The Missing Brasses of St. Margaret’s Church

During the period of the two English Civil Wars (1642-46 and 1648) - and both earlier and later on - parish churches up and down the length of the land were visited by authorised (and, in some cases, unauthorised) local inspectors whose task it was to ensure that the worship being carried out was both simple and unadorned, in line with Puritan taste and leanings and free of the “High Church” ritual and practice associated with King Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, who was executed for treason by Parliament in January 1645. Basically, it was a matter of removing or concealing what were termed “superstitious images” so that worshippers could concentrate on what mattered in services: namely readings from Scripture and sermons delivered on Biblical texts which suited the Puritan point of view. At the back of it all was the conviction that, under Charles I (who certainly had Roman Catholic sympathies), the country was being  taken back to pre-Reformation times and returned to the Pope’s authority.

And, so, anything that was a reminder of those times had to go. Unfortunately, this resulted in the destruction of much that was of great worth in terms of Late Medieval creative activity. In fact, the “cleansing” of churches of anything visual which offended the Puritan view has been described as the greatest act of vandalism carried out on works of art in the history of England. Carving and sculpture in wood or stone, wall paintings depicting Biblical scenes and stories, painted glasswork in windows, decorative fabrics adorning altars - everything of this nature had to be removed, destroyed, mutilated or made invisible. Some of it managed to survive, by one means or another (wall paintings, particularly if white-washed over, awaiting later discovery and restoration), but most fell victim to hammer, chisel, axe, saw and ladder - the last-named used to reach as high as possible in the work of removing offending images and artefacts. 

St. Margaret’s Church did not escape the process. On 12 June 1645, Francis Jessop of Beccles came to Lowestoft (probably with assistants) to carry out specific work relating to  memorial brasses set into grave-slabs within the building itself. He may even have found people within Lowestoft sympathetic to what he had come to do, as there was a small Nonconformist congregation present in town. James Rous, vicar from 1639 until 1651, made the following entry at the end of the first surviving parish register, 1561-1649 (Norfolk Record Office, 589/1), following on from one concerning the disastrous fire of 10 March in the same year. What he had to say was this: “In the same year also on the 12th of June there came one Jissope with a commission from the Earle of Manchester [leading Parliamentary commander] to take away from gravestones all Inscriptions on wch [which] he found ‘orate pro anima’ [‘pray for the soul of’]. A wretched commissioner not able to read or find out that wch his commission injoined him to remove; he took up in our church so much brasses as he soulde to Mr. Josiah Wilde for five shillings wch was afterwards contrary to my knowledge run [cast] into the little bell that hangs in the town house.”

This statement was then followed by three other, separate ones - now reproduced in order, with numbers appended to add clarity. 1. “There weare [were] taken up in the middle ally [alley, meaning aisle] pieces belonging to twelve several [separate] generations of the Jettors. 2. “In the Chancell one belonging to Bpp [Bishop] Scrope; the words these - Richardus Scroope Episcopus Dromorensis et hujus Ecclesiae Vicarius qui obiit 10 May Anno 1364”. 3. “There was also by this Jyssope taken up in the Vicar’s Chancell, one [on] the north side of the Church, a faire piece of brass with this inscription ‘Hic jacet Johannes Goodknapp hujus Ecclesiae vicarius qui obiit 4 o [of] Decembris Anno Dni [Domini], 1442”.

All of these four entries by James Rous (who was one of the Royalist sympathisers taken away by Oliver Cromwell and placed under house arrest in Cambridge, for a period of time, following the latter’s visit to Lowestoft on 14 March 1644) are worth looking at in detail. The three shorter ones, quoted in the preceding paragraph, will be dealt with first. The reference to twelve brasses commemorating members of the Jettor family being removed from the middle aisle is an interesting one, as there are eleven grave-slabs  present today having matrices from which the brasses have been removed - but, a twelfth could easily have been replaced at some stage by a later one. The Jettors were the wealthiest Lowestoft merchants of the late 15th and early 16th century and were major donors to the building of the church. The “twelve separate generations” of this family group referred to by James Rous almost certainly means twelve branches of the family, rather than twelve generations in the usually accepted sense. Construction of the main body of St. Margaret’s dates from c. 1450-80, with completion of the tower and adding of the spire possibly stretching into the early 1500s, and would not allow for twelve generations as normally understood.

