What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 22: Bling on Tombs

  Efffigy tombs of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries always show people dolled up in their finest, adorned with various kinds of bling. Sure, they want to be looking their best when they arise at that last trump, but every item of expensive decoration embodies some kind of message about that person's position and role in society. It is a form of communication; a readable code.

  Effigies of ladies of the 13th or very early 14th centuries tended to all be very similarly dressed with a flowing gown and simple head covering, often with a wimple. The fact they they were depicted as large tomb effigies at all was sufficient testimony to their status. Most tombs of this vintage have been knocked around a bit, moved, and lost their colouring and gilding. They are ghosts of their former selves. The two ladies above are from Tideswell in Derbyshire.

  It has been said that fashion was invented in the early 14th century, with clothing styles for men and women undergoing rapid change. Having the very latest in fashions was an insignia of not only wealth, but status and influence. If the missus was dressed in the latest crazy headgear and sleeves with a million buttons, then she was not only rich, she undoubtedly had someone to help her get dressed in the morning, like this lady from Bothamsall in Nottinghamshire.

  In the days of sumptuary laws, if she was togged out in imported brocade, she was guaranteed to be of a certain status in the social hierarchy. The above is a replica of the brass to Margaret Peyton (1484) in Isleham, Cambridgeshire. These fashions changed so rapidly that the makers of effigies, whether brass or sculpted stone, were constantly updating their designs to keep up. Where the tomb has an inscription it is possible to create a chronology for these fashion changes but in the absence of one, I have doubts about identifying the tomb owner by cross referencing the date of death with the fashion design. It may date the effigy accurately, but it would depend on whether it was made before death (It's been done.), immediately after or some years after.

  Here is a bit of gratuitous female bling from Methley, Yorkshire, because bling looks so good in alabaster. Amazing hat.

  Something similar happened over the same period with the depiction of knights. The example above is an early 14th century effigy from West Tanfield, Yorkshire, turned out in chain mail. The evolution to plate armour and beyond took place as a series of specific details which resulted in a very different final result. Funerary effigies depicted these changing details of body armour, sword belts, shields, spurs in intricate detail.

  

  This knight from Harpham, Yorkshire, displays the lean, clean and mean look of full plate armour of the early 15th century, apart from the frivolous crown of feathers on his helmet.

  Some later depictions, such as this late 15th century knight from Howden, Yorkshire, have strangely exaggerated features of some parts of their armour, as if the novel features were being emphasised. As with the ladies, although armour can be dated stylistically, it probably dates the manufacture of the effigy rather than the demise of its owner. The medieval art tradition generally had a strange anachronistically modern approach. Alexander the Great's armies wore 15th century armour if they were depicted in a 15th century chronicle, as did King Arthur's knights.

  Armour, at one level, might not be considered technically bling. It was practical attire to stop you getting murdered in battle. It was, however, very much a sign of status. Being entitled to a suit of armour meant you were entitled to risk getting yourself murdered for the king. You had rank. There is nothing to say that the actual practical armour that your average knight kept in case they had to clobber the French again was as perfectly in synchronicity with fashion as the one they were depicted with on their tomb. By the Tudor period, upwardly mobile city merchants who were granted knightly status ordered a suit of armour to prop up in the banqueting hall, just to show.

  Heraldry was bling, and also subject to the rapid elaboration over those competitive centuries as seen in clothing and armour. A simple coat of arms on a shield may have sufficed in the early 14th century, but these were often depicted in a colouful and blingy way. This battered brass of a knight from Gorleston in Suffolk bears a small shield that has a roughened surface to hold enamels or resins to display the heraldic colours.

  This brass from Chesterfield has gone the full monty. Terrible photo, sorry. Because of the way tombs have been messed around over time, sometimes the full heraldic bling is not preserved as it could include arms on the tomb chest, in an archway or above a niche. The whole ensemble is often not in its original condition. Somebody versed in the arcane language of heraldic depiction could tell a whole story of family fortune from the brass above.

