Richard Wenman

Date of Brass:

c.1510

Place:

Witney

County:

Oxfordshire

Country:

Number:

I

Style:

London F

Description

September 2025

Richard Wenman was variously described in the proceeedings of the court of Common Pleas as a wool merchant, woolman, merchant of the staple and gentleman and elsewhere as a clothier. His brass effigy is on the top slab of a Purbeck marble tomb chest now placed towards the west end of St Mary’s church in Witney, placed between the effigies of two wives, each with figures of daughters below. Missing are one of four shields, figures of three sons below Richard’s effigy and a marginal inscription but otherwise complete with scrolls above the three main figures and a Trinity above Richard’s head. There is reason to doubt that Mill Stephenson’s interpretation of the brass in his List is correct: he gives Anne, daughter of John Bushe of Northleach , as his first wife and Christian, who died in 1501 as his second wife . Anne was the mother of his son and heir, Thomas. According to The History of Parliament, Thomas was born by 1504. The brass appears to have been made around 1510, perhaps prompted by the award of arms to Richard in 1509. The inscription was recorded in June 1660 as reading:

Of your charity pray for the soulys of Richard Wenman, Anne and Christian his wifes, whiche Christian deceased the xi. day of April in the year of our Lord God mccccc. and the said Anne deceased the . . . . day of . . . . in the year of our Lord God mv. . . . on whose soules, &c.

Man in what state that ever thou bee,

Timer Mortis should trouble thee.

The Oxford antiquary Anthony a Wood gives slightly different wording, ‘Wainman’ for ‘Wenman’, 1501 for Christian’s death, ‘Jesu have mercy’ after ‘on whose soules’ and two additional phrases after the verse: ‘For when thou leest wenyst

Veniet te mors superare.’

He does not give the start of Anne’s year of death but he does recognise that Christian was Richard’s first wife and that it is the figure of Anne who is placed on Richard’s right. He also gives the arms placed below Anne’s figure: Barre nebule on a chief a lion passant gardant. These are the arms of the Staple of Calais, the company of which Richard was a member. The shield over Richard’s head has the arms of Wenman, on a fess between three anchors as many lion’s heads erased. The other Wenman shield, now placed below Christian, appears to have been missing in both a Wood’s and Mill Stephenson’s time.

Christian had died very early in 1500 or 1501, only a couple of weeks after Lady day, when the year then began, but Anne’s incomplete year of death began 15, with the day and month omitted indicating that she was yet to die when the brass was installed. As the mother of Richard’s heir, Thomas, she had been promoted to be named first in the inscription. This may mean that she was also the mother of all Richard’s three sons as well as three daughters. She made her will in 1536. In it, she left £20 to her (half) brother, Thomas Midwinter: her mother Alice had married William Midwinter after the death of her father, John Bush, and both her father and step-father were prominent Northleach woolmen.

Richard himself lived until October 1534, having made his will a year earlier. He left Anne a thousand marks in ready money. In 1501, he and his brother-in-law Thomas Bush had been appointed executors of a Wiltshire woolman, John Godard of Ogbourne St George, but in 1507 both of them required a pardon and release in consequence of this, recorded in the Patent Rolls. Richard’s, in April, stated it was because of dealings in wool contrary to the statute of 8 Henry VI but Thomas’s in October gave no reason. In 1524 he is recorded as paying four fifths of Witney’s tax. He had come to Witney as a child following his mother Emmota’s marriage to Thomas Fermer a woolman of Witney after the death of his father, Henry Wenman of Blewbury, Berkshire. Emmota was the daughter and heir of Simkin Harvey of Herefordshire. John, Emmota’s other son by Henry, was perhaps John Wenman, a London grocer and merchant of the staple. His mother’s will of 1501 names Richard as her eldest son names. Richard’s son Thomas, merchant of the staple, was knighted in 1553 and was MP for Oxfordshire in 1555.

Richard’s brass, like those of many other woolmen, was a London product. It has figures typical of the late stages of the London F style but before the decline that marks the final years of production. It makes no specific reference to his trade and was more a mark that he had achieved gentry status. The trinity at the top end of the slab and the choice of the phrase ‘on whose soules Jesu have mercy’, the latter also once found on the lost brass to his son William, died 1521, point to a greater degree of spirituality than is suggested by the brasses of most woolmen. This is confirmed by much of his long and very particular will.

For more on the brasses of woolmen, please see Nigel Saul, ‘The Wool Merchants and their Brasses’ in the 2006 Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society.

©Jon Bayliss: text and photos