If you saw the episode of ‘Treasures of the National Trust’ in which the Sackville pedigree rolls at Knowle were being unrolled for conservation, you may have spotted fleeting glimpses of what looked like miniature drawings of monuments. (Fig. 1)

The National Trust has very kindly sent us high-resolution images of the rolls from which we have been able to extract photographs of the tomb drawings. We are grateful to the Trust for this, and for permission to reproduce the images here.

Like the heraldry on the Sackville rolls, monuments were a way of bolstering a family’s prestige and identity. It is worth stating at the outset that drawings in pedigree rolls are not definitive evidence of the existence of a monument. However, there is no compelling reason to doubt the monuments in the Sackville roll. The effigy of a Franciscan tertiary is too unusual to be anything other than genuine. A drawing of Isabel Sackville’s brass appears in the Gentleman’s Magazine and the inscription is recorded in Weever’s Ancient Funeral Monuments. What we have here, therefore, is evidence for two Sackville monuments lost in the fire at Withyham, where the family chapel was located; a lost monument from St James, Clerkenwell; and an effigy from an unknown location.

Near the top right of one roll is a small drawing of an effigy in a long hooded robe over mail. (Fig. 2)

The mail coif and mittens are clearly visible. The head  rests on a double pillow, the top pillow being set diagonally. The mailed feet rest on a lion.

There is no note of identity or location. The drawing adjoins pedigree entries for Richard de Courcy (fl. 1090) and his sons but the style of the effigy (in particular the arrangement of the pillows) is late C13 or early C14.

There is a very close parallel to this effigy in the church of All Saints, Conington (Hunts.). In a study of the Conington effigy (‘The Conington effigy: fourteenth-century knights at Conington, Doddington and Tollard Royal’, Church Monuments 6 (1991), 3-20) Claud Blair identified the habit as that of a Franciscan tertiary and suggested that the Conington effigy was that of Bernard de Brus IV, lord of the manor of Conington, who died 1332/3.

Blair stated that he knew of no other example of an effigy wearing monastic robes over armour. The figure in the Sackville roll is very similar to that at Conington: in particular, the arrangement of the pillows and the clearly visible mail coif and mittens. There are however several differences in detail. Most noticeably, the hood on the Conington effigy only extends to just below the neck, while the Sackville effigy has a hood that covers the whole shoulder and upper chest. The lower pillow on the Sackville effigy is larger; and the Conington effigy is clearly wearing a helmet, a bascinet, while the head of the Sackville effigy appears to be covered only with mail. The feet of the Conington effigy have been broken off, so it is impossible to compare them. However, it was drawn by John Carter in 1798 (the drawing was published in T. D. Fosbroke, British Monachism (London: M.A. Nattali, 1843, available online at https://archive.org/details/britishmonachism00fosb/page/n7/mode/2up), facing p 292) and the drawing shows the feet but without any supporter.

There are of course many examples of inaccuracy in antiquarian drawings – they were after all made under difficult conditions, often in low light, and sometimes seem to have been worked up from rough sketches made on the spot. There is however no apparent connection between the Sackville ancestors and Conington, so it seems quite possible that the effigy in the Sackville roll is an additional example of a tertiary wearing habit over armour, the original of which has probably now been lost.  If the drawing is accurate, the fact that the Sackville figure is wearing a mail coif and apparently no helmet suggests a date in the late C13 rather than the C14. While there may be inaccuracies in detail, the unusual nature of the effigy suggests that the drawing is authentic.

But who did it represent? According to the pedigree roll, the de Courcy line ended with a daughter at the end of the twelfth century – still too early for our effigy. The line then went through Neville, Lynde and Dalingridge: Margaret Dalingridge married Thomas Sackville in the early fifteenth century. It is possible that more work on those families might find a suitable candidate for the effigy.

Further down the roll and adjacent to the entry for Humphrey Sackville (d. 1488) is a monumental brass with an inset standing figure of an armed knight (fig. 3)

Under the figure is a separate inscription panel reading

PRAY FOR HUMFRY SAKEVYLE ESQ. Y^E WHICH DISCESID Y^E XXIIIJ DAY OF JAȲN IN THE YEARE OF OUR LORD GOD A. M^OCCCCLXXXVIIJ ON WHOSE SOULE IHU HAVE MERCY AMEN.

There are shields with the Sackville arms in the corners of the slab.

Mark Downing of the Church Monuments Society suggests that the armour may not be exactly as it would have appeared on the original monumental brass. The armour in the drawing is more typical of the mid 16^th century. This is quite common in antiquarian drawings of monuments: the armour is represented as that which was familiar to the artist rather than being copied in exact detail. There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the drawing.

Above the drawing is a note  ‘In sacello de Buckhurst locatum’. This is therefore a valuable record of a Sackville brass from the family chapel at Withyham. All the monuments there were destroyed in a fire in 1663.

A little further down and to the left of the entry for Richard Sackville (d. 1524) is a drawing of a tomb chest in an alcove, with a cherub’s head at the top of the arch over the alcove (fig. 4).