  A significant bit of knightly bling was the livery collar, becoming apparent during the Wars of the Roses, supposedly to indicate where loyalties lay: SS for Lancaster, suns and roses for York and S with roses for the Tudors to show we are all lovey again. The above examples all come from Harewood church in Yorkshire.  If they really show loyalties, this mob did tend to go with the flow. They are sometimes found on female tombs as well, as in the example from Methley above. There is a difficulty in interpreting the significance of these. They are taken to indicate allegiance. In contradictory mode, they are often used for dating, identifying the precise owner of the effigy by the reign of the monarch that they died in. Both cannot be correct. If everyone had been on the side of the current winners, there would have been no war. Perhaps it didn't show so much which side they were actually on, but how their descendants wanted them to be remembered.

  They were not all fraught with royal controversy. This example from Ripon in Yorkshire wears a collar depicting a deer within a park, a local badge of the Markenfield family. He evidently preferred to advertise his big fish in a smaller pond status.

  Certain styles of bling denoted particular offices. This battered effigy in Eastrington, Yorkshire, wears the robe and coif of a judge over the suit of armour of a knight; not a combination he would have worn in real life. He really wanted to hit the viewer with all his status symbols.

  A mayor of Norwich flaunts his fur lined ceremonial robe and beads, significata of office.

  If you didn't rate a suit of armour, you could advertise your significance with the size of your purse, as with this civilian tomb in Ashover, Derbyshire. Presumably this was meant to indicate the amount you were prepared to give to charity for the benefit of your immortal soul, but a purse that size is definitely bling. They kind of missed that bit about the camel and the eye of a needle in the middle ages.

  Even at slightly less elevated levels of society, a bit of bling denoted special status. This rather lumpy battered effigy from Wadworth, Yorkshire, carries a hunting horn, symbolic of his role as a forester. In less complex tombs, symbols such as swords, chalice and paten, keys, shears and the like serve as a communication system for information about the status of the deceased.

  The ultimate bit of swank was if your dog was wearing bling. This fine hunting dog, a status symbol in itself (Hey, you didn't have a dog that could bring down a deer unless you were entitled to hunt the deer.), on a knightly alabaster tomb in Halsham church, Yorkshire, was probably sporting some real bling in his heyday.

  In the religious community, clothing and bling had very specific references to the status and function of the wearer, but that is a story for another day.

What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 21: Brass Rubbings - Perfect Facsimiles?

  In 1973, on my first visit to England, I did over 80 brass rubbings from medieval tombs. A major reason for doing them was that my husband had recently begun teaching medieval history in Australia and realised that students there did not have the familiarity with medieval heritage remains or an awareness of how they fitted into the ordinary landscape of folks in England. It was part of an ongoing project that included increasing amounts of photography over the years, and eventually some multimedia shenanigans. It meant much of our luggage was guide books, OS maps, Pevsners, cameras, paper and wax. We did take the odd change of undies. We were there for eight months on that occasion and I was towing a two year old child around at the time. Most of the rubbings were done around Yorkshire, Derbyshire and East Anglia, which were not so heavily populated with tourist brass rubbers as the more popular areas such as Kent. It was possible to fit each project into a two year old's timetable. The bulk of my luggage coming home comprised four large plastic cylinders solidly packed with rolled up paper. Don't quite know how we got away with that.
  I didn't do any more brass rubbings on our various extended trips after that. The tide had turned somewhat against it among the clergy and besides, how many cylinders full of rolls of paper that can only be got out for occasional special occasions does a girl need?

  This is one of the first rubbings I did, one of several in a strange little isolated church in the village of Harpham on the East Yorkshire wolds, of a knightly member of the St Quentin family. Yes, it's a scruffy phone pic, done under guerilla circumstances. One day I guess I must hire a small hall for a day and photograph them all properly.

