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III.—The Roof-bosses in St. George's Chapel, Windsor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

C. J. P. Cave  and
H. Stanford London
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Extract

St. George's Chapel as it now stands was begun in the reign of Edward IV and finished in that of Henry VIII. It took the place of an earlier chapel. St. John Hope considered that the first part of the chapel to be vaulted was the north aisle of the choir ‘because one of the keys or bosses bears the arms of Thomas Fitzalan as Lord Maltravers, which dignity he held from 1461 until he succeeded to the earldom of Arundel in 1487, while another has the arms of William Lord Hastings who was beheaded in 1483'. But these arguments are of no weight. The Hastings boss may be posthumous like the Bray heraldry in the nave, whilst the arms on the Fitzalan boss are those of the head of the house, perhaps William, the 9th earl of Arundel (K.G. 1471, died 1487), but more probably his son Thomas, the 10th earl (K.G. 1474, died 1524). They cannot be Thomas's arms ‘as Lord Maltravers' for so long as his father was alive he must have differenced those arms in some way, and in fact at least two contemporary manuscripts show that he added to his paternal arms a silver label, then as now a common difference for the eldest son.2 Hope also says that ‘the greater part of the vault of the south aisle of the quire was put up in the time of Henry VII and probably before 1502, since one of the keys has the arms of Arthur Prince of Wales who died in April of that year'. Here, too, Hope is mistaken. The arms may just as well be those of Henry VIII as prince of Wales; he was so created on 18th February 1503, and would have taken the plain white label of the eldest son on the death of his brother.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 95 , 1953 , pp. 107 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1953

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References

page 107 note 1 Windsor Castle, p. 384.

page 107 note 2 See John Wrythe's Garter Armorial (MS. penes the Duke of Buccleuch) nos. 57 and 97; the compiler, John Wrythe, was Garter king of arms 1478–1504. See also Peter Le Neve's Book no. 154 (Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 6163, fo. 9). Like Wrythe's armorial this was compiled about 1480 when both William and Thomas were alive. It was published in rather unsatisfactory fashion together with Randle Holme's Book (MS. Harl. 2169) under the title Two Tudor Books of Arms (De Walden Library, 1904). Wrythe's Garter Armorial should eventually be printed in the Aspilogia series. The first volume of that series, Mr. Wagner's Catalogue of English Medieval Rolls of Arms, contains descriptions of all the above armorials.

page 107 note 3 Hope, op. cit., p. 384.

page 108 note 1 The Society of the Friends of St. George's, Report to 31st December 1943, p. 15.

page 108 note 2 Hope, op. cit., p. 385.

page 109 note 1 The Collegiate Chapel of St. George, Windsor, p. 15 note.

page 109 note 2 The Inventories of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle 1384–1667, ed. Maurice F. Bond, F.S.A. (Historical Monographs relating to St. George's Chapel), Windsor, 1947, pp. 49, no. 3, and 167, no. 6.

page 109 note 3 Since this was set up my attention has been drawn to two seals (Brit. Mus. Cat., nos. 7144, 9517) on which the device is a heart with one or more flowers sprouting from it. In neither of these cases is there any apparent reason to associate the device with St. George and I am now more inclined to regard it as a religious emblem although its exact significance eludes me. Sigismund also gave to the College a golden statue of St. George and a bit of his skull. Other relics preserved in the chapel were two of the saint's fingers and fragments of an arm and of another bone. H. S. L.

page 109 note 4 Hope, op. cit., p. 376.

page 111 note 1 Birch's catalogue of the British Museum seals and Kingsford's card index of the casts in the Society's collection both blazon the pelican on the seal as ‘in its piety', but that is a mistake. If the term ‘in its piety’ must be used it should be reserved for the bird feeding its young in its nest. When there are neither nest nor nestlings the jargon is ‘vulning itself, though pecking its breast is both simpler and clearer. ‘In its piety’ is a modern invention unknown even to Guillim and it is probable that Fox and his contemporaries saw no material difference between the two versions. The earliest use of ‘in its piety’ which we have noticed is in Edmondson's Complete Body of Heraldry, 1780.

page 112 note 1 Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 45132, c. 1530.

page 112 note 2 Published in the De Walden Library, 1904, as Banners, Standards and Badges, see p. 63.

page 112 note 3 Sandford, Genealogical History of the Kings of England, 1707, p. 227.

page 112 note 4 e.g. College of Arms MSS. I. 2, fo. 2 and M. 4, fo. 145, both temp. Henry VIII.

page 112 note 5 Sandford, op.cit., p. 464; Montagu, Guide to Heraldry, p. 64.

page 112 note 6 Willement, Regal Heraldry, p.59.

page 112 note 7 The Inventories of St. George's Chapel..., p. 44, no. 84.

page 113 note 1 Chronicon Adae de Usk, ed. Sir E. Maunde Thompson, 1904, pp. 25, 172.

page 113 note 2 Cotton MS. Cleopatra C.v, fo. 59, printed in the Retrospective Review, 2nd series, vol. ii, pp. 511–23.

page 113 note 3 Ibid., fo. 59V.

page 114 note 1 Edward IV's French Expedition of 1475, ed. by F.P.Barnard, p. 31, from College of Arms MS. 2 M. 16, fo. 2V.

page 114 note 2 Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, iii, 68.

page 114 note 3 See his stall-plate and Wrythe's Garter Armorial, College of Arms version, no. 108.

page 114 note 4 De Walden Library edition, p. 15. The leaves on this boss are more like poppy leaves, but we can find no reason for including a poppy-boll in this series and we conclude that the sculptor did not know what a pomegranate leaf is like.

page 115 note 1 Churchill, Divi Britannici, p. 257.

page 115 note 2 See Willement, Regal Heraldry, p. 57, and Sandford, p. 464.

page 115 note 3 College of Arms MS. 1 H. 7, fo. 8V.

page 116 note 1 Cotton MS. Cleop. C.v, fo. 6Iv.

page 116 note 2 St. John Hope, Stall Plates..., pls. LXI and LXIII.

page 116 note 3 Heraldic Notices of Canterbury Cathedral, p. 37.

page 116 note 4 It gave title to his pursuivant, Rasyn, that is racine.

page 117 note 1 Bodleian MS. Ashm. n a i; College of Anns MS. L. 14, etc.

page 118 note 1 ‘The Heraldic Decoration of the Drawbridge of the Medieval Bridge at Rochester’, by Canon W. Wheatley, F.S.A., Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. xiii, pp. 141, 143.

page 118 note 2 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1509–1525, No. 54.

page 119 note 1 Celtic Britain and the Pilgrim Movement, by G. Hartwell Jones, p. 100.

page 119 note 2 The Inventories of St. George's Chapel, pp. 166, no. 3, 51, no. 116, 108, no. 107 (inventory of 1410). A very full account of the cross is given in the Report to December 1943 of the Society of the Friends of St. George's Chapel.