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II.—On a Picture commemorative of the Gunpowder Plot, recently discovered at New College, Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

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The picture which is the subject of this paper is a canvas measuring 3 ft. 4½ in. in height and 2 ft. 8½ in. in width, now enclosed within a plain narrow gilt frame, which used until recently to hang behind the green baize door of the Bursary at New College, Oxford, and now is hung in the room there known as the Chequer. It was so completely blackened by time that some sixty years ago Warden Sewell attributed it to Richard Haydocke; but, as we shall see, Haydocke was the donor rather than the artist. Recently, even the words ‘Ric. Haydocke’ upon which the Warden had based his inference had become invisible, and indeed the only judgement that could safely be passed upon the canvas was that it was a painting. Some frequenters of the Bursary never even noticed its existence; but the more observant would, after one glance, abandon the attempt to solve its riddle. Nor would any attention have been paid to it, had it not been that, on the Bursary being redecorated, Mr. Albert Rutherston suggested that the picture might be cleaned, and so it has come about that the skill of Mr. B. Comfort of Woodstock has revealed a curious commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, painted in 1630, the semijubilee of the conspiracy, by the hands, as would seem probable, of John Percivall of Salisbury.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1935

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References

page 28 note 1 Ps. lxxxiii. 14. This is the prayer-book numbering. The designer who gives the references generally uses this, but occasionally lapses into that of the Vulgate.

page 28 note 2 Ps. lxxxii. 11 (Vulgate numbering).

page 28 note 3 Iac. i. 19.

page 28 note 4 The reference given is ‘Ro. 13. 19.’, an error; it should be xii. 19.

page 28 note 5 Ps. Ixxxiii. 4.

page 28 note 6 Ps. lxix. 23 (the Vulgate text is Fiat mensa eorum coram ipsis in laqueum).

page 29 note 1 Ps. ii. 4.

page 29 note 2 Ps. i. 1.

page 29 note 3 Ps. xciv. 23.

page 29 note 4 Iac. iii. 10.

page 30 note 1 Ps. xviii. 51.

page 30 note 2 Ps. xlvi. 11. It may be noted that the Vulgate text is Susceptor noster Deus Iacob.

page 30 note 3 Luc. ii. 37 (the Vulgate reads obsecrationibus).

page 30 note 4 Ps. cxlviii. 11, 12.

page 31 note 1 Ps. xci. 3.

page 31 note 2 Ps. xxi. 1.

page 31 note 3 Ps. cxxi. 4. The words in brackets are now illegible.

page 31 note 4 Isa. xxxvii. 20.

page 32 note 1 Isa. xxxvii. 35.

page 32 note 2 Esth. vii. 3.

page 32 note 3 Ibid. 5.

page 32 note 4 Ibid. 6.

page 32 note 5 Ps. cxlv. 3.

page 32 note 6 Haskins, Charles, The Salisbury Corporation Plate, Salisbury, 1890, p. 51Google Scholar. ‘Mr. Percivall for the pictures of the King, Queene & Erle of Pembroke £6. 0. 0.; p. 207, a charge made by J. Percivall appears in 1643, ‘for painting and guilding the frame for the mases, 32s. 6d.’.

page 32 note 7 Ps. cii. 19.

page 33 note 1 A tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge carvinge and buildinge written first in Italian by 10: Paul Lomtius painter of Milan and Englished by R. H. student in physik, Oxford, 1598. The writer of a popular but not over accurate account of Haydocke's preaching, in Chambers's Journal (Feb. 17, 1872, no. 425, p. 99), calls it a ‘heavy folio’: on the contrary it is a small folio and rather thin: he also states that Haydocke put his own portrait on the title-page; whereas it is clearly stated that the portrait is that of Lomazzo.

In the late Dr. J. R. Magrath's History of the Queen's College, Oxford, 1921, vol. ii, pp. 206–40Google ScholarPubMed, there is a description of two memorial brasses in the college chapel, designed by Haydocke, to two successive Provosts, Henry Robinson, bishop of Carlisle, and Henry Airay. Attention is there also called to the brass at Tingewicke (a New College benefice) to Erasmus Williams, illustrated in G. Lipscombe's History of Buckinghamshire, vol. iii, p. 124); and Dr. H. E. Salter, to whom I owe this reference, pointed out to Dr. Magrath the brass in memory of Dr. Thomas Hopper in the antechapel at New College. It is not very clear why Dr. Salter's correct description of the figure at the top of this brass was changed by Dr. Magrath from a pentagram to a mullet.

page 34 note 1 Stow, John, Annals, Londini, 1615, p. 865Google Scholar, col. 2, confirms the story of the Protestant nature of his discourse. He used to ‘envay against the Pope, the crosse in Baptisme, and against the last Canons of the Church of England’.

page 34 note 2 Hatfield MSS. 110/79; dated Sarum, April 13, 1605.

page 34 note 3 Ibid., 110/130. Thomas Hyde and other prebendaries of Salisbury to Cranborne; Sarum, May 3, 1605. Cf. also the account in Yonge's Diary (Camden Society, 1st series, vol. xli).

page 34 note 4 See below, Appendix II, p. 37.

page 35 note 1 P. R. O., S. P. 14/13, no. 80*.

page 35 note 2 P. R. O., S. P. 14/13, no. 79.