Its inscription is in Latin, and reads in translation:
Interpretation
The monument is notable on two accounts, firstly, its four figurines housed in its two columns, Pax and Gloria, Vanitas and Labor, are relatively rare examples of Northern Mannerist sculpture extant in Britain; secondly, these four figurines exemplify how, during the era of Elizabeth I, Christian iconography occasionally integrated symbolism which originated from the western esoteric traditions of alchemy and astrology into works of art, including funerary monuments.
The four figurines of The Layer Quaternity share a number of iconographical details to an illustration found in Alchemia by the German academicAndreas Libavius in a chapter entitled De Lapide Philosophorum including - an identical pairing of a lower mortal pair with an immortal pair of bare-legged male and draped female above them, the shared titled captions of Gloria and Labor, along with both monument and illustration also depicting a palm branch, sun, moon and rotundum. Symbolically, the Layer Quaternity correspond to the alchemical "deities" of Apollo, Luna, Mercurius and Vulcan as named in Atalanta Fugiens by the German alchemist-physician Michael Maier. Collectively the Layer Quaternity are a unique alchemical mandala. Through polarized symbolism they delineate essential coordinates associated with Mandala art, namely Space and Time. Utilizing variety and multiplicity, key attributes of Northern Mannerist art, they also represent fundamental aspects of the human condition, namely, gender, youth and age, pleasure and suffering. A fifth, uniting symbol, a skull, is located at the very centre of the monument. The skull is the commonest of all memento mori symbols in funerary art. It was also defined as the philosophical vessel in Renaissance-era alchemy. The role of the Quaternity in religious symbolism is discussed in depth in the writings of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. In essence, the Layer monument's four figurines represent spiritual entities which agree with Jung's analytical psychology, that the psyche moves toward individuation in fours.
