Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings C. J.Wright

On 1 April 1839 Sir Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts at the , received distressing news.1 Mr McDonald, a surgeon at Bristol, wrote to inform him that the previous morning his brother, Lewis Pryse Madden, had, after a brief illness, expired of apoplexy at Clifton aged fifty-six.2 A week later, on Monday the 8th, Lewis was laid to rest in the crypt of Clifton Parish Church. Unlike his two other surviving brothers, Charles and Henry,Sir Frederic was unable to be present at the ceremony as his second wife, Emily,was expecting their first child, a son, Frederick William, who was born the next day. Such a melancholy occurrence would usually only affect the bereaved family but Lewis’s demise was to have unexpected ramifications. It must, after all, be rare for the domestic afflictions of one of the Museum’s Keepers to throw light on the development of its collections.To understand why it should be so in this particular case, it is necessary first to say something about Lewis Madden himself. The history of Sir Frederic’s eldest brother was typical of that of many of his generation. Lewis Pryse Madden had been born at Rochester on 15 October 1782, the second child but eldest son of Captain William John Madden. Like his father before him he joined the Royal Marines, though only rising to the rank of Lieutenant. His memorial tablet3 in Clifton parish church proudly records that he served for almost twenty years in the French Revolutionary Wars in many parts of the globe under, amongst others, Nelson and Sir Home Popham.4 After the defeat of , the armed forces were cut back and Madden retired. He had married, first, on 10 March 1811, at Bath, Caroline, daughter of John Marsh of Woodhouse, Gloucestershire. Their two children, Caroline Lucy and Lewis Powell Madden, were born at Bath Easton (on 7 May 1819 and 5 March 1822 respectively).

1 A version of this paper was read at a meeting of the Madden Society at the British Library on 5 September 2002. Most scholarship is a collaborative effort and this article is more a fruit of such collaboration than most. It is a particular pleasure here to acknowledge A. J. Spence. He it was who, in his transcription of Madden’s Journal for 1843, first raised the question as to the fate of Lewis Madden’s brass rubbings which this article seeks to answer. In generously making available extracts from his transcripts of the 1843 Journal he has also provided much of the evidence on which that answer is based. I would also like to express my gratitude to all those others who have so greatly assisted with its preparation: Jean Rankine; Antony Griffiths, Keeper of Prints & Drawings, British Museum; Professor Andrew Prescott; Christopher Date, the British Museum Archivist; Gary Thorn of the British Museum Archives; and John Hopson, the British Library Archivist, to name but a few. 2 Madden’s Journal, 1 April 1839. The Journal [hereafter, MJ] is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. hist. c. 140-182. A copy is BL, MS. Facs. *1012/1-44. Extracts are printed by permission of Mrs P.Scowen and of the Bodleian Library. 3 By H.Wood of Bristol. 4 MJ, 25 July 1843.

1 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

Caroline died at Clifton on 14 July 1835 but was buried at Bath Easton. Lewis remained a widower for under a year. On 5 May 1836, at St Martin’s in the Fields, London, he married his first cousin Margaret Jordan, the widow of the Reverend Wilfrid Carter. Though the second Mrs Madden lived until 1861, this union was cut short by his own death just under three years later.5 How Lewis Madden occupied himself during his retirement emerges from his brother’s journal.Thus, when Sir Frederic called at Clifton during his honeymoon tour of the west of England in the late autumn of 1837, Lewis was away in shooting on the estate of his friend,William Congreve of Aldermaston House.6 However, he also shared some of the interests that made his younger brother famous. On 1 July 1843 Lewis’s widow told Sir Frederic that Evans, the printseller, had failed to sell the rubbings of monumental brasses at Bristol and elsewhere which Lewis had made, possibly because they were valued at a guinea each, which Madden thought too high. Evans had advised her to send them to John Nichols of Parliament St,‘that stingy hound’, as Madden referred to him. ‘These rubbings are 25 in number, most of them the size of life, beautifully executed, and mounted on tinted paper. The expenses of the paper, heel-ball, journeys. etc. cost Lewis above 6£. 6s.0d. [i.e. six guineas] yet this miserable screw Nichols, in a letter to Mrs. M. while admitting the beauty of the rubbings, and the labor of execution, has had the meanness to offer two guineas for the whole! I was excessively indignant, & told Mrs. M. to take them out of Nichols’s hand immediately.’7 A few days later she called at the Museum with a couple of the rubbings to show him.8 He had already suggested to her that they might well find a home in the Museum and he spoke twice about it to Henry Josi, the Keeper of Prints & Drawings.9 Madden had a low opinion of Josi - ‘I never thought him a gentleman’ - and was horrified to discover after his death in 1845 that as well as a being a former printseller he had also once kept a ham and beef shop.10 On the question of the rubbings, however, Josi proved obliging - even Madden conceded he was ‘genial’ and ‘inoffensive’11 - agreeing to pay the asking price of seven guineas. Though not among the pioneers of brass-rubbing, Lewis Pryse Madden belonged to the growing band of enthusiasts for this new pursuit. Whereas in France monumental brasses had been systematically destroyed at the Revolution, in England a significant number had survived the ravages of the Reformation12 and formed a major resource for the antiquary. Scattered illustrations of brasses can be found in the early numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine.The need for a more accurate means of recording them than by drawing them

5 The biographical information in this paragraph is based, with their kind permission, on two printed tables in the possession of Mr and Mrs R. Scowen: Pedigree of the Madden Family,As entered in the Office Books of the College of Arms at Dublin and in London in the year 1839, with later additions and corrections, single sheet (aft. 1873), and Schedule of the descendants of William Carter, of Guildford, and Elizabeth, his wife, single sheet (aft. 1873). 6 MJ, 6 Oct. 1837. There is a small illustration of Aldermaston House in Peacock’s Polite Repository or Pocket Companion [for 1820] (London, 1819?), at the beginning of March. 7 MJ, 1 July 1843. 8 MJ, 5 July 1843. 9 MJ, 6, 11 July 43. Prints & Drawings had been established as a separate department in 1836, though there had been a Keeper of Prints since the beginning of the century; see Edward Miller, That Noble Cabinet, A History of the British Museum (London, 1973), p. 294. 10 MJ, 15 Mar. 1845; cited by Miller, p. 294. On the vexed question of whether a post at the Museum was a proper occupation for a gentleman, see A.W.Franks,‘The Apology of my Life’, in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds.), A.W.Franks: nineteenth-century collecting and the British Museum (London, 1997), p. 319. 11 MJ, 15 Mar. 1845. 12 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 332-4, 494-5.

