MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES 



took the field. Of the six figures or weepers 

 on the sides of the tomb, four are men and 

 two women, the men being in complete har- 

 ness of a slightly later date than that shown 

 on the effigy. The women appear to wear 

 mourning habits. The kneeling figure at the 

 west end is in armour of the same character 

 as that of the male statuettes at the sides. 

 It probably represents the last Sir John Lyons 

 son of the subject of the paramount figure. 



No doubt from the architecture and costume 

 of this interesting memorial, it commemo- 

 rates Sir John de Lyons, who was living in 

 1346. It is nevertheless somewhat remark- 

 able that we should find upon the tomb the 

 arms of the wife of the last Sir John de 

 Lyons, son of the subject of the effigy, 

 and who was married in 1370, as well as 

 those of his brother-in-law and successor Sir 

 Nicholas de Chetwode who died in 1369. 

 These coats must have been sculptured after 

 the marriages. The existence of the Chet- 

 wode arms upon the tomb seems to account 

 for the absence of any other memorial to Sir 

 Nicholas in Warkworth church, where 

 brasses still remain to several of his immediate 

 successors. 



John de Ardele. Aston-le-Wal!s. 



Near the north door of the chancel is a 

 cinquefoil-headed arch containing the free- 

 stone effigy of a priest with a crocketed canopy 

 over the head. He is shown vested in alb, 

 stole, chasuble and amice, and of course wears 

 the tonsure. This is a monument of the 

 middle of the fourteenth century, and probably 

 commemorates John de Ardele who was pre- 

 sented to the church in 1348. 



Sir John dePateshull. Died 1350. Cold 

 Higham. 



This individual is represented by a cross- 

 legged effigy carved in oak, and lying under a 

 richly-moulded ogee arch in the south wall of 

 the chapel, upon a freestone tomb with 

 delicate tracery panels, containing ten blank 

 shields under cusped canopies. It is an 

 instructive example of military costume, and 

 is so far, and indeed widely, transitional that 

 it presents details of armour both of the be- 

 ginning and of the middle of the fourteenth 

 century. For instance the mail hauberk, 

 surcoat and chausses are of the former, while 

 the plate and leather gauntlets, the coutes, 

 genouilleres, bascinet and camail are of the 

 latter time. The head rests upon the 

 customary pillows of the older fashion, and 

 the feet upon the lion, which appears to 

 acquire greater fierceness of expression and 

 fulness of treatment as time advances. The 



figure has suffered from decay in the usual 

 manner and has been painted white in modern 

 days. 



Nothing is known of the knight here com- 

 memorated save that he was lord of Cold 

 Higham in the time of Edward II. and 

 Edward III. and died in 1350, the probable 

 date of the effigy. It is reasonable to suppose 

 that the surcoat was originally blazoned with 

 the arms, and it may be hoped that no ama- 

 teur in archaeology will now claim as the 

 effigy of a crusader this cross-legged represen- 

 tation of a man who died eighty years after 

 the last of the romantic expeditions to Pales- 

 tine.* 



> The procedure during the thirteenth and the 

 first half of the fourteenth century with regard to 

 the fashioning of monumental figures sufficiently 

 explains why we find effigies in the purely English 

 conventional attitude so common throughout the 

 country, and particularly during the half century 

 subsequent to the last crusade of 1 270. Such 

 memorials bear, obviously, no more reference to 

 attachment to the enthusiastic expeditions to 

 Palestine than to participation in the wars of 

 Edward I. in Wales and Scotland. 



With a view to once more dispelling this fiction, 

 it may be stated that there are no cross-legged 

 figures to be found on the continent, and that 

 one of the striking characteristics of the armed 

 English effigies is that with two or three exceptions 

 they are uniformly shown with open eyes, as living 

 and alert, with the hands in prayer or drawing or 

 sheathing their swords. Moreover, devotional 

 feeling has been invariably expressed in recumbent 

 statues throughout Christendom by the position 

 and treatment of the hands and not by the attitude 

 of the legs, and this is illustrated by hundreds of 

 monumental effigies from end to end of England. 



Practically the cross-legged attitude is one that 

 a recumbent living figure naturally takes, and it 

 was not a posture reserv'ed to illustrate romantic 

 episodes in one period of the world's histor)-. The 

 old sculptors of the golden age of English Gothic 

 speedily saw the sculpturesque value in the natural 

 and restful character of the living position. It 

 added at once an artistic flow of the lines to the 

 folds of the surcote, while the yielding nature of 

 the mail specially promoted and lent itself to the 

 particular technical treatment of English effigies 

 which we look for in vain on the continent. 



By far the greater number of cross-legged effigies 

 are, as has been intimated, of a later date than the 

 Eighth and last Crusade of 1270. The attitude 

 being a purely conventional one was only very 

 gradually adopted by the sculptors from about the 

 time of the Seventh Crusade of 1248. Conse- 

 quently the generality of examples in this posture 

 are to the memory of men who flourished a whole 

 generation subsequent to 1270, and whose military 

 ardour was chiefly expended in the Welsh and 

 Scotch wars. 



The existing cross-legged effigies of such men 

 as Brian Fitz Alan at Bcdale, Yorkshire (died i 302), 



405 



