The ledger slabs of Canterbury Cathedral, 1991

THE LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, 1991 TEMPEST HAY The ledger slabs of Canterbury Cathedral, of which there are some 320, are only sketchily recorded and the principal remaining sources of information about them, the inscriptions on the slabs themselves, are rapidly being removed by the feet of countless tourists. There is a need, therefore, to record the details remaining before they vanish for ever. So a definitive catalogue has been drawn up and deposited in the Cathedral archives, with copies going to other appropriate authorities. A separate page is provided for each slab, whether identified or not, recording all the known details: location, description, material, dimensions, inscriptions, and any information available from earlier sources. It is to be hoped that these pages will be added to or amended as further information comes to light. In this connection ledger slabs are taken to be inscribed horizontal floor slabs, most of which mark, or did mark, burials; and this includes brass indents from which the brasses have been removed. But it does not include chest tombs, sarcophagi, or any wall monuments. The article that follows gives a general description of the ledger slabs and their displacement around the cathedral and monastic buildings, with more detailed comments on some of the knottier problems of identification, and finally a summary of the slabs now most at risk. I am indebted to numerous helpers in collecting the information: to the recorders, to library and archive staffs, to the works department staff, to the vergers, and even to the occasional tourist who held the other end of a tape measure. In particular, I must thank Margaret Sparks for her help and advice and for reading the final draft and suggesting improvements. GENERAL OUTLINE In the earlier Middle Ages, the bodies of the few people who were buried inside great churches, mainly royalty and higher ecclesiastics, 5 TEMPEST HAY were generally put in above-ground chest tombs or sarcophagi, as in the choir and Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. But as time went by, and they were joined by more and more assorted local magnates and benefactors, chest tombs became too expensive in floor space. So burials under the floor, marked by varying forms of ledger slabs, became more common, and after the Reformation spread to quite ordinary clerics and their families. Gradually the nave and western transepts in Canterbury began to fill up. Then in 1787, as part of the all too common late eighteenth-century drive for open vistas and the removal of clutter, the nave was cleared completely of all its floor tombs, and the ledger slabs moved to the chapter house and the south-west transept. Next, in the late nineteenth century, as part of a programme of restoration, the chapter house was in turn cleared completely and most of the slabs were moved to the cloisters. Finally in 1980, those slabs in the south-west transept found to be exposed to too much wear were moved to the nave side aisles. Detailed evidence on these moves is incomplete. Many slabs simply vanished: perhaps they were misused or misreported, or are in fact still in position, but have had their inscriptions worn away. For the post-Reformation named tombs there is most fortunately a meticulously detailed - and to all appearances meticulously accurate - inventory published in 1897 by J.M. Cowper,1 which gives the inscriptions then visible in full. Unfortunately, Cowper has the limitation that he was concerned only with inscriptions, and slabs that have no inscriptions are not even mentioned. This rules out every one of the brass indents: all the brasses have gone and the inscriptions are lost. Just when the brasses went cannot be certain. They were taken, as Weever2 says' ... for greediness of the brasse, or for that they were thought to be Antichristian, pulled out from the sepulchres and purloined.' The looting - 'for greediness of the brasse' - could have taken place at any time. The removal on doctrinal grounds must have been after the Reformation but could have been selective: sometimes only that which was held idolatrous was removed while other details, like names and dates, might be undisturbed. Information is incomplete, but it seems that the bulk of the brasses in Canterbury were removed during the 1640s, at the time of the ravages of Colonel Sandys (1642) and Blue Dick Culmer (1643) and the iconoclasts. 1 J.M. Cowper, The Memorial Inscriptions of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, (1897). 2 J. Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, (1631), 51. 6 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Certainly Weever, writing in 1631, and Somner,3 in 1640, were still able to quote from a great number of inscriptions; while Dart4 in 1726 could give hardly any at first hand. In any event, by the time the 1787 move was completed, all the brasses seem to have gone. THE NAVE [Note: positions are described in terms of pillars and bays, numbering from the east. Thus, bay 1 contains the nave altar, bay 3 the pulpit, bay 7 the font and bay 9 the south-west door.] At the Midsummer Chapter of 1786,5 it was ' ... agreed with Messrs White to pave the whole body of the Church with Portland stone, two inches in thickness, in lozenges of 2 ft. 10 in. x 1 ft. 11 in. . . . at one shilling and eight pence per foot'. Then, at the next meeting the St. Catherine's Chapter of 25 November, it was further directed6 that ' . . . our Treasurer do pay 3 guineas to White for mapring the stones and inscriptions'. The resulting plan must be the map now held in the Cathedral Archives and partially reproduced in Plate I; and the White is presumably the Jesse White who formally became Cathedral Surveyor in 1797. Jesse White, for all his sometimes cavalier attitude towards the cathedral fabric, was a professional, and it can be assumed that his plan is fairly accurate and comprehensive. But the detailed sketches of the brasses, which may well have been done by somebody else, are another matter: they are poorly drawn and they simply do not match up with the surviving indents. For instance the sketch of Bishop Buckingham's tomb in the nave bay 7 cannot be right: having died in 1397, Buckingham could be expected to have had an elaborate late-medieval-type brass, as in fact Somner8 implies and Hasted9 spells out; but the plan gives him the sort of plain engraved stone that would not be expected before the sixteenth century. In the cloisters bay 22 there is a huge indent which, although worn, quite clearly shows a canopy and super-canopy with a row of niches in between; 3 W. Somner, Antiquities of Canterbury, (1640). 