York: Art, Architecture and Archaeology (The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions) [1 ed.] 9781032019666, 9781032019642, 9781003181231, 1032019662

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of abbreviations
Preface
The shrines of St William of York reconstructed
The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster
The chapter-house roof of York Minster
York Minster at the time of the Black Death: the stained glass and chantry-chapel of Archbishop Zouche
The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster
Looking for John Thornton: the Great East Window of York Minster revisited
Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York
Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants
The early-sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York
The material world of the York plays
Index

Citation preview

York York explores the archaeology, art, architecture and cultural heritage of the city in the late Middle Ages. In the years since the resurrection of the British Archaeological Association conference in 1976, the association has met in the city only once (in 1988), for a conference that celebrated Yorkshire Monasticism. As a consequence, the secular and vernacular architecture as well as the architecture, art and imagery of York Minster were excluded from its scope, something redressed in the meeting that took place in 2017. As many recent publications have focused on York in the earlier medieval period, this book shines a much-needed light on the city in the later medieval ages. Starting with a range of essays on York Minster by authors directly involved in major conservation projects undertaken in the last ten years, the book also includes information on the vernacular architecture and transport infrastructure of York, as well as the parochial and material culture of the period. Illuminating the extensive resources for the study of the late Middle Ages in England’s second capital, this book provides new research on this important city and will be suitable for researchers in medieval archaeology, art history, literature and material culture. Sarah Brown is Professor of the History of Art at the University of York and Director of the York Glaziers’ Trust. Her research focus is stained glass history and conservation. Sarah Rees Jones is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York. She specialises in the history of the later Middle Ages, with a particular interest in urban societies and the lived environment. Tim Ayers is Professor of the History of Art at the University of York. He specializes in English art of the later Middle Ages, with a particular research interest in stained glass.

The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions Series Editor: Helen E. Lunnon XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX XL XLI XLII

Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture at Chester (2000), ed. A. Thacker Medieval Art and Architecture in the Diocese of Glasgow (1999), ed. R. Fawcett Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology (2001), ed. M. Henig and P. Lindley Windsor: Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture of the Thames Valley (2002), ed. L. Keen and E. Scarff Anjou: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology (2003), ed. J. McNeill and D. Prigent Carlisle and Cumbria: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology (2004), ed. M. McCarthy and D. Weston Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rochester (2006), ed. T. Ayers and T. Tatton-Brown Cardiff: Architecture and Archaeology in the Medieval Diocese of Llandaff (2006), ed. J. R. Kenyon and D. M. Williams Mainz and the Middle Rhine Valley: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology (2007), ed. U. Engel and A. Gajewski King’s Lynn and the Fens: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology (2008), ed. J. McNeill Prague and Bohemia: Medieval Art, Architecture and Cultural Exchange in Central Europe (2009), ed. Z. Opacic Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity (2011), ed. L. Monckton and R. K. Morris Limerick and South-West Ireland: Medieval Art and Architecture (2011), ed. R. Stalley Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Canterbury (2013), ed. A. Bovey Newcastle and Northumberland: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art (2013), ed. J. Ashbee and J. Luxford Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow and Lesser Poland (2014), ed. A. Roz˙nowska-Sadraei and T. We˛cławowicz Norwich: Medieval and Early Modern Art, Architecture and Archaeology (2015), ed. T. A. Heslop and H. E. Lunnon Westminster: The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace (2015), ed. W. Rodwell and T. Tatton-Brown Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the Dioceses of Aberdeen and Moray (2016), ed. J. Geddes Peterborough and the Soke: Art Architecture and Archaeology (2019), ed. R. Baxter, J. Hall, and C. Marx York: Art, Architecture and Archaeology (2021), ed. Sarah Brown, Sarah Rees Jones and Tim Ayers

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/archaeology/series/BAA

ii

York Art, Architecture and Archaeology Edited by Sarah Brown, Sarah Rees Jones and Tim Ayers

The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions XLII

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 The British Archaeological Association The right of Sarah Brown, Sarah Rees Jones and Tim Ayers to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the author for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-01966-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-01964-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-18123-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents List of abbreviations Preface The shrines of St William of York reconstructed stuart harrison

vi vii 1

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster hilary moxon

26

The chapter-house roof of York Minster julian munby

39

York Minster at the time of the Black Death: the stained glass and chantrychapel of Archbishop Zouche christopher norton

63

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster alexander holton

108

Looking for John Thornton: the Great East Window of York Minster revisited sarah brown

133

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York gareth dean and jayne rimmer

157

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants david harrison

189

The early-sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

209

The material world of the York plays richard beadle

239

Index253

Abbreviations Yorks. Archaeol. J. Journal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Yorks. Archaeol. Soc. Yorkshire Archaeological Society

