ABSTRACT
The early modern church reformed since the time of Jeffry Bukwell and familiar to Ralph Josselin no longer survives, having been swept away in the nineteenth century by the rebuilding work of the Incorporated Church Building Society (ICBS). Pre-Reformation monuments were not automatically destroyed even in the more hard-line Puritan parishes, such as Earls Colne, and a close reading of surviving antiquarian accounts reveals the existence of these church monuments. This type of reconstruction also allows us to rediscover the memorials visible to assembled congregations, and demonstrates why there was the ongoing need for negotiations around their continuing survival. Harlakenden's monument at Earls Colne was building on commemorative practices of the Harlakendens of Woodchurch, Kent, who had erected two monumental brasses in the parish church during the second half of the sixteenth century. Monuments were static sites of commemoration that often accompanied a range of additional memorial activities within and beyond the parish church and churchyard.