4 J. Dart, The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, (1726). 5 Dean's Book, 1777-1793, 136. 6 Ibid., 141. 7 Cathedral Archives, Map no. 104. 8 Somner, op. cit., 180. 9 E. Hasted, History and Topographical Survey of Kent, iv, (1799), 531. 7 TEMPEST HAY 8 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL whereas the plan shows no such super-canopy anywhere. Other examples will appear when the cloister indents come to be discussed in detail. It is of course conceivable that these cloister indents came from somewhere else; but it is difficult to imagine why or from whence such huge and important slabs could have been imported, nor where the old ones went to. Altogether the most likely explanation seems to be that the tomb sketches were put together with little care. The tombs shown in the nave fall into four categories: fourteen large canopied indents, which would all be pre-Reformation; seven small uncanopied brass figures with foot-inscriptions, which could date from any time up to the end of the seventeenth century; twelve dark slabs with white plates or scrolls or medallions, all probably post-Reformation; and fifty-five assorted incised slabs, probably also post-Reformation. The only clear identification of tombs is where the names are shown on post-Reformation incised slabs. However, for most of the major brass matrix slabs Woodruff and Danks10 append a numbered key and from Somner's, Dart's and Batteley's11 accounts this seems to be accurate, except for what must be a clerical error in transposing Archbishops Wittlesey and !slip. That Wittlesey should be in the south arcade and Islip in the north is borne out by both Somner and Dart, by the present position of the Wittlesey floor-plate, and indeed by Woodruff and Danks themselves on their page 273. To this key can be added the further possible identification that the indent in bay 4, north of the Brenchleys, with four shields down each side of the body, may be Sir Thomas Fogge ( d. 1407) and the indent might be the one in bay 11 of the west walk of the cloisters. Certainly Fogge is known to have been buried in the nave; but the evidence (which will be discussed later in the context of the cloisters) tying together the nave drawing, the cloister indent and Fogge is far from watertight. However, if it is accepted, we have now named twelve out of the fourteen large canopied indents and actually located one. Referring to map 104 (Plate I), numbering bays from east to west and listing indents from south to north within the bays, identifications are as follows: Bay 1 Bay 2 Prior Salisbury (in south arcade) Sir William and Lady Lovelace Prior Elham (in north arcade) Archbishop Islip 10 C.E. Woodruff and W. Danks, Memorials of Canterbury Cathedral, (1912). 11 N. Batteley, Somner's Antiquities of Canterbury, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged by N. Batteley, (1703). 9 Bay 3 Bay 4 Bay 5 Bay 7 TEMPEST HAY (in south arcade) Archbishop Wittlesey (to east) Prior Woodnesborough ( to west) Prior Chillenden (in north arcade) Archbishop Arundel Sir William and Lady Brenchley Unidentified Sir Thomas Fogge Unidentified Sir William Septvans Jnr Sir William Septvans Sr Bishop Buckingham The same standard of identification cannot be claimed for the smaller, uncanopied brasses, not one of which can be named, although there are several names on offer. Sir John Guildford (d. 1493), for instance, is referred to by both Somner12 and Dart13 as being on 'the South side of the body' and having had his brass torn off; but Dart quite clearly sites him 'fronting the porch' where the map shows no tombs at all. Then, there are a number of tombs listed by Somner but not found by Dart: Odomarus Hengham (d. 1411), Edmund Haute (d. 1408), Richard Willeford (d. 1520), Robert Clifford (d. 1422), Sir William Arundel! and half-a-dozen more; as well as, in Somner's own words, 'divers others, mostly obscure and mean personages, which I think not mention-worthy'. Any of these could be among the smaller brasses. Furthermore, the matrices for these brasses cannot be found with any certainty elsewhere in the cathedral. There is one extremely battered slab in the cloisters bay 18 which is very probably an indent of this type; but of the other candidates, two in the south-west corner of the crypt were probably there well before 1787, and may be Prior Molash's parents, while the third, on the floor of the infirmary chapel, seems to go back to before the Dissolution. The twelve dark slabs with white panels are not named, so could never be identified with certainty. But there are six possible candidates in the cathedral; one in St. Michael's Chapel, two in the south-west transept ( one now covered over), and three in the cloisters, west walk. One of the latter, in bay 14, can just be read as 12 Somner, op. cit., 183. 13 Dart, op. cit., 39. 