Elite commemoration in Early Modern England: reading funerary monuments.

WILSON, JEAN

Early Modern funerary monuments are polyvalent texts -- they have artistic form, iconographic content, inscriptions conveying information and ideas. They are common in churches but overlooked by many scholars, although their equivalents from other cultures command eager attention. British funerary monuments are material objects capable of offering rich insights into the culture that produced them. They are designed to provide both explicit memorialization of an individual and, for those who understand, a subtle celebration of that person's life and achievements. In this paper I examine three monuments which feature Sir Henry Savile (1549-1622), and the ways in which these objects enhance our understanding of their cultural context.

`Most Weighty Savile'

Savile was a polymath: a pioneer in textual editing, distinguished as an historian, a mathematician, a classicist, a theologian and an academic administrator. He was tutor in Greek to Elizabeth I and served on the committees that produced the King James Bible. His monumental Works of St John Chrysostom, printed at Eton on the press he set up there to produce it, using specially cast founts (Savile 1613 -- still the standard for most of Chrysostom's writings) was the first truly scholarly edited text to be produced in England. As Warden of Merton College, Oxford he was responsible for building the Fellows' Quadrangle, and he was concurrently a reforming Provost of Eton. He cared about the deficiencies of contemporary English scholarship: his foundation of the Chairs of Geometry and Astronomy at Oxford which bear his name was designed to remedy the almost total neglect of geometry -- it is a measure of his sense of the wider academic community that he specified that candidacy should be open to mathematicians from any part of Christendom. His correspondence shows the extent to which he was aware of the need to provide support for the holders of his chairs -- he also bequeathed books for their use. He was an upholder of the highest scholarly standards, distrusting the merely flashy, and realizing that the best scholarship rests upon scrupulous attention to detail (Aubrey 1962: 328):

He could not abide Witts: when a young scholar was recommended to him for a Good Witt, Out upon him, I'le have nothing to doe with him; give me the ploding student. If I would look for witts, I would goe to Newgate: there be the Witts

(For Savile's life, see the Dictionary of National Biography, and Maxwell-Lyte 1875: 190ff.)

This admirable man died aged 73 at Eton in 1622 and features on three memorials. Although he was buried in Eton Chapel, his widow arranged for a commemorative monument to be put up in Merton. He also appears on Lady Savile's own memorial at Hurst, Berkshire. The three memorials provide texts which comment on different aspects of Savile's life, and demonstrate the differences between private and public commemorations of Early Modern elites.

Merton

In the explication of the `fair and stately honorary monument' to Savile in the chapel of Merton College (Bott 1964: 84-5,111-13, quoting Wood 1786:85(1)) (FIGURE 1), we are fortunate in possessing biographical information, but the material thus gained may be used in the treatment of other monuments where the subjects' lives are less well documented. Originally it faced the great memorial to Savile's colleague, Sir Thomas Bodley (see Wilson 1993), across the choir, Bodley on the north and Savile the south, where at services they would have looked down on the members of the College (for the idea of the image of the dead participating in church services in the form of an onlooker, see Llewellyn 1991:16-18). Those behind the choir were presented with three objects of devotion -- the central altar flanked by two monuments to Scholarship. The resiting of the memorials in the ante-chapel has thus reduced their impact.

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

At the centre of the monument is a half-effigy portrait of Savile wearing a scholar's gown, his left hand on a book. Above him, projecting from the rear of the memorial, is an arched canopy, supported on gilded brackets and touch (black marble) columns. Behind him are displayed his arms. On either side of the effigy, placed as though approaching him, are the figures of Chrysostom and Ptolomey (dexter) and Euclid and Tacitus (sinister). The front face of the arch is decorated with a scene of astronomers gazing at the heavens, and it is surmounted by three figures -- at the top centre, Fame, blowing a trumpet and resting on a shield with Savile's arms with his owl crest, on either side, a seated cherub, dexter `beholding the face of the party represented in a glass', sinister `writing his name in the book of life' (Wood 1786. quoted Bott 1964: 84).

