William & Ann Wright

Date of Brass:

1621

Place:

Welwick

County:

Yorkshire

Country:

Number:

I

Style:

Francis Grigs

Description

February 2025

The sculptor Francis Grigs is perhaps best known for the 1638 monument he signed in the church at Framlingham in Suffolk commemorating Sir Robert Hitcham, who died in 1636. For monumental brass enthusiasts, the brasses with his signature for Mrs Jane Cressett, formerly at Upton Cressett in Shropshire, and John Morewood and his wife at Bradfield in Yorkshire loom larger. While the precedents for his work at Framlingham, a black marble slab on the shoulders of four figures (angels in the case of Framlingham), go back to the 1520 monument of Count Engelbert of Nassau at Breda in the Netherlands, the same inspiration behind the monuments of Sir Francis Vere, died 1609, in Westminster Abbey and Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, died 1612, at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the above brasses probably take their inspiration from the work of the mid to late 1610s seeminhly of his master and uncle Henry Grigs, one of the London marblers who joined the Masons Company when they amalgamated with the Marblers in 1585. While none of these prototypes is signed, they give every indication of being based on designs emanating from the Cure family. Francis Grigs himself did not take up the freedom of the Masons Company until 1619/20, presumably at the age of 21. It is striking that his signed brasses all date from the 1640s, as do his other signed monuments other than that at Framlingham. However, from the early 1620s onward there are a considerable number of both rectangular brasses and incised black marble panels that seem to be his work. They usually take the form of one or more kneeling figures, often at a prayer desk on a tiled floor, sometimes with an architectural frame, with an inscription below.

Despite concentrating on producing these rectangular brasses, it seems that Grigs did occasionally make ones with separately inlaid components and the brass at Welwick in Yorkshire is one example. It commemorates William Wryght of Plowland, esq, and Ann Thornton, his wife, who died on 28 December 1618 after a marriage lasting fifty years. William died 23 August 1621. The inscription plate has an epitaph in English in Roman capitals apart from the words God and Paridice and concludes with a Latin phrase Memoria iusti vivat in Aeternam: the memory of the just lives on in eternity. Unusually for Grigs’ work Ann Wright’s underskirt is patterned. William Wright’s stiff semi-circular collar is more typical for Grigs and his wife wears a large ruff. It was perhaps laid locally after being sent as plates as the stone it is set in has an uneven surface as opposed to the black Tournai marble that was the usual choice for at this date. An much earlier Tournai marble slab nearby has indents of two separately laid heads and hands under a canopy that joins the marginal inscription.

The Wright family came to Welwick from Kent in the reign of Henry VIII. John Wright married one of the daughters and co-heirs of John Ryther. William Wryght had two notorious younger half-brothers, John and Christopher Wright, the sons of his father’s second marriage. John and Christopher had been hoping to raise a rebellion in the Midlands had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded but were killed a few days after their co-conspirator Guy Fawkes was arrested on 5 November 1605 during the attempt to blow up the king and parliament. Christopher Wright and Fawkes had attended school together in York. Martha, sister of Christopher and John, was married to another co-cospirator, Thomas Percy. There is a tradition that a barn on the Plowland estate was where the conspirators met.

Copyright: Jon Bayliss (text and photographs)

Reference: https://stevewright.nz/john_wright_plowland.php