Relhan Collection : 244 Lolworth church. Incised slab, with effigies of two Langley ladies

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Labelled in pencil within the bottom margin ‘Langley’s’and ‘Lolworth Church’. This is in the chancel, called ‘white marble’ and dated to reign of Edward IV (1461-83) by Lysons, who also identifies the family from the arms. Benton identifies it as alabaster and c.1480. Relhan has resisted the temptation to draw the worn arms more than tentatively. Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, passed Lolworth to his nephew Henry Langley, who passed it to his younger son Henry, d. 1495, in 1456. He seems to have had 2 wives called Elizabeth who are commemorated here, but this is a bit unclear. The widowed Elizabeth ran the estate during the minority of their son Edward, and married Alexander Hampden, who later rented the estate to the Cutts of Childerley. Brasses of these 2 ladies were recorded in the chancel by Cole1745 ‘<i>a very old and handsome white marble or alabaster grave </i><i>stone, with the figures of two ladies in the full length and habit of the times, with large coifes on their head</i>’. There were coats of arms between them, once coloured but too worn for him to make out, wear butterfly head-dresses and arms including those of Langley. Even Layer, who gives a detailed account of the heraldry on the brass, including the Hampden arms, was unable to read the inscription as it was so defaced. Relhan’s drawing of these slim women in identical elegant clothing looks like an indent of a brass (probably on Purbeck marble, not alabaster) that Cole sketched in 1745. It is particularly unfortunate that this medieval stone, the only one in the Collection for women alone, has not yet been traced.</p><p>Lysons 1808; Palmer 1932; RCHME 1968; VCH 1989 </p></p>