Like many memorials from the fifteenth century, the Ingleton brass in the parish church of St Michael, Thornton (Buckinghamshire) pictures a man with more than one spouse (Fig. 51). The armoured effigy of Robert Ingleton (d. 1473), Justice of the Peace for Buckinghamshire and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Edward IV, is flanked by his three wives: Margaret Dymoke to his left, Clemens Lister and Isabel Cantilupe to his right. Successive wives stand alongside one another, collapsing the boundaries between life and death. This is an impossible image of spousal unity. In death the women are united, but in life each of the wives could only be Robert’s spouse in the absence of the others. Clustered beneath their feet are the children which they each bore him: three sons and five daughters in the case of Margaret, two sons and three daughters in the case of Clemens, and one son and two daughters in the case of Isabel. Cut from the same template, these three female effigies are distinguishable only by the escutcheon bearing the arms of their natal family above their head. While Robert’s effigy is also adapted from a workshop model, it is the only figure of its type on the memorial, set apart by the ornate detailing of its armour as opposed to the simple vertical folds of the women’s skirts. The three-line Latin inscription at the base of the frame records Robert’s titles, date of death and pleas to Christ and the Virgin for mercy on his soul, but neglects to even mention Margaret, Clemens or Isabel. Like the children clustered at their feet, these wives are appendages to a memorial that first and foremost commemorates Robert. Gathering his spouses together was a means to create a comprehensive record of his offspring and marital connections, a genealogical summary of the successors to his estates.

Women in the Middle Ages also remarried frequently. But, while there are numerous examples of a male effigy flanked by two or more wives, a mere handful of memorials show a female effigy surrounded by multiple husbands Such a disparity highlights the stark contrast in the positions of men and women within marriage, as well as in the social and legal spheres more broadly, an inequality that circumscribed their choices in death as well as in life.