Agnes Oxenbridge (died 4 August 1480) and Elizabeth Etchingham (died 3 December 1452) have a joint memorial brass on the floor of the side aisle of The Assumption of Blessed Mary and St Nicholas church at

Etchingham Etchingham is a village and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex in southern England. The village is located approximately southeast of Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent and northwest of Hastings, on the A265, half a mile west o ...

, England. The brass is in front of the monument to Etchingham's ancestors. The Latin inscription under Elizabeth Etchingham identifies her as the first daughter of Thomas and Margaret Etchingham. The text under Agnes Oxenbridge identifies her as the daughter of Robert Oxenbridge. Both Judith M. Bennett in ''The Lesbian Premodern'' and

Alan Bray Alan Bray (13 October 1948 – 25 November 2001) was a British historian and gay rights activist. He was a Roman Catholic and had a particular interest in Christianity's relationship to homosexuality. Early life Bray was born in Hunslet, Leeds, ...

in ''Homosexuality in Renaissance England'' observed that the arrangement of the memorial brasses resembled those made for married couples, and therefore speculate that the brasses for Oxenbridge and Etchingham represented a particular friendship. This, they infer, may have been a medieval example of Lesbian relationship.

Biography

Elizabeth Etchingham was the daughter of Thomas Etchingham II (1424/25–1486) and Margaret West, daughter of

Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr and 3rd Baron West (5 or 7 September 1395 – 27 August 1450) was an English nobleman and politician. Life Reginald was the second son of Thomas West, 1st Baron West (d. 19 April 1405) and Joan La Warre (d. 2 ...

. The monument to Thomas Etchingham I and his parents is in front of the memorial brass of his granddaughter. Agnes Oxenbridge was the daughter of Robert Oxenbridge (died 1487), of Brede, and his wife Ann Livelode (or Anne Lyvelode) (died 1494). The Etchingham and Oxenbridge families were deeply connected: Thomas Oxenbridge (died 1540) inherited both Etchingham and Mountfield manors from his mother Elizabeth, sister of Elizabeth Etchingham, born in 1460, 8 years after the death of her sister; she married in 1500

Goddard Oxenbridge Sir Goddard Oxenbridge, KB (died 1537) was an English landowner and administrator from Sussex. Origins Prominent in East Sussex for generations, the family's home in Brede, which he improved and extended, had been built in the 14th century. ...

(died 1531), son of Robert Oxenbridge and Anne Lyvelode, and therefore brother of Agnes Oxenbridge.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Etchingham, Agnes Oxenbridge and Elizabeth 1480 deaths 1452 deaths People from Etchingham