The lower section of the monument has an inscribed central drum-shaped projection which supports the bust of Savile. On either side is a picture, representing dexter Merton, sinister Eton, each surmounted by their arms. At the bottom, supporting the drum-shaped inscription panel, is a quarter-globe marked with Magellan's route in red, the globe itself being supported by two cherubs' heads and wings. The inscription reads:

 MS
 (MERTONENSIS CVSTOS
 HENRICVS SAVILE MILES, COLLEGII (ETONENSIS PRAEPOSITVS
 FVI
 EXVVIAS CORPORIS FRVSTRA SIT QVI HIC QVAERAT
 SERVAT PRAENOBILE DEPOSITVM ETONA
 PERENNEM VIRTVTVM AC BENEFACTORVM MEMORIAM
 QVIBVS COLLEGIVM VTRVMQVE, ACADEMIAM INPRIMIS
 OXONIENSEM COMPLEXVS EST, IPSVMQVE ADEO
 MVNDVM HABET SIBI DEBENDI REVM
 AFFECTVS INSVPER PIENTISSIMAE VXORIS
 POSSIDET ISTE LAPIS
 B.M.P. Margareta conivx obseqventissima
 In hoc vno qvod posvit pie immorigera
 OBIIT [A.sup.o][D.sup.ni] M.D.C.XXI. FEBRVAR; XIX(2)

The whole is executed in marble and touch, with painted detail.

Visually the monument encapsulates Savile's life, physical, intellectual and professional. Read vertically, it places him within the universe, with the (bottom) of the globe at the bottom, supported by angels. This is surmounted by buildings, which are on the face of the earth. Above them are representations of the people who live on earth: Savile preeminent, but flanked by the subsidiary figures. This scheme is geographically correct, in the sense that all this is represented in the northern hemisphere, where it and they existed: it is in some ways like a cinematic sequence in which the camera progressively pulls back, to reveal first the southern hemisphere small, then the buildings (sited in the northern hemisphere) bigger, then the figures from the past at half-scale, and finally Savile himself, representing the present, on the most expansive scale. Savile's worldly position is topped by his honour, in the form of his achievement of arms. Above is a representation of astronomers on the earth studying the heavens, and the top of the monument is concerned with the heavenly and eternal, with the cherubs representing heaven and Fame (who may also represent the angel of the last trumpet calling Savile to eternal life) eternity: we move from the temporal to the transcendent, and Savile is poised, as are all human beings, between earth and heaven.

There is also a representation of the elemental structure of the universe. The southern hemisphere is mostly ocean, and the part of the globe represented is the most ocean-covered aspect. Here are the elements of earth and water. The buildings stand on the earth, and they and the persons represented exist in the realm of air, whose upper limits are shown by the astronomers, who in studying the heavenly lights move into the realm of fire. Above all, beyond the elemental world, are the angels and Fame. This is a scientifically correct representation of the medieval model of the the physical world which mortals inhabit and which Savile was dedicated to studying.

Thus the vertical axis of the monument shows the universe, the physical world and Savile's place in it. On the level above the quarter globe, we are presented with Savile's biography, in the form of the pictures of the two places where he spent the most important parts of his career -- Eton and Merton, represented without figures, possibly to suggest that with the death of Savile both are left empty. The inscription gives the location of Savile's physical remains and mentions his marriage, but this is a monument to a professional career and ignores the personal. There is no mention of the date of Savile's birth, his parentage, his age at death, his children. This monument deals with his appointments and his triumphs as a scholar.

From Savile's life as an administrator, we move up on the next level (where he is himself appropriately situated -- above the colleges he dominated) to his intellectual life: the life of the mind which transcends the merely physical. Savile holds a book, and is flanked by the figures of four scholars, the subjects of his most important works. Ptolomey and Euclid represent Astronomy and Geometry, the Chairs which Savile endowed. They were also the subjects of his first and last series of lectures at Oxford. `On taking his M.A. degree on 30 May 1570 he read "his ordinaries in the Almagest of Ptolomey"' (DNB, quoting Wood 1815: ii, 310), while `Savile himself gave in act week 1620 the first lectures in geometry [under the aegis of the Chair he had founded[, which were published in 1621, together with some of his earlier mathematical lectures [as] ... Praelectiones tresdecim in principium elementorum Euclidis' (DNB). Chrysostom was the subject of his great eight-volume edition, and he had published a highly regarded edition and translation of Tacitus in 1591 (his first publication). He also left several works, both published and unpublished, on British history.(3)

The figures thus mark the beginning, end and triumphs of Savile's scholarly career. They indicate its breadth, representing the different disciplines of Astronomy, Geometry, Theology and History, and its geographical and historical comprehensiveness -- Ptolomey represents ancient Egypt, Euclid ancient Greece, Tacitus ancient Rome and Chrysostom (who was born in Antioch and Archbishop of Constantinople and may represent Asia Minor) the early Church Fathers. They encapsulate the cultural strands -- Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Christian -- that made up western civilization at the point when Savile's monument was erected -- that made up Savile. (History's being represented by Tacitus and Greece by Euclid possibly explains the omission from the monument of Xenophon, on whom Savile also did important work).

