John Maunsell

Date of Brass:

1605/6

Place:

Haversham

County:

Buckinghamshire

Country:

Number:

Style:

Southwark

Description

May 2024

John Maunsell was born on 22 September 1539, the second son of Richard Maunsell and his wife Margarey Fairfax. His will, proved in March 1605/6, a few weeks after his death, shows him to be a man of considerable means, leaving five hundred marks to each of his five younger sons, Tobias, John, Ralph, Thomas and Francis when they reached twenty-four years (or twenty-five in John’s case) and five hundred marks to his daughter Marie on her marriage. He had previously given six hundred marks to his daughter Dorothy on her marriage to Robert Hasellwood. After smaller bequests to his sister and her children, the poor of Haversham, each of his servants and his daughter Dorothy, the remainder went to his wife Dorothy and eldest son Samuel. His executors, Dorothy and Samuel were to deduct from John’s five hundred marks the cost of a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford (where he was already studying). The additional year John was to wait for his money is presumably tied in with this plan for his future. The will names four overseers, Ralph Smith of Milton, his cousin John Maunsell of Chicheley, his son-in-law Robert Hasellwood and John Farnwell of Loughton who were to receive twenty shillings apiece. Smith was perhaps his brother-in-law, his wife Dorothy being the daughter of Samuel Smith. His cousin John, who was one of the witnesses of the will, represented a branch of the family that was well established in Chicheley, which was where he had been born himself. The extra hundred marks that his daughter Dorothy had received on her marriage was at the request of her mother and John wished her to repeat that additional sum for each of his his other children.

The form that John’s brass took was unusual: his skeleton in its open coffin was shown as if viewed from above. Nothing in the published wording of his will gives any indication of whether he wished to be portrayed in this way. The inscription plate with its Roman capital inscription gives his exact age to the day and asks us to follow his life and end as a good example. As Sally Badham’s article in the society’s Bulletin 146 ‘Post-Reformation cadaver and skeleton brasses’ of October 2021 demonstrates, skeleton brasses are far from plentiful at this period and John Maunsell’s is out of the ordinary even in the relatively sparse selection found in our churches.

Maunsell’s will asked his children to be dutiful and obedient to their mother.

HERE RESTETH THE BODY OF JOHN MAVNSELL GENT:
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 25TH OF IANVARYE
1605 WHEN HE HAD LIVED LXVI YEERES FOWER
MONETHS AND FIVE DAYES WHOSE CHRISTIAN LIFE
AND GODLY END GOD GRAVNT VS ALL TO FOLLOW

John and his family have left relatively little mark other than the brass that memorialises him. Samuel, John’s eldest son acquired an interest in Cosgrave, Northamptonshire, where his desendants lived while his son John, after taking his BA at Magdalen College, received his MA from Trinity College, Cambridge and became rector of Calverton in Buckinghamshire in 1609 and of Herstmoncaux, Sussex in 1616. John was buried at Calvrton in 1640.

Copyright (text and photo): Jon Bayliss