To see: an alabaster chest bearing two recumbent effigies, Sir Thomas Lucy and his wife Joyce Acton (d.1595). The monument was made in two stages: first raised for Joyce, then enlarged to receive the husband too, who died in 1600. Look along the sides for the kneeling children and the three armorial shields displaying the family's alliances. Sir Thomas Lucy, master of nearby Charlecote Park, owes his fame to a legend: the young Shakespeare is said to have poached deer on his land, and Lucy is supposed to have been the model for the ridiculous "Justice Shallow" of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The work of an unattested English workshop — not Nicholas Stone, whose hand belongs to a later Lucy tomb (1640).
Did you know?
Shakespeare's supposed literary grudge against Lucy is one of the most persistent legends about the bard: true or invented, it has turned this country tomb into a Shakespearean pilgrimage site.
Info
- Alabaster chest, two recumbent effigies; kneeling children; three shields.
- First raised for Joyce Acton (d.1595), enlarged at Sir Thomas's death (1600).
- The Nicholas Stone attribution belongs to the 1640 Lucy tomb, NOT this one.