some well-known examples of English patrons exhibiting a high degree of interest in monument design, indicating that they had fairly precise requirements for how the finished article should look. About a dozen contracts between patron and craftsman have survived from the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth.2 One of these, an indenture concluded in 1421 between Richard Hertcombe and the alabastermen Thomas Prentys and Robert Sutton for the tomb of the earl and countess of Salisbury at Bisham (Berkshire), lays down the look of the monument in some detail. A ‘patron’, or pattern, had already been drawn up on which the finished product was to be based. Its dimensions, the form of the head- and foot-rests, canopies and angels were all specified, as was the 1 See, for example: Loveday Lewes Gee, Women, Art and Patronage from Henry III to Edward III, 1216–1377 (Woodbridge, 2002); Christopher Wilson, ‘Calling the Tune? The Involvement of King Henry III in the Design of the Abbey Church at Westminster’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161, no. 1 (2008), pp. 59–93. 2 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 100–1. A number are transcribed in Badham and Oosterwijk, Monumental Industry.

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price (forty-three marks), method of payment and date for completion.3 Such plans presuppose a certain degree of intended involvement in, or even control over, the look of the finished monument on the part of the commissioners. Other monuments, for which no contract or will survives, sometimes point to specific criteria having been insisted upon by the patron. The rather unusual features of the tomb of Oliver, Lord Ingham (d.1344), at Ingham (Norfolk), including his twisting pose, bed of stones and angels supporting the great helm, have been seen as being ‘specially chosen to reflect Oliver’s sense of how he wanted to be remembered’.4 Ultimately, of course, it was the craftsman who was responsible for the execution and final look of the monument.5 The dominance of the craftsman’s role is especially apparent in the case of monumental brasses, the manufacture of which approximated to near production-line methods in the fifteenth century, and many patterns of the same design were produced, to be differentiated only by the details of heraldry, inscriptions and so on.6 From the fifteenth century there is circumstantial evidence that stock figures were prepared in advance, reflecting a low level of creative participation on the part of the purchaser.7 The brass figure of Wenllian Walsche (d.1427) at Llandough, for example [Plate IV], is highly comparable to several others across southern England,8 and on the whole medieval patrons were less interested in artistic originality than in the accurate expression of status.9 The contract for the tomb of the earl and countess of Salisbury, mentioned above, instructs that the earl was ‘to be armed in all respects as is fitting to a lord’ and both figures were ‘to be painted gilded and arrayed well & decently in their colours as pertains to such images’.10 The documentary evidence for patronal interest in monuments in south Wales is thin but fairly representative of the level of detail usually entered into by testators in their wills. Morgan John, a wealthy inhabitant of Bassaleg who died in 1500, simply stipulated an alabaster tomb, while Charles Somerset, earl of Worcester (d.1525), requested ‘a fflatteston to be laid upon me with a fflatte remembraunce that they that look upon it praye 3 Jon Bayliss, ‘An Indenture for Two Alabaster Effigies’, Church Monuments, 16 (2001), pp. 22–9, translation of indenture at p. 24. The 43 marks were payment for the effigies alone. The tomb-chest cost an additional £22 13s 4d, and the total cost of the monument was £60: Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 109–10. 4 Badham, ‘Beautiful Remains of Antiquity’, p. 11. 5 Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Motivation and Choice’, p. 150. 6 Nigel Saul, ‘Bold as Brass: Secular Display in English Medieval Brasses’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 185–6. 7 Norris, Monumental Brasses, pp. 88–9. However, Lawrence Stone’s opinion was that as far as sculpted monuments were concerned there was probably little prospective production due to the financial outlay involved. Nor are tombs ever precisely identical despite the ‘close similarity of basic designs’: Stone, Sculpture in Britain, pp. 179–80. 8 Elizabeth Poyle at Hampton Poyle (Oxfordshire), Isabell Carew at Beddington (Surrey) and Elizabeth Slyfield at Great Bookham (Surrey). 9 Ramsey, ‘Artists and Craftsmen’, pp. 48–59, at p. 51; Saul, ‘Bold as Brass’, pp. 185–6. 10 Bayliss, ‘An Indenture’, p. 24.

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for my soule’. The latter sounds like a brass or an incised slab and was only to be commissioned in case he could not be buried in the far more elaborate tomb he had already erected to himself and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Herbert, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.11 In the event this back-up plan was not needed, and unfortunately, none of the other monuments referred to in the extant wills are known to have survived so we have no way of knowing whether executors typically carried out their instructions in this regard. Occasionally wills are somewhat more enlightening. Sir William Herbert of Troy, receiver of the lordship of Monmouth from 1485 until his death in 1524,12 requested in his will that his executors ‘shall cause a Tombe of marble to be made over my grave with ymage of me, Margery my first wife and of Blanche nowe my wife, and a Epitafe to be made for me and sett in a square marble to be fyxed in the walle ayenst my said Tumbe according to my mynde therfor declared to myn executors’.13 This monument, to be erected in the south side of the chapel built by Sir William in Monmouth church, no longer exists, but the wording of the will raises two interesting points. The first is the fact that Sir William had already made plans for his monument and had communicated this to his executors. The basic directions given in the will were only part of the story, however, and the executors seem to have been in possession of more detailed instructions, perhaps including the wording of the epitaph. Secondly, the use of the term ‘marble’ suggests that Sir William wanted a brass,14 and it is this which may have necessitated the need for prior arrangements. Brass was an unusual choice for Welshmen of Herbert’s calibre, despite being popular in parts of England. Alabaster was overwhelmingly the preferred material for the tombs of contemporary southern Welsh gentry, and was particularly favoured by the Herberts.15 Figure brasses composed of the images of the deceased and family members, together with an epitaph on the back wall of the tomb – which is what the wording of the will seems to suggest – were relatively common in England at this time. But such a construction would have been a rare sight in south Wales, the only other known example being a roughly contemporary tomb at Monkton Priory, Pembrokeshire. Such a radical preference would have had to have been made explicit to executors. Sir William’s will reminds us, therefore, that the true level of involvement of patrons in the design of tombs is generally unknowable, but may be more easily detected in cases where there was an intention to depart from local and family standard practice, whatever the motives for this may have been. 11 Charles Somerset did not specify an alternative burial location: TNA, PROB 11/22, image ref. 132. 12 W.R.B. Robinson, Early Tudor Gwent 1485–1547 (Welshpool, 2002), p. 5. 13 TNA, PROB 11/21, image ref. 203. 14 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 95. The makers of brasses were known as ‘marblers’. 15 The three alabaster monuments at Abergavenny Priory to members of the Herbert family are a case in point, and others were erected in Tintern Abbey. The question of the lack of the patronage of monumental brasses in the region is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

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The will of another Herbert testator raises a note of caution, however – alluded to above – namely, that it is difficult to know how far executors followed testators’ instructions. William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, executed in July 1469 after the Battle of Edgecote, changed his mind at least twice about his tomb. In his original will, drawn up before the battle, he began by requesting a tomb for himself and his wife at Abergavenny Priory, near that of his parents, Sir William ap Thomas and Gwladys Ddu [Fig. 4]. This tomb was to be ‘of the same height as my Fathers and Somewhat more’, no doubt to reflect his greater social status. Later in the same will, however, he refers to ‘my Tomb at Tinterne’, at the end adding: ‘item, where I have strucken out there I purposed to ly at the Priory of Bergavenny, I will ly in the Church of Tinterne and my wife in the same Tomb with me and she with the number of our children in the same Tomb’.16 Shortly afterwards, as the earl was awaiting execution after the battle he drew up a second will where he reverted to his first choice of Abergavenny.17 In the event, however, he was buried at Tintern, under a tomb which was defaced in 1538 and is now lost.18 The reasons for the repeated changes of mind are not easily accounted for, but the important consideration here is how much control Earl William ultimately had over his burial and place of commemoration. On the face of it, at least, it looks as though his final wishes were ignored by his executors. THE COMMUNICATION OF STATUS The above examples indicate how inscrutable wills can be as evidence of the intentions of the deceased and the extent to which their wishes influenced the final look of their monument.19 Given this, it is often more instructive to study the features of the monuments themselves which indicate what the specific requirements of the deceased, family and executors may have been. In almost all cases, there is a clear desire to communicate messages of status. This was displayed not only by the erection of a monument in the first place, particularly if it was effigial in form, but also by the inclusion of details such as heraldry, costume and other features which further defined the deceased’s place in society. Heraldic decoration became an important aspect of tomb design, and one with which patrons were necessarily involved. Not only would it identify the deceased personally and place him or her within the ranks of the armigerous elite, it could also advertise kinship ties and give a sense of ‘exclusionary closure’.20 Unfortunately, much heraldry has been lost, whether due to the wearing off of the paint or the loss of the tomb-chests Will transcribed in CCL, Herbertorum Prosapia, fols 55–8. TNA, PROB 11/5, image ref. 305. 18 CCL, Herbertorum Prosapia, fol. 75. 19 For a discussion of the value of testamentary evidence as a guide to pious provision see Burgess, ‘Late Medieval Wills’. 20 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 164–5. 16 17

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on which such decoration was often displayed. This has deprived us of the heraldic detail on the monuments of, among others, Payn de Turbeville at Ewenny Priory and David Mathew at Llandaff Cathedral, while the single inlaid brass shield above the head of Wenllian Walsche at Llandough has been robbed out. Carved and incised heraldry does survive, however, and can be seen on the monuments of Thomas Basset at St Hilary, the Butlers at St Brides Major [Fig. 1], as well as at Manorbier (de Barri) and St David’s Cathedral (Talbot) [Fig. 35], to name just a few. Among the most profusely decorated monuments in south Wales are those of the de Berkerolles father, son and wives at St Athan and the Mathew cousins and their wives at Llandaff. Heraldry is emblazoned on the tomb-chests of each of these four monuments, but in each case the coats are modern additions, none of which can be confirmed as original with the exception of a handful on the tomb of Sir William and Jenet Mathew, and the boldly carved Berkerolles crescents on the shields of the knights [Plate I]. Although the messages of the original heraldry are therefore largely lost, the fact that such overt displays were felt necessary indicates that the patrons of the Mathew and de Berkerolles tombs sought to make specific statements about the deceased, their relationships, and their status and position in local society. Another status indicator sometimes seen on late-medieval military monuments was the livery collar. A study of collars on monuments in southwestern England has identified four types: personal devices, corporate or guild insignia, badges of office and livery devices issued to retainers. The Lancastrian SS and Yorkist Suns and Roses predominate, but the appearance of such a collar on an effigy is not necessarily a sign of membership of an affinity, as they were increasingly used as insignia implying seniority within the judiciary or government administration.21 A later variation on the Lancastrian SS was the Tudor rose, alternating with SS or with knots, while the SS themselves are found in a variety of forms, such as sideways linking. In some cases livery collars may accurately reflect the political affiliations of the deceased. The Suns and Roses worn around the necks of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469) at Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 18] and Sir Henry Wogan of Wiston (d. before 1483?) at Scolton Manor (previously at Slebech) are fitting adornments for such ardent Yorkists.22 Logically, however, the wearing of livery collars is also bound to reflect the chronological dispersal of the monuments themselves and the public roles of the deceased men. Two monuments of the famously Yorkist Herbert family actually display 21 Stephen Friar, ‘Livery Collars on Late-Medieval English Church Monuments: A Survey of the South-Western Counties and Some Suggestions for Further Study’, unpublished M.Phil. Thesis, University of Southampton (2000), pp. 5, 20, 34–5. See also Matthew Ward, The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales: Politics, Identity and Affinity (Woodbridge, 2016). 22 Richard Herbert was executed after his part in fighting for Edward IV at Edgecote, while Henry Wogan was married to Margaret, Richard’s sister. Their son John also died at Edgecote: Dictionary of Welsh Biography Online, http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-WOGAPEN-1250.html?query=wogan&field=name [accessed 14 June 2012].

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the Lancastrian SS: Sir William ap Thomas (d.1445), who of course rose to prominence, and died, during the reign of Henry VI, and Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510), who had been a gentleman usher in the household of Henry VII.23 The Lancastrian SS, sometimes alternating with knots, are also found on the monuments of Sir William (d.1528) and Christopher Mathew (d. after 1530) and Sir John Morgan of Tredegar (d.1492), indicating their roles within the Tudor administration. Arnold Butler (d.1541) wears a plain chain of oval links, while David Mathew (d. before 1470), who is often cited as a Yorkist, wears a collar of sideways S-shaped links [Fig. 17]. This could be a variation on the Lancastrian SS, or a personal device with no particular significance, which David’s uncertain death-date does little to clarify. The pendant, which may have provided more information, has been effaced.24 FEMALE IDENTITY AND PATRONAGE If we know a little about the patrons and subjects of the male monuments discussed above, their women-folk are all too frequently harder to identify and describe other than in the most basic terms. Discussions of the female patronage of monuments in south Wales are hampered by the same issues as for those in England and elsewhere, and the extent to which female monuments reflect the identity and concerns of the woman herself, or those of her husband’s family, are rarely easy to gauge. As with the monuments of men, however, heraldic displays may be informative. Heraldry was by no means a solely male preserve. It could be inherited and transmitted by women and was frequently a feature of the secular rhetoric of female memorials despite its martial origins.25 The most striking display associated with a single female effigy in south Wales is found on the mid-thirteenth-century effigy of Eva de Braose (d.1257) at Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 13]. As a de Braose, Eva was a member of one of the most powerful of the Marcher families, hereditary lords of Abergavenny, and had married into the similarly powerful Cantelupe family. After the death of William de Braose in 1230 the lordship passed to four heiresses, of whom Eva was one. Through her the lordship then passed to her husband William de Cantelupe, who predeceased her in 1254. On Eva’s own death three years later, the lordship passed into the hands of the crown as the couple’s son was only five years old.26 Eva’s effigy is almost entirely concealed Robinson, ‘Some Welsh Members’, p. 160. David Matthew drops from the historical record in the early 1450s, but his monument is very close in style to that of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469), suggesting it was manufactured at about that time. In which case, the S-shaped links are unlikely to be Lancastrian in inspiration. 25 Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000–1500 (Stroud, 1998), pp. 38–47. 26 A.J. Roderick and William Rees, ‘The Lordships of Abergavenny, Grosmont, Skenfrith and White Castle – Accounts of the Ministers for the Year 1256–1257’, in South Wales and Monmouth Record Society, vol. 2, ed. William Rees and Henry John Randall (Cardiff, 1950), pp. 69–125, at p. 70. 23

24

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by the large shield over her body, which displays not the de Braose arms to which she had a claim, but those of the Cantelupe family. This is an unusual design for a female monument and is unique in south Wales. While it is not surprising to see the husband’s arms take precedence over the wife’s, such a total absorption of the woman’s identity – especially a woman of such distinguished birth and an heiress to boot – into the husband’s family is something to be remarked upon. An acceptable arrangement in such circumstances would be something along the lines of Margaret Paston’s (d.1484) brass at Mautby (Norfolk), on which her natal arms of Mautby featured more prominently than those of her husband.27 As a de Braose, a widow and an heiress, Eva held about as much independent power as a medieval woman could hope to do. It is tempting to surmise, therefore, that the foregrounding of the Cantelupe arms on her monument reflected a personal agenda of her own. It may have been intended as a reference to the Cantelupe family’s possession, through her, of the lordship of Abergavenny, and this would have acted as a reminder of her infant son’s inheritance rights during his minority and wardship. This apparent heraldic absorption of the wife into the husband’s family is a practice seen elsewhere. The seals of ladies often prominently displayed their husband’s arms, such as the mid-thirteenth-century seal and counterseal of Ela Basset, countess of Warwick, which shows the arms of both of her husbands as well as of her father. Of this Peter Coss notes that a lady’s ‘wider sense of identity [was] transmitted through the maleorientated medium of heraldry. Her status was expressed – and necessarily so – through the dominant chivalric culture.’28 Unfortunately, some other single female effigies known to have been associated with coats of arms, such as those of Lady Audley at Llandaff Cathedral and Wenllian Walsche at Llandough, have lost their heraldry, and so it is now impossible to determine whether they, like Eva de Braose, were identified primarily with their husband’s family in death.29 Where women were commemorated alongside their husbands it is more common to find the marshalling of arms, however. The central shield on the tomb-chest and canopy of Christopher Mathew and Elizabeth Morgan at Llandaff Cathedral depicts the Mathew lion impaling the Morgan griffin [Fig. 21]. At Abergavenny Priory the Herbert lions appear, or appeared, along with the lion of Gwladys Ddu, the ravens of Margaret, wife of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook, and the boars’ heads of Richard Herbert of Ewyas’s wife, Margaret Cradock. Other examples of female monuments in south Wales display variations in the construction of female identity: at Cardiff Blackfriars there was a 27 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 295. The arms on the blank shields around Eva’s tomb-chest were never recorded and so it is impossible to surmise what other messages they may have contained. 28 Coss, The Lady, pp. 41–2. 29 Wenllian’s brass is discussed further below.

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semi-effigial slab of a woman identified only as the wife of Michel Rofim;30 at Brecon there is a cross slab to Leucu (sic), the wife of Anian ap Madoc of Builth; while at Tenby Isabella Verney (d.1413) is called by her maiden name as well as being named as the wife of John Perrot. More enigmatic is the incised slab at Flemingston commemorating a woman identified only as ‘Elizabet’. While it was common, therefore, for the male presence to be felt on the monuments of women, the converse is also found on occasion. Some women found a presence on their husbands’ memorials despite not appearing there in effigy. At Abergavenny the diminutive figure of Margaret Cradock, the wife of Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510), kneels in devotion before the Virgin on an alabaster panel fixed to the back wall of the tomb recess. The couple’s children kneel alongside and are identified by shields displaying the arms of Cradock and Herbert, making it clear that they were the bearers of their mother’s lineage as well as their father’s more illustrious (if illegitimate) one [Fig. 5]. A parallel arrangement is found on the tombs of Thomas and John White at Tenby (c.1500). While the men lie alone in effigy on top, their four wives are remembered in the epitaphs below and appear as figures on the tomb-chests, identified by their coats of arms [Fig. 29]. The extent to which these and other monuments reflect the wishes and concerns of the women involved is a moot point. We have no concrete evidence that south Welsh women commissioned their own, or others’ monuments, but given the evidence for this in England it is likely that some did so.31 Widows, such as Eva de Braose and Sycill Butler, were more likely to have the freedom, and occasion, to commission monuments than married women.32 Given this consideration it is possible that the effigy of Payn de Turbeville (d.1318) at Ewenny Priory was commissioned by his widow, Wenllian. Wenllian was clearly a capable and resourceful woman, who took over some of her husband’s official responsibilities after his death,33 so it would not be beyond reasonable speculation to expect that she was responsible for arranging his commemoration also. Speculation is about as far as it is possible to go, however.

30 This monument is now lost but is illustrated in Rodger, ‘Stone Cross Slabs’, p. 41. The top edge of the slab has been partially broken off but it does not appear to have contained a Christian name. 31 Perhaps the best known English example of female patronage is the commissioning of a tomb at Lowick to herself and her husband by Katherine Green. The contract is given in Badham and Oosterwijk, eds, Monumental Industry, pp. 217–24. 32 For women as patrons see Hall McCash, Cultural Patronage and Gee, Women, Art and Patronage. 33 This included submitting the accounts of the lordship of Glamorgan, of which Payn had been acting as custodian after the death of Gilbert de Clare in 1314: Anthony Hopkins, Medieval Neath: Ministers’ Accounts 1262–1316 (Pontypool, 1988), p. 74.

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CHOICES All patrons exercised a certain amount of choice over the form and style of the monument, and this could also extend to the material from which it was made. Financial constraints would limit some to the products of the local area, especially in the case of cross slabs, but the wealthy had the resources and the necessary contacts to order an item from as far afield as Bristol, London or the Midlands if they preferred. One popular form of monument throughout much of England, the brass, never really caught on in Wales, however. Fewer than twenty brasses of pre-Reformation date are known of in Wales. Only nine survive in some form or another (including the Victorian replacement brass of Edmund Tudor in St David’s Cathedral) and a total of ten others, including some now lost and known only from antiquarian sources, were located in south Wales.34 These low numbers have been attributed to a combination of economic, geographical and commercial factors: the Welsh gentry are generally thought to have been too poor, too far from the London producers, and adequately catered for by the local market in stone memorials.35 These arguments are basically sound, but they are not satisfactory by themselves and do not take into consideration questions of choice and group identity. The extremely low incidence of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century brasses in south Wales must be partly explained within the context of the low level of patronage of all kinds of monuments in the area, which was particularly marked in this later period. While there are pockets of relatively dense distribution, such as in the Vale of Glamorgan and southern Pembrokeshire, taken as a whole south Wales is not thickly populated with late-medieval memorials. This can be contrasted with nearby English counties such as Gloucestershire and Somerset, with which south Wales enjoyed close links and where numbers are noticeably higher. Not only are there more monuments overall in these counties, however, but a far greater percentage of them are brasses, especially from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.36 Elsewhere in England brasses have been noted as the memorial of choice for certain sections of society in this period. In Norfolk they were most popular among the knighted manorial lords, clergy and wealthy merchants,37 and they have also been seen as proliferating amongst the Cotswold woolmen, Oxford and Cambridge academics, and within 34 J.M. Lewis, Welsh Monumental Brasses (Cardiff, 1974); Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, pp. 7–8. Browne Willis recorded three or four indents when he visited Llandaff in 1722: Bodleian Library, MS Willis 104, fol. 3, and a small number of others in his Survey of Cathedral Church of St David’s. 35 Lewis, Welsh Monumental Brasses, p. 11; Norris, Monumental Brasses, p. 46, p. 50. 36 Based on calculations of the monuments recorded in the Pevsner volumes for Somerset and Gloucestershire. 37 Jonathan Finch, ‘Church Monuments in Norfolk and Norwich before 1850: A Regional Study of Medieval and Post Medieval Material Culture’, University of East Anglia PhD Thesis (1996), pp. 64–6, 74–6.

