No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
XIX.—Notes on the Imagery of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
Extract
The Chapel of King Henry the Seventh, orbis miraculum, as Leland calls it, has passed through troublous times with less injury to itself than most of our ecclesiastical buildings have, and than its especially exposed position might lead us to expect; and it still possesses much of the rich furniture and decorations with which it was originally fitted up. Amongst the latter, of one hundred and seven stone images in niches which once adorned the interior, not less than ninety-five remain, and of the twelve missing ones, we can discover the subjects of some, and explain the absence of all. The outside was once also rich in images, as the empty niches still testify, and they seem to have stood there until the beginning of the last century. I have not found the exact date of their removal, but Dart says they were “taken away lest they should fall upon the heads of those who attend the Parliament.” They were forty-eight in number, the six eastern turrets having four niches apiece, and the eight others three. The outside of the Chapel is all new, but is a very good copy for the time when it was done. The pedestal under each niche has a scroll, with a name, as it were that of the figure formerly above, but, I fear, not worth much as evidence of what was originally there. The selection has a very modern look, and there seems to be no system of arrangement. Apostles, prophets, and kings are mixed up in the most complete confusion; but the apostles and evangelists are all there, as are the greater and lesser prophets.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1883
References
page 361 note a Vol. ii. p. 49. According to Newbery's Guide Book, of which my copy is dated 1754, there were some images removed from the outside stowed in the roof of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, but it is not said clearly where they came from.
page 362 note a Beginning at the south-west and working round from left to right to the north-west.
Two or three of the names are so obscured with soot that I could not be sure about them, but Cottingham's plates of the north and east elevations have enabled me to complete the list.
page 362 note b The lists I have met with are Coombe's, in , Ackermann'sHistory of Westminster Abbey, vol. ii. pp. 145–9 (1812)Google Scholar; , Brayley's, in , Neale and , Brayley'sHistory and Antiquities of Westminster Abbey, vol. i. pp. 37–9 (1818)Google Scholar; , Cottingham's, in his Chapel of King Henry the Seventh, vol. ii. pp. 11–17 (1829)Google Scholar; and Cole's, Sir Henry, in his Handbook for Westminster Abbey, pp. 129–131 (1842).Google Scholar Cottingham has drawn many of the images, but has restored missing parts according to his fancy.
page 363 note a See note A at the end of the paper.
page 363 note b Not a bishop. Nearly all the names which have been suggested to me for this figure have been those of bishops. St. Simon Stock and St. Gilbert of Sempringham have been proposed, and either is possible, but I have not found in their stories anything to account for the very curious representation we have here. The same is in “Twelfth Bay” 5, and Plate XII.
page 364 note a Husenbeth gives an example of St. Vincent, “with book and jug or ewer,” from an old vestment in Wardour Chapel.
page 364 note b The same as in “Eleventh Bay” 3, and Plate XL
page 365 note a The initials H. R. and the various Tudor badges are common all over the Chapel, but this is the only case in which they are found on the base of the niche or in any other way connected with any of the images.
page 366 note a I suspect that the altar of St. Erasmus, at which was the chantry of Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward the Fourth, stood in this place. The chapel which she built, and which stood near, and probably attached to the side of the old Lady Chapel, was pulled down to make way for the new Lady Chapel built by Henry the Seventh, and an altar for the chantry services was temporarily set up where is now the entrance to the chapel of St. John Evangelist. That altar cannot have stood after the erection of the tomb of George Ruthall, who died in 1524; and as at that time the new Lady Chapel was ready for use, it would be natural to provide for the Queen's chantry in it at a new altar of St. Erasmus placed somewhere near the site of the old one. I learn from Mr. Wright, the clerk of works to the Dean and Chapter, that he has found the foundations of the older Lady Chapel, which show that it reached eastwards as far as the body of the present Chapel and there ended in a three-sided apse. So if, as is very likely, Qceen Elizabeth's chantry chapel stood between two of its buttresses near the east end, it may have been nearly on this spot. The figure of the saint to whom the altar was dedicated would be one of those in the wall above, and all the chapels on the north side except this have their figures complete, and St. Erasmus is not among them. If the altar were anywhere in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and not here, it must have been in what I have called the south chapel. For the east is accounted for, and the south aisle had the chantry of Margaret of Richmond.
page 367 note a Probably placed here with reference to the text “In the midst are the damsels.”
page 368 note a Dart, vol. i. p. 8.
page 369 note a Is the story of St. Dunstan, his hot pincers, and the young woman who was a devil, a popular improvement on that of the branding of the face of Elgiva ? It is true that was not contrived by Dunstan, but by the Archbishop of Canterbury; but Dunstan was so distinctly the leading English ecclesiastic and statesman of his time, that the credit—and we must remember that the act was regarded as praiseworthy—might easily be transferred to him. The remaining steps are simple.
page 370 note a Dart's view of the inside of the chapel, which is a fairly good one, and was taken before the alterations, does not show figures here. Perhaps they fell before the over-zeal of Dr. John Hardyman, who in 1567 was deprived of his prebend here for destroying altars and other church ornaments without authority.
page 372 note a “Communicantes et memoriam venerantes, imprimis gloriosae semper Virginis Mariae, genitricis Dei et Domini nostri Jesu Christi; sed et beatorum Apostolorum et Martyrum Tuorum, Petri, Pauli, Andreae, Jacobi, Joannis, Thomae, Jaeobi, Philippi, Bartholomaei, Matthaei, Simonis, et Thaddnei, &c.”
page 373 note a See note B at the end of the paper. It seems, from a letter of one of the Pastons to his mother in 1465, that ladies who had not husbands and wanted them paid their devotions to the Rood of Northdoor at St. Paul's. See Gairdner's Paston Letters, vol. ii. p. 233Google Scholar.
page 374 note a Probably a hawk if the figure is that of Edward.
page 375 note a It is a common error to suppose the cross of an archbishop to be the equivalent of the crook or crozier of an ordinary bishop, and to have been carried by him in ecclesiastical functions. An archbishop did not carry the cross, but it was borne before him by a clerk appointed for that office. He himself used the crozier like other bishops. In monumental effigies and seals ana the like we sometimes see an arch-bishop represented with the cross in his hand as a conventional way of showing his dignity.
page 376 note a See note C at the end of the paper.
page 376 note b This agreement is printed in Britton's account of the chapel in the first volume of his Architectural Antiquities, page 15.
page 377 note a Part of Dominationes laudate nomen Domini.
page 377 note b Genealogical History, plate, ed. 1707, p. 497.
page 377 note c Printed in Brayley, vol. i. p. 58, and elsewhere.