Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

Specimens of this style of architecture in whole or in part will meet the reader in every part of England, Wales, and Scotland; and it should be remembered that it is an especial and exclusively English style, no other country possessing it. In Scotland Melrose Abbey and Roslin Chapel present fine specimens of the Perpendicular, the latter one displaying some singular variations, the work of foreign artists.

When we descend from the military castle to more domestic architecture, we find the large houses of the gentry, or nobility, though totally incapable of resisting cannon, yet frequently battlemented, flanked with turrets, and surrounded by the flooded moat. The large houses of this period were generally built round one or two quadrangles. These buildings often possessed much variety of exterior detail: a great arched gateway with the armorial escutcheon above it; projections, recesses, tall chimneys, flanking buttresses, handsome oriel windows, and pointed gables, terminated by some animal belonging to the emblazonry of the family. They were commonly adorned with fanes, in the form of the military banner of the chief, duly emblazoned in proper colours. Within, the great hall, with its open groined roof, the kitchen, and the buttery, cut the principal figure. At the upper end of the hall was the daïs or raised part, on which stood the table of the lord and his immediate family or particular guests; and below the great salt-cellar sat the remainder of the establishment. At the lower end was commonly a music gallery. The fire was still frequently in the centre of the hall, and there was a hole in the roof to permit the smoke to escape, as at Penshurst, where the front of the music gallery is true Perpendicular. In other houses there were large open fireplaces, the mantelpieces of which were frequently richly carved with the armorial shields of the family.

The floors were still strewn with fresh rushes instead of a carpet, and the walls were hung with arras, which clothed them, and at the same time kept out cold draughts. Plaster ceilings were yet unknown. The greater portion of these houses, however, was required for the sleeping apartments of the numerous retainers.

In the humbler halls, granges, and farmhouses, the same plan of building round a quadrangle was mostly adhered to, and a large number of such houses were of framed timber, with ornamental gables and porches, and displaying much carving. Great Chatfield manor-house in Wiltshire, Harlaxton in Lincolnshire, Helmingham Hall, Norfolk, Moreton Hall in Cheshire, and probably some of the framed timber houses of Lancashire, as the Hall-in-the-Wood, Smithell's, Speke Hall, &c., in whole or in part, date from this period. Ockwells, in Berkshire, is another of the fine old timber houses of this century.

In the towns the houses were also chiefly of wood. The streets were extremely narrow, and the upper storeys of the houses projected over the lower ones, so that you might almost shake hands out of the third or fourth storey windows. This was the cause of such frequent fires as occurred in London. Many of the small houses in these narrow streets were adorned with abundance of carving. The houses or inns of the great barons, prelates, and abbots were extensive, and surrounded inner courts. Here, during Parliament, and on other grand occasions, the owners came with their vast retinues. We are told that the Duke of York lodged with 400 men in Baynard's Castle, in 1457. The Earl of Warwick had his house in Warwick Lane, still called after it, where he could lodge 800 men. At another house of his called the Herber, meaning an inn, the Earl of Salisbury, his father, lodged with 500 men. Still more extensive must have been the abodes of the Earls of Exeter and Northumberland, who occasionally brought retinues of from 800 to 1,500 men. The sites of these great houses are yet known, and bear the names of their ancient owners, but the buildings themselves have long vanished. The great houses of Scotland still kept up the show of feudal strength and capability of defence. The peels, or Border towers, yet bear evidence of the necessity of stout fortification in those times. We may form some idea of the devastation made amongst private dwellings in the Wars of the Roses, from the statement of John Rous, the Warwick antiquary, who says that no fewer than sixty villages, some of them large and populous, with churches and manor-houses, had been destroyed within twelve miles of that town. From all that we can learn, the common people of this age were but indifferently lodged, and the mansions of the great were more stately than comfortable.

Though such extensive destruction of the statuary which adorned both the exterior and interior of our churches took place at the Reformation, sufficient yet remains to warrant us in the belief that the fifteenth surpassed every prior century in its sculpture. The very opposition which the Wycliffites had raised to the worship and even existence of images, seems to have stimulated the Church only the more to put forth its strength in this direction. Sculptors, both foreign and English, therefore received the highest encouragement, and were in the fullest employ. The few statues which yet remain in niches, on the outside of our cathedrals, especially those on the west end of the Cathedral of Wells, though probably not the best work of the artists, are decided proofs of their ability. The effigies of knights and ladies extended on their altar tombs received grave damage, with the rest of the ecclesiastical art, from the misguided zeal of the reformers, yet many such remain of undoubted beauty, and the chantries, which were in this century erected over the tombs of great prelates, are of the most exquisite design and workmanship. Such are those in Winchester Cathedral of Bishops Wykeham, Beaufort, and Waynflete. The shrine of Bishop Beaufort, in particular, is a mass of Portland stone, carved like the finest ivory, and is a most gorgeous specimen of a tomb of the Perpendicular period. Henry V.'s chantry, in Westminster Abbey, is the only one erected in this period to royalty, and it is a monument of high honour to the age.

The names of some of the artists of this era are preserved. Thomas Colyn, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehowe, executed, carried over, and erected in Nantes, in 1408, the alabaster tomb of the Duke of Brittany. Of the five artists who executed the celebrated tomb of Richard, Earl of Warwick, in the Beauchamp Chapel, four were English, and the fifth was a Dutch goldsmith. Besides the great image of the earl, there were thirty-two images on this monument. These were all cast by William Austin, a founder of London, clearly a great genius, on the finest latten (brass), and gilded by Bartholomew Lambespring the Dutch goldsmith. The monument and the superb chapel in which it stands cost £2,481 4s. 7d., equivalent to £24,800 now.

Most of the monumental brasses which abound in our churches were the work of this period. There are some of much older date, but, during this century they were multiplied everywhere, and afforded great scope for the talents of founders, engravers, and enamellers.

In painting, the age does not appear to have equally excelled. There was, unquestionably, abundance of religious pictures on the walls of our churches, and the images themselves were painted and gilt; but there do not seem to have existed artists who had a true conception of the sublimity of their pursuit. The painting of such works was undertaken by the job, by painters and stainers. John Prudde, glazier in Westminster, undertook to "import from beyond seas glass of the finest colours, blue, yellow red, purple, sanguine, and violet," and with it glaze the windows of the Beauchamp Chapel. Brentwood, a stainer of London, was to paint the west wall of the chapel "with all manner of devices and imagery;" and Christian Coliburne, painter, of London, was to "paint the images in the finest oil colours." The great Earl of Warwick bargained with his tailor to paint the scenes of his embassy to France, for which he was to receive £1 8s. 6d. The "Dance of Death," so common on the Continent in churches and churchyards, made also so famous by Holbein, was copied from the cloister of the Innocents in Paris, and painted on the walls of the cloister of St. Paul's. It was a specimen of the portrait painting of the age, for it contained the portraits of actual persons, in different ranks of life, in their proper dresses. The portraits of our kings, queens, and celebrated characters, done at this time, are of inferior merit.