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families, such as the Cobhams of Kent. The operation of conservatism and loyalty to particular monumental types played a large part here, resulting in a taste for brasses ‘spreading across wide kinship networks’.38 Of course, the socio-economic structure of south Wales was quite different to that of Norfolk or the Cotswolds in the late Middle Ages. Levels of commercial activity, population, urbanisation and wealth were much lower, and likely patrons in the form of wealthy merchants and burgesses, or even a rich network of rural gentry, were thinly spread. There is also the question of competition – Norfolk had high levels of medieval brasses because it was wealthy and populous, but also because it lacks good stone, resulting in such a demand for brass that local workshops were established to meet it.39 South Wales on the other hand has a plentiful supply of local stone which was regularly employed for memorial sculpture until the middle of the fourteenth century, while West Country imports also claimed a major share of the market, making brass a less attractive option. From the middle of the fifteenth century, however, the dominance of these freestones in south Wales did face a serious challenge from the popularity of an imported material, although it was not brass that managed to capture the market, but alabaster. Significantly, this shows that brass was not kept out of the local market because of its saturation by convenient local stones as alabaster also had to be exported from a distant centre of manufacture. Nor does the economic argument really add up here. Although poor finances and lack of opportunity may have prevented many would-be patrons from seeking monumental commemoration at all, economics could not have been the primary motive for the choice of alabaster over brass for those who actually did commission monuments: Midlands-produced alabaster chest tombs were, unlike brasses, very bulky items which were not only expensive in themselves but would have also incurred high transport costs and required careful assembly and decoration on site. This underlines the essential oversimplification inherent in stating that Wales is too far from London, and the Welsh gentry generally too poor, to make it a viable option to commission a brass memorial. The manufacturing and transport costs of the alabaster tombs erected at Slebech, Swansea, Llandaff, Abergavenny, Llanmartin and Newport would have far exceeded those of most of the modestly sized brasses that managed to reach Wales.40 It could be argued that the kinds of networks that fostered the patronage of brasses amongst the Cotswold woolmen and university academics failed to operate in south Wales, but it is actually more accurate to say that they Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 102–4. Norris, Monumental Brasses, p. 50. 40 The tomb of Sir William ap Thomas and Gwladys Ddu at Abergavenny, from the same workshop as that of Ralph Green at Lowick (Northamptonshire), was probably purchased for much the same price, £40, whereas Wenllian Walsche’s little figure brass at Llandough is more likely to have cost in the region of £5. For the likely patronage of Wenllian Walsche’s brass see: Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, p. 8. 38 39

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operated in favour of alabaster to the detriment of brass.41 Nor may it be too far-fetched to talk in terms of a form of national resistance to brass as a commemorative medium. Other expressions of late-medieval piety that gained favour in England, such chantries, services and especially fraternities, were also more thinly spread in Wales,42 while the north Wales producers of monuments seem to have resisted the English vogue for naturalistic foliage and other Decorated motifs around 1300 as ‘a style that was never congenial to the Celt’.43 The southern Marches were of course among the most Anglicised, urbanised and wealthiest parts of Wales, but it is worth considering that brass failed to catch on with the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Welsh gentry in part because of its perception as an ‘alien’ and unfamiliar method of commemoration in a land of stone.44

PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES The above discussions have indicated a number of general concerns about status and identity, as well as choice, which most, if not all, medieval patrons of funerary monuments would have taken into consideration in the commissioning of a monument. In some cases, however, patrons were influenced in their choices by the specific personal circumstances in which they found themselves. While these circumstances will inevitably have differed from individual to individual, scholars have identified a number of recurrent themes often relating to a change in the family fortunes. The dying out of the male line and hence the disappearance of the family name, marriage into a family of higher status or greater local influence, and the acquisition of new estates may all have occasioned a shift in circumstances which families or individuals felt the need to either gloss over or draw attention to. Such image manipulation could be achieved in a number of ways and, in common with their counterparts in the rest of Britain, such motives often lay behind the decision of Welsh patrons to arrange a monument in the first place, as well as playing a part in influencing its design and location.45 More specific to Wales, however, were certain political, 41 See below for a more in-depth discussion of the patronage of alabaster monuments by the Welsh gentry. 42 Williams, Welsh Church, p. 292. 43 Gresham, Stone Carving, pp. 21–4. 44 It has recently been noted that the late-medieval merchants of Tickhill, Yorkshire, also bucked the trend towards brass memorials, favouring instead incised effigial and cross slabs, despite the proximity of the York brass industry. This has been accounted for by conservatism and the influence of the ‘choices made by their immediate peers and the expectations and understanding of the local audience for their memorials’: Patrick Farman, Peter Hacker and Sally Badham, ‘Incised Slab Discoveries at Tickhill, Yorkshire’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 17, vi, (2008), pp. 521–49, at pp. 543–5, quote at p. 545. 45 See discussions in: Saul, Death, Art and Memory, pp. 116–18, 237–41; Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Motivation and Choice’; Clara Maria Barnett, ‘Memorials and Commemoration

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economic and cultural conditions prevailing from the mid fifteenth century which fostered the rise of the native gentry, giving rise to a whole new set of secular motivations for commemoration in the region. FAILURE OF THE LINE For the aristocracy and gentry, a social group for whom continuity of lineage was highly prized, the extinction of that lineage due to childlessness was a time of family crisis, which not surprisingly heightened the desirability of erecting a durable and visible memorial to the last of the line. There were several elements to this: not only was it deemed necessary to perpetuate the family’s memory after their physical disappearance, but there were also likely to be greater funds available for an expensive commemorative scheme as no children had to be provided for. The lack of children also made it more important to arrange formal commemoration to ensure that the deceased’s soul would not be forgotten and left suffering in purgatory. Memorials commissioned at a time of family failure are not uncommon and were also erected in circumstances where only an heiress survived, carrying the estates to a new family and resulting in the extinction of the paternal name. In England, the ending of several gentry lines influenced the commissioning and design of memorials, including those of Joan de Cobham (d.1434) at Cobham (Kent) and the spectacular series of effigies to the de la Beche family at Aldworth (Berkshire) who died out in the mid fourteenth century.46 In south Wales the same motivations can be glimpsed behind the commissioning of monuments, and those of Hawise de Londres (d.1276) at Ewenny Priory, Wenllian Walsche (d.1427) at Llandough [Plate IV] and Arnold (d.1540/1) and Sicyll Butler at St Bride’s Major [Figs 1, 42] illustrate the ways in which effigial commemoration was sometimes used as a way of minimising the implications of family extinction. In the case of Hawise de Londres the motives must be to some extent inferred from the very existence of her monument rather than any elements of its design. This damaged incised effigial slab now only shows the bottom half of the gown, the toes of a pair of pointed shoes and part of an inscription requesting prayers for her soul. The de Londres family had been one of the earliest Norman settlers in this part of Glamorgan and Hawise’s ancestors were in the Parish Churches of Late Medieval York’, University of York D.Phil Thesis (1997), pp. 128–9; Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, pp. 103, 82; Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries, pp. 167–70; Denton, ‘East-Midland Gentleman’, p. 61, p. 156; Kelcey WilsonLee, ‘Dynasty and Strategies of Commemoration: Knightly Families in Late-Medieval and Early Modern Derbyshire, Part 1’, Church Monuments, 25 (2010), pp. 85–104, and part 2, Church Monuments, 26 (2011), pp. 27–43. The monuments of clerics are not discussed in this chapter but they could be as susceptible to worldly motivations as those of the laity. See, for example, Biebrach, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Monuments in Llandaff Cathedral’, pp. 221–39. 46 Saul, Death, Art and Memory, p. 117; Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Motivation and Choice’, pp. 144–5.

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responsible for the building of nearby Ogmore Castle as well as Ewenny Priory itself. Hawise was the last representative of her family and her death signalled the end of the de Londres’ long tenure of the lordship of Ogmore. Her incised effigial slab marked a change in form from the boldly cut cross slabs of her male forebears Maurice and William de Londres, and no other monuments to female members of the family are known to have existed. Hawise’s memorial should be seen in the context of the tradition of de Londres burial and commemoration at the priory, but it also reflects her status as the last survivor of the family that had built it and had been its active patrons for over a century.47 The tomb of Arnold Butler of Dunraven (d.1540/1) at St Bride’s Major, already discussed in chapter four in relation to its spiritual messages, is also communicative of family crisis. Arnold was the last of the male line of his family, one of the oldest of the Glamorgan advenae dynasties, which can be traced back to at least the thirteenth century and probably earlier.48 The early-fourteenth-century incised slab of an ancestor, John le Botiler, depicted as a cross-legged mail-clad knight, flags up the family’s long history of association with the locality and with this particular church. Arnold made no reference to a tomb in his will of 1541, and it may have been erected either shortly before his death, or arranged by his wife Sicyll, whom he made his executrix.49 Their memorial is an imposing double monument, carved from a Bath-type oolitic limestone and situated in a large window recess in the chancel [Fig. 1]. Spiritually understated in tone – a wise choice given the nature of the times – it is in nearly all respects a conventional late-medieval to mid-Tudor design, consisting of tomb-chest, effigies and wall-canopy. In a highly unusual departure from the norm, however, Arnold Butler’s legs are crossed, a feature of military monuments which had otherwise disappeared completely nearly 200 years earlier [Fig. 42]. Arnold and Sycill’s lack of a male heir presaged the failure of the family after a presence at Dunraven for as much as three centuries, but their tomb 47 F.G. Cowley, ‘The Church in Medieval Glamorgan: 1. From the Norman Conquest to the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century’, in Glamorgan County History, vol. 3, ed. Pugh, pp. 87–135, at p. 96 48 Tradition accords the Butlers’ possession of Dunraven to the gift of William de Londres, or his son, to Sir Arnold Butler in the twelfth century: Clark, Limbus Patrum, p. 366. Johannes le Botiler was a juror at Glamorgan County Court in August 1299: G.T. Clark, Cartae et alia munimenta quae ad dominium de Glamorgancia pertinent, vol. 3 (Cardiff, 1910), pp. 911–12. There has been some uncertainty over the identity of the couple commemorated by this tomb. Newman records it as the monument of Arnold’s parents, John Butler and Jane Basset of Beaupré: Newman, Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan, p. 550. It is not known when they died, but the Bassets were a well-established local family and it would be expected that their arms of three hunting horns stringed would appear prominently if the monument commemorated Jane. Siddons’ opinion is that the tomb is that of Arnold and Sycill: Visitations, ed. Siddons, p. 44, n. 5, and the style of the monument fits comfortably with Arnold’s date of death in 1540/1. This, taken together with the obvious motivation felt by Arnold and Sycill to leave behind a prominent reminder of the family, makes it far more likely that the tomb is that of the younger couple. 49 TNA, PROB 11/28, image ref. 366.

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is, above all, a celebration of family and dynasty, designed to gloss over the stark reality of the couple’s failure to continue the name and lineage.50 The foregrounding of the family unit is achieved in the effigies of Arnold and Sycill themselves, fashionably attired and accompanied by two male and two female weepers on the tomb-chest, and underlined with an insistent display of heraldry. The tomb is framed in a canopy surmounted by a prominent achievement of arms with supporters and mantling. The quartered arms are those of 1 and 4 Butler, 2 Fleming and 3 ?Bawdrip, indicating the family’s links with other prominent local families dating back several generations.51 Sixteenth-century and later observers would thus have been in no doubt about the central place that the Butler family had once held in local society. The Butler device of a covered cup appears on the canopy and on the detached fragments now placed on the wall, as well as on shields beneath each kneeling weeper. This was a conventional way of identifying the weepers as members of the family, most likely children, as is the case with the figures placed on the back wall of the recess housing the monument of Richard Herbert of Ewyas (c.1510) at Abergavenny Priory. The two male weepers on the Butler tomb-chest would seem to be anomalous given their lack of sons, but are easily interpreted as an attempt to negate the appearance of their dynastic failure and the figures may represent children who had not survived to adulthood. Such a manipulation of the family story – what Saul has termed ‘a study in the concealment of failure’ – is exactly mirrored on the brass of Joan, Lady Cobham (d.1434), at Cobham (Kent). Joan was the last of a long and distinguished line of Cobhams and all her male children died during childhood, resulting in the extinction of the dynasty. Her brass, however, like the monument of Arnold and Sycill Butler, contains a wealth of heraldry and the diminutive figures of ten male and female children clustered either side of her skirts.52

The couple were survived by a single daughter. The attribution of the third quarter – azure, on a fess argent 3 ravens beaked and clawed gules – to Bawdrip is given in Geoffrey Orrin, Medieval Churches in the Vale of Glamorgan (Cowbridge, 1988), p. 338. However, Siddons records the main Bawdrip coat as gules, 3 swans argent, with a similar coat to that on the Butler tomb, azure, on a fess argent 3 Cornish choughs proper, itself only a quartering. On the Butler tomb, moreover, Siddons maintains that the Cornish choughs may in fact be martlets, and that they appear as lilies on a coat of arms carved in the floor next to the monument: Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, pp. 21–2, 54. I have been unable to trace any marital link between the Butlers and the Bawdrips, but an Agnes Bawdrip had married a John Basset in the fourteenth century: Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 17, 15–23 Richard II (London, 1988), p. 196. Arnold Butler could, therefore, have claimed the Bawdrip quartering through his mother, Jane Basset of Beaupré, although the Bassets themselves do not seem to have used it. It does not appear on the heraldic decoration of the porch (c.1600) at Beaupré: Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, p. 20. Nor does it seem to have come from Arnold’s wife Sycill, a daughter of John Monington of Herefordshire: Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, p. 384. 52 Saul, Death, Art and Memory, pp. 116–17. The brass is reproduced in Fig. 20, p. 107. Joan was survived by a single daughter, who took the estate to her husband’s family, the Brookes. 50 51

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Much more notable than the Butler heraldry, however, is the remarkable appearance of those crossed legs. This feature can only be explained by the specific wishes of the patrons and their clear communication to the craftsman of their precise requirements.53 The crossed legs of Arnold Butler are undoubtedly to be seen as a deliberate reference to the incised slab of his ancestor, John le Botiler,54 shown conventionally cross-legged, with his sword drawn and standing on a wyvern. As if to further underline the connection between the two men, and their monuments, this mythical beast also appears on Arnold’s monument: on the tomb slab near his feet and as a supporter of the Butler crest on top of the canopy. A picture emerges here of extensive involvement in the design of this tomb on the part of the patron(s), with the specific aim of making a connection with the monument of a distant ancestor, underlining the antiquity and constancy of the Butlers’ tenure of the Dunraven estate. When seen in this light, the reason behind the quartering of the Fleming arms becomes more apparent: it is possible that the John le Botiler alluded to in the design of Arnold Butler’s effigy was the John Butler who married the daughter of Sir William Fleming of St George’s, making the link between the two monuments, and between ancestor and descendant, even stronger. Significantly, John le Botiler was not considered the family’s founding ancestor, suggesting the slab, rather than the man, was the fulcrum of the connection. Although the patrons of Arnold and Sycill Butler’s monument may have acted primarily out of the spiritual need for commemoration, it is certainly the case that purely secular matters dictated its unusual look. The prospect of family extinction was also faced by the Walsche family of Llandough in the 1420s.55 In May 1427 Robert Walsche, the lord of Llandough, died without issue and was buried and commemorated on the family’s other estate at Langridge (Somerset).56 On Robert’s death the estates were settled on the male heirs of his married, but as yet childless, sister Wenllian, and so on her death on Christmas Day of the same year it became necessary to erect a monument that would perpetuate the family’s memory, this time at Llandough, where they had been lords since c.1200. Her modest brass, (870×410 mm) is a stock product of the London B workshop and is placed in the prestigious ‘founder’s position’ to the north of the high altar [Plate IV]. Wenllian is fashionably dressed in a loose gown with opulent, hanging sleeves, belted at the waist and gathered in rich folds at her feet. She wears a horned headdress and holds her hands together in prayer. The 53 The monument is made of a Bath-type oolitic limestone, an unusual choice for the monuments of the south Wales elites at this time, who generally opted for alabaster. Was this choice dictated by the necessity of finding a craftsman prepared to undertake such an unusual commission, or by the suitability of the material for the required pose? 54 Lord, Visual Culture, p. 245. 55 For the brass of Wenllian Walsche, and for a discussion of Welsh brasses in general, see Biebrach, ‘Conspicuous by their Absence’; Lewis, Welsh Monumental Brasses; Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, p. 8. 56 TNA, PROB 11/3, image ref. 105.

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brass plate is set into a slab of local limestone rather than the more common Purbeck marble, and a cusped and crocketed ogee canopy has been incised above her head, accompanied by a single robbed-out shield. The key to Wenllian’s predicament, however, is found not merely in the commissioning of the monument in the first place and its placing in a position of honour, but in the wording of the epitaph: ‘Hic iacet Wenll[i] an Walsche quonda[m] uxor Walteri Moreton que obit xxv° die Decembris Anno d[omi]ni Mill[esi]mo cccc° xxvii° cuius a[n]i[m]e p[ro]piciet[ur] deus Amen.’ It is relatively unusual to find a married woman identified by her maiden name in her epitaph unless her natal family was socially superior to that of her husband.57 Walter Moreton was an important local official, constable of Cardiff Castle and a retainer of the Beauchamp lords of Glamorgan, but the Walsches, as manorial lords, were a notch above. Moreover, as a childless woman, unable to continue the lineage of either the Walsches or the Moretons, Wenllian’s natal identity was given precedence over that of her husband, just as early in the previous century the childless Marie de St Pol had inserted the arms of her own relatives on the tomb of her husband, Aymer de Valence, in Westminster Abbey. While there could be no attempt to deflect the reality of the failure of the Walsche line by the inclusion of figures of dead heirs and heiresses as on the Butler monument, Wenllian’s brass nevertheless successfully drew attention to the Walsche family’s dominance by its placement in the chancel and perpetuated their memory into the future; Wenllian would be remembered as a Walsche, not a Moreton. Regrettably, the loss of the single shield prevents us from knowing whether this point was hammered home via the heraldry.58 LORDSHIP, LAND AND DYNASTY For other families it was the acquisition of new estates or titles that motivated the erection of an eye-catching monument. The colonising of churches by the dead of recently arrived lordly families has been observed on several occasions, such the Foljambe family of Derbyshire, who erected their monuments in churches carefully chosen to display their ownership of their several newly acquired estates.59 A change of personnel was a time of 57 Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 293. My thanks also go to Sally Badham and Philip Lankester for discussing this issue with me. In ‘Welsh Wales’ it was not the usual practice for women to take their husbands’ surnames, a practice difficult in any case where patronymic forms of naming were followed. Another early-fifteenth-century south Welsh example is the slab of Isabella Verney at Tenby, on which she is described as the wife of John Perrot. 58 Compare Wenllian’s epitaph with that of her brother Robert’s widow, Elizabeth, at Langridge (Somerset), who is given her married name: ‘Hic iacet Elizabeth Walsche que obit xx° die mens[is] Ap[ri]lis Anno d[o]m[ini] M° CCCC° xlj° qu[on]dam uxor Roberti Walsche Armig[eri] qui iacet in cancello isti eccl[es]ie quor[um] a[n]i[m]ab[us] p[ro] piciet[ur] deus Amen.’ Elizabeth’s brass is illustrated in A.B. Connor, Monumental Brasses in Somerset (reprinted Bath, 1970), Plate XCII. 59 Wilson-Lee, ‘Dynasty and Strategies’, part 2, p. 27.

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potential upheaval but the break could be partly glossed over via the erection of monuments to the new family in the church previously patronised by the old.60 In south Wales the fourteenth-century Berkerolles family of East Orchard and the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Herberts of Raglan found it appropriate to take over the burial churches of their predecessors with their own memorials as a way of easing the transition from one family to the other. These small collections of monuments are excellent Welsh examples of this practice and, although the Herbert monuments are relatively well known, the Berkerolles tombs have not so far been examined in this context and so it is worth considering them in some detail.61 The Berkerolles family were in many ways typical of the south Wales elite of the early fourteenth century, being descended from Anglo-Norman stock and holding estates straddling the Severnside region. In the middle of the twelfth century a William de Berkerolles held land in Bassaleg and, although they continued to be associated with this manor, by the beginning of the fourteenth century the family were building up a presence further west in the region of St Athan, eventually moving their caput to East Orchard, previously the sphere of influence of the Nerber family. The Berkerolles’ ascent to lordship in Glamorgan was gradual. The ‘Spenser’s Survey’ of 1320 lists Sir William de Berkerolles in possession of a share of the manor of St Athan, along with the well-established Norris, Walsche, Fleming, Juel and Nerber families.62 By 1349, however, his son Sir Roger had gained sole possession of three-and-a-half knights’ fees at St Athan (which included the manor of East Orchard) and a further one at Merthyr Mawr.63 No Berkerolles monuments are known to have been erected at Bassaleg, but by the time that the family were finally in sole possession of East Orchard they had erected two there, both consisting of the effigies of a knight and lady on a tomb-chest with weepers and heraldry, and one surmounted by a striking wall canopy. The monuments commemorate Sir William (d.1327) and Sir Roger de Berkerolles (d.1351) and their wives, Phelice de Vere and Katherine de Turbeville, both in the south transept of the church at St Athan, which they had appropriated as a burial chapel.64 In the 1930s the monuments were insensitively repainted, obscuring some of the finer details of the carving and significantly detracting from their aesthetic appearance. 60 Well-known English examples include the Despenser patronage of Tewkesbury Abbey following their succession to the de Clares, the succession of the Brookes as lords of Cobham, who continued the practice of memorialisation in brass initiated by the Cobhams, and the Woodford heirs of the Folvilles of Ashby Folville, who took over the Folville chapel for their own burials. 61 See Biebrach, ‘Effigial Monuments in Fourteenth-Century Glamorgan’, p. 131, for a discussion of the production of the Berkerolles monuments. The most recent account of the Herbert monuments can be found in Lindley, Tomb Destruction. 62 Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, pp. 72–3. 63 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 9, Edward III (London, 1916), p. 338. 64 The presence of a piscina in the south wall suggests that there may have been a chantry here, although there is no trace of one in the documentary record.

