1 Dublin, Trinity College. Ms 177, fol. 59 v; London, British Library, Ms Cotton Nero D.1, fol. 23 v.

2 Woodman, Francis, ‘For Their Monuments, Look about You: Medieval Masons and their Tombs’, in Architecture and Interpretation: Essays for Eric Fernie, ed. Franklin, Jill, Heslop, T.A. and Stevenson, Christine (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 176–77Google Scholar.

3 Shelby, Lon R., ‘Monastic Patrons and their Architects: a Case Study of the Contract for the Monks' Dormitory at Durham’, Gesta, 15, no. 1/2 (1 January 1976), p. 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Coulton's followers included most of the authorities on English medieval architecture of the mid-twentieth century, including Douglas Knoop and G.P. Jones, L.F. Salzman and John Harvey. Coulton, in turn, was writing in opposition to a long tradition that had given responsibility for design to monastic patrons. See Coulton, G.G., Art and the Reformation (Oxford, 1928), pp. 26–72 Google Scholar; and also Shelby, L.R., ‘The Contractors of Chartres’, Gesta, 20, no. 1 (1 January 1981), p.175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shelby's conclusions have been broadly accepted; see Clark, James G., The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), p. 253Google Scholar; Parcell, Stephen, Four Historical Definitions of Architecture (Montreal–Kingston, 2012), p. 110 note 109Google Scholar.

5 See Binski's account of medieval artistic invention: Binski, Paul, ‘Notes on Artistic Invention in Gothic Europe’, Intellectual History Review, 24, no. 3 (3 July 2014), pp. 287–300 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also many other works by Shelby, such as Shelby, L.R., Gothic Design Techniques: the Fifteenth-Century Design Booklets of Mathes Roriczer and Hanns Schmuttermayer (Carbondale, 1977)Google Scholar.

6 Popper, Karl R., Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, revised ed. (Oxford, 1979), pp. 164–68 and 170–76Google Scholar; for Collingwood's work on recreating artistic ‘problems’ see: Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), pp. 313–14Google Scholar; for a survey of the contradictions in Collingwood's treatment of problem-solving in the history of art see: Dray, William, History as Re-Enactment: R.G. Collingwood's Idea of History (Oxford, 1995), pp. 132–40Google Scholar; for an excellent account of problem solving as an historiographical method see: Crossley, Paul, ‘Baxandall's Bridge and Charles IV's Prague’, in Architecture and Interpretation, pp. 192–220 (pp. 193–95)Google Scholar.

7 Gombrich, E.H., Art and Illusion (London, 1960)Google Scholar.

8 A similar point is made by O'Malley regarding the very different environment of the Italian Renaissance; see O'Malley, Michelle, The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy (New Haven–London, 2005), p. 3Google Scholar.

9 Toker discusses an unusual Sienese contract that includes an orthogonal elevation of the building that may be a copy from a working drawing; see Toker, Franklin, ‘Gothic Architecture by Remote Control: An Illustrated Building Contract of 1340’, The Art Bulletin, 67, no. 1 (1 March 1985), pp. 67–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Nicolas, Nicholas Harris, Testamenta vetusta, 2 vols (London, 1826), 1, p. 766Google Scholar.

11 For example, Sir John Trevelyan in 1518 patronised a chapel at Nettlecomb, specifying that ‘in length of the saide chaunsell and in bredethe of 11 or 12 foote, after the caste and proportion as is contained in a bill for the making of the same signed with my own hand’; see Weaver, Frederic William, ed., Somerset Medieval Wills (1501–30), 2 vols (London, 1905), 2, p. 197Google Scholar.

12 See also ‘manner’, from ‘manuarius’, belonging to the hand, and ‘form’ in the sense of correct procedure.

13 For example, the cloister windows at Magdalen College in Oxford, with buttresses and doors, were to be as good as or better than those of All Souls, according to a contract of 1475; see Salter, H.E. and Lobel, Mary D., A History of the County of Oxford: The University of Oxford, 17 vols (London, 1954), 3, pp. 193–207 Google Scholar.

14 A good, non-architectural example can be found at Morebath, Devon, where the new cross was to be ‘according to the patent of [Brushford] or better’; see Binney, John Erskine, The Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520–1573 (Exeter, 1904), p. 70Google Scholar.