vi

Preface THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION’S annual conference in 2017 was held in the King’s Manor in the City of York between 21 and 25 July. More than 100 delegates attended the events, which focussed primarily on the medieval archaeology, architecture both ecclesiastical and secular, and art of the later medieval city between, broadly, 1200 and 1500. The association first held a conference in York in 1891, and again in 1923. In the current series of conferences, begun in 1976, the 1988 conference was based in York, but its theme was Yorkshire monasticism, so, as a secular cathedral, the Minster was automatically excluded, and the only paper on York itself included in the published transactions concerned Holy Trinity Priory.1 A conference which embraced the whole of the medieval city and the Minster in particular seemed long overdue. Since the earlier periods (especially pre-conquest) have been the subject of several publications and conferences in recent years, it was decided to concentrate on the late Middle Ages. Even with the subject of the conference thus limited, the range of sites and topics available is overwhelming, and difficult choices had to be made in the selection of papers from the rich range of those offered, and in the sites to be visited. As the city itself offered so much to study, it was decided not to include trips to sites further afield. The association was grateful to the York Archaeological Trust for generously granting access to its visitor attractions and for hosting a reception on the Friday evening in St Antony’s Hall (by kind permission of Trinity Church), to English Heritage for granting access to Clifford’s Tower and to the York Glaziers’ Trust for access to its premises. York Minster was generous in granting access to its premises for specialist tours of the crypt, as well as the chapter-house roof and masons’ loft, led by Stuart Harrison and Chris Adams, and informal on-site talks were given by Kate Giles, Alexander Holton, Christopher Norton, Hilary Moxon and Philippa Turner. Sarah Brown led tours of the York Glaziers’ Trust workshops and enabled access to The Stained Glass Centre in the church of St Martin-cum-Gregory in Micklegate. The churches of All Saints’ North Street, Holy Trinity in Goodramgate (Churches Conservation Trust), Holy Trinity in Micklegate and St Michael-le-Belfrey were also gracious in welcoming guests and providing or permitting extended guided tours. Walking tours of the city, its churches, defences and vernacular architecture were led by Gareth Dean, Jane Grenville, John Oxley, Jayne Rimmer and Sarah Rees Jones. On-site talks were given by Peter Addyman, Jeremy Ashbee, Tim Ayers, Claire Cross, Lisa Reilly and David Stocker. The local organising committee was chaired by Philip Lankester and included Professor Tim Ayers, Sarah Brown and Professor Sarah Rees Jones. The conference was also supported by generous grants towards catering from the Department of the History of Art, and administrative support was provided by Gillian Galloway and Brittany Scowcroft from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. On the first day, three introductory lectures – by Patrick Ottaway on ‘Roman York’, Ailsa Mainman on ‘Anglian and Anglo-Scandinavian York’ and Sarah Rees Jones on ‘Norman York and the re-use of the Roman past’ – provided an overview of the development of the city before c. 1150, with a particular focus on its developing topography. These papers have not been included in the present volume. All three vii

preface

speakers had recently contributed substantial chapters to the British Historic Towns Atlas, volume 5, The City of York, published by Oxbow Books in 2015, as well as each publishing monographs on their respective periods, and it was decided not to duplicate those publications here.2 With the scene set, the conference proceeded over the following days with a wealth of papers, the majority of which are published in this volume. We are most grateful to Frances Mee for her exemplary assistance with editorial work on the published volume and to Tony Carr for the compilation of the index.

notes 1. D. A. Stocker, ‘The Priory of Holy Trinity, York’, in Yorkshire Monasticism: Archaeology, Art and Architecture from the 7th to 16th Centuries, ed. L. R. Hoey, vol. XVI (BAA Conference Transactions 1995) (Leeds – a Maney volume), 79–96. 2. P. Ottaway, Roman York (Stroud 2004); Ailsa Mainman, Anglian York (Pickering Press 2019); S. R. Jones, York, the Making of a City, c. 1068–1350 (Oxford 2013).

viii

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed STUART HARRISON

There were four architectural structures or shrine bases associated with the cult of St William of York (d. 1154, canonised 1226), whose sarcophagus was rediscovered in 1968, positioned centrally between the first two pair of piers at the east end of the nave of York Minster, where it had been buried at the Reformation. Its site marked that of St William’s shrine, built around and over the sarcophagus, which had only been partly sunk into the nave floor and was always visible. An analysis of the sarcophagus revealed evidence for the former existence of a casing around it and a canopy over it, which must have formed an early shrine superstructure. It was succeeded c. 1284 by a second shrine structure erected behind the high altar in the choir, paid for by Antony Bek, consecrated bishop of Durham, on the same day as the translation of the relics of St William. The nave shrine was replaced in c. 1330 by a larger two-storeyed shrine structure designed to fit carefully around the sarcophagus, embellished with ogee arches, elaborately carved spandrels and tracery supports decorated with niches and statuary. Finally, a fourth shrine structure, made of Teesdale marble, was erected in the new choir of the Minster c. 1470. This was also of two storeys, with large, vaulted prayer-niches and upper tracery elements capped by an elaborate cornice. the history, destruction and rediscovery of the shrine structures William FitzHerbert was archbishop of York twice and died in 1154. Details of his life and the cult which emerged after his death have been explored at length by Christopher Norton.1 William was the treasurer of the Minster, and his election as archbishop in 1142, evidently as the preferred candidate of King Stephen, proved to be hugely controversial. It was opposed by the Cistercian and Augustinian houses in the region and also by some members of the York Chapter. Appeals were made to Rome, and with the intervention of St Bernard of Clairvaux and the election of a Cistercian pope, Eugenius II, he was deposed in 1146 and retired to Winchester. His successor was Henry Murdac, the Cistercian abbot of Fountains Abbey, who initially encountered problems with the York Chapter, which meant he did not enter the city until later in his episcopate, when matters had settled down. Upon his death in 1153 and also the deaths of Pope Eugenius and St Bernard in the same year, William was re-elected archbishop and, after travelling to Rome to obtain the pallium, he returned to York, only to die three weeks later in 1154. It was alleged that he died from poison administered in the chalice at the Mass, and thus he was soon viewed as a martyr.

