Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/269



Eastern counties contain more numerous examples of sepulchral brasses than any other district of the kingdom, and this fact has often been quoted to warrant the opinion that they were of foreign manufacture, and imported from Germany or Flanders in readiness to be laid down. There are, however, many objections to be urged against this conclusion, and the fact itself may be more satisfactorily explained if it be considered that these memorials were only within the reach of the wealthy, and that the Eastern counties were, in the days when sepulchral brasses were in fashion, the scene of manufacturing wealth and activity: Ipswich, Norwich, Lynn, and Lincoln were great and important cities, when Birmingham and Liverpool were as yet country villages. In Norfolk, especially, the effigies of civilians abound, and Norwich with its numerous churches even now (sadly reduced as the number is) exhibits a collection of sepulchral brasses which attests the wealth of its ancient merchants and the splendour of their civic dress. Many of these have been made known in Cotman's elaborate work on the Sepulchral Brasses of Norfolk, but unhappily, as it would seem, in more than one case only with the effect of inviting the cupidity of the spoiler, since many which Cotman engraved, so lately as 1815, have now disappeared. Among others we may mention two from St. Stephen's, of great interest, figured in plates 17 and 104, and the curious figure of Faith, bearing the brazen bed, from the brass of Galfridus Langley, in the church of St. Lawrence, plate 97. To these may be added the effigy of John Clarke, stolen from St. Andrew's in the memory of the present incumbent, and brasses formerly to be seen in the churches of St. Edmund and St. Mary, now no longer to be found. It is to be hoped that the newly-awakened interest in regard to these ancient relics will reach "the most Catholic