In 1558, Mary Neville, Lady Dacre, commissioned Hans Eworth, a leading Flemish painter resident in England, to paint her portrait. The occasion was almost certainly to record the success of her long campaign to secure restoration of the Dacre titles for her surviving son Gregory. The titles had forfeited to the Crown in 1541 when her husband, Thomas, Lord Dacre, was executed for murder.

Seated in an armchair at her desk, Lady Dacre dominates the picture spatially and expressively. The contrast with the small portrait of her husband in the background could not be more striking and underscores her triumph in rescuing their children from the consequences of his crime. Dacre's rich black gown and dark fur mantle signify her status as a respectable, wealthy widow, the embroidered sleeves and collar of her chemise providing the only contrast to the dark colors. She is wearing minimal jewelry: rings and a simple chain necklace barely visible at the opening of her collar. To indicate her piety, she is holding an open prayer book in her left hand.

Challenging the image of Lady Dacre as a conventional devout widow, however, is the object she is holding in her other hand—a quill pen. The pen was in fact the weapon she had used to conduct her seventeen-year-long struggle for restoration of the Dacre titles. Eworth's portrait, the first of an English aristocratic woman writing or about to write, thus memorialized her success in deploying a skill long considered inappropriate for women.

Furthermore, in commissioning the portrait, Lady Dacre was as careful about what was omitted from the painting as about what it included. Most notably, it omits any reference to the fact that she had married twice after her first husband's execution and was the mother of six children by her third spouse. These facts would have undermined the image she was fashioning of herself as a devout noble widow dedicated to her first husband's memory and the future of their children.

The following year, Lady Dacre ordered another painting from Eworth, this time a joint portrait of herself and Gregory, the Dacre heir. Once again, she dominates the picture, presenting herself as serious and formidable, while Gregory appears to be something of a fop.

(2) indicates that the woman built two different tombs. For more information on these women, see Appendix 1.

Dates have been added only in cases where there are two women of the same name in the period. Occasionally, the women are listed by the name they used, rather than their last husband's surname.

Mary Allington Chancel

Katherine Arderne Chancel

Anne, Lady Audley Lady Chapel

Elizabeth Audley Chancel

Katherine Babington Adjacent to chancel

Anne Barnardiston High altar

Elizabeth Barnardiston High altar (2)

Dame Joan Barre Chancel

Margaret, Lady Beauchamp of Powick North side of chancel

Margaret Bedingfield Adjacent to chapel

Katherine Berkeley Lady Chapel (2)

Dame Elizabeth Biconyll Lady Chapel

Anne Bourchier South aisle adjoining chancel

Elizabeth Bourchier, Lady Bath

Elizabeth Bourchier, widow of Sir John Lady Chapel

Elisabeth Bourchier (daughter of John,Earl of Bath)

Elisabeth Bourchier, Lady Fitzwarren

Isabel Bourchier, Countess of Devon Chancel

Isabel Bourchier

Margaret Bourchier, Countess of Bath High altar (3)

Joan Bradbury Lady Chapel

Elizabeth Brandon

Jane Bray, Lady Bray Chancel (3)

Elisabeth Bridges, Lady Chandos Chancel (2)

Eleanor Brereton East end of north aisle; probably. Lady Chapel

Anne Brooke, widow of Sir Richard

Anne Broughton

Elizabeth Brown

Lady Lucy Fitzwilliam Brown (2)

Margaret Bulkeley Aisle adjacent to chancel

Maud Bulstrode Aisle adjacent to chancel

Alice Burgh

Jane Calthorpe

Margaret Capell Capell chapel on south side adjacent to chancel

Dame Margaret Carew Chancel

Margaret Catesby Chancel

Jane Chamond South aisle adjacent to chancel

Agnes Cheyne (1494) West wall of nave has brass

Anne Cheyney (1562) East side of south transept

Margaret Choke North or Lady Chapel adjacent to chancel

Alice Clere Chancel before high altar

Elizabeth Clere

Elizabeth Clifford South chapel adjacent to chancel

Dame Agnes Clifton Chantry closet of Our Lady;

North aisle (2)

Isabel Clifton South aisle adjacent to chancel

Anne Cobham (1453) Chancel before high altar

Anne Cobham (1472) Lady Chapel

Barbara Cokayne Our Lady's Chapel

Eleanor Cornwall

Katherine, Countess of Devon

Margaret Courteney

Eleanor Croft North chapel adjacent to chancel

Mable or Maud, Lady Dacre (1508)

Margaret Danby

Anne Danvers (1531) Between Chancel and South

Chapel

Anne Danvers (1539) Chancel

Dame Sybil Danvers Chancel

A brass inscription on the wall of St Swithin's church in East Grinstead, Sussex, records Katherine Grey Lewkenor's death in 1505 and praises her and her husband Richard for having “endowed, founded, [and] adorned” the church “to the laud and honor of God, with divers ornaments and images and an almshouse of 6 persons.” The almshouse was clearly the work of the couple, but Katherine seems to have been responsible for the ornaments referred to in the inscription. In her will, she bequeathed a silver bowl and ewer to be made into a cross for the church, and all her silk gowns to churches in the vicinity for conversion into clerical vestments.

