One of the most notable features within the present portrait is the sitter’s prominent memento mori ring - a stark reminder that life, and everything that constitutes it, is impermanent. These rings were common in the Tudor period as, despite their morbidity, they were motivational devices that encouraged one to live their life to the fullest. The simplicity of their design, which almost always featured a skull, also meant that its symbolic message was equally one-dimensional: ‘Remember you must die’. It is likely Harford wore this to acknowledge those who had already passed, such as his father, and his own definite fate; sadly, his first wife Katherine Purefoy died only three years after this portrait was painted. The Harfords were evidently as eager to be memorialised in death as they were in life, as grand tombs – one dedicated to Richard and his second wife, the other to his parents – were erected in the Holy Trinity Church in Bosbury. These memorial effigies, with splendid Italianate decorative elements, remain excellent examples of late Renaissance funerary monuments to have been constructed in Tudor England.

Richard Harford was the son of John Harford of Worcester (b.c. 1502 – 1559), and Anne, daughter of Sir John Scrope of Castlecombe, Wiltshire. The Harford arms were admitted by the Norroy King of Arms around the time of Richard’s parents’ marriage in 1525, as ‘a sable, two bends argent (Harford), on a canton azure, a bend or (Scrope); crest a demi-eagle or, winged azure, breathing and issuing out of flames, proper’. John Harford rented the Manor of Bosbury belonging to the Bishop of Hereford, and the family remained there for the next 150 years.

Richard’s father, John Harford, was evidently a self-made man, who ‘sided with Henry VIII’ during ‘the period of storm and upheaval that preceded and accompanied the Reformation… and rose to prosperity through the acquisition of Church lands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries’.[1] As the eldest son, on his father’s death Richard was left ample provision. John’s will, written some years before in 1551 stipulated that Anne, Richard’s mother, should ‘find my sonne Richard and Kateryn his (first) wieff honest and convenient horse-meate and man’s meate and also meate and drinke for all his children and one man servant and one woman sevante.’[2]

Richard had married firstly in 1551, Katherine Purefoy, daughter of William Purefoy of Northampton, but she the couple remained childless and she died in July 1570. In 1571, Richard remarried Martha Foxe of Brimfield, who brought with her a large dowry, and whose coat-of-arms have been latterly incorporated into the present portrait, (the portrait itself was painted in 1567 when Richard’s first wife Katherine was still alive). The portrait is evocatively described by his descendent Alice Harford, in her ‘Annals of the Harford Family’ of 1909, as ‘a dignified Elizabethan figure in black velvet cloak and doublet, the wide outstanding collar trebly wound with a golden chain. Reddish sandy hair, moustache, and beard frame a characteristic self-contained countenance, not lacking in shrewdness. His name and age, forty-one, are inscribed on the canvas…’ (op. cit.).

In 1566, the year prior to this portrait being painted, both Richard Harford and his father, posthumously, were accused by Elizabeth I of ‘concealing the advowson of a living’ from the Queen. In other words, as Lords of the Manor of Bosbury, on land rented from the Bishops of Hereford, they had ‘failed’ to admit to the crown any living they made there. Nonetheless, this does not seem to have had a significant impact on Richard, for we see a wealthy man before us here, wearing heavy gold chains and luxurious if sober clothing. In 1573, the year of his mother’s death, Richard Harford commissioned an elaborate stone tomb and effigy of his father in Bosbury church, along with an inscribed slab to his mother, ‘TVMVLVS. JOANS. HARFORDI. QVEM. SIBI. SVVS. FILIVS. EREXIT. RICHARVS. ANNO. DOMINI. 1573’

Richard Harford himself died only two years later in 1575, aged forty-nine years old (his will was proved on 26 March, 1576). Three years later his widow Martha erected a canopied tomb to her husband in Bosbury Church, facing his father’s, designed and carved by the same Italian artisan, John Guido. Martha would go on to marry two more times, and was evidently a formidable character herself. In 1588, she contributed the not insubstantial sum of £25 to the fund for the defence against the Spanish Armada.