The windows in the gallery at Hampton Court were glazed with heraldic glass displaying the arms, badges, and mottoes of the King and Queen. This was in accordance with the custom of the time, the principal windows being generally more or less filled with heraldic devices relating to the family who owned the house. Much of this splendid decoration throughout the country has disappeared, but enough is left to show that the treatment of the glass followed the same lines as the carving of stone and wood. In the early part of the century it consisted of dainty foliage, vases, candelabra, scrolls, and the quaint animals with attenuated bodies, which are characteristic of Italian ornament. Toward the end of the century these were replaced with the strap-work and the great bunches of fruit and flowers which we owe to Dutch designers. A small part of an early pattern from Ightham Church is illustrated in Fig. [182]; among the Italian vases and flowers is the English portcullis, the badge of the Tudor family, more particularly of Henry VII. A good example of the later treatment, when the Dutch strap-work was in vogue, is given in a panel from Moreton Old Hall on Plate [LXXVII]. The strap-work is merely an ornamental border to the shield bearing the family device, and is treated in the same way as that which surrounds most of the shields on the tombs of the period. There is a fair amount of sixteenth century glass to be found up and down the country, but it is mostly in small pieces, either saved from the wreck of larger windows, or consisting of detached coats of arms. The finest display of the later glass that has survived is that in the dining-room of Gilling Castle, in Yorkshire, where there are several large windows full of beautiful heraldic glazing. Much of it was the work of a Dutchman, Bernard Dininckhoff, who signs one of the panels with the date 1585 (Fig. [183]). The hall of the Middle Temple also has some good heraldic glass which is dated 1570. There were good English glaziers both before and after Dininckhoff's time. At Hengrave the old glass, dated 1567, was the work of Robert Wright, who was paid £4 for the "making of all the glasse wyndows of the Manour-place, with the sodar, and for xiij. skutchens with armes."[28] In the year 1615 one Walter Gedde published a book of pattern glazing called "A Booke of Sundry Draughtes. Principally serving for Glasiers; And not Impertinent for Plasterers and Gardiners: besides sundry other Professions. Whereunto is annexed the manner how to anniel in Glas; And also the true forme of the Furnace, and the secretes thereof," in which he gives 103 pages of designs for lead glazing of varying merit, out of which four have been selected for illustration on Plate [LXXVIII]. Few, if any, of these designs have survived in actual execution; such patterns as are still to be found here and there are somewhat simpler in design. It is interesting to observe how Walter Gedde considered that his patterns would be useful to plasterers for the groundwork of their ceiling-designs, and to gardeners for the ornamental beds and knot-work with which they embellished their gardens.
[28]History and Antiquities of Hengrave, by John Gage.
182.—Portion of Glazing from Ightham Church, Kent.
183.—Glass Panel from one of the Windows at Gilling Castle, Yorkshire (1585)
Plate LXXVII.
GLASS PANEL FROM MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE.
Plate LXXVIII.