English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450-1550

Description

The role played by women in the evolution of religious art and architecture has been largely neglected. This study of upper-class women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries corrects that oversight, uncovering the active role they undertook in choosing designs, materials, and locations for monuments, commissioning repairs and additions to many parish churches, chantry chapels, and almshouses characteristic of the English countryside. Their preferred art, Barbara J. Harris shows, reveals their responses to the religious revolution and signifies their preferred identities. Cover Table of Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgements Preface Introduction 1 Tombs: Honoring the Dead 2 Chantries: The Quest for Perpetual Prayers 3 Building for the Congregation: Roofs, Aisles, and Stained Glass 4 Adorning the Liturgy: Luxury Fabrics and Chapel Plate 5 Almshouses and Schools: Prayers and Service to the Community 6 Defining Themselves 7 Epilogue: Destruction and Survival Conclusion Appendix 1 – Patrons of the Fabric of the Church Appendix 2 – Patrons of Tombs Appendix 3 – Location of Tombs in Churches Appendix 4 – Choice of Burial Companion Appendix 5 – Women Who Commissioned Chantries Appendix 6 – Commissions of Stained-Glass Windows Appendix 7 – Additions or Major Repairs to Churches Appendix 8 – Bequests of Vestments Appendix 9 – Patrons of Almshouses or Schools Glossary Select Bibliography Archival Sources Illustrations Figure 1 – Monument of Sir Thomas Barnardiston (1503) and his widow, Dame Elizabeth (d. 1526). Church at Kedington, Suffolk. Photograph by the author, 2003. Figure 2 – Sir Richard Fitzlewis (1528) and his four wives*. Church at West Horndon, Essex. Commissioned by his fourth wife, Jane, née Hornby Norton Fitzlewis. Permission of the Monumental Brass Society, UK. Figure 3 – Ecclesiastical embroidery, Elizabeth Scrope Beaumont de Vere (1539), widow of fourteenth Earl of Oxford*. Once an enriched vestment belonging to her private chapel. She may have bequeathed it to Wivenhoe, the Essex church where she was buried. R Figure 4 – Westmorland altar cloth*. Figures of Ralph, the fourth Earl of Westmorland (1549) and his wife Catherine Stafford, daughter of the third Duke of Buckingham (1555). Textiles store, museum no. 35-1888. Permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Figure 5 – Altar frontal, St Catherine*. Made for the Neville family; possibly made for Catherine Stafford (1555). Museum no. 36-1888. Permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Figure 6 – Bedingfield cup*. Hallmark 1518-19. Silver and gilt. Probably in private chapel. Museum no. M76 1947. Permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Figure 7 – Mary, Lady Dacre (c. 1576), widow of Thomas, Lord Dacre of the South (executed 1533). Permission of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. Figure 8 – Mary, Lady Dacre (c. 1576), widow of Thomas, Lord Dacre, and her son Gregory (1593). Permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Figure 9 – Monument of Sir Thomas Kitson (1540), John, second Earl of Bath (1561) and Margaret Donnington Kitson Long Bourchier, Countess of Bath (1561). Hengrave, Suffolk. Photograph by the author, 2003. Figure 10 – Monument of Sir Richard Knightley (d. 1534) and his widow Jane Skennard Knightly (1550). Church at Fawsley, Northamptonshire. Permission of “Walwyn, www.-professor-mortiarty.com”. Figure 11 – Sir Thomas Stathum (1470) and his two wives*. Church at Morley, Derbyshire Commissioned by his widow and second wife, Elizabeth Permission of the Monumental Brass Society, UK.