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The East Window of St. Margaret's, Westminster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Summary

The glass, now comprising a three-light Crucifixion between two royal figures and their patron saints, reflects the style of Leiden and can be dated c. 1515-27. It may have stood originally in three linked windows in Waltham Abbey Church, and been padded out after the Dissolution to fit the five-light window of the chapel of New Hall, Boreham. On its transfer to Copt Hall c. 1740 William Price the younger replaced some of the glass, and must have overpainted and refired most of the rest. A local glazier, James Loton, was responsible for transferring it to St. Margaret's in 1758.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1981

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References

NOTES

1 Westminster City Library, 160 Buckingham Palace Road, E. 135, St. Margaret's Westminster Churchwarden's Accounts 1757-1761, under the year 11th May 1758 to 31st May 1759.

2 Westlake, H. F., St. Margaret's Westminster (London, 1914), p. 89.Google Scholar

3 Pub. Westminster 1761: only the preface and appendix are by Wilson, the rest by W. Hole. See letter from John Jones to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvii, i (Jan.-June 1817), 228–9Google Scholar.

4 An error for Essex: the correction is made already in Wilson's interleaved copy of the book now in the British Library (4707.g.1).

5 Walcott, M. E. C., History of the Parish Church of St. Margaret in Westminster (Westminster, 1847), p. 9n.Google Scholar

6 Chelmsford, Essex Record Office D/DW E36/4. The window was in fact dismantled in 1758 by James Loton, the Westminster glazier who installed it in St. Margaret's. The work of William Price the younger (1706-1765) can best be seen at New College, Oxford ( Woodforde, C., The Stained Glass of New College, Oxford (Oxford, 1951), pp. 1620),Google Scholar and in the west window and north rose window of Westminster Abbey.

7 Edward Conyers paid John Olmius £50 for the window, but less than twenty years later his son sold it for 400 guineas to the churchwardens of St. Margaret's. There are three discernible reasons for this disparity: (a) St. Margaret's had the stone and iron-work of the window as well as the glass for the larger sum; (b) John Conyers knew that Parliament had voted £4,000 for the rebuilding and decoration of the east end of the church (see letter from John Sanderson to John Conyers dated 10th June 1758: Chelmsford, Essex R. O., D/DW E64/7); (c) his father had paid a considerable sum for the restoration of the window.

8 In his deposition dated 8th February 1760 to the Court of the Dean and Chapter William Price says he cleaned and mended the window ‘about twenty years ago, as he best remembers’: Westminster Abbey Library, box marked Controversy over the East Window in St. Margaret's, Westminster.

9 Vertue Note Books, v (Walpole Society, xxvi (1937-1938)), 100.Google Scholar

10 Prints & Drawings Collected before 1750, ff. 21-2.

11 ‘Mr. Daniel Chandler…was employed by Mr. Vertue to take the measures and make drawings of the painted Glass windows in New Hall in Essex’: S.A.L. Minute Book iii, 77. Treasurer's Accounts 1718-1738, p. 308,Google Scholar records a payment to Chandler of 12 guineas for six drawings of the house, including the three of the glass. Among the Gough papers at Oxford are replicas of all three drawings, but though inscribed, like those at Burlington House, in Vertue's hand, none of them carries his monogram: Bod. Lib. Gough Maps 45, 67 R (general view), MS Gough Drw. ai,4a (Catherine), 5a (Henry).

12 Minute Book iii, 87-9, meeting of 19 January 1737/8.

13 Vetusta Monumenta, ii (1789), pl. xxvi.Google Scholar

14 A reproduction of the kneeling male figure still sold in the churc h bears the legend ‘Prince Arthur’.

15 R(ickman), J., Historical Curiosities Relating to St. Margaret's Church, Westminster (London, 1837), p. 4.Google Scholar

16 Winston, C., An Inquiry into the Difference of Style…Hints on Glass Painting (Oxford, 1867), 1, p. 205n.Google ScholarThe Ecclesiologist, iii, nos. xxv-xxvi (September, 1843), 24–5,Google Scholar printed a letter dated 12th June and signed ‘T.W.’ (perhaps for Thomas Willement, as Mr. Michael Archer suggests); this identifies the two royal figures correctly.

