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North Mimms, Herts; they both belong to ecclesiastics, and are both Flemish. Also at Minster and Horsmonden, Kent; at Elsyng, Norfolk; Horseheath, Cambridge; at Ockham, Surrey; and at Trotton in Sussex, (date 1310); all of which are to be attributed to French artists. And, on the other hand, there is a brass at Constance cathedral to Robert Hallum, Bishop of Salisbury, who died while attending the council held at that city, A.D. 1416, which is of English design, and there is a tradition that it was sent thither from England.

Before the introduction of brasses, the designs which we have good reason for supposing to have been prevalent upon incised slabs were crosses with (in some instances) marginal inscriptions. Effigies appear to have been less common. There was also a singularly interesting class of designs which obtained very generally in incised slabs, but which we do not find to have been adopted in more than a few instances by the engravers of brasses; these designs exhibit, with the monumental cross, and sometimes with the inscription also, a device indicative of the profession or occupation of the deceased, such as a pastoral staff for a bishop or abbot, a chalice for a priest, a sword for a warrior, &c.

The earliest brasses appear to have been inscriptions, or inscriptions and crosses. In these memorials the inscription was set about the four sides of the slab near the margin; each letter was cut out of the metal and fixed in a hollow for its reception, and the rows of letters were (but not in the earliest examples) enclosed within narrow strips or fillets of metal forming borders to them. During the 13th and 14th centuries we find that an attempt was made to combine the cross and the effigy upon the same monument and in the