Martin Cook has sent us this survey of the Barnardiston family tombs at Kedington in Suffolk. More to follow – he has also made a more detailed study of Elizabeth Barnardiston’s strategies for the afterlife
In July 1653, as his death approached, Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston declared to those by his bed, “I am so chearful in my heart, that I could laugh whilst my sides ake.” So another Barnardiston of Kedington, Suffolk, awaited death. He was a descendant of a family that had risen from obscurity in the fourteenth century to become lords and baronets, to entertain royalty and Puritans, and to create sumptuous monuments for themselves in the village church of St Peter and St Paul.
Five of the monuments contain life-size figures, which were created over a period of 150 years, from pre-Reformation England to the Restoration. Here we shall look at these five monuments and ask: how does their style evolve, and does this evolution reflect changing religious beliefs in the people represented? Our fifth and final monument will be Sir Nathaniel’s.
The earliest Barnardiston monument in the church is for Sir Thomas (c.1440-1503) and his wife Dame Elizabeth (c.1464-1526). Their chest tomb is in the east end of the south aisle. Three sides of the tomb are decorated with shields in quatrefoils, but the north side is joined to a church column. Life-size effigies of Sir Thomas and Dame Elizabeth lie on top of the monument, with their hands clasped in prayer.
Sir Thomas is clean-shaven, with shoulder-length straight hair. He wears armour with chain mail underneath and a jerkin over the top. His feet rest on a bittern, a bird from the family coat of arms.
Dame Elizabeth wears a gable hood with embroidered lappets hanging down to her chest, where two necklaces lie on her chemisette. Her arms are in slashed sleeves, and appear from a voluminous overdress. She rests her feet on a dog, a common symbol for faith on women’s tombs.
Traces of paint remain on both figures, and they must have appeared splendid when newly-made.
The graffiti dates from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after the Barnardistons had left the village and after their manor, Kedington Hall, had been pulled down.
A stone tablet on the wall at their feet says that Sir Thomas left lands “for ye maytenns of a cantry in yis church”, and that his wife obtained a perpetual license for the chantry. In addition, she built a new church roof and “covyd yt wid lede.”
The first phrase on the tablet has been scratched off, but probably read “Pray for the souls of [Thomas and Elizabeth]”. We know the couple planned for a speedy passage of their souls through Purgatory because Elizabeth also funded some stained glass for the window close to the tomb.
The stained glass has gone, but the antiquarian John Weever (1576–1632) tells us it showed Sir Thomas, Dame Elizabeth and their 15 children kneeling in front of Jesus arising from his tomb. The accompanying text told the onlooker that if they said a Pater Noster and six credos for “the Resurrection of our Lord” and for the Barnardistons “ye shall have a hundred days pardon to your name.”
Dame Elizabeth spent her last years at the priory at Great Walsingham, and requested in her will to be buried there. Despite the Prior being the executor to her will, the tablet records she was actually “buryed under this tombe” at Kedington. The double blow for her was that she was not even next to her husband. He is buried at another family estate – Great Cotes in Lincolnshire.
This chest tomb is for a later Sir Thomas and Lady Elizabeth (the Barnardistons called their eldest son Thomas). This Sir Thomas is the grandson of the first, and lived c. 1543-1619. His first wife was Elizabeth Hanchet (c.1545-84), and he lies by her on this tomb.
The style of the tomb is similar to that of the Thomas and Elizabeth from 100 years before. Again, the couple lie with hands held in prayer, and wear high fashion for the wealthy of the day. He has short hair and a beard, and his head rests on his helmet. His armour has a breastplate with a peascod belly, which is a swelling over the stomach that makes it look like you have a beer gut.
Like her husband, Lady Elizabeth wears a ruff. Her hair is swept back under a coif with an embroidered band. A veil is folded under her head, which rests on a tasselled pillow. She is wearing an overdress with embroidery at the hems and a girdle knotted around her waist. Her purse lies at knee-height, hung by a cord from the girdle.
Like the earlier Thomas and Elizabeth’s tomb, there is a wall plaque at the feet. This one shows the Barnardiston coats of arms, but the only text is the family motto “Je trouve bien” (“I find good”).
