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Brief Lives, Vol. 2

Chapter 15: Note.
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About This Book

A collection of concise biographical sketches of contemporaries and earlier figures recorded by an antiquarian observer, combining factual entries—births, offices, publications, and inscriptions—with personal anecdotes, hearsay, heraldic and parish-register notes, bibliographic references, and occasional critical judgments. Entries range from terse records to extended reminiscences, often citing documentary sources or witness statements, and reflect an informal, detail-driven approach aimed at preserving lives, reputations, and local traditions for reference and remembrance.


Inigo Jones (1573-1652).

[34]Inigo Jones' monument[C]—this tombe is on the north side of the church, but his bodie lies in the chancell about the middle. The inscription mentions that he built the banquetting howse and the portico at St. Paule's.—Mr. Marshall in Fetter lane tooke away the bust, etc. here to his howse, which see. Quaere Mr. Oliver + de hoc.

[35]Inigo Jones: vide epitaph at Mr. Marshall's.

Mr. <John> Oliver, the city surveyor, hath all his papers and designes, not only of St. Paul's Cathedral etc. and the Banquetting-house, but his designe of all Whitehall, suiteable to the Banquetting house; a rare thing, which see.

Memorandum:—Mr. Emanuel Decretz (serjeant painter to King Charles 1st) told me in 1649, that the catafalco of King James at his funerall (which is a kind of bed of state erected in Westminster abbey, as Robert, earl of Essex, had, Oliver Cromwell, and general Monke) was very ingeniosely designed by Mr. Inigo Jones, and that he made the 4 heades of the Cariatides (which bore up the canopie) of playster of Paris, and made the drapery of them of white callico, which was very handsome and very cheap, and shewed as well as if they had been cutt out of white marble.

Note.

[C] Aubrey gives a drawing of the monument. It is a rectangular stone, having the inscription on the front; at one end 'the banquetting-howse at Whitehall in bas relieve,' at the other 'west end of St. Paule's in bas relieve.' On the top, his bust, in the middle, and at each end a pinnacle. In MS. Wood F. 39, fol. 163, on Jan. 27, 1671/2, Aubrey notes that the inscription is 'yet legible, notwithstanding the fire.'