Note 60 — HISTORY OF SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS.
Reading edition
This is one of the earliest specimens we have of the cross-legged monument. It is made of Irish oak, as well the table part, as the effigy. On the pannels are the arms of several of the worthies, and at the foot the arms of France and England, quarterly, which shews these escutcheons to have been painted since the reign of king Henry the fourth. This monument stood entire until the parliamentary army, during the Cromwell usurpation, having garrisoned the city of Gloucester against the king, the soldiers tore it to pieces, which being about to be burned, were bought of them by Sir Humphrey Tracy, of Stanway, and privately laid up until the Restoration, when the pieces were put together, repaired, and ornamented, and again placed in their former situation by Sir Humphrey, who also added a wire screen for their future preservation. There is an engraving of this monument in Sandford’s Genealogical History, page 16, which Rudder, (History of Gloucester, p. 126.) calls a noble representation of it.
Gibbon has left us the following account of this prince, (Rom. Hist. vol. 11. p. 32)—“Robert, Duke of Normandy, one of the chiefs of the first crusade, on his father’s death was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of temper; his cheerfulness seduced him to the indulgence of pleasure, his profuse liberality impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man, became the essential defects of a sovereign. For the trifling sum of ten thousand marks (the one hundredth part of its present yearly revenue) he mortgaged Normandy during his absence in the first crusade, to the English usurper; but his behaviour in the Holy War, announced in Robert, a reformation of manners, and restored him in some degree to the public esteem.”
There is an engraving of Robert, Duke of Normandy, in Ducarel’s Anglo-Norman Antiq. Plate 5.
The monument of William, Earl of Flanders, son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, as also two of his seals, are engraven in Sandford’s Genealogical Hist. p. 17.