10 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Hadrian Saravia, d. 1612, who also has a wall memorial in the nave, north side, bay 8 (see page 22). Also in the west walk of the cloisters (bays 11/12 and 15) are two black slabs with the scars of rectangular brass plates, which could match two of the shaded slabs in bay 1 of the nave. The lettered stones are nearly all named on the map, and Dart's account confirms in most cases.T he fourteen names which appear on the map but not in Dart could all, or mainly, be later burials, after his writing in 1726, but before 1787. So the map of the nave shows the following: Large canopied brass indents Small brass figures Dark slabs with light inlays Engraved slabs 14, of which 12 identified, and one perhaps located 7, of which none identified, although there is one candidate, and perhaps three more 12, of which none identified, although there are eight possibilities, one of them named 55, of which 52 identified and located As regards chest tombs on the Nave Plan, some accounts have assumed that at the time of the move there were four, all within the nave arcades: Archbishops Wittlesey, Arundel and Islip and Sir William Lovelace. But Somner14 tells us quite clearly about Arundel that' ... chantry and monument are both gone, a bare grave-stone, levelled with the floor, with the brass shamefully torn away, being only left'. Dart15 in his text gives Brenchley a 'large grey table monument' and he specifically lists Lovelace's as among those tombs lost. But Gostling16 writing fifty-three years later talks of '3 ancient table monuments ... 'lslip, Wittlesey and Lovelace; and Dart's own (not very reliable) plan of the nave shows these three. Perhaps we can say that there were certainly two table tombs, Islip and Wittlesey, and probably a third; but whether the third was Brenchley or Lovelace is not clear. Both Islip and Wittlesey had been marked by 14 Somner, op. cit., 268. 15 Dart, op. cit., 40. 16 W. Gostling, A Walk in and About the City of Canterbury, (1774), 189. 11 TEMPEST HAY brasses and both tombs were found, as described by an anonymous writer17 at the time, to contain bones. !slip's bones were in disarray, his tomb having already been moved once; but Wittle8ey's skeleton was intact and lying in wood ashes, and by his hand was the leaden seal of a papal bull. In 1787, everything was removed from the nave ( even the font was taken to the Water Tower, which became known as the Baptistry) and the ledger slabs were put in the Chapter House and in the south-west transept. The nave was repaved with Portland stone and the only indications of the lost tombs are five engraved flagstones marking the burials of Archbishops Arundel and Wittlesey, Bishop Buckingham and Priors Chillenden and Woodnesborough. Why these five and no others were marked is not recorded. Nor is it known when the flagstones were engraved; stylistically, they do not look quite right for the eighteenth century, and could be early twentieth century. In 1980, it was decided that the ledger slabs in the south-west transept were being exposed to too much wear, so twenty-four of those in the open were moved to the nave and set out end-to-end in two lines, one in each side aisle, close to the outside walls. Of these twenty-four, fourteen originated in the nave; they appear on the Nave Plan and are confirmed by Dart or the Cathedral Register, or both. Nine originated in the south-west transept and there is one in the south aisle which is quite plain and unidentifiable. The latter could tally with a plain slab reported in Cowper18 in the south-west transept in 1897. The wear on all these slabs varies widely: some are in quite good condition, others are very difficult to decipher indeed. Finally, there is a small group of modern burials in St. Augustine's chapel, under the north-west tower. The builder of the tower, the surveyor George Austin (d. 1848), had his own burial vault there, where his body was eventually joined by that of his son, the surveyor Harry Austin (d. 1892) and then by Archbishop Edward Benson (d. 1896), the first archbishop since Pole to be buried in Canterbury. Benson was also the last person to be buried inside the cathedral, and a special licence had to be obtained for this from the Secretary of State. 19 17 Gentleman's Magazine, March 1787, 222-3. 18 Cowper, op. cit., 53. 19 Chapter Minutes 1895-1910, 63. 12 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL THE CHOIR AND TRINITY CHAPEL Under the floor of the eastern part of the cathedral lies the crypt, and there would hardly be room for full coffin burials between the floor and the crypt vaulting. Burials were, therefore, in chest tombs, all or partially above ground, and such floor inscriptions as there are - to Lanfranc, St. Dunstan and St. Alphege - refer to vanished chest or altar tombs. At the extreme eastern end, behind the Corona altar, there are, however, two small slabs, to Anne Belke, died 1695, and to John and Elizabeth Randolph, died 1688 and 1691 ( or according to the Register 1691 and 1688). As infants, they could theoretically have been fitted in above the Jesus Chapel vaulting. But the Nave Plan and the Cathedral Register make it quite clear that these children were buried in the nave and their ledger slabs were still there in 1787; and how the stones achieved their present positions is unknown. THE CRYPT There are surprisingly few burials in the crypt. In the eastern crypt, at the west end of the central aisle, is an unmarked slab which is presumably the re-burial of the bones, dug up in 1888, at first thought to be Becket's;2° and there are two other unidentified slabs on the north side. In front of Our Lady Undercroft altar is the surviving two-thirds of Archbishop Morton's splendid indent: the brass has all gone but the identity is undisputed. The tomb has, however, been rifled,2 1 probably in the 1640s. In the south-west corner of the crypt is another large matrix, in reasonable condition, showing an ecclesiastic, presumably a prior, holding a crozier. On either side are two small indents; to the south a single figure, probably an ecclesiastic, with two inscriptions underneath; and to the north a slab that is very battered, but is apparently similar to the southern one. A sixteenth-century Christ's Church monk's list22 of priors' burial places says 'Wille/mus Molassch ... sepultus est in criptis cum patre et matre ejus'. He gives no further details, but there seems a good probability that this little group of three indents is Molash and his parents: no other site in the crypt suggests itself and there are no other contenders for the tombs. 