English: Monumental brass to John Foxley (1378) in
St Michael's Church, Bray, Berkshire, England.
His will, dated 1378, gives instructions in Latin: "Item, I will and order my executors aforesaid to purchase another marble stone suitable for my own tomb, when I shall be buried, and that the stone be prepared with writing with my images in metal; viz, myself in armour, and my deceased wife on the right side of my image, and shown in arms, viz, with my arms and those of this my said wife; and a figure of my surviving wife in my arms to the left of my image."
Ashmole gives the following as being part of the inscription of this brass:
…..jacet Dmns Johannes de….. …..Novembris, Anno Domini Millems….. (millensimo) …..Cuius anime propicietur Deus, Amen.
(H.T. Morley's 'Monumental Brasses of Berkshire' (1924)[1])
Left: Foxley arms; right: Martin arms, as shown impaled on robe of Joan Martin (right).
The fine brass, still to be seen placed upright in the wall of Bray Church, in memory of Sir John de Foxley and his two wives, has been admirably represented in Waller's 'Monumental Brasses'. It has a double interest in relation to our subject. Arnold Brocas, the founder of the Compton branch of the family, was Foxley's chief executor; and anyone may observe how exactly the minute directions given in the will were carried out under the 'ordination' of the testator's 'most reverend lord,' the Bishop of Winchester. On the surcoat of the knight are his arms (Foxley):
Gules, two bars argent ; on his helmet a crest of
a fox's head. At his right appears Matilda Brocas, whose dress displays the same arms, impaling her paternal coat of Brocas:
Sable, a lion rampant or; while Joan Martin bears the arms of Foxley alone" (sic, actually shows Foxley impaling Martin, counterchanged version of Foxley (See arms of FitzMartin, feudal barons of Barnstaple in Devon:
Argent, two bars gules )). "The family died out in the male line with the bastard aisné, Thomas Foxley, who, like his father, was buried at Bray and, like him, is [ie. was] represented on a brass in the church between his two wives, Margaret and Theobalda. His daughter, Elizabeth, by Margaret Lytton, carried the Foxley properties to her husband, Sir Thomas Uvedale of Wickham, in Hampshire. ( 'The Foxleys of Bray & Bramshill' and reproduced from Montague Burrows' 'The Brocas Family of Beaurepaire' (1886)
[2])