BELASYSE, Sir William

1523 - 1604  (81 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	BELASYSE, William
  Prefix	Sir
  Birth	1523	Newburgh, Coxwold, Hambleton, Yorkshire, England
  Gender	Male
  Burial	Apr 1604	Coxwold, Hambleton, Yorkshire, England
  Death	13 Apr 1604	Coxwold, Hambleton, Yorkshire, England
  WAC	7 Sep 1934	SLAKE
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I65362	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Family ID

  F31042

  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	FAIRFAX, Margaret ,   b. Abt 1519, Walton, Barnsley, Yorkshire, England Walton, Barnsley, Yorkshire, Englandd. 1571, Workington Hall, Workington, Cumberland, England (Age 52 years)
  Marriage	Abt 1545	Gilling, Walton, Yorkshire, England
  Family ID	F31036	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

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• Notes

  Excerpt from article by Andrew Green (May 29, 2016): "In the church in Coxwold there’s a... much later monument. A man of importance lies still in stone, side by side with his wife...their faces are... sharp and well-defined, and...[it is a] huge and magnificently ornate wall-memorial to Sir William Belasyse (or Bellasis) and his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Nicholas Fairfax of Gilling. When I visited, a local woman in the church explained that a comprehensive restoration of the stone monument had been completed only a few weeks ago. The restorers have done a wonderful job. New gold, red and black paint have been applied, and the whole statue has been cleansed of the dust and dirt of four centuries. William Belasyse was the nephew and ward of Anthony de Belasyse, a lawyer and priest who was fortunate or wily enough to be granted the lands of Newburgh Priory by Henry VIII in 1540 following the king’s dissolution of the monastic houses. William received his uncle’s estate in 1546 and by the time of his death on 13 April 1604 at the age of 81 he seems to have succeeded in improving and extending it so that it became one of the largest estates in north Yorkshire. William was buried in Coxwold church. He took great care to make sure that he’d be remembered there by something more than a brief inscription on a simple headstone. Thomas Browne was employed to sculpt a huge and elaborate confection out of magnesian limestone, transported all the way from Tadcaster. Browne took care to immortalise his own name by adding a couplet to the base of the monument: Thomas Browne did carve this tome Himself alone of Hessalwood [Hazlewood] stone Pevsner, in his best grumpy mood, isn’t impressed by Browne’s masterpiece: ‘rather fussy, i.e with many columns, many shields, obelisks, strap-work, and inscriptions’. he writes in his North Yorkshire volume of The buildings of England. He fails to convey the sheer size of the thing – it extends from the floor of the chancel almost to the top of the wall – and the child-like exuberance of Browne’s imagination. It’s as if he’d ransacked every style-book of Renaissance designs and insisted on reproducing, somewhere or other in his plan, every one of them: brightly ornamented columns with Corinthian capitals, elaborate friezes, giant volutes, an arch, armorial bearings, numerous inscriptions, obelisks and figures carved in relief. The whole thing ascends in a stepped pyramid towards the ceiling. At the centre of the design are the recumbent figures of William and Margaret. Both clasp their hands in prayer. William, echoing the Arundel tradition, displays his military masculinity, being togged in armour from neck to foot (his feet rest on a stag, Margaret’s on a lion – isn’t that the wrong way round?). He has a longish beard and moustache and a rather surprised look on his face. Margaret wears a ruff, full swept back hair, a pale complexion, and the severest of expressions. Her nose is beaky and her eyes are piercing. She must have been a tough cookie. The punning family motto was ‘bonne et belle assez’, and Thomas Browne clearly felt under some duty to reproduce some of the handsome features the two may have possessed. At their sides and in the dado below are the couple’s children, four sons and a daughter. All are in prayer for their parents’ souls. The sons wear distinctive clothing but share their father’s wide-eyed, startled look. Two of the inscriptions do their best, rather insistently, to convince the children that their parents are in a better place: ‘Better is the daye of death then the daye that one is borne’, from that jolly book Ecclesiastes. Despite all this piety the monument hardly gives the impression that the worldly life is insubstantial and unreal. On the contrary, its unambiguous message, despite Thomas Browne’s stylistic naivety, is to remind the viewer of the overwhelming power and influence of the Belasyse family. Over two generations they had planted their aristocratic feet firmly on the landscape of north Yorkshire – and they were unlikely to relinquish their hold on its communities any time soon. Just one of their memorials would occupy a full quarter of the available wall space in the chancel of Coxwold church. They achieved their prominence not by military prowess – William’s armour is purely symbolic – but by the new arts of making your way in the world – careful negotiation, legal chicanery and political positioning, as well as the gift of being in the right place at the right time." Source: http://gwallter.com/art/a-coxwold-tomb.html