2 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings freehand is graphically demonstrated by the grotesquely inadequate sketches of the brasses of John Cosowarthe and Sir John Arundell of Trerice at Colan and Stratton in Cornwall in ‘Imagines seu Figuræ...’,two volumes (Stowe MSS. 1023, 1024) compiled for the herald John Anstis and afterwards owned by Thomas Astle.13 The scholarly study of brasses is usually traced back to the antiquary Richard Gough,14 whose Sepulchral monuments in Great Britain applied to illustrate the history of families, manners, habits, and arts, at the different periods from the Norman Conquest to the seventeenth century was published in two volumes in 1786 and 1796. Even then, it took a little while for the standard method of rubbing with a heelball, a mixture of hard wax and lampblack originally used by shoemakers, to be accepted. Craven Ord,‘my friend and fellow labourer’, whose ‘indefatigable assiduity’ Gough was happy to acknowledge,15 for the most part inked the brasses themselves, a practice which not only produced ‘reversed’ images but had potential for damaging the artefact and its surroundings.16 The ’s Illustrations of the Monumental Brasses of Great Britain did not begin appearing until the year after Lewis Madden’s death.17 C. R. Manning’s A List of the monumental brasses remaining in England. Arranged according to counties dates from 1846.The first edition of Herbert Haines’s A Manual of Monumental Brasses was only published in 1848.18 In some ways Lewis Madden seems atypical of the brass enthusiasts of the period, many of whom developed or extended their interest in the subject while undergraduates at the two ancient universities.19 Such evidence as there is suggests that it may have been an activity of his later years. Certainly, his second wife was remarkably well-informed on the subject.When, in 1842, Sir Frederic himself decided to experiment with brass-rubbing, it was she to whom he applied for advice and who was able to provide him with the most detailed information. ‘She tells me that the proper paper to use in making rubbings from church brasses is the paper with which walls are lined, before the printed paper is put on. It should be a good colored white, and not too thick. A piece of 12 yards white, of a medium thickness, will be about 2s. but the price depends on the width. A very good sort is called crown demi, and also double crown printing, which is sold in large sheets. The principal qualities requisite, are not to stretch and not to be too thick.’ 20 Armed with her instructions, Sir Frederic set out on 1 September 1842 for a holiday on the Isle of Wight.

13 BL, Stowe MS. 1023, ff. 45, 50. Cf. the respective brasses illustrated in William Lack, H. Martin Stuchfield and Philip Whittemore, The Monumental Brasses of Cornwall (London, 1997), pp. 21 and 158.The St Mawgan brass of John Tremain can be compared with its sketch (Stowe MS. 1023, f. 43) in Lack, Stuchfield and Whittemore, p. 134. 14 For Gough, see Sally F. Badham, ‘Richard Gough’s papers relating to monumental brasses in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society,xiv, pt 6 (1991), pp. 467-512. 15 Sepulchral Monuments,vol. ii, p. 10. 16 For Ord, see V. J.Torr, ‘A Guide to Craven Ord’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, ix, pt. 2 (Oct. 1952), pp. 80-91. This cites, p. 84, the famous account of Ord’s method in a letter from J. C. Brooke to Gough, 29 March 1780, printed in John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century... (London, 1817-58), vol. vi, p. 393. For a brief history of methods of copying, see Herbert W. Macklin, Monumental Brasses (first published 1890), revised by Charles Oman (London, 1965), pp. 27-30. 17 Illustrations of Monumental Brasses, etc. [By various authors.With a preface signed: J. M. N., i.e. John M. Neale] (J.T.Walters: Cambridge; F.& J. Rivington: London, 1846 [1840-6]). 18 H. H., A Manual for the study of Monumental Brasses (Oxford, 1848).The second enlarged edition appeared in 1861. 19 I am indebted to John Cherry for this point. 20 MJ, 20 Aug. 1842. I wish to thank Jean Rankine for drawing my attention to this and related passages in the Journal for 1842 and for very generously providing me with extracts of them from her transcription of it.