15 For a non-architectural use, see Weaver, Somerset Wills, 2, p. 246: ‘lytull chayne of gold wrought in diverse places after the forme of bedstones’.

16 Shelby, ‘Monastic Patrons and their Architects’, p. 94.

17 Some authors have gone further such as Gajewsky who remarks that ‘no contemporary medieval text employs descriptive terms to define architectural details like the capital style or the relative thinness of the colonettes that a patron would have needed in order to communicate his ideas about style to the architect’; see Gajewski, A., ‘The Patronage Question under Review: Queen Blanche of Castile (1188–1252) and the Architecture of the Cistercian Abbeys at Royaumont, Maubuisson, and Le Lys’, in Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Martin, Therese 2 vols (Boston, 2012), 1, p. 208 Google Scholar.

18 Morris, Richard, Churches in the Landscape (London, 1989), pp. 306–07Google Scholar.

19 The location was originally identified by Salzman as ‘Weston Admeals’, but Pevsner is surely right that it is Ingoldmells. Weston is some thirty-five miles away, very far for a source building in a parochial contract. See Salzman, L.F., Building in England down to 1540: a Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1967), p. 575 Google Scholar. Pevsner, Nikolaus and Harris, John, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (New Haven–London, 1989), 595 Google Scholar.

20 That is the Heryng family. The mason was from Bratofte, about two miles in the other direction. Providing the mason's surety was another local man, Robert Pelson of Burgh, two miles south of Orby.

21 Salzman, Building in England, p. 595.

22 Ibid., p. 543.

23 Coulton, Art and the Reformation, p. 218.

24 The Victoria History of the County of Essex, ed. Page, William and Round, John Horace, 10 vols (London, 1907), 2, pp. 107–10Google Scholar.

25 Kilburne claims that the Harlackenden family founded the chapel, a view probably based on their burials there, of which the earliest is Margaret, d. 1479, although he, and other antiquarians, also report a memorial of 1081 to William Harlackenden. The Engehams were still active parishioners into the sixteenth century. Richardson notes that an excavation in 1947 found bones in the chapel, under two large flat stones. See Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 1, p. 289; Kilburne, Richard, A Topographie, or Survey of the County of Kent (London, 1659), p. 293 Google Scholar; Richardson, Jessie Winifred Packham, A History of Woodchurch (Ashford, 1968), p. 9 Google Scholar; Mansell, M.H., The Parish Church of All Saints, Woodchurch, Kent, 2nd ed. (Northfleet, 1982), p. 5 Google Scholar.

26 Newman, John and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Kent, West and the Weald (New Haven–London, 2012), p. 658 Google Scholar.

27 Harvey, John, English Mediaeval Architects: a Biographical Dictionary Down to 1550 revised ed. (Gloucester, 1987), p. 79 Google Scholar.

28 Testamenta Cantiana (East Kent) ed. Hussey, Arthur (London, 1906), p. 225 Google Scholar.

29 Exceptions are usually explicable, as for example with the chapel and grammar school of Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, which was modelled on the gatehouse at Esher, Surrey, some 140 miles away. Both were built by William Waynflete, whose Lincolnshire carpenter, Henry Alresbroke of Tattershall, probably visited Esher, while John Gygour, warden of Tattershall, recommended that Waynflete show Alresbroke ‘sum maner house in your nobly place of Ascher that may be example to hym’; see Salzman, Building in England, p. 543; Davis, Virginia, William Waynflete, Bishop and Educationalist (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 115 Google Scholar.

30 Relevant here, for example, is the building of a house, probably in Nottingham, which was to be ‘in alle maner proporcion according as the new howse of John Tauerner that William Roodes made ys’; see Salzman, Building in England, p. 541. Also relevant is the will of Robert Northern (1508) requiring that the screen of Buxton ‘was to be made after the newe perke [screen] in the chapel of the ffelde in Norwiche’ [my italics]: the document is quoted in Wrapson, Lucy, ‘East Anglian Rood Screens: the Practicalities of Production’, in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the 2010 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Binski, Paul and New, Elizabeth (Donington, 2012), pp. 386–40Google Scholar. Competition obviously was of some importance: In the early fifteenth-century treatise Dives & Pauper, Pauper reports the ‘envy, [of] one parish against another’; see Coulton, Art and the Reformation, p. 217.

