CHURCHES of SUSSEX
Brass Rubbings of Sussex
Firle - Sir Edward Gage
There are four Gage portraits among the six fine brasses at Firle. One brass
is to an unknown warrior with his sword, and the oldest brass shows Bartholomew
Bolne and his wife as they were in 1476. Sir Edward Gage and his wife have
their brasses on their tomb; he has a pointed beard and she wears a Paris
cap. He was a judge of the martyrs, and is said to have been courteous to
them; he looks as if he would be.
Thomas Gage, who died in 1590, is here magnificent in armour with his wife
in her embroidered petticoat, with two daughters dressed like her, and Sir
Edward's son John with two wives. The third Gage brass is to Lady Mary Howard,
who married at 18 and died at 36; she has her shroud drawn tightly under her
feet and over her head.
Chief of all these brasses, and of peculiar interest
to lovers of art and antiquity, is the brass of John Gage, for it was made
in Shakespeare's day in the workshops where Shakespeare's bust was made for
his grave at Stratford, the engraver being Gerard Johnson, a member of the
school in which Epiphanius Evesham, our first known great sculptor, was trained.
It is said that Sir John Gage sent Johnson one of his wife's caps to copy,
and there is still in existence the drawing from which the brass was engraved.
One of the two wives of Sir John had three husbands, and of her the interesting
story is told that she, Lady Penelope D'Arcy, was loved by three men and promised
to marry them all. She kept her word, and John was one of them.
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