3 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

He knew of a fourteenth-century brass in Calbourne church ‘on which I felt anxious to try my skill by the rubbing process...There was no inscription on the monument, and as to any tradition of the personage represented, it was absurdly said by the Sexton to be the effigy of a “foreign Spaniard!”The figure is about 4 ft. in length, in armour, and in tolerably good preservation. I immediately set to work with my paper and heel ball, and in the course of half an hour, had the satisfaction of obtaining a very good impression of the brass.’21 He also rubbed brasses at Arreton22 and at Southwick on the mainland.23 On an expedition to Winchester he was particularly eager to obtain a rubbing at St Cross of the brass of John de Campeden, a late-fourteenth-century Master of the Hospital. This gave him much trouble, not least because he was interrupted by morning service, but he managed to rub off or copy all the monumental inscriptions he could find in the church.24 It would be interesting to know what became of these rubbings by a second member of the Madden family. As to those by Lewis Madden, if they were acquired by the Museum, the question arises, where are they now? The accession records and catalogues of neither the British Museum nor the British Library make any reference to Lewis Madden.The searcher is thrown back on the information about the rubbings given by Madden in his Journal: there were twenty- five of them, on tinted paper, and some of the impressions were taken in Bristol. One of the locations there, which might have been inferred, is confirmed by Madden, who during a visit to Bristol and Clifton in late July and August 1843 visited St Mary Redcliffe,‘the finest parish church in the kingdom’ as he called it, and remarked ‘there are three or four monumental brasses of the 15th cent[ur]y,all of which were rubbed off by Lewis Madden’.25 Almost certainly Lewis Madden’s rubbings are now British Library,Add. MS. 32480 A-X (listed in Appendix I below; see also fig. 1).These are of brasses at Bristol and locations in Gloucestershire south of the Severn estuary,Wiltshire and Somerset, within a twenty-mile radius of the city, from Wotton-under-Edge in the north, to Bradford-on-Avon in the east and Axbridge in the south-west.Ten (A-K) were taken in Bristol itself, at the Churches of St James, St John, St Mary Redcliffe, St Peter, and the Temple Church, as well as Trinity Almshouses. The only Bristol brasses listed by Macklin which are absent are those at St Werburgh and the Grammar School.26 They are for the most part on elegantly tinted blue- grey paper. Their exact number depends on the method of counting. The Trustees, when approving Josi’s purchase, described them as twenty-four.27 The Print Room Accessions Register gives no number.28 The highest Museum accession number now visible is ‘26’ (on the dorse of 32480 G. However, S comprises Museum accession numbers 17 and 18).The Manuscripts Catalogue allots them twenty-three Letters (A to X, excluding J), though T and U both consist of two parts.

21 MJ, 12 Sept. 1842. 22 MJ, 22 Sept. 1842. 23 MJ, 14 Sept. 1842. 24 MJ, 28 Sept. 1842. He was so stiff as a result of his exertions that the next day he had to take a warm bath. 25 MJ, 3 Aug. 1843. For the brasses here, see Martin Lee, Medieval Monumental Brasses in St. Mary Redcliffe ([Bristol, 1996]). I am indebted for the reference to this pamphlet to John Hopson. 26 Macklin, op. cit., p. 157. 27 British Museum, Central Archives [hereafter BM/CA],Trustees Minutes,Vol. XXI, c. 6427 (23 Mar. 1844); cf. Josi’s Report to the Trustees, 22 Mar. 1844. Extracts from the Museum archives are printed by kind permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 28 It merely gives the date (year/month/day) and description ‘1844 4 29 [ ] Impressions from Monumental Brasses’. I am indebted to the kindness of Antony Griffiths for this information.

4 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

Fig. 1. Brass of Sir Walter and Morys Denys, rubbed by Lewis Madden.Add. MS. 32480 W

The brasses from which they were taken range in date from circa 1370 (32480 V) to 1638 (32840 R).They cover the social spectrum from the great local noble family of Berkeley, through gentry to the clergy. However, as might be expected, the largest number relate to the prominent merchant families of Bristol and its locality.They include Thomas Rowley, Sheriff of Bristol (32480 I), whose brass at St John’s was the inspiration for Thomas Chatterton’s famous ‘Rowley’ forgeries, ‘Rowley’ being supposedly a fifteenth-century priest at St John’s,29 and Judge John Brook and his wife Johanna Amerike (32840 G), whose family is asserted, albeit unconvincingly, by supporters of Cabot’s claim to be discoverer of America, to have lent its name to the new continent.30 Some of these brasses had already

29 William Barrett claimed that he first called him ‘Ronley’, the assumption being that he had misread the brass: E. H. W. Meyerstein, A Life of Thomas Chatterton (London, 1930), p. 59. This was a mistake of which, as it happens, Barrett himself was quite capable: see n. 33 below. 30 See, for example, Rodney Broome, Amerike:The Briton who Gave America its Name (Stroud, 2002).

5 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings attracted notice.That of John Jay and his wife in St Mary Redcliffe (32840 E) is recorded both by Gough31 and the local historian William Barrett.32 Barrett also refers to the brasses of John Brook and Sir John Juyn in the same church33 as well as to the brasses of John Barstaple and his wife at Trinity Almshouses which they founded.34 The story of how Lewis Madden’s as well as the Museum’s other collections of brass- rubbings came to rest in the Department of Manuscripts is a complicated one and goes some way to explaining how their provenance was lost.The first collection of rubbings to reach the Museum was bequeathed by Francis Douce in 1834. Douce had been one of Madden’s predecessors as Keeper of Manuscripts, resigning in 1812 in exasperation at excessive bureaucracy. His marvellous collection of printed books, manuscripts, and prints, he left to the Bodleian Library. However, the Museum received a volume of the works of Albrecht Durer, which he himself had been left by Joseph Nollekens,35 annotated copies of Whitaker’s accounts of Manchester and the ancient Cornish cathedral,36 his private papers (now in Bodley), and ‘his large Volumes and unbound Rolls of Impressions from Monumental Brasses’.37 In view of their future history, it is interesting that Douce himself distinguished between these rubbings and his collection of prints.When he wrote his will Douce had only owned them for seven months. His opportunity had been provided by the dispersal in three sales (25 June 1829, 25 January 1830, 9 May 1832) of the collections of none other than Craven Ord. The importance of these sales was not in dispute. Indeed, before the first, Josiah Forshall, Madden’s predecessor as Keeper of Manuscripts, had been authorized by the Museum Trustees to spend up to £500 on the purchase of items,38 and many valuable manuscripts were added to the national collection. Ord’s rubbings were lots 1102 and 1103 on the fifth day of the second Ord sale.39 Evans described the first lot as ‘In Two volumes, about six feet in height, with a stand to hold them’.The second was unbound. There was also (Lot 1107) an actual brass, four foot high, in two compartments ‘representing a whole length Figure in Armour’. Madden’s copy of the sale catalogue records that it was purchased by ‘Gage’‘in order to restore it to the Church from which it had been taken’.40 Evans observed of lot 1102 that ‘this Collection of Impressions from antient Monumental Brasses, is most probably matchless’, before remarking disingenuously,‘it is to be hoped that