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The monument of the elder couple, William (d.1327) and Phelice [Fig. 33], now lies with its western end against the middle of the west wall, facing out into the chapel with its southern, eastern and northern faces exposed.65 The cross-legged, praying knight wears a mixture of painstakingly carved plate, textile and mail armour, typical of the mid fourteenth century, covered by a long belted surcoat and accompanied by a shield and sword. The praying female effigy also wears the dress of the period and has a footrest of two small dogs. The effigies lie on, and overhang by several inches, a badly damaged tomb-chest to which they do not belong.66 The monument of Roger and Katherine [Plate I] is rather more impressive, being not only more complete but also considerably better made. Erected in the 1340s, a few years prior to the death of Roger in 1351, it lies against the south wall of the chapel under a richly moulded ogee arch.67 The effigies strongly resemble those of Sir William and Phelice although Roger retains his legs and wears the later ‘cyclas’ over his layers of armour. Katherine Turbeville’s effigy is very like that of her mother-in-law, but a larger animal, which may be a lioness, serves as her footrest. The tomb-chest is again very similar in concept to that of the older couple, but is much more competently executed. On the front (northern side) four ogival trefoiled arches contain from left to right a bearded civilian, a friar, another cleric and an armoured knight. All kneel and carry scrolls, although the legends painted on them were part of the 1930s repainting and the original texts are not known. In each spandrel is a painted shield, the heraldry again an addition of the 1930s. A further two kneeling civilian figures bearing scrolls are squeezed into the space available on the eastern and western ends of the chest as it awkwardly protrudes from the back of the recess. The spandrels are again filled with shields, making twelve in all. As noted above, the monument of Roger and Katherine can be securely dated to the 1340s, a few years prior to Roger’s death, and it is likely that that of William and Phelice was commissioned as a retrospective memorial at the same time. William’s armour in nearly every respect is the same as

65 Before 1933 it lay against the south-east corner, with the effigies facing south, their feet against the south wall: NLW, MS LL/F/746 (Faculty for repairs to the south transept at St Athan, 1933). The original location is more likely to have been close to where it now lies. 66 See Biebrach, ‘Effigial Monuments in Fourteenth-Century Glamorgan’, p. 131, and eadem, ‘Monuments and Commemoration’, pp. 171–4. 67 The armour of Sir Roger de Berkerolles is of a distinctive form seen on several English effigies which have been subject to detailed analysis and securely dated by, among others, Sally Badham and Leslie Southwick. The effigy of Oliver, Lord Ingham, at Ingham (Norfolk) has the same scalloped-edged coat-of-plates, ‘cyclas’, bacinet and ridged poleyns as Roger de Berkerolles, and has been compared with several others, including that of Prince John of Eltham (d. 1336) at Westminster Abbey, which have all been dated to the 1340s: Badham, ‘Beautiful Remains of Antiquity’, pp. 12–13; Leslie Southwick, ‘The Armoured Effigy of Prince John of Eltham at Westminster Abbey and Some Closely Related Military Monuments’, Church Monuments, 2 (1987), pp. 9–21.

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that of his son,68 and it was perhaps stipulated that the more antiquated form of long surcoat be depicted on William in order to differentiate the generations.69 They were undoubtedly intended as a pair.70 Both tomb-chests at St Athan are recognisably of the ‘kinship’ type which was particularly in vogue amongst the gentry class during Edward III’s reign.71 Like all such tombs, the Berkerolles monuments are replete with heraldry, although there is no evidence of what was originally painted on the shields. Even so, it is fair to assume that the weepers themselves are likely to represent family members and that the specific tone of the monuments arose from particular family circumstances.72 The single armoured figure on the tomb-chest of Roger and Katherine subsumes chivalric and military references within the more dominant dynastic tone of the monument. This is largely reinforced by the effigy of Katherine de Turbeville herself, a member of a family who had been lords of Coity since the early twelfth century and were at the pinnacle of local landed society. The foregrounding of lineage and dynasty, together with the grand overall conception of the tomb with its distinctive canopy, was part of a deliberate statement of arrival and achievement on the part of the Berkerolles family, who had managed an alliance with the foremost local clan. Though far from being social parvenus, the Berkerolles succeeded an old Glamorgan family, the Nerbers, in the lordship of East Orchard and this transition needed to be managed. An empty niche in the north wall of the chancel of St Athan church is thought to have housed a monument to one of the Nerber family, and there is likely to have been a tradition of Nerber burials in the church.73 The erection of two sets of Berkerolles effigies in the south chapel in the late 1340s was therefore a highly effective way of announcing the family’s arrival on the former Nerber estates and underscoring the prominent position they had already adopted in local society with their Turbeville alliance. Moreover, the presence of a piscina in the south wall of the chapel suggests that a chantry service was 68 This is a style of armour which is entirely inconsistent with effigies produced in the 1320s when William died, which show only mail armour and small additions of plate on the knees and elbows. See Claude Blair, ‘The De Vere Effigy at Hatfield Broad Oak’, Church Monuments, 8 (1993), pp. 3–11; Blair, ‘The Wooden Knight at Abergavenny’; Claude Blair, John A. Goodall and Philip J. Lankester, ‘The Winchelsea Tombs Reconsidered’, Church Monuments, 15 (2000), pp. 5–30. 69 A parallel case is that of the brass of the father and son Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Swynborne at Little Horkesley (Essex). The father is armed for his date of death in 1391, the son in the armour of 1412: Norris, Monumental Brasses, p. 103. 70 The tomb-chest of William and Phelice was produced a couple of decades after the effigies and does not originally belong to the monument. See Biebrach, ‘Monuments and Commemoration’, chapter 4, case study 2 and ‘Effigial Monuments in Fourteenth-Century Glamorgan’, p. 131. 71 Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, p. 82, p. 103. 72 This discussion only deals with the monument of Roger and Katherine as its coherence is not in question. 73 CCL, MS 3.535, vol. 2, fol. 214r. The author, Herbert M. Thompson, implied this monument was in existence at the time of writing in 1935, but it has since gone.

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held here, further highlighting the dynastic element of the Berkerolles’ commemorative strategy at St Athan.74 It has been observed by the takeover of burial chapels elsewhere, such as that of the Woodfords from the Folvilles at Ashby Folville in the east Midlands, that even established gentry families needed to assert their arrival in a new inheritance as gentility was rooted in place and nobility of lineage counted for less outside its original geographical context.75 The Berkerolles tombs at St Athan were undoubtedly erected with this in mind. Continuity and legitimacy are the keys to understanding the secular motives behind the commissioning of both Berkerolles tombs. The Berkerolles’ succession to the Nerbers at St Athan was signalled by the erection of Roger and Katherine’s monument and given force and a sense of historical legitimacy by the addition of the almost identical retrospective monument to Roger’s parents, William and Phelice. Roger and Katherine are presented as the nucleus of an extended network of family and associates – lay, military and clerical – firmly rooted in local society. The marginalisation of the military tone of the monument in favour of dynastic references was partly achieved by Katherine’s own effigy, and her thoroughly local and well-established credentials would not have been lost on contemporaries. The Berkerolles monuments were born out of the need to confirm the legitimacy of the family’s possession of East Orchard and their other Glamorgan acquisitions, and the continuity of their lordship with that of the Nerbers. FAMILY AGGRANDISEMENT AND POLITICAL CULTURE The Berkerolles family arrived at East Orchard already secure in their social status – it was the geographical translation of lordship they had to manage. However, as we have already seen, across south Wales the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the emergence of a new breed of native landowners, many of whom had begun their rise to prosperity in the wake of the Black Death and the revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr by buying up vacant tenements and seeking royal and noble service. It was demonstrated in chapter two that the Welsh inhabitants of the March rarely commissioned major memorial monuments complete with carved effigy, but from the mid fifteenth century this began to change as the emergent families of Welsh descent sought to mark their new status by engaging in the kinds of commemorative display practised by their English counterparts. The erection of a showy chest monument, with all its potential for heraldic display and dynastic 74 Morganstern has shown how kinship tombs are often associated with chantries, acting as aides-memoires to the chaplain: Morganstern, ‘The Tomb as Prompter for the Chantry’, pp. 81–9. There are no documentary references to a Berkerolles chantry at St Athan, although since the family died out later in the fourteenth century it is not surprising that none is recorded in the chantry certificates of the 1540s. 75 Denton, ‘East-Midland Gentleman’, p. 61, p. 156.

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bluster, was an opportunity for family aggrandisement not to be missed and constitutes a noticeable trend among the new elites of late-medieval south Wales. Many of these tombs may only be fully understood against the backdrop of resurgent Welsh optimism and self-confidence that characterises the era.76 The trend effectively began with the erection of one of the best known of this group of monuments – that of Sir William ap Thomas (d.1446) and Gwladys Ddu, his wife (d.1454), at Abergavenny Priory [Fig. 4] – a grand alabaster monument consisting of a tomb-chest supporting the effigies of the couple carved in the latest style. From this point onwards alabaster became the medium of choice for south Welsh patrons, only occasionally diverted from in favour of stone or brass.77 A few decades later the ap Thomas monument was followed at Abergavenny by that of their son Sir Richard Herbert (d.1469) and his wife Margaret [Fig. 18], while his brother William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d.1469), had an alabaster monument at Tintern Abbey, later joined by that of his son the earl of Huntingdon (d.c.1490), both the latter now lost. Early in the sixteenth century the Herbert collection at Abergavenny was added to by the tomb of Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510) [Fig. 5].78 Although the male Herberts are most closely associated with Abergavenny and Tintern, Herbert women were inevitably commemorated elsewhere: before 1483 the monument of Margaret Herbert and her husband Sir Henry Wogan of Wiston, a member of an old Pembrokeshire advenae family, was erected at Slebech, Pembrokeshire, and is now kept at Scolton Manor, while that of Elizabeth Herbert (d.1506) and her husband Charles Somerset, earl of Worcester (d.1526), was arranged at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Elizabeth’s kinsman Sir William Herbert of Troy (d.1524) requested his monument – a brass in a departure from the family norm – to himself and his two wives, at Monmouth. This monument, if it was ever commissioned, is now lost. The Herbert interest in effigial commemoration was undoubtedly the most sustained, but they were not the only south Welsh family exhibiting 76 See John Morgan-Guy, ‘Arthur, Harri Tudor and the Iconography of Loyalty in Wales’, in Arthur Tudor Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, ed. Steven Gunn and Linda Monkton (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 50–63, and Lord, Visual Culture, chapter 5, for a fuller discussion of this issue. 77 See above for the Welsh gentry’s apparent rejection of brass. It is interesting to speculate how the subsequent pattern of commissioning might have been different if Sir William ap Thomas and his sons had been commemorated in brass instead of alabaster. 78 The Herberts had a spectacular rise to power from the mid fifteenth century, particularly under Yorkist rule, and were the first native Welsh family to be elevated to the ranks of the English aristocracy. The earl of Pembroke and his brother Sir Richard Herbert were both executed after the battle of Edgecote in 1469 but the former’s son, the earl of Huntingdon, seems to have been an ineffectual character. The marriage of his daughter Elizabeth Herbert with Charles Somerset, the illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, took most of the Herbert’s Welsh estates into that family, although there were several cadet branches of the Herberts who remained influential well into the sixteenth century. See Thomas, The Herberts of Raglan.

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such behaviour in this period. Closely associated with the Herberts were the Mathew family of Llandaff and Radyr. The rise of the Mathews began in the early fifteenth century with the careers of David Mathew (d.before 1470) and his brothers Lewys and Robert. David was commemorated with a distinctive alabaster effigy and associated chantry at Llandaff Cathedral [Fig. 17]. This was followed by the tombs of two of his grandsons, Sir William (d.1528) and Christopher Mathew (d. after 1531), and their wives, Jenet Henry (d.1530) and Elizabeth Morgan (d.1526) [Figs 20, 21]. Again, other monuments to Mathew women are found elsewhere: that of Jenet Mathew, a cousin of William and Christopher, along with her husband Sir John Morgan of Tredegar (d.1491), at St Woolos’, Newport, while the sister of Sir William, another Jenet (d.1535), was commemorated with her husband, the powerful Sir Rhys ap Thomas (d.1525), at Carmarthen Greyfriars, the tomb being moved to St Peter’s church in Carmarthen at the Dissolution. Of stone instead of alabaster, Sir Rhys and Jenet’s monument is among the grandest of the lot, the effigies exhibiting touches of Renaissance exuberance lacking in most of the other, more conservative tombs.79 Another Renaissanceinfluenced monument, with a barley-sugar column at each corner, was the now lost alabaster tomb of Sir Mathew Cradock (d.1531) and his second wife Katherine Gordon at St Mary’s church, Swansea.80 Two more lost alabaster monuments were those of the grandfather of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, Gruffydd ap Nicolas, at Carmarthen Greyfriars, and another member of the Morgan family, Sir William (d.1541/2), and his wife Florence at Llanmartin. Standing outside the main group stylistically, but allied to it for reasons of kinship and patronal links, are a small number of other monuments. Three are non-effigial in character: that of Sir Thomas Morgan (d.1510) at Llanmartin, near Newport, is an unusual design consisting of a tomb-chest crowded with weepers, which may have been intended for use as an Easter Sepulchre [Fig. 19]; that of Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys (d.1521), the son of Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his first wife Efa Henry, is a Purbeck marble monument in the south-east transept of Worcester Cathedral, close to the chantry and the similar tomb of his lord, Prince Arthur Tudor (d.1502); and at Pentyrch is the richly decorated cross slab to Robert Mathew the Younger, his wife Matilda and their son. Finally, there are two brasses: at Swansea is the brass of Sir Hugh Johnys (d.c.1485, but the brass later) and his wife Maud Cradock,81 while that of Edmund Tudor (d.1456), earl of Richmond and 79 For the careers of the Mathews see Biebrach, ‘Monuments and Commemoration’, chapter 4. For Sir Rhys ap Thomas see Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The Morgans flourished as estate stewards of the Marcher lords in Monmouthshire from the 1470s and fought on behalf of Henry VII in 1492 and 1497: see Griffiths, ‘Lordship and Society’, pp. 241–79. 80 The Cradock monument was destroyed when the church was bombed in the Second World War. Sir Mathew Cradock was closely associated with the Lord Chamberlain: Robinson, ‘Some Welsh Members’, pp. 157–70. 81 Sir Hugh Johnys had a distinguished military career in the service of the duke of Norfolk and was made a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre in 1441: W.R.B. Robinson, ‘Sir Hugh

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father of Henry VII, was erected in Carmarthen Greyfriars around 1500 under the directions of Henry’s servant Sir Rhys ap Thomas, and moved to St David’s Cathedral at the Dissolution. Looking at the main collection of tombs in more detail it is possible to detect a certain level of group consciousness expressed both in the form of monument commissioned and in the choice of heraldic display. It has already been pointed out that alabaster was the material of choice for the majority of these patrons. This in itself is relatively unremarkable as it was a popular medium for monuments throughout England and Wales at the end of the Middle Ages, but at least six of the monuments were sourced from the same two workshops in operation at slightly different periods. In about 1470 the patrons of the tombs of David Mathew at Llandaff Cathedral and Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook at Abergavenny purchased from the same workshop, the characteristic facial features and details of armour given to the two men indicating their common source. Sometime later the patrons of the tomb of Richard Herbert of Ewyas at Abergavenny, the two later Mathew memorials at Llandaff and the Mathew-Morgan monument at St Woolos’, Newport, also commissioned the same workshop and the monuments display a number of virtually identical features. Both male Mathew effigies at Llandaff, and that of Richard Herbert, are accompanied by a sleeping bedesman under one of the feet (the feet of Sir John Morgan at Newport have been lost); the three female effigies, all Mathews by marriage or birth, wear a gown with the same distinctive ruched and gathered sleeves; the tomb-chests (only a single panel of which survives at Newport) are decorated with the same form of arcading and weepers. These details were standard features of the workshop’s pattern book and are found on several of its products in different parts of England,82 but their selection by a small group of closely linked families in a restricted geographical area suggests there was a deliberate attempt by the Herberts, Mathews and Morgans to display their political and familial associations in death by patronising the same alabaster workshop. Another distinctive feature of this group of tombs is the tendency for some of them to draw attention to the family’s supposed links with figures from Welsh history. The tomb of Sir William Mathew and Jenet Henry at Llandaff is the clearest example of this practice. In 1531, not long after it was erected, the herald William Fellow recorded a range of arms associated with the monument: Elystan Glodrudd (lord of Rhwng Gwy ag Hafren, d.c.1010); Johnys: A Fifteenth-Century Welsh Knight’, Morgannwg, 14 (1970), pp. 5–34; Francis Jones, ‘Knights of the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, 26 (1979), pp. 11–33. 82 For example, the tombs of Margaret Gyffard (d.1539) at Middle Claydon (Buckinghamshire), Sir George Forster (d.1539) at Aldermaston (Berkshire) and Sir Richard Redman (c.1500) at Harewood (Yorkshire). The wide geographical and chronological range of these monuments indicates that the workshop was a well-established business, but – if the monuments in question were all commissioned around the time of death of those they commemorate – one whose pattern book barely changed in nearly half a century.

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Llywelyn Foethus (lord of Llangathan, c.1360); and Cydifor ap Selyf (king of Dyfed), as well as the Mathews’ own arms of a lion rampant,83 to which was added Marchweithian (eleventh-century lord of Is-Aled, Denbighshire) by Richard Symonds, who visited the cathedral in 1645.84 Heraldic displays on English monuments at this period tended to advertise close family links, but none of the original arms recorded on the Mathew monument seem to represent immediate family members and all the individuals, apart from Llywelyn Foethus, hail from the pre-conquest, pre-heraldic era, to whom arms had been attributed retrospectively. These apparently unconventional choices may seem counter-intuitive for a family who were keen to ape the artistic and commemorative preferences of their English counterparts, but this monument was intended for a Welsh audience, for whom the primacy of blood and lineage in the transmission of gentility would have had a deep resonance. A long and distinguished pedigree was considered of central importance by the late-medieval and Tudor Welsh gentry, and this was regularly extolled by the bards who frequented the halls of their gentle patrons. Sir William Mathew counted himself as such and his death was mourned in an awdl (ode) by Lewys Morgannwg.85 Although heraldry was slow to develop in Wales, when it did so (from the mid fourteenth century), it took on a distinct flavour which reflected the Welsh concern with genealogy and was used to display tribal ancestry rather than immediate family in the English fashion. Arms were projected back to a distant patriarch, such as Iestyn ap Gwrgant, the last native ruler of Glamorgan, and all the families that claimed descent from him could bear those arms.86 The Mathews’ lion rampant was not a coat awarded by the heralds in the way that would have been accepted contemporary practice in England, but had been unilaterally adopted to signify their descent from the patriarch Gwaithfoed, and was also borne for this reason by many other families.87 Viewed in this light, the logic behind the heraldic display on William Mathew and Jenet Henry’s tomb is much easier to understand. The arms of Visitations, ed. Siddons, p. 45. The current armorial scheme was painted on in 1980 and cannot all be verified. 84 Symonds, Diary, p. 214. 85 For Welsh heraldry and genealogy in the medieval and early modern period see: Morgan-Guy, ‘Arthur, Harri Tudor and the Iconography of Loyalty’, p. 50; Glanmor Williams, ‘Glamorgan Society, 1536–1642’, in Glamorgan County History, vol. 4, ed. Williams, pp. 73–141, at pp. 79–80; Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 357–61; J. Gwynfor Jones, The Welsh Gentry 1536–1640: Images of Status, Honour and Authority (Cardiff, 1998), p. 204; J. Gwynfor Jones, ‘Concepts of Order and Gentility’, in Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales, ed. J. Gwynfor Jones (Cardiff, 1989), pp. 121–57, at pp. 125–6; Williams, Renewal and Reformation, pp. 98–102 and passim for individual examples of the relationship between gentry and poets in the late-medieval and early-Tudor period. For Lewys Morgannwg’s awdl see J. Gwynfor Jones, ‘The Gentry of East Glamorgan: Welsh Cultural Dimensions, 1540–1640’, Morgannwg, 37 (1993), pp. 8–39, at pp. 32–3. 86 Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 1, pp. xi, 331. 87 See Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, pp. 202–3. 83

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Elystan Glodrydd, Llewelyn Foethus and Cydifor ap Selyf, quartered with those of the Mathews on the tomb, derived in fact from Henry ap Gwilym of Carmarthenshire, Jenet’s father,88 while those of Iestyn ap Gwrgant were inherited from William’s mother, Katherine Morgan of Radyr.89 In essence, therefore, William and Jenet’s heraldic display was no different in tone or intent to those of their English contemporaries, who would also have naturally included the wife’s and mother’s families, but owing to the distinctive way in which Welsh heraldry operated it appears unusually archaic. There was undoubtedly something quite self-conscious about this tendency, however, and the tomb was intended to encapsulate the duality of the couple’s gentility: they wanted to be seen as established landed gentry in the English fashion, qualified by wealth, profession and lifestyle, but they reinforced and authenticated this with an heraldic account of their descent from several lines of the ancient nobility of Wales. Echoes of the cultural and ethnic statements of the Mathew tomb can also be found on the monuments of their contemporaries, although the messages are not always as insistently Welsh in tone and are often interspersed with English arms.90 Cydifor Fawr’s arms (d.1091) are found on the partial remains of the tomb of Sir John Morgan and Jenet Mathew at Newport, which also displays the Morgan griffin, the three towers of the twelfth-century lord Hywel of Caerleon and the cross between four spearheads of the Merbury family of Cheshire.91 A similar mixture of Welsh and English heraldry formed part of the destroyed tomb of Sir Mathew Cradock at Swansea which combined the chevron between three fleursde-lys of Einon ap Gollwyn (d.1090) with the boars’ heads of the Cradocks’ main arms and the arms of Mathew’s wives Alice Mansel and Katherine Gordon.92 At Abergavenny the white lions of the Herberts are displayed on the monument of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook, together with the arms Visitations, ed. Siddons, p. 45. NLW, MS 7272e. Nineteenth-century description of the arms of Mathew of Radyr. 90 It should be pointed out that heraldry could be used in similar ways in England. Two windows commissioned for Tewkesbury Abbey by Eleanor de Clare, the widow of Hugh Despenser the Younger and sister of Gilbert de Clare, depict eight knights, including Hugh, the first de Clare earl of Gloucester, Eleanor’s second husband William de la Zouche and Robert FitzHamon, encapsulating the descent of the honour of Tewkesbury from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries and providing an ‘excellent example of an aristocratic tendency to project their values back into a pre-heraldic past, in the interests of lineage’: Peter Coss, ‘Knighthood, Heraldry and Social Exclusion in Edwardian England’ in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display, ed. Coss and Keen, pp. 48–9. Similarly, it has been noted how the secular tomb narratives of the gentry of the East Midlands ‘could often call on centuries of genealogical information when required’: Denton, ‘East-Midland Gentleman’, p. 167. Denton cites the lost brass to Sir Thomas Chaworth (d.1458) and his wife Isabel Aylesbury at Launde Priory (Leicestershire), which contained nine shields depicting ten separate lineages of the couple. Interestingly, among them were the de Londres arms, representing the marriage of Patrick de Chaworth and Hawise de Londres (d.1274) of Ewenny, via which the lordship of Kidwelly came to the Chaworths: pp. 149–53. 91 Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, pp. 398–400. 92 NLW, MS 6554e, fols. 11, 13 and 14. 88

89

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of his wife Margaret, which were derived from the mid-sixth-century figure Urien Rheged. Urien’s chevron between three ravens also adorns the tabard of one of his more famous descendants, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, at Carmarthen and are repeated on shields around the tomb-chest.93 The heraldic tone of the monument of Sir William and Jenet Mathew is therefore echoed in the tombs of their contemporaries to varying extents, and, taken as a whole and as individual examples, this collection of monuments reflects the new-found power, authority and self-confidence of their class. Peter Lord has identified Welshmen and women such as these as ‘extravagant patrons of visual culture’, even if some preferred books, glass, wood and paint to alabaster, stone and brass. The medieval commemorative monument had always been the vehicle of concerns other than the purely spiritual. A potent mixture of social, political, territorial and familial bluster and anxiety is conveyed in their design and execution. For the Mathews, Herberts, Morgans, Cradocks and their kind, the monumental effigy was one way in which they could express their new-found social, political and economic status on one level and set it within the context of their noble blood-line on another.

