Tomb sculptor believed to be descended from James van Hawstert (originally Haastrecht), an immigrant from Holland in the reign of Henry VIII who subsequently adopted his first name as his surname. Although Isaac James is likely to have grown up in Southwark, an area with numerous sculpture workshops, nothing is known of his training. By 1600 he had moved across the river, to the parish of St Martin in the Fields, Westminster, occupying premises close to the sculptor William Wright. In 1603 he married a Dutch woman, Anna Manjet, in the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, in the City of London. He appears to have retired in 1625 and, following the deaths from plague that year of four of his children, moved from Westminster. His earliest documented works, the monuments to Sir Edward Denny and his wife in Waltham Abbey Church, Essex (1600–01), and to Sir Richard Kingsmill in St Michael, Highclere, Hampshire (1601–02), were executed in partnership with Bartholomew Atye (d. c.1616). Adam White has proposed, on stylistic grounds, five more monuments to Atye and James which, if correct, would take the partnership to Atye’s death. Three of James’s independent works are documented but only one has survived intact, the monument to Henry, Lord Norris and his family in Westminster Abbey (c.1611). Five others are proposed by White, namely, Bridget, Countess of Bedford (d. 1601), in St Michael, Chenies, Buckinghamshire; Sir Francis Vere (d. 1609), in Westminster Abbey; John Bunce (d.1611), his wife and infant daughter, in St Lawrence, Otterden, Kent; and Thomas Selwyn (d. 1613) and his wife, in St Mary the Virgin, Friston, East Sussex.
James was master to Nicholas Stone the Elder (1586/87–1647), who was with him for two years as an apprentice and one year as a journeyman.
Bibliography: K.A. Esdaile, English Church Monuments 1510–1840, New York, pp. 47, 49, 75, 82; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 60–61; A. White, Biographical Dictionary of London Tomb Sculptors (Walpole Society, vol. 61, 1999, pp. 7–9, 61–63, 118; M. Whinney (rev. J. Physick), Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830, London, (1964), 2nd integrated edn. 1988, pp. 55–56.
Terry Cavanagh, March 2025
