Stained Glass Tours in England

by Charles Hitchcock Sherrill

LONDON

London, that capital of the world, contains no examples of early glass in situ, and it is not until we have arrived at the study of Renaissance windows that she provides something to engage our attention. It must not be overlooked that there is an excellent collection of early glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum which, by the way, is most advantageously displayed, thanks to the manner in which all light is cut off save that coming through the coloured panes: it is unfortunate that the same good taste and judgment is not in evidence at the Louvre and other great museums. Some of the original mosaic medallions from the Sainte Chapelle, Paris, are here preserved. After all, though this South Kensington exhibit is undeniably good, glass appeals to one less in a museum than when seen in its natural home, a church. Two London churches have interesting examples of Renaissance glass, which, however, came from abroad, the east window in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and three in the east wall of St. George’s, Hanover Square.

Westminster Abbey is generally entered by the north transept door, and almost every one of its visitors overlooks the modest little parish church of St. Margaret, standing only a few paces off, so completely dwarfed and rendered almost insignificant is it by the imposing proportions of its impressive neighbour. Nevertheless, small as is this interior, it possesses a window which the Abbey would be proud to have, one of such pre-eminent excellence as to draw from Winston the statement that “the harmonious arrangement of the colouring is worthy of attention. It is the most beautiful work in this respect that I am acquainted with.” It completely fills the large eastern embrasure, and one needs but a glance to recognise it as a Renaissance work of an excellent type. The three central lancets show Christ between the thieves, and below, the Holy Women, and soldiers. The drops of blood from His wounded side fall into chalices held by three angels. The repentant thief has his soul carried away by an angel to heaven, while a devil is mocking the other one. On the north side is St. George, and below him a kneeling figure which provides the only authentic portrait of Arthur Prince of Wales. On the left is Katharine of Aragon, the fiancée of Prince Arthur, and later the first wife of Henry VIII. Above her head appears her badge, the pomegranate. As no stranger tale could be related of the vicissitudes to which a glass window could be subjected than the adventures of this window during the 300 years that elapsed between its making and its installation at St. Margaret’s, the writer is moved to set it out in full in the words of the historian of that church, Mrs. J. E. Sinclair:

“The window was ordered in 1499, and took five years to be executed at Dordrecht (or, as some authorities state, at Gouda) in Holland. It was intended as a gift from King Ferdinand the Catholic and his wife, Queen Isabella, to Henry VII. to commemorate the marriage of their children, and was originally purposed to be erected in the Lady chapel of Westminster Abbey, then in course of construction by Henry VII., and now generally designated by his name. As Prince Arthur died in 1502, before the arrival of the window in England, and as it was the policy of Henry VII. to avoid the repayment of the widow’s dowry by her marriage to his younger son, for obvious reasons, the window was never erected in the Lady chapel of the Abbey of St. Peter. After the vicissitudes of three centuries, it has been eventually put up in St. Margaret’s Church, within a very short distance of its original destination. Henry VIII., after marrying his brother’s widow, naturally disliked the window, and presented it to the Abbey of Waltham, where it remained till the Dissolution of Religious Houses in 1540. Then the Abbot, with a view to its preservation, transferred it to his private chapel at New Hall in Essex. This property, strange to relate, fell at the Reformation into the hands of Sir Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, father of Queen Katharine’s rival, Anne Boleyn. On the death of Sir Thomas without a male heir, Henry VIII. seized New Hall with the rest of the Boleyn patrimony, in right of his murdered wife, on behalf of her daughter Elizabeth. He then wished to alter the name of New Hall into Beaulieu, but the old nomenclature survived. Queen Elizabeth bestowed the estate on Ratcliffe, Earl of Essex, who sold it to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. His son, in turn, sold it to General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who caused the window to be taken down and buried in chests, thus preserving it from the iconoclastic zeal of the Puritans during the Civil War. The next owner of New Hall, John Olmius, offered the window, in a letter dated July 30, 1738, preserved in the British Museum, to the authorities of Wadham College, Oxford, for their chapel; he terms it ‘one of the finest large windows of painted glass in England.’ The negotiation apparently fell through, for it was bought from him by Mr. John Conyers of Copt Hall, Essex, for fifty guineas. The son of this gentleman, on February 8, 1759, sold the ‘window with its stone frame, ironwork, and other appurtenances’ to the Churchwardens of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, for £420. This sum formed part of the Parliamentary Grant of £4500 then voted for the repair of the Parish Church of the House of Commons.” The parishioners of that small sanctuary possess in this much-travelled window as inspiring and beautiful a treasure as any of those which attract so great an attendance to its mighty neighbour Westminster Abbey.

ST. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON

A Renaissance Tree of Jesse from Belgium, readjusted to fit its new embrasures. Figures unusually large for this subject. Fine colours and drawing

Certainly one would not visit the Abbey because of its stained glass, but equally certain is it that no one who happens into its neighbourhood can resist its spell and must enter the portal, if only for a moment of old-world inspiration. Let us yield gracefully, and when we have entered look about us for what little ancient glazing remains after the visit of the Roundhead despoilers. There are fragments in the two small windows of the nave’s west end, but the most important remains are those in the east window above the altar. Here are assembled pieces dating from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which serve as a background for Edward the Confessor and his patron saint—these figures are of the fifteenth century. Passing on to the east through the maze of kingly remains, a few steps lead us up into the magnificent Henry VII. Chapel, whose noble proportions seem to mock the modesty of its name. The ancient glory of its glass has departed, but those who interest themselves in the light which heraldry throws upon history should repair to the easternmost chapel and examine the coats of arms set out upon its panes. Here are blazoned all the Tudor badges, picturing the claims upon which that new house based its right to occupy the throne of England. The red rose of Lancaster and the white one of York are there alone and in combination. The portcullis of the Beauforts, the family of Henry VII.’s mother; the Countess of Richmond’s root of daisies; the English lions; the fleur-de-lis of France; the Cadwalader dragon, a reminder of Henry’s descent from the last of the British kings; the greyhound of the Nevilles, from whom Elizabeth of York descended through her grandmother, and also the badge of her father, Edward IV.—a falcon within the open fetterlock; and last, but most significant of all, the green bush with its golden crown, emblematic of Henry’s hasty coronation on Bosworth Field with the diadem of Richard III. picked from off a hawthorn bush. In those strenuous days the proof of a legal title was not infrequently deferred until after the mailed fist had laid hold upon its prey!

St. George’s, Hanover Square, has long been famed far and wide for the great number of weddings there solemnised. It is perhaps not inappropriate that the old glass to be seen here once constituted a Tree of Jesse. The spacious window at the back of the chancel, and also those which flank it on either side, are filled with it. So large are the figures (the largest the writer has ever seen in this favourite glass design) that two of them suffice to fill each of these side windows, although their embrasures are by no means small. The glass was originally made for a church at Mechlin, Belgium, and though its figures have been necessarily readjusted to suit their new home, there remain so many sections of the vine as well as of the familiar name-labels as to make it obvious that the panels as originally combined made up a Tree of Jesse. The glazing as a whole is rich in tone, unmistakably Renaissance, and, best of all, so agreeably disposed in its present abiding-place as to make it seem as if it had always belonged there.