93

Siddons, Development of Welsh Heraldry, vol. 2, pp. 498–9.

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D

amaged, fragmentary and lost monuments have featured in discussions throughout this book where we know enough about them to make valid comments, and in chapter one it was noted that we can never be sure how many monuments have been lost without a trace. It is the purpose of this chapter to attempt to build a picture of those losses and attacks, when they occurred, and under what circumstances. But this is not only a tale of destruction. It is also one of survival, and many of our remaining monuments have gone through periods of neglect or removal, followed by restoration and protection, or have simply been left where they are since the original reason for their existence was partially invalidated at the Reformation. They have been studied for different purposes, and successive generations, forgetting how to interpret them through medieval eyes, have spun tales about them and their subjects which in some cases have passed into local lore. These different forms of ‘afterlife’ are the subject of this chapter. Loss of and damage to tomb monuments have traditionally been ascribed to two bouts of iconoclasm: the first in the mid sixteenth century during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Edwardian Reformation, and the second during the civil wars of the seventeenth century. Phillip Lindley has outlined the process by which medieval monuments became the targets of iconoclastic fury, and has written extensively about the destruction of the tombs at Abergavenny, an account which will not therefore need to be repeated here.1 The attacks occasioned by the Dissolution of the Monasteries from 1536 to 1539 had a disproportionate effect on the memorials of the clergy and since, at this stage, it was the material value rather than the spiritual sensibilities of the monuments that sealed their fate, those of the laity that had received monastic burial were also plundered.2 The denial of the doctrine of purgatory in 1547 and the subsequent banning of prayers for the dead did away with the need for chantries, colleges and other intercessory institutions and introduced a doctrinal element into the onslaught on Catholic institutions. This inevitably had serious consequences for tomb

Lindley, Tomb Destruction, chapter 6; idem, ‘Disrespect for the Dead?: The Destruction of Tomb Monuments in Mid-Sixteenth-Century England’, Church Monuments, 19 (2004), pp. 53–79. 2 Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 8; Stone, Sculpture in Britain, pp. 2–3. 1

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monuments throughout England and Wales, so many of which made their intercessory function explicit in their iconography or inscriptions and contained overtly Catholic imagery. That attacks occurred is indicated by government pronouncements that tombs were not to be targeted as they preserved the memory of honourable men, but in spite of official bans monuments became caught up in the waves of iconoclasm.3 There were sporadic attacks on monuments during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI/I, again despite official prohibition, but the 1640s unleashed destruction on a devastating scale as the backlash against Laudian innovations gained momentum and victorious parliamentary troops were given their heads by their commanders.4 Historians and art historians have bemoaned these waves of vandalism. Lawrence Stone estimated that ‘well over ninety percent’ of medieval religious imagery, including tomb monuments, was lost during these periods of religious and political upheaval.5 Margaret Aston has also cited many examples of monuments being deliberately targeted in official or unofficial acts of vandalism and referred to the Reformation period as ‘an age of deliberate disrespect for the dead’.6 Peter Sherlock has written of the ‘wholesale attack’ on monuments during the Dissolution, a view echoed by Peter Marshall, who also claimed that the ruinations of Edward VI’s reign were ‘entirely unprecedented’.7 Lindley maintains that the destruction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was devastating.8 Although he is ready to acknowledge that subsequent periods may have been equally hazardous due to ‘church reorderings, ecclesiological restorations, aesthetic revulsion, the “de-cluttering” of church interiors, carelessness and theft’, he argues that the Reformation and Civil War destruction was of a particularly virulent kind as it was state-sanctioned and national in scale.9 While this is undoubtedly the case, it is suggested below that iconoclastic impulses may not have been felt as keenly in south Wales (Abergavenny Priory and St David’s Cathedral aside) as they were in other parts of the British Isles. Although there are examples of horrific deliberate vandalism, it will become apparent below that the slow process of attrition suffered in later centuries was ultimately to be just as detrimental in many cases to the region’s monumental heritage as earlier, episodic, religiously motivated attacks. The regrettable effects of post-Restoration attitudes to medieval remains have long been acknowledged. Stone cited the indifference and misguided restorations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as having a Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 18–21. See Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 111–23 for examples. 5 Stone, Sculpture in Britain, pp. 1–3. 6 Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts: Laws Against Images (Oxford, 1988), quote at p. 15; and see pp. 71–83, 269–70, 314 and 317. 7 Peter Sherlock, Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2008), p. 102; Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002), p. 104. 8 Lindley, Tomb Destruction, p. 1. 9 Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 241–2, quote on p. 242. 3

4

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detrimental effect on medieval religious sculpture,10 while Aston has also recognised that not all damage to tombs dates from the ReformationCivil War period.11 Nigel Llewellyn has put the particular tendency to blame parliamentarian troops down to the nature of the primary sources. He sees royalist reports of attacks as ‘propagandistic and sensationalist’, and comments that there are only ‘a handful of documented episodes’ of rampaging soldiers destroying images and tombs. Llewellyn cites a range of other circumstances in which monuments may have been damaged, such as inherent weaknesses in the structure of the effigy and attacks motivated by hatred of the person commemorated, and comments that the nineteenth century was a dangerous time for funeral monuments.12 Marshall also seeks to provide a balanced view and makes the fundamental point that many sixteenth-century examples of destruction come from London, where tombs must have been ‘particularly vulnerable’ due to their ‘proximity to the nerve-centres of the Edwardian Reformation’.13 Marshall agrees with Llewellyn’s scepticism of the veracity of seventeenth-century accounts and maintains that antiquarian summaries of the damage done also show just how much had survived. Crucially, for the suggested pattern of events in south Wales outlined below, Marshall cites early-seventeenth-century chorographies of Suffolk and Norfolk which listed tombs and inscriptions then surviving. A comparison of these with an eighteenth-century account of Norfolk ‘suggests that present-day survivals represent only a fraction of the epitaphs remaining in the churches throughout the seventeenth century’ (my italics), and that many epitaphs in Suffolk were either lost in the Civil Wars ‘or, more likely, [as a result] of subsequent theft, neglect, and Victorian enthusiasm’.14 Of the twenty-four wooden memorials known to have been lost in England and Wales, A.C. Fryer claimed that, although five fell victim to parliamentary troops at Brecon, most of the rest were destroyed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.15 Madeleine Gray’s study of medieval Welsh religious imagery agrees that the traditional emphasis on the state-sanctioned, religiously motivated destruction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has to be examined carefully in the context of Wales. She points to the abundant evidence that other damage and outright losses occurred at other times, drawing attention to the dangers posed by the nineteenth century, and recording many examples of quite recent destruction, including a small number from the twentieth century. The Welsh, she argued, were reluctant to attack images during the Reformation and those which were destroyed, such as Stone, Sculpture in Britain, pp. 1–3. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 63. 12 Nigel Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 261–9. 13 Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead, pp. 104–5. 14 Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead, p. 175. 15 Fryer, Wooden Monumental Effigies, pp. vi, 16–17. 10 11

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the immensely popular image of the Virgin at Penrhys in the Rhondda, were the most potent examples, singled out by the government and dismantled by crown agents. Consequently, in the seventeenth century a great deal of religious imagery remained; some damage was done during the 1640s and 1650s, but ‘Wales suffered particularly badly at the hands of the nineteenthcentury restorers’.16 In the absence of evidence for the precise timing of the losses of some of the monuments described below it is impossible to say whether it was the neglect of an earlier period or the ‘repairs’ of a later one that are most to blame. Almost all the medieval parish churches in south Wales were restored at least once in the Victorian era. In the 1850s the primary concern of the restorers was to increase accommodation by adding extra capacity in the form of nave aisles and other extensions. In some cases this was followed later in the century by a complete rearrangement of the interior and provision of new fixtures and fittings in accordance with new liturgical ideas.17 In such cases any memorials set into the floors, obstructing processional routes, or in wall niches must have been especially vulnerable.18 Although there had always been individuals, such as Stow and Weever, who spoke out vociferously against the vandalism of medieval artefacts, attitudes towards the ‘superstitious’ and Catholic Middle Ages did not fundamentally begin to change until the nineteenth century and the Gothic Revival. On a practical level, the preservation of medieval remains in cathedrals and parish churches was unlikely to become a point of general concern until the attitudes of an educated elite began to filter down to the wider parish clergy and other interested parties. By the middle of the nineteenth century such concerns were certainly being expressed in some quarters in south Wales, as a letter to the newly established Archaeologia Cambrensis, quoted below, demonstrates. But it was not until the latter part of the century, following the establishment of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in 1877, that more sensitive conservation-orientated restorations replaced the earlier potentially destructive overhauls.19 By the end of the nineteenth century this approach seems to have become the accepted practice. A faculty for the restoration of Llantrithyd church was granted in 1897 on condition that monuments were not affected, and similar promises

Gray, Images of Piety, p. 83. Geoffrey Orrin, Church Building and Restoration in Victorian Glamorgan (Cardiff, 2004), p. xvi. 18 Two medieval cross slabs have recently been discovered beneath pews mounted on a wooden platform, erected in 1844, in Tickhill, Yorkshire: Farman, Hacker and Badham, ‘Incised Slab Discoveries’, pp. 521–49. 19 Orrin, Church Building, p. xvii. The SPAB was dubbed the ‘anti-scrape brigade’ in reference to their abhorrence of the contemporary practice of removing layers of plaster and limewash in order to expose the bare stone, a practice which had resulted in the loss of medieval wall-paintings. 16 17

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were made in applications for permission to re-lay floors at Llandyfodwg in 1892, Llanblethian in 1896 and Llantwit Major in 1899.20

PRE-REFORMATION LOSSES Some medieval monuments are known to have come to grief well before the Reformation. Grave slabs, especially brasses, were appropriated for use by others, some were recycled as building materials and others, such as the tomb of Henry V’s queen Katherine de Valois, were demolished to make way for new building projects or interments and never rebuilt.21 Such lack of respect in the medieval period is echoed by the observation of Vanessa Harding that ‘a casual attitude to monuments and memorials was not necessarily the product of religious change’.22 A similar point is made by Marshall, who credits the medieval reuse of monuments as masonry and window lintels in several locations in Derbyshire, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire and the evidence of palimpsest brasses to a ‘pragmatic and utilitarian approach’ to the memorials of the dead in an age when the longdefunct were in competition with the recently deceased for the attention of the living.23 Examples of this kind of attitude can be found in south Wales. In 1897, during restoration work on St John the Baptist’s church, Llanblethian, a cross slab and the effigy of a civilian, both probably of the thirteenth century, were discovered reused in the foundations of the fifteenth-century tower.24 The effigial figure, already in fairly low relief, had been flattened off, ostensibly in order to bed more evenly into the course of masonry. In Llantwit Major church is a semi-effigial monument, apparently of a thirteenth-century cleric, consisting of a tonsured head set into a circular depression at the head of a coped tombstone decorated with interlacing geometric and foliate patterns. The decorative carving, however, appears to be the work of the twelfth century and the inscription indicates that the gravestone was once that of a female [Fig. 43].25 These examples indicate NLW, MS LL/F/468; LL/F/373; LL/F/401; LL/F/479/B. Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 6–7. 22 Vanessa Harding, ‘Burial Choice and Burial Location in Late Medieval London’, p. 129, in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Stephen Bassett (Leicester, 1992), pp. 119–35. Harding cites the reuse of gravestones from St Michael Cornhill in 1456–57, when the churchwardens sold a monument to a marbler for 6s 8d. 23 Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead, pp. 38–40. 24 Charles B. Fowler, ‘Discoveries at Llanblethian Church, Glamorganshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 15 (1898), pp. 121–31, at p. 121. 25 The inscription reads NE PETRA CALCETUR QUE SUBIACET ISTA TUETUR. Sally Badham has suggested that the patterns are typical of twelfth-century work and the coped shape is unlikely to be later than the mid thirteenth century, as is the inscription with its mixture of Lombardic and Roman lettering. However, the fashion for semi-effigial monuments came later, in the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries. The hollow in which the head is set also cuts into the ends of the interlacing patterns. Badham maintains 20 21

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that old memorials could be at risk in the medieval period, and presumably were reused because their original subjects were unknown or had no living descendants to preserve their memory. The two monuments cited here clearly are not now ‘lost’, but the Llanblethian effigy in particular indicates that there may be further undiscovered examples of memorials which have been similarly misappropriated.

THE REFORMATION AND THE CIVIL WARS An unknown number of monuments were lost in south Wales between the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The few that are known are found in the scant archaeological remains and a small number of documentary sources from the interim period, many of which refer to monasteries of one sort or another. From William Fellows and Rice Merrick we learn of the loss of the monuments of Sir William Fleming and Llywelyn Bren at the suppression of Cardiff ’s Greyfriars. Crucially, we know that this house was plundered not long after the few remaining brothers had been expelled. Four local men were accused of taking away stones, windows, timber and tiles,26 which would undoubtedly have involved the destruction of commemorative displays in stained glass, and this could also have been when the monuments were stripped. Bren’s, made of wood, would have been particularly vulnerable, and the motives behind such activities were clearly financial, rather than iconoclastic, for monetary gain was a powerful incentive to destruction.27 Given the popularity of the mendicant houses for late-medieval burial requests, it seems logical to assume that these were not the only monuments in the monasteries of Cardiff that disappeared at this time.28 Excavations in the 1890s of the site of Cardiff ’s Blackfriars, situated next to the castle, unearthed a semi-effigial slab to the wife of Michel Rofim, probably from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century – ‘several that this points to the slab being a twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century monument which was appropriated in a later period for the tomb of a priest, whose head was then carved into the top. This would also explain the gender disparity between the inscription and the carved head: Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, pp. 17–18. A closely similar recycling of a coped twelfth-century slab by adding a head in the thirteenth century has recently been described by Andrew Sargent. The slab was reused again in the sixteenth century as a window lintel: Andrew Sargent, ‘A Reused Twelfth-Century Grave Cover from St Andrew’s, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge’, Church Monuments, 23 (2008), pp. 7–13. 26 Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), p. 96. 27 By 1578 the Herbert mansion had been built on the site of the Greyfriars. It is visible on Speed’s map of 1610, which shows no surviving conventual buildings, providing a terminus ante quem for the destruction of the Bren and Fleming tombs. The Benedictine priory had been suppressed at the beginning of the fifteenth century. 28 A study of late-medieval Norwich wills revealed that one in ten testators requested burial in one of the city’s friaries: Judith Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370–1547 (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 72.

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fragments of finely-worked tomb canopies’ – which suggest this to be the case.29 Further hints of the memorials that once may have been housed in the friaries and lost after their destruction are gleaned from the first visitations of the heralds to the region. William Fellows’s 1531 account of the heraldry in ‘Carmarthen Friary’ and ‘Cardiff Friary’ (probably both the Greyfriars) records well over fifty coats of arms, the majority of which belonged to local gentry families. Some of the coats recorded at Cardiff refer to prominent local families of long standing for whom there are no known surviving medieval memorials, such as the Bawdrips, Norrises and Stradlings, and it is tantalising to think that the arms may have been seen on their tombs. Fellows was concerned only with heraldry, however, and often failed to note the context in which it was seen, so it cannot be assumed that all he recorded was seen in a monumental context. One of the coats of arms at Cardiff, for example, was that of Rhys ap Thomas impaling Mathew, representing the union of Sir Rhys ap Thomas and Jenet Mathew of Radyr. This could not have been seen on the couple’s monument, however, as they were buried and commemorated at the Carmarthen Greyfriars, and he records their ‘goodly tombe’ close to the high altar there. This monument, along with that of Edmund Tudor, was moved at the Dissolution (Rhys ap Thomas to St Peter’s, Carmarthen, and Tudor to St David’s Cathedral) and thus saved, but others in this location were not so fortunate. Also at Carmarthen Greyfriars Fellows saw the alabaster tomb of ‘Gryffyth Nycolas, esquier’, the grandfather of Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The monument was placed before an image of St Francis, not far from that of his illustrious grandson, but whoever saw fit to rescue Sir Rhys either could not or would not do the same for Gruffydd ap Nicholas, and no trace of it now remains.30 The case of the Carmarthen Greyfriars, however, reminds us that not all monuments in monastic settings were doomed to destruction. The once numerous tombs of the Herbert family fared differently depending on their location. Those at Abergavenny Priory survived the attack on them which probably took place after the fall of Raglan Castle to the parliamentarians in 1646 and were ultimately preserved,31 but those at Tintern Abbey suffered in the total despoliation of the house.32 William Fellows and the Herbertorum Prosapia record the monuments at Tintern of William Herbert, earl of 29 Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments ’, p. 19; Fowler, ‘Excavations Carried out at the Site of the Black Friars’ Monastery’, p. 11. 30 Visitations, ed. Siddons, pp. 40–3, 65–71. For Gruffydd ap Nicholas (fl. 1425–56), see Dictionary of Welsh Biography: www.http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s3-GRUF-APN-1425.html [accessed 9 June 2016]. There are fragments at St Peter’s containing heraldry which could have come from the Gruffydd ap Nicholas tomb. I am grateful to Professor Ralph Griffiths for this information. 31 That of Sir John Morgan and Jenet Mathew at St Woolos’, Newport, is also thought to have been damaged at this time: David Richard Thomas, ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 1 (1884), pp. 35–45, at p. 38. 32 See Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 199–220.

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Pembroke (d.1469), and his wife Anne Devereux, and their sons William, earl of Huntingdon (d.1491), Sir Walter Herbert of Caldicot (d.1507/8) and Sir George Herbert.33 The earls’ monuments are said to have been defaced in 1538.34 At Neath Abbey the destruction seems to have been almost total, with nothing surviving except for a few cross slab fragments and the effigy of one of its thirteenth-century abbots, Adam of Carmarthen. This in itself must raise questions as to the motivations and timing of the destruction of the rest: why would an iconoclastic attack spare the memorial of such a bastion of papal supremacy as an abbot?35 The abbeys of St Dogmael’s and Margam, and the priories of Monkton, Abergavenny, Usk, Brecon and Ewenny all retain medieval memorials, due in part to the fact that they (apart from St Dogmael’s) remained in use as parochial churches after the Dissolution and so were not entirely abandoned to the twin depredations of the elements and rapacious laity. Even so, some of these monuments have been badly damaged, discarded or recycled, and some will have been lost altogether, but it is frequently difficult to determine the timing and rationale behind both the losses and the survivals. The example of Monkton Priory, Pembroke, is a case in point. Founded in 1098 by Arnulf of Montgomery, earl of Pembroke, like several other Benedictine foundations in south Wales it suffered periodically from neglect, and monastic life was temporarily suspended between 1441 and c.1471. In 1525 it housed only three monks and it was dissolved in 1539. It now contains the partial remains of three effigial monuments: those of a monk (or more likely a prior) [Fig. 44], a late-thirteenth- or earlyfourteenth-century knight [Fig. 45] and an early sixteenth-century robbedout brass [Fig. 46]. The effigy of the prior is complete apart from the tonsured head and praying hands – a deliberate and targeted defacement of offensive features (in contrast to the general wear of the Neath abbot) which is most likely to have taken place during the religiously sensitive decades of reform and war in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The knight is a virtually unrecognisable torso, the only identifiable feature being part of the belt and some drapery folds on the side of the surcoat. The rest of the monument has been sawn off at each end and carefully flattened off on top, with a broad, smooth central plane running along its length. This is a clear case of recycling, the monument having been cut down in order to function possibly as a window ledge, lintel or door jamb, and this could have taken place at any time, even before 1539. The priory was not wealthy and so it is Visitations, ed. Siddons, p. 38; CCL, MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia, fols 75, 145, 149. Fellows refers to four other burials at Tintern, but does not confirm if the tombs were effigial, while the Herbertorum Prosapia includes an illustration of the effigy of William Herbert of Coldbrook for which neither date nor location is given. 34 CCL, MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia, fol. 75. 35 The effigy of Abbot Adam has been far from protected, however. During the nineteenth century it lay in a field near the abbey and consequently much of the detail of the carving has been lost, but it does not seem to have suffered unduly from vandalism. 33

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feasible that old monuments were pressed into use for necessary repairs to avoid the expense of acquiring new stone. Finally, there is the splendid early-sixteenth-century canopied wall monument of a local family. The beautifully carved stonework of the tombchest, side panels and canopy supported by twisted columns all survives largely intact, but the brasses of praying figures, prayer scrolls and images of saints, including possibly one of the Trinity, as well as several heraldic shields, have been robbed out. The most likely scenario here is that the brass plates were taken out after the Dissolution, possibly by John Vaughan, who was granted custody of the priory in 1545.36 Brasses were particularly at risk due to the inherent value of the material,37 but was it this or the Catholic imagery and prayers which sealed their fate, or a combination of the two? Whatever the timing and the reasons, the remains at Monkton indicate how difficult it can be to recapture these complex motivations when all that survives are a few mangled lumps of stone. The same is the case for monuments which have survived in other ex-monastic settings. The broken incised-slab of Hawise de Londres at Ewenny Priory, of which only the bottom half remains, was found at the end of the nineteenth century, placed upside down and used as a seat in the church porch.38 Evidently the physical needs of the parishioners overcame the need to commemorate the last member of the priory’s founding family, although we do not know when the slab was pressed into its new use, or when and how it was broken.39 Other knights, at Margam [Fig. 7] and Ewenny [Fig. 15], like that at Monkton, have lost various parts of their anatomy. That at Ewenny is intact apart from the lower legs and feet, although the rest is very abraded, while the Margam knight has lost his hands and feet. This may have been accidental as the figure was kept outside for an unknown length of time,40 but the nature of the damage to the Ewenny knight’s face suggests a deliberate and violent attack, and both knights are known to have suffered their losses before the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.41 The location of these effigies in ex-monastic settings makes it plausible to assume they were attacked during the Reformation, like the memorials of Llywelyn Bren and Sir William Fleming described above, at a time when the buildings and their contents were particularly vulnerable. But what their particular ‘offence’ may have been is not easy to say. They were of no real material value and so it may have been religious imagery or epitaphs, 36 Information on Monkton Priory taken from Monastic Wales, http://www. monasticwales.org/event/537 [accessed 15 June 2016]. 37 In 1550–51 thirty pounds in weight of brass was sold by the churchwardens of All Hallows, London Wall: Lindley, Tomb Destruction, pp. 22–3. 38 Orrin, Medieval Churches, p. 154. 39 It was not seen by Francis Grose on his visit to the church in 1775, so it had presumably been removed to the porch before then. 40 Letter from Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick to Henry Ellis, Esq., 1820, Society of Antiquaries of London, MS 238. 41 Francis Grose’s Itinerary, BL, Add. MS 17, 398, fol. 78.