  Here is a photograph of the same tomb. The proportions look different because I didn't have a hovercraft to get directly above him, so the rubbing is a more accurate depiction in that regard. A piece of his dagger has been broken off at some stage, which is apparent in the photograph but not the rubbing. He clearly had a livery collar in the past, inlaid in a different material to the brass. The slab he was set in also had four separate heraldic shields in the corners, only three of which have survived. These were most probably originally inlaid with coloured material, but that is gone. The colour of the brass itself is a dingy brown, weathered with age, and the whole arrangement is monochrome, a characteristic only emphasised by the stark black and white of the rubbing.

  The slab into which the brass is set lies in the floor of the St Quentin family chapel, amid a miscellany of tombs including other brasses, an incised alabaster slab on a table tomb under a canopy, a beat up old limestone effigy and some later wall monuments, not to mention bits of woodwork and old heating pipes. Whether it is in its original place or setting is impossible to know. These things got moved around and reorganised a lot.
  There were once many more medieval monumental brasses around than there are today, and despite the favourite villains of history often getting all the blame, there have been steady losses over the centuries from natural circumstances, religious change, pillage, church refurbishment and gradual wear and tear. The most vilified despoilers include Henry VIII and his henchmen, Puritans, Civil War soldiers who melted them down for cannons and corrupt churchwardens of later days. Those that survive tend to be battered, worn and often relocated, but they still provide a fascinating visual projection from that romanticised past.
  16th and 17th century antiquarians took a great interest in tombs, including brasses. Their particular focus was on recording epitaphs and heraldry. Detailed and accurate depictions of the figures on tombs and brasses are rare, although their records do indicate the existence of many tombs since lost or damaged. The first direct prints from brasses were taken in the 18th century, by flooding the incised lines in the brass with ink and pressing paper over them. I can't quite see this being approved of by church authorities today. Nevertheless, it produced very accurate monochrome, linear prints of the designs, but reversed of course. Easy to pick if there are inscriptions because these are written back to front. These were used to produce monochrome engravings for publication, and some are the only evidence for brasses which are no longer extant.

  This figure from a brass to Robert Attelath in the church of King's Lynn is known only from such a print by Craven Ord, later published as an engraving in J.S. Cotman and D. Turner 1838 Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses in Norfolk and Suffolk, Vol. 1. The image here is taken from Wikimedia Commons. King's Lynn has other surviving amazing Flemish brasses, and this is only part of the one that was lost, but it gives us some beautiful visual information.
  The use of black wax to take impressions of brasses became very popular during the mid 19th century. It produced sharp durable impressions which were the right way round. They were black, because the wax used was black heelball wax, used by cobblers to blacken the heels of shoes. Brass rubbing wax is still often referred to as heelball wax to this day, although folks have generally forgotten why.
  Collections of these historic rubbings survive in such places as the British Library, Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in some cases they document brasses which have since disappeared or been mutilated or damaged. They are historical records, and at the level of reproducing linear design, they are accurate.

    This is my rubbing from 1973 of a brass in Cowthorpe, Yorkshire, showing one Brian Roucliff precariously balancing a church on one hand. Various other disordered bits and pieces of the design are scattered around. From memory, he was mounted on the wall at the time.

  The Victoria and Albert Museum catalogue of 1915 has this picture of a rubbing of the same brass, done before somebody ran off with his wife, not to mention the church tower, and the whole ensemble got disarranged. So we know a lot more about the monument than the surviving fragments can tell us.
  The stark blackness made these simple to reproduce at a time when books were largely printed in monochrome, and provided a much more detailed and crisp image than photographic images of three dimensional tombs could provide. The stereotype of the flat, black, negative, monochrome design patterns the mind into thinking that was what brasses were like.