This reading of the monument is supported by the dress and disposition of the four figures. They seem to approach Savile as if bearing gifts or offering homage. Each carries or carried either a book or a rod and Euclid has a pair of compasses. Wood (1786: 22) describes their attributes as Chrysostom: book, Ptolomey: `a rod pointing down to the sphere', Euclid: `a rod in one hand, and a pair of compasses in the other' and Tacitus: book. Their cultural diversity is reinforced by their costuming: Chrysostom wears canonicals, Ptolomey the turban and short open coat over a kaftan that was seen as typical oriental dress, Euclid a long, hooded robe and a broad-brimmed hat, intended to represent the Greek petakos, and Tacitus a toga. In the centre, on a much larger scale, is Savile, in the dress of a modern English scholar.

There are several mutually compatible readings of this assemblage. If the figures are taken as representing the individual writers, then they may be seen as welcoming Savile into a shared afterlife: he is joining the Immortals. But the figures are posed as if slightly subservient, bending towards Savile as if deferring to him, or offering him tribute. There may be a suggestion that, in devoting his life to bringing them before a modern public, whether through lectures, editions or translations (all these aspects of his career are represented in the four figures), Savile has earned their gratitude: he has freed them from obscurity and brought them into the light (the scene of greeting takes place under the heavenly light studied by the astronomers on the canopy).

The virtues of the deceased were conventionally represented on contemporary funerary monuments in the form of allegorical figures of the Theological or Cardinal Virtues. On monuments to scholars there may be variations -- Bodley has the Seven Liberal Arts, the mathematician John Blagrave at Reading the Five Regular Solids (Wilson 1998). Here Savile's scholarship becomes his Virtue. These are, in fact and in a visual pun, his Good Works. According to the Articles of Religion (no. 12) of the Church of England, good works (although one cannot be justified by them) are a sign of the soul's acceptability to God. As much as Justice on a lawyer's monument, Euclid on Savile's assures the viewer that he is Saved.

If the figures epitomize their various cultures, and Savile his, there is another ambivalent reading of the monument available. The Four Wise Men bring their gifts to England, representing the strands that went to make up Early Modern English culture. The discrepancy in the size of the figures -- the Mages of the past dwarfed by the Sage of the present -- might relate to a contemporary controversy about English potential. England was to be seen as the new Greece and Rome, but greater than both; the Church of England a refoundation of the Primitive Church, but without its weaknesses. This is a theme in much contemporary writing.(4) The monument could be seen as a patriotic statement about the superiority of English culture: History culminates in Savile.

The upper levels, with their representations of the heavens and Heaven, deal with Savile's ultimate destination. Milton reminds us (Lycidas (1638) 11. 78-83) that

 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, ...
 But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
 And perfet witness of all judging love;
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed ...

This characterization of Fame as a heavenly attribute, only truly to be found after the Last Judgement, is to be found on other monuments which conflate the Angel of the Last Trumpet with Fame (e.g. the monument to Henry (d. 1616) and William (d. 1625) Cavendish at Edensor, Derbyshire. See Wilson 1998:91-2 and notes). The figure on Savile's monument, leaning as it does on a shield with Savile's arms & his owl crest, would seem to emphasize the Fame, rather than the Judgement, aspect. But the owl is an attribute of Minerva as well as of Savile, and its presence here may be intended to indicate the presence of that Goddess, thus paralleling the figure of Minerva/Wisdom on Bodley's monument.

