Two Lost Brasses

JOHX :,;_.\:'\OE\\".\Y. OF HtCCL\'l•:H, .\:S:D HIS \\"ffls ,JO..\XI•:. HEXRY \\'ELOE, RPctor of \\"iekhambreux. K .. nt. ( 187 ) TWO LOST BRASSES BY FANE LAMBARDE. REOENTLY I fortuned upon a copy of Weever's Funeral Monuments, on the title page of which is the autograph of Edward Hasted, and the date 1755. It was in that year that our Historian went to live at Canterbury. He has added some manuscript notes, etc. : but of chief interest is the record of two Brasses, that are now lost. These are those of John Sandeway and his wife Joane, once at Reculver; and of Henry Welde, Rector of Wickhambreux, of which now only the inscription remains in that church. Ai3 Hasted notes : " The figures are reduced (for the most part with a pantograph) from facsimiles of monumental Brasses, found in several parish churches in East Kent. The originals were very carefully traced in pencil, upon transparent oiled paper, laid on the Brass plate, and their respective inscriptions were copied with the same accuracy. The figures were traced about the year 1794, and have not been published." Of neither of these unfortunately is there much to record. That of John Sandeway and his wife is not dated, but is said by Mill Stephenson to be of about the year 1480. John, then, may have been son of John Sandeway, who possessed land in Thanet in 1440, and his wife Dionise, daughter of Thomas Salesbury of St. Nicholas at Wade. Christine, the widow of Thomas Salesbury, and mother of Dionise, afterwards married Clement Overton, Esquire. Though not shown here, two shields of arms remained ; that above John being " 3 Boars' heads," and that above Jane being " 3 Rams' heads." By these arms, Jane would appear to have been of the family of Ram of High Halstow in Hoo. John Ram (possibly the husband of Jone, to whom an inscription in St. Helen's, Cliffe at Hoo, is recorded in Arch. Gant., XI., 153), for whom. see Vis. of Kent, 1619, p. 85, and 188 TWO LOST BRASSES. whose .will was proved 1451 (Cant. P.O., 17 Rous, n. 57), was impleaded in Chancery, about 1440, for payment of dowry to his daughter Isabel, wife of William Weye, and widow of William Bewell. It is rather extraordinary that, of John Sandeway's eight sons and seven daughters, apparently no trace remains. A sketch of this Brass, showing how the Brasses were placed on the ledger stone, is given in Top. Brit. I., No. XLV., pl. x, fig. 5, p. 165, and p. 85 (head-dress). Of Henry Welde, nothing more is known than that, as is recorded by the inscription, which now alone remains, he was Rector of Wickhambreux till the time of his death on 9th Oct. 1420. The inscription is illustrated in Beloher's Kent Brasses, II., 147, No. 478.