20 Arch. Cant. xviii (1889), 254; xxi (1895), 73; and !xiv (1951), 112-5. 21 Arch. Cant. xxxviii (1926), 158. 22 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 298, 120. I owe this reference to D r Christopher Wilson, from the draft o f the forthcoming history of Canterbury Cathedral. 13 TEMPEST HAY But there are discrepancies. No other authority mentions Molash's burial, nor any inscription on his tomb: Somner, Dart and Weever make no mention in their lists of friors; the 1836 plan of the crypt in Britton's Cathedral Antiquities2 omits the supposed Molash, but does show Morton; and so also do both Canon Scott Robertson24 in his very detailed description of the crypt of 1880 and Sir Arthur Blomfield25 in his 1893 correspondence concerning the re-flooring of the entire crypt. Blomfield speaks of ' . . . the matrix of a brass (apparently of a priest) and half of another of a very large and elaborate one of a Bishop immediately west of the chapel ... ' [Our Lady Undercroft] and he goes on to describe how he is going to have 'to shift these two stones very slightly to the west'. The bishop would be Morton, but the single priest is difficult to explain. Perhaps his was a minor brass indent of a single figure and inscription and has been lost. Presumably all this time Molash was in his present position in the crypt and simply was not noticed under the layer of earth that covered the crypt floor in the nineteenth century. Scott Robertson, writing in 1880, says that at the west end of the crypt there was an accumulation of earth to an average depth of eighteen to twenty-four inches, covering the bases of the vaulting shafts. Britton's illustration 26 of 1836 shows the floor level at the western end at least a foot up the bases of the columns. We know when this earth went, for in 1893 Sir Arthur Blomfield reported that ' ... the excavation of the earth has been steadily progressing . . . and the floor is lowered throughout to its proper level'; but what we do not seem to know is where the earth came from, and when. Writing in 1926 Woodruff27 establishes that the screen of Our Lady Undercroft was built on top of this earth, which could suggest that the whole earth floor dates from before 1400, and well before Molash died in 1438. However, Hasted,28 writing in 1799, reports seeing an indent, with its brass lost, of an archbishop or prior in 'the western extremity of [the crypt]', and this could well be Molash. Sadler29 dates the small priest's indent as sixteenth century and 23 John Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury, (1836), 60, Pl. ii. 24 Arch. Cant., xii (1880), 17. 25 Chapter Minutes, 1884-95, 199. 26 Britton, op. cit., 61, Pl. xiii. 27 Arch. Cant., xxxviii (1926), 153. 28 Hasted, op. cit., 542. 29 A.G. Sadler, The Indents of Lost Monumental Brasses in Kent, (1975), App. p. 14. 14 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL says that it had probably been used in the fifteenth century for another brass. If this is Molash's father, then it follows first that the top brass must have been some sort of replacement, and secondly that Molash pere took holy orders late in life, perhaps after his wife's death. Altogether there is a need for further information before the identification of the Molash family can be deemed secure. In the north-east transept of the crypt, in front of St. Mary Magdalene's Chapel stands an unexplained stone, a two-metre raised slab, carved simply with a round discoid cross on a staff. It looks like a thirteenth-century coffin slab and is indeed virtually identical to the slab over Archbishop Langton's tomb in St. Michael's Chapel; and it has the same type of cross as those on the modern tombs of Archbishops Frederick Temple and Randall Davidson in the cloister garth. The slab does not seem to cover anything and there is no mention of it in any of the detailed accounts of the crypt. The most plausible suggestion seems to be that it came here in the early twentieth century and may have been salved from a derelict church elsewhere in Canterbury. SOUTH-WEST TRANSEPT Dart, 30 writing in 1726, lists sixteen ledger slabs in the south-west transept. Cowper31 gives a list of eighteen people he says were originally buried there, presumably based on the (rather incomplete) Burial Registers. In theory Cowper's eighteen might be expected to comprise Dart's sixteen, plus two buried after Dart's time; but in practice only seven of Dart's names appear in Cowper. The other nine must have been lost or misreported. By 1897, the clear-out from the nave, plus some later burials, had brought the total number of slabs Cowper could find up to fifty-four. Of these twenty can be positively identified, by dates and initials, as coming from the nave; and a further fifteen, whose surnames only are given in the Nave Plan, are almost certainly identified. The remaining nineteen names that Cowper found do not match exactly either his list of those he said had been buried in the transept ( seven lost), nor Dart's list (eleven lost): again there is a steady attrition of slabs mislaid. By this time the transeft was paved entirely with ledger slabs, as a surveyor's 1980 drawing 2 shows: they were laid side by side like 30 Dart, op. cit., 63-8. 31 Cowper, op. cit., v. 32 H.J.A. Strik, Drawing 05/12 of May 1980. 