![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
The Pudsay chapel in Bolton-by-Bowland church contains a varied collection of monuments to the Pudsays, a gentry family who held the manor from 1349 to 1770. In the century before the Reformation, the successive heads of the family rebuilt much of the church and provided eye-catching monuments to various family members, yet after the Reformation only two minor brasses to family members are to be found in the church. This article analyses the collection as a set, explores what they represented especially in relation to the family’s religious adherences, investigates how and where they were made, and places them in a wider context of contemporary monuments.
Acknowledgements
A generous grant from the trustees of the Francis Coales Charitable Foundation has supported publication of the images accompanying this article. The authors are grateful to Paul Cockerham for access to Greenhill’s unpublished notes, currently in his custody, and for reading an earlier version of this article and making many useful suggestions for improvements. Jerome Bertram, Patrick Farman, Peter Hacker and the anonymous referees have also offered valuable comments and other help. Martin Stuchfield and Cameron Newham have kindly provided photographs.
Notes
1 Unless otherwise stated, locations are in Yorkshire as based on the pre-1974 county boundaries.
2 T. D. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York (London, 1805), p. 105; John W. Winder, Pudsays and Parsons (Nelson, 1972), pp. 2–3.
3 Yorkshire Church Notes 1619–1631 by Roger Dodsworth, ed. J. W. Clay, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 34 (1904), pp. 33–4. None of the other many Yorkshire antiquaries appears to have visited Bolton.
4 Frank A. Greenhill, Incised Effigial Slabs, 2 vols (London, 1976), II, plate 66; Mill Stephenson, ‘Monumental Brasses in the West Riding of Yorkshire’, YAJ, 16 (1898), 1–60 (p. 7).
5 The standard work on the medieval period is Nigel Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages. History and Representation (London, 2009). The equivalent for the Early Modern period is Nigel Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000). The journals Church Monuments and Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society contain many valuable articles on the subject.
6 N. Saul, Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England. The Cobham Family and their Monuments 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), esp. pp. 75–122.
7 S. Badham and N. Saul, ‘The Catesby’s Taste in Brasses’, in The Catesby Family and their Brasses at Ashby St Ledgers, ed. Jerome Bertram (London, 2006), pp. 36–75.
8 S. Badham, ‘Beautiful Remains of Antiquity’: the Medieval Monuments in the former Trinitarian Priory Church at Ingham, Norfolk. 1: the Lost Brasses’, Church Monuments, 21 (2006), 7–33.
9 Brian and Moira Gittos, ‘Motivation and Choice: The Selection of Medieval Secular Effigies’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 143–68, esp. pp. 163–6 and fig. 4.
10 Lecture by Brian and Moira Gittos to Church Monuments Society study day at Puddletown, 11 May 2013; publication forthcoming.
11 Robin Emmerson, ‘William Browne’s Taste in Brasses’, Trans. Monumental Brass Society, 12 (1978), 322–5.
12 S. Badham, ‘Patterns of Patronage: Brasses to the Cromwell-Bourchier Kinship Group’, Trans. Monumental Brass Society, 17 (2007), 423–52.
13 Pauline Routh and Richard Knowles, The Medieval Monuments of Harewood (Wakefield, 1983).
14 Patrick Farman, Peter Hacker and Sally Badham, ‘New incised slab discoveries at Tickhill, Yorkshire’ with an appendix by Peter Ryder, Trans. Monumental Brass Society, 17 (2008), 521–49.
15 Testamenta Eboracensia, Part 2, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society, 30 (1855), pp. 107–8.
16 For Sir Ralph’s life, see The Pudsay Deeds. The Pudsays of Bolton and Barforth and their Predecessors in those Manors, ed. Ralph Pudsay Littledale, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 56 (1916), pp. 28–33; and unpublished notes of F. A. Greenhill, currently in the custody of Dr Paul Cockerham. Both, however, identify Ralph of Bolton as subject of references which are to a namesake from another branch of the family based near Hull.
17 Testamenta Eboracensia, Part 5, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society, 79 (1884), pp. 129–34.
18 Although the brass was thought by Stephenson to have been lost in the 1868 restoration, it was rediscovered in the church chest and mounted on a wooden board: Patrick Farman, ‘Local Secretary Report’, Monumental Brass Society Bulletin, 52 (Oct. 1989), 398.
19 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, p. 40.
