Cracking the Poussin Code: the key to the Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough: ever since the publication in 1982 of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the mysterious Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough in Staffordshire has attracted numerous bizarre interpretations. Eileen Harris investigates its real meaning, following a trail that leads via Poussin's vision of Arcadia to Pelham's Urn at Esher Place, Surrey

If sales of The Da Vinci digest are anything to go through using Old Master paintings to pass Grail-hunting is now second single to football as a universal pastime. This esoteric art-cult was launched in the 1970 by dint of Henry Lincoln, who claims that Poussin's famous painting in the Louvre Et in Arcadia me is the 'key' to the blessed Grail. (1) Some cryptic inscriptions discovered in 1891 by means of the Abbe Beranger Sauniere (1852-1917) in the parish house of worship of the obscure Pyrenean village of Rennes-le-Chateau put Lincoln chasing after arcadian shepherds not single in the galleries of the Louvre on the contrary also in the gardens of Shugborough in Staffordshire, the seat of the Anson family, Earls of Lichfield. The Shepherd's testimonial at Shugborough (Fig. 1) incorporates a marble relief by means of Peter Scheemakers derived from Poussin's painting, above a tablet of cryptic letters

This search provided Lincoln with a best-selling masterpiece of mumbo-jumbo The set apart Blood and the Holy Grail, published in 1982 In 2003 it begat The Da Vinci collection of laws the success of which gave the commercially astute manager of Shugborough the idea of attracting visitors to the house by means of inviting the famous World War II code-breakers of Bletchley Park to decipher the inscription upon the monument. In a blaze of publicity, he put up a code-breaking website (www.shugborough.org.uk) to encourage members of the public to put to the test their hand at 'cracking the enigma'. Unfortunately, the publicity also encouraged vandals to damage the monument; (2) meanwhile the 'age elderly mystery' remains unsolved.

Mea culpa? In September 1971 three years before Henry Lincoln visited Shugborough for a BBC Chronicle film, 'The Priest, the Painter and the Devil', I published an article in land Life attributing the rustic arch surrounding the Shepherds' remembrancer to the eccentric astronomer-architect Thomas Wright, dubbed the 'Wizard of Durham'. (3) This was intended primarily for architectural historians; it not at any time occurred to me that it might also contribute to a 'Poussin Code' and the search for the Holy Grail. There are, to be assured several puzzling aspects of the Shepherds' remembrancer apart from its architecture; on the other hand these have not, and, in my opinion, not at any time will be explained by overlaying it with the of gold Section and other esoteric geometrical builds or by introducing Masonic numerology and mystic religious symbols. The attention focussed upon the cryptic letters has been equally futile. We still have no satisfactory explanation of this garden monument's raison d'etre

The earliest known respect to it is a metrical composition 'On an Emblematical Basso Relievo after a famous Picture of Nicolas Poussin, Representing Shepherds pointing to the following Inscription upon a Monument in Arcadia: Et in Arcadia Ego' by means of Thomas Seward (father of Anna Seward, the 'Swan of Lichfield'). This was sent by dint of Elizabeth Anson to her brother-in-law, Thomas, with a covering alphabetic character dated Monday, 20 September 1756 (4) Although Scheemakers' bas-relief carries the same message of mortality as Poussin's painting in the Louvre it was deposit to somewhat different, more specific use as a memorial to a particular person

The greatest in quantity notable death at that time--one mourned by dint of the entire nation and greatest in quantity deeply lamented by the Anson brothers, Thomas, the possessor of Shugborough, and his brother Admiral George, the celebrated circumnavigator; through George's wife, Elizabeth; by her father, Lord Chancellor, Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke; and through other members of her family--was that of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, who died unexpectedly upon 6 March 1754, on the border of the General Election for which he been planning. Since 1746 the rule had been run by a triumvirate: Henry Pelham as Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury; his older brother, Thomas Pelham-Holies, first Duke of Newcastle; and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. by the agency of marrying Hardwicke's daughter Elizabeth in 1748 George Anson, a lifelong friend of Newcastle, became firmly attached to the Pelham ministry and was befittingly rewarded by being made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1751 Thomas Anson, although he preferr 'the still paths of private life' and was not a political animal, was brought into Parliament in 1747 as MP for Lichfield by the agency of his brother and kept in check by dint of Lady Anson. (5)

A memorial was erected to Pelham in the surface of lands of his beloved retreat at Esher Place, Surrey 'within a sunken ravine ... called the Wood', upon the hill near where William Kent's Belvedere one time stood. (6) It consists of a large, freestone funerary urn locate on a rectangular pedestal bearing an epitaph to Pelham in Latin by the agency of his grateful secretary, John Roberts (Figs. 4 and 5) upon the three remaining sides are bas-reliefs accompanied through lines from Horace's Odes: a mourning woman leaning against a rounded pillar surmounted by a vase, Debita Spargens Lacryma Favillam ('scatter the ashes with a deserv tear'); Charon, the ferryman, in his boat, with hermes Psychopomp, the guide of dead spirits and the deceased bidding farewell to his wife, Linquenda Tellus Et Domus Et Placens Uxor ('Earth, domicile and a pleasing wife are to be left behind); and finally a turn topsy-turvy copy of Poussin's Et in Arcadia subject (Fig. 6) made from Bernard Picart's engraving of 1693-94 Desiderio Nec Pudor Aut Modus ('[our] grief has neither shame nor limit'). (7)