ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by considering the context for these military monuments in early modern England and at Westminster Abbey in particular. This shift was particularly notable at Westminster Abbey for it was during this period that the building became the unquestioned centre of English monumental commemoration. This complex frame of reference for militant masculinities had been present for some decades in funerary sculpture across western Europe inspired by the Renaissance, but only began to appear in England in examples such as these in the early seventeenth century. Militant masculinity appeared in words before it emerged in the images of monuments, and by the nature of the medium, was more precisely expressed. Youthful masculinity, and the unrealized potential to govern, was the focus of commemoration here, building on the trope established by Sidney's death and memory. This chapter argues that a significant shift in aristocratic representations of masculine governance occurred in early seventeenth-century England.
