The cost of an inlaid brass effigy occurs in the will, dated in 1438, of Maud, Lady Morley, who left xx. marks for a marble stone, with her portraiture thereon in copper, or latten gilt. "

A remarkable order for a tomb appears in the will, dated in 1439, of Isabel Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, who desired her body to be buried in the Abbey of Tewkesbury, and willed that her statue should be made all naked, with her hair cast backwards, according to the design and model which Thomas Porchalion had for that purpose, with Mary Magdalen laying her hand across, and St. John the Evangelist on the right side, and St. Anthony on the left; at her feet a scutcheon, impaling her arms with those of the Earl, her husband, supported by two griffins; but on the sides thereof the statues of poor men and women, in their poor array, with their beads in their hands. x

It is uncertain whether the order in her will for her naked statue, originating probably from a feeling of deep humility, was complied with, as no monument like the one described exists, though she was buried in the church at Tewkesbury, where a beautiful chantry chapel, founded by her, still remains.

In 1457, Master Robert Toste, provost of the collegiate church of Wingham, desired that his body might be buried on the uppermost step on the north side of the high altar, where the Gospel was read in the quire on holidays; and willed that a marble stone be laid over him, with an inscription, to induce people to pray for his soul. y

The mantle or cloak, which first appears on effigies in armour, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, constituted part of

u Nicholas' Testamenta Vetusta, p. 235.

the insignia of Knights of the Order of the Garter, and as such is noticed in the will of Sir Thomas Burgh, Knight, who, in 1495, after desiring that his body should be buried in his new chapel within the parish church of Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, directed that a tomb should be made at the north end of the altar of the same, with two images or figures thereon, of himself in armour, and of his wife, with their arms, and the days of their obits, and that the image of himself should have his mantle of the Garter, and a garter about his legs. z

Such were the monuments of the fifteenth century, which, inferior in comparative simplicity and pure elegance of design to the chaste models of the Edwardian era, far exceeded them in rich display and exuberance of well-defined detail, and as yet were entirely free from that strange intermixture of Italian composition which afterwards crept in. Every species of ornament that could be devised, consistent with the prevailing mode, including cognizances, badges, rebuses, monograms, and other devices, was now abundantly lavished in the decoration of sepulchral chapels and tombs.

On the sculptured effigies much care and attention was bestowed: the minutest ornament on the dress and armour was elaborately copied; the drapery, as far as circumstances would permit, was gracefully adjusted; and the attitudes, though formal, were not without merit.

But the eve of that crisis was fast approaching, when, amidst religious dissentions, a variety of causes co-operated to accomplish a more perceptible change in the monumental designs of our ancestors than had ever before been effected. From the introduction and rapid progress of a new style of

x Nicholas' Testamenta Vetusta, p. 288.

art, after the Italian school, founded on the classic orders of antiquity; yet, when contrasted, essentially differing, originated the adoption of a barbarous incongruity of architectural composition, which, instead of the rich flowing outline and florid tracery characteristic of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, presented a peculiar combination of inelegant and cumbrous detail, no where more strikingly exemplified than in the tombs of the sixteenth century.

THE Italian school of design, as evinced in architectural structures based on antique models, began not to prevail, even in Italy, till about the commencement of the fifteenth century, when Brunnelleschi, a Florentine architect, having measured the ruins of Roman edifices and studied the proportions of the orders, discovered and restored to the world the long-lost principles of ancient art.

The system deduced from these principles continued for some time, however, to be but slowly developed; and it is rather to the beginning of the sixteenth century that the epocha of the revival of classic architecture may be ascribed.

It was then that, under the patronage of Julius II. and Leo X. and under the guidance of Bramante, Raphael, and Buonarotti, the construction of St. Peter's, at Rome, commenced a new era in art.

Nor was it long before a taste for the mode thus adopted began to be displayed in this country, though in imperfect imitations, and compositions by no means of a pure and unmixed character; and early in the reign of Henry the Eighth we first perceive, on tombs, traces of that peculiar style, which was soon destined to supplant, not by a gradual transition, but by rapid and perceptible advances, the Gothic designs of the middle ages, which latter, though originally derived from the most corrupt species of Roman architecture, had nevertheless, by imperceptible degrees, become so essentially different, as to retain not a single feature in common with their ancient prototype.

But it was not till after the Reformation that the rich and costly monumental fabrics of late florid English character were superseded by an heterogeneous mixture of Grecian and Gothic detail, in compositions peculiar to the age; for the Italian and foreign architects, who were encouraged by the court of Henry the Eighth, and whose designs were followed by others, having no pure examples in this country to resort to, as in Italy, were constrained to have recourse to their own conceptions, and by an incorrect and unmeaning application of columns, entablatures, friezes, scroll work, and heraldic devices, formed a style, which prevailed throughout the latter half of the sixteenth, and the early part of the seventeenth century, as totally dissimilar to the classic designs of Greece and Rome, as many modern structures termed Gothic' are to the well constructed and exquisite productions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.