20 J. Geoff Blacker and Murray Mitchell, ‘The Use of Egglestone Marble in Durham Cathedral’, Durham Archaeological Journal, 14–15 (1999), 119–30; ‘Egglestone Marble in York Churches’, Interim, 22.4 (1998), 39–42; S. Badham and G. Blacker, Northern Rock: the Use of Egglestone Marble for Monuments in Medieval England, British Archaeological Reports, 480 (Oxford, 2009).
21 The Itinerary of John Leland, 5 vols., ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (London, 1964) I, p. 78.
22 Badham and Blacker, Northern Rock, pp. 32–4.
23 Blacker and Mitchell, ‘Durham’, 122.
24 Christopher Wilson, The Shrines of St William of York (York, 1977), p. 21; Blacker and Mitchell, ‘York’, 40–1.
25 Badham and Blacker, Northern Rock, passim.
26 Alec Clifton-Taylor, The Pattern of English Building’ (London, 1972), p. 187 dismissed Egglestone marble as ‘never of any importance’, although he may have been referring only to its lack of use as a building stone.
27 Whitaker, Craven, p. 107.
28 Examples are found at Egglestone Abbey, Sir Ralph Bowes (d. 1482); Croft-on-Tees, Sir Richard Clervaux, c. 1490; Gainford, Sir William Pudsay (d. 1499); Brancepeth, Margaret Neville, Countess of Westmorland (d. c. 1530); and Skipton, Henry, 11th Lord de Clifford (d. 1542).
29 We are grateful to Fr. Jerome Bertram for help with this inscription.
30 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, p. 38.
31 Clay, Yorkshire Church Notes, p. 34.
32 The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, ed. G. E. Cokayne; with V. Gibbs, H. A. Doubleday, G. H. White, D. Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, new edn., 13 volumes in 14 (1910–59; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, 2000), 3, p. 294.
33 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, pedigree opp. p. 17.
34 Isabella may perhaps be the daughter of that name of Sir Ralph Pudsay and his wife Margaret; although she was married twice, to Robert Plays and then to Thomas Beauchamp, she might have taken the veil after the death of her second husband. She had an elder full brother named Thomas, although he is usually referred to as of Worsall. Alternatively, she may have been a sister of Sir Thomas Pudsay, Ralph’s great-grandson, who was born c. 1471 and died in 1536.
35 Badham and Blacker, Northern Rock, pp. 54–8.
36 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, p. 44.
37 Whitaker, Craven, p. 102. The last marriage was arranged by Henry VIII; a letter from him to Florence is quoted by Whitaker.
38 Clay, Yorkshire Church Notes, p. 33.
39 The Certificates of the Commissioners Appointed to Survey the Chantries, Guilds, Hospitals etc in the County of York, Part 2, ed. William Page, Surtees Society, 92 (1893), p. 246.
40 Page, Certificates, p. 246. However, another entry on p. 410 values the goods at just 12d.
41 Testamenta Eboracensia, Part 5, pp. 129–34.
42 Testamenta Eboracensia, Part 5, p. 85.
43 Stephenson, ‘Monumental Brasses’, 7.
44 T. D. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven: in the County of York (3rd edn, Leeds, 1878), pp. 125 and 133–4; this is repeated in Smith’s Old Yorkshire (1881).
45 W. Lack, H. M. Stuchfield and P. Whittemore, The Monumental Brasses of Dorset (London, 2001), pp. 10–14.
46 We are grateful to Patrick Farman and Peter Hacker for first suggesting to us that the entire brass is a restoration.
47 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, pp. 355–6.
48 Mervyn James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society. A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1974), esp. pp. 177–98. See also M. James, Society, Politics and Culture. Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), passim.
49 James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society, p. 36.
50 James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society, pp. 137–46.
51 James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society, p. 138.
52 Winder, Pudsays and Parsons, pp. 12–13.
53 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, pp. 54–5.
54 Winder, Pudsays and Parsons, p. 13; Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, p. 56.
55 Whitaker, Craven, pp. 102–3; Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, pp. 56–7.
56 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, p. 56.
57 Elizabeth died in 1664 and was buried at Thornton-le-Street where there is a brass to her memory. It comprises an inscription full of much useful genealogical information, emblems of mortality and two shields. It is signed by P. Brigges of York.
58 Pudsay Deeds, ed. Littledale, pp. 61–2; Winder, Pudsays and Parsons, pp. 13–17.
59 Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 63–5.