31 Incorrectly as ‘Johan Jan’: op. cit., vol. ii, p. 269. 32 The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol (Bristol, [1789]), p. 586. 33 Ibid., pp. 586-7, giving the latter the surname ‘Inyn’ and assigning the former a wife ‘Johanna…hæredum Richardi Amenæ [sic]’. 34 Ibid., pp. 536-7. 35 Nollekens had also left Douce for his life a print of the Triumphal Arch of the Emperor Maximilian, with reversion to the Museum, now P&D, E.2.334-353: see Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, The Department of Prints & Drawings in the British Museum: User’s Guide (London, 1987), p. 111. 36 John Whitaker, The History of Manchester (London, 1821, 1825), now BL, C.28.l.6-7, and The Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall historically surveyed (London, 1804), now BL, C.28.l.8; see Douce’s presentation inscription to the Museum facing the half title of the latter. Both works are full of disobliging annotations by Douce, explained on one of the rear fly-leaves of the Cornish volume:‘I should never have taken the trouble of criticising this tiresome and chaotic work, if the author had not unwarrantedly attacked, and totally misconceived the design of my essay in the Archæologia on the names of the pieces used in the game of Chess’. On p. [435] of the same volume, advertising other ‘Works, by the Reverend John Whitaker’ Douce has inserted ‘that irreverend coxcomb, improperly intitled’ before ‘the Reverend John Whitaker’. 37 See the extract of Douce’s will, dated 22 Aug. 1830, in BM/CA,Trustees Minutes, vol. xiii, 12 Apr. 1834, c. 3781. 38 BM/CA,Trustees Minutes, vol. xi, 20 June 1829, c. 3188; a letter from Mr Petrie in support. 39 Catalogue of a valuable collection of books of a gentleman gone abroad; valuable collection of manuscripts of Craven Ord, Esq.; and a curious collection of autographs...which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Evans, at his house, No. 93, Pall- Mall, on Monday January 25, and Four following Days. 1830, p. 53. 40 Ibid., p. 54; BL, Dept. of MSS, P.R.3.B.2.This is possibly the antiquary John Gage, afterwards Rokewode, of Suffolk.

6 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings this Collection will be secured and deposited in some Public or Private Collection to which the Antiquary may have access. It forms a most valuable Supplement to Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments’.41 It was duly secured by for Douce and within a few years the auctioneer’s pious wish had come about. On its arrival in the Museum in 1834 Douce’s collection came to rest in the Print Room. Its Keeper, Ottley,42 thought it a valuable acquisition. The very next year he requested permission from the Trustees to prepare a descriptive catalogue of it, informing them that it was a ‘Collection of the highest interest, and likely to furnish our Artists with some details of costume at different periods on which they might place the firmest reliance.’ The Trustees refused.They did not want his attention diverted from ‘the General Catalogue including the Drawings and more valuable Engravings upon which he has been some time engaged’.43 In 1836 Ottley was succeeded by Josi. Over the following years a few extra rubbings came in. In 1839 the artist George Perfect Harding, who had in 1822-3 published portraits of the Deans of Westminster, gave rubbings from brasses in Westminster Abbey and Castle Ashby.44 A Mr Pulham gave five rubbings the same year and in 1841 Charles Henry Hartshorne presented a lithograph of a brass at Higham Ferrers (see fig. 2).The next major addition was the collection of Lewis Madden. Given that the acquisition of these impressions was agreed in July 1843, there is a slight mystery in the fact that they were not finally purchased from a Mr Powell until Spring 1844.45 No reference to Sir Frederic’s brother appears in the records. However, one Museum officer had not forgotten him.The Keeper of Manuscripts was biding his time.

Fig. 2. Rev. C. H. Hartshorne's presentation inscription to Henri Josi on Add. MS. 32486, f. 14

41 Op. cit., p. 53. 42 See J. A. Gere, ‘William Young Ottley as a collector of drawings’, British Museum Quarterly, xviii (1953), pp. 44-53. 43 BM/CA:Trustees Minutes, vol. xiv, c. 4109, 21 Nov. 1835. 44 See Appendix II. 45 BM/CA: Officers Reports, c. 9868, 22 Mar. 1844;Trustees Minutes, vol. xxi, c. 6427, 23 Mar. 1844. They were inscribed with the acquisition date 29 April 1844. The identity of Mr Powell presents problems. Lewis Madden’s only male Powell relative, his cousin Henry Weyland Powell, had died in 1840.