© 2022 The British Archaeological Association

1

stuart harrison

A series of miracles at his tomb in 1177 led to his promotion as a saint, and his tomb became an object of veneration from the late 12th century. In 1226 a papal bull of canonisation was secured. In 1284, at a great ceremony attended by the king and many church dignitaries, the tomb was opened, and William’s remains were exhumed and placed in a feretory. As will be discussed below, this may also have been the time when the bones were split into three parts, with the main skeleton remaining in the nave tomb, some of the long bones translated at Bishop Bek’s expense to the new shrine in the choir and the skull enclosed in a separate reliquary box. The site of the tomb continued to attract attention, and around 1330, following the rebuilding of the nave, a substantial two-storey stone shrine base was erected over it at the behest of Archbishop Melton. Finally, a fourth shrine base, made from Egglestone or Teesdale marble, was erected in the choir of the cathedral in the 1470s, presumably to replace the older choir base. This marble stone shrine base, together with the stone shrine base housed in the nave, is thought to have been dismantled sometime between 1538 and 1541; much of its stonework was broken up and buried near the Minster in Precentor’s Court. The fact that the Privy Council, meeting in York on 22 September 1541 during Henry VIII’s visit to York, issued an instruction to the archbishop of York in which he was ‘commanded that all the shrines with their hovels’ be taken down throughout his province, suggests that the two shrine bases of St William in the Minster, though stripped of their treasures, were probably still intact.2 This is a suggestion given some credence by the recorded destruction of the reliquary box containing the skull of St William which took place the following month, as discussed below. Christopher Wilson detailed the subsequent periodic discovery of elements of these two shrine bases during construction or digging in Precentor’s Court.3 Many fragments of the two shrine bases eventually found their way into the Yorkshire Museum, where some parts may be seen on display.4 The latest discovery, in 1928, is partially recorded in W. Harvey Brook’s catalogue of stonework in the Yorkshire Museum collection, and this includes a plan showing where some pieces were dug up in Precentor’s Court.5 the discovery of the sarcophagus of st william and the evidence of the first nave shrine Crucial to this study of the shrines of St William is the relationship of the shrine base fragments to the surviving sarcophagus of St William, which was rediscovered during the archaeological excavations in the crossing, nave and transepts undertaken between 1967 and 1972.6 In 1968 the excavation beneath the crossing was extended further into the nave, and as the limits of the trench moved westwards, the end of a large stone sarcophagus was revealed poking out of the vertical soil section. This was not the first time the stone sarcophagus with its coped lid had been seen. In 1732, during the replacement of the old medieval flooring with the present Burlington/Kent pavement, the antiquary Francis Drake had made a search for the burial of St William, and after lifting a large floor slab and digging down, he had exposed a large stone sarcophagus that he identified as that of the saint.7 That the sarcophagus exposed in 1968 was indeed the one seen by Drake was confirmed by the examination of its contents, which he had described and which were still there on its later rediscovery, as reported by Derek Phillips.8 The sarcophagus contained a lead relic box housing a collection of human bones and some fragments of silk fabric which were examined in detail, and 2

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

the bones were later presumably returned to the sarcophagus.9 The sarcophagus lay in the position traditionally identified as the site of the tomb and subsequent shrine of St William, in the centre of the nave on an axis between the first two piers of the nave arcades. There is no reason to doubt the identification. It is notable that most of the long bones and skull were missing from the lead relic box. Following its rediscovery, Phillips saw the sarcophagus in the context of its relationship with the vertical soil sections butting to each side of it and from which the end of the sarcophagus projected (Fig. 1). The sarcophagus has a clear ‘tidemark’ round the outside about 10 in. (c. 254 mm) from the bottom. Above this line are the remains of mortar adhering patchily to the sarcophagus, and below it the roughly tooled stonework is unadorned.10 Phillips rightly concluded that the upper part of the sarcophagus had been visible, while the lower part had been set into the floor. The ‘tidemark’ aligned in the soil section with the top of what he described as laminated mortary deposits. He therefore concluded, not unreasonably, that the laminated deposits

Fig. 1.  The sarcophagus discovered in 1968 can now be seen in the western crypt Source: Stuart Harrison