The rear wall of the alcove has a monumental brass with inset kneeling figures on either side of a prayer desk. He wears a tabard with the Sackville arms over armour. She wears a gable head-dress and a cloak with the black eagles of the Diggs family. Underneath are the  kneeling figures of four sons and six daughters. Above and on the tomb chest are shields with Sackville and Diggs arms. On the top of the tomb chest is a brass plate with the inscription:

OF YOUR CHARITIE I BESECHE YOU PY [sic] FOR Y^E SOULES OF RICHARD SAKEVYLE ESQ. & ISABELL HIS WIFE, ON OF Y^E DA: OF IOHN DYGGS OF BARHAM IN KENT ESQ. WHICH RICHARD DIED Y^E XVIIJ DAY OF IULY AN^O DŇI M^OV^CXXIIIJ & Y^E SAIED ISABELL DIED Y^E [blank[ DAY OF [blank] AN^O DŇI M^OV^C [blank] FOR WHOSE SOULS OF YO^R CHARITIE EVERY GOODE CREATURE IN Y^E REVERENCE OF IHU SAY A PATER AND AN AVE

Mark Downing suggests that an attempt has been made here to depict the male figure in ‘antique’ armour but that the artist has overshot the mark as the armour is typical of that of the late C15 or early C16. On the other hand, depiction of armour on tomb carvings does tend to lag behind the actual weapons technology, so it’s quite possible that Richard Sackville was being depicted in the most up-to-date armour he possessed. His wife’s costume with its gable head-dress is quite appropriate for her age, though by the mid 1520s younger women were increasingly adopting the newly-fashionable French hood.

The overall style of the brass, the couple kneeling at a prayer desk with their children kneeling behind them, was becoming increasingly fashionable by the 1520s, though it can be found on earlier monuments. The image of the family at prayer and the household as the place of piety and devotion has been associated with the Puritan tendency in the church but it can be found in later medieval devotional literature – for example, John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry (which contained plenty of what Alexandra da Costa in Marketing English Books (online publication) terms ‘pithy spiritual guidance’) and the Syon monk Richard Whitford’s A werke for housholders. Again, there is nothing to suggest that this brass is not genuine.

Above the drawing is a note  ‘In sacello de Buckhurst locatum’. This is therefore probably another lost brass from the family chapel at Withyham.

Further down the roll and  adjacent to the entry for a later Isabell Sackville  is a  monumental brass with the Sackville arms in a lozenge at the top (fig. 5).

Underneath is the figure of a nun and the inscription:

HIC IACET ISABELLA SACKVILE QUE FUIT PRIORISSA NUPER PRIORATUS DE CLARKENWELL TEMPORE DISSOLUTIONIS EIUSDEM PRIORATUS QUE OBIIT DIE 24 OCTOBRIS AN: DOM: MILLESSIMO QUINGENTESIMO SEPTUAGESIMO & ANO REG: ELIZ. DEI GRATIA &C. DUODECIMO

Under the inscription are brass figures of heads and torsos of 3 nuns

Underneath the drawing is an extract from her will asking for burial at Clerkenwell (the will is at TNA PROB-11-52-408). She gives her residence as Clerkenwell and makes bequests of clothing and household goods to several women.

The priory at Clerkenwell was a house of Augustinian canonesses. The priory church of St James survives but was completely rebuilt in the C18. W. J. Pinks, The History of Clerkenwell ed. Edward J. Wood (London: Charles Herbert, 1881) pp. 29-30, online at https://archive.org/details/b24863944/mode/2up, transcribes from the churchwardens’ accounts the description of Isabel’s  burial ‘in the quyr off Clarkynwell’. Pinks copies the transcript of the inscription on Isabel’s monument from John Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments (London: Thomas Harper, 1631) p. 429. A drawing of the damaged remains of Isabel’s brass was made by Matthew Skinner and published in the Gentleman’s Magazine 55(2), 1785, plate next to p 935 (available at #1 – The Gentleman’s magazine v.55 1785 Jul-Dec. – Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library). At that time, according to Skinner, only the coat of arms and the upper part of Isabel’s effigy survived: the inscription plate and the figures at the bottom of the slab had vanished.  According to the Survey of London (online at Clerkenwell Close area: St James Clerkenwell | British History Online) Isabel Sackville’s monument was one of those destroyed when the church was rebuilt in 1788-92.

The design of the brass is particularly interesting. The figures of the 3 nuns at the bottom are in the position where one would normally find children of the deceased. It is possible that this might indicate that Isabel and some of her canonesses remained together after the Dissolution, possibly on property owned by her family, and continued in some sort of communal devotional life. (There are other examples of this.) However – though Isabel described herself in her will (TNA Prob 11-52-408) as ‘of Clerkenwell’, suggesting she was still living in the area, her will consists mainly of household goods left to several women, none of whom corresponds to the names of canonesses of Clerkenwell in the monastic pension records. More research is needed into Isabel’s actual residence after the dissolution of the priory. More research might also identify these women: it is possible that they had a connection with the priory, although they do not appear to have been professed members of the community. Alternatively, it is possible that these three figures are members of the former Clerkenwell community who have died and who Isabel wished to memorialise.

Grateful thanks to:

Christine Buckley who spotted the drawings when the Sackville roll was being unrolled for the television programme ‘Treasures of the National Trust’;

Jean Wilson, of the Church Monuments Society, who identified the Conington effigy as a parallel for the first of the drawings;

Norman Hammond and Sally Badham, Brian and Moira Gittos of the Church Monuments Society for advice and references;

Mark Downing of the Church Monuments society for advice on styles of armour.

Madeleine Gray