7 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

In spring 1845 Sir Frederic asked the Trustees for the transfer to Manuscripts of various items in the Print Room. He began by requesting the return of certain volumes of Lansdowne and Sloane Manuscripts, which had been deposited there at some stage, possibly for exhibition or because of shortage of space in Manuscripts. He emphasized that he did not include in this request Sloane Manuscripts containing fine art, though he did regret that six of these (Add. MSS. 5215, 5216, 5225, 5235, 5248 and 5250) had been cut up and dispersed. He also asked for a volume of drawings of Mexican antiquities (Add. MS. 15502), a volume of ‘Hindoo’ drawings (possibly Add. MS. 15515) and the Abbé de Rive’s illustrations of manuscript miniatures (Add. MS. 15501). He pointed out, somewhat disingenuously, that this would create more space for expansion in the Print Room.46 The Trustees appear to have inspected all the volumes concerned at the Standing Committee on 5 April. Indeed, Forshall, the Secretary to the Museum, had even included some topographical volumes not mentioned in Sir Frederic’s report.47 Most, but not all, of his requests were acceded to.48 Meanwhile, Madden had looked at Josi’s manuscript list of the contents of the Print Room. He noted that the only significant topographical items remaining in the Print Room were J. C. Crowle’s extra-illustrated copy of Thomas Pennant,49 drawings by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm and the brass-rubbings.50 Greatly encouraged by the Trustees’ previous decision, in May he went on to request the transfer not only of the Grimm drawings, as complementing those already in the Department’s Burrell Collections, but also all the brass rubbings on the grounds that they were ‘connected intimately with the volumes preserved there [i.e. Manuscripts] and with topographical research, and very little or not at all with Art’.51 The timing of these requests may have a simple explanation. Madden was probably taking advantage of the death of Henry Josi on 7 February 1845. On 15 March, Forshall told him that W.H. Carpenter had been appointed to succeed Josi.52 The period of the vacancy and the first weeks of an inexperienced Keeper must have seemed the ideal time to advance his claims against the Print Room. However, in Carpenter Madden had misjudged his adversary.The former protested vehemently to the Trustees that the rubbings were ‘most especially connected with the Department of Prints and Drawings; they being the only positive works by the hands of the Artists in England, at the period they were executed.’ Contemporary artists frequently consulted them for details of mediaeval costume. He

46 Madden’s draft Report to the Trustees, 7 Mar. 1845;Add. MS. 62025, ff. 51-54. I am very grateful to Andrew Prescott for drawing my attention to this series of references in Madden’s draft Reports. 47 MJ, 15 Mar. 1845. 48 Add. MSS. 5214, 5284 and 5285 were retained in the Print Room, but Lansd. MSS. 1242-1244 and Add. MSS. 5219, 5221, 5234, 5253, 5275-5279, 5283, were ordered to be sent back to Manuscripts, together with some other material. See the copy of the Standing Committee Minute, 5 Apr. 1845 and the accompanying ‘List of MSS. transferred…’ in Dept of MSS., Minutes, Acquisitions, 1841-1845, ff. 428-430; cf. Add. MS. 62025, ff. 52-54, and the related annotations in Dept of MSS., MS. Catalogue of Additions, 1817. Volumes which had not previously been in the Department were numbered Add. MSS. 15501-15515; Register of Additional MSS. 1843-Feb. 1851. Of these, Add. MS. 15504 had originally been part of the Lansdowne Collection; Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the years MDCCCXLI- MDCCCXLV (London, 1850), p. 13. 49 For Crowle’s copy of Thomas Pennant, Some Account of London (1793), see Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, op. cit., p. 55. 50 MJ, 15 Mar. 1845. 51 BM/CA:Trustees Minutes, vol. xxi, c. 6684, 24 May 1845; P.R. Harris, A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973 (London, 1998), p. 153. 52 MJ, 15 Mar. 1845. Characteristically, Madden would have preferred either of the rival candidates,William Brockedon and Lt.-Col. Robert Batty.

8 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings challenged Madden’s assertion that the Douce Collection had been bequeathed specifically to the Department of Manuscripts53 and, unkindest cut of all, pointed out that in 1844 the Trustees had sanctioned the purchase out of the Prints & Drawings budget of the rubbings which it is now clear were made by Madden’s own brother. However, the Grimm drawings, as purely topographical, he was prepared to concede.54 His report was duly endorsed by the Trustees on 28 June.55 This remained the position for the next forty years and Madden does not seem to have challenged it again.Thus, for example, after the Museum purchased the papers (Add. MSS. 19077-19247) of the great Suffolk antiquary David Elisha Davy (d. 1851) from his sister, Lucy Elizabeth Davy on 13 November 1852, Madden discovered they contained two large Solander cases of brass-rubbings.56 Despite the fact that one part of the main collection consisted, inter alia, of notes and plans of Suffolk brasses,57 he made no attempt to retain the brass rubbings and they were duly transferred to Prints & Drawings (see Appendix II).58 Some rubbings did, of course, enter the Manuscripts Department at this period, although only in small numbers and as an integral part of volumes from which it would have been injudicious to remove them. Specimens can be found, for example, in the historical collections for English counties (Add. MSS. 17456-17463) assembled by the Rev. D. T. Powell.59 Curiously, before entering the Church, Powell had, like Lewis Madden, served in the Revolutionary Wars against the French, albeit briefly.60 Over the years the number of brass rubbings in Prints & Drawings grew inexorably, almost entirely by gift and bequest.61 Then, suddenly,in 1885, what Madden had argued for so eloquently many years before came to pass. On 11 June, Sidney Colvin, the Keeper of Prints & Drawings, informed the Museum Trustees that the Principal Librarian, Bond, and Maunde Thompson, the Keeper of Manuscripts, had agreed he could transfer the rubbings to that Department.What had occasioned this change of heart? Almost certainly it was the arrival in February of a substantial new acquisition. Colvin had only been appointed to the Keepership in 1883.62 He came from Cambridge where he had been Director of the Fitzwilliam and Slade Professor of Fine Art. He was confronted after only a year in office with organizing the removal of his Department from the north-west of the building to its new quarters in the White Wing facing Montague Street in the east.63 Even had he been an enthusiast for brass-rubbings the collection of the Reverend must surely

53 This was a view Madden had already expressed in his Journal; MJ, 15 Mar. 1845. 54 BM/CA: Officers Reports, vol. xxxiii (June-Dec. 1845): 10728, 25 June 1845. 55 BM/CA: Trustees Minutes, vol. xxi, c. 6727. The Grimm Drawings became Add. MSS. 15537-15548, supplementing the earlier series 5670-5675, 5678. 56 MJ, 3 Jan. 1854. 57 Add. MSS. 19077-19113 passim; thus for brasses at Lavenham, see 19077, ff. 384v-391. 58 The Davy Collection contained other material, topographical engravings and portraits, which was also transferred to Prints & Drawings and still remains there: see Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, op. cit., p. 107. 59 Powell’s collections were dispersed at auction on 31 July 1848, at which Add. MSS. 17433-17443 were acquired; 17456-17463 were bought from the bookseller Rodd on 11 Sept. 1848; Register of Additional MSS. 1843-Feb. 1851. 60 Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses...1715-1886 (Oxford, 1888), vol. iii, p. 1136. He died 9 June 1848; see Gentleman’s Magazine, xxx, N.S. (July-Dec. 1848), pp. 438-9. 61 The collection is mentioned briefly in Louis Fagan, Handbook to the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (London, 1876), p. 204. 62 See Edward Miller, op. cit., pp. 296-7. 63 Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, op. cit., p. 3; The Times, 18, 19, 20 and 26 Aug. 1885.

