Puritanism had been very destructive of the glass paintings which had added so much glory of colour to mediæval churches. The art had begun to decline, from a variety of causes, at the beginning of the Reformation. In Elizabeth's reign, few coloured windows of any note were executed. Under James I. and Charles I. the taste to some degree revived. A new style of colouring was introduced by Van Linge,[937] a skilful Flemish artist, who appears to have settled in England about 1610, and found many liberal patrons. It was an interval when much activity was displayed throughout the kingdom in the work of repairing and beautifying churches. When he died, or left the country, the art became all but dormant. The Restoration did little to resuscitate it. Religious taste and feeling were at a low ebb. Not only in England, but throughout the Continent also, the glass painters had no encouragement, and were continually obliged to maintain themselves by practising the ordinary profession of a glazier. And besides, long after the time when painted windows had become secure from Puritanic violence, a feeling lingered on that there was something un-Protestant in them—something inconsistent, it might be, with the pure light of truth. For many years more, few were put up; nor these, for the most part, without much difference of opinion, and sometimes a great deal of angry controversy.[938] It may have stirred the irony of men who had no sympathy with these suspicions, that corporations and private persons who would by no means[939] admit into their churches windows in which scenes from our Saviour's life were pictured in hues that vied with those of the ruby and the sapphire had often no scruples in emblazoning upon them, to their own glorification, the arms of their family or their guild.[940] Winslow speaking of the east window[941] in University College, Oxford, done by Giles of York in 1687, the earliest example of a stained-glass window after the Restoration, remarks how much the art had deteriorated even in its most mechanical departments.[942] In the first quarter, however, of the eighteenth century, there was some improvement in it. Joshua Price, in the east window of St. Andrew's, Holborn, has 'rivalled the rich colouring of the Van Linges. The painting is deficient in brilliancy, and some of the shadows are nearly opaque; yet these defects may almost be overlooked in the excellence of its composition, and in its immense superiority over all other works executed between the commencement of the eighteenth century and the revival of the mosaic system.'[943] Joshua Price also executed some of the side windows in Magdalene College, and restored, in 1715, those in Queen's College, Oxford, the work of Van Linge, which had been broken by the Puritans.[944] William Price painted, in 1702, the scenes from the life of Christ, depicted on the lower lights of Merton College Chapel. They are 'weak as regards colour, enamel being used almost to the substitution of coloured glass,'[945] and lose in beauty and effect by the glaring yellow in which they are framed. He also painted the windows which were put up in Westminster Abbey by order of Parliament in 1722,[946] and repaired with considerable skill the Flemish windows of Rubens's time, which he purchased and put up on the south side of New College Chapel.[947] It is remarkable that the Prices appear to have been the last who possessed the old secret of manufacturing the pure ruby glass.[948] After their time, until its rediscovery some forty years ago in France, it was a familiar instance of a 'lost art.'
When nearly fifty years had passed, some little attention began to be once more turned, chiefly in colleges and cathedrals, to the adornment of churches with coloured windows. The most memorable examples are in New College Chapel. Pickett, of York, painted between 1765 and 1777 the lower lights of the northern windows in the choir, with much brilliancy of colour, but in a style very inferior to the work of the Flemings and William Price on the other side.[949] The great window in the antechapel, erected a few year later, certainly avoided that uniformity of gaudiness[950] which Warton so greatly complained of in Pickett's work. Its design employed for several years[951] the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The central picture of the Nativity, after Correggio's 'Notte' at Modena, was exceedingly fine as a sketch in colours. Unfortunately, it was wholly unsuited to glass, and remains a standing proof that oil and glass paintings cannot be rivals, their principles being essentially different. A competent critic pronounces that had it been executed in coloured glass, it would still have been unsatisfactory.[952] As it is, the dull stains and enamels employed by Jarvis give it what Horace Walpole called 'a washed-out' effect. Reynolds has introduced into it likenesses both of himself and Jarvis, as shepherds worshipping. Of the allegorical figures beneath, Hartley Coleridge justly remarks that personifications which are nowhere found in Scripture are not well adapted for a church window.[953]
Another glass painting of something the same character, and showing the same futile attempt at impossible effects of light and shade,[954] was a picture of the Resurrection, executed by Edgington, from a design by Sir Joshua Reynolds, for the Lady Chapel of Salisbury Cathedral. Mention should also be made of the great eastern window in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by Jarvis and Forrest, and designed by West. The three last examples quoted by Dallaway are Pearson's windows in Brasenose Chapel, his scenes from St. Paul's life, at St. Paul's, Birmingham, and his 'Christ bearing the Cross,' at Wanstead, Essex.[955] All these were produced towards the close of the century. They have merit, but they show also how much had to be learnt before the slowly reviving art of glass painting could recover anything of its ancient splendour.
Many ancient church bells disappeared in the general wreck of monastic property at the commencement of the Reformation. Many more were broken up and sold during the Civil Wars. In the eighteenth century another danger awaited them. They were not converted into money for spendthrift courtiers, nor disposed of for State necessities, nor cast into cannons and other implements of war; but they came to be considered a useful fund which the guardians of churches could fall back upon. 'Very numerous were the instances in which four bells out of five have been sold by the parish to defray churchwardens' accounts.'[956] On the other hand, a great number of new bells were cast during the period, among which may be mentioned the great bell of St. Paul's, 1716, and those of the University Church, Cambridge, a peal particularly admired by Handel. The single family of Rudall of Gloucester, cast during the ninety years ending with 1774 no less than 3,594 church bells. Bell-ringing is often spoken of as an exercise and recreation of educated men. Hearne, the famous Oxford antiquary, was passionately fond of it. In his diary there are constant allusions to the feats of bell-ringing which took place in Oxford, and to the intricacies and technicalities of the art.[957] The learned Samuel Parr is said to have been excessively fond of church bells,[958] and so was Robert Southey the poet.
The old superstitions connected with the inauguration of bells, and the services expected from them, had become exchanged in either case for a great deal of coarse rusticity and vulgarity. Some pious aspiration was still in many cases graved upon the border of the metal; but often, instead of the old 'funera plango, fulgura frango,' &c., or the dedication to Virgin or saint, the churchwarden who ordered the bell would order also an inscription, composed by himself, commemorative of his work and office. The doggerel was sometimes absurd enough:—
Samuel Knight made this ring
In Binstead Steeple for to ding;
or,
Thomas Eyer and John Winslade did contrive
To cast from four bells this peal of five;
or,
At proper times my voice I'll raise,
And sound to my subscribers' praise.[959]