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A Paget Memorial in Perspective: Aspects of A Seventeenth-Century Funerary Monument Erected to Richard Paget in St Mary's, Skirpenbeck, East Riding of Yorkshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Extract

The undocumented memorial (pl. XIIa) to Richard Paget (d. 1636) and his two children in St Mary's, Skirpenbeck, some 12 miles east-north-east of York, has hitherto received little or no attention from scholars, other than a brief mention by Nikolaus Pevsner and a flawed description and conjectural attribution by K. A. Esdaile. Yet its form and its remarkable inscriptions, combined with a puzzling incongruity ofexecution, present the art historian with a number of intriguing problems. Among these are questions relating to its design and construction, the date of its erection, and the style and possible authorship of its ingenious commemorative verses. Detailed consideration is given to such matters in another paper by the writer, however, a brief résumé of them may be helpful before discussion of the wider questions raised here: the iconography of the monument and its relationships both with others of the period and with contemporary opinions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1990

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References

1 ‘Patchet, Richard. Adm. sizar (aged 15) at Caius, July 2, 1600. S. of William (1549), B.D. B. at Skirpenbeck, Yorks.. School, York. Died June 17, 1636. Buried at Skirpenbeck.’ Alumni Cantabri-gienses. From the Earliest Times to 1751, Venn, J. and Venn, J. A., (eds.), Part I, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1922-1927), III (1924), 296.Google Scholar

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3 Esdaile, K. A., ‘Sculptors and sculpture in Yorkshire, pt. Ill’, Yorkshire Archaeol. J. 36 (1944-1947), 155.Google Scholar

4 ‘A Paget Memorial’, ch. I-III, unpublished M.A. dissertation, Fine Art Department, Universify of Edinburgh, 1989Google Scholar . Paper based on the above to be published in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal.

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7 The faculty of 1895 authorizes church restoration and the resiting of the memorial. Archives of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York.

8 The Will of Richard Paget, February 1636. Archives of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York.

9 Venn, and Venn, op. cit. (note 1), 1, 25 (William Dealtry), in, 295 (Nathaniel Paget).Google Scholar

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11 On altar tombs, children might be represented in relief round the sides, playing the same role as medieval'weepers ‘. Alternatively, they might kneel - on the tomb-chest itself in smaller scale than their parents, although united in the same space (popular c. 1550-1610), Whinney, M., Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830, second edition (London, 1988), 228Google Scholar.

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15 Mercer, E., English Art, 1553-1625 (Oxford, 1962), 247Google Scholar , discusses how far concern with the human figure existed in England even before the development of a sophisticated Renaissance taste with Charles I, but how the ‘virtuosi’ naturally became catalysts in its development.

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19 Ibid., 172. The inclusion of bats' wings is noted here as a baroque development, most used in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

20 Ibid., 70.

21 Ibid., 72.

22 Whinney, , op. cit. (note 11), 251Google Scholar . The motif cannot be designated as having originated in sculpture or in painting.

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34 It may be significant that these features of th e Marshall angels are shared by the grou p mentioned in note 33, and closer study might produce further reasons for linking them with Marshall's authorship.

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37 Llewellyn, N., John Weever and English Funeral Monuments of the 16th and 17th Century (unpublished London, 1983), 11, 27Google Scholar . Camden, W., Reges Regina Nobiles et alij in Ecclesia Collegiata B Pedri Westmonesterji sepulti vsque ad annum 1600 (London, 1600, et seq.)Google Scholar.

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48 If, as seems likely, the sculptor was a local man, he will probably remain anonymous. Although indigenous sculpture continued in Yorkshire at this time, littl e data survive. Few sculptors’ names appear on the lists of Freemen, suggesting that their yards lay outside the city. However, the Thomas Ventrises Snr. (Freeman in 1615)and Jnr., of Coney Street, York, mus t have bee n held in some regard, as they were heavily patronized by Sir Arthur Ingram between 1620 and 1642 (see Gilbert, C., ‘Newly discovered carving by Thomas Ventris of York’, The Connoisseur 162 (1966), 257–9.Google Scholar ) Others were Thomas Hogges (?), Head Mason at York Minster c. 1630-67 (see Addleshaw, G. W. O. MS Add. 359/6, York Minster Archive)Google Scholar , Thomas Brinsley and Thomas Browne ( Esdaile, K. A., ‘Sculpture and sculptors in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeol. J. 35 (1940-1943), 383)Google Scholar . Only Browne's funerary sculpture is known with certainty, and it is stylistically far removed from the Paget memorial.

Whoever the craftsman, he was probably a mason too, in line with the usual practice of the time, hence the description of Walter Hancock, builder of Andover and also a tomb-maker, as ‘a very skillful man in the art of masonry, in settinge of plottes for buildinges and performing the same, ingraininge in alabaster in other stone or playster’, who was said to have done ‘most sumptuous buildings, most stately tombs, mos t curyous pictures.’ Mercer, E., op. cit. (note 15), 232Google Scholar.

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60 Spelman, H., De Sepultura (London, 1641), 28Google Scholar . A homily where the charging of a fee both for the priest's services and the burial ground is decried in favour of voluntary donations for the funeral rites alone to be hinted at and not demanded.

61 Another William Dealtry was rector there until 1736. Venn, and Venn, op. cit. (note 1), 1, 25Google Scholar.

62 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 14), 138.Google Scholar

63 Llewellyn, , op. cit. (note 37), 113.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., 90.

65 Ibid., 105, quoting from the Irish Journal of 1670 in Nicholas, Camden Society, (1867), 17.Google Scholar

66 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 36), 59.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., 60, quoting from Thoma s Dingley's MS History in Monuments (c. 1680), an antiquarian who chronicled many English tombs.

68 Llewellyn, , op. cit. (note 37), 124Google Scholar , quoting the Life of Sir Philip Sidney (c. 1610) by Fulke Greville, a considerable tom b patron himself.

69 Ibid., 114.

70 Esdaile, , op. cit. (note 14), 138Google Scholar , quoting from Fuller's, Worthies.Google Scholar