MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES took the field. Of the six figures or weepers on the sides of the tomb, four are men and two women, the men being in complete har- ness of a slightly later date than that shown on the effigy. The women appear to wear mourning habits. The kneeling figure at the west end is in armour of the same character as that of the male statuettes at the sides. It probably represents the last Sir John Lyons son of the subject of the paramount figure. No doubt from the architecture and costume of this interesting memorial, it commemo- rates Sir John de Lyons, who was living in 1346. It is nevertheless somewhat remark- able that we should find upon the tomb the arms of the wife of the last Sir John de Lyons, son of the subject of the effigy, and who was married in 1370, as well as those of his brother-in-law and successor Sir Nicholas de Chetwode who died in 1369. These coats must have been sculptured after the marriages. The existence of the Chet- wode arms upon the tomb seems to account for the absence of any other memorial to Sir Nicholas in Warkworth church, where brasses still remain to several of his immediate successors. John de Ardele. Aston-le-Wal!s. Near the north door of the chancel is a cinquefoil-headed arch containing the free- stone effigy of a priest with a crocketed canopy over the head. He is shown vested in alb, stole, chasuble and amice, and of course wears the tonsure. This is a monument of the middle of the fourteenth century, and probably commemorates John de Ardele who was pre- sented to the church in 1348. Sir John dePateshull. Died 1350. Cold Higham. This individual is represented by a cross- legged effigy carved in oak, and lying under a richly-moulded ogee arch in the south wall of the chapel, upon a freestone tomb with delicate tracery panels, containing ten blank shields under cusped canopies. It is an instructive example of military costume, and is so far, and indeed widely, transitional that it presents details of armour both of the be- ginning and of the middle of the fourteenth century. For instance the mail hauberk, surcoat and chausses are of the former, while the plate and leather gauntlets, the coutes, genouilleres, bascinet and camail are of the latter time. The head rests upon the customary pillows of the older fashion, and the feet upon the lion, which appears to acquire greater fierceness of expression and fulness of treatment as time advances. The figure has suffered from decay in the usual manner and has been painted white in modern days. Nothing is known of the knight here com- memorated save that he was lord of Cold Higham in the time of Edward II. and Edward III. and died in 1350, the probable date of the effigy. It is reasonable to suppose that the surcoat was originally blazoned with the arms, and it may be hoped that no ama- teur in archaeology will now claim as the effigy of a crusader this cross-legged represen- tation of a man who died eighty years after the last of the romantic expeditions to Pales- tine.* > The procedure during the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century with regard to the fashioning of monumental figures sufficiently explains why we find effigies in the purely English conventional attitude so common throughout the country, and particularly during the half century subsequent to the last crusade of 1 270. Such memorials bear, obviously, no more reference to attachment to the enthusiastic expeditions to Palestine than to participation in the wars of Edward I. in Wales and Scotland. With a view to once more dispelling this fiction, it may be stated that there are no cross-legged figures to be found on the continent, and that one of the striking characteristics of the armed English effigies is that with two or three exceptions they are uniformly shown with open eyes, as living and alert, with the hands in prayer or drawing or sheathing their swords. Moreover, devotional feeling has been invariably expressed in recumbent statues throughout Christendom by the position and treatment of the hands and not by the attitude of the legs, and this is illustrated by hundreds of monumental effigies from end to end of England. Practically the cross-legged attitude is one that a recumbent living figure naturally takes, and it was not a posture reserv'ed to illustrate romantic episodes in one period of the world's histor)-. The old sculptors of the golden age of English Gothic speedily saw the sculpturesque value in the natural and restful character of the living position. It added at once an artistic flow of the lines to the folds of the surcote, while the yielding nature of the mail specially promoted and lent itself to the particular technical treatment of English effigies which we look for in vain on the continent. By far the greater number of cross-legged effigies are, as has been intimated, of a later date than the Eighth and last Crusade of 1270. The attitude being a purely conventional one was only very gradually adopted by the sculptors from about the time of the Seventh Crusade of 1248. Conse- quently the generality of examples in this posture are to the memory of men who flourished a whole generation subsequent to 1270, and whose military ardour was chiefly expended in the Welsh and Scotch wars. The existing cross-legged effigies of such men as Brian Fitz Alan at Bcdale, Yorkshire (died i 302), 405
