7-15 



STOTHARD, CHARLES ALFRED. 



STOW, JOHN. 



746 



Canterbury Pilgrims, the Flitch of Bacon, F6te Champotre, and 

 the Wellington Shield, of the last of which he made an etching. 

 His largest performance is the painting of the staircase at Burleigh, 

 the seat of the Marquis of Exeter, the figures of which are eight feet 

 high, while in all his easel pictures the figures arc of small si/e. He 

 also designed the ceiling of the Advocates Library at Edinburgh. 

 Among the best of his book illustrations are hi* designs for the 

 Complete Angler, and Rogers' a Poems, and Italy. The first style 

 of painting adopted by Mr. Stothard was that of Mortimer, whose chief 

 characteristics he closely imitated, indeed so exactly that many of his 

 early works are mistaken for those of that vigorous painter. In his later 

 productions however he followed the bent of his own genius, which 

 was essentially gentle. He is supposed to have made upwards of five 

 thousand designs, three thousand of which have been engraved, and 

 although, as might be expected in so large a number, there is a same- 

 ness and mannerism of style, yet truth, nature, simplicity, and grace are 

 always apparent. In his comic subjects he was very happy, without in 

 any one instance descending to vulgarity, whilst in his representations 

 of female beauty his drawing is replete with purity of design and 

 delicacy of execution. For several months before his decease, though 

 Mr. Stothard's bodily infirmities prevented his attending to his 

 labours as an artist, he would not relinquish his attendance at the 

 meetings and lectures of the Royal Academy and in the library, 

 uotwitstanding extreme deafness prevented his hearing what was 

 pas.-iug. He died on the 27th of April 1834, at his house in Newman 

 Street, where he had resided more than forty years, and was buried in 

 Bunbill-Fields burial-ground. He had a numerous family, the most 

 eminent of whom was Charles Alfred, the author of 'Monumental 

 Effigies of Great Britain,' noticed below. A great number of his 

 works have been engraved by Collins, Heath, Parker, Cromek, and 

 Medland, and there are several engraved portraits of him, the principal 

 of which are by Worthington, after Harlowe, and by Bond, after 

 Jackson. A very complete list of his works, with the prices he 

 received for them, is given in Mrs. Bray's very elegant ' Life of 

 Thomas Stothard, R.A., with numerous Illustrations from his Works,' 

 (sm. 4to, 1851); among these illustrations is the design he made for 

 Chantrey's celebrated monument, known as the ' Sleeping Children,' 

 in Lichfield Cathedral. 



STOTHARD, CHARLES ALFRED, an antiquarian draughtsman, 

 son of the preceding, was born in London, on the 5th of July 1786. 

 In 1807 he was. admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where he 

 was soon distinguished for the chasteness and elegance of his copies 

 from antique sculpture. In the following year he became a student 

 in the Life Academy of the same institution, and attended at the 

 British Institution, Pall Mall, to study from the pictures, by the old 

 masters. In 1810 he executed his first historical picture, ' The Death 

 of Richard II. in Pomfret Castle,' in which the costume of the period 

 was strictly adhered to, and the portrait of the king taken from his 

 effigy in Westminster Abbey. As early as the year 1802, Mr. Stothard 

 had been accustomed to make drawings from the monuments in the 

 churches at Stamford and other places near Burleigh, the seat of the 

 Marquis of Exeter. This occupation he undertook at the recommen- 

 dation of his father by way of improving his knowledge of costume, as 

 being valuable to a painter of historical subjects. This practice, 

 together with a sight of some unpublished etchings by the Rev. P. 

 Kerrich, of Cambridge, from monuments in the Dominican and other 

 churches in Paris, suggested to him the idea of a work on the monu- 

 mental effigies of Great Britain, of which the first number appeared in 

 June 1811. The work was accompanied by an advertisement, stating 

 that the objects of the undertaking were, to give the historical painter 

 a complete knowledge of the costume adopted in England from an 

 early period of history to the reign of Henry VIII., to illustrate 

 history and biography, and to assist the stage in selecting with pro- 

 priety the costume for the plays of Shakspere. The success of the 

 work was complete, and at once established the reputation of the 

 author both as an antiquarian and an artist. In successive years he 

 occupied himself in making excursions in search of monumental 

 antiquities; and during the summer of 1815 her proceeded so far 

 northward as the Pict's Wall to make drawings for Lysons' ' Magna 

 Britannia.' In the same year he was appointed historical draughtsman 

 to the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1816 was deputed by that body to 

 make drawings from the tapestry at Bayeux. He left England for that 

 purpose in September, and after having visited Paris, proceeded to 

 Chiuon, and discovered in the adjacent abbey of Fontevraud those 

 interesting works the existence of which since the first French 

 revolution had been matter of doubt, namely, the monuments of 

 Henry II., his queen Eleanor of Guienne, Richard I., and Isabella of 

 Angouleme, wife of King John. The abbey had been converted into a 

 prison, and these effigies were placed in a cellar, where they were 

 subject to injury from the prisoners. He made accurate drawings 

 from these figures, and succeeded not without difficulty in discovering 

 the painting on their surface. When visiting the abbey of L'Espan, 

 near Mons, which lie found converted into a barn, ho discovered, 

 under a quantity of wheat, the effigy of Berengaria, queen of 

 Richard I. At Mons he also discovered the beautiful enamelled 

 tablet of Geoffrey Plantagenet, which he considered the earliest 

 specimen of sepulchral brass, and of armorial bearings depicted de- 

 cidedly as such. On his return to England, he suggested. .to govern- 



ment the removal of the Fontevraud effigies to Westminster Abbey, a 

 suggestion which, though not acceded to, had the effect of causing 

 them to bo removed to a place of security. 