15 TEMPEST HAY flagstones, and few if any can still have marked exactly the burials they commemorated. In 1980, some slabs that seemed to be subject to excessive wear were moved to the nave, and have already been discussed in that context. There remain fifteen slabs now out in the open in the transept, and sixteen tucked away behind or under shop counters. Of the former, five can still be identified: the others are worn away, in some cases so badly that it is not easy to be certain that they ever have been inscribed at all. Of the five identifiable ones, three are considerably worn or damaged and may not have been thought worth rescuing, but two (Aucher 1700 and Holcombe 1725), which in 1980 were protected by a longer shop counter than the present one, are in fair condition and are subject to very heavy wear. In the south-east corner of the transept is one of the blue-black slabs with inlaid white marble escutcheon and rectangle, which was probably one of the shaded slabs in the Nave Plan. A second one of these lies to the south, but is now completely obscured. ST. MICHAEL'S CHAPEL The three engraved slabs, one each of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, listed by Cowper as being in St. Michael's Chapel, are still there. They have been joined by a fourth, unidentifiable, dark blue slab inlaid with white scroll and medallion, probably seventeenth or eighteenth century, which might have originated in the nave, although its scroll does not match any of the sketches exactly. Somner33 and Weever34 quote brass inscriptions on the east wall to Priors Oxenden (d. 1338) and Hathbrand (d. 1370), though Dart implies that by his time they had gone. There is certainly no sign now. These priors were originally on the north and south sides of the chapel, respectively, and probably were removed or covered up when the chapel was rebuilt in 1437 or when the massive Holland monument turned up in 1439. NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT (MARTYRDOM) The north-west transept contains the greatest concentration of major brass indents and in this case the ledger slabs have not been moved 33 Somner, op. cit., 290. 34 Weever, op. cit., 237. 16 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL and may, therefore, be assumed actually to mark burials. This is also probably the busiest part of the cathedral and the most exposed to massive tourist wear. As they stood at the Dissolution the graves are given in the plan in Legg and Hope's35 Inventories etc' reproduced as Fig. 1. The identifications are based on Somner and Weever, who had actually sighted the brasses before they were looted, and can be taken as confirmed. Reading from north to south, Prior Finch and Archbishop Stafford are now very worn, Archbishop Dean and Prior Selling are much better and still fairly clear, while Prior Goldstone II is reduced to about a third of his size and is now just a piece of battered grey stone studded with brass rivets. There have since been added three seventeenth-century slabs, five eighteenth-century and one seventeenth- or eighteenth-century, illegible but with a coat of arms. There are also two small slabs, one black marble with traces of writing and one white marble with what looks like a carved skull, which may have been children's burials, and are probably Francis Isham 1699 and Tufton Jeffrey 1688 from Cowper's list. Of Archbishop Ufford (d. 1348, before consecration), who is said by Weever and others to be buried in the Martyrdom, and shown in Legg and Hope's plan as lying beside Archbishop Warham, there is no trace, nor was any sign reported by Dart. THE LADY CHAPEL (DEAN'S CHAPEL) Legg and Hope,36 writing in 1902, say there were four slabs in front of the altar: from south to north a worn brass indent (perhaps Archdeacon Bourchier, d. 1495); a black slab to Dean Potter, 1746; an indent to Prior Goldstone I, 1468; and another worn brass indent (perhaps Sir Henry Gray, Lord of Powys, 1450). Freeth,37 in about 1970, reported the three brass indents only; but since he was writing specifically about brasses, he could not be expected to include Dean Potter. Today there quite clearly are just two slabs, the remains of Prior Goldstone I's indent, and Dean Potter's ledger slab. Where or when the other two indents have gone does not seem to be recorded. Added since the Dissolution (in addition to Potter) are two seventeenth-century, one eighteenth- and two early nineteenthcentury slabs. 35 J. Legg and St. John Hope, Inventories of Christ Church, Canterbu,y, (1902), 147. 36 Ibid., 166. 37 A.G. Sadler, op. cit., App. III, p. 10, reporting work of S.G.H. Freeth 1967-70. 17 1---" 00 0 r 0 en -I rn ;o )> r r rn -<: NORTH AISLE 10 step•l 111, 1- NOR􀀏􀀐SLE OF \ CRYP1' 6 0 10 20 30 (OFeol W.H ST.JOHN HOPE Oet! IBGB Fig. 1. Plan of the north-west transept and Lady chapel at the Dissolution. From Legg and Hope's Inventories of Christ church, Canterbury, 1902. LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL CHAPTER HOUSE There must surely have been burials in the Chapter House in the monastic days and indeed Hasted38 says that 'some very ancient gravestones ... were all removed when the pavement was new laid', and both Somner39 and Dart 40 quote from a brass commemorating Prior Wibert (although, since Wibert died in 1167, the brass can hardly have been contemporary). In any event, all was swept away in the great alterations after 1787, and when Cowper came to make his inventory the earliest burial he could find in the Chapter House was dated 1798. There is no exact information about the slabs which came to the Chapter House after 1787, because as usual Cowper, our only detailed informant, makes no mention of slabs without inscriptions. Hasted, writing in about 1799, says that the 'modern' slabs from the nave went to the south-west transept, and the rest, presumably the brass indents in particular, came to the Chapter House. There are various nineteenth-century illustrations, for