The face and pillow of Lady Elizabeth has been rubbed so much that the stone has polished. None of the descriptions of the monument mention this. A local guidebook says that the villagers thought the earlier Barnardiston tomb could cure rheumatism, and broke bits off to take home. Perhaps there was a similar belief surrounding this tomb, and that touching it would be curative. (Unfortunately the guidebook does not mention the source of this anecdote.) The Lady Barnardiston on this tomb is next to the aisle, so maybe the polishing is the result of fingers touching her over the years.
This tomb, unlike the older one, has weepers carved on one side (the north side). These figures represent the five sons and three daughters of the couple.
When Elizabeth Barnardiston died, Thomas married again and had a daughter called Grisel. She died in 1609, at sixteen years old, and must have been adored by her parents because they installed a huge wall monument for her.
In the centre, Grisel kneels in prayer in an arched recess. Her effigy is carved in extraordinary detail, down to the strands of hair that is swept up over a hoop and tied in ribbons at the back, the bead necklace around her neck, the buttoned stomacher, and the folds of her dress falling from her wheel farthingale.
Around the central recess is an elaborate structure of marble columns, floral motifs, tall pyramids and peculiar faces: one of a lion and one of a child. The affection she was held is expressed by a verse under her effigy, part of which reads:
“Loo heere the image of Lyfe of new inspyr’d
Too wise too choice too olde in youthful breath :
Too deare to Frendes, too much of men desier’d,
Therefore bereaft us by untymely death”
This is the first effigy where the subject is represented living, sitting upright and looking in front of her, as if captured in daily prayer. It is also the only monument of the five with no Barnardiston coat of arms on it. Perhaps her parents built it to cope with their bereavement by giving their daughter a continued presence in the world. Reinforcing the legitimacy and status of the Barnardistons was less important.
The Sir Thomas on our second chest tomb (d. 1619) outlived his son and heir Sir Thomas (1564-1610). This son and heir has a grand monument on the wall of the south aisle, just on the other side of a window from Grisel Barnardiston’s (which is on the easternmost end of the south aisle). Dame Katherine, Thomas’ second wife, left £100 to build the monument when she died in 1633. This was despite the fact she married again after Thomas’ death.
This monument is quite unlike the earlier two Thomas Barnardistons’. For a start, it is enclosed by tall spiked railings. Inside the railings, Thomas lies in armour like his predecessors, but unlike them his hands are not clasped in prayer and he is not looking up to Heaven. Instead his hands lie with fingers entwined on his stomach and his head is tilted slightly to the side. It is as if he is lying on a grassy bank watching the clouds go by, rather than praying for the intercession of God.
Beside him rises a huge wall monument with life-size sculptures of his two wives kneeling in prayer in arched recesses. Foliage motifs decorate the recesses and the central partition shows a heraldic tree with crests of the Barnardiston pedigree sprouting off the branches.
Two marble columns flank the monument and rise up to a heap of skulls with the Barnardiston crest sticking out of the top. In the top centre, a plaque details Sir Thomas’ lineage and above that the heraldic achievement of the Barnardistons is crested with a golden bittern. Then, in a slightly garden-shed fashion, Sir Thomas’ gauntlets and helmet hang from the wall.
It is impossible to get a full face-on view of this monument because there is an organ standing in front of it.
The earlier monuments conveyed the power of the Barnardistons but also their humility in front of death. This monument just conveys the power of the Barnardistons: it is much larger and more decorative than the older chest tombs, the railings separate the figures from the churchgoers, and Thomas himself is not praying.
It is true that Thomas’ wives are praying, but they are kneeling upright and living like Grisel. They are performing an everyday routine, and not prostrate in death or in the moment of death.
The next generation Thomas Barnardiston died young, and the manor at Kedington passed to his brother Nathaniel (c. 1588 – 1653), who we mentioned at the beginning. Nathaniel’s monument is on the opposite side of the church to the ones we have looked at so far: it is up on the northern wall, about half way along the nave.
It features Sir Nathaniel and his wife Dame Jane carved in alabaster, looking like they are sitting in a theatre box. A frame of white marble is behind them, festooned with swags of cloth like a curtain, with putti in the middle. Carved flowers and fruit tumble down the sides of the frame. Sir Nathaniel and Dame Jane themselves have their heads leaning on their hands, and gaze ahead as if watching a slightly dull play.