  Flat, black and battered, this knight from Gorleston in Suffolk would have been a handsome fellow in his day, back when he had legs, and a canopy, and some colour in his heraldic shield. As for the brass itself, it may have been polished, or gilded or made shiny and interesting in some way. This rubbing was done on red paper, but as I recall that was a practical decision because the red paper was softer than the white and he was placed vertically on the wall, so it was easier to get a clean print.

  With the fancy brass rubbing waxes that were being produced in the 70s it was possible to get a shiny, metallic finish, as in this rubbing of Sir Robert de Bures from Acton in Suffolk. The colour is entirely false though. It is an artifact of production and still provides only a monochrome outline of what was probably a much more colourful affair. Interestingly, the purveyors of brass rubbing supplies back then said that some rubbers preferred the metallic waxes because they looked more brassy, and others preferred the "authentic" black and white look. In other words, the visual characteristics of the old rubbings were determining authenticity, not those of the original brasses. The little Shire Library book S. Badham with M. Stuchfield 2009 Monumental Brasses has lovely colour photographs that illustrate a number of brasses with spectacular survivals of colour.

 Something else that can be lost is texture. This little figure of a priest from West Tanfield in Yorkshire, here shown without his inscription, shows blank spaces where the brass was clearly scraped out and roughened for some sort of inlay, probably representing fur, on the garment below his cope. Similar things are seen on the collars and cuffs of ladies in elaborate gowns.

  This knight from Aldborough in Yorkshire looks to me like one that would once have had some colourful adornment, with both his jupon and shield covered in heraldic designs. Both this example and that from Gorleston were mounted on the church wall, which brings up another issue. The engraved sheet of brass and its base stone, even with shields, inscriptions, canopies and other adornments, were not necessarily the totality of the monument. Brasses could be on tomb chests, under canopies, part of larger compositions. The brass rubbing isolates the design of the engraved brass from its setting, once again creating a stereotype that does not reflect the complexity of the original.

  This canopied tomb chest in Higham Ferrers church supports a very famous brass to a priest, Laurence de St Maur, which cannot be seen from this angle. It appears that somebody has put a vase of flowers on him. (Ulp.) The whole arrangement may have served as an Easter Sepulchre as well as a tomb, which is something that cannot be deduced from looking at the many black and white illustrations of the rubbing of the brass.
  Back in 1973 some facsimiles taken from moulds of monumental brasses were being sold. These were taken up by brass rubbing centres as a way of taking the heat off churches while letting people have the brass rubbing experience. The actual sellers of these appear to have changed several times over the years, but it does seem that the core repertoire of brasses treated in this way has remained fairly constant. Some brasses have become more famous than others.

  This picture, taken in 1988 in the Norwich Brassrubbing Centre shows people getting up close and personal with some medieval heritage using these facsimiles. We also bought a bunch of them over the years so that Australian students thousands of miles from the place they were studying could have a bit of the experience. They were very popular at end of year parties as cash strapped students used their rubbings for Christmas presents. 
  Now these were claimed to be absolutely accurate, producing a rubbing that was unable to be differentiated from one produced from the original. Certainly they look pretty good. One indignant lady at a university open day accused us noisily of pillaging churches. However, for practical reasons many are miniature versions, and some extract details rather than show complete compositions. Our crosslegged knight from a full sized effigy is only about half a metre high. There are even some that are based on historical figures who never had brasses made. This is fine if they are accepted for what they are, homage to brass memorials not reproductions of them.

  This little facsimile is of a small group of daughters of the main figures on a brass from Dinton, Buckinghamshire. There is a brief description on the back, but no image of the complete composition. It's a little memento, not a recording, but that is also what you find out in the field.

  Sometimes all that is left is the ghosts, as in this indent of a lost brass in Chichester cathedral. You just have to use your imagination, and not just think in black and white.

  A couple of times we have pulled them all out to display some of the best ones for university open days. I still get a thrill when I open up one of the tubes to look at the shiny precision of them, but then it takes about an hour to roll them back up again for storage. They are precise copies of original art works at one level, but at another they are mere shadows.