31 Hobhouse, Edmund, Church-Wardens’ Accounts of Croscombe, Pilton, Yatton, Tintinhull, Morebath, and St. Michael's, Bath: Ranging from A.D. 1349 to 1560 (London, 1890), pp. 82–100 Google Scholar.

32 ‘erit conformatum per omnia edificio Ricardi de Briggenhall’; ‘[the timbers] coaequabunt et conformabunt edificio Simonis le Gower […] per omnia’; Salzman, Building in England, pp. 430–31.

33 Patrons were, however, able to describe roofs with remarkable accuracy without reference to source buildings; see ibid., pp. 530–31 (referring to a description of the roof of St Bene't, Cambridge, in 1452).

34 A non-architectural exception may be when testators chose to ‘copy’ a neighbour's tomb. See also Krautheimer, Richard, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), pp. 1–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Bandmann, Günter, Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning, trans. Wallis, Kendall (New York, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Hans-Joachim Kunst, “Freiheit und Zitat in der Architektur des 13. Jahrhunderts: von Reims, Die Kathedrale, in Bauwerk und Bildwerk in Hochmittelalter, ed. Clausberg, Karl, Kimpel, Dieter, Kunst, Hans-Joachim and Suckale, Robert (Giessen, 1981), pp. 87–102 Google Scholar.

36 Wilson, C., ‘Calling the Tune? The Involvement of King Henry III in the Design of the Abbey Church at Westminster’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161 (2008), p. 61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 ‘eo videlicet modo quo ecclesia Abbatie Westm’: Salzman, Building in England, p. 429.

38 Ibid., pp. 446–48.

39 Ibid., pp. 467–69.

40 Ibid., pp. 497–99.

41 At St Giles's, Edinburgh, for example, the vault was to have ‘the maner and the masonrys’ of the vault of St Stephen's Chapel, Holyrood.

42 Munby, J., ‘Richard Beauchamp's Funeral Car’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 155 (2002), pp. 278–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Willis, Robert, The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, and of the Colleges of Cambridge and Eton, ed. Clark, John Willis, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1886), 1, p. 597 Google Scholar.

44 Nicolas, Testamenta vetusta, 1, p. 33; see also Henderson, V.K., ‘Rethinking Henry VII: the Man and his Piety in the Context of the Observant Franciscans’, in Reputation and Representation in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Biggs, D., Michalove, S.D., and Reeves, A.C., (Leiden, 2004), p. 335 Google Scholar.

45 Salzman, Building in England, pp. 571–72. In a similar vein, McKitterick argues that the choice was Robert Shorton, master of the St John's; see McKitterick, David, ‘Two Sixteenth-Century Catalogues of St John's College Library’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7 (1977–80), p. 37 Google Scholar.

46 Sandars, Samuel, Historical and Architectural Notes on Great Saint Mary's Church, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1869), p. 65 Google Scholar.

47 He also bequeathed sums to the reparation of both church and chapel; see Nicolas, Testamenta vetusta, 1, p. 416.

48 Duncan, L.L., Testamenta Cantiana (West Kent) (London, 1906), p. 62 Google Scholar.

49 John II Paston's failure to erect a tomb to his father in the 1470s is a well-known example; see Richmond, Colin, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Fastolf's Will (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 156–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 It was in fact built; see Clarke, G.R., The History & Description of the Town and Borough of Ipswich (Ipswich, 1830), p. 361 Google Scholar.

51 Burgess, Clive, ‘Late Medieval Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered’, in Profit, Piety and the Professions, ed. Hicks, M. (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 20–21 Google Scholar.

52 Atkinson lists some thirty-two late medieval examples, and others up to the mid-seventeenth century; see Atkinson, Thomas Dinham, Local Style in English Architecture: an Enquiry into Its Origin and Development (London, 1947), pp. 159–61Google Scholar, Appendix II.

53 Woodman, Francis, The Architectural History of King's College Chapel and its Place in the Development of Late Gothic Architecture in England and France (London, 1986), p. 28 Google Scholar.

54 Byng, Gabriel, ‘The Contract for the North Aisle at St James, Biddenham’, Antiquaries Journal, 95 (2015), pp. 251–65 (p. 256)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the contrast between specificity regarding which materials to use and flexibility regarding design can be found in contemporary Italian contracts, see: O'Malley, The Business of Art, pp. 251–54.