On top of the “theatre box” are urns with gold flames coming out and the coats of arms of Barnardiston impaling Soame (Dame Jane was a Soame). This monument is even more secular than Nathaniel’s father’s (number 4 above). No-one is praying or even looking up to heaven.
The urns symbolise the rise of the spirit, and the couple hold each other’s hands over a skull, but the rest suggests the sensual world: the flowers and fruit, the act of touching, and the fact that the figures appear alive and are looking into the world and not up to the skies.
We have seen, then, that across these five monuments there is a drift in design towards the secular and worldly. We have moved from figures lying close to the earth as if in death, gazing to the heavens with their hands held in prayer, to figures high up on a wall looking down into the world, apparently indifferent to death or religion.
Looking at a group of wills of the Barnardiston family and their neighbours in Kedington, we can see how priorities changed, sometimes in response to government policies. All the earlier wills left money to the church, always in lieu of forgotten tithes and sometimes specifically for obits or repairs. These dry up by about 1550. The last will asking for prayer is in 1549, when John Barnardiston gave his brother-in-law a cloak to pray for him. By that date, chantries had been abolished and prayer for the dead was frowned on. Instead, people were encouraged to leave money for the poor, and this can increasingly be seen in the wills. Gifts to family and friends also became more common. The earlier wills never specified leaving cushions, tableware etc to people. This may reflect higher levels of material possessions or a higher awareness of their importance.
But does the change in monument style also reflect a change in beliefs? The similarity between the first two monuments (1 and 2) is perhaps odd. The first one was created in a Catholic Europe before the Reformation, when belief in Purgatory prevalent, and the monument reminded parishioners to pray for the souls of Thomas and Elizabeth. The second one was created after the Reformation, when the Barnardistons had fully espoused Protestantism.
The Thomas on the second tomb, for example, was sent to Geneva to be schooled under Calvin. Calvin’s scorned self-aggrandisement and the belief in Purgatory, which he called “the deadly device of satan.” The Calvinists marked their graves with a simple stone, or nothing at all. It’s perhaps odd that this second Thomas has the same kind of monument as his Catholic ancestors, one that follows tradition rather than the family’s new Puritan values.
Grisel’s monument (3) marks the first move to decoration at scale. Although she is praying, she is surrounded by such ornate and secular carving that the monument impresses with the grandeur of the world rather than the divine. Yet the final lines on her monument are:
“While shee trod earth shee rais’d her mynd farre higher, her actions faire, unstayn’d of vice or pride;
Truth was her loade starre, heaven was her desire, Christ was her hope & in his faith shee dyde”
As for the Thomas Barnardiston who didn’t outlive his father (4), we know his son Nathaniel expressed gratitude for his father’s piety, and claimed his own pious life was inspired by his father’s example. Yet the tomb does not even show Thomas praying, and with the coats of arms over the skulls, it almost suggests the Barnardistons triumph over death. There is little to suggest humility before God or death.
Finally we know Sir Nathaniel himself (5) was a staunch supporter of the Parliamentarian cause, and a devout Puritan. He was renowned for the pains he took in the spiritual education of his children, his household, and the villagers. His house was “a spiritual church and Temple, wherein were daily offered up the spiritual Sacrifices of Reading the Word.” Yet his monument expresses nothing of this, and in fact suggests the opposite: a worldly and sensual man who has passed with apathy into death. This is presumably because his monument was built when his wife died, which was after the Restoration in 1660, and when a more flamboyant decorative style had moved in from the continent.
So to answer our question: the evolution of the monument styles in this church does not reflect the changing spiritual beliefs of the people represented. Although the monuments became more secular and decorative, the people represented did not.
Whether Catholic or Protestant, the Barnardistons maintained a piety that was noted by contemporaries as exceptional. Nathaniel’s life, for example, was driven by the tasks he felt God had set him, and he was not as nonchalant about death as his monument shows him. He was elated that his work was done and rejoiced in “the great favour of God to be sent for speedily”. His final gesture on his deathbed was, like the gestures of his ancestors on the chest tombs, to raise his hands to the heavens.
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