What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 20: Owning the Church

  My sorting and cleaning up of old photographs finally allowed me to identify two pictures which recalled a tale from when they were originally taken. I was trailing two small boys around medieval sites at the time. Mostly they were happy with castles and didn't mind monasteries if they had good drains, but churches generally had to be rationed. They were observant little lads though and as I was investigating a tomb one queried "Why is the shield in the stained glass window the same as the one on the knight's shield. Did he own the church?" I explained no, he didn't own it, but he may have had something to do with building the part of it where he was buried. Thinking about it for a few decades, there is an element of ownership in these remains, and sometimes contested ownership at that.

  The church was in Ryther, West Yorkshire, where there are tombs to members of the Ryther family. In an earlier post I discussed how stained glass windows could be funerary monuments in themselves, and could contain specific references to praying for the souls of the dead. Another post also discussed the use of heraldry on tombs as an identifier and a status marker. I guess I am trying to pull a few threads together to look at signs of possession within the church.
  There must always have been some competition between the clergy and the wealthy lay folks about ownership of the church real estate. The clergy used the space to go about their business of saying the offices and the mass, conducting weddings, baptisms, confessions and funerals and doing their own work. It was their space. Nonetheless, wealthy donors provided some of the means for them to do it, and laid claim to spaces for their personal and family display.
  Some of the earliest large effigy tombs are in the great churches, the cathedrals and abbeys, commemorating the senior clergy of the church; the founding fathers and those who oversaw the development of ever increasing grandeur of these buildings and communities. These can be seen in some places, despite being moved and messed around during the course of various religious upheavals.

  The Purbeck marble tomb to Bishop Joscelin de Bohun (d.1184) in Salisbury Cathedral is one of several of senior ecclesiastics in this church.

  Abbot Benedict (d.1193) is one of a number of abbots who survived the Reformation and remain commemorated in Peterborough Cathedral after it was changed from a Benedictine abbey. They weren't forgetting their origins in Peterborough.
  Ecclesiastics were not the only people memorialised in the abbeys, even those which did not serve as cathedrals. Although one might think of the more remote Cistercian houses, for example, as places that were largely the preserve of their serving monastic communities, significant lay people were buried there, having paid well for the privilege no doubt.

  This mangled specimen of a knightly effigy lies in the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey. Nobody salvaged him and carted him off to a safer haven at the dissolution of the monasteries. His capacity to own a piece of monastic territory was subverted by the disappearance of the institution itself.

  A hefty but battered tomb of Sir Ralph Bowes stands plonk under the crossing of the church of Egglestone Abbey, a Premonstratensian house. More modest slabs and brass indents are scattered about, of lay and ecclesiastical figures. This was a bit of a battling house and probably had to treat its patrons well.

  At Fountains Abbey some battered relics of the tombs of the abbots lie in the chapter house. This was a space where the monks conducted their own affairs and could perhaps be perceived as their particular space, even more than the body of the church was.
  In the later medieval period, the claiming of space in the major churches, by ecclesiastics as well as mighty lay people, became even more conspicuous with the building of lavish chantries, marking out confined spaces within the general area of the church and splashing heraldry and other symbols of ownership all over them. They were for the wealthy, religious or lay, as they not only required payment for their construction but ongoing expenditure to maintain the priests who said the masses in them.

  Entrance to a chantry in Ely Cathedral. Now imagine it with all its colour and statuary; definitely laying claim to a space.
  In the parish churches, it seems the wealthy local laity had the upper hand. While there are some fancy tombs to parish priests, there are many more modest little affairs and a lot of them are small brasses.

  This tiny brass to a priest in West Tanfield church, North Yorkshire, sits in a church with several large and elaborate effigy tombs to the laity. Who provided these modest memorials - family, parishioners? I don't doubt there may have been some battles, and some rearrangements over time, as the priests tried to ensure they had the space to do their business while the lay patrons tried to impose their memorials in the most conspicuous places.
  Stained glass windows do not occupy floor space and they do serve useful and aesthetic functions within the church. Heraldic windows emblazon the family stamp on the place without getting in anybody's way, which might explain why you find so many of them.