instance Britton's41 plan of 1836 and a coloured print hanging in the office of the Headmaster of King's School of Speech Day in 1845, which show at least some of the indents down the middle of the Chapter House floor. But according to Woolnoth,42 Archbishop !slip's indent had reached the cloisters by 1816, and so possibly had Archbishop Wittlesey; so it seems that not everything went to the Chapter House. Cowper also lists nine seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ledger slabs brought in to the Chapter House; eight definitely from the nave but the ninth (Thomas Gold 1653) unspecified. In 1897, just as Cowper had made his inventory, the Chapter House was extensively restored and the floor entirely repaved with the present Hopton Wood limestone. The brass indents were moved to the cloisters, and so, too, were seven of the nine seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slabs, all to the west walk. The remaining two (Highmore 1780 and Thomas Boys 1722) cannot now be found. This left the eighteen burials in the Chapter House dating from 1798 to 1854 and they were re-marked by simple engravings on the new Hopton Wood paving flags. 38 Hasted, op. cit., 577. 39 Somner, op. cit., 278. 40 Dart, op. cit., 180. 41 Britton, op. cit., 60--61, Pl. xv. 42 W. Woolnoth, Graphical Illustrations of the Metropolitan Cathedral Church of Canterbury, (1816), 98. 19 TEMPEST HAY CLOISTERS [Note: for describing locations in the cloisters, the bays are numbered clockwise, starting at the Martyrdom door, as shown in Fig. 2.] The cloisters seem to have been the final resting-place of the more important ledger stones from the nave, particularly the large Purbeck/Bethersden matrix slabs. Unfortunately, their appalling, and daily worsening, condition makes the surviving indents impossible to identify positively. It seems that when they were moved from the Chapter House many of them were cut down to make them fit and they were then covered with cement. Indeed, many would have already been 'made good with cement' by direction of the December Chapter of 1891.43 The cement has now largely flaked away; but so, in many cases, has most of the surface of the slabs, and recognition is difficult. In some cases only the presence of a few brass rivets shows that the slab formerly held a brass at all, and in several it is not possible to be certain whether a stone is a brass matrix or not. A stone two metres or more long is generally taken to be an ex-ledger slab, one way up or the other: paving stones were not normally supplied as big as that. Sadler's44 work on 'The Indents of the Lost Monumental Brasses ... ' provides useful details of many of the slabs and the work that he quotes, by S.G.H. Freeth in 1967-70, gives some ingenious identifications, based on rather battered outlines and on the surviving brass rivets. The more than twenty years of heavy tourist tramping since Freeth's time have removed some of the evidence that he saw, and it is no longer possible to check more than the general outlines: often the details that he gives have now to be taken on trust. It is not possible to say when the cloisters' paving was originally laid: but, from the look of the result, the job was done piecemeal, as and when needed, and using whatever was to hand. There are plenty of York flagstones, particularly in the east walk, and they quite probably did not get there before the railway age. Elsewhere there is a variety of limestones, now mainly orange-coloured, while odd patches in the corners and down the sides are filled in with nineteenth-century red tiles. Near the middle of the east walk there are even a few small squares of what looks like the pink marble used in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in the Trinity Chapel paving. All that can be said in general is that by the completion of the 1897 move the cloisters floor was pretty well as it is today. 43 Chapter Minutes 1884-95, 158. 44 Sadler, op. cit. 20 N ,-,. Frater i Theodore 119 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 18 17 16 􀀃 115 􀀁 ::3 14 to 􀀆 13 I 3 12 11 10 9 North Walk 29 30 􀀄 31 en 32 -;- 􀀅 33 South Walk 8 7 6 5 4 3 Fig. 2. Bay numbering of cloisters. 􀀇 34- 35 36 2 1 t) Dormitory tI1 :;,;; en t"" ► en Dark Entry 0 'T1 n ► z --3 tI1 :;,;; Chapter House ➔ 􀀅 􀀈 &? --3 tI1 t) ► t"" Martyrdom TEMPEST HAY SOUTH WALK The South Walk is the least disturbed. Apart from the insertion of two heavy and quite anonymous slabs in bay 5/6, nothing seems to have been added. Of the fifteen ledger slabs mentioned by Cowper, thirteen are now identifiable. One of the missing ones - Booth 1791- could well be the now smooth slab just round the corner in the West Walk, bay 11. The other - Fitzgerald 1783 - was probably a simple flagstone engraved with a pair of initials and could easily have been lost. WEST WALK This walk seems to have been completely rearranged when the slabs were brought over from the Chapter House at the end of the nineteenth century and is now solid with ledger slabs and brass indents. Many have been cut down. The cloister is under twelve feet wide so it will not quite take two slabs end-to-end: something has to be lopped off. It can no longer be expected that the stones will mark exactly the burials underneath. Cowper lists thirty-six ledger slabs, of which thirty-one are still identifiable. Of the missing ones, four are children and one a collection of initials: all could be on small slabs and could easily have been lost. The following were added, presumably all from the Chapter House, at the rearrangement: 1. Six ledger slabs. Five of these, Wootton 1700 bay 12, Beacon 1629 bay 15, Sprakeling 1687 bay 13, Tenison 1750 bay 15, and Hirst 1679 bay 18, originally came from the nave. The initial origin of the sixth, Gold 1653 bay 13/14, is not recorded, but it can hardly have been the Chapter House. 