Fig. 15. Patrington, Yorks: interior, looking across nave from south transept.

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§ 48. Mural painting, however, was little more than a complement to the stained or painted windows, which were the most gorgeous note of colour in the medieval fabric. There is no more familiar feature of medieval architecture than the gradual increase in the size of windows, due to that constant progress in the science of architectural construction, in which the timber-roofed parish church followed the vaulted cathedral. The low round-headed windows of the twelfth century were followed by the long lancets of the early thirteenth century. Lancets gradually drew closer and closer together, and were united with spherical openings above, until the mullioned window with its geometrical tracery was formed. The restless spirit of the medieval craftsman was not satisfied with tracery imprisoned within geometrical limits: the enclosing circles and triangles were removed, and the tracery twined in naturalistic curves in the head of the window. Then, at the middle of the fourteenth century, the limit of the imitation of nature was reached. The Black Death formed a sudden division between the work of the old school and the new age, and that formalism in window tracery began, which lasted for years, and left its mark on our architecture as late as the days of the Stewarts. It was long the fashion among those who saw merely the decline in architectural detail, distinctive of the ‘Perpendicular’ style, to speak of the magnificent achievements of the fifteenth century masons with an overbearing contempt. As a matter of fact, fifteenth century builders were gifted with a power of design, and an ability to plan a parish church as a whole, unequalled in the previous history of medieval art. They lost their interest in sculptured detail, because their main concern was with the broad contrasts of light, shade, and colour, which their large windows and high walls afforded—contrasts in which there was no use for minute detail, and the deep under-cutting and delicate carving of the earlier styles became mere waste of time. The great sheets of coloured glass, in which, as time went on, painting became of more and more importance, and large figures beneath tall canopies of white glass took the place of the smaller subjects and more deeply coloured canopies and grounds of an earlier time, supplied an effect fully as beautiful as that once given by the contrasts of bold projections and deep hollows in moulded arches and carved foliage. The mason in no small degree sacrificed his skill to the glazier; but, in the service of the glazier, his power of noble design on a large scale increased. No effect of colour can well surpass that which is still to be seen in some of our late medieval churches—the grisaille windows of the chancel at Norbury in Derbyshire, the late fourteenth century figure glass of the north aisle at Lowick in Northamptonshire, the fifteenth century east window of the south aisle at St Winnow in Cornwall, the fourteenth century Jesse tree, once in St Chad’s, and now in St Mary’s at Shrewsbury, or the fifteenth century Jesse tree at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Cynmerch, near Denbigh. Some of the parish churches of York are almost as rich in glass as the cathedral itself. But, in those churches which are still so fortunate as to retain nearly all their medieval glass, like All Saints, North Street, at York, St Neot in Cornwall, and Fairford, the lack of the connecting link which the mural paintings between the windows formed in the colour-scheme is sadly felt. At Fairford, in particular, where the wall-painting which remains is not near the windows, the glass, in its frame of cold plastered wall, gives the effect of isolated masses of almost violent colour, which need to be reduced to their proper key by the painting of the intermediate wall surfaces. On the other hand, at Pickering or Raunds, where we have the mural paintings, the glass is wanting. Often, where painting and stained glass have both disappeared, as in the chapel at South Skirlaugh, their necessity to the building forces itself on the attention. Probably, the full value of stained and painted glass in architectural design, and the relations which prevailed at the close of the middle ages between the mason and glazier, can be judged nowhere in Europe better than in King’s college chapel at Cambridge.