3

stuart harrison

represented the original late-11th-century nave floor of the cathedral of Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux and that the sarcophagus had been let into the floor with its upper part and lid standing proud of it. The implication (though not explicitly stated) is that the sarcophagus was in situ and that it must therefore have been buried when the floor was raised to its late medieval level during the construction of the present nave, c. 1291–1339. In other words, the original nave floor in which the sarcophagus had been set was some considerable depth below the later medieval floor level. After much reflection and a detailed reconsideration of the evidence, it has become evident that there are serious objections to this interpretation. Although the soil sections at the east end of the nave are particularly disturbed by graves (which clustered around the tomb of St William) and other disturbances, the north–south section does give a clear indication of the relationship of the coffin to the surrounding deposits. The laminated mortary deposits did not actually extend as far as the sides of the coffin, so their precise relationship is questionable. Furthermore, the coffin rested in a cut which was made not from the level of the putative lower floor (as represented by the laminated deposits) but from the top of the soil section, i.e. from a level which (on Phillips’ low-floor hypothesis) was not reached until c. 1300. The sarcophagus therefore cannot have been in its original relationship vis-a-vis a putative low-level 11th-century floor: the apparent coincidence between the ‘tidemark’ on the sarcophagus and the top of the laminated deposits could simply have been that, a pure coincidence. The problems of interpreting the stratigraphy prompted a careful examination of the sarcophagus itself. This yielded extremely interesting results. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the sarcophagus of St William was originally set into the 11th-century nave in a pavement whose level hardly changed during the Middle Ages. The 11th-century nave must therefore have always had a high-level pavement at about the same level as the floor of the crossing. At the Reformation the Melton shrine of c. 1330 was demolished, and the sarcophagus was revealed again. It was then simply moved aside and a large hole dug into which it was carefully dropped and buried. The relics from the shrine, if not already in it, were placed in the lead relic box and put in the sarcophagus. A large slab was then put in place to cover the disturbance in the pavement. The present lid, in a single piece, is the second one to have covered the sarcophagus, as the first was broken in a fire in the 12th century and so must have been replaced.11 It is of coped design and also tapers gently from west to east (Fig. 1). Along each short end is a chamfer on the angle. Its surface has a remarkable patina and is very smooth, showing clear signs of wear to the chamfers on each end. This can only be explained as the result of human touching of its surface over an extended period and by many thousands of people. This contact gradually polished the surface and also wore it away, resulting in the production of some remarkable archaeological evidence in the form of three slightly raised areas of stone spaced equidistant along each side edge of the sarcophagus lid (Fig. 2). They all show as a raised arc and indicate the former presence of a series of circular bases that overlapped the edges of the lid and would have effectively sealed it down as well as protecting it from the touch of pilgrims. Their presence can also be detected on the vertical edges of the lid where the remains of mortar indicate their positions. In turn, the former presence of such bases indicates that the sarcophagus had also been encased with a masonry jacket to support the bases. Their circular plan would tend to indicate a 13th-century date for the structure. The bases would of course have supported shafts and capitals and surely arches 4

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

Fig. 2.  Raised curved section showing along the edge of the lid of the sarcophagus created by pilgrims touching the lid and gradually wearing it away. The sarcophagus shows evidence for three such raised sections on each side, equally spaced apart Source: Stuart Harrison

as well. An additional pair at each end would also be needed to support a shrinelike structure. In this connection we are surely looking at something very similar in appearance to the tomb of Archbishop Walter de Grey (d. 1255) in the south transept (Fig. 3). In fact, de Grey is the most likely candidate to have erected the shrine canopy, as he was archbishop when William was canonised in 1226. He was deeply involved in promoting the cult of the archbishop, and a new architectural canopy over the sarcophagus would surely have been an appropriate reflection of the new status of William as a saint. In summary, the sarcophagus originally stood proud of the pavement, and only the lower 10 in. or so were buried in the floor. At some point, most likely in the 1220s, the sarcophagus was encased in a previously unsuspected shrine structure, which left the sarcophagus lid visible and accessible to pilgrims. In due course this structure was dismantled, presumably at the time of the 1284 translation. The sarcophagus was 5

stuart harrison

Fig. 3.  A simple reconstruction model of the first shrine base over the tomb in the nave showing how the columns overlapped the edge of the lid of the sarcophagus and must have been partly supported on a casing placed around it Source: Stuart Harrison

eventually encased in another nave shrine base around 1330, which likewise left the lid open to view and touch.12 In 1284 the opening of the sarcophagus was an essential part of the translation, and at least some of the bones of St William were moved to a new second shrine sited in the choir. the second shrine base of 1284 sited in the choir Christopher Wilson described how Bishop Bek of Durham paid for the translation of 1284 and also for a new shrine base and its cover, built behind the high altar in the Minster choir. He suggested that it would have consisted of a marble base with a silver coffin or feretrum to contain the relics of the saint, that it was likely to have survived the rebuilding of the Minster choir and was eventually replaced by a larger marble shrine in the 1470s (see below).13 This is about all we know regarding this 13th-century shrine in the choir, as no trace of it has ever been discovered, as Wilson pointed out, although it is mentioned in several documents. 6