  The above is an assortment of glass fragments in St Martin's church, Stamford, featuring some natty heraldic shields.
  I suspect some competition among the laity themselves for ownership of space as family fortunes waxed and waned. There are plenty of clues that tombs got moved around and re-organised and it is not always clear when. The older, and often a bit forlorn, effigies seem to be usually found in churches that are not crammed with the clunky memorials of post-Refomation upstarts, whether they are in tiny country churches or tucked away rather surprisingly in modern industrial towns (or post-industrial in many cases today). Tomb chests show signs of having been broken up and reassembled. Effigies look to have been dragged outside and left in the rain. In some cases they have been found buried in the churchyard or tucked into strange places inside the church.

  This alabaster couple in Pickering church lie in what looks like a family chapel, but if they haven't spent some time out in the North Yorkshire dreek I would be very surprised.

  Then there is this. Several tombs of the de la Pole family reside in the church at Wingfield, Suffolk, a church which became collegiate under their patronage. Note the location of the tomb up next to the altar and the way that various heraldic devices spread all over the aisle arcades of the chancel. The sedilia are actually built in to the structure of the tomb. Another tomb lies directly opposite on the other side of the chancel. These folks are still owning the church.
  We like to have a romantic notion of medieval churches as havens of peace, love and Christian values, but it is very hard for those competitive, acquisitive, pugnacious creatures we call people to leave those characteristics at the door. The battle for status and influence continues inside, using the vocabulary of the sacred spaces.

What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 19: Animals on Tombs (2)

  The first posting on this topic examined some of the generic types of animals depicted on tombs and what they signified in general terms. In this post I will look at some more specific examples of how animals were used in a way the referred to particular individuals. One of the ways of individualising tombs was through the use of heraldry, as the depictions of the actual effigies were generally highly generic and indistinguishable. Animals had their place in achievements of arms. Unfortunately, in many cases the heraldry is lost to us as it was painted on to shields adorning the tombs, and has been effaced in that phase of church restoration that insisted everything should be monochrome.

  The 13th century tomb of William Longspee in Salisbury Cathedral has six prominently carved heraldic lions on the shield. This example has some significance in the history of heraldry as his grandfather, Geoffrey Plantagenet, was supposedly the first person to be granted a personal coat of arms. So they say. The lions on his tomb in France were made in a more durably colourful medium, but William's have been reduced to monochrome. This dynasty did not have a monopoly on lions however, just on this arrangement.

  The early 14th century brass to Sir Robert de Bures in Acton, Suffolk also features lions on the shield. These are the very stylised heraldic lions whose poses all have fancy French names. Heraldry is basically a bunch of patterns arranged in different combinations. During the course of the 14th century these combinations became more and more complicated.

  This tomb of a 14th century knight in Melton Mowbray church has a nice heraldic lion shield, but as no colour remains on the rest of the effigy it has presumably been repainted. It may even have been reappropriated with the help of said lion for somebody who needed some ancestors. Still, it gives you the idea of how these things could be used.

  Lions were not just heraldic symbols, but represented Christian virtues and were deemed to represent Christ. The rather strange books known as the bestiaries ascribed all manner of characteristics to various animals, all with overlaying connotations of virtue or sin. According to the bestiaries, lion cubs were born dead and were revived on the third day by the male lion breathing in their faces. Anything sound familiar here? For those and many other equally spurious reasons, lions were cool, tough and virtuous, and were found as foot supporters on many effigy tombs, as shown in the previous post. The mid 14th century knightly effigy from Pickering, Yorkshire, above has the emblem of a lion's head on the elbow piece of his armour; a medieval version of the saying "more power to your elbow".