9 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings have proved the last straw. It consisted of 2,600 rubbings, in thirty-five bound volumes and a large quantity of loose sheets. By the time that these had been bound up, there were to be fifty-four elephant-folios in all. It must have been with a sense of intense relief that he saw these and all the other rubbings depart for Manuscripts. The brief listing, which accompanied his report to the Trustees, and which is printed as an Appendix II below,is the probably the most revealing guide to the state of the collection at this time. Ironically, the person in the Museum who probably knew most about mediaeval brasses, Augustus Wollaston Franks, appointed to the Antiquities side in 1851 and almost single- handed creator of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities, had no direct involvement with the collection.This was in many ways unfortunate. He had begun his own extensive collection of rubbings before he went up to Cambridge and though his work at the Museum allowed him little opportunity to pursue his enthusiasm, he managed to add to his own holdings those of such distinguished figures as Herbert Haines and J. G. Nichols, as well as some rubbings by C. H. Hartshorne.The bulk of this great collection he presented in due course to the Society of Antiquaries. In fact, he described the Museum’s own collection as ‘very fine’, containing most of the figured brasses, though with some deficiencies as to inscriptions.64 These lacunae he sought to supply by offering in 1896 some of his duplicates to the Museum (now Add. MSS. 34891-34894)65 while making other important gifts, not least of which was Henry Addington’s descriptive catalogue of sepulchral brasses (Add. MS. 34897). However, his more active involvement with it might have led, for instance, to the identification of the Flemish brass, whose rubbings form Add. MS. 32486, ff. 15, 16, as that acquired for the Museum by Franks himself at the Pugin sale of 1853.66 In some respects, the brass rubbings posed as many problems for Manuscripts as they had for Prints & Drawings.Their arrangement and description as Add. MSS. 32478-32490 now seem cavalier.67 In part this reflects changing attitudes to the collection. At the time it was the brasses themselves and their geographical distribution which were the sole object of interest. Today, the trends in antiquarian scholarship which produced the rubbings have assumed equal importance. Here the Catalogue is unhelpful, giving little information on provenance, even where, as in the cases of George Perfect Harding or Charles Boutell (see fig. 3), this is recorded on the rubbings themselves. Even the history of the Ord Collection (Add. MSS. 32478, 32479) as bequeathed by Douce is confused, the first volume being arbitrarily assigned to Ord and the second to Douce.68 There is no indication, either, that some of the ‘volumes’ contain groups of rubbings by antiquaries as distinguished as Albert Way (see fig. 4),69 as well as by others who cannot at present be identified.70

64 President’s Address, 23 April 1896, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 2nd Ser., xvi (1895-7), pp. 149-51. 65 Add. MSS. 34891-34893 consist chiefly of inscriptions and shields,Add. MS. 34894 of figured brasses.This gift is acknowledged in the description but, unfortunately, is omitted from the index entry for Franks in Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the years 1894-1899 (London, 1901); see pp. 112 and 886. 66 John Cherry,‘Franks and the Medieval Collections’, in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds.), A.W.Franks, p. 188 and pl. 22. 67 Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCLXXXII- MDCCCCLXXXVII (London, 1889), pp. 129-32. 68 See V.J.Torr,‘A Guide to Craven Ord’, p. 81. 69 For rubbings by Albert Way, many with his notes, see Appendix II. 70 For example Add. MS. 32485 A 1: King’s College Chapel ‘June 1850’ Add. MS. 32485 A 2: " ‘June 1850 WPN’ Add. MS. 32485 A 3: " ‘June 1850 WPN’ Add. MS. 32485 A 6 (verso):‘From a mutilated Brass in Great Shelford Church near Cambridge W. P. N. June 1850’.

10 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

Fig. 3. Rev. Charles Boutell's monogram and inscription on Add. MS. 32485 A 5 verso

Fig. 4. Albert Way's inscription on Add. MS. 32485 B 1

Once it had reached the Department of Manuscripts, the collection of rubbings continued to grow for the next fifty years.The last significant acquisition,Add. MS. 45877, was made in 1942.71 Given the problems involved in their storage, this may be just as well. Rubbings by their nature tend to be unwieldy.Many,such as those made by Lewis Madden, have always been kept in roll form. However, Ord’s rubbings had been partly mounted in two huge volumes.72 By the time they were catalogued in the 1880s, only one of the two volumes survived.The Addington Collection survived in volume form until the early 1960s when part of it was displayed in a temporary Museum exhibition, occasioned by the closing of the Grenville Library while its ceiling was reconstructed.73 However, at sometime after that it was disbound and converted to paper rolls.The great majority of the rubbings, even those which originally were bound, are now stored in this fashion. It may save space but the practice has not commended itself to all students.Torr remarked acidly of Add. MS. 32479: ‘the rubbings are kept folded and tightly jammed in containers somewhat resembling coffins, which reach the student either on trolleys or with considerable physical exertion by the departmental staff.’All in all, he found consulting them a depressing experience and he thought this discouraged their wider use by scholars.74

71 A summary list of brasses (relating solely to Britain) in the Department of Manuscripts is given by M. W. Barley, A Guide to British Topographical Collections (London, 1974), pp. 71-2. 72 Catalogue (see n. 39), p. 53. 73 ‘Addington Brass-Rubbings’, British Museum Quarterly, News Supplement (Jan. 1964), p. [9]. 74 V. J.To rr,‘A Guide to Craven Ord’, p. 81.