2. Three black marble slabs with inlaid white rectangles and medallions, which could match several of the shaded rectangles in the nave plan. One can just be made out as Hadrian de Saravia, 1612, and came over from the Chapter House. There is still a wall memorial to this Dr Saravia on the nave wall north side bay 8 and Cowper45 says that the Saravia ledger slab was originally in the north aisle of the nave; but the Nave Plan gives 45 Cowper, op. cit., 212. 22 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL no slab of this type further west than bay 5. Probably the wall monument has been moved west. 3. Two absolutely plain black marble slabs. Perhaps they are ledger slabs face downwards. 4. Two black marble slabs with the scars of rectangular brass plates, including a full set of brass rivets. These could match shaded slabs in the Nave Plan bay 1. 5. Fifteen possible brass indents, or parts of indents. Eight of these are confirmed by their brass rivets or lead plugs; and of these five are large enough to have held big canopied brasses and three actually show traces of side fillets, pinnacles, etc. Freeth, as reported by Sadler, gives the most detailed descriptions that we have of these extremely battered indents. In bay 18 there is what looks like one of the smaller brasses on the Nave Plan, in bay 17 two large indents seem to show single figures, and there is a similar one in bay 11; but in none of these are there enough recognisable details to make an identification. The second indent in bay 11, lying head to the east, is more promising. The traces of four shields down one side make it a pretty certain match with the indent in the middle of bay 4 of the nave plan, tentatively identified as being Sir Thomas Fogge. Freeth makes out sufficient details to date the armour on the figure to match Fogge's dates; but later wear makes it impossible now to check these details. There is also the unsettling evidence that Fogge really ought to have his wife with him: both Weever46 and Somner47 quote the brass inscription as beginning 'Thomas Fogge jaeet hie, jaeet hie sua spousa Johanna'. Altogether the identification must remain tentative. It is, however, the only brass in the Nave Plan which has been both named and matched with an existing indent. NORTH WALK The four eastern bays (25, 26, 27 and 28) seem more or less undisturbed, while the western part has been largely relaid and now accommodates the five largest brass indents that remain. Cowper lists 46 Weever, op. cit., 235. 47 Somner, op. cit., 183. 23 TEMPEST HAY forty-eight graves in this walk in 1897, all but two of which can now be found, and these two (Susanna Broderip 1747, and John Airson 1755) were reported as broken even in Cowper's time. The brass indents comprise five huge matrix slabs down the middle of the four western bays, two fragments in bay 24 each about 90 X 30 cm. with a number of brass rivets, a large slab also in bay 24 which looks as though it might once have contained brasses although there are no rivets visible now, and the equivalent of about five further ledger slabs in the form of very rough stones, which could be indents or parts of indents, face upwards or downwards. It is the five large matrices which provide the main interest, and which give Freeth plenty of scope for his analysis of brass rivets. The first slab, a rubbing of which is shown as Fig. 3, just outside the door to Theodore, is the clearest. (At least it is so far; it is also subject to the heaviest wear.) It shows figures of a civilian man and a woman standing on a mound, with foot inscriptions, under which are two groups, probably of two sons and of four or five daughters, between which is a larger kneeling figure. This nowhere near matches any of the brasses shown on the Nave Plan and where it comes from is not clear; but a brass showing women and children would hardly originate in the monastery. Maybe it is simply an extreme example of the inaccuracy of the sketches on the Nave Plan. Next to the east is a very worn slab, said by Freeth to show two figures beneath a double canopy with four shields between the pinnacles, probably Sir William and Lady Brenchley. But the Nave Plan's Brenchley shows no shields among the pinnacles at all: surely this is more likely to be the unidentified tomb on the north side of the nave's bay 4, next to the suggested Sir Thomas Fogge. Next to the east comes an even more worn slab, showing two figures under a double canopy, with two shields between the pinnacles. Provided that the absence of shields can be accepted, this might be either Sir William Septvans junior, or Sir William and Lady Brenchley in nave bays 5 and 4, respectively. Freeth suggests Septvans. Next is a much clearer indent showing a prior beneath a canopy with pinnacles and a central finial supporting a super-canopy, side shafts once filled with saints, four each side, and shields each side of the head. Much the nearest match on the Nave Plan is Archbishop Wittlesey, except that the figure in the indent is quite clearly carrying a crozier and not a cross, so therefore must be a prior and not an archbishop. It is not clear which prior this is: the indent does not really match any of the sketches. The last, biggest and most damaged of the matrices shows an ecclesiastic in pontificals beneath a triple canopy, a shield each side of 24 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Fig. 3. Rubbing of brass indent in cloisters bay 19 from R. Griffin's Some Indents of Lost Brasses of 1914. 