Of some considerable interest is the fact that one of the eleven remaining late medieval slabs has an inscription which translates as “Pray for the soul (abbreviated in Latin to orate paia) of dame Margaret Parker who died the first day of March 1507 [1508 by New Style dating] and on whose soul may God look favourably”. The woman in question might well have been a member of the Jettor family and use of the title “dame” (or “lady”) for her shows social and economic elevation in the Lowestoft community and the respect which accompanied it. The fact that Francis Jessop missed this particular inscription perhaps lends credence to the remark which James Rous made about his being “not able to read or find out that which his commission injoined [enjoined] him to remove”. 

The two other short pieces of commentary made by Rous are also of interest, with the first making reference to “Richard Scroope [al. Scrope] Bishop of Dromore [in the north of Ireland] and Vicar of this Church who died on the 10th of May in the year 1364”. There are two errors here - the first being that the man’s Christian name was Thomas and the second that this retired prelate was Vicar of Lowestoft 1478-91. His elaborate grave-slab, minus the brass-work, was moved from the middle of the chancel to the eastern end of the north aisle during later internal alterations carried out and now rests within the War Memorial Chapel. The last of James Rous’s remarks, concerning a brass inscribed “Here lies John Goodknapp vicar of this Church who died 4th of December the Year of our Lord 1442, refers to a priest who is not even mentioned in the official list of Lowestoft clergy. Hugh Lees, in his book The Chronicles of a Suffolk Parish Church (1948), p. 38, gives John Mildewell as incumbent in 1442. And there the matter has to rest, in the absence of further information.

Which leads on to Rous’s first and most substantial comment - that concerning Francis Jessop’s general act of despoliation on 12 June 1645. As things stand today, there are thirty-eight medieval grave-slabs altogether in the floor of St. Margaret’s Church: four to the south of the font, seventeen in the north aisle, eleven in the middle one, four in that to the south and two in the chancel. They are shown in Hugh Lees’s book, p. 18, in an excellent floor-plan of the church’s interior (depicting all the grave-slabs present, numbered) and only five of them have any visible remains of brass left in place. The first is that of Margaret Parker, mentioned two paragraphs above (no. 67) and one immediately to the east of it (no. 68) retaining decorative scrolls above the missing effigies of the two people - husband and wife most likely - buried beneath. Then there are three remaining in the south aisle: two shrouded skeletons, minus their heads (no. 51), and to the west of them (nos. 54 & 55, respectively) the husband and wife shown in the introductory image used here and a small tablet in memory of William Coby [Colby?] dated 1534. 

The brass commemorating the man and the woman show them with hands clasped in an attitude of prayer and there is sufficient evidence visible to show that they are richly clad. Only the wealthy and influential could afford to be buried inside a church and it was very much a status symbol of Late Medieval and Early Modern times to be laid to rest there. Obvious visible damage to this particular brass is present, in that the inscription to the couple has been removed and the woman has lost her right arm, her head and her butterfly head-dress - the last of which dates this burial to perhaps c.1470-80. The encaustic tiling surround of the grave-slab itself is very much later, being of mid-late 19th century origins and probably made by the Minton company of Stoke-on-Trent. Removal of the dedicatory inscription was probably the work of Francis Jessop, but damage to the female arm and head could well have been later and not the result of deliberate iconoclasm. 

Exactly how much of the removal of the funerary brass-work in St. Margaret’s Church was down to Jessop cannot be stated with full accuracy, but it was obviously extensive - the remarks made by James Rous bearing witness to this. His reference to the metal (often known as lat(t)en, at the time) being sold to Josiah Wilde for the sum of 5s. is an interesting one. Wilde was one of the sons of John Wilde (died 10 August 1644) - an important and much respected townsman - and a merchant like his father before him. He lived in a house on the site of what is now No. 2 High Street and was involved in fishing, fish-curing (especially red herrings) and maritime trade. His burial is recorded in the parish registers on 9 May 1656. Having purchased the metal commemorative artefacts ripped from the floor of St. Margaret’s Church, he then had them melted down and cast into a bell which which was later hung in the “town house”.

