EAST WINDOW OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
"A Stranger," writing to one of the local newspapers a few months ago, drew the attention of antiquaries to some painted glass in the great east window of the above church which is not noticed by Dr. Nash or Mr. Green, the Worcester historians. There is (he says) a head with long flowing hair and a forked beard, and another head with the face close shaven and a coronet. The first of these, I should suggest, was painted in the reign of Richard II; on his tomb in Westminster Abbey there is his effigy with a forked beard; and on the tomb of Edward III, in the same place, his effigy has the long flowing hair. The head with the coronet is exactly like one in the great church in Cirencester, of which there is a coloured engraving in Mr. Lyson's Gloucestershire Antiquities: that is supposed to be the head of Edward IV's father, whose "feodary" (an official something between an English steward and an Irish middleman), built this part of the church. Dr. Nash mentions two circumstances connected with St. John's which coincide with these dates. He says that in 1371, only six years before the reign of Richard II, William de Lynne, Bishop of Worcester, suppressed the Chapel of Wyke and constituted St. John's a vicarage; and that in the first year of the reign of Edward IV, the Prior of Worcester granted to the Corporation the privilege of attending Divine service at the Cathedral with their officers, but if any officer should arrest, or do any act in the monastery sanctuary, or St. John's, he should "forfeit his mace and office without any hopes of restitution." This grant is witnessed by John Carpenter, then Bishop of Worcester; Sir Thomas Littleton, Serjeant-at-Law (the very celebrated Judge who was buried, in the Cathedral); and others. There is also a figure kneeling. This is a Saint, as he has the nimbus round his head, and from his young and beardless face it is probably St. John. There is also between this figure and the coroneted head a grotesque head with the mouth open and the tongue protruded. This I never before saw in a window, or inside a church, though it is very common in carving on the outside of churches. These grotesques are by some supposed to represent the deadly sins—the evil passions and the like. May not this device be founded on Isaiah ch. lvii, v. 4?