9° THE CHURCH OF NORBURY. 



aisle, is a separate memorial to Elizabeth, the wife of Ralph 

 Fitzherbert. It represents a figure tied up in a shroud. The 

 inscription is now almost quite illegible. Elizabeth survived 

 her husband, dying in 149 1. By her will, of the previous year, 

 she left her body to be buried, as has been already stated, 

 in " the Churche of Seint Barloke," before the image of 

 St. Nicholas. 



The two beautiful tombs to Nicholas and Ralph Fitzherbert, 

 which were two of the very finest of their kind and date ever 

 made in England, have suffered scandalously during the thirty 

 and odd years that I have known them. In their present 

 condition they are still beautiful remnants of works of art, but 

 their maltreatment in recent years has been most grievous. 

 On this ix)int, however, it will be better to let someone else 

 speak. 



When Sir Ernest Clarke, F.S.A., visited this church in Januar)', 

 1893, he found the Christmas "decorations" in i^osition. He 

 described to the Society of Antiquaries how " the fine effigy 

 of Sir Henry Fitzherbert, situated in the centre of the chancel, 

 was practically smothered with boughs and twigs of fir, which 

 had been stuck in every crevice. The chancel was decorated 

 all round with the same gruesome material ; and as the two 

 magnificent altar tombs to Sir Nicholas Fitzherbert (1473) ^"^ 

 of his son Ralph (1483) were fixed very close to the north 

 and south sides of the chancel, it could hardly be expected 

 that they would emerge unscathed from the depredations of 

 the Christmas decorators. We counted on one t(jmb alone 

 twenty-five recent chippings of the alabaster, especially on the 

 side nearest the wall, and a further search would doubtless 

 have revealed more."* 



John Fitzherbert, twelfth lord of Norbury, who died in 1517, 

 had one son Nicholas, who predeceased his father, so that 

 Norbury then reverted to his younger brother Anthony — a man 

 of much celebrity and probity. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, who 

 became a most distinguished judge, was born in 1470, called 



* Proceedings of Soc. of Antiq. xv., 97. 



