On a pier by the transept door his work is commemorated in a sculptured and coloured representation of his arms—the fleur-de-lis of France, quartered with the lions of England—surmounted by a cardinal's hat, with its tasselled strings, twisted into a true-lover's knot, pendent on either side.
ARMS OF CARDINAL BEAUFORT.
From "Church Bells."[ToList]
Henry Beaufort, born in 1377, was a natural son of John of Gaunt by Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford. His parents were married in 1396, and their issue legitimated by Richard II in the following year; but the bastardy is supposed to be indicated in the bordure compony surrounding the shield. Henry Beaufort was translated to Winchester in 1404, in succession to William Wykeham. He was raised to the cardinalate in 1426, and died in 1447. Among the famous marriages that have taken place in the church, perhaps the most famous is that between James I of Scotland and the Cardinal's niece, Joan Beaufort, in the year 1423, when the wedding banquet was served in the adjacent Bishop of Winchester's palace.
In the restoration by Sir Arthur Blomfield, the windows of both transepts were rebuilt, the pointed roofs raised to their old level, and the walls underpinned and refaced (externally) with Box Ground and Bath stone, in place of the inferior material employed in 1830, care being taken to place the stone in the natural direction of the strata.
All whitewash and plaster facing have been stripped off the walls throughout the old parts of the church, to make the restoration as complete as possible, not only in the purity of the new work, but in the removal of what was fictitious and incongruous from the old.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] "When Dr. Sacheverell was at Lichfield (in 1712) Johnson was not quite three years old. My grandfather Hammond observed him at the Cathedral perched upon his father's shoulders, listening and gaping at the much celebrated preacher. Mr. Hammond asked Mr. Johnson how he could possibly think of bringing such an infant to church, and in the midst of so great a crowd. He answered, because it was impossible to keep him at home; for, young as he was, he believed he had caught the public spirit and zeal for Sacheverell, and would have stayed for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him."—Boswell's "Life of Johnson," Chap. I.