York Minster

by Arthur P. Purey-Cust

The famous window of the north transept, the Five Sisters, consists of five lights, each measuring 53 ft. 6 in. by 5 ft. 1 in., and is entirely of old glass. There are six windows in the north and six in the south aisles of the nave, with only a little modern glass in the tracery. The superb flamboyant window at the west end of the centre aisle measures 56 ft. 3 in. by 25 ft. 4 in., and consists, I believe, entirely of old glass, except the faces of the figures. The clear-story windows are studded with ancient shields, but a great part of the glass is, I fancy, modern; those of the vestibule, 8 in number, measuring 32 ft. by 18, are of old glass, including the tracery lights. And in the Chapter House the seven windows, of five lights each, are filled with old glass. The east window has been clumsily restored by Willement. In the side windows of the transepts there is some old glass, and the great rose window over the south entrance still retains much of the old glass; while far overhead in the tower there are some really fine bold designs of late, but genuine, design and execution. Altogether, according to actual measurements, there are 25,531 superficial feet of mediæval glass in the Minster, i.e., more than half an acre—a possession, we should think, unequalled by any church in England, if not in Christendom.

But the difficulty in describing the glass arises from the fact that many of the windows are composed of fragments of glass of different dates, which, for various reasons, perhaps to preserve them, have been interchanged during past generations. The educated eye of the glass painter can detect splendid specimens of every school of glass painting throughout the Minster, but sometimes comparatively small portions isolated in the midst of glass of a totally different period. The Five Sisters window is an almost complete specimen of Early English glass, with an elaborate geometrical pattern formed by the conventional foliage of the planta benedicta, but at the foot of the central light there is a panel consisting of distinctly Norman glass, portraying Jacob's dream, or Daniel in the lion's den, for it is indistinct, and critics differ. The suggestion is that this panel formed part of the previous window, in the old Norman transept, and, for some unknown reason, being specially valuable, was preserved and incorporated in its successor. The tracery lights of the vestibule windows are filled with old Norman glass, and the late Canon Sutton was of opinion that the stone tracery had been specially designed to suit it. The clear-story tracery in the nave contains also much Norman glass, probably from the old Norman nave, and in many other windows we can trace similar insertions.

Transept, Lantern, and Five Sisters' Window

Sometimes groups of figures may be noticed evidencing, by their utter lack of connection with their environment, that they have been transplanted from some other window. Sometimes a single figure, under a Decorated canopy, stands out in a window of distinctly Perpendicular tracery. Sometimes several of such figures fill separate lights when they have evidently been intended to be together. Sometimes kneeling figures, each of which had been intended to represent the donor of some window, have been brought together in a rather amusing and inharmonious fellowship. Sometimes the whole of some large figure has been removed, and only the outline left, which has been indiscriminately filled up with a patchwork of scraps of all kinds and subjects. This is specially noticeable in the window on the north side of the choir, where the letters R.S., in the bordure, indicate that it had been put up to the memory of Archbishop Scrope; here there are three large outlines of female figures, each with a child in her arms, one of them probably the Virgin, but all detail has been obliterated. Sometimes only a portion of a figure remains, e.g., a beautiful and venerable head and shoulders of some grave ecclesiastic in the most delicate mezzotint; or a dignified face with splendid crown and nimbus, and cope and pectoral cross adorning what remains of a saintly figure; or a crowned head, in a maze of painted fragments, around which the initials, E., in the bordure, evidently denote Edward the Confessor. Again, there are legs only, with the water flowing over the feet and the end of the staff which the hands had grasped, evidently the remains of some grand figure of St. Christopher, a very frequent and favourite figure in the church windows of York. Or, again, draped figures of ecclesiastics, complete almost to the hem of their robes, but destitute of feet, which may be discovered in the tracery above, where they have been utilised simply to supply some fracture. Sometimes heads and bodies, which have evidently no real association, are found united together. The former occasionally the work of some modern painter, who had attempted with his own brush to supply what was lacking. This is manifestly the case in the west windows of the central aisle of the nave, where the faces of the archbishops are evidently modern insertions, and in the west window of the south aisle, where a stately figure of our Lord on the Cross, tended by little angels, has been terribly marred by a most repulsive modern face, which has been added. But sometimes the head and body are both mediæval, but sadly incongruous, for male faces are to be found on female shoulders, and delicate crowned heads of virgins or angels on the stalwart bodies of men.

And similar confusion exists in many other details: borders of different dates which have been pieced together, or incongruous modern borders which have been devised to make up the space on each side of some smaller window, which has been brought from some other church. Some of the windows, indeed, are almost, if not altogether, perfect. The east window has been patched with pieces of crude coloured glass, but only as repairs, possibly after the great fire in 1829, otherwise it must be very much as put up by John Thornton, 1405; and in its nine lights divided into six tiers, it contains two hundred panels of groups of figures, the two upper tiers being subjects from the creation of the world to the death of Jacob, the remainder from the book of Revelation. The tracery lights of the east window of the north aisle seem to me altogether untouched.

The North Aisle

The choir transept windows have been restored, but contain a large portion of the old glass in five lights. That on the north side, erected by some member of the family of de Ros, has one hundred panels of groups of figures illustrating the life of St. William, that on the south, erected by Langley, Bishop of Durham, seventy-five similar panels illustrating the life of St. Cuthbert. The grand series of windows in the vestibule also seems to me absolutely untouched since the day when they were first put up, and, with their figures of kings and queens and borders of Plantagenet badges, contain very striking specimens of the best date of painted glass.

The windows on the north aisle of the nave, no doubt erected soon after its completion, are equally perfect, and were probably presented by members of the court of Edward I. The window next to the transept given by Peter le Dene, the court ecclesiastic and tutor of Edward II., when Prince of Wales, has six illustrations of the life and martyrdom of St. Catherine, step-niece of Constantine the Great, and therefore a very acceptable subject to the people of York. It is adorned, moreover, with the shields of the immediate relations of Edward I., while the border of the central light contains figures in tabards emblazoned with the arms of some of the principal nobility of the day. The next window, presented by Richard Tunnoc, the bell-founder, has three illustrations of the entrance of St. William to York, and two of the founding of bells, while peals of gold and silver bells are spread in profusion throughout it, and the worthy bell-founder himself kneels at the foot of the central light presenting his window to the Archbishop.