In 1817 he made a second, and, in 1818, a third journey to Bayeux, 

 in company with his wife, whom he had recently married. After 

 completing his drawings of the tapestry, he made a tour in Normandy 

 and Brittany, when he discovered at Ploermcl the effigies of the dukes 

 of Brittany, at Josselin, those of Sir Oliver de (Jli.-;,-ou and his lady, 

 and at Vannes several others in a mutilated state. In 1819 he laid 

 before the Society of Antiquaries the complete series of drawings from 

 the Bayeux Tapestry, together with a paper, in which he proved that 

 the tapestry was really a work coeval with the Norman invasion, a 

 period assigned to it by tradition, and not, as attempted to be shown 

 by the Abb<5 de la Rue, a work of the time of Henry I. The paper 

 was printed in the nineteenth volume of the ' Archscologia ; ' and on 

 the 2nd of July Mr. Stothard was elected a Fellow of the Society of 

 Antiquaries. He soon after visited various places in Norfolk and 

 Suffolk, for the purpose of making drawings for his monumental 

 subjects, and whilst so engaged, he accidentally saw in a newspaper 

 of the day an account of the discoveries then recently made on the 

 walls of the painted chamber in the House of Lords. He immediately 

 proceeded to London, and made a series of drawings from the 

 paintings, of which, not long before his death, he prepared a paper, in. 

 which he investigated their age. In 1820 he travelled in the Nether- 

 lands, and, on his return, published the ninth number of his 'Monu- 

 mental Effigie?.' Early in 1821 he prepared a tenth number for 

 publication, and also finished a large plate of the Royal Effigies at 

 Fontevraud. He also began a work on seals, and left behind him 

 about thirty unpublished drawings of the scarcest of our regal and 

 baronial ones. Another of his undertakings was a work illustrative 

 of the age of Queen Elizabeth. In May in the same year he left 

 London for Devonshire, for the purpose of making drawings for the 

 Rev. D. Lysons' account of that county. He arrived at Beer-Ferrers 

 on Sunday the 27th, and after attending church, commenced a tracing 

 of the portrait of Sir William Ferrers in the east window. For this 

 purpose he stood on a ladder about ten feet from the ground, but one 

 of the steps having broken, he was thrown with such violence against 

 a monument, that he was killed on the spot. The most important 

 work of Mr. Stothard is that before mentioned the monumental 

 effigies. The writings of Mr. Gough on the same subject are extremely 

 valuable, but the delineating part contains so many errors, and bears 

 so little resemblance to the style of the originals, that the labours of 

 Mr. Stothard were appropriately devoted to the preservation of 

 accurate as well as tasteful representations of those relics of antiquity. 



Mr. Stothard's work on monumental effigies was completed by his 

 widow and her brother Mr. Kempe. Some time after his death his 

 widow published ' Memoirs of the Life of C. A. Stothard,' from which 

 most of the above facts are taken. Mrs. Stothard, whose maiden 

 name was Anne Eliza Kempe, by her subsequent marriage with the 

 Rev. E. A. Bray, rector of Tavistock, is now MRS. BRAY, and by that 

 name has become known to the readers of our current literature. 

 Besides the Memoirs of her first husband, she has written several his- 

 torical and other novels, some of which obtained considerable popu- 

 larity ; she has also written some extremely pleasing descriptions of 

 Devonshire scenery (and Devonshire legends) in her ' Borders of the 

 Tatnar and Tavy,' and other works ; some books of foreign travel ; 

 and the ' Life of Thomas Stothard. R.A.,' noticed above. 



STOW, JOHN, was born in the parish of St. Michael, Cornhill, 

 London, in the year 1525. His father, Thomas Stow, belonged to 

 the company of Merchant Tailors, and both his father and his grand- 

 father appear to have been tradesmen of credit and substance. Both 

 had monuments in the church of St. Michael's, Cornhill, in which 

 parish they dwelt, and which has also the honour of having given 

 birth to the subject of the present article. 



It is certain that Stow, in the earlier part of his life, followed some 

 trade, and he is expressly called a tailor in at least one document of 

 the time. It appears that in his own day he was regarded as secretly 

 attached to the old religion, and he was more than once exposed to 

 some danger on that account : he was certainly however no bigoted 

 Romanist ; his inclination in that direction was an antiquarian rather 

 than a theological feeling; he did not sympathise much with the 

 destructive work of the Reformation ; but he does not deny that both 

 doctrine and practice were purer under the new than under the 

 ancient system ; and his chief patrons and friends were some of the 

 heads of the Established Church, to which also there can be no doubt 

 that he always professed to belong. 



He had probably been given from early life to the investigation of 

 the national antiquities ; but about his fortieth year, as we learn from 

 himself, he left his business and applied himself altogether to this his 

 favourite study. The different accounts he gives however vary some- 

 what as to the time at which he took or acted upon his resolution. 

 Thus, iu the edition of his ' Summary,' published in 1567, he describes 

 the compilation of the work some years before as having resulted 

 from his thinking it good at vacant times to take him to his "old 

 delectable studies ; ' in the edition of 1573, he speaks of its being then 

 eight years since, leaving his own peculiar gains, he had consecrated 

 himself to the search of our famous antiquities ; in the edition of 1598, 

 his expression is, that it was " full thirty-six years " since he had done 