Katherine Lewkenor was one of 82 aristocratic Yorkist and early Tudor widows whose religious bequests included fabric and vestments, plate, jewels, or prayer books. Like her, they often made gifts of this kind to more than one church, a choice reflecting the fact that they and their families owned land in many parishes and often in more than one county. Almost all of these legacies were intended for use during performance of the Mass at the church's high altar or in the women's chantry chapels. Only nine of the women gave vestments or ritual objects exclusively to their chantries. The others either gave material goods to the high altar or to both the high altar and their chantries. Their identification with the vestments and objects they donated to the high altar brought them as close as possible to the miracle performed during the Mass.

Before the break with Rome led to the gradual confiscation and prohibition of such gifts, the widows of knights and noblemen bestowed what must have seemed to be an unending stream of expensive fabrics, silver and gold plate, and jewels to the churches they patronized. As early as 1537, however, the dissolution of the smaller monasteries evidently proved sufficiently alarming to cause a dramatic decline in the number of legacies of this kind. Of the 54 women who donated vestments to churches between 1450 and 1550, for example, only four did so after 1537. Similarly, they gave only five of 38 liturgical objects for the performance of the Mass after that date.

For more information on these women, see Appendix 1.

*=joint foundation with husband

Before 1540, with chantries

Dame Joan Barre (1485), school with chantry

*Dame Margery Bourchier

*Dame Eleanor Brereton (1522)

Dame Anne Cobham

*Elizabeth Fettiplace

*Dame Katherine Grey (1505)

Margaret Grey, Countess of Kent

Dame Elizabeth Holles

Dame Jane Huddleston

Margaret Hungerford, Lady Hungerford

Dame Thomasine Percival

Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk

*Sybil Quatermain

Margery, Lady Roos

Anne Scrope, Lady Scrope

Dame Margaret Shelton

*Dame Eleanor Stafford

Maud Willoughby, Lady Cromwell

Dame Anne Worsley

After 1540

Dame Isabel Gresham

Dame Anne Packington

Dame Frances Peyton

*Bridget Russell, Countess of Bedford

19 built before1540

4 after 1540

The bidding prayer on Sir Thomas Barnardiston's monument at Great Cotes, Lincolnshire, was an elaborate version of the simple request for prayers that appeared on virtually every tomb in pre-Reformation England. Nonetheless, it did not satisfy the Barnardistons’ desire for perpetual prayers. His widow therefore undertook to found a chantry, funded by land worth 7 marks per annum, which her husband had bequeathed for that purpose. A chantry was an endowment to support perpetual Masses for the soul of its founder and any other persons she named. Although prayers could be funded for a specific period of time, only perpetual chantries in the form of specially-built altars or chapels became part of the fabric of the churches in which they were located. These chantries, which were founded and/or built by aristocratic women, form the subject of this chapter.

Endowments for everlasting prayers first became popular in the thirteenth century. By 1300, they had become the “ultimate personal strategy for intercession.” From this time onward, founding chantries was the best possible provision for the afterlife, for those who could afford it. The efficacy of this strategy depended on the doctrine of Purgatory, which provided a coherent means of dealing with sin, and the increasing importance of the Mass as a means for reducing the amount of time a soul remained there. The more Masses that were said, the shorter the time.

Eamon Duffy has underscored the “overwhelming preoccupation” of the clergy and laity alike with shortening their stay in Purgatory and the “supreme efficacy of the Mass” in relieving its pains, while Jonathan Hughes has called the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries “the age of the perpetual chantry”. Although half of all chantries were founded between 1425 and 1500, Jonathan Finch has found that in Norfolk, the fate of the soul in Purgatory remained a major concern of worshippers until at least the beginning of the 1520s. Aristocratic women continued to establish chantries right through the period of Henrician reform.

This chapter focuses on chantries commissioned and constructed with the women's funds and according to their directions. The results of their endowments rivaled those of men of their class.

(2) indicates that the woman built two different tombs. For more information on the women, see Appendix 1.

Dates have been added only in cases where there are two women of the same name in the period. Occasionally, women are listed by the name they used rather than their last husband's surname.

Material of tomb and sculpted or brass effigies where known; Caen stone is a yellowish limestone.