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of which there is now no sign, that drew the attention of the vandals. It is surprising that they were not better protected, however, particularly that at Ewenny Priory, which became the property of the recusant Carne family and so was unlikely to have been at the mercy of iconoclasts at this period. Ultimately, the removal or reuse of monuments such as those of Hawise de Londres and the Margam and Monkton knights may speak not of iconoclasm but of indifference, and this can be a feature of any period. The case of Brecon Priory is particularly difficult to explain in terms of iconoclasm. Here, numbers of cross slabs containing the IHS monogram and calls for prayers, the effigy of a tonsured figure and two large and prominent crucifixes on the Awbrey monument all survive, yet the postReformation triple-decker memorial to the Games family was smashed by parliamentarian soldiers, leaving only one of the effigies unscathed. The monument was wooden, perhaps giving a clue to the priorities or needs of the attackers, although Peter Lord attributes this attack – as well as those on other gentry monuments – to the ‘levelling instincts of the soldiery’.42 When Thomas Dineley passed through Brecon in 1684 he remarked that a monument in the south chapel, reputed to be that of Bernard Neufmarché, had been ‘so battered by the late English Rebells’ that it was impossible to make out, lending credence to Lord’s suggestion.43 The question of motivation is an important one, and what we know of Welsh attitudes to the Reformation confirms that religious iconoclasm is likely to have been rare. Reformed beliefs were patchy and slow to develop. Poor communications, under-urbanisation, restricted trade and a lack of independent institutions and educational opportunities resulted in a society where few would have been ready to accept the Protestant message, even if it had been broadcast in Welsh. Although they usually acquiesced in the government’s religious policies due to an innate loyalty to the Tudor regime, the Welsh in general were reluctant to give up their local saints and traditions. A crowd turned out at the destruction of the shrine of Derfel Gadarn at Llandderfel, near Bala, and the remarkable sum of £40 was offered to Henry VIII’s commissioners to spare the image.44 Here, as with the destruction of the shrine of the Virgin at Penrhys in the Rhondda valley, it was government agents, and not a local mob, who were responsible for the desecration. Glanmor Williams put such progress as the Reformation made in Wales (and there is very little evidence of popular resistance) down Lord, Visual Culture, p. 55. Thomas Dineley, The Account of the Official Progress of His Grace Henry first Duke of Beaufort through Wales in 1684 (London, 1888), p. 213. The monument was described (despite Dineley’s assertion that he could not ‘reduce it to any figure’) as being an armoured figure with its head on a crested helm, suggesting it to be possibly of later-fourteenth- or fifteenth-century date. Neufmarché (d.1125) was the first Norman lord of Brecon and founder of the priory. 44 Williams, Welsh Church, p. 497; Lord, Visual Culture, p. 220. Although the image of the saint himself was taken, his devotees must have been at least partly successful in protecting the shrine as a wooden horse or stag associated with it still remains in the church. 42 43

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to the gentry’s total acceptance that their families’ advancement was in the hands of the crown, which followed on from their natural support of the Tudors. The region’s aristocracy, the Herberts, Somersets and Devereux, were ‘only gentry writ large’ and similarly unlikely to resist royal will in the way that the earlier, more independent-minded Marcher lords might have done.45 It is to these men that Henry VIII and Edward VI looked to carry out the royal will in the localities, and they did so irrespective of their religious affiliations. A century later and during another period of upheaval, Wales’s sympathies for much of the Civil War (Pembrokeshire apart) were firmly Royalist, and the country saw little in the way of major military campaigns. The dangers posed by the more fervent forms of Protestantism or rampaging parliamentary troops were therefore much less in evidence here than they would have been in East Anglia or London. As well as monasteries, cathedrals were also the sites of major shrines, and therefore similarly at risk of looting, vandalism and general misappropriation which could have been extended to target monuments. In 1538 some of Llandaff Cathedral’s canons attempted to forestall the confiscation of the treasures of the shrine of St Teilo by dismantling it and distributing them amongst themselves. The authorities were able to recover only a fraction.46 In a petition to the bishop of Winchester about the actions of the canons, it was claimed that ‘they have not omitted to plucke up and sell the paving stones’.47 It may have been at this point that the brass plates were removed from the fourteenth-century memorial of Bishop Pascall and from the one or two other monuments which had lost brass inscriptions by the time that Browne Willis visited in 1723.48 On the whole, the surviving evidence suggests that Llandaff Cathedral suffered relatively lightly at the hands of iconoclasts motivated by religious sensibilities as opposed to asset-strippers motivated by financial gain. It still contains the stone effigies of six bishops, some of which are accompanied by Catholic iconography which has remained mostly intact. The effigy of ‘St Teilo’ contains a carving of the Virgin and Child and of a soul being lifted to Heaven by an angel [Figs 38, 39]. The Virgin and the little soul have both lost their heads, but the delicacy of the carving remains clear, despite the garish modern gold paint. The effigy of ‘St Dyfrig’ is censed by angels and accompanied by the Image of Pity, Christ in Majesty and the Instruments of the Passion [Figs 45 Williams, Wales and the Reformation, pp. 32–8, quotes at pp. 32 and 38. It has also been pointed out that the beginnings of the Reformation were being felt at the same time as the union between Wales and England, which may have focused the Welsh gentry’s minds on more pressing matters: Lawrence Thomas, The Reformation in the Old Diocese of Llandaff (Cardiff, 1930), p. xiv. 46 Williams, Wales and the Reformation, pp. 127–8. The shrine, located in the Lady Chapel, included gilded and jewelled images of the three founding saints of the diocese, twelve silver apostles and the Trinity: Thomas, Reformation in the Old Diocese of Llandaff, p. 75, 77. 47 Cardiff Records, ed. Matthews, vol. 1, pp. 376–7. It is easy to imagine the impact of such actions on the cathedral’s floor slabs. 48 Bodleian Library, MS Willis 104, fol. 7

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2, 30].49 The Image of Pity and Christ in Majesty are slightly damaged, but the Instruments of the Passion are still remarkably crisp and clear. Another plaque depicting the Instruments of the Passion and angels supporting the head of Bishop Marshall are also unscathed. The two later Mathew memorials at Llandaff also contain intact religious imagery [Figs 20, 21].50 Both display several undamaged monastic and angelic weepers, and the sleeping bedesman visible under the foot of Sir William Mathew is an overt reference to the Catholic belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead that was allowed to go unmolested.51 All these figures have been subject to a certain amount of wear and tear, but overwhelmingly this would seem to be accidental, rather than of a type targeted only at religious imagery, and is easily explained by Llandaff ’s ruinous state from the later sixteenth to the nineteenth century, when some of the monuments were relocated to different positions within the cathedral. That Sir William and Christopher Mathew’s tombs, peppered with religious imagery, and the bishops’ tombs and accompanying iconography should have survived nearly intact while the apparently entirely secular tomb-chest of David Mathew disappeared is difficult to account for other than by accident, recycling or neglect, rather than deliberate iconoclastic damage. Religious motives do seem to have been behind the attack on the angels at the head of Lady Audley’s effigy, however. The figure is otherwise quite well preserved and the loss of her nose, chin and fingertips may be collateral damage from the attack.52 In contrast, St David’s Cathedral appears to have suffered rather more seriously than Llandaff, and from Civil War iconoclasm and asset-stripping rather than earlier depredations. Towards the end of the sixteenth century an account of the cathedral, possibly written by George Owen of Cemais, described some of the monuments, including those of Bishop Vaughan (d.1522) in the Vaughan Chapel and Edmund Tudor in the chancel, which then contained its original brass plates. The only prior iconoclasm he mentioned was connected with the shrine of St David, which even then still bore its painted images of St David and St Patrick, although another saint had been defaced.53 By 1716, however, all the cathedral’s brass and some of 49 These details are not thought to belong originally to the effigy although they formed part of the same monument in Browne Willis’s time: Willis, Survey of Llandaff Cathedral, p. 24. They were also observed by Symonds in 1645 in conjunction with the effigy of a bishop: Symonds, Diary, p. 213. 50 Sir William Mathew (d.1528) and his wife Jenet Henry, and Christopher Mathew esquire (d. after 1531) and his wife Elizabeth Morgan. 51 There is a similar one under the foot of Christopher Mathew, but this abuts the wall and is therefore protected. 52 An intriguing alternative explanation for the loss of the prominent parts of alabaster effigies, such as noses and fingertips, is provided by F.A. Greenhill, who notes that ground alabaster was used to treat foot-rot in sheep, and he cites a quotation from Stothard to the effect that the monument of Sir Hugh Calveley in Cheshire had been mutilated for this purpose: F.A. Greenhill, Incised Effigial Slabs: A Study of Engraved Stone Memorials in Latin Christendom, c.1100–c.1700 (London, 1976), p. 63, n. 65. 53 Willis, Survey of the Cathedral Church of St David’s, pp. 68–70.

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its other metalwork had gone, including the palisade which had surrounded the tomb of Bishop Gower (d.1347). Willis’s correspondent noted that ‘the Rebels took that, and all the Brass upon the other Tombs of the church quite away’. Of Bishop Morgan’s tomb, then situated near the pulpit, it was noted that the face was mangled, ‘as are all the Faces upon every Monument in the church more or less’.54 An examination of the monuments today confirms that this was no exaggeration. Virtually all the ecclesiastical effigies, which make up the majority of those surviving, have been vandalised to varying degrees: faces, but also praying hands, accompanying angels and sometimes footrests, having been sawn or hacked away [Fig. 47]. The faces of the saintly weepers on the Gower tomb-chest have been chipped off [Fig. 41], but probably the greatest, and most regrettable, damage is to the beautiful Renaissance-inspired tomb of Bishop Morgan (d.1504), with its sumptuous naturalistic drapery and dynamic figure of Christ rising from the tomb. Its quality still shines through the ruin that affects every part and it must originally have been a gorgeous and, for the time and place, an avant-garde example of funerary art [Fig. 10]. One or two others have escaped the carnage, notably that of Bishop Anselm [Fig. 8], which still has its canopy angels largely intact, but the overall impression is one of sustained and targeted vandalism. The monuments of knights have also been damaged, and here again it is faces and praying hands which seem to have caused offence: in some cases they have been neatly sawn through rather than roughly hacked. The ruination of St David’s Cathedral in the 1640s and ’50s is considered by a recent writer to have been so extreme that the ‘restoration period was, in effect, a second foundation’.55 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were undoubtedly dangerous times for monuments in south Wales, particularly for those in ex-monastic sites and in St David’s Cathedral. In the latter location, religious motivation seems to have been a primary driver of the violence, but it is not so easy to identify the same motives in places like Brecon Priory and Llandaff Cathedral, where Catholic imagery has been left largely untouched. The Welsh, on the whole, did not display iconoclastic tendencies in this period. Such damage as was done may in many cases be put down to ignorance or greed, and perhaps the survivals are more eloquent witnesses to the nature of the situation than are the losses.

54 Willis, Survey of the Cathedral Church of St David’s, pp. 3–4. Bishop Morgan’s tomb was moved to the south aisle in the twentieth century: Wyn Evans and Roger Worsley, St David’s Cathedral 1181–1981 (St David’s, 1981), p. 63. 55 William Gibson, ‘“The Most Glorious Enterprises have been Achiev’d”: The Restoration Diocese of St David’s 1660–1730’, in Religion and Society in the Diocese of St David’s 1485– 2011, ed. William Gibson and John Morgan-Guy (Farnham, 2015), pp. 91–128, at p. 109.

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POST-RESTORATION LOSSES AND DAMAGE Threats to monumental sculpture did not come to an end with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, however, and there is plenty of evidence that the eighteenth, nineteenth and even twentieth centuries took as great a toll in south Wales as the turbulent sixteenth and seventeenth. Returning to St David’s Cathedral, a comparison of what was visible in 1716 with what Richard Fenton saw in 1811 indicates that further outright losses were sustained in the interim. In the north transept (St Andrew’s Chapel in Willis) Fenton noted that modern gravestones on the floor now replaced some ‘very ancient [monuments], of which not a trace remains’ and which had been there ‘even in [his] memory’. As if to prove his recollections right, Fenton went on to describe the monuments he remembered under two plain canopies, which had been filled up, as well as two tombs, one of grey and one of white marble (probably alabaster), the latter having an effigy and inscription, ‘HIC IACET MAURITIUS GLYN CUIUS ANIME …’. Another, of white marble, but damaged, had contained an inscription to Thos. ap Hoell (d.1490), identified as a cathedral canon. Also lost from the north transept by 1811 were two tombs of cathedral dignitaries, both of the name Powell.56 Fenton’s memory was not playing tricks with him. Willis’s account of the north transept as it stood at the beginning of the eighteenth century confirms that there were two stones said to belong to two canons and another two of marble or alabaster to canons both of the name Powell.57 Something catastrophic had clearly happened in the north transept between 1716 and 1811, resulting in the loss of at least four large monuments, and the south transept had suffered a similar clearing out. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, noted Fenton,58 there had been ‘five old grey marbles’, one or two of which had been like stone coffins, and two had ‘embossed heads’. Only one of these remained in 1811 and it had been recycled for current use – ‘fresh inscribed to the modern dead’.59 Willis does not seem to have noted any of these for certain, although they sound from Fenton’s description like cross slabs and semi-effigial cross slabs, probably of thirteenth- or fourteenth-century date. There is a small number of these kinds of memorial still surviving in the cathedral, including the reused slab,60 and three fragments incorporated into the modern altar frontal in the Trinity Chapel (previously the Vaughan Chapel), but it is impossible to say if the latter are the remains of the ones Fenton had in mind. Moving into the Lady Chapel, the vaults of which had collapsed in 1775, the supposed monument of Bishop Houghton (d.1389) had also been stripped from its Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, pp. 84–5. Willis, Survey of Cathedral Church of St David’s, pp. 8–9. 58 Fenton was relying for some of his knowledge of the previous condition of the cathedral on Willis’s account, as well as his own memories. 59 Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, p. 85. 60 I am grateful to Professor Madeleine Gray for this information. 56 57

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recess.61 But the spoliation of St David’s was not over by Fenton’s time. In 1811 the Vaughan and Lady Chapels housed the brass of Bishop Vaughan (d.1522) and the monument of Bishop Martin (d.1328) respectively. There is now no sign of either. An engraving of the Lady Chapel made shortly after 1811 shows an unroofed and windowless space, the floor covered in vegetation growing luxuriantly enough to cover the base of the sedilia, and collapsed roof bosses lying in a heap on the floor. It is not surprising that monuments failed to survive this level of ruination.62 For Llandaff Cathedral, the fabric of which had to be virtually rebuilt in the mid 1800s, it was the eighteenth century that proved the most calamitous. In 1718 it was described as being in a deplorable state and the evidence for the authorities’ neglect is overwhelming. Just after Willis visited, in the early 1720s, the tower collapsed, bringing down much of the nave roof, and services were subsequently moved to the Lady Chapel as the rest of the building was uninhabitable. In 1724 Thomas Davies, a Llandaff clergyman and antiquary, complained that ‘I do not know one gentleman or figure of note in this county that will take any pains to keep up his own parish church, much less the cathedral’,63 but in 1752 work was begun on a restoration of sorts when the Bath architect John Wood was commissioned to build a ‘classical temple’ within the remains of the Gothic shell. Although this may have serendipitously preserved some medieval features, including monuments, which became walled up and thus protected behind the plaster of the new structure, the nave was left to go entirely to ruin. A number of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century engravings show a roofless, and apparently floorless, western portion of the church, with ivy and other vegetation growing on its walls. Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s accounts of his visits around the turn of the nineteenth century confirm that this was not all just imaginative Romanticism,64 and a visitor in 1805 saw green mould covering the aisle walls and ‘immense books’ scattered in heaps on the vestry floor.65 Some of the monuments which had previously lain in the nave were protected, however. That of Sir William Mathew and his wife was dismantled and stored in the Chapter House, propped up in pieces against the walls, but others must surely have been destroyed or discarded at this point. Among these were presumably the empty matrix of the brass of Bishop Pascall and the monuments of Bishops Monmouth and William of Radnor, as well as the tomb-chest of David Mathew, all of which had been in existence at the start of the eighteenth century, but had gone by the Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, p. 86. Evans and Worsley, St David’s Cathedral, p. 135, pl. 148. The Lady Chapel was not restored until 1901: Roger Stalley, ‘St David’s Cathedral’, in The Buildings of Wales: Pembrokeshire, ed. Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield (London, 2004), p. 290. 63 Quoted in Jenkins, ‘From Edward Lhwyd to Iolo Morgannwg’, p. 36. 64 CCL, MS 3.127, vol. 2, fol. 60; vol. 6, fol. 86. 65 NLW, MS 678b, fol. 147. 61

62

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time Sir Richard Colt Hoare and the draughtsman John Carter made their separate visits in 1802–03. In the mid nineteenth century Wood’s ‘temple’ was dismantled and the whole cathedral underwent an extensive rebuilding under the direction of Bishop Ollivant which restored its medieval design. The Mathew tomb was returned to its former position in the nave, as we must assume were the others which are now in that part of the church. But even after the restoration and the adoption of a more custodial attitude by the clergy, it appears that the cavalier attitude of the public was still putting some monuments in danger. A rather breathless letter to the dean in 1883 complained about damage to the effigies of David Mathew and Jenet Mathew, sustained since the writer’s previous visit. Then, to his ‘grief ’ and ‘astonishment’, he had personally observed during a service that the vergers allowed Jenet and Sir William Mathew’s tomb-chest to be made ‘the recepticle [sic] for all the hats, umbrellas, canes etc. […] in some instances the handles of parasols were hooked into I may say violently dug into the delicate tracery of the Tabernacles round the Tomb, also the beautiful carving did as a rest for the boots of those sitting by’.66 Despite incidents such as this, Llandaff Cathedral was generally dealt with sensitively, but the fashion for church restoration and modernisation which had taken hold from the later eighteenth century could also be detrimental, leading the antiquary Richard Gough to describe some attempts to be as damaging to medieval memorials as ‘the axes and hammers of the Reformation’.67 A mixed picture emerges of the attitudes in this period of clergy, churchwardens and congregations to church buildings and the monuments they contained. Fenton’s account of his travels around Pembrokeshire is peppered with exasperated references to monuments lost within his memory, as at St David’s Cathedral, due to the neglect or ignorance of those who should have been caring for them. A cross-legged knight at Nolton had repeatedly been coated in whitewash, obliterating most of its features, a practice which he describes as common throughout the county. At St Mary’s church, Haverfordwest, an effigy lying near to the communion rails had been moved to make way for the body of Sir John Pryse of Newton Hall and was afterwards ‘huddled most disgracefully amongst rubbish and lumber’, as was the effigy of a knight, discarded from a demolished aisle at Nash and kept amidst building rubble ‘under the drippings of the eaves’. At Burton an effigy hidden in undergrowth in the churchyard was moved to make way for another burial and had since disappeared. The worst case was at Newport (Pembrokeshire), where Fenton observed an empty niche. Falling into conversation with an old man at work in the church, he was 66 Glamorgan Archives, DL/DC/B/49: Letter from S.L. Stevenson to the dean of Llandaff, 4 October 1883. 67 From Richard Gough, Sepulchral Monuments (London, 1786–1802), vol. 1, p. 7, quoted in Sally Badham, ‘Richard Gough and the Flowering of Romantic Antiquarianism’, Church Monuments, 2 (1987), pp. 32–43, at p. 41.