If Anthony Wood's description of the two cherubs who flank Fame is correct, and the dexter was once `beholding the face of the party represented in a glass', then we are again in the realms of iconographical ambivalence. The term `glass' might refer either to a mirror or a crystal ball: either appropriate for Savile. A crystal ball can be `symbolic of the divine world of light before the creation of the earth' (Ferguson 1961: 175). In the Ptolomaic universe, Earth is surrounded by a `series of hollow and transparent globes', one for each planet, one for the fixed stars, an outer one for the Primum Mobile, and beyond that Heaven (See Lewis 1967: 96f.). It may also represent insight (as in the fortune-teller's crystal ball) and Prudence. The mirror is an alternative form of the attribute of Prudence and may also be an attribute of Truth. Wood's wording, and the pose of the damaged cherub, make a mirror seem a more likely accessory, although a crystal ball would provide an appropriate balance in the heavenly sphere to Savile's earthly scholarly interests. The mirror has a wide range of symbolic readings. Besides Prudence and Truth, it may actually refer, by means of etymology, to the study of the heavens (`The Latin word for mirror (speculum) has given us the verb "to speculate"; and originally speculation was scanning the sky and the related movement of the stars by means of a mirror ...' Chevalier & Gheerbrant 1994:657). The idea of the mirror as a symbol of the soul is found in Plato, Plotinus, St Athanasius and St Gregory of Nyssa (Chevalier & Gheerbrant 1994: 659-60). When the cherub looks at Savile, represented in the glass, therefore, he is examining Savile's soul, which is deemed worthy enough for the other cherub to be `writing his name in the book of life'. There may also in the glass-holding cherub be allusions both to St Paul's reference to the true vision attainable in heaven -- `For now we see through a glasse, darkely, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am knowen' (I Corinthians xiii,12) -- and to the platonic doctrine of Forms. The image of Savile in the glass is a shadow -- an imperfect, earthly reflection of the heavenly truth. We may even be invited to read the cherub as Savile's soul contemplating his earthly form in a mirror, thus submitring to the admonition nosce teipsum -- `know thyself'. The cherub who writes Savile's name in the Book of Life is less symbolically complex, but together these little heavenly twins provide a celestial summation of Savile's life, dedicated as it was to knowledge (the glass) and writing (the book).

The framing of the monument between the heavens and the earth also refers to Savile's great legacy to Oxford-- the Chairs of Astronomy and Geography. Although he saw these subjects as neglected, they were intensely fashionable at the turn of the 17th century, as is shown by John Donne's references to them (`The Good-Morrow' 11.12-13,17-18). (The quarter-sphere on Savile's monument shows the southern half of the eastern hemisphere -- the better part of the world as defined by Donne-- `without sharp North, without declining West'. Although Donne's poems were not published until 1633, the two men may have known each other). Savile is poised between his Chairs, and above his Seats of learning.

The monument invites an elaborate and multi-layered reading. It is placed in a space designed principally for the use of members of the College, who would know Latin, and might be expected to be aware of Savile's history, achievement and patronage. This is the monument as emblem, containing information about Savile's life and about his intellectual interests and those of his contemporaries. Although it deals with the public man, it is not a public monument, and there is a paradox in that on it what was overt in Savile's life becomes esoteric. There is an element of flattery, not only of Savile himself, but of the reader -- if the Mertonian who looks at the monument finds himself capable of reading it, then he may regard himself as in some sense a sharer of Savile's intellectual eminence.

Like many contemporary monuments, Savile's is a piece of drama, a dumb-show on which characters act out a symbolic scene which involves not just the figures represented, but the place in which the monument is situated, It is a memory-theatre, which keeps alive not just the memory of Savile, but the corporate memory of Merton (and indeed Eton) of whose history he formed a part. In viewing the memorial the Mertonian sees History in action, but in addition he acts out history in reading his (Savile's and, corporately, his own) story.

Hurst

Savile features on another monument erected by his wife to herself and some of her descendants (FIGURE 2). Gossip suggests that she was conscious of the exigencies of being married to a scholar -- when Savile was knighted in 1604 she complained that she had deserved an earlier and a greater honour (Maxwell-Lyte 1875: 187, quoting a letter from Sir Thomas Edmonds to Sir Ralph Winwood), but the evidence of the monuments is that she adored her third husband. Even when she resented his work, she was able to recognize its importance, and her concern for her husband's health is evidence of her love (Peck 1732: 49):

