Transcript

of

The Alleged Tomb of Bishop Leofric in Exeter Cathedral.

The Alleged Tomb of Bishop Leofric in Exeter Cathedral.

by

Rev John Hellins, M.A.

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol. XIX, 1887, pp. 675-678

Prepared by Michael Steer

In the absence of the late Rev Hellins, this paper was communicated to members at the Association’s July 1885, Plympton meeting by J. Brooking Rowe, FSA, FLS, The Confessor appointed Leofric as Bishop of Cornwall and Bishop of Crediton in 1046, but because Crediton was a small town, the new bishop secured papal permission to move the episcopal seat to Exeter in 1050. Leofric died in 1072. Although his remains were moved to the new Exeter Cathedral which was built after his death, their location is no longer known and the current tomb does not mark his resting place. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Three structures within Exeter Cathedral have in some way been traditionally connected with the memory of Leofric, its first bishop, neither of them, however, the work of his own - the eleventh - century, but two being of the fourteenth, and one of the sixteenth.

(a) Archdeacon Freeman, in his Architectural History (pp. 37-41), shows that the Choir Sedilia were known by the name of Bishop Leofric's  “Stone," in memory of his having been seated at his installation between King Edward the Confessor and Queen Eadgytha.

(b) Then there is the monument fixed against the south wall of St James' Chapel. Leofric (1) is said to have been buried in cryptâ ejusdem ecclesiæ, and under St. James' Chapel is the only crypt of the present Cathedral Search was made here for his grave in 1847, but nothing was found. Of course, this crypt is of a much later date than any that may have existed in Leofric's Church.

(c) Lastly, there was the tomb, placed against the east wall of the South Tower, between the south choir aisle and St. John Baptist's Chapel, which was put up by the Chapter, in 1568, at the suggestion of John Hoker, alias Vowell, and removed in 1885. It is to this last memorial that the following remarks refer.

It does not now seem clear why Hoker fixed on the east wall of the South Tower as the site of Leofric's grave. The quotation from Brice's edition of his history, given by Archdeacon Freeman at page 71, note 4, speaks of the bishop's burial in the churchyard, "under a simple and broken marble stone;" and as Leofric's Church occupied the ground of the present Lady Chapel and eastern end of the Choir, it may well be that the ground now covered by the transept and towers was part of his churchyard. Cat then comes the fact that the floor of the transept, which must be at the same level now as when Hoker saw it, is quite five feet above the natural level of the soil. Moreover, any grave situated at the north-east angle of the Tower must have been destroyed in digging foundations. Hoker does not seem to say that he saw the “simple marble stone" in the transept-floor; still, there may have lingered to his day acme tradition which induced him to fix on this spot.

By the way, it may be remarked of Hoker that, however great his merit as a chronicler, his utter ignorance of the growth of gothic architecture renders him a very unsafe guide as to the date of the various portions of the cathedral; for instance, he evidently thought that the present Lady Chapel was Leofric's Church, built in Saxon times. Unfortunately his mistakes, natural enough perhaps in his day, have been copied and repeated by many subsequent writers.

In 1568 then, at Hoker's persuasion, the Chapter set up a monument to Bishop Leofric, but on very economical principles, scarcely honourable to the  “memory of so good and worthy and noble a personage." They simply availed themselves of the materials at hand, in the shape of fragments of altars, shrines, and tombs, demolished, we may guess, by the Commissioners of Edward VI., twenty years before; and so, putting together the disjecta membra of at least some half-dozen structures, they produced something like an altar-tomb, on the cornice of which was placed, in golden letters, the inscription, " Leofricus the first Bysshoppe of Exeter lyeth here." The fact that this tomb lay north and south shows that it could not have corresponded with any older monument; for such must have run east and west, and altogether, to critical eyes, it had a very unreliable look.

However, in popular estimation it retained its credit, and it survived the restoration works of a dozen years ago, when many other monuments were moved to more convenient or suitable positions. Meanwhile the vergers had often observed that the tower wall, between the canopy and the slab of this tomb, sounded when struck as though there was a hollow place within, and they remembered a tradition which told of a box of relics or church plate buried somewhere near.

At length, in August, 1885, orders were given for the cathedral workmen to take the tomb to pieces, and to open the tower wall behind it; and these operations were most carefully carried out, and anxiously watched. No box was found: but the tradition seemed to be justified by the finding of a key, in good preservation, embedded in the masonry of the tomb; while the state of the soil under the stones of the floor for some way round, plainly showed that at some time there had been previous searchers at work, who had left nothing for their successors.

The fragments of the tomb, however, proved most curious In the first place, the slab had evidently formed a little more than half of an altar-slab, which, from its great size, could hardly have belonged to any but a former high altar of the cathedral. It is of Purbeck marble, and, in its present state, 5 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 9 inches wide, and 5 inches thick. It bears three out of the usual five incised crosses; namely, two near the corners of one end, and one just in the middle of the other end, an inch from its edge. The original length therefore, must have been 11 feet. There is no sign that the width was greater than now.

The jambs of the tomb had been made out of portions of Purbeck shafts from pillars of two patterns. The panels of the front were also of Purbeck, taken from at least two monuments, one of which was of Flamboyant character, and with very rich details. But perhaps the most curious find of all was made when the canopy was taken down. This, when in position, had appeared as a stout slab, hollowed out into an elliptical arch, with quatrefoiled outline, and the cusps ending in rounded knobs, and it was of the colour of Purbeck marble. On being taken down it turned out to be the remains of a life-size recumbent figure, and its material freestone, from the quarries at Beer. The hands, now destroyed, had been crossed on the breast; the head and the feet rest on cushions ; the dress and the hair are those of a layman; and from the execution of the whole it seems to be exceedingly good work of the fifteenth century. Whether it will be possible to identify the individual whose effigy was thus dishonoured is no doubt problematical. There is just this clue: On the cushion at the feet is cut what is known as a "merchant's mark," and perhaps someone who has made such marks his study may from this be able to say who this merchant was.

The opening of the tower wall disclosed the reason of the hollow sound. Its face had been formed of the backs of some panels of a reredos, or a shrine, and behind these a large cavity had been roughly hewn out of the wall, and then filled in with a quantity of fragments of carved stonework, some showing traces of great beauty of design and execution, but all in a state of ruin.

The unreal nature of the monument having been made thus apparent, there was no attempt to reconstruct it; but its various portions have been preserved, and lie most of them in the Sylke Chantry under the North Tower, others in St. John Baptist's ChapeL The site is now marked by a rectangular recess cut in the wall, in which are placed three of the reredos panels mentioned above. These are all mutilated; but one of them retains its full proportions, and is 2 feet 6 inches high, by 1 foot 5½  inches wide. Each bears the figure of a saint within a moulded frame with carved pateræ, and they have traces of colour and gilding. The name of one saint - S. Dionysius, in an abbreviated form - can still be read on the supporting bracket.

Footnote

(1)    See Oliver’s Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, p. 8.