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told that about thirty years previously (therefore about 1780) there had been an effigy of a man in the niche, which the man ‘remembered … being taken away, adding, with great exultation, that it served to cut up into fine arches for windows’.68 There is evidence that the situation was similar in other parts of south Wales. At Llanmartin the alabaster tomb of Sir William (d.1541/2) and Florence Morgan had been badly damaged sometime before 1796 when the roof fell in after the lead had been stripped from it and replaced with tiles. The monument was at that point covered with brambles, and it had entirely gone by the 1930s.69 An early correspondent to Archaeologia Cambrensis claimed that the Butler monument at St Bride’s Major was ‘falling into decay; and if the help of some one … does not ere long do something to restore it, it will like many others in the county of Glamorgan, fall to pieces’ (my italics). Of the Berkerolles monuments at St Athan, the same writer commented that ‘These monuments require to be cleaned and repaired, or they will soon fall into the same state as that of the Botelers of St Bride.’70 In 1869 the situation was still perceived to be precarious and it was feared that village churches ‘may soon become mute and ruined memorials of a state of things doomed to destruction’.71 Churchwardens’ accounts and applications for grants to the Incorporated Church Building Society (ICBS) tell a tale of dilapidated buildings in dire need of repair. Coity church, in 1860, was in ‘imperfect repair’ and nearby St Crallo’s at Coychurch was in a ‘ruinous condition owing to neglect’ six years later.72 That the plight of monuments does not feature in these complaints is telling, and surviving churchwardens’ accounts, such as those of St Bride’s Major and St Hilary, are entirely silent on the matter of church monuments.73 It is not surprising, therefore, that monuments have disappeared from parish churches since the eighteenth century, and one or two have been lost relatively recently. At Coity, in poor condition in 1860, Browne Willis had previously seen the ‘effigies of a man in armour and his wife’, identified in inscriptions as Gilbert de Turbeville and Anne (or Agnes) de Saint Quintin.74 Fenton, Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, pp. 156, 216, 276–7, 428, 545. Bradney, History of Monmouthshire, vol. 4, part 2, p. 220. 70 Correspondence, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 2 (1847), p. 93. 71 Longueville-Jones, ‘On the Study of Welsh Antiquities’, p. 82. 72 Lambeth Palace Library, Incorporated Church Building Society (ICBS) File 5440; File 6573. 73 Glamorgan Archives, P/89/10; P/12/3. 74 ‘Gilbert de Turbeville … Nostre Seigniour 1447 de qui alme deux eyt merci Et qi put ca Alme priera quater cents jours de pardon avera’; ‘Ici gist Dame Annes [?] de Saynt Quinti [?] sa mare [?] soyt fillus ai [?]’: Bodleian Library, MS Willis 42, fol. 290r. Brackets indicate illegible sections. Willis’s inclusion of the year 1447 in a French inscription seems incongruous, and is likely to be a mistake as the use of French in epitaphs had been in decline since the end of the fourteenth century: Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 354. There were several Gilbert de Turbevilles at Coity from the twelfth to the fourteenth century (this branch of the family died out in the male line in the second half of the fourteenth century), one of whom married an Agnes probably in the late twelfth or thirteenth century. See pedigrees in Clark, Limbus Patrum, pp. 452–5 and Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, 68 69

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There is no military effigy at Coity now and it is difficult to identify either of the inscriptions with the early-fourteenth-century monuments of a lady and a civilian which can now be seen there, both of which make reference to Payn, rather than Gilbert, de Turbeville. Did these monuments get moved, or destroyed, during a nineteenth-century restoration? At Ewenny Priory the cross slab of Sir Roger de Reigny was still in existence in 1809 but has since disappeared,75 and further destruction occurred at St Woolos’ in 1818 when fragments of the already damaged tomb of Sir John Morgan and Jenet Mathew were burnt for plaster during a restoration of the church.76 At Tintern Abbey all that is now left of a military effigy seen propped against a pillar in 1819, and then in good enough condition for the details of the mail to be described, is its head, worn so smooth as to be virtually unrecognisable.77 Brecon Priory (used as a parish church between the Reformation and the creation of the diocese of Brecon in 1923, when it became a cathedral) also went through a period of upheaval which saw the loss or removal of many monuments. One such was the tomb of ‘Waters’, commemorating an early Tudor man and wife, which was intact when Thomas Churchyard saw it at the end of the sixteenth century. In 1809 Theophilus Jones revealed that it had lost its figures in living memory, and by 1886 it had gone completely.78 According to G.E.F. Morgan, writing in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1925, only four monuments out of sixteen wooden and alabaster examples known to have existed in Brecon Priory in the early seventeenth century were then surviving, which is not perhaps surprising given the ‘ruinous’ and ‘dilapidated’ condition it had fallen into by the beginning of the nineteenth century, followed by a thorough restoration which was carried out in stages between 1860 and 1930.79 Some, we know, were destroyed by parliamentarian soldiers, but Morgan states that a number of gravestones were turned out in 1862. In other cases, what the soldiers failed to accomplish the later inhabitants of the town finished off: the remains of the thirteenthcentury wooden effigy of Reginald de Breos, which was partially destroyed by the Roundhead army, were being used by local washerwomen in the mid nineteenth century, presumably as some kind of scrubbing board. Having said that, Morgan also refers to the rediscovery of recycled slabs during the restoration that were then restored to the church. Among these was pp. 54–5. The St Quintin family of Llanblethian failed in the male line during the reign of Henry III: Merrick, Morganiae Archaiographia, pp. 27, 56. 75 NLW, MS 6497c, fol. 60. There are many fragments of cross slabs in the church which may include all that is left of this monument. See also Gray, Images of Piety, pp. 82–3, for examples of post-Restoration destruction of medieval features elsewhere in Wales. 76 Thomas, ‘Sir John Morgan’, p. 38. 77 Society of Antiquaries of London, MS 238, fol. 2. 78 Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales; Jones, History of the County of Brecknock, p. 65; Edwin Poole, The Illustrated History and Biography of Brecknockshire (Brecon, 1886), p. 43. 79 RCAHMW, The Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist, Brecon (Brecon, 1994), pp. 7 and 55.

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the slab of David Smyt, which had been used to floor the roof gutter of the nave along with two others [Fig. 28].80 More of the medieval slabs now to be seen on the floor and around the walls may have been rescued when the floor was relaid in the 1870s: it was reduced to its original level, uncovering buried memorials.81 Some monuments were lost in the twentieth century. Mathew Cradock and Katherine Gordon’s grand alabaster monument was destroyed in a bombing raid on Swansea in 1941, but the fate of others is more obscure. The thirteenth-century semi-effigial slab of the wife of Michel Rofim, excavated from the ruins of Cardiff Blackfriars in the late nineteenth century, was last known to be located near that spot in the gardens of Cardiff Castle in the 1930s, but its present whereabouts are unknown.82 The ‘much weathered recumbent figure’ of a knight in Llandough churchyard and the thirteenthcentury effigy of Phillip de Nerber at St Athan were recorded by Herbert M. Thompson in 1935.83 Phillip de Nerber is nowhere to be seen, and the Llandough churchyard knight is now nothing more than an unrecognisable heap of rubble amongst the weeds [Fig. 48].84

MONUMENTS AND FOLKLORE The catalogue of wilful destruction, accidental damage and neglect described above makes depressing reading, yet there are also signs that subsequent ages did not always regard medieval monuments as either superstitious relics or inconvenient (or potentially useful) lumps of stone. Antiquarian accounts, church guidebooks and living local traditions reveal that some in fact took on a new relevance and continued to figure in the collective consciousness of the local community in a surprising variety of ways, ranging from the use of affectionate nicknames to the creation of entire myths of long-standing tenacity.85 Some associations are difficult to account for. One such is connected with the fourteenth-century incised slab of John and Isabella Colmer at Holy Trinity, Christchurch, near Newport, which gained a reputation as a Morgan, ‘Vanished Tombs of Brecon Cathedral’, passim. RCAHMW, Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist, p. 55. The slabs referred to here dated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, but could have included some preReformation examples. 82 Badham, ‘Minor Effigial Monuments’, p. 19. 83 CCL, MS 3.535, vol. 1, fol. 116r; vol. 2, fol. 214r. The Llandough knight was said to be in a mutilated condition in the churchyard, near the south entrance porch, in 1989: Hilary M. Thomas, ‘Llandough Castle, near Cowbridge’, Morgannwg, 33 (1989), pp. 7–36, at pp. 7 and 34, n. 4. 84 Information from Madeleine Gray, May 2016. 85 A modern example is ‘Walter by the Altar’, the name given to a fourteenth-century effigy by some members of the present congregation of St Crallo’s, Coychurch. Of greater antiquity are the names ‘Dolly Mare’, a corruption of ‘de la Mare’, given to the effigy of a knight at Llangennith, Gower, and ‘Mary Drell’ for a cleric at Brecon Priory. 80 81

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site of healing and was resorted to by the sick until the eighteenth century. The sick person was supposed to lie all night on the stone to achieve a cure, although it is not known when this tradition arose, or why;86 there is nothing in its physical appearance or location to mark it out as having spiritual or medicinal properties any more than any other piece of medieval art. Perhaps the fact of its being a flat slab on the floor – quite a rare thing in southern Welsh churches – simply made it more accessible to the sick, who could lie upon it with little inconvenience. The presence of the Latin inscription may also have held some residual spiritual/magical power in a part of the world described as ‘one of the dark corners of the land’. Why this tradition evolved at Christchurch is a mystery, but in other cases there are particular features which can be seen as the focus or origin of a story that has become woven around the person commemorated. The most striking example of this tendency is the traditions that have built up surrounding the effigy of David Mathew (d. before 1470) in Llandaff Cathedral [Fig. 17]. This effigy, which has lost its tomb-chest, is indeed notable, measuring nearly seven feet in length, with a large head bearing distinctive features such as a lined face and a receding hairline. Scholars maintain that – royals apart – medieval effigies were not intended to be portraits, but it is hard to escape the sense here that some measure of individuality has been injected into this face, if only in the impression of age that it gives.87 This, combined with the figure’s stature, creates an aura of gravitas and powerful physicality. It may come as no surprise, therefore, to read in local histories and the cathedral guidebook, and to be told by cathedral guides, that ‘Sir’ David Mathew was a six-foot-two Marcher lord who bore the banner and saved the life of Edward IV at the battle of Towton in 1461. He saved Llandaff Cathedral from attack by Bristol-based pirates, for which he was awarded the title of keeper of the tomb of St Teilo and is said to have been finally killed in 1484 (which would put him at around ninety years of age) in a riot at Neath. There has even been a historical romantic novel based on his life, in which he hob-nobs with the earl of Warwick and fathers an illegitimate child with a London tavern-wench.88 Some of these traditions have a long pedigree, the first written evidence of which can be dated as far back as the seventeenth century, but they are more than likely to have been in existence before that. In 1645 Richard Symonds referred to Mathew as ‘Great David Mathew, standard bearer to K’, in which he was followed by Browne Willis’s description of A.G. Spink, The History of Holy Trinity Church (Cardiff, 1965), p. 28. A comparison of armour and facial features reveals that the effigy was a product of the same workshop that made, among others, the monuments of Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469) at Abergavenny and Charles Somerset, St George’s Chapel, Windsor (1506). 88 Garner Scott Odell, Sir David: The Life and Loves of a Welsh Knight (Bloomington, 2002). A further surprise for the reader is that the fifteenth-century Sir David also smokes a pipe. 86 87

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‘the monument of David Mathew the Great, who was standard bearer to Edward IV, and was murther’d at Neath by some of the Turbevilles with whom he was at variance’. It is possible that Willis may have been aware of Symonds’s description, and both are likely to have picked up on an earlier oral tradition current locally. The claim that Mathew saved King Edward’s life at Towton seems to have been made much later and is mentioned in a short genealogical (and rather fantasist) work written by a descendant in the 1920s.89 Unfortunately, none of the stories told about David Mathew can be borne out by surviving documentary evidence. To begin with, the title ‘Sir’ appears to be unwarranted as he is only ever described as armiger (esquire) in contemporary records; the fifteenth-century lordship of Glamorgan was not in Mathew’s hands, but in the those of the powerful and aristocratic Beauchamp and Neville families; and he had certainly died years before 1484 as he is referred to in the past tense in his son’s will of 1470.90 There are no contemporary descriptions of his physical appearance and all that can be said of him for certain is that he was an acquisitive and increasingly prominent landowner with estates scattered between Llandaff, the Vale and the uplands of Glamorgan, a steward of the lordship of Llandaff in the 1440s, and a witness to the charters of other prominent local gentry and occasionally the lords of Glamorgan themselves.91 There is no certain evidence that he had any kind of military career, although a man of his name did serve in France in 1417.92 He possibly had some legal training, but in essence was nothing more glamorous than a successful local gentleman bureaucrat. How, then, did he become known to subsequent generations as a dashing man of action? It is more than likely that it was the nature of his monument – ostensibly that of a large and powerful warrior – that began to give rise to these stories in the century and a half after his death, which were then embellished in the retelling. His descendants rose to even further prominence in local society in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, several eventually achieving the knighthood that David Mathew is often credited with. Given the contemporary Welsh propensity for claiming descent from illustrious forebears, perhaps it suited them to have such admiring rumours in circulation. They may even have believed them themselves. Once the real man had passed from living memory, and the medieval understanding of the visual language and conventions of monumental sculpture had been lost, it might have been logical to assume that a tall figure in armour must in life have been a powerful knight, skilled in arms and capable of valiant acts of derring-do. Once such traditions are Symonds, Diary, p. 213; Willis, Survey of Llandaff Cathedral, p. 25, G.M. Matthews, Y Mathiaid: The Mathews of Llandaff (London, 1924), pp. 19–21. 90 TNA, PROB 11/16, image ref. 7. 91 See for example, Clark, ed., Cartae et alia munimenta, vol. 4, pp. 1523, 1544–55, 1550–52, 1559–61, 1608–09, 1621–25. 92 Chapman, ‘The Welsh Soldier 1282–1422’, p. 134. 89

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committed to paper they become authoritative, liable to repetition and are hard to eradicate from popular consciousness.93 David Mathew’s is not the only example of the physical appearance of a monument giving rise to local traditions about those it commemorates, though it might be the most oft-repeated one. Another such story was captured by Thomas Churchyard in 1587 regarding the fourteenth-century effigy of a lady at Abergavenny Priory. She is described as having a squirrel on her hand, a pet which was said to be the cause of her death by falling while she was playing with it on top of a wall.94 Churchyard’s description implies that the squirrel was then still on the effigy, but all that can be seen now is a thin chain emerging from her pocket which snakes up to her abdomen where it is then lost, and where the animal was supposedly tethered. However, close inspection of the marks on this part of the effigy suggests that the chain may originally have secured an object such as a circular mirror or pomander, so what gave rise to the squirrel story is unclear. An even more ingenious leap of imagination gave rise to a story about a member of the de la Roche family commemorated by a mid-fourteenth-century military monument at Llangwm, Pembrokeshire. Supposedly the monument of Adam de la Roche (d.c.1200),95 it is said to feature a viper wound around the knight’s ankle. According to the local story, a soothsayer had predicted that Adam would die from a snakebite and so he took precautions to ensure this did not happen, including building Roche Castle on top of a rocky outcrop away from vegetation where snakes might lurk. Unfortunately, as the story goes, he met his end when a snake found its way into a basket of firewood brought into the castle and the lethal animal was depicted on his monument in memory of the manner of his death. The ‘snake’ around the ankle of the effigy, however, is nothing more than the attachment strap for his spur.96 On a practical level the above examples are the obvious consequences of a need to explain features such as physical appearance and unfamiliar items of dress to observers who no longer understood them, and they can be replicated in many other locations.97 On another, they also speak of an awareness among locals of a community stretching back many generations where it was possible to feel a sense of connection with the distant past through well-known figures and the material remains they left behind.

93 This is an ongoing process. The author has overheard a cathedral guide telling a party of tourists that David Mathew must have suffered from a form of gigantism in order to account for the monument’s large size. 94 Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, cited in Lindley, Tomb Destruction, p. 225. 95 But more likely to be that of Robert de la Roche (d. before 1349). 96 The story may also have arisen as a need to explain the siting of Roche Castle on top of a bare rocky outcrop, where it forms a very prominent feature in the landscape even today. 97 For example, the local names given to the de la Beche effigies at Aldworth, Berkshire: John Long, John Strong, John Neverafraid and John Everafraid.

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his book has shown that one of the most distinctive features of the monumental culture of south Wales is its chronological development, from burgeoning growth up to the middle of the fourteenth century, in which it demonstrates a common trajectory with contemporary trends in England, to collapse, stagnation and limited recovery prior to the Reformation. In this, it departs from English patterns to a considerable degree, as the English monumental industry recovered from crisis and regained its buoyancy during the fifteenth century and beyond. The reasons for this contrast are far from straightforward, and while they must to a great extent reflect Wales’s early-fifteenth-century set-backs, there is clearly more to it than this. The investigation into the production of south Wales’s monuments has demonstrated that it was tied up to a certain extent with the failure of native production. But whatever the causes of this phenomenon, it is clear that we must now introduce to our current picture of the increasing democracy of monumental commemoration at the tail-end of the Middle Ages a few caveats and more subtlety. The south Welsh picture has an extra layer of complexity owing to the region’s ethnic make-up, which is likely to have been a contributory factor to the way in which monuments are located across the region. While the basic facts of population density, transport availability and suitable terrain inevitably determined where monuments are likely to be found, the geographical distribution of Welsh monuments was also dictated to a certain extent by the observed preference for them, especially in their effigial form, among the non-Welsh settler population. This preference may also play a part in the reasons why south Wales seems to have a disproportionately large percentage (in relation to its mostly rural medieval character) of monuments in urban locations. These conclusions can only be carried so far however. The unavoidable fact that the huge bulk of cross slabs must remain anonymous, as well as the hints from Brecon Priory and Cardiff Greyfriars that the Welsh certainly did have monuments in urban churches, simply raises more questions about why monuments are sited where they are. In the case of the monasteries, both rural and urban, it is clear that those commemorated there were attracted by the presence of the monks, who could be relied upon to keep up a stream of intercessory prayer. It is unfortunate that the sites of so many of these houses, such as Cardiff ’s

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Franciscan, Dominican and Benedictine houses, Haverfordwest’s Augustinian Priory, Premonstratensian Talley and Cistercian Whitland, have now been all but completely ruined, taking with them the evidence of the monuments they once contained. These losses, as well as those from urban parish churches still in use, may have skewed the current picture of a largely rural, parochial, dispersal, but if this is the case it is probably in agreement with what has been observed elsewhere. Where the patrons of south Wales are concerned, two consistent themes have emerged. Firstly, the mid fourteenth century was a significant watershed in the patronage of commemorative monuments in south Wales. Until this point south Welsh patterns were very similar to those of England: ecclesiastical, military, female and civilian monuments appeared at around the same time and generally followed the same styles. Moreover, the majority of patrons were of Anglo-Norman or English descent and identified with English interests and cultural practices. As in England, the market for monumental commemoration in south Wales expanded and diversified throughout the thirteenth and into the fourteenth century. From the second half of the fourteenth century, however, patterns in England and south Wales began to diverge dramatically. While both countries saw a fall in patronage immediately after the Black Death, English commissions recovered throughout the rest of the century and by the middle of the fifteenth century the market was buoyant, swelled by the increasing ability of lower-status individuals to purchase modestly priced brasses and slabs. In south Wales the opposite was the case. Not only did levels of patronage remain low, but the patronal group – especially those commissioning effigial monuments – contracted to a narrow social stratum of the episcopacy and the upper gentry, with the parish clergy and non-knightly families dropping out of the market altogether. The major exception to this is the White family of Tenby, but they too had one foot in the landed rural elite and were wealthy enough to be able to ape the latter’s conformist commemorative tastes. The second theme is closely linked to the first: while patterns of patronage in south Wales were fully integrated into those of southern England up to c.1350, they were substantially different to those in ‘Welsh’ Wales where Gresham has shown the dominance of the market by the princely families and the uchelwyr up to 1400. In the south, as we have seen, monuments were commissioned overwhelmingly by advenae settlers in both town and country before the mid fourteenth century, who often preferred effigial forms over the floriated cross slabs popular in the north. Uchelwyr patronage of monuments in the south prior to the mid fifteenth century is largely hidden, but it must have been there. It may have been the case that they relied on cross slabs, and here the few remnants at sites such as Brecon Cathedral, Llantwit Major and Ewenny Priory may give a hint of their preferences. The monumental effigies and cross slabs of south Wales comprise an eclectic range of products, dominated by no single style, material, or place

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of origin, the consequence of the lack of a long-lived, thriving, prominent local source of centralised production. The combined effects of plague and revolt from the mid fourteenth to the early fifteenth century resulted in an abrupt collapse of the once flourishing native industry in all its forms, a process in which disruption at local quarries and the curtailment of available craftsmanship and client groups played important parts. Although the evidence for what might be classed as established workshops in operation in south Wales is somewhat elusive, it is likely that circumstances in Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire gave rise to a couple of relatively short-lived operations serving the local elites at a time of high demand in the first half of the fourteenth century. The small number of monuments which can be identified with these producers illustrate just how much choice was available to contemporary consumers, who could have taken their custom to masons based at local quarries, suppliers of cross slabs, itinerants attached to local building sites, or other suppliers across the Bristol Channel, depending on the depth of the patron’s pocket. The scarcity of cheaper monuments such as cross slabs in the aftermath of plague and revolt was such that imported products were the only practical option in the wake of the collapse of the local industry. Consequently, a renewal of interest in monumental commemoration from the early fifteenth century directed itself towards outside sources of supply, partly due to prevailing fashions, but also as a possible reflection of the lack of expertise closer to home in a period when few major building projects were underway. The evidence for the origin and production of monuments in south Wales illustrates the complexity of the forces involved in the creation of the monumental culture of a given region, and suggests that, in an area with a restricted client base of limited economic means, the availability or otherwise of an affordable local supply ultimately defined its character. Medieval Welsh men and women were motivated by a range of factors when opting for monumental commemoration, but the overriding consideration was the central concern of contemporary religious practice – the salvation of the soul. At its most basic, the cross slab summed up this desire through the depiction of the object most closely associated with Christ’s sacrifice, the cross itself. But the horror of purgatory and the need to ease its pains underlay many additional aspects of tomb design and appearance, from epitaphs calling for prayers, to praying effigies, angels and bedesmen. On occasion a more personal theology makes itself felt in the appearance of specific saints, or images associated with Mary and Christ. Despite Wales’s plethora of native Celtic saints, however, Welsh patrons preferred to rely on the intercessory power of the Roman canon. The evidence of wills, poetry and non-monumental forms of commemoration indicates that, although the Welsh accepted the beliefs and practices of latemedieval Christianity without demur, they wore their religion relatively lightly. Loyalty to the Tudor regime seems to have deflected any violent resistance to the Reformation, but reformed belief was slow to catch on,

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and this delicate balance between political pragmatism and religious conservatism can just be glimpsed playing itself out in the (regrettably) few monuments of the 1540s. But the patrons of south Wales did not just have spiritual concerns in mind when they commissioned a memorial monument. A lack of documentary evidence means that it is usually difficult to arrive at a good understanding of their wider motivations, but the picture that has emerged from this study is nevertheless of a patronal class fully conversant with the secular rhetoric of the medieval tomb and able to exploit it for particular ends when necessary. More often than not they were happy with the conventional expressions of status, gender, gentility and territorial dominance communicated through armour, costume and heraldry. On occasion, however, a more finely judged approach was required: there may have been crucial family misfortunes or achievements to manage, and in such cases it was imperative that patrons obtained a memorial which was tailored to these specific circumstances. The crossed legs of Arnold Butler are probably the most obvious – if unusual – example of this kind of genealogical embellishment, but on closer examination there are plenty of more subtle communications of a similar kind. Even the choice of material and workshop could communicate status, identity and group loyalty. In terms of the myriad reasons behind the commissioning of commemorative monuments in late-medieval south Wales, there was no fundamental difference in outlook and approach between Welsh patrons and their English counterparts. The evidence points overwhelmingly to the full participation of the wealthier inhabitants of south Wales in the commemorative practices of the day as observed across Christian Europe. Welsh patrons were subject to the same worldly insecurities and triumphs as their counterparts elsewhere and often chose to express them in their funerary monuments. This, of course, should hardly be surprising. Although medieval Wales was a poor region with its own distinctive cultural practices, the kinds of people commissioning durable memorials, especially those of an effigial nature, were generally either of Anglo-Norman descent or of upwardly mobile native stock who often sought to ape the practices of the English gentry. Although relative poverty dictated that there were to be no equivalents in south Wales to the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick, the Cobham and de la Beche mausoleums at Cobham and Aldworth, or the monuments enclosed in grand cage chantries at cathedrals such as Winchester, this study has shown that there are smaller-scale equivalents found across south Wales whose patrons were motivated by the same concerns as their English counterparts. This is not to say that distinctively Welsh concerns were never displayed in funerary art. The fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century tombs of the Mathews and other families were designed to point to their patrons’ Welsh noble credentials in their heraldic decoration. But this is really no more than a thin veneer. The monuments of this latter group are not Welsh in

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their essentials – in materials and in manufacture they were English, while the desire for salvation and the claims to earthly status that they evince were universal. Although we will never know how many monuments have been lost, south Wales has undoubtedly been more fortunate than wealthier and more densely populated parts of England such as Norfolk. While some losses and damage are certainly to be assigned to the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there is plenty of evidence that the eighteenth, nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries proved hazardous to the survival of medieval monuments, despite the growing appreciation of the need for their preservation. The evidence available for this part of Wales, therefore, does not fit particularly comfortably with the traditional assertion that the period from the mid-1530s to the Restoration was ‘cataclysmic’,1 but it agrees broadly with the observation of Nigel Llewellyn that greater damage was done during eighteenth- and nineteenth-century changes than by earlier religious iconoclasts.2 The features of the monumental culture described in this book are a natural manifestation of the complex and changing society which produced it; a society which was at once similar to, and yet quite different from, that of the English regions which have informed our understanding of the history of monumental commemoration until now. As a poorer, more thinly populated, more culturally mixed and more politically unstable region, the evidence of south Wales provides a constructive alternative to the lowland English model offered by many earlier studies and adds a greater richness to the history of late-medieval commemorative culture across Britain and Europe.