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

the third shrine commissioned by archbishop melton, c. 1330 The third shrine structure to be built formed the second incarnation of the nave tomb shrine and can be dated stylistically to the years around 1330. It was this nave shrine base that survived until the Reformation and whose remains, dug up in Precentor’s Court, are now preserved in the Yorkshire Museum. It was partly if not fully financed by Archbishop William Melton (1317–40), who paid £20 towards its construction.14 It can be distinguished from the first nave shrine structure which served as a tomb shrine containing the relics of St William because it served the considerably different function of a base for the elevation of a reliquary box or feretrum containing the bones of the saint. Not only was the sarcophagus never buried prior to the Reformation, it is demonstrable that it protruded from the floor throughout these changes: there is no sign that the floor was raised to any great extent around it. The sarcophagus must have stood proud of the late medieval floor level in order for it to be encased in the Melton shrine base structure. What has become known as the Melton nave shrine base was made from magnesian limestone and carved to a high standard. Numerous parts of its structure survive in various degrees of preservation in the collection of the Yorkshire Museum. In 2008 the author was commissioned by the Yorkshire Museum to make a detailed examination of all the pieces, with a view to making a reconstruction drawing of the whole. It is remarkable that of the four lower corner-supports of the shrine base, three have survived (Fig. 4). They all show a lower plinth section which must have surmounted a sub-plinth. Above this was a band of large quatrefoils running around all four sides of the monument. Above the quatrefoils were a series of open arches that supported a mid-shelf stone slab on which the feretory containing the relics would have stood. This was surrounded, in turn, by another series of arches with tracery heads and supports decorated with miniature niches and canopies sheltering small statues. Various sections of the arches have survived, and notably they have, with one exception, been cut up and severely damaged. The exception is a corner section, which almost miraculously retains the complete arch springer on each side (Fig. 5). This shows that the side arches were of ogee-headed form, but the end arches were nodding ogees. Overall the structure had a single arch at each end and four arches along each side. As reconstructed, it can be demonstrated that it was purposely designed to fit snugly around the sarcophagus but also to leave the lid still visible and accessible (Fig. 6). The mouldings of the arches are complex small rolls and hollows, while the arch spandrels are decorated with carved figures or abstract tracery ornament. Some of the internal arch spandrels are also decorated with carvings, but not, it seems, the end arches. This confined the internal spandrel carvings to the two central arches along each side of the shrine. The nodding ogee end arches have external spandrel carvings of the four evangelist symbols of the Winged Lion (St Mark), the Eagle (St John), the Angel (St Matthew) and the Winged Ox (St Luke). Of these, the first three have survived in clearly recognisable form, but only perhaps part of the scale-feather-decorated wing of the Ox of St Luke, though this might have originated in one of the other spandrel carvings. Not all of the parts of the arches have survived, so there are gaps in the series. The form of the decorative spandrels, both inside and outside, is also in some cases puzzling and enigmatic.15 One might expect there to have been episodes from the life of the saint or examples of his miraculous cures, but there is no such obvious theme 7

stuart harrison

Fig. 4.  One of the cornersupports from the lower part of the Melton nave shrine which encased the sarcophagus Source: Stuart Harrison

among the surviving pieces. Only one spandrel panel can be shown to relate to one of the miracle stories associated with the cult of St William. It is that of trial by combat between Ralph and Besing and in which Ralph is blinded by Besing, who damaged one of his eyes.16 Ralph had his other eye removed as a forfeit because he lost the contest. He then prayed at the tomb of St William, and his sight was miraculously restored, though the new eyes he received were smaller than the old ones and of a different 8

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

Fig. 5.  The surviving corner section from the Melton nave shrine, revealing the form of the arches and the spandrel decoration, perhaps showing an angel of half-animal half-human form with scale-feather wings and holding a hawk Source: Stuart Harrison

colour.17 In this scene the figures are compressed into the spandrel shape and fight with hammer-like weapons; one has a small round shield. The arm of the right-hand figure is extended towards the head of the left-hand figure and the hand touches his head. The hand is damaged, but it is possible to see part of his thumb poking into the other’s eye, which confirms the identification of Ralph and Besing (Fig. 7).18 The internal spandrel of this arch is decorated with the figure of an old, bearded man with a beret-like hat. He is smiling and looking straight out at the viewer and has a raised arm and hand pointing upwards to a book. To the side of his head is what looks like a leathery bat-like wing. The rest of the carving is unfortunately lost. Other external and internal spandrels were arranged on paper to give an idea of a possible sequence. On the surviving intact corner springer is the Eagle of St John on the end-arch spandrel, and on the side-arch spandrel, an angel-like falconer with a hawk on his wrist but with a wing on his back and with animal legs (Fig. 5). From the opposite side corner there is the Angel of St Matthew, and that may have been matched around the side with a bowman drawing his bow and about to fire an arrow with a large barbed point. From the other end of the shrine structure is a spandrel 9

stuart harrison

Fig. 6.  Reconstruction elevation drawings of the Melton nave shrine  Stuart Harrison Source: Stuart Harrison

10

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

Fig. 7.  Trial by combat scene showing on the left Ralph and right Besing, who has poked his thumb in Ralph’s eye to blind him Source: Stuart Harrison

showing the Lion of St Mark, but the return arch along the side is lost. The adjoining corner assembly with the Ox of St Luke is also lost, together with the return-side arch. Of the surviving midsection arches there is a spandrel with a winged angel figure on the exterior, but this is badly damaged, and some of the scene is missing. On the internal spandrel there is a strange beast with a scale-feather-covered body and rear leg, showing a flowing tail at the top left and long pointed ears at bottom right to the downward pointing head. The rest of the head is unfortunately lost. Another fragmentary spandrel piece shows a section of another scale-feather-decorated wing. That it originated in an 11