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I shall take here Leave to set down one Word or two more, concerning Sir Henry Savil's ... Pains.... he was so sedulous at his Study, that his lady thereby thought herself neglected; & coming to him one Day, as he was in his Study, saluted him thus. `Sir Henry I would I were a Book too, & then you would a little more respect me.' Whereto one, standing by, replied, `Madam, you must then be an Almanack, that he might change every Year.' Whereat she was not a little displeased. The same his lady, a little before Chrysostome was finished (when Sir Henry lay sick) said, `if Sir Harry died, she would burn Chrysostome, for killing her Husband.' Which Mr. Bois hearing [he] answered, `That so to do were great Pity.' To whom she replied `Why? Who was Chrysostome?' To which he answer'd, `One of the sweetest preachers since the Apostles Times.' Wherewith she was so satisfied, `that, she said, she would not do it for all the World.'

The monument which Lady Savile erected at St Nicholas Hurst was a lavish gift to the daughter and son-in-law with whom she lived during her widowhood. This explains the selection of figures and their arrangement. There are three bays, the middle projecting, surmounted by a canopy from which hang curtains held back and up by figures of angels and cherubs to reveal three sets of figures. The whole is surmounted by three achievements of arms on cartouches. The inscription panel under the central figures reads

HERE RESTETH IN EXPECTATION OF A IOYEFVLL RESVRRECTION [Y.sup.e]
LADY MARGARET SAVILE DAVGHTER TO GEORGE DACRES ESQUIER;
DESCENDED FROM [Y.sup.e] [R.sup.t] NOBLE & ANCIENT FAMILY OF THE
 BARONS
DACRES OF [Y.sup.e] NORTH
SHE HAD THREE HUSBANDS
THE FIRST GEORGE GARRARD ESQ. SECOND SONNE TO [S.sup.r] WILL:
 GARRARD
[KN.sup.t] SOMETIMES [L.sup.d] MAIOR OF LONDON. THE SECOND IOHN
 SMITH ESQ:
[sic, but there seems to be a line missing on the inscription,
which one would expect to read, `son to -- Smith, of --']
IN THE COVNTY OF ESSEX THE THIRD THE HONORABLE & MOST
FAMOVS KNIGHT BOTH FOR THE STVDYES & ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
[S.sup.r]. HENRY SAVILE READER TO QVEENE ELIZABETH OF BLESSED
MEMORYE WARDEN OF MERTON COLLEDG IN OXFORD, & PROVOST
 OF EATON, WHERE HE LYETH INTERRED
 AND BY THEM NINE CHILDREN
BY HER FIRST HUSBAND THREE DAVGHTERS THE ELDEST [Y.sup.e] LADY
ANNE CARLETON, WIFE TO THE LORD CARLETON VICECOVNT
DORCHESTER; THE SECOND DYED IN HER INFANCY. THE YOUNGEST
THE LADY FRANCES HARISON, WIFE TO [S.sup.r]. RICHARD HARISON KNIGHT,

BY HER SECOND HVSBAND THREE SONNES, ALL [WC.sup.ch] DECEASED IN
 THEIR INFANCY

BY HER THIRD HVSBAND TWO SONNES, [W.sup.ch]. DYED YOUNGE AND ONE
DAVGHTER [Y.sup.e] LADY ELIZABETH SIDLEY, WIFE TO [S.sup.r] JOHN
 SIDLEY [BARRONE.sup.t].

SHE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT
WHILST SHE WAS YET LIVINGE FOR HER SELFE & HERS
BEINGE DESIROVS TO DEPOSITE HER BODY IN [Y.sup.e] PLACE
WHERE LIVEINGE SHE HAD FOVND SOE MVCH CONTENT
& SOE SWEET A REPOSE OF HER AGE
SHEE WAS BORNE AT CHESHUNT IN HARTFORD
SHEIRE & DYED [A.sup.o] DOM 1631
AETATIS SVAE 73