11 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

Is it the case, then, that the brass-rubbings have had their day? Are they akin to the collections of skins and stuffed animals that have ceased to thrill visitors to museums of natural history?75 Like these, of course, the rubbings remain an invaluable reference collection. In a few cases they are the only record of a brass now lost. However, they still have much to offer, especially to those who are as interested in the brass-rubbers as in the brasses themselves. The recovery of the provenance of Add. MS. 32480 illustrates their potential. Lewis Madden would never have sought scholarly comparison with his illustrious sibling, but in his humble way he is as much a representative of nineteenth-century antiquarianism as the great Sir Frederic. For over a century and a half he has been unacknowledged and forgotten. Sir Frederic, who succeeded in securing his brother’s rubbings for the national collection, would surely be gratified that it is his own Journal which has proved the means of restoring to the historical record the name and contribution of Lewis Madden.

APPENDIX I LEWIS MADDEN’S BRASS-RUBBINGS (Add. MS. 32480 A-X) For each brass, the following information is given: British Museum Accession Number, where visible; subject; date; location; approximate distance from Bristol. A. 44 4 29 9. John Barstaple and his wife, Sibilla, 1411. Trinity Almshouse Chapel, Bristol. B. 44 4 29 14. A civilian. Temple Church, Bristol. C. 44 4 29 6. A priest. Temple Church, Bristol. D. 44 4 29 3. Sir John Juyn, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 1439. St Mary Redcliff, Bristol. E. 44 4 29 12. John Jay and his wife, Johanna, after 1472. St Mary Redcliff, Bristol. F. 44 4 29 4. Philip Mede and his wives, circa 1475. St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. G. 44 4 29 26. John Brook, judge, and his wife, Johanna, 1522. St Mary Recliffe, Bristol. H. 1. 44 4 29 2. Robert Lond, chaplain, 1462. St Peter’s, Bristol. H. 2. 44 4 29 15. The same. I. 44. 4 29 22. Thomas Rowley,Sheriff of Bristol, and his wife, Margaret, 1478. St John’s, Bristol. K. 44 4 29 8. Henry Gibbes and his wife,Ann, 1636. St James’s, Bristol. L. No visible accession number. Edmund Forde, 1440. Swainswick, E. of Bristol, N. of Bath - c. 13 miles M. No visible accession number. Roger Harper and his wife, Johanna, 1493. Axbridge, W. of Cheddar - c. 15 miles. N. No visible accession number. John Martok, 1503. Banwell, 5 miles E. of Weston-Super- Mare - c. 15 miles.

75 See Dame Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies and History (London, 1983), pp. 102, 118.

12 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

O. No visible accession number. Raphe Jenyns and his wife, Jhane, 1572. Churchill, SSW. of Bristol - c. 13 miles. P. 44 4 29 5. John Blandon and his wife, Elizabeth, 1554. Banwell, 5 miles E. of Weston- Super-Mare - c. 15 miles. Q. 44 4 29 25. John Cutte and his wife, Ioane, 1575. Burnett, ESE. of Bristol - c.6 miles. R. 44 4 29 24. Rice Davis and his wife, Dorothie, 1638. Backwell, WSW. of Bristol - c.7 miles S. 44 4 29 17-18. Anne Longe, wife of Gyfford Longe, 1602. Bradford-on-Avon, E. of Bristol - c. 20 miles. T. 1. No visible accession number. Thomas Horton and his wife, Mary, 1530. Bradford- on-Avon, E. of Bristol - c. 20 miles. T. 2. No visible accession number. Alexander Staples and his wives, Elizabeth and Ann, 1590.Yate, ENE. of Bristol - c. 10 miles. U. 1, 2. No visible accession number. Thomas, 4th Baron Berkeley, and his wife, 1417. Wotton-under-Edge, NNE. of Bristol - c. 17 miles. V. 44 4 29 16. Full length female figure, circa 1370. Winterbourne, NE. of Bristol - c.5 miles. W. 44 4 29 20. Sir Walter and Morys Denys, 1505 (see fig. 1). Olveston, N. of Bristol - c.8 miles. X. 44 4 29 13. Full length female figure above a sepulchral inscription to Thomas Tyndall, 1571.Thornbury, NNE. of Bristol - c. 11 miles.

APPENDIX II THE COLVIN LIST The Additional Manuscript numbers assigned to the brass-rubbings by the Department of Manuscripts, where identified, are supplied in square brackets, together with other relevant information. BM/CA. Original Papers, 1885, p. 2151.

Rubbings from Monumental Brasses, transferred from the Department of Prints & Drawings to the Department of MSS., June 1885.

38 parcels and 3 separate rubbings on rollers; in all 578 rubbings. Presented by Robert Hutchison, Esq., as executor of the Rev.Aeneas Barkly Hutchison. (1867.12.14.972-1549) [Add. MS. 32489] 35 bound volumes, and a large quantity in loose sheets. Presented by J.A.Addington, Esq. (1885.2.14.112) [Add. MS. 32490] 1 tall volume and a parcel of the same size. Craven Ord Collection. (no inventory or register mark.) [Add. MSS. 32478, 32479] 2 parcels, one containing duplicates. Douce Collection. (no inventory or register mark) [See Craven Ord Collection above,Add. MSS. 32478, 32479]

