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This brass rubbing is actually a small part of a larger monument, that of Sir Nicholas Hawberk, third husband of Joan, Lady of Cobham. Here we have their son John, who died in infancy sometime after 1405, the year they married. The diminutive figure of John is to the left of Sir Nicholas, about one fifth the size of his father. He stands on a pedestal with the simple inscription, “Here lies John, their son.” The larger monument carries this inscription: Here lies Sir Nicholas Hawberk, Knight, formerly husband of Dame Joan, Lady of Cobham, heir of Sir John de Cobham, founder of this College, which same Nicholas died at Cooling Castle on the ninth day of October, 1407. On whose soul may God have mercy. Amen. Hawberk’s brass monument is one of the earliest that includes the figure of a child. The depiction of children in a brass sometimes indicated the continuation of the family line. In this case, however, John was included to mourn the loss of a son who died young.
This fact is made even more poignant by another brass monument in the same church, that of Joan’s previous husband Sir Reginald Braybrook, which includes similar figures of two sons, both of whom died in childhood. Scholars believe she commissioned the two tombs at the same time. The nearly identical depiction of the sons of Hawberk and Braybrook, essentially as miniature adults praying at the feet of their fathers, presents some problems for understanding how these children might have been viewed by their elders. The subject of children and childhood in the medieval period has been explored and has provoked argument since the early 1960s, when scholars such as Philippe Ariès and Lloyd de Mause claimed that before the 17th century, childhood was not seen as a distinct time of life; rather, children were viewed as miniature adults who, as yet, showed no signs of distinct personalities. The boys’ undifferentiated effigies in these two brasses suggest as much. More recent scholarship, however, by Sally Crawford, Nicholas Orme, and others has presented a more nuanced view of children in this period, thus challenging what we can infer from their effigies. The children’s very inclusion in the monuments to their fathers points to the attachment that the tombs’ commissioner, their mother, Joan, Lady Cobham, likely had for them. As Nigel Saul observes, after three marriages, she had yet to bear a son who lived beyond early childhood. Ultimately, her daughter Joan was her sole heir from five marriages.