The Hales Monument in Canterbury Cathedral: Ships, Commemoration and New knowledge in the Late Sixteenth Century
Supervised by Dr Tom Nickson
The monument to Sir James Hales and his family, now in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, is a unique representation of a sea burial in sixteenth-century English funerary art. Sir James, a member of a prominent Kent gentry family, died in 1589 during a counter-Armada against Philip II of Spain. His body was not repatriated, but buried at sea, and the monument was erected almost a decade later by his friend, Richard Lee. The presentation of Hales’s sea burial was highly unconventional, even potentially shocking for a contemporary audience, challenging contemporary expectations concerning respectable burial. Yet the monument was erected in the prestigious location of a royal chapel within England’s premier cathedral.
In this thesis I explore this monument, asking why it was made in this highly unusual form. I also question why ship imagery is such a rare feature of funerary art of this period, a time of burgeoning global maritime enterprise, exploration and naval warfare with Spain. This absence is particularly striking when contrasted with the popularity of maritime imagery in other areas of art and material culture. The thesis explores this disparity, questioning what it can reveal about contemporary attitudes and emotions regarding seafaring, and contributing to recent reassessments of maritime histories.
In addition to the novel iconography of the sea burial, the memorial features a painted landscape panel that is exceptionally rare in funerary monuments of this period. Together, these innovative features speak to contemporary interest in topography, maritime technology and in new systems of knowledge, and expanding geographical and intellectual horizons. Whereas academic study has tended to treat funerary monuments as distinct from other classes of visual and material culture, this thesis situates the Hales monument within its broader cultural context, using it as a ‘frontispiece’ through which to explore a range of visual, literary and material culture in Elizabethan England.
Education
PhD Candidate, The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute of Art (2021 – present)
MA History of Art, The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute of Art (2019-20), Awarded Â鶹ÊÓƵ New Direction Scholarship. Special Option: ‘England Europe and Beyond: Art, Identity, Trade and Politics in the Middle Ages’
Dissertation: ‘The Chantry Chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete in Winchester Cathedral’ (Awarded Sam Fogg Prize for a Pre-1500 Dissertation Topic, 2020)
2018-19 Â鶹ÊÓƵ Graduate Diploma in the History of ArtÌý
1983-86 Oxford University MA (Hons) English Language and Literature
Research Interests
Chantry chapels, death and funerary commemoration in the 15th and 16th centuries
Art of trade, encounter and politics (including maritime art)Ìý
Publications
‘The Chantry Chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete in Winchester Cathedral’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 175 (2022) – (Awarded Reginald Taylor & Lord Fletcher Essay Prize)