1 2

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Lindley, Tomb Destruction, p. 237. Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments, pp. 4, 259–69.

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UNPUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES BODLEIAN LIBRARY Willis MSS THE BRITISH LIBRARY John Carter’s Sketchbook, Add. MS 29, 940 Francis Grose’s Itinerary, Add. MS 17, 398 CARDIFF CENTRAL LIBRARY MS 3.535 MS 5.7, Herbertorum Prosapia Tour Journals of Sir Richard Colt Hoare: MS 3.127, vol. 2 (1802), vol. 3 (1793), vol. 6 (1797) GLAMORGAN ARCHIVES DL/DC/B/49 P/89/10; P/12/3 LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY ICBS File 5440; 6573 THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES E101/39/7 PROB 11 THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES Milborne MS 2200 MS LL/F/746; LL/F/468; LL/F/373; LL/F/401; LL/F/479/B. MS 678b MS 6497c MS 6554e MS 7272e THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON MS 238

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PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 9, Edward III (London, 1916); vol. 17, 15–23 Richard II (London, 1988). Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 10, 1447–55 (London, 1915). Calendar of Patent Rolls 1476–85 (London, 1901). Churchyard, Thomas, The Worthines of Wales, 1587 (London, 1876). Clark, G.T., Limbus Patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae (London, 1886). —— ed., Cartae et alia munimenta quae ad dominium de Glamorgancia pertinent, vol. 3 (Cardiff, 1910). Coxe, William, Historical Tour through Monmouthshire (reprinted Brecon, 1904). Dineley, Thomas, The Account of the Official Progress of His Grace Henry first Duke of Beaufort through Wales in 1684 (London, 1888). Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541, 11: The Welsh Dioceses (Bangor, Llandaff, St Asaph, St Davids) by John Le Neve, ed. B. Jones (London, 1965). Fenton, Richard, A Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire (London, 1811). Jones, Theophilus, History of the County of Brecknock, 2 vols (Brecon 1809, reprinted 1909). Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 1, ii, ed. R.H. Brodie (London, 1920). Merrick, Rice, Morganiae Archaiographia, A Book of the Antiquities of Glamorganshire, ed. Brian Ll. James, (Barry, 1983). Penrice and Margam Abbey Manuscripts, ed. Walter de Gray Birch (London, 1893). Records of the County Borough of Cardiff, ed. J.H. Matthews, 5 vols (1898–1905). Symonds, Richard, Diary of Richard Symonds, ed. Charles Edward Long (London, 1859). Treble, John, An Account of Tenby: Containing an Historical Sketch of the Place (Pembroke, 1811). Visitations by the Heralds in Wales, ed. Michael Powell Siddons (London, 1996). Willis, Browne, Survey of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff (London, 1719). —— Survey of the Cathedral Church of St David’s (London, 1717).

SECONDARY WORKS Allen, J.R.L., ‘Roman and Medieval-Early Modern Building Stones in South-East Wales: The Sudbrook Sandstone and Dolomitic Conglomerate (Triassic)’, Monmouthshire Antiquary, 21 (2005), pp. 21–44. Allen, Mrs Thomas, ‘A List of Effigies in South Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 10 (1893), pp. 248–52. Aston, Margaret, England’s Iconoclasts: Laws Against Images (Oxford, 1988). Badham, Sally, ‘Beautiful Remains of Antiquity: The Medieval Monuments in the Former Trinitarian Priory Church at Ingham, Norfolk. Part 2: The High Tombs’, Church Monuments, 22 (2007), pp. 7–42. —— ‘The de la More Effigies at Northmoor (Oxfordshire) and Related Monuments at Winterbourne (Gloucestershire)’, Church Monuments, 23 (2008), pp. 14–44. —— ‘Evidence for the Minor Funerary Monument Industry, 1100–1500’, in Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contacts, Contrasts and Interconnections, 1100– 1500, ed. Kate Giles and Christopher Dyer (Leeds, 2007), pp. 165–95.

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Roderick, A.J., and Rees, William, ‘The Lordships of Abergavenny, Grosmont, Skenfrith and White Castle – Accounts of the Ministers for the Year 1256–1257’, in South Wales and Monmouth Record Society, vol. 2, ed. William Rees and Henry John Randall (Cardiff, 1950), pp. 69–125. Rodger, John W., ‘The Stone Cross Slabs of South Wales and Monmouthshire’, Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society, 54 (1911), pp. 24–64. Routh, Pauline, ‘Yorkshire’s Royal Monument: Prince William of Hatfield’, Church Monuments, 9 (1994), pp. 53–61. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, The Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist, Brecon (Brecon, 1994). —— Glamorgan – Medieval Non-Defensive Secular Monuments (Cardiff, 1982). Sargent, Andrew, ‘A Re-used Twelfth-Century Grave Cover from St Andrew’s, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge’, Church Monuments, 23 (2008), pp. 7–13. Saul, Nigel, ‘Bold as Brass: Secular Display in English Medieval Brasses’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2002) —— Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and their Monuments, 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001). —— ‘The Early Fifteenth-Century Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law in Flamstead Church (Hertfordshire)’, Church Monuments, 27 (2012), pp. 7–21. —— English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009). —— ‘The Gentry and the Parish’, in The Parish in Late Medieval England, ed. Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy (Donington, 2006), pp. 243–60. —— Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2017) —— ‘The Sculptor of the Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law at Flamstead (Hertfordshire): a Sequel’, Church Monuments, 29 (2014), pp. 7–21. Scourfield, Robert, ‘Medieval Church Building in Pembrokeshire’, in Pembrokeshire County History, 2: Medieval Pembrokeshire, ed. R.F. Walker (Haverfordwest, 2002), pp. 587–606 Sherlock, Peter, Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2008). Siddons, Michael Powell, The Development of Welsh Heraldry, 2 vols (Aberystwyth, 1991 and 1993). Smith, J. Beverley, ‘The Kingdom of Morgannwg and the Norman Conquest of Glamorgan’, in Glamorgan County History, 3: The Middle Ages, ed. T.B. Pugh, (Cardiff, 1971), pp. 1–43. Smith, Llinos B., ‘In Search of an Urban Identity: Aspects of Urban Society in Late Medieval Wales’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Helen Fulton (Cardiff, 2012), pp. 19–49. Somerville, Robert, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1: 1265–1603 (London, 1953). Soulsby, Ian, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Chichester, 1983). Southwick, Leslie, ‘The Armoured Effigy of Prince John of Eltham at Westminster Abbey and Some Closely Related Military Monuments’, Church Monuments, 2 (1987), pp. 9–21. Spink, A.G., The History of Holy Trinity Church (Cardiff, 1965).

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Spurr, Barry, See the Virgin Blest: The Virgin Mary in English Poetry (Basingstoke, 2007). Stalley, Roger, ‘St David’s Cathedral’, in The Buildings of Wales: Pembrokeshire, ed. Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield (London, 2004), p. 290. Stevens, Matthew Frank, ‘Anglo-Welsh Towns of the Early Fourteenth Century: A Survey of Urban Origins, Property-Holding and Ethnicity’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Helen Fulton (Cardiff, 2012), pp. 137–62. Stöber, Karen, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons (Woodbridge, 2007). Stone, Laurence, Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1955). Suggett, Richard, Houses and History in the March of Wales: Radnorshire 1400–1800 (Aberystwyth, 2005). —— ‘The Townscape 1400–1600’, in Urban Culture in Medieval Wales, ed. Helen Fulton (Cardiff, 2012), pp. 51–94 Swanson, R.N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989). Thomas, D.H., The Herberts of Raglan and the Battle of Edgecote 1469 (Enfield, 1994). Thomas, David Richard, ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 1 (1884), pp. 35–45. Thomas, Hilary M., ‘Llandough Castle, near Cowbridge’, Morgannwg, 33 (1989), pp. 7–36. Thomas, Lawrence, The Reformation in the Old Diocese of Llandaff (Cardiff, 1930). Tummers, Harry, Early Secular Effigies in England: the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 1980) Turvey, R.K., ‘The Gentry’, in Pembrokeshire County History, 2: Medieval Pembrokeshire, ed. R.F. Walker (Haverfordwest, 2002), pp. 360–400. —— ‘The Marcher Shire of Pembroke and the Glyndŵr Rebellion’, Welsh History Review, 15 (1990–91), pp. 151–68. —— ‘Priest and Patron: A Study of a Gentry Family’s Patronage of the Church in South-West Wales in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1991), pp. 7–19. Vale, Malcolm, Piety, Charity and Literacy among the Yorkshire Gentry 1370–1480 (York, 1976). Verey, David, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire: The Vale and the Forest of Dean (Harmondsworth, 1970). Verey, David and Brooks, Alan, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds (Harmondsworth, 1999). Walker, David, Medieval Wales (Cambridge, 1990). Walker, R.F., ‘Jasper Tudor and the Town of Tenby’, National Library of Wales Journal, 16, i (1969), pp. 1–22. —— ed., Pembrokeshire County History, 2: Medieval Pembrokeshire (Haverfordwest, 2002). Ward, Matthew, The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales: Politics, Identity and Affinity (Woodbridge, 2016). Williams, D.H., ‘Medieval Monmouthshire Wills in the National Library of Wales’, Monmouthshire Antiquary, 19 (2003), pp. 113–28. Williams, G.J., ‘The Welsh Literary Tradition of the Vale of Glamorgan’, in Glamorgan Historian, vol. 3, ed. Stewart Williams (Cowbridge, 1966), pp. 13–32. Williams, Glanmor, ‘The Church, 1280–1534’, in Pembrokeshire County History, 2: Medieval Pembrokeshire, ed. R.F. Walker (Haverfordwest, 2002), pp. 312–37.

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—— ‘Glamorgan Society, 1536–1642’, in Glamorgan County History, vol. 4, ed. Glanmor Williams (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 73–141 —— ‘Pen-rhys: Poets and Pilgrims’, Monmouthshire Antiquary, 20 (2004), pp. 9–15. —— Renewal and Reformation: Wales c.1415–1642 (Oxford, 1993). —— Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997) —— The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Second Edition, Cardiff, 1976). —— ed., Glamorgan County History, vol. 4 (Cardiff, 1974). Williams, S.W., ‘Archaeological Notes and Queries’. Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 10 (1893), pp. 271–4. —— ‘Some Monumental Effigies in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Fifth Series, 7 (1890), pp. 182–93. Wilson, Christopher, ‘Calling the Tune? The Involvement of King Henry III in the Design of the Abbey Church at Westminster’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161, no. 1 (2008), pp. 59–93. Wilson-Lee, Kelcey, ‘Dynasty and Strategies of Commemoration: Knightly Families in Late-Medieval and Early Modern Derbyshire, Part 1’, Church Monuments, 25 (2010), pp. 85–104; part 2, Church Monuments, 26 (2011), pp. 27–43.

THESES Barnett, Clara Maria, ‘Memorials and Commemoration in the Parish Churches of Late Medieval York’, University of York D.Phil Thesis (1997). Biebrach, Rhianydd, ‘Monuments and Commemoration in the Diocese of Llandaff c.1200 to c.1540’, Swansea University PhD thesis (2010). Chapman, Adam John, ‘The Welsh Soldier: 1283–1422’, University of Southampton PhD thesis (2009). Denton, Jon, ‘The East-Midland Gentleman, 1400–1530’, University of Keele PhD thesis (2006). Edwards, J.F., ‘The Transport System of Medieval England and Wales: A Geographical Synthesis’, University of Salford PhD thesis (1987). Finch, Jonathan, ‘Church Monuments in Norfolk and Norwich before 1850: A Regional Study of Medieval and Post Medieval Material Culture’, University of East Anglia PhD Thesis (1996). Friar, Stephen, ‘Livery Collars on Late-Medieval English Church Monuments: A Survey of the South-Western Counties and Some Suggestions for Further Study’, University of Southampton M. Phil Thesis (2000).

WEBSITES https://archive.org/ https://books.google.co.uk/ http://www.monasticwales.org/ http://www.oxforddnb.com/ http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/

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Aberdare 12 Abergavenny  10, 30, 31 lordship of  3, 35, 53, 145, 146 priory of  17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 31, 33, 34 n.58, 35, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 67, 74, 80, 85, 120, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142 n.15, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 153, 160, 162, 164, 167, 172, 173, 187 Abergwilly 29 Advenae  5, 7, 31, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 60, 152, 160, 189 Altars  123, 131, 133, 136, 154, 172 Anniversaries (see Obits) Anselm, Bishop of St David’s  70, 131, 178 Antiquaries, antiquarian writings  15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 43 n.9, 44 n.12, 50, 135, 148, 168, 169, 171, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187 Afan, lordship of  6, 7, 48 lords of  42, 48, 49 Morgan Gam  49, 50 Aubrey family  48, 57, 175 Christina  57, 128 Walter  57, 128, 129 Audelay, John  129 Audley family  133 n.47, 146, 177 de Avene family (see lords of Afan) Bards (see Poets) de Barri family  48, 70, 79, 144 Bassaleg 156 Basset family  7, 59 Jane  152 n.48 Sir Thomas (d.1423)  54, 144 Bath stone  152, 154 n.53 Bawdrip family  153, 172 Beer stone  86 Benedictine Order  11, 34, 36, 137, 173, 189 Berkeley (Gloucestershire)  76 Berkeley family  56 de Berkerolles family  12, 15 n.2, 37, 48, 68, 69, 72, 75, 133, 156, 157, 158, 159, 182

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Katherine (née Turbeville)  144, 156, 157, 158, 159 Phelice (née de Vere)  73, 156, 157, 159 Sir Roger de Berkerolles (d.1351)  54, 144, 156, 157, 158, 159 William de Berkerolles (d.1327)  53, 73, 83, 144, 156, 157, 158, 159 Black Death  10, 24, 28, 51, 69, 80, 82, 83, 84, 125, 159, 189, 190 Bosherston 124 de Braose family, Lords of Abergavenny  35, 48, 146 Eva (d.1257)  35 n.62, 50, 51, 124, 145, 146, 147 Reginald de Breos  183 William, Bishop of Llandaff (d.1287)  75 Brecon  8, 10, 30, 32, 48, 57, 168 Benedictine Priory of (Brecon Cathedral)  11, 19, 20, 22, 28, 30, 33, 57 n.66, 58 n.67, 61, 74, 84, 122, 129, 131, 147, 173, 175, 178, 183, 184, 188, 189 Dominican Priory of  57, 128 n.32 lordship of  3, 4, 9, 10, 30 St Mary’s church  73 Breconshire  26, 27, 30, 69, 73 Bridgend  6, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77 Bristol  8, 9, 25, 33, 59, 62, 65, 79, 85, 148 Bristol Channel  6, 8, 9, 25, 62, 67, 72, 79, 86, 190 Builth, Marcher Lordship of  30, 147 Burial/burial requests  12, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 143, 152, 156, 158, 159, 166, 171 Burton 181 Butler/Botiler family  37, 48, 64, 144, 153, 154, 182 Arnold (d.1541)  18, 55, 138, 145, 151, 152, 153, 154, 191 Isabella  62, 147 John le Botiler (d.c.1335)  54, 152, 154 Sycill née Monington  138, 139, 147, 151, 152, 153, 154 Caerbwdi stone  31, 69, 70

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Caerleon 86 Caerphilly Castle  4, 8, 56, 74 Caldicot  10, 22, 60, 81 Candleston Castle  72 Cantelupe family  35, 135, 145, 146 Carboniferous Limestone  70 Carboniferous Sandstone  70 Cardiff  3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 32, 33, 50, 81, 120, 137, 138 Blackfriars  61, 146, 171, 184 Castle  20, 83, 155, 184 Greyfriars  19, 20, 33, 48, 50, 171, 172, 188 St John’s church  12, 21 .25, 120 St Mary’s church  61 de Cardiff family  59 Cardiganshire 3 Carew church  37, 48, 50, 57 n.65, 78, 123, 124, 132 family  48, 51, 79 Carmarthen  3, 5, 9, 10, 21, 32, 138 Greyfriars  33, 34 n.58, 52 n.42, 55, 66 n.4, 131, 161, 162, 172 St Peter’s church  12, 25, 34 n.58, 61, 85, 161, 165, 172 Carmarthenshire  3, 26, 27, 29, 30, 58 n.67, 70 Carter, John  22, 23, 181 Cathedrals  12, 23, 176 Chantries/chantry chapels  36, 57, 72, 119, 120, 127, 133, 134, 135, 150, 156 n.64, 158, 159 n.74, 161, 166 Chepstow  3, 5, 30, 32 castle  74, 86 lordship of  11 Christ, devotion to  120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130 Christchurch  22, 60, 74, 80, 184, 185 Churchyard, Thomas  19, 20, 135, 183, 187 Cistercian Order  8, 11, 34, 36, 44, 189 Civil Wars, the (1642-49)  20, 128, 166, 167, 168, 171, 175, 176, 177, 183 de Clare family, lords of Glamorgan  50, 147 n.33 Cleddau, River  79, 84 Cloth industry  8, 9 Coity  3, 12, 22, 25, 37, 48, 56, 60, 69, 73, 75, 76, 77, 158, 182, 183 Colmer, John and Isabella (d.1376)  60, 184 Colwinston  67, 71, 72, 75 Cotswolds, the  9, 61, 64, 148, 149 Coxe, William  22 Coychurch  44 n.13, 60, 61, 73, 76, 77, 80, 125, 182, 184 n.85 Cradock family  52, 64, 133, 165

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Margaret (wife of Richard Herbert of Ewyas)  127, 146, 147 Sir Mathew (d.1531)  55, 56, 131, 161, 164, 184 Maud (wife of Sir Hugh Johnys)  161 Crickhowell  30, 37, 48, 86 Deheubarth 2, 3, 4 Devon 6 Dundry stone/quarries  9, 25, 42, 45, 49, 59, 65, 85, 86 Dwnn family  7, 60 East Anglia  9, 61, 84, 176 East Orchard  69, 156, 158, 159 Edgecote, Battle of (1469)  136, 143, 144 n.22, 160 n.78 Ewenny Priory  11, 19, 22, 23, 35, 42, 47, 54, 71, 72, 86, 122, 144, 147, 151, 152, 164 n.90, 173, 174, 175, 183, 189 Fekenham, John de  70 Fellowes, William, Lancaster Herald  19, 21, 23, 162, 171, 172 Fenton, Richard  22, 23, 179, 180, 181 Fleming family  7, 48, 153, 154, 156 Joan 129 Margaret 132 Sir William (d.1321)  19, 20, 54, 154, 171, 174 Flemingston  22, 48, 60, 72, 129, 147 Fraternities (see Guilds) Friars, the/Friaries  11, 32, 34, 36, 61, 130, 131, 138, 157, 171, 172, 189 Glamorgan lords of  50, 81, 155, 186 lordship/county of  3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 21, 26, 27, 30, 31, 54, 56, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 82 n.47, 122, 147 n.33, 151, 152, 158, 159, 163, 186, 190 Vale of  5, 6, 30, 32, 45, 58 n.67, 60, 72, 84, 148, 186 Gloucester, earldom of  8 Gloucestershire  6, 25, 26, 27, 28, 73, 85, 148 Glyndŵr, Owain, Revolt of  10, 28, 51, 54, 81, 82, 83, 159, 190 Gower, lordship of  3, 4, 5, 56, 58 n.67 de Gower, Henry (d.1347), Bishop of St David’s  70, 128, 131, 132, 178 Gruffydd ap Nicolas  161, 172 Gruffydd ap Rhys, Sir  161 Guilds/fraternities  120, 150 Gwent  3, 81 Gwynedd  2, 3, 4 Gwynllwg, lordship of  10

