The Jefferay Monument, Chiddingly

[poliphilo]

 The Jefferay Memorial in Chiddingly church, East Sussex, commemorates three generations of a single county family. The males held high office- as you tend to do (even now) if you're very wealthy- and don't seem, otherwise, to have done anything particularly memorable. It was erected in 1612 by Edward Montagu, the son in law of John and Alice Jefferay. The sculptor is unknown, but there's agreement that he was probably operating out of the sculptural workshops of London or Southwark. He might have been William Cure the Younger or possibly- a much longer shot- the great Epiphanius Evesham. John and Alice are lying down, a granddaughter kneels in front of them, and they are flanked by Edward Montagu and his wife Elizabeth- both of them standing. The standing figures are among the very earliest to appear on any English church monument. The central figures are much battered, the flanking ones less so, though Edward has lost a hand and Elizabeth has lost both. The battering, I've seen it suggested, may have occurred because John Jefferay was being mistaken for the infamous "hanging" judge Jefferies who made a public enemy of himself in the wake of the Monmouth rebellion several generations later, but this seems rather fanciful to me.

It's a terrific thing, not great art but memorable- and what makes it peculiarly memorable is Dame Elizabeth's low-cut bodice and drum like skirt (known, I believe, as a farthingale) Pevsner calls her get-up "preposterous'. Well, that's one word for it... 









It's a month since we were here- on our very last self-propelled church crawl. It'll be harder, now we don't have a car, to get to places- like Chiddingly- a little off the beaten track. Ah well, all good things come to and end- and there aren't that many old churches within a day's drive that we haven't yet visited. Besides, with Elizabeth Montagu, we're going out a high note...