§ 49. The third source of colour to the church, apart from the stonework and the stained glass, was the woodwork of roofs, screens, and other pieces of furniture. With this must be reckoned also the colour of the stone furniture of the church, the sedilia, canopied tombs, stone reredoses, pulpits, and so on. As a rule, the colouring of the stone, here as upon the walls, has faded away or has been obscured by later coats of plaster or whitewash. Here and there, as at Higham Ferrers, a tomb-canopy keeps not a little of its original brilliance. There is a gorgeous coloured frame, probably much restored, for a reredos in the north chapel at Worstead in Norfolk. The panels of the reredos in the south aisle at Northleach contain certain figures of saints, in faded green, red, and blue. The fine reredoses in the side chapels of St Cuthbert’s at Wells have brilliant remains of gilding. But coloured woodwork, which has lost little of its brightness, is fairly common, and, though it has often been subjected to drastic restoration, is sometimes almost untouched by time. This type of art reached its highest point in the churches of East Anglia, in the great roofs, with their figures of angels at the end of the hammerbeams or at the foot of the principal rafters, extending from end to end of the building, in the canopies of the fonts, like that at Ufford St Mary, near Woodbridge, and in the rood screens, like that at Ranworth, its openings fringed with cusping of gilded plaster, and its panels painted with figures of saints and archangels, which sometimes, as at Southwold, were set within a raised frame of gilded gesso work.

§ 50. This setting of colour, towards which stone, wood, and glass all contributed their share, constituted the great beauty of the internal effect of a medieval parish church; and naturally, the more the various craftsmen who worked there advanced in skill—their skill growing in proportion to their opportunity—the more gorgeous was the effect of the assemblage of brilliant windows, screens, and pictured walls. The usual entrance would be through the south porch. Near the entrance, or, at any rate, near the west end of the church, stood the font, beneath its canopy. No piece of church furniture was subject to so much variety of design as the font; and the types vary from perfectly unadorned examples to structures of the utmost richness. The canopy was sometimes a simple cover, which could be moved by hand: often it was a towering structure, suspended by pulleys from the ceiling: sometimes it formed a roofed enclosure on carved uprights, within which the font stood, of stone at Luton in Bedfordshire, of wood at Trunch in Norfolk. Some fonts, like the famous one at Little Walsingham in Norfolk, perhaps the most beautiful of those on which the seven Sacraments are represented, stand on high stepped platforms: others are on a low plinth, which is occasionally continued from the base of a neighbouring column. In fact, the arrangement of fonts is as various as their shape. The rest of the furniture of the nave would vary. Some of the East Anglian churches, such as Irstead in Norfolk, or Dennington and Fressingfield in Suffolk, keep many of the medieval benches, with narrow seats, backs with carved lines of open-work, and projecting ledges which to-day are used for book-rests, but were originally intended as kneelers. Worshippers would kneel on these ledges, with their feet on the seats behind: the age of hassocks had not come, and the floor was hardly an ideal kneeling place. Many English churches were seated with benches of this kind during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Few parts of England are without their examples of bench-ends. Many fine examples remain in Cornwall, as at Launcells, and in Somerset, as at Trull; and in some churches, as Down St Mary and Lapford in Devon, the early sixteenth century bench-ends are almost complete. Wooden benches, however, do not seem to have become general till a comparatively late date, and there was probably little seating accommodation in the earlier churches. The plinths of columns were sometimes made of some size, as at Coddington in Notts, to afford seats; and in some churches, as Belaugh and Tunstead in Norfolk, and Cotterstock, Tansor, and Warmington in Northamptonshire, there are stone benches round the inner walls of various parts of the church, apparently for the same purpose.

Fig. 16. Well, Yorkshire: font cover.

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§ 51. At the east end of each aisle, as has been shewn, there was very frequently an altar. This was enclosed within screens, shutting off, as a rule, the eastern part of the aisle. The screens remain at Dennington, where the loft above the rood screen was continued round them, with fine effect. At Wolborough in south Devon, the side screens also project from the main screen; and, in many cases where the screens themselves have disappeared, holes in the adjacent columns, vertical grooves in the bases, and other similar signs, bear witness to their former existence. All the side altars of a church would be fenced in by screens. In large churches, such as Grantham, there was often more than one chapel in an aisle: the north and south aisles of the nave at Grantham contained at least two chapels each. There were four chapels in the south aisle at Ludlow, three in the north: the transepts each contained two chapels; and, in addition to these, five of the arches of the nave had chapels beneath them, while the altar of the Cross stood at the east end of the nave in front of the tower.