Lady Savile intended both a memorial to herself and an ancestral monument to the Harrison family, with whom she lived. That such a gift would be acceptable is indicated by her son-in-law Sir Richard Harrison's having already placed brasses to some of his ancestors in the church. The figures shown are, in the centre, Lady Savile with Sir Henry, facing each other at a prie-dieu, dexter Lady Anne Carleton and Lady Elizabeth Sidley, and sinister Sir Richard and Lady Harrison, with their children below (Kemp 1984: 3-5; West 1983: 9f). The monument seems to show only Lady Savile's living descendants (the only dead figure is Sir Henry) and therefore almost certainly pre-dates 1627, when Lady Carleton died. Lady Savile does not seem to have erected monuments for either her first or her second husband, and it is interesting that even though Lady Harrison was the daughter of George Garrard, it is her step-father Sir Henry Savile who is shown on the monument. The presence of Sir Henry, as well as the celebration of him on Lady Savile's inscription, does suggest that she held him in warm affection and valued him more highly than her previous spouses. Since the monument was essentially intended for the Harrisons, the absence of her two other sons-in-law should not be taken as indicating a lack of affection, but the figures and the wording of the inscription together do suggest that this monument is designed to celebrate the place and people who were closest to Lady Savile's heart -- her three daughters, her Harrison grandchildren, Sir Richard Harrison, and her third husband.

In contrast to the esoteric memorial celebrating Sir Henry Savile's professional life, we have here a public memorial to Lady Savile's emotional life. In a parish church, rather than a private chapel, its inscription is in English rather than the more exclusive Latin. Lady Savile sees her husband's life in terms of what he did, her own in terms of what she felt. (For another example of a 17th-century woman celebrating her emotional life, see Wilson 1997).

The two monuments, together with the surviving portraits of Sir Henry Savile, show a consistency in his depiction that makes it certain that his figure on both the monuments is based on portraits, suggesting that the other figures are also authentic representations. The degree to which figures on monuments may be seen as portraits, rather than depictions of the idea of the person -- a gentlewoman, a scholar -- is a matter of some dispute; with this monument there is enough comparative material to support its authenticity.

The workshop/s which produced the monuments have not yet been identified, but they are high quality metropolitan work, and indicate the prosperity of the family. Savile, who started off as the younger son of a high-achieving Yorkshire family, ended up a rich man. Lady Savile was also from a cadet branch of an old northern family. We are here dealing with the gentry and the meritocracy of the period, rather than the aristocracy: it is noteworthy, on the basis of of these monuments, which represent very conspicuous consumption, just how prosperous that section of Early Modern society was. Savile's life may have been intellectual, but he made a great deal of money with his mind.

Eton

Savile's memorial at Eton, where he is buried, is a plain floor-slab, with the inscription (Fuller 1840: III, 432),

HIC JACENT OSSA ET CINERES HENRICI SAVILL, SUB SPE CERTA RESURRECTIONIS, NATUS APUD BRADLEY IUXTA HALIFAX, IN COMITATU EBOR. ANNO DOMINI 1549, ULTIMO DIE MENSIS NOVEMBRIS, OBIIT IN COLLEGIO ETONENSI. ANNO DOMINI 1621, XIX DIE MENSIS FEBRURARII.(5)

This plain statement of the limits of his life is felt appropriate for the place where his body is buried.(Savile seems to have been buried at Eton not just because he died there, but because his son, whose death was the deciding factor in his resolution to devote his fortune to educational purposes (DNB), is buried there: Wood (1813: II, 315) says that he was buried in the chapel at Eton `near to the body of Henry his son (who died 1604, aged 8 years) ...'. There is, however, a monument associated with him originating at Eton in the form of the monumental frontispiece to his edition of Chrysostom (FIGURE 3). This shows the twin foundations of Eton (the representation is the basis for the painting of Eton on his memorial) and King's College, Cambridge, and the whole takes the form of a magnificent triumphal arch, embellished with figures of theologians, and topped with obelisks celebrating Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps this was felt to be a sufficient monument, or perhaps his physical, if deliquescent, presence at Eton, was felt to preclude the need for him to be memorialized there in any elaborate way.

[Figure 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Nigel Llewellyn (1991) has argued that we should understand Early Modern funerary practices in terms of the social and the natural bodies. The Savile monuments suggest that this division may be too simple. Sir Henry's natural body is at Eton, and it is there that the essential facts about that natural body are recorded -- date and place of birth, and date and place of death. The monument to his social body is at Merton, where his career is recorded in an elaborate visual code. But Lady Savile's monument deals with the missing factor of the two-fold classification of the person -- the familial and emotional body -- and it is there that Sir Henry is joined to the wife whom he undoubtedly exasperated, but who loved him and took pride in his achievements and position.

