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Sonning Church

Chancel Floor: Brass effigy

This is the finest, and oldest, brass in Sonning Church and commemorates one of the early bailiffs of the Bishops of Salisbury at their grand palace in the parish. He was the seventh son of Sir Laurence Fitton, the Lord of Gawsworth in Cheshire.

"Here lies Sir Laurence Fyton, knight, formerly Bailiff of Sonning, who died 29th Day of March, in the Year of Our Lord 1434. Upon whose soul God have mercy. Amen."

runs the inscription below a full length effigy of a man in complete plate armour with his feet resting upon a lion. He is wearing a pointed bascinet, a gorget of plate, overlapping plates on the shoulders, with roundels protecting the armpits, gauntlets with round cuffs, breastplate, and a skirt of taces. The thighs and shins are protected with the usual plates, and he has pointed sollerets, with rowel spurs, buckled over insteps. A narrow ornamental belt - upon which some of the original coloured enamel can still be traced - crosses the taces diagonally and supports the sword on the left side, and on the right the misericorde is seen. A scroll proceeds from his mouth, "My soul shall live and praise thee, and thy judgements shall help me."

The arms, repeated four times, may be described thus:

Or, on a bend sable, three garbs of field, a mullet for difference gules

Costume Description taken from H.T. Morley's "Monumental Brasses of Berkshire" (1924)