55 The extraordinary contract for the roof of St Bene't, Cambridge, is a good example (see above n. 36), as is the construction of the roof at Hardley, Norfolk; see Willis, Cambridge, 1, pp. 282–83; Woodman, Francis, ‘Hardley, Norfolk, and the Rebuilding of Its Chancel’, in Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture Presented to Peter Lasko, ed. Buckton, David and Heslop, T.A. (Stroud, 1994), pp. 203–10Google Scholar; the roof was included in the contract for the aisle at Biddenham: Byng, ‘Biddenham’.

56 Salzman, Building in England, pp. 505–09.

57 Ibid., pp. 483–85.

58 Ibid., p. 600.

59 Ibid., p. 27.

60 My thanks to Hannah Verge for this suggestion; Norfolk Record Office NNAS S2/26/2. Mortlock identified Easthorpe with Thorpe Abbotts, which is most unlikely as the latter has a round and octagonal tower; see Mortlock, D.P., The Popular Guide to Suffolk Churches, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1990), 2, p. 214 Google Scholar.

61 The tower at Besthorpe is fourteenth-century, with plain Y-tracery bell openings and diagonal buttresses extending, unusually, from corner-buttresses.

62 Besthorpe is slightly further away: seventeen miles to the north.

63 The National Archives, PRO C1/76/30.

64 His testament continues: ‘a bowl of latyn be bought for the Roodeloft like the others standing over the head of the Image’; see Hussey, Testamenta Cantiana (East Kent), p. 333.

65 Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 1, p. 87.

66 Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Davis, Norman, 3 vols (Oxford, 2004), 1, p. 506 Google Scholar.

67 British Library, Add. MS 14848, f. 304; Salzman, Building in England, pp. 512–13.

68 Harrod, Henry, ‘Some Particulars Relating to the History of the Abbey Church of Wymondham in Norfolk’, Archaeologia, 43, no. 2 (January 1872), p. 271 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Whitaker, Thomas Dunham, An History of the Original Parish of Whalley, and Honor of Clitheroe, fourth ed., 2 vols (London, 1876), 2, p. 158 Google Scholar.

70 Hartwell, Clare and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Lancashire, North (New Haven–London, 2009), pp. 177 and 691Google Scholar.

71 Goulding, Richard William, Records of the Charity Known as Blanchminster's Charity (Louth, 1898), p. 91 Google Scholar.

72 There are other, more distant examples: for example, seats at Bodmin were to be ‘after the form and making’ of seats at Plympton, over thirty miles away; see Mattingly, J., ‘The Dating of Bench-Ends in Cornish Churches’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, second ser., 1, no. 1 (1991), p. 59 Google Scholar.

73 It has a fifteenth-century tower arch.

74 L.F. Salzman, Building in England, pp. 499–500. A later will by Catherine Brown (1503) required the Our Lady of Pity tabernacle at Walberswick to be painted and gilded ‘according to the form of St Mary of Pety at Southwold’. Southwold and its Vicinity (Ipswich, 1844), p. 31.

75 Ibid., pp. 547–49; Bettley, James and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Suffolk, East (New Haven–London, 2015), p. 271 Google Scholar.

76 The parapet at Helmingham suggests an elaborated version of the Brandeston one, but was added for the lord of the manor in 1543. It does not indicate a 55-year-long building period as is suggested by some writers.

77 Clarke, G.R., The History & Description of the Town and Borough of Ipswich (Ipswich, 1830), p. 361 Google Scholar.

78 Bettley and Pevsner, Suffolk, p. 553.

79 Arms of Felbrigg (lords of Rushmere 1387–1423) and Sampson (lords 1423–1511); see Ron Baxter, ‘Rushmere St Andrew, Suffolk’, Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture Report, 2005 (http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/869).

80 Et unam excellentem pulcritudinem vel tractum colligunt de una imagine et aliam de alia ut omnes illas excellentias in una imagine ponant et pulcerrimam faciant: quoted by Binski, Paul (‘Notes on Artistic Invention in Gothic Europe’, Intellectual History Review, 24, no. 3 (3 July 2014), p. 287)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It perhaps echoes Cicero's De invention, Book II, Chapter 1,1).

81 Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of Intention (New Haven–London, 1985), pp. 58–62 Google Scholar.

82 Paul Crossley, ‘Baxandall's Bridge and Charles IV's Prague’, p. 211.