Brass Rubbing: John Lord Le Strange and Jacquette

From Horowitz. 2002. Although Lord Le Strange died in 1479, the brass was not created until 1509; it thus portrays a lord and his lady in dress common at the beginning of the 16th century and not at his death. He has a passeguard on his left shoulder, a petticoat of mail and the rounded sabbatons on his feet. A flower grows between his feet. Lady Le Strange wears an outer gown fastened across the breast by a band of roses. Her girdle hangs loosely about her waist and is decorated with three suns, a chain hanging from the lowest one. Her sleeves end in fur cuffs. The hairstyle is a simple covering, unlike the pedimental style current in 1509. Joan, their only daughter and heir, is placed between her parents as a 8-inch figure. It was she who commissioned the monument for her parents. She wears the pedimental headdress. The couple lay beneath a double canopy, each of which has a rose in the center. Lord Le Strange was born in 1444 and at the age of five succeeded his father as the 8th Lord Strange of Knocking and 4th Lord Mohun. His last name, Strange, may derive from the "strangers" (extranei) brought to England by Henry Plantagenet, the future King Henry II, in 1148. In 1461, he was knighted and a year later received a license to enter into his father's lands. By 1450, he was married to Jacquette Woodville, yet another daughter of the prolific Richard Woodville and therefore a sister to Edward IV's queen. During the 1470s, Lord Le Strange was on several commissions to array supporters of Edward IV against the adherents of Henry VI, or for foreign war. He also swore allegiance to the king's son on the same occasion when Sir Anthony Grey was present (1997.05.0016). In 1469, letters went out to certain sheriffs to arrest Lord Le Strange for non-payment of a debt, but he seems to have escaped imprisonment by selling several watermills to his creditor. Lord Le Strange died on 16 October 1479, leaving his 16-year-old daughter Joan as sole heir. He may not have lived to see the marriage of Joan to George Stanley. Stanley's father helped put Henry VII, claimant for the Lancastrians, on the throne of England in 1485 through the defeat of the last Yorkist king, Richard III. Since the brass was made at the end of Henry VII's reign, there is little wonder that Yorkist collars were excluded from the effigies.

Horowitz, Mark R. The Monumental Brasses of England: The Horrowitz Collection. Morton Grove, IL: Portcullis Productions, 1980 (1979). p. 29. Horowitz, Mark R. The Monumental Brasses of England. The Horowitz Collection. New Edition, 2002. p.35-36.