25 TEMPEST HAY the main finial, side shafts once containing five saints each, supercanopy with round arch, five small figures. None of the sketches matches this, and indeed none has a super-canopy at all; but within the low standard of accuracy we must accept, it could be, as Freeth suggests, any one of four or five churchmen. The other possible bits of matrix do not provide enough information even for guesswork. There is in bay 24 a large yellow oval stone, probably from a wall monument and perhaps laid face downwards. In bay 25 is a double tombstone, with two skulls carved on it, which commemorates Rev. Gaston Lavaure of the 'Walloon Church', d. 1733. This is a tombstone from the cloister garth, where it is recorded by Cowper. He says that in 1897, when he was writing, the tombstone was broken and was in 'the workman's yard': probably when they were carrying out the great move round of 1897, they simply used Lavaure as a handy stone for patching the cloister paving. EAST WALK Finally, there is the east walk, which is a considerable jumble of different paving stones, although only in bays 29 and 30 at the north end, are there major insertions. Of the eight tombs given by Cowper, six are certainly identifiable, while the seventh (C. Rouch, d. 1855) probably is, and of the eighth (Sarah Francis, 1798) there is no trace. Bay 29 has one large Purbeck/Bethersden matrix, lying north/south, just in front of the dormitory door, which Freeth deduced once held a brass showing two figures at the north end and possibly two blocks of children beneath the inscription. Maybe: but little is now recognisable and there is no obvious match in the Nave Plan. Until recently this dormitory door was the main access to the cathedral library, so this indent was subject to particularly heavy wear. Also in bays 29 and 30 are four possible large ledger slabs, much cut and battered and quite unrecognisable. CLOISTER GARTH During the time that the Cathedral Register gave the actual places of burial - from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century - some 400 burials were recorded in the 'cloister yard'; and there must have been many more before that time. Even allowing for many people having no memorial, the place must have been a forest of tombstones, and there must have been a continuous weeding out 26 LEDGER SLABS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL of old tombs. When Cowper came to make his list in 1897, there were only forty-three tombstones left, their dates ranging from 1719 to 1874. Then in the 1930s the garth was cleared out completely and the soil level lowered. Some of the tombstones - sixteen out of the forty-three reported by Cowper in 1897 - have been used as paving stones round the outside: the rest have disappeared. In modern times there have been six burials, three archbishops and three deans, in the garth, all marked with major ledger slabs. Other recent burials of ashes are simply recorded on the cloister walls: the place of burial (except for Margaret Babington's) is unmarked. OUTSIDE In the south aisle of the infirmary chapel is a single matrix plate, much broken, but quite clearly showing the indent of a single figure, perhaps a priest, about 60 cm. high, with a scroll underneath. From appearance, it could be one of the smaller indents on the Nave Plan. But after the Reformation the infirmary was turned into residences for prebendaries and, in 1787, the chancel was still part of the house of Stall no. 1: it is hardly likely that a redundant ledger plate would have been inserted in its basement. Presumably, the plate is left over from the monastic infirmary. Under the Henry IV chantry chapel, on the north side of the Trinity Chapel are the famous ghost brasses on the walls, discussed in detail in 1952 by F.A. Greenhill.48 The ghost on the south wall matches exactly the Sir Robert Septvans (d. 1306) brass in Chartham church. One suggestion is that the ghost derives from a second identical brass used for the next generation Septvans, Sir William, d. 1323. Another is that it comes in fact from the Chartham brass itself, which is not now in situ in the church. However that may be, there is no suggestion that the ghost represents either of the fifteenth-century Septvans on our Nave Plan, in which case it does not obviously concern the cathedral ledger slab problem at all. On the east wall are a number of generally shadowy figures, including two which match pretty well exactly, both in shape and size, the two major figures of the indent slab in the cloisters just outside the door to Theodore. The explanation for all these ghosts is uncertain: perhaps the most plausible is that they were hung on the wall between the time the brasses were torn off their indents and the time when they were disposed of - anything from decades to centuries - and hence cast the shadows which remain. 48 Arch. Cant., !xv (1950), 138. 27 TEMPEST HAY CONCLUSION Records are sketchy: such as they are, they show a steady attrition of ledger slabs over the centuries, particularly during inajor moverounds such as the clearing of the nave in 1787. And with the massive tourist traffic round the cathedral many of the surviving ledger slabs are steadily being worn away. The following are the major risks: a. Choir, Trinity Chapel, etc.; also Chapter House. None. b. Crypt. The group of indents in the south-west corner, the supposed Prior Molash and his parents, are in the main gangway and seriously at risk. c. South-west Transept. There are still two good ledger slabs seriously exposed, Aucher 1700 and Holcombe 1725, to the north of the shop counter. d. North-west Transept (Martyrdom). This probably contains the most important slabs and indents, and at the same time is the busiest part of the cathedral. Some sort of fairly radical protective action seems to be called for; perhaps, for instance, a false floor. As a separate issue there is a single ledger slab (Jeffreys 1689) in the middle of the passage to the crypt which seems to be almost wantonly exposed. e. Nave. The ledger slabs down the side aisles are covered and protected by chairs; but it is not clear whether perhaps the chair feet themselves damage the slabs. f. Cloisters. All the cloisters are subject to heavy wear and many good ledger slabs and brass indents are being worn away. 28