  When the lion fought the dragon it represented Christ fighting the devil, as on this corbel tucked away inside the famous so-called Percy tomb in Beverley Minster, Yorkshire. It is not the only piece of hinted Resurrection symbolism on this tomb, suggesting its possible use as a Easter Sepulchre.

  Above is the Percy tomb in all its glorious complexity.

  As heraldic achievements became more and more complicated, animals appeared in other places, such as on the crest of the helm of a knight, used as a rather uncomfortable pillow in funerary effigial depictions. The late 15th century brass to Nicholas Kniveton in Mugginton church, Derbyshire has an animal that looks like a wolf as the crest. However, the composition recalls the bestiary story about the tiger. When a hunter steals a tiger cub, he can throw the indignant mother tiger off his trail by throwing her a glass ball which acts as a mirror. She peers in the mirror thinking that it is her cub and the hunter makes his getaway. It doesn't look much like a real tiger but it does look like the way the tiger was depicted in the bestiary, mirror and all. Is he telling us that he is as cunning and fierce as a tiger, or that he steals other people's offspring, or what?  He is wearing a Lancastrian collar during a Yorkist reign so I suspect he is telling us something.

  Animals were also deployed as shield supporters in heraldry. This fragmentary arrangement shows the supporters on the funerary achievements over the late 15th century tomb of Sir John de la Pole and wife Elizabeth in Wingfield church, Suffolk.

  This beat up specimen from Halsham, East Yorkshire may represent the head of a wolf, or something else fierce and hairy.

  The crest on the 15th century knight's tomb from Swine in East Yorkshire seems to represent a bird, perhaps an eagle.

From C.A. Stothard 1840 The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, London

  It isn't just knights who can have fancy pillows. The late 14th century tomb of the wife of Lord Beauchamp in Worcester Cathedral depicts her with her head resting on a swan. I think this is unique.

  The knight's effigy on the brass of Sir Godfrey and Dame Katherine Foljambe in Chesterfield church, Derbyshire is a mid 16th century over the top extravaganza of heraldry, as is the rest of the tomb. His feet are resting on a stag. As this brass uses the convention of placing his feet on a grassy hillock, it makes it look as if he is standing upright and stomping on the stag.

  The animals, heraldic or otherwise, can be part of a play on words of the commemorated person's name, a trick known as a rebus. The early 14th century effigy of Sir John de Bordeston in Amotherby church, Yorkshire carries the emblem of three boars. (Boars, Bordeston, get it?) As heraldry became more complex it became less of a symbolic language and more of a pictorial one.

  The 15th century alabaster effigy of a member of the Redmayne family in Harewood church, Yorkshire has a crest of a horse, which no doubt had a red mane in its glory days.

  Sir Walter Griffith (d.1481) rests his feet on a splendid alabaster gryffon in Burton Agnes church, East Yorkshire. Griffith, gryffon; well it only has to be close.

  This gentleman, lying here serenely in Glastonbury parish church, bore the name of John Cammel (d.1487). Spot the camel.

  The early 14th century tomb of Sir Richard (or Robert) Stapledon in Exeter cathedral has the biggest and most conspicuous animal ever in the form of a horse, sadly mutilated, not supporting his feet but being led by a groom beside the feet of his effigy. Another effigy, perhaps a squire, stands by his head. Sally Badham, in her Seeking Salvation (2015) suggests that this could represent his funerary procession. Or maybe Stapledon, stable ... maybe, or both.

  I only include this picture of a horse as foot supporter for Bishop John Langton in Chichester Cathedral because I never met a horse that could do that.

  Finishing off somewhere near where we started, here is a lion foot supporter. Even as foot supporters go, it's a rather peculiar lion with strangely monstrous feet and it's biting at the sword tip in the way that dragons and demons do. It's a mixture of the noble Christian lion and the nasty bitey beastie. It stands at the feet of King John in Worcester Cathedral. Make of that what you will.