The biographical information available about the Saviles makes it easy to read their monuments. But these material objects add greatly to our understanding of the cultural, intellectual and financial milieu in which they lived, and suggest the riches available from incorporating an awareness of the importance of such objects into the study of historical archaeology.

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Professor N.D.C. Hammond, who read a draft of this paper, made various useful suggestions, and furnished me with some technical vocabulary, and also to ANTIQUITY's anonymous referees. Any errors are, of course, my own.

(1) In 1813: ii, 316, Wood describes the monument as `most sumptuous'.

(2) `MS/Sir Henry Savile, Warden of Merton, Provost of Eton/I was/Anyone who would look for his bodily remains here would be disappointed/Eton guards that most distinguished trust/the imperishable memory of his virtues and of the benefactions/which embraced both his Colleges, (and) most notably the University/of Oxford, and by which indeed/he holds the whole world in his debt/and also the affection of his most loving wife/(these things) this stone has in its keeping/ B[ene] M[erenti] P[osuit] Margaret, his most devoted consort/In this one act of setting up this (monument) lovingly disobedient' I am grateful to Professor E.J. Kenney, FBA, for supplying me with this translation. nunc primum editi (1618), Tract of the original of the monasteries (Bodleian MS. 3499, art.17) and Tract concerning the union of England and Scotland, written at the command of the king (Bodleian MS. 3499, art. 22). Savile's Tacitus was well-enough regarded to attract commendatory verses by Ben Jonson (`To Sir Henry Savile' Epigrams XCV).

(3) For Savile's bibliography, see DNB and Wood (1813: ii, 317). The works concerned with Britain are Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam praecipui ... primum in lucem editi (1596); Thomae Bradwardini Arch. olim Cantuariensis de causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum ad suos Mertonenses, libri tres ex scriptis codicibus

(4) E.g. Ben Jonson: `TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOUED, THE AVTHOR MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT VS' ll. 19-54; Samuel Daniel: `Musophilus' 11. 939-968.

(5) `Here lie, in the sure hope of resurrection, the bones and ashes of Henry Savile, born at Bradley near Halifax, in Yorkshire, AD 1549, on the last day of the month of November, died in Eton College, AD 1621, on the 19th day of the month of February.'

References

AUBREY, J. 1962 [1669-1696]. Brief Lives [ed. O. Lawson Dick). Harmondsworth: Penguin.

BOTT, A. 1964. The monuments in Merton College chapel. Oxford: Blackwell.

CHEVALIER, J. & A. GHEERBRANT. 1994. A dictionary of symbols (trans. J. Buchanan-Brown). Oxford: Blackwell.

FERGUSON, G. 1961. Signs & symbols in Christian art. London: Oxford University Press.

FULLER, T. 1840. The History of the Worthies of England (ed. P. Austin Nuttall). London: Thomas Tegg.

KEMP, B. 1984. The monuments in Hurst Church, Berkshire. Hurst: St Nicholas Hurst Church.

LEWIS, C.S. 1967. The discarded image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LLEWELLYN, N. 1991. The art of death. London: Reaktion.

MAXWELL-LYTE, H.C. 1875. A History of Eton College 14401875. London: Macmillan.

PECK, F. 1732. Desiderata Curiosa. London: T. Evans.

SAVILE, H. 1613. S. Ioannis Chrysostomi Opera Graece. Eton: John Norton.

WEST, D.M. 1983. The parish church of St Nicholas Hurst. Hurst: St Nicholas Hurst Church.

WILSON, J. 1993. The memorial by Nicholas Stone to Sir Thomas Bodley, Church Monuments 8: 57-62.

1995. The archaeology of Shakespeare. Stroud: Sutton.

1997. Patronage and pietas: the monuments of Lady Anne Clifford, Journal of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society 97:119-42

1998. Ethics girls: the personification of moral systems on early modern English monuments, Church Monuments 13: 87-105.

WINWOOD, SIR R. 1725. Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I (ed. Edmund Sawyer). London: T. Ward.

WOOD, A. 1786. The history and antiquities of the colleges and halls in the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1813. Athenae Oxonienses (new edition). London: F.C. & J. Rivington, etc.

JEAN WILSON(*)

(*) Wholeway, Harlton, Cambridge CB3 7ET, England.

Received 25 August 1999, accepted 9 November 1999, revised 15 February 2000.