The Monumental Brasses of Gloucestershire (Classic Reprint) - Tapa dura

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Excerpt from The Monumental Brasses of Gloucestershire

Scattered over the county of Gloucester, sometimes in out-of - the-way places, are still to be found a goodly number of those very interesting memorials called Monumental Brasses. These brasses are worthy of more than a passing notice, they furnish us with information most valuable to the historian, both general and local, and give many details of much importance to the herald, genealogist and antiquary. To the general reader they are equally interesting, since they are richly suggestive, and full of the touching pathos of the past. They clearly mark the successive steps of our nation's progress - they tell of those stern and terrible times of strife and glory through which England has passed - they bear silent witness to those grand and far-reaching changes which have made our country what it is - and they give an insight into the currents of thought and feeling which deeply moved our forefathers.

Gloucestershire contains more than eighty of these incised memorials, embracing a period of several centuries. In one place we have the valorous knight clad in glittering coat of steel - in another a tonsured ecclesiastic in vestments rich and elaborate - then the gentlewoman in the costume peculiar to her time - but whether knight, or priest, or lady fair, each is of importance in giving with remarkable fidelity a life-like picture of the military, sacerdotal, and domestic life of by gone times.

One cannot but deeply regret that these unobtrusive memorials have suffered much mutilation and spoliation at the hands of the thief and the religious fanatic, as well as from the culpable neglect of their lawful custodians. Many brasses,whose matrices alone are left to record the melancholy fact, are utterly lost and doubtless many more have perished of whose existence not a trace remains. One would fain hope that every particle still left us will be jealously guarded and saved from further harm by those to whom the care of them is entrusted. As works of art, many being of the finest execution and of great merit, they are deserving of careful preservation. They form an attractive class of engraved portraitures in metal. Among them will be found the quaint, the picturesque, the bold, the simple, the graceful and the magnificent; even to the casual observer they are each and all of them attractive.

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