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Ham stone/quarries  86 Hastings family, lords of Abergavenny  35, 48, 53, 67, 133, 135 John, 2nd Baron Hastings (d .1325)  53, 135 Laurence (d.1348)  53, 86 Sir William (d.1349)  53 n.48 Haverfordwest  5, 10, 29, 32, 41 n.4 Augustinian Priory  189 St Mary’s church  12, 86, 181 Hay, Marcher Lordship of  30 Heart burials  124 Herbert family  5, 7, 18, 34 n.58, 35, 36, 52, 55, 64, 126, 133, 135, 136, 142, 144, 146, 156, 161, 164, 165, 172, 176 Anne Devereux (wife of William, earl of Pembroke) 173 Elizabeth (d.1506) (wife of Charles Somerset)  142, 160 Sir George  19, 173 Gwladus Ddu (d.1454)  55, 126, 135, 136, 137, 143, 146, 149 n.40, 160 Margaret 160 Margaret (wife of Henry Wogan)  144 n.22, 160 Maud/Margaret (née Cradock)  127, 146, 147 Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook (d.1469)  55, 126, 127, 144, 145 n.24, 146, 160, 162, 164, 173 n.33 Richard Herbert of Ewyas (d.1510)  35, 55, 56, 126, 127, 145, 146, 147, 153, 160, 162 Sir Walter  19, 173 William, earl of Huntingdon (d.1490)  19, 136, 160, 173 William, earl of Pembroke (d.1469)  4, 18, 18 n.12, 19, 55, 120, 136, 137, 143, 160, 172 Sir William ap Thomas (d.1445)  35, 55, 126, 127, 135, 136, 137, 143, 145, 149 n.40, 160 Sir William Herbert of Troy (d.1524)  18, 18 n.12, 142, 160 Hereford 9 Herefordshire  6, 19 Henry ap Gwilym  164 Henry VII (see Henry Tudor) Hoare, Sir Richard Colt  22, 23, 180, 181 Houghton, Adam, Bishop of St David’s  131, 179 Iestyn ap Gwrgant  163, 164 Images  120, 121, 123, 131, 133, 137, 168, 172, 175 Iorweth, Bishop of St David’s  70, 131 Ireland  6, 65, 85

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Jankyn ap Hoell  129, 130 Jones, Theophilus  22, 183 Johnys, Sir Hugh (d.c.1485)  55, 128, 129 n.34, 161 Juel family  156 Kenfig 6 Kidwelly  3, 5, 7, 10, 29, 32, 35, 60, 62, 71 Kilvey, lordship of  56 Laleston  73, 122 n.17 Landsker line  29 Laugharne  3, 29, 62, 71 Letterston 29 Lewys, John  61, 129 Leybourne, Juliana (wife of Lord John Hastings) 135 Lias limestone/quarries  31, 42, 43, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75 Lights 120 Llanblethian  22, 45, 60, 170, 171 Llandaff  134, 138, 161, 180, 186 bishops of  18, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46 n.17, 50, 67, 75, 85, 86, 125, 126, 128, 131, 181 cathedral  18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 46 n.17, 54, 55, 57, 61, 67, 71, 72, 74, 75, 82 n.47, 85, 86, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 133, 144, 146, 149, 161, 162, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 185 Llandough  8, 18, 22, 132, 141, 144, 146, 149 n.40, 151, 154, 184 Llandow  50, 51 n.34, 73, 77 Llandyfodwg  30, 41 n.4, 170 Llanfihangel Abercywyn  29, 67 Llangennith  48, 123, 184 n.85 Llangwm  37, 48, 50, 54, 70, 78, 80, 84, 123, 133, 187 Llangynwyd  30, 122 n.17 Llanhamlach  30, 134 n.51 Llanmartin  55 n.60, 132, 133, 134, 149, 161, 182 Llansannor  69, 73, 76, 77, 80, 123 Llansoy 121 Llantarnam Abbey  11, 120 Llantood 29 Llantrisant  22, 50 n.33 Llantrithyd  60, 71, 75, 169 Llantwit Major  12, 22, 31, 59, 69, 71, 75, 77, 84, 122, 170, 189 Llanvetherine  30, 73 Lleucu, wife of Anian ap Madoc  61, 147 Llywelyn Bren (Llywelyn ap Gruffydd)  20, 34 n.58, 50, 54, 74, 171, 174 Lollards/Lollardy 121

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de Londres family, Lords of Ogmore  3, 35, 42, 47, 71 Hawise (d.1276)  35, 151, 152, 164 n.90, 174, 175 Maurice  47, 72, 152 William  47, 72, 152 Macabre, the  121, 125 Malefant family  48 Manorbier  48, 70, 71, 78, 144 Marcher Lordships  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 52, 53, 55, 83, 145, 150 Welshries  5, 6 Englishries  5, 6 Marcross 45 de la Mare family  48 Margam Abbey  4, 6, 11, 19, 22, 34, 35, 42, 44, 48, 49, 71, 122, 173, 174, 175 Martin, David (d.1328), Bishop of St David’s  131, 180 Martletwy 45 Marshall, John (d.1496), Bishop of Llandaff  18, 85, 86, 128, 177 Masses  120, 121, 131, 134, 137, 138 Mathew family  35, 52, 64, 126, 133, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 181, 191 Christopher (d. after  1531)  55, 56, 126, 127, 134, 135, 144, 145, 146, 161, 177 David (d. before  1470)  54, 57, 133, 134, 144, 145, 161, 162, 177, 180, 181, 185, 186, 187 Elizabeth (née Morgan) (d.1526)  134, 144, 146, 161 Jenet (née Henry) (d.1530)  144, 161, 162, 163, 164, 180, 181 Jenet (wife of Sir John Morgan of Tredegar)  161, 164, 183 Jenet (d. 1535) (wife of Sir Rhys ap Thomas)  34, n.58, 161, 172 Katherine (née Morgan)  121, 164 Lewys 161 Matilda 84 Reynborn (d.1470)  120, 133, 134 Robert (the elder)  161 Robert (the younger)  57, 84, 161 Wenllian (wife of David Mathew)  133 Sir William (d.1528)  55, 126, 144, 145, 161, 162, 163, 164, 177, 180, 181 Merrick, Rice  19, 20, 171 Merthyr Mawr  22, 31, 71, 73, 75, 84, 156 Merthyr Tydfil  120 Monasteries  12, 32, 34, 36, 50, 130, 171, 174, 176, 178, 188 Dissolution of  20, 34, 44, 61, 120, 128 n.32, 137, 161, 162, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174

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Monkton Priory, Pembroke  11, 36, 52 n.42, 142, 172, 173, 174, 175 Monmouth  10, 31, 32, 142, 160 lordship of  81, 142 Monmouth, John (d.1323), Bishop of Llandaff 180 Monmouthshire  5, 9, 12, 21, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 58 n.67, 69, 73 Monuments alabaster  24, 31, 52, 53, 57, 63, 65 n.3, 67, 69, 74, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 126, 134, 135, 136, 141, 142, 149, 150, 154 n.53, 160, 161, 162, 165, 172, 179, 182, 183, 184 armour on  15, 47, 49, 51, 54, 55, 59, 60, 65, 76, 79, 152, 157, 158, 159, 162, 173, 186, 187, 191 brasses  1, 15, 16, 18, 19 n.15, 20, 24, 27 n.46, 32, 36, 37, 43, 45, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 63 n.83, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 74, 80, 82, 83, 84, 86, 128, 130, 131, 132, 136, 141, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 160, 161, 165, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180, 189 cadaver  21, 39, 41 n.4, 44, 69, 82 n.47, 124, 125 canopies  53, 72, 75, 79, 134, 139, 140, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 172, 174, 179 civilian  25, 39, 40, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 71, 75, 83, 84, 85, 170, 183, 189 clerical  21, 22, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 51, 71, 73, 83, 85, 86, 124, 125, 131, 166, 170, 173, 175, 176, 178, 189 commissioning of  2, 17, 18, 24, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 80, 81, 83, 85, 119, 123, 125, 129, 131, 132, 137, 140, 141, 142, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 162, 188, 189, 191 cost of  24, 31, 33, 66, 67 68, 69, 72, 79, 80, 141, 148, 149, 190 cross slabs  1, 15 n.5, 16, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35 n.61, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 84, 85, 122, 123, 129, 131, 148, 152, 161, 170, 173, 175, 179, 183, 188, 189, 190 costume on  15, 39, 40, 47, 51, 59, 60, 63, 64, 76, 78, 143, 153, 154, 157, 162, 173, 191 double  50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 146, 152, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162 effigies and effigial monuments/semi effigies  1, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45,

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47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 132, 135, 136, 138, 143, 145, 146, 147, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 168, 170, 173, 174, 176, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 epitaphs/inscriptions  50, 56, 60, 61, 84, 119, 122, 125, 129, 130, 141, 142, 155, 167, 174, 179, 182 n.74, 185, 190 female  25, 39, 40, 47, 50, 51, 56, 57, 59, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 80, 85, 132, 145, 146, 152, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 170, 182, 183, 187, 189 heraldry on  15, 19, 20, 37 n.68, 60, 64, 126, 134, 135, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 172, 174, 191 iconoclasm/damage to  49, 55, 126, 145, 156, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 192 incised slabs  43, 45, 59, 60, 80, 84, 131, 132, 142, 151, 152, 154, 174, 184, 185, 189 inlaid heads  72 loss/destruction of  20, 24, 25, 34, 35, 36, 39, 48, 50, 58, 80, 123, 133, 138, 143, 147 n.30, 148, 158 n.73, 160, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 192 manufacture/production of  24, 29, 30, 31, 33, 45, 60, 65, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 126, 141, 148, 150, 154, 188, 190, 192 merchant/burgess  61, 62, 63, 64 military  15, 23, 39, 40, 42, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 65, 70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 80, 85, 86, 123, 132, 144, 152, 157, 158, 159, 162, 173, 175, 178, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189 north Wales  25, 46, 48, 51 n.36, 59, 69, 74, 81, 82, 150, 189 pilgrim  30, 39, 41 n.4 Purbeck marble  66 n.4, 67 n.5, 72, 155, 161 religious iconography on  22, 57, 63, 76, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 135, 136, 139, 140, 162, 167, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 190 re-use of  24, 123, 166, 170, 171, 173, 174, 177, 179, 182, 183, 184 stone  31, 67, 83, 148, 149, 150, 160, 161, 165 symbols on  40, 45, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 84, 144, 145 tomb chests  40, 44, 45, 47, 52, 53, 59, 63, 66 n.4, 70, 72, 73, 79, 80, 83, 86,

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126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134, 135, 139, 143, 144, 147, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 174, 177, 178, 180, 185 transport of  29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 66 n.4, 67 n.5, 79, 86, 149, 188 undersized  56, 57 n.65, 76 weepers  53, 63, 79, 80, 126, 132, 134, 135, 139, 147, 153, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 177, 178 wooden  19, 20, 53, 54 n.48, 67, 135, 168, 171, 175, 183 workshops  15, 46, 65, 69, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86, 149, 162, 190, 191 Morgan family  52, 133, 165 Elizabeth  134, 146 Florence  161, 182 Jenet (née Mathew)  161, 164, 183 Sir John (d.1493)  55, 145, 162, 164, 183 Sir Thomas (d.1510)  55, 132, 161 Sir William (d.1541/2)  138, 161, 182 Morgan, John, Bishop of St David’s (d.1504)  85, 86, 127, 128, 132, 178 Nash 181 de Naunton, William and Isemay  60, 73 Neath  9, 138, 185, 186 abbey  4, 11, 23, 34, 44, 71, 74, 173 de Nerber family  48, 156, 158, 159 Phillip 184 Newport  5, 22, 30, 32, 50, 55, 85, 86, 120, 149, 161, 162, 164 castle of  83, 86 lordship of  8 Newport, Pembrokeshire  181 Newton Nottage  12, 73 Nolton 181 Norfolk  66 n.5, 148, 149, 192 Obits  36, 121 Ogmore, lordship of  3, 10, 47, 72, 74, 82, 152 castle  72, 152 river 71 Ogmore-by-Sea 75 Old Red Sandstone  69, 73 Owen, George of Cemais  19, 20, 177 Oxwich  54, 80, 132 Painswick stone/quarries  85, 86 Pascall, John (d.1361), Bishop of Llandaff  80, 176, 180 Pauncefoot family  48 Parish churches  12, 19, 21, 23, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 61, 83, 120, 122, 130, 132, 133, 155, 156, 169, 173, 182, 189

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INDEX

restoration of  32, 167, 169, 182, 183 Pembroke  5, 32, 173 earls/earldom of  53, 56, 173 lords/lordship of  4 Pembrokeshire  3, 5, 6, 9, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 58 n.67, 60, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 79, 83, 84, 86, 122, 124, 148, 160, 176, 181, 187, 190 Penally  60, 72, 73 Pennant Melangell  48 Penrhys, shrine of the Virgin at  30, 120, 121, 169, 175 Penrice, Sir John (d.1410)  54, 132 Pentyrch  57, 84, 161 Pen-y-Clawdd 73 Perrot family  52, 60, 62, 64 Agnes 62 John  60, 147, 155 n.57 Sir Stephen  62 Pilgrims/Pilgrimage  120, 121, 122 n.17, 137 Plague (see Black Death) Poets/Poetry  7, 8, 30 n50, 119, 121, 127, 129, 130, 163, 190 Guto’r Glyn  121 Lewys Morgannwg  163 Rhisiart ap Rhys (d.c.1510) 121 Porthcawl 12 Prayer  122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 151, 166, 175, 177, 188, 190 Purgatory  119, 138, 151, 166, 190 Pyle  73, 74 Quarella stone/quarries  67, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 83, 85 Radnor, William of (d.1266), Bishop of Llandaff 180 Radyr  121, 161 Raglan, lordship of  4, 5 castle  55, 83, 136, 172 church of  31 Reformation, the  1, 19, 26, 50, 82, 121 n.13, 122, 127, 137, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 174, 175, 179, 181, 183, 188, 190 de Reigny, Roger  47, 183 Relics 121 Rhoscrowther  50, 84 Rhys ap Thomas, Sir (d.1525)  34 n.58, 55, 161, 162, 165, 172 Robeston West  50, 84 de la Roche family  37 n68, 48, 79, 133 Adam (d.c.1200) 187 Robert (d. before  1349)  54, 187 n.95 Rofim, Michel, wife of  61, 147, 171, 184

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Saints, devotion to  120, 121, 127, 128, 131, 136, 138, 190 Senghennydd, lordship of  50 Severn Estuary  74 Severnside  8, 25, 26, 27, 28, 156 Shrines  120, 121, 131, 137, 169, 175, 176, 177 Skenfrith, lordship of  10 Slebech  55, 144, 149, 160 Smyt, David  61, 184 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 169 Somerset  6, 18, 25, 26, 27, 28, 72, 86, 148, 154 Stackpole church  12, 37, 48, 50, 51, 67, 70, 78, 80, 83 n.50, 85, 123, 133, 134 family  12, 48, 51, 79, 133 Stradling family  5, 7, 19, 172 St Arvan  30, 57 n.65, 60, 73, 74 St Athan  12, 22, 37, 48, 51, 54, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75, 80, 133, 134, 144, 156, 157, 159, 182 St Bride’s (Pembrokeshire)  67 St Bride’s Major (Glamorgan)  18, 37, 48, 54, 55, 138, 144, 151, 152, 182 St David’s bishops of  41, 42, 43, 46 n.17, 70, 85, 124, 127, 128, 131 cathedral  3, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 n.17, 48, 50 n.33, 52 n.42, 66 n.4, 70, 71, 72, 74, 80, 85, 124, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133, 144, 148, 162, 167, 172, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181 diocese of  81 town of  70 St Dogmael’s Abbey  41 n.4, 69, 82, 124, 173 St Dogwell’s  29 St Donats  19 St Fagan’s  21 n.25 St Hilary  54, 59, 60, 85, 144, 182 St Non’s Chapel  45 St Quintin family  3, 48, 182, 183 n.74 Sudbrook stone  31, 73 Sutton stone/quarries  31, 47, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 82 n.47, 85 Swansea  5, 9, 10, 32, 33 St Mary’s church  55, 128, 129 n.34, 131, 133, 149, 161, 164, 184 Symonds, Richard  20, 21, 23, 135, 163, 177 n.49, 185, 186 Talbot family  144 Talley Abbey  189 Taverner, Phillip  35 n.61, 61, 72, 133 n.47 Tenby  5, 8, 10, 32, 33, 189

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St Mary’s church  12, 22, 31, 33, 37, 41 n.4, 43 n.9, 44, 50, 51, 59, 60, 62, 69, 82 n.47, 85, 86, 124, 127, 128, 147, 155 n.57 Tewkesbury Abbey  8 Three Castles, lordship of  81 Tintern Abbey  11, 18 n.12, 19, 22, 23, 34, 35, 55, 58 n.67, 74, 84, 120 n.9, 122, 128 n.31, 129, 136, 142 n.15, 143, 160, 172, 183 Towton, Battle of  185, 186 Treble, John  22 Trellech  30, 32, 57 n.65, 60, 67, 73 Trinity, the  120, 122 Tudor family  52, 137, 144, 175, 176, 190 Arthur 161 Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond  34 n.58, 52 n.42, 55, 66 n.4, 131, 148, 161, 172, 177 Henry  56, 62, 145, 162 Jasper 62 Turbeville family  3, 12, 48, 56, 57, 60, 61, 69, 73, 75, 77, 158, 186 Gilbert  182, 183 Katherine  144, 156, 157, 158 Payne de Turbeville (d.c. 1318)  50, 53, 144, 147, 183 Wenllian 147 Uchelwyr  5, 48, 50, 51, 189 Upton  37, 48, 70, 80, 85, 128 Usk  5, 30 castle 86 priory  19 n.15, 130, 172 Usk, Adam  19 n.15, 130 Uzmaston  57 n.65, 70 Vaughan, Edward (d.1522), Bishop of St David’s  131, 177, 180 Verney, Isabella  60, 128, 147, 155 n.57 Virgin Mary, the  30, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 136, 137, 138, 147, 169, 175, 176, 190 Voss, Mathew (d.1534)  59, 69

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Wales the church  18, 32, 82 the March  1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 30, 31, 32, 46 n.18, 48, 53, 74, 81, 82 the Principality  2, 48, 53, 189 towns  5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 29, 30, 32, 33, 61, 62, 81 Welsh language  130, 175 Wall paintings  123, 169 n.19 Walsche family  8, 154, 156 Robert (d.1427)  18, 154 Wenllian (d.1427)  132, 141, 144, 146, 149 n.40, 151, 154, 155 Wenvoe 120 West Country, the  1, 8, 25, 43, 46, 63, 65, 67, 69, 76, 79, 80, 82, 85, 86, 149 White family  8, 33, 59, 62, 63, 64, 85, 189 Christina (née Einion)  62, 63, 147 Isabella (née Butler)  62, 147 Joan (daughter of Howel ap Jenkin)  62, 147 John (d.c.1500)  62, 63, 64, 127, 147 Margaret (née Phillip) (d.1472)  62, 147 Thomas (d.1482)  62, 63, 64, 127, 147 Whitland Abbey  11, 34, 35 n.59, 71, 189 Wogan family  48, 52, 70, 133 Sir Henry (d.1375)  55 Sir Henry (d. before  1483?)  56, 144, 160 William ap Thomas, Sir (see Herbert Family) Willis, Browne  19, 21, 148 n.34, 176, 177 n.49, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 186 Wills  12, 17, 18, 38, 119, 120, 121, 127, 131, 133, 135, 136 n.62, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 152, 171 n.28, 186, 190 Windows, stained glass  20, 119, 120, 135, 136, 137 de Winton family  50 Wiston  9, 144, 160 Worthines of Wales, The (See Churchyard, Thomas)

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ALREADY PUBLISHED

The Art of Anglo-Saxon England Catherine E. Karkov English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning Paul Hardwick English Medieval Shrines John Crook Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces Edited by Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe Kirk Ambrose Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape Edited by Howard Williams, Joanne Kirton and Meggen Gondek The Royal Abbey of Reading Ron Baxter Education in Twelfth-Century Art and Architecture: Images of Learning in Europe, c.1100–1220 Laura Cleaver The Art and Science of the Church Screen in Medieval Europe: Making, Meaning, Preserving Edited by Spike Bucklow, Richard Marks and Lucy Wrapson Motherhood and Meaning in Medieval Sculpture: Representations from France, c.1100–1500 Marian Bleeke Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book Edited by Michelle P. Brown, Ildar H. Garipzanov and Benjamin C. Tilghman

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Church Monuments….qxp_Layout 1 12/10/2017 17:05 Page 1

Church Monuments in South Wales is the first full-scale study of the medieval funerary monuments of this region offering a much-needed Celtic contribution to the growing corpus of literature on the monumental culture of late-medieval Europe, which for the British Isles has been hitherto dominated by English studies. It focuses on the social groups who commissioned and were commemorated by funerary monuments and how this distinctive memorial culture reflected their shifting fortunes, tastes and pre-occupations at a time of great social change. Rhianydd Biebrach has taught medieval history at the universities of Swansea, Cardiff and South Wales and edited the journal Church Monuments. She currently works for Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales. Cover image: Detail of the effigy of David Mathew (d. before 1470), Llandaff Cathedral. Courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Llandaff Cathedral. All rights reserved.

c.1200 –1547

BIEBRACH

Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture

CHURCH MONUMENTS IN SOUTH WALES

South Wales is an area blessed with an eclectic, but largely unknown, monumental heritage, ranging from plain cross slabs to richly carved effigial monuments on canopied tomb-chests. As a group, these monuments closely reflect the turbulent history of the southern march of Wales, its close links to the West Country and its differences from the 'native Wales' of the north-west. As individuals, they offer fascinating insights into the spiritual and secular concerns of the area's culturally diverse elites.

CHURCH MONUMENTS IN

SOUTH WALES c.1200 –1547

RHIANYDD BIEBRACH