Thomas Prentis, who is mentioned above, is found in 1419 in company with Robert Sutton[277] covenanting to carve, paint, and gild the elaborate and beautiful tomb of Ralph Green and his wife, which may still be seen in Lowick Church, Northants, for a sum of £40. An examination of this tomb makes it almost certain that the glorious monuments of the Earl and Countess of Arundel at Arundel, Henry IV. and Queen Joan at Canterbury, and the Earl of Westmoreland and his two wives at Staindrop, were all from the same workshop. During the last twenty years of the fifteenth and the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, we have the names of a number of 'alablastermen' and 'image-makers' in Nottingham,[278] Nicholas Hill in particular being prominent as a manufacturer of the popular St. John the Baptist heads,[279] and during the same period we find a number of 'alblasterers' at York.[280] At Burton-on-Trent, also, where Leland in the sixteenth century mentions 'many marbellers working in alabaster,' the trade was evidently established in 1481, when Robert Bocher and Gilbert Twist were working for a number of religious houses; and it still flourished there in 1581 and 1585, when Richard and Gabriel Royley undertook contracts for elaborate tombs of alabaster,[281] but for all practical purposes the English school of alabaster carvers ceased to exist when the Reformation put an end to the demand for images and carven tables.
The alabaster, or gypsum, when not suitable for carving, was still valuable for conversion into plaster by burning, the finer varieties yielding the so-called Plaster of Paris and the coarser the ordinary builders' plaster. References to the actual burning of plaster seem practically non-existent, but it is noteworthy that one of the places from which Plaster of Paris was obtained for the works at York Minster was Buttercrambe,[282] where there is a large deposit of gypsum which probably furnished the York alabasterers with their material. In the same way Chalk, though to some extent used for masonry, was most in demand for conversion into lime. When building operations of any importance were undertaken, it was usual to build a limekiln on the spot for the burning of the lime required for mortar. In earlier times the kiln seems to have taken the form of a pit, 'lymeputt' or, in Latin, puteus, being the term usually employed, but in 1400 we find a regular kiln (torale) built, 3300 bricks and 33 loads of clay being purchased for the purpose.[283] Where lime was burnt commercially, that is to say for sale and not merely for use on the spot, the kilns would naturally be larger and more permanent, and a sixteenth-century account of the erection of eight such kilns[284] at a place unnamed—probably Calais—shows that each kiln was 20 feet high, with walls 10 feet thick, and an average internal breadth of 10 feet, and cost over £450.
When wood was plentiful it was naturally employed for burning the lime, and a presentment made in 1255 with regard to the forest of Wellington mentions that the king's two limekilns (rees calcis) had devoured 500 oaks between them.[285] But it was soon found that pit coal was the best fuel for the purpose, and it was constantly used from the end of the thirteenth century onwards, as much as 1166 quarters of sea coal being bought in 1278 for the kilns (chauffornia) in connection with the work at the Tower.[286] For the most part, chalk and lime required for work at London or Westminster was brought from Greenwich. Kent has indeed always been one of the great centres of the trade, both home and foreign, and in 1527,[287] to take but one instance, we find six ships from Dutch ports taking out of Sandwich port chalk to the value of £20.[288] In the chalk hills round Chislehurst labyrinthine galleries of great extent bear witness to the flourishing state of chalk-quarrying in this district in former times;[289] smaller quarries of a similar type exist in the 'caverns' at Guildford. Kent, Surrey, and Sussex[290] were indeed busily employed in quarrying chalk during the medieval period, and for long afterwards, down to the present day.