James Rous refers to this in his parish register comments, saying that it was done without his knowledge and obviously (by implication) disapproving of the act. In making reference to the “town house”, he was using an alternative name for the “Town Chamber” - a multi-purpose civic structure consisting of an arcaded ground-floor area where corn was traded, surmounted by a large first-floor room where meetings were held and public business conducted. It stood where the present-day Town Hall is located. The bell would possibly have been used to give notice of some kind of emergency or other in town, but its main function was to ring the curfew at 8 p.m. each evening (widely done in urban communities) as a reminder to people that the day was coming to an end and that fires should be either extinguished or banked before each household retired for the night.

What Rous does not reveal is anything specific regarding the bell’s casting. That was  left for Edmund Gillingwater to do in his book, An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), where a footnote on p. 282 states that the bell bears the inscription “John Brand made me 1644”. This refers to the Brend family of Norwich, bell-founders there from the 1560s into the 1660s or longer. John Brend was of the third generation of craftsmen and he characteristically marked his work in the way noted by Gillingwater - though as raised letters and numerals formed in the moulds when the bronze was cast into church bells. The spelling of his surname as Brand is possibly a spelling or typographical error of some kind and the year of manufacture was 1645, not 1644 - but the discrepancy in date might just be an overhang from the Julian Calendar (Old Style) having one year end on March 24th and its successor start on the 25th.

The bell itself is still in existence. When the old Town Chamber was demolished during the 

1850s, to make way for the new Town Hall which opened in 1860, the bell was saved and installed in the clock tower. It is still there and, once the building is back in use again, will continue to ring the curfew at 8 p.m. - as it had done every evening right up to the building going out of use by Waveney District Council in 2015. Up until about the 1970s or 80s, it had been done by hand, but an electronic mechanism was then installed to continue its function automatically. And, so, the bell remains a small (but important) vestige of Lowestoft’s history - something which bridges the centuries in changed form and has so much to reveal about certain aspects of the town’s past.

And it is, perhaps, not the only thing left from the mid-17th century visit made to St. Margaret’s Church by Francis Jessop. The building underwent major interior changes during both the 18th and 19th centuries, too lengthy to go into here, but one remaining fixture from the building’s 15th century past is the impressive triple-stepped font at the west end of the nave. This is surmounted by a fine decorative wooden cover, dating from 1940, created by Ninian Comper (1864-1960) - one of the last great Gothic Revival architects - and is of great visual impact and worth in its own right. But, so is the font itself. Made of sculpted limestone, the bowl is an octagonal one set on a short stem of like shape, with the three, matching, tapering steps below intended not only to make the font itself a positive visible feature of the church’s interior, but to provide standing-room for priest, parents and god-parents around it when baptisms took place.

Before Puritan destruction did so much damage to churches all over the land - and which might have occurred during Jessop’s visit, but could also have been carried out by someone else on another occasion - the font was one of the finest of its type. And it would have been colour-painted and gilded to increase its beauty. Each of the eight faces on the bowl contained two standing figures in canopied niches, with a single figure occupying each niche on the stem below.  All of them probably represented well-known saints of the Christian Faith, but all are completely unrecognisable with every detail of appearance systematically chiselled away. The one notable thing inside the building which survived Puritan zeal in the doctrinal “cleansing” of places-of-worship is the impressive brass eagle lectern (dating from c. 1500), which was probably hidden away somewhere during the period of iconoclasm and restored to its place at some point after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.

The phrase “world turned upside down” - stemming from the name of a broadside (al. broadsheet) ballad of the time protesting at the changes being made and focusing particularly on the downgrading of the Christmas festival under Puritan influence - has been used generally of the mid-17th century revolution in both politics and religion. In a way, Lowestoft saw its own small part in this on the day that Francis Jessop came to town. 

CREDIT:David Butcher