Relhan Collection : 156 Fulbourn church. Brass of William de Fulburne, 1391

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

c. 1808Drawn by S LysonsWilliam de Fulbourn was Chaplain to Edward III, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, Rector of St Vigor’s Fulbourn and a Baron of the Exchequer 1328. Layer records the grave stone of marble with the effigy of William de Fulbourn, and Blomefield recorded the full inscription in 1727, but this was fragmentary when Cole visited. However, Cole describes a very large and beautiful grey marble slab, having the full proportions of a priest in his cope, in the middle of the chancel. Typically, ‘marble’ at this time would be Purbeck marble, from quarries around Corfe Castle in Dorset and shipped to London where it was used by brass workshops. When new, such marble is gleaming white, then ages to pale grey. Set against bright new brass it must have been a magnificent sight. Lysons describes and includes an engraving of an ecclesiastic in a richly ornamented cope, under a canopy and with a mutilated inscription around the edge and at the foot, which was copied by Relhan. This large (1.7m long) and magnificent brass is from the London B workshop, and shows edges of de Fulbourn’s choral cope personalised with the initials of William de Fulbourn (WF and FW alternating) and a clasp engraved with the Fulbourn arms. It is the oldest known priestly brass showing a cope. William, as rector, probably gave the church its nave roof, which retains its original steep pitch, and its bosses, removed to the chancel roof in 1870, which include the arms of St Paul's Cathedral where he was once a canon. This superb brass played a significant role in ecclesiological history for, as Nicholas Rogers records ‘one evening in 1839 3 undergraduates of Trinity College called on their tutor. With them they carried the 67 inch long figure of William de Fulburne, which they found lying loose in Fulbourn church. This dramatic demonstration of the neglect into which England’s churches had fallen was intended to obtain support for a projected ecclesiological organisation, the Cambridge Camden Society’. This and similar reports inflamed fervour for rubbing brasses, a popular pastime at Cambridge that led to creation of a nationally important collection (now in Cambridge University Library) and also the Monumental Brass Society. It also quickly led to an active Cambridge Camden Society which, through its offspring, the Ecclesiological Society, drove energetic Victorian restoration programmes that insisted on retaining the medieval, preferably Early English, look by all architects, however drastic the works undertaken. This policy could work well, eg Chesterton (108), or might be taken too far (eg rebuilding of Cambridge St Sepulchre (Round Church)). It has had a radical effect on the look of English (and American) churches today. He had also been a clerk for Joan, princess of Wales and mother of Richard II.Heseltine 1981; Rogers in Hicks 1997; Kinsey pers comm; Lack 1995; Lankester and Blair 2020; Palmer 1932; VCH 2002; Saul N 2009