CHAPTER VI
METAL WORKING
The English craftsmen were renowned for their metal work from the days of St. Dunstan downwards. St. Dunstan was the patron of the goldsmiths, his image being one of the chief ornaments of their gild hall in London, and a ring attributed to his workmanship was in the possession of Edward I. in 1280,[291] while his tools, including the identical tongs with which he pulled the devil by the nose, may still be seen at Mayfield. Coming to later times and the less questionable evidence of records, we may probably see in Otto the Goldsmith, whose name occurs in the Domesday Survey of 1086, the progenitor of the family of Fitz-Otho, king's goldsmiths and masters of the Mint from 1100 to 1300.[292] The names of many early goldsmiths[293] have survived, and the beautiful candlestick given to St. Peter's Abbey at Gloucester in 1110, and now in the South Kensington Museum, is evidence of their mastery of the art. The great religious houses were foremost patrons of the craft, many of them, as the Abbey of St. Albans, numbering amongst their inmates artists of great repute. The famous college of Beverley included a goldsmith in its household,[294] but in 1292, when it was determined to erect a new shrine for the relics of St. John of Beverley, the chapter did not entrust the work to their own craftsman, but sent up to London to the establishment of William Faringdon, the greatest goldsmith of that time. The contract between his servant, Roger of Faringdon, and the Chapter of Beverley is still extant.[295] By it the chapter were to provide the necessary silver and gold; Roger was to refine it, if needful, and to supply his own coals, quicksilver, and other materials. The shrine was to be 5 ft. 6 in. long, 1 ft. 6 in. broad, and of proportionate height: the design was to be architectural in style, and the statuettes, the number and size of which were to be at the discretion of the chapter, were to be of cunning and beautiful work, the chapter reserving the right to reject any figure or ornament and cause it to be remade. For his work Roger was to receive the weight in silver of the shrine when completed, before gilding. No very general rule can be laid down as to the proportion between the intrinsic value or weight of metal and the cost of workmanship, but roughly in the case of simple articles of plate the cost of manufacture may be set at approximately half the weight. Thus in the case of the plate presented by the city to the Black Prince on his return from Gascony in 1371[296] we find six chargers, weight £14, 18s. 9d., amounting with the making to £21, 7s. 2d.; twelve 'hanappes,' or handled cups, weight £8, 12s., amounting to £12, 7s. 7d.; and thirty saltcellars, weighing £15, 6s. 2d., amounting to £21, 17s. 8d. The charge for making silver basins and lavers in the same list amounts to about two-thirds of the weight. The rate appears to have remained fairly constant, as in 1416 William Randolf made four dozen chargers and eight dozen dishes of silver for King Henry V. at 30s. the pound.[297]
The demand for silver plate during the later medieval period must have been brisk, for every house of any pretension had its service of plate standing on the cupboard or dresser. Nothing more astonished the Venetian travellers in England in 1500 than this extraordinary profusion and display; they noted that,[298] 'In one single street, named the Strand, are 52 goldsmiths' shops so rich and full of silver vessels, great and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice, and Florence put together I do not think there would be found so many of the magnificence that are to be seen in London. And these vessels are all either saltcellars or drinking-cups or basins to hold water for the hands, for they eat off that fine tin which is little inferior to silver.' Although the home of the goldsmiths is here stated to be the Strand, their chief centre was in Lombard Street and in Cheapside, where, just about the time that this Venetian account was written, Thomas Wood built Goldsmiths' Row with its ten fair houses and fourteen shops and its four-storied front adorned with allusive wild men of the wood riding on monstrous beasts.[299] Even as late as 1637 efforts were made to compel the goldsmiths to remain in Cheapside for the greater adornment of that thoroughfare.[300]
The Venetian reference to the 'fine tin' used for plates and dishes serves to remind us that gold and silversmiths had no monopoly of metal-working. Pewterers, founders, and such specialised trades as bladesmiths and spurriers played an important part in the realm of industry, and if the materials upon which they worked were less valuable in themselves, the finished products were not to be despised even from a purely artistic point of view. The figures of Queen Eleanor of Castile and Henry III., both cast by William Torel, and those of Edward III. and Queen Philippa, by Hawkin of Liége—to name but a few obvious examples—are magnificent examples of the founder's work. Mention may also be made of the tomb of Richard II. and his queen, at which Nicholas Croker and Godfrey Prest, coppersmiths, worked for four years, and for which they received £700.[301] To deal at all fully with all the many branches of metal-working is outside the scope of this book, but two particular branches, the founding of bells and of cannon, are worth treating in considerable detail.
References to Bells[302] during Saxon times are not infrequent, but probably the earliest notice connected with their manufacture is the entry amongst the tenants of Battle Abbey in the late eleventh century of 'Ædric who cast the bells (qui signa fundebat).'[303] It is likely that most early monastic peals were cast in the immediate neighbourhood of the monastery by, or under the supervision, of the brethren. But in the twelfth century, when Ralph Breton gave money to Rochester Cathedral Priory for a bell, in memory of his brother, the sacrist sent a broken bell up to London to be recast.[304] Possibly the craftsman who recast this bell was the Alwold 'campanarius' who was working in London about 1150.[305] Another early bell-founder was Beneit le Seynter, sheriff of London in 1216.[306] Mr. Stahlschmidt is no doubt right in interpreting this founder's name as 'ceinturier' or girdler,[307] for there was at Worcester in the thirteenth century a family whose members bore indifferently the name of 'Ceynturer' and 'Belleyeter.'[308] The demand for bells could hardly have been large enough to enable a craftsman to specialise entirely in that branch, and a bell-maker would always have been primarily a founder, and according as the main portion of his trade lay in casting buckles and other fittings for belts, or pots or bells, he would be known as a girdler, a potter, or a bell-founder.[309]