stuart harrison

external spandrel is clear from the remains of the cornice moulding which partially survives. It may have formed a pair with the other angel-decorated spandrel, as it is could not have formed part of the missing Winged Ox evangelist figure. The next example has a whole arch with both spandrels decorated with an opposed pair of bearded fighting men. The left-hand figure holds his sword in a defensive posture while the right-hand figure swings his sword behind his head to strike out at his opponent. The central section of the panel has been hacked away, and the scene is therefore incomplete.19 The internal spandrels show the badly damaged carvings of what seem to be horses. Certainly the right-hand spandrel shows the rear end of a horse-like creature with one leg and a flowing tail. The left-hand spandrel is so damaged that hardly any sculpture remains. One external spandrel is decorated with tracery panelling rather than figurative sculpture, and it may be that the opposing spandrel was similarly treated. On the internal spandrel is a stonemason cleverly set in a vigorous pose to fit the spandrel shape. He has his mallet raised to strike the chisel. He wears a cap and gloves to protect his hands as he works. Another spandrel has a half-human, half-animal figure. The human head is bearded and has a hood tapering to a long waving tassel at the end. The upper body is covered by a mantle tied at the waist with a cord. The lower body and legs are naked and of distinctly animal form, in fact rather horse-like with the jointing and what look like hooves. The internal spandrel is decorated with what is clearly a depiction of a typical pilgrim, with his hat slung back over his shoulder and holding out his staff with its iron-shod tip. He is clean shaven and has curly hair. His feet are bare to show his penitence and devotion. Such pilgrim figures are often identified by a scallop shell, the symbol of St James of Compostela, but as this is the shrine of St William, that particular pilgrim emblem is noticeably absent. The complete corner springer shows an internal corner with an engaged fillet-decorated shaft with a moulded capital at the top. This is set down from the top of the lower stage of the shrine to allow for the large slab which formed the shelf for the feretrum containing the relics. At this level there is also a continuous setback of around 10 mm to help support the slab. Besides the complete corner section, one other identical moulded corner capital survives from a broken-up corner springer. The intermediate side supports were treated like moulded mullions and rose up through the elevation and supported the mouldings of the arches without the benefit of capitals. The central shaft on the exterior and interior continued above the arch springing level, dividing the springers vertically into distinct bays. The top of the lower stage was defined by a moulded string-course, and this was breached by the corner buttresses, which rose through it to continue into the upper stage. The whole scheme for the lower stage is one of architectural decoration to every surface. The backgrounds to the figures are all gridded with recessed squares decorated with flower motifs or fleurons. As Wilson pointed out, the sumptuous decoration is matched only by such monuments as the Percy Tomb and reredos screen at Beverley Minster, the Easter Sepulchre at Hawton (Notts.) and the arcading of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral.20 the upper stage While the corner arrangement of the lower stage of the shrine base structure was simply moulded, there was a distinct change in the upper section. Here there were tiered and paired niches decorated with small statues and elaborate canopies. The 12

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

statues were not separately carved but on the same block as the niches and canopies. The canopies are foliate and are considerably extended with crocket decoration. They are of a similar height to the statues below them. The surviving upper corner springer shows two paired statues and niches on the external angle and a single statue and niche on the internal angle. This springer, though damaged, retains enough evidence to reconstruct the form of the arches springing off it. It shows an arch springing off with a cusp on the soffit and a similar springer, and the broken stub of another cusp on the other side. Above the arch, the side of the corner is moulded and indicates an open tracery arch arrangement. Given that the arches in the lower stage are of ogee form, it seems most likely that ogees were also used in the upper stage. In fact, the arches must have been very similar to those of the lower stage, except with cinquefoil cusping to the soffits and open spandrels. One intermediate support survives and shows half a figure at the bottom, with a complete figure and canopy above it and then the start of a third niche and statue (Fig. 8). This arrangement is repeated on both sides of the support with internal and external statues and niche canopies. Altogether, the proportions of the two most complete surviving upper supports suggest three tiers of niches, which would mean there were seventy-two niches and statues in all. Surviving attributes allow some of the statues to be identified as saints. Wilson identified St Margaret, St Cuthbert holding the head of St Oswald, St Edmund holding arrows, and St Thomas the Apostle in the guise of a master mason, with a compass and mason’s square, although he also acknowledged that this might be the master mason who created the shrine.21 To these attributions might be added another figure who seems to be holding the damaged remains of a key and may therefore be St Peter. The upper section of the shrine base must have been finished with a cornice, although no pieces have yet been found or identified. Other sculpture in the Museum’s collection includes parts of two busts, one with long wavy hair meant to sit on top of a moulded shaft. The other is an angel with scale-feather wings and emerging from clouds. These may have stood on top of the vertical supports and may in turn have been surmounted by pinnacles. Considerable amounts of iron reinforcements were used in the construction of the shrine. The lower corner supports show evidence for vertical dowels, connecting to the upper sections, and also corner cramps from the top of the lower section that would have connected into the missing feretory slab. It would seem that these corner cramps were there to prevent any movement of the corners away from the feretory slab and would have kept the parts tightly locked in position. There is also a socket for a cramp across an arch apex joint to hold it together. Other sections of the shrine also show evidence for large vertical dowels to hold the various sections together. The top of the surviving corner springer also shows evidence for the setting out of the stone on the bench with a series of squared-up centre lines incised into it. This is basic setting-out practice for carving the overall shape and emplacing the stone, but notably there are also the profiles of the main mouldings with filleted rolls separated by hollows, which gave the detail to be worked on the arches and mullions.22 Overall the shrine was 1.37 m wide, 3.26 m long and around 3.8 m high. It had a single arch at each end and four arches down each long side. Drawing all these pieces of evidence together enabled the detailed reconstruction drawing (Fig. 6) and also a simple 3D model to be constructed to show the overall form of the structure (Fig. 9). It should also be borne in mind that this was originally covered with polychromy. 13

stuart harrison

Fig. 8.  Section of surviving upper stage support showing statues in tiered niches Source: Stuart Harrison