17 Westlake, N. H. J., A History of Design in Painted Glass, iv (London, 1894), pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

18 Eden, F. S., Ancient Stained and Painted Glass (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 98100.Google Scholar

19 Lethaby, W. R., Westminster Abbey Reexamined (London, 1925), p. 179.Google Scholar

20 Read, H., English Stained Glass (London, 1926), pp. 236–40Google Scholar and figs. 60-61.

21 This view was even mor e forcibly expressed by Knowles, J. A., ‘The Price family of glass-painters’, Antiq. J. xxxiii (1953), 191Google Scholar.

22 Read (n. 20), p. 239 an dfig.67.

23 See e.g. L. & P. Henry VIII II, ii, pp. 1476-9, in, i, 576.

24 lbid. II, ii, 2750, p. 1537.

25 It was probably in 1906 that the sill was raised and the window shortened. Compare pis. 1 and IX in Westlake (n. 2).

26 Her sword, moreover, had become more conspicuous, and its blade had been moved. Price also gave the devil in Id a new head and added a second skull beneath the legs of the horse in th e foreground of the same light.

27 Above, p. 292 & n. 8.

28 Above, n. 16.

29 Above, n. 17.

30 On that of Catherine see below p. 296.

31 Knowles (n. 21) takes a similar view, though he uses the word ‘repainted’ without specifying that the glass was also re-fired.

32 Above, n. 21.

33 Above, n. 10.

34 Chelmsford, Essex Record Office, D/D W E27/1-2.

35 See n. 8; Loton's deposition is dated 5th December 1759. The Churchwardens' Accounts (n. 1) show that Loton was paid £152.12s.I0d for his work, which included the glazing of the south-east and north-east windows in the apse with glass formerly in the east window: in Westlake (n. 2) cf. pls. VII & IX.

36 Wayment, H. G., The Windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge (London 1972), PP. 34–5.Google Scholar

37 Above, n. 21.

38 Mr. Brian Thomas and Mr. Alfred Fisher: letter to the author from Mr. J. P. Foster, 6th July 1978.

39 Westlake, , op. cit. (n. 2), p. 116Google Scholar; the Churchwardens' Receipts & Expenses for the Year 1906 (printed folder) shows that £721 had been collected between January 1906 and Marc h 1907 for the Hunt Memorial & Restoration Fund, and that £74.is.Id was still required.

40 The wooden frame bears a stuck-on paper label inscribed: ‘…Head of Queen Katharine of Arragon (from) the East Window of St. Margaret's Westminster, remov(ed) when the glass was repaired and the head renewed 1906’; cf. Eden, F. S., Ancient Stained and Painted Glass (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1933), pp. 57Google Scholar.

41 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, nos. 47902–30; I am particularly grateful to the Museum for making these excellent photographs available to me.

42 The woman prominent in comforting the Virgin figures, for instance, in the Crucifixions attributed to the Master of Delft at Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz Museum: Friedländer, M. J., Early Netherlandish Painting, x (Leiden, 1973), no. 61, pl. 45)Google Scholar and Turin (ibid., no. 66 VI, pi. 53); for the woman above and behind the Virgin cf. the Lamentation ‘from Naples, now in Rome’, Hoogewerff, G. J., De Noord-Nederlandsche Schilderkunst III, p. 337,Google Scholar fig. 178.

43 Friedländer, , op. cit. (n. 42), no. 71, pl. 61.Google Scholar The windswept loincloths of the two thieves (as distinguished from Christ's) are paralleled in the Lamentation Altarpiece in the same gallery (ibid., no. 74, pl. 64).

44 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: ibid., no. 67, pl. 55.

45 Ibid., no. 108, pl. 78.

46 Ibid., no. 109, pl. 80; Bangs, J. D., Cornells Engebrechtsz's Leiden (Assen, 1979), pp. 47–8,Google Scholar pls. 40-41. For the putti cf. the Van der Doest-Van Poelgeest Panels also in the Lakenhal, Leiden, which Bang s dates c. 1515; ibid., pp. 35-42, figs. a-b. Dr. Bangs tells me that he came independently to the conclusion, some years ago, that the St. Margaret's window is connected with Leiden.

