Elizabeth Beresford

Date of Brass:

1624

Place:

County:

Lincolnshire

Country:

Number:

I

Style:

London

Description

August 2024

 

Peter le Neve, Norroy King of Arms, collected an enormous amount of antiquarian information during his lifetime. However his methods of organising this material left a lot to be desired. He possessed two particularly valuable anonymous manuscripts, The Chorography of Norfolk and The Chorography of Suffolk, both compiled in the very early years of the seventeenth century. Le Neve cut much of the Suffolk volume into small strips, arranged into his desired order, and had his amanuensis copy the content of these strips. He died before he could do the same to the Norfolk volume, which survived to be transcribed and published in 1938. Fortunately the small strips survived, although often pasted into books, so concealing more text on their reverses. To publish the Suffolk volume in 1976, Dr Diarmaid MacCulloch had to reassemble it from the remnants scattered across various collections, a monumental effort that retrieved well over 90% of the original text.

When John le Neve, a distant cousin, was putting together the five volumes of Monumenta Anglicana between 1715 and 1719, he used material from Peter le Neve's collection, including the text of the inscription from the brass commemorating Elizabeth Beresford. However, like some other entries from the same source in these volumes, the location of the monument was missing. The brass survives in the floor at Leadenham, Lincolnshire, set in a black Belgian marble slab and with the figure of Elizabeth set above the inscription. The lack of any heraldry suggests that the slab may have been cut down. The inscription reads:

Here lyeth the right honourable the Ladie Elizbth

Davghter to ye right honble Thomas Earle of

Lincoln Lord Clynton & Saye & wife to Iohn

Beresforde Gent to whome shee left living

3 Children Thomas, Marye and Fynes shee

departed this life the 26 of Ivly Anno Dni 1624

Ætatis suae 32.

 

The Beresford family is more associated with Derbyshire than with Lincolnshire, and there are a number of memorials to family members in the church of Fenny Bentley. However a Christopher Beresford was established in Leadenham by 1567, dying in October 1590 and being buried in the church there. A tablet with a shield of the Beresford arms, helm, crest and mantling between classical pilasters with the initials CB above may have been part of his monument. A small crescent at the centre of the shield indicates he was a second son. He had five surviving sons of whom the fourth was Elizabeth’s husband, John. They married around 1618.

John Beresford was a servant of Elizabeth's father Thomas Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, who promptly disinherited her for marrying him. The heraldic visitation of Lincolnshire refers to John Beresford as ‘described as of Gray's Inn, Middlesex, 14 Sept. 1590, although the register does not record him, and that he was rector of Scopwick’. The brass describes him as John Beresford gent. 

Elizabeth’s brass appears to be of London manufacture. The framing of her figure in a basically rectangular plate with a rounded extension for the top of her head closely resembles the effigies of Edward and Joane Keat at East Lockinge, Berkshire, who also died in 1624. Joane is shown wearing a stiffer ruff than Elizabeth, and a broad-brimmed hat. The lettering of the inscription is in Roman capitals with no distinctive letters.

 

Jon Bayliss, copyright text and photo