14

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

Fig. 9.  A simple 3D reconstruction model of the nave shrine  Stuart Harrison Source: Stuart Harrison

the fourth shrine, sited in the choir A new shrine of Egglestone or Teesdale marble, which is a dark fossiliferous limestone from Teesdale, was made for the choir of the cathedral in the early 1470s. Numerous fragments of it have survived, and some are displayed in the Yorkshire Museum. In concept it was somewhat different from the tomb shrine in the nave and was of the type with prayer niches with vaulted decorative canopies down each side and at 15

stuart harrison

each end. At the west end there were two diagonally set wings or extended tracery buttresses. At the top was an elaborate cornice that ran around the whole monument. Presumably the relics were placed in a wooden feretrum which stood on the top of the marble base. This may be one of the two wooden feretories which were described in an inventory made in 1535 as: Item a Shryen of Sanct William standing of wood covered with plait of silver and gilt the valor theroff by estimacion C li. Item a Shyreren of Sanct William that is borne with certain Images brouches beads and bells by estimacion CC li.23

As both Wilson and Fowler before him have mentioned, there was a portable feretory or shrine which was taken in processions around the city and to St Mary’s Abbey at Pentecost.24 In that respect the term ‘standing’ to describe the first shrine may mean that it was fixed, and the term ‘borne’ for the second that it was the portable shrine carried in processions.25 The presence of images, broaches, beads and bells and considerable difference in value indicates one was considerably more elaborate than the other. The rope which lifted the elaborate shrine cover of St Cuthbert at Durham had six bells attached which tinkled when it was raised up to reveal the actual reliquary it enclosed. In his case, a chest bound with iron contained his mummified body. In fact, the account of 1593 of the arrangements, customs, usage and suppression of St Cuthbert’s shrine gives a comprehensive description of how a great medieval shrine was managed and of its main features. St William’s shrine can have been little different.26 It seems most likely that the less elaborate feretory was displayed upon the nave tomb shrine base and the more elaborate on the shrine base in the choir, though we cannot be certain. This suggestion is made simply because of the physical differences in the two shrine base structures. The nave tomb shrine feretory platform set midway in the height of the structure meant that the feretory it supported was enclosed within a cage of tracery and therefore difficult to access. In other words, it would have surely been difficult to dismount it to take it in a procession. On the other hand the later marble shrine base in the choir had a flat top, upon which presumably the feretory stood, and which could be more easily dismounted, though it was of considerable height, and ladders would have been needed; some sort of pulley system attached to the ceiling to lift either feretory cannot be discounted. Besides the two shrines listed in the inventory there was also mention in the following entry of a reliquary box or little chest in which the skull of St William had been kept.27 This was on 24 October 1541 and states: Xxiiii die mensis Octobris A.D. 1541 in domo et hora capitulari etc. dominus Decanus Ebor. cum consensu venerabilium virorum Magister Cuthberti Marshall et Roberti Hullensis episcopi canonicorum residentiariorum decrevit capsulum in qua stetit et cohabitavit caput Sancti Willelmi Ebor. ab antiquo accepi et distrahi atque converti ad usum et publicam utilitatem ecclesie Ebor. Et postea eodem die ipsa capsula fuit distracta cum omnibus jocalibus suis. Unde in argento deaurato et vendito Ricardo

16

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed Bardisman de Ebor goldsmyth cciiiixx xiiii uncie precii summa lvi li. vii s. Et in gold iiii uncie viii li. x s. lez uncia silver iii s. x d. lez uncia gold xls. Summa totalis lxiiii li. xvii s. Unde payd in hand xxiiii li. xvii s. deliberacione Magistri Johannis Coltman subthesaurarior in bursa sigillata cum sigillo Willelmi Wright clerici Capituli et in custodia Magistri Johannis Colteman; restat xl li. to pay at Cristymas next. 24th day of October 1541 in the house and hour of the chapter etc. The Lord Dean of York with the consent of the venerable men Master Cuthbert Marshall and Robert bishop of Hull, and of the residentiary canons, dismantled the little chest in which stood and dwelt the head of St William of York. From that which excels and which pulls apart and also turns around for use and public profit of the church of York. And the next day after the same little chest was taken apart with all its jewels, from which 292 ounces of silver gilt was sold to Richard Bardisman of York, goldsmith, for the sum of £56 7s. And in gold 4 ounces £8 10s. The ounces of silver 3s. 10d., the ounces of gold 40s. Total sum: £64 17s. Then paid in hand by deliverance to Master John Coltman, subtreasurer, £24 17s. in a bag [or purse, bursa can mean either] sealed with the seal of William Wright, Chapter Clerk, and in the keeping of Master John Coltman. £40 remains to pay at Christmas next.28

Clearly, somehow the Chapter had managed to retain this reliquary box and break it up for its own benefit rather than it being taken in the usual manner by the king’s commissioners and sent to London for the king’s profit. It clearly wasn’t listed with the other two shrines in the earlier inventory. As Wilson pointed out, it had angels supporting the main structure which had to be repaired at one time, and it was kept in the choir and also carried in processions.29 In the absence of any further mention of the two great silver-plated shrine feretories, described above in 1535, I think it can be safely assumed that these had already been taken, perhaps in the first great attack on the cult of saints and dismantling of shrines in 1538. What this additional information tells us is that the skull had been separated from the body and was kept in its own jewel-encrusted box covered in silver plates and some gold ornament as well.30 That the two silver-plated feretories had gone but the stone structures of the shrines or shrine bases themselves likely remained standing should be no surprise. In 1539 the abbot of Hailes wrote to Thomas Cromwell asking what to do about the shrine base of the Holy Blood relic.31 This relic had been taken and exposed as a fake at St Paul’s Cross in London, but the stone shrine base still stood, and the abbot was in a quandary over what to do about it. At St Albans, the discovery in the 19th century of the dismantled parts of the shrine bases of St Alban and of St Amphibalus, in a post-suppression wall dividing the Lady Chapel from the rest of the church, shows that both had stood intact until the abbey was dissolved and turned to new purposes as a parish church.32 So it seems that following the initial attacks on the cult of saints, their shrines were usually stripped of their treasures and relics but the structures were not always immediately pulled down. That it took a Privy Council order to the archbishop to achieve this suggests that there had been little or no destruction of the shrine bases throughout the archdiocese of York. The Privy Council was most likely directed by the king himself, who no doubt visited the Minster during his stay in York in 1541 and who would have seen the shrine bases. The suggested sequence is of course largely supposition, and without further documentation we cannot be certain that the two great stone shrine bases in York Minster 17

