Richard Wellesburne De Montfort Framed Print

This very remarkable effigy lies on the north wall of the church of Hitchendon in Buckinghamshire. After the battle of Evesham in 1265, in which the famous Baron Simon de Montfort, with his eldest son Henry, lost their lives, his wife * and children fled the country, with the exception of the youngest son Richard, who assumed the name of Wellesburne (from a manor so termed in Warwickshire, an ancient possession of the family), and retired to Hinchendon as above, where he resided at a mansion called Wreck Hall.

The armorial bearings on this effigy, and the peculiarities which mark the period of its execution, enable us very confidently to appropriate it to this identical personage. He became the founder of the family of Wellesburne, which was extant in the county of Buckingham, in the reign of Henry VI. In the church of Hitchendon down to that period were placed numerous monuments of his successors, one of which will be found in another place. A deed of this Wellesburne de Montfort has been printed in Nichols’s History of Leicestershire, the faulty Latin of which is perhaps no proof of its being fictitious. There are two seals appended to this instrument, one of which has the legend “Sigillum Bellatoris, Filii Simonis de Montefort”: the other bears the rampant lion of his house, the legend ” Wellisburne de la Monteforte.”

There is some reason to conjecture that Richard Wellesburne de Montfort was imbued with the martial character of his race. His effigy represents him in the attitude of a Crusader (he might, not improbably, have passed some of the years immediately after his father’s overthrow, abroad, in the service of the cross); his right-hand grasps a dagger, his left sustains a ponderous broad-bladed sword, on the scabbard of which are escutcheons of various armorial coats, borne doubtless by the connections of his noble family. On this and all the effigies of his descendants, the pride of heraldry obtains, which shows that they resigned not, under adverse fortune and a change of name, the remembrance of their honours. The quilted gambeson appears in bold folds under the hauberk and descends to the upper part of the knee. His feet rest on a lion, on which is a crescent for difference. The bearing of the shield is very remarkable; a lion rampant a’ la queue fourchée, holding Eleanor, second daughter of King John and Isabella of Angouleme, she retired to a nunnery at Montargis, in France.