47 (1) In the Chapel of Burgundy at Antwerp: Helbig, J., Les vitraux mediévaux conservés en Belgique 1200-1500 (Brussels, 1961), pp. 191–7,Google Scholar fig. 90. (2) Th e Prophet Jeremiah at Fairford: Joyce, J. G., The Fairford Windows (London, 1872), pl. xx.Google Scholar (3) Chastity Triumphant over Love, Wandtapijten, i (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1962), fig. 18Google Scholar.

48 Crucifixion in Missale Traiectense (Antwerp, 1514).Google Scholar

49 Bangs, , op. cit. (n. 46), figs. 54-5, 61–3.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., fig. 68.

51 Dülberg, F., ‘Die Persönlichkeit des Lucas van Leyden’, Oud Holland, xvii (1899), 66 n. 1.Google Scholar

52 Bangs, J. D., ‘The Leiden Monogramist PC…’, Source 1, i (Fall, 1981), 1215.Google Scholar Dr. Bangs has found in th e Leiden City Archives a previously unknown list of marks (S. A. 1173) which shows that in 1515 Pieter Cornelisz Kunst's mark was. The mark is not listed. It may stand not for PC, as has hitherto been assumed, but for DC. The only known Leiden artist or craftsman bearing either pair of initials who might be responsible for the drawings, and whose mark is not included in the 1515 lists, is Pieter van Cloetinge.

The popular art of can scarcely have developed inside Engebrechts' workshop, though it may have been influenced by Engebrechts; the recognition of the popular style in certain figures in paintings from Engebrechts' circle, e.g. Nicodemus in the Descent from the Cross ( Friedländer, , op. cit. (n. 42), no. 93, pl. 73),Google Scholar does not invalidate the general distinction. More specifically, the style of Pieter Cornelisz Kunst, as illustrated in his only authenticated work, the design of the Pieterskerk pulpit, differs radically from that of the simple Renaissance arabesques found occasionally in the backgrounds of this monogrammatist's designs are of a far less sophisticated type.

53 The National Trust, St. Michael's Mount, Marazion, Cornwall.

54 e.g. the Monument of Elisabeth and Hermann VIII of Henneberg, Römhild, Stadtkirche (probably after 1507): Osten, G. van der and Vey, H., Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands 1500-1600 (Harmondsworth, 1969), fig. 5Google Scholar.

55 e.g. in a design for a scabbard for a dagger by Urs Graf (c. 1511-12): Friedländer, M. J. and Bock, E., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Die Zeichnungen alter Meister im Kupferstichkabinett, Die Deutschen Meister (Berlin, 1921), p. 44Google Scholar.

56 The head of Henry VIII may be related to that in the glass at the Vyne, which was almost certainly designed in 1522; it shows Henry a little older, but the two portraits may perhaps be derived from the same original: Wayment, H. G., ‘The Stained Glass in the Chapel of the Vyne’, National Trust Studies 1980 (London, 1979), p. 43, and fig.11Google Scholar.

57 Th e horizontal strips may, it is true, have replaced an inscription previously removed, but this removal might similarly suggest a change of place.

58 Charlton, J., ‘Excavations at Waltham Abbey, Essex’, Antiq. J. xix (1939), 330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 The nave lancets at Wells, for instance, are 5 ft. 4 in. wide ( Bond, F., English Church Architecture (London, 1913), 11, pp. 560–61Google Scholar and 754). The sun and the moon might more properly form part of the Crucifixion itself, and may have fitted in above the spring of the arch, perhaps with the two badges between them. The angels are so vaguely delineated in th e watercolour of 1737, and were so radically restored by Price, that the date of the original painting is difficult to determine; but there must be a suspicion that the angel in A4 depends on th e torch-bearing angel in Heemskerk's, St. Luke Painting the Virgin of 1532 (Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum:Google ScholarFriedländer, , op. cit. (n. 42),Google Scholar xiii (Leiden, 1975), no. 183, pi. 92). If the Crucifixion was originally in a single light the angels were probably added when it was split up, i.e. c. 1540.

60 Walcott, M. E. C., ‘Inventory of Waltham Holy Cross’, Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. v (1873), 264.Google Scholar

61 See refs. under Waltham Holy Cross indexed in L. & P. Henry VIII1, i, ii; iv i, iii; v and vn.

62 2001. per annum: see n. 60.

63 Walcott, , op. cit. (n. 60), 257–64.Google Scholar