Mary Allington

Katherine Arderne, brass

Anne, Lady Audley

Elizabeth Audley, brass

Katherine Babington, alabaster

Anne Barnardiston, Easter sepulcher

Elizabeth Barnardiston, stone

Joan Barre, brass

Margaret Bedingfield, terracotta

Katherine, Lady Berkeley

Elizabeth Biconyll, brass

Anne Sulyard Bourchier, brass

Elizabeth Bourchier, Lady Bath, widow of 1st earl

Elizabeth Bourchier, widow of Sir John

Elisabeth Bourchier (daughter of John, Earl of Bath), brass

Elisabeth Bourchier, Lady Fitzwarren

Isabel Bourchier, Countess of Devon

Isabel Bourchier

Margaret Bourchier, Countess of Bath, sculpted

Joan Bradbury

Elizabeth Brandon

Jane Bray, Lady Bray

Eleanor Brereton, white alabaster

Elisabeth Bridges, Lady Chandos

Anne Brooke, widow of Sir Richard

Anne Broughton

Elizabeth Brown

Lady Lucy Fitzwilliam Brown

Margaret Bulkeley

Maud Bulstrode

Alice Burgh

Jane Calthorpe; brass

Margaret Capell

Margaret Carew

Margaret Catesby; brass

Jane Chamond

Agnes Cheyne (1494); brass

Anne Cheyney (1562); brass

Margaret Choke; stone

Alice Clere; brass

Elizabeth Clere; stone with brass

Elizabeth Clifford; Purbeck with brass

Agnes Griffiths Clifton; alabaster

Isabel Clifton; brass

Anne Cobham (1453); alabaster

Anne Cobham (1472); marble

Barbara Cokayne; marble

Katherine, Countess of Devon; gilded effigy

Margaret Courteney; brass

Eleanor Croft; stone

Mable or Maud, Lady Dacre (1508)

Margaret Danby

Anne Danvers (1531); brass

Anne Danvers (1539); brass

Sybil Danvers; grey marble, brass

Anne Darrell; alabaster

Elizabeth Delabear; brass

Elizabeth Denys

Jane Denny

Elizabeth Donne

Elizabeth Drury; Purbeck marble, brass

Jane Dudley, Duchess of Northumberland; brass

Jane Dynham, Lady Dynham

Katherine Edgecombe

Mary Englefield

Emote Fermour; marble, brass

Constance Ferrers

Dorothy Ferrers; marble

Jane Fiennes, Lady Clinton

Elizabeth Fineux; brass

Eleanor Fitzalan, Countess of Arundel; Purbeck marble

Benedicta Fitzherbert

Elizabeth Fitzherbert; alabaster

Jane Fitzwilliam

Elizabeth Fitzwilliams; marble

Joan Fowler; marble

Elisabeth Frowick (1515)

Ursula Giffard; alabaster

Katherine Gordon

Elizabeth Goring; brass

Isabel Gresham

Katherine Gresley

Lady Anne Grey (Clement, 1557); alabaster

Lady Anne Grey (Drury Walsingham, 1559)

Cecily Grey, Marchioness of Dorset

English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450-1550 is the first comprehensive study of Yorkist and early Tudor aristocratic women's role in the flowering of religious art—architecture, sculpture, stained glass, engraving, textiles, and plate ornaments—that transformed English churches in the century before the break with Rome. They enlarged, restored, and decorated their parish churches and other favorite religious institutions; built tombs, stained-glass windows, chantry chapels, and altars; endowed almshouses and schools to perform works of charity and pray for their souls; and donated many priceless and luxurious textiles, jeweled objects, and plate to adorn the celebration of the Mass. The vast majority of these women's projects were designated for the parish churches where their principal manors or castles were located, the parish being the community that formed the basis of their social, economic, and political position. As members of a community's leading family, these women expected and received the deference of the community's inhabitants, a high proportion of whom were their tenants and servants. In return, they built, restored, and beautified their parish churches, the sole public buildings in the majority of these communities, while their commissions were the only art most of their neighbors ever encountered.

Whatever projects they commissioned, the religious purpose of their patronage was the same: to secure perpetual prayers for their souls and the souls of their closest kin. All the evidence indicates that members of the aristocracy continued to believe in the doctrine of Purgatory and to trust in the efficacy of prayers for the dead throughout the 1530s and into the 1540s. Only the intervention of the state interrupted and finally stopped their gifts, providing yet further confirmation of the revisionist argument that widespread, often active, support for the Church and religious status quo existed in the generation or two before Henry VIII's break with Rome. As we shall see, however, the tombs and buildings that aristocratic women built served equally important secular purposes. They consciously planned their monuments, chapels, and additions to their parish churches to proclaim their and their families’ status and wealth, and to represent their dominant position in their villages. In a culture that believed that the social and political hierarchy formed part of the divine order of creation, they saw no contradiction in projects that embodied both worldly and spiritual aspirations.