13 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

1 parcel. Aldridge Collection. (no inventory or register mark.) 2 solander cases, containing 490 rubbings. Davy Collection for Suffolk. Transferred from Dept. of MSS. (1853.1.12.847-1336) [Add. MSS. 32483, 32484] 2 parcels. Presented by Albert Way, Esq. (no inventory or register mark.) [Includes:Add. MS. 32485 B 1:‘Aug.11.1837’ (fig. 4) Add. MS. 32485 B 2:‘Aug. 1837’ Add. MS. 32485 C:‘Nov 29.1837’ Add. MS. 32485 D 3&4: Undated Add. MS. 32485 D 5&6:‘Apr 17/37’ Add. MS. 32485 E 2:‘April 1837’ Add. MS. 32485 E 3: Undated Add. MS. 32485 F 1:‘April 1837’ Add. MS. 32485 F 2:‘Apr 25/37’ Add. MS. 32485 F 3: Undated Add. MS. 32485 H 5:‘16 March 1837’ Add. MS. 32485 H 6: Undated Add. MS. 32485 I 1&2: Undated] 2 parcels. Purchased from Mr. Powell. (1844.4.29.1- ) [Add. MS. 32480] 24 rubbings, mounted on linen with rollers. (?) Faulkner Collection. (no inventory or register mark.) 1 parcel. Presented by Lieut. Newnham, R.N. (no register or inventory mark. Presentation Book, I, p. 99.) 1 parcel containing 5 rubbings presented by Mr. Pulham in 1839, and 3 presented by Lieut. Newnham in 1845. (no register mark.) 1 small roll inscribed “Dulau & Co.” (no register mark.) 1 parcel containing rubbings from brasses in Castle Ashby Church and Westminster Abbey. Presented by G. P. Harding, Esq. (1839.1.26.3&4) [Add. MS. 32485 H 2, I 3-11: 1839.1.26.3 = H 2; 1839.1.26.4 = I 3, 6, 7, 9; I 4, 5, 8, 10, 11 = Unmarked, but similar.] 1 rubbing from brass of Sir Arthur Gorges, Chelsea. Presented by Mr. Faulkner. (no inventory or register mark) [Add. MS. 32486, f. 12; presented by Faulkner, 23 Nov. 1832; see entry below for f. 11.] 1 rubbing from brass of Richard Thaseburgh. Purchased from Mrs. Curtis. (1871.6.10.708) [Add. MS. 32486, f. 13] 1 rubbing from brass of Bishop Goodrich, Ely. Presented by Rev. C. Boutell. (1848.4.15.2) [Add. MS. 32485 A 5; with Boutell’s monogram, the date 1847 and its location on the verso; see fig. 3.]

14 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

1 roll containing 4 rubbings (Grevel, Walley, Lethenard & Tybbys [sic]). Presented by W. Hawes, Esq. (1849.8.11.28-31) [Add. MS. 32488 B 1-4; B 1 is inscribed ‘Presented August 1849 by Mr.W.Hawes, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.’ 1849.8.11.28 = William Grevel, wool merchant, of Chipping Camden (Add. MS. 32488 B 1) 1849.8.11.29 = William Welley (Add. MS. 32488 B 2) 1849.8.11.30 = John Lethenard (Add. MS. 32488 B 3) 1849.8.11.31 = William Gybbys (Add. MS. 32488 B 4)] 1 parcel containing 145 rubbings. Presented by Mrs. Rowe. [Add. MS. 32481] 2 impressions, with counterproofs, from brasses of Henry [Airay?] and Henry Robinson. Presented by the Provost [sic] & Fellows of Queen’s [sic] College, Cambridge. (1847.8.11.12-15) 1 impression, with counterproof, of inscription of brass of J. Humfre, Great Berkhampstead. Presented by A.W. Franks, Esq. (1859.2.12.121 & 122) [Add. MS. 32486, ff. 9, 10] 1 impression from brass of Sir Arthur Gorges, Chelsea. Presented by Mr. Faulkner. (1850.3.9.29) [Add. MS. 32486, f. 11; Faulkner’s presentation inscription, 1 Mar. 1850, is on the verso; f. 12a (fig. 5) is a letter from Faulkner to Sir , 1 Mar. 1850, presenting f. 11; see entry above for f. 12.]

Fig. 5. Letter of Thomas Faulkner to Sir Henry Ellis, 1 March 1850, presenting a rubbing of a brass at Chelsea:Add. MS. 32486, f. 12a

1 lithograph of brass in Higham Ferrers Church. Presented by Mr. Hartshorne. (1841.7.10.5) [Add. MS. 32486, f. 14; gold lithograph with Hartshorne’s presentation inscription to Henry Josi; see fig. 2.]

15 eBLJ 2003,Article 1 Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings

1 parcel containing eight rubbings, seven mounted on card and one on linen. (Origin not known; no inventory or register mark.) [Add. MS. 32486, ff. 1-8] 1 parcel of rubbings much injured. (Origin not known; no inventory or register mark.) 1 rubbing fitted in an oak box, with spring. (Origin not known; no inventory or register mark.) 4 large rubbings (Braunche, Bramstone, and two ecclesiastics), mounted on linen and tied with ribbons; and 1 smaller ‘bronzed and shaded’, on linen, but without ribbons. (Origin not known; no inventory or register mark.) [Add. MS. 32488 A 1, 2; C, D 2, E. Add. MS. 32488 A 1 (Bramstone), 2; C and D 2 (Braunche) are identifiable by the use of the same purple ribbon; Add. MS. 32488 E is annotated ‘Copy of No. 4 Bronzed & Shaded’.] 1 impression for a portion of a Flemish brass. (Origin not known; no inventory or register mark.) [Add. MS. 32486, ff. 15, 16. Inscription on f. 16v:‘Quaere if this be not the flemish brass mentioned by Boutell at page 10...[in] the possession of Pugin...Boutell suggests the possibility of it being the effigy of Michael de Mentmore, Abbot of St Albans who was buried 1342’. This brass was purchased at the Pugin sale by the British Museum.]

S.C.

16 eBLJ 2003,Article 1