Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cure, William
CURE, WILLIAM (d. 1632), statuary, was son of Cornelius Cure, a native of the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Southwark, who held the office of master-mason under Queen Elizabeth and James I, was employed in 1605–6 to erect monuments to Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey, and died in 1607. On his father's death William succeeded to his post of master-mason to James I, and completed the monument to Mary Queen of Scots. This monument, the painting of which was executed by one James Mauncy or Manuty, presents perhaps the most faithful portrait of that ill-fated queen at the time of her death; Cure received 825l. 10s. for his share in the work. Payments for the services of Cure and his father on these works occur in Sir Julius Cæsar's papers (Brit. Mus. Lansd. MS. 164). In 1613 Cure signed an agreement to erect a monument in Cranford Church, Middlesex, to Sir Roger Aston, master of the great wardrobe to James I, his two wives, and his children; this agreement still exists (Gent. Mag. 1800, lxx. 104). In 1618 he signed another agreement to erect a monument in the Abbey Church at Bath to James Montague, bishop of Winchester, for 200l.; this agreement also exists, and it is noteworthy that he spells his name in his signature as Cuer (Dingley, History from Marble, i. 155, Camd. Soc. Publ.) Cure worked under Inigo Jones at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and continued to hold the office of master-mason until his death in 1632, when he was succeeded by Nicolas Stone [q. v.] On 4 Aug. 1632 he was buried in the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Southwark. Francis Meres, in his ‘Palladis Tamia’ (published 1598), says: ‘As Lysippus, Praxiteles, and Pyrgoteles were excellent engravers, so have we these engravers, Rogers, Christopher Switzer, and Cure.’ It is no doubt Cornelius Cure who is thus extolled. It would appear that Cure was of Dutch origin, as in 1576 there exists a payment to ‘W. Cure, Duchemane graver,’ for making a clay figure of the tartar, lately brought to England by Sir Martin Frobisher (Rye, England as seen by Foreigners, p. 205).
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Scharf's Cat. of the National Portrait Gallery, 1884; Peter Cunningham in the Builder, 4 April 1863; Lysons's Parishes of Middlesex; authorities cited above.]