Details of Sculptor

Surname

Beard

Alternative Surname

Bard

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1674-80

Year of Death

Biographical Details

In 1674 he was paid £2 for finishing the moulds and casting the plaster for the great model of St Paul’s Cathedral. This must have been an exacting task, for Beard was paid on the basis of 12 days’ work (Bolton 1939, 202).
Four years later ‘Mr Beard the stone-cutter’ travelled from London to repair ‘the breaches and decays in the Earl of Leicester’s and Ambrose Earl of Warwicks monuments’ in the Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary, Warwick (1). That year Beard wrote to Sir William Dugdale, Garter King of Arms, that he had ‘almost completed ye Lord Ambrose’s monument which will be very handsome and commendable’. Later in the letter Beard says ‘I must gett a crownet for his head and three more for ye Lord Lesters tombe is wanting, and one more for the Lord Ambrose at the end of his tombe. I will make a mould and fix them all on before I go hence’ (Archives, Sir William Dugdale of Merevale in GPC).
Beard was also employed by Joshua Marshall to erect the monument to Lady Katherine Leveson in the same chapel. It is possible therefore that he and Marshall had a professional connection. It is clear however that Beard also worked independently, for in 1680 he contracted to carve the monument to Edward Bonham, younger son of William Bonham of Bocking Ash, Essex (2). The agreement, in which the sculptor is described as ‘William Bard (sic) citizen and stone-cutter of London’, was drawn up and witnessed by Sir William Dugdale and it survives in the archives of Sir William Dugdale of Merevale. Dugdale noted in his diary on 15 June 1680 that he had ‘delivered to Mr. Willm Beard, stone cutter, the summe of ten pounds in pt of the summe of £20 for a monument of white marble for Mr. Edward Bonham, which summe of £20 Mrs. Eliz. Dilke is to pay to my son at Coventre’ (Hamper ed 1827, 143).
While undertaking his various works at St Mary, Warwick, the sculptor seems to have fallen foul of the local mayor, who was also a trustee of the Beauchamp chapel. Beard wrote to Dugdale ‘Mr Mayor hath ordered my landlord to trust me no further than Thursday night, which was last night. Now for my part I have and do work like a horse in a mill to finish it, but if I cannot have a little victuals I must desist and shall, except you be pleased upon sight of this to speak to Mr. Mayor to-day to continue me there at my lodgings and to satisfy them’ (Archives, Sir William Dugdale of Merevale in GPC).
It was probably Beard’s son, another William Beard, who was apprenticed to Edward Pearce in 1686. It seems likely that this was the ‘William Beard, Carver of St Andrew Holborn’ whose will was proved on 4 July 1734 (PROB 11/1766).
Literary References: Hamper ed, 1827, 140 Gunnis 1968, 43
Archival References: GPC