Simon and Merrial Coates

Date of Brass:

1644

Place:

Thame

County:

Oxfordshire

Country:

Number:

Style:

London: Christmas

Description

June 2024

From around the 1620s to the middle of the seventeenth century a number of memorial slabs substituted white marble inlays for brass, set in in black marble. Although quite a number of white marble inscriptions survive, there are few white marble figures. The prime example of the latter is the slab for Elizabeth Havers, died February 1633/4, at Stockerston, Leicestershire. Here the rectangular inlay with her figure takes up most of the slab and has a further white marble foot inscription plus two armorial shields. There are further inscriptions on the black marble to either side of the figure. It is clearly the work of a leading London sculptor, and the lettering of the foot inscription enables it to be identified as the work of the idiosyncratic William Wright of Charing Cross.

Some separately-inlaid white marble figures have not stood the passage of time and many feet, and their features are now largely worn away. Some of the inscription inlays have also suffered wear, as at Foxton to Philip Weldone, died 1615, barely legible in places, although others survive well.

Occasionally both white marble and brass are inlaid into the same slab, as at Woodrising, Norfolk, for Francis Crane, died 1636, and Worlingworth, Suffolk, for Susanna Barker, died 1622, the brass inlays being heraldic for both. The lettering of the Crane slab suggests that it is the work of the Christmas brothers, John and Mathias, whose sculpted tombs sometimes used white marble inscription panels. They seem to have been reponsible for some white marble inscriptions inlaid in black marble slabs, such as that for William Johnson, died 1640, at Ingham, Norfolk.

A small number of white marble inlays in the form of lozenges survive in the Thames Valley. Two are found at Sunningwell. One commemorates Dr Samuel Fell, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, and rector of Sunningwell from 1625. This has an incised skull, his initials and date of burial, 2 February 1648, altered to show the year as 1649, which accords to modern dating. He had died the day before. It is now embedded in a slab of black mosaic, along with a shield bearing his coat of arms, also in white marble. The other, also now inlaid on a black mosaic slab, is to three of his children (Thomas, 1632; Elizabeth, 1634; and Martha, 1637). It also commemorates Thomas Washbourne, 1644. It shows their heads at the corners. Thomas Washbourne must be Fell's grandson, the son of Thomas Washbourne, clergyman and poet, and Fell’s daughter Dorothy. This slab also has an inscription in white marble to Margaret Wylde, Fell’s wife, buried in 1653 at the age of 56. She has a lozenge of arms on white marble above the inscription. Ashmole described these memorials as being on blue stones, the current arrangement apparently copying the original.

Another church with two white marble lozenges is Thame. The lozenges are now on a wall. They commemorate Merrial Coates, died 14 July 1644 aged twelve months, and Simon Coates, died 1 May 1644 at the age of three. Both have their heads and shoulders incised above a fictive fringed hanging on which their details are written. Both look rather older than their stated ages, and seem to be by the same engraver as executed the heads of the Fell children. They are attractive memorials.

Although Sunningwell and Thame are close to Oxford, aspects of the lettering suggest that the Christmas brothers may have been responsible, and not an Oxford engraver.

Copyright: Jon Bayliss