Henry Manners, 2nd Earl of Rutland (1543-1563) and Countess Margaret (née Neville), d.1560.

The earl wears armour, his head resting on a tilt-heaume. On his left leg is the Garter. He holds a sword in his left hand, a prayer book in his right. Countess Margaret, daughter of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, wears a coronet and an ermine-trimmed mantle, her head on a scroll. On the overlying table are the figures of their children. Following the death of Countess Margaret, the Earl married Bridget, daughter of Lord Hussey of Sleaford, who lived until 1600.

During the twenty years of Henry Manners’ earldom England had four monarchs, Henry VIII and his three children, Edward VI (1547-53), Mary I (1553-58) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603), each of whom followed a different strand of religious belief. Edward, a strict Protestant, supported the destruction of religious images and transformation of churches into white spaces decorated only with biblical texts. Mary, a devout Catholic, strove to restore the Catholic church and suppress the Protestants. Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, created a church which was Protestant but followed some Catholic forms and ceremonies, a compromise called the Elizabethan Settlement. A major point of dispute was the form of the rite of communion, either kneeling at the altar in the Catholic manner or sitting at a table in the nave in the way of the Calvinists. The Earl and his Lady show their confusion at all this religious change and lie not on the traditional altar tomb but underneath a Protestant altar table. He is holding The Book of Common Prayer, whereas she appears to hold a different prayer book, possibly an older Book of Hours reflecting her catholic faith.

During the reign of Edward VI, Henry Manners supported the reformed Protestant party in church matters and was close to John Dudley, the Lord Protector, who led the government of the young King from 1550 until 1553, and unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey as Queen after Edward VI’s death. The Earl of Rutland was appointed Warden of the Scottish Marches in 1549, and then Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire in 1552. On Mary’s accession in 1553 he was imprisoned as a supporter of Lady Jane Grey, but came to terms with Mary’s Government after Lady Jane Grey’s and Northampton’s executions. He was made an admiral and took part in the Italian War of 1551-1559, serving as Captain-General of the cavalry in the English victory at St Quentin in 1557. Continued fighting during 1558 resulted in the loss of Calais, England’s last stronghold in France (a defeat said to have broken Queen Mary’s heart!). After these events, the earl was placed in command of the defence of Dover against possible French invasion. He subsequently became a favourite of Elizabeth I, who in 1559 made him a Knight of the Garter and Lord Lieutenant of Rutland. He was made Lord President of the North and in 1561 an ecclesiastical commissioner for the reforms of the Church of England that resulted in the Act of Settlement. He died in 1563, not long after completing the re-building of Belvoir Castle.