print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.3575
- Title
- Object: The Hierarcichal Skimington: Or a Representation of the Ambitious and Arbitrary Views of a Party.
- Description
-
Satire on High and Low Church disputes at the time of a petition to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. A rural scene with a procession making its way to Canterbury led by armed men followed by Jesuits carrying banners showing victims of the Inquisition, "the Sons of Schism", Samuel Clarke, William Whiston, James Foster, Samuel Madden (?), Benjamin Hoadly, and Thomas Rundle. Bishop Endmund Gibson follows looking through a telescope at "a delightful Prospect" of Canterbury while another man warns him of a group of mounted Jesuits approaching at the gallop; Gibson leads an ass loaded with his "Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani" (1713). Next come three clerics: the first wearing a monk's habit and a Turkish turban saying "Pecuniary Mulcts [Fines]" and carrying a banner showing a friar holding a sword and an olive branch rising from a cloud in which sits a dog with a burning brand in its mouth setting fire to a royal orb; a Jesuit carrying a banner lettered, "Always right"; Bishop Hoadly, leaning on his walking stick, and carrying a banner lettered, "Never wrong", the words, "The accuser of the Brethren" appearing below his feet. Then follows a horse carrying a man and a woman sitting back to back as in a Skimmington indicating popular censure of their behaviour. The wife, in front, carries a cross and model church to indicate that she represents the Church of England while the husband wearing a crown indicating that he represents the State carries a distaff and is spinning. Behind this quarrelling couple are three Jesuits on horseback using ladles to throw mud; they carry banners labelled with the names of Opposition newspapers, "Daily Courant" and "Weekly Miscellany". The surrounding mob carry banners referring to Church practices and accompany the procession with rough music playing cow horns, marrow bones and cleavers, bladder and string, and a saltbox; in the foreground, a man holds a cat like a pair of bagpipes and bites its tail to make it shreik and a boy hits a pig, on which he sits, to make it squeal; a man with a wooden leg waves his hat while his dog barks.
Etching and engraving
- Production date
- 1735
- Dimensions
-
Height: 207 millimetres (image)
-
Height: 247 millimetres (trimmed)
-
Width: 340 millimetres (image)
-
Width: 348 millimetres (trimmed?)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- For Gibson's Codex, see BM Satires 2280
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.3575