stuart harrison

Fig. 10.  A section of the marble shrine from the choir reassembled in the Yorkshire Museum showing part of the base with quatrefoil and a niche with its vault Source: Stuart Harrison

18

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

were destroyed following the king’s visit, but it does seem a strong possibility, given that the Chapter still had in its possession the skull reliquary, having somehow apparently concealed its presence.33 The finish and details of the fourth marble shrine base from the choir are superb examples of the mason’s craft and, as Wilson pointed out, in 1472, the Minster master mason Robert Spillesby had gone in search of marblers, presumably to carry out the work, which was a specialist aspect of the trade.34 The shrine base was divided into bays, most likely four on the long sides and one on each end, and thereby matched in scale the earlier second shrine in the nave. The base section, like the earlier shrine, was decorated with quatrefoils that had human heads set at the centre enveloped in foliage. The sill or base that sat on top of the quatrefoils is lost but must have taken the form of a slab with a moulded edge. Standing on it were the half-hexagonal niches covered with miniature shafts at the angles and mullions between, with bases standing on tall sub-bases and moulded capitals. At the head were perpendicular tracery arch-heads set between miniature fan vaults of varied and considerable complexity. At mid-height was a transom section decorated with miniature cusped tracery and a delicate, detailed cresting. It was also studded with small foliage bosses and miniature grotesque heads (Fig. 10). The backs of the niche sections are roughly finished but articulated to fit together, so that an intermediate niche is rectangular at the sides and back but at the end of the long side the last niche has one end angled to fit the return end niche, which had both ends angled at 45 degrees. The niche heads are similarly treated, and both extend only as far as the straight front return. In other words, they consist of only three angled sides to form the niche and its vault. The front buttress sections between each niche are separate stones which simply butted up to the niches. In this respect, the bays were strongly delineated by tall base sections starting at floor level with vertical shafts, set with niches between them at the front. A hollow moulding studded with leaf decoration ran up each side. A few examples had small statues carved in situ, but none has survived sufficiently intact to identify the figures. They supported a front arch that has its own short section of vault and an ogee arch with openwork cusped tracery (Fig. 11). The upper section of the shrine featured a number of image niches which were set into blind tracery panelling (Fig. 12). No surface is left unarticulated. There were tiered image niches between each niche section rising to the cornice level. The side spandrels of each ogee arch were decorated by a pair of winged angels, while the upper part was decorated with crockets and rose to an elaborate finial. The two eastern corners had an image niche across the corner angle, and at the top the figure of an angel sitting in clouds. The western corners were treated differently and had diagonally orientated buttresses of considerable size and a projection formed of openwork perpendicular tracery. There was a reverse curve flying-buttress section rising to near the top of the monument that had open circular tracery elements and a foliate cresting with projecting crockets. Considerable portions of both of these upper sections have survived, together with one complete lower section of tracery, but unfortunately the middle section has not been found, and its form remains conjectural. At the apex of each corner was a winged angel. The top of the shrine was decorated with a deep foliate cornice running continuously all the way around the rim. This has some evidence, as do various other sections, for cramps to hold the shrine together, though some may be modern intrusions to the original fabric.35 In 1977 the form of the shrine was reconstructed by the late John Hutchinson under the supervision of Christopher Wilson (Fig. 13). It vividly shows the 19

stuart harrison

Fig. 11.  Upper part of marble shrine from the choir, with the central buttress section of a bay flanked by half a cusped arch at each side which fronted the niches Source: Stuart Harrison

Fig. 12.  Upper section of marble shrine from the choir, with niche canopies flanking the finial from a lower arch and blind arcading Source: Stuart Harrison

20

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

Fig. 13.  Reconstruction drawing of the shrine by the late John Hutchinson, showing its location in the bay behind the high altar of the Minster. It was surrounded by screens, with that to the west being made of timber Source: With permission of the Yorkshire Museum, which commissioned the original work

21

stuart harrison

Fig. 14.  Reconstruction elevations and plan (to scale) of the marble shrine from the choir drawn for this paper  Stuart Harrison Source: Stuart Harrison

22

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed

arrangement of the shrine behind the high altar of the Minster, separated from it on the west side by a timber screen that survived until the rearrangement of the high altar in the 18th century.36 Perhaps missing are all the votive objects, other clutter and gifts usually associated with shrines that were left by grateful pilgrims, though some detail of this can be seen in the St William window. The surviving parts of the shrine have been measured and reassembled on paper for the first time for this study (Fig. 14). This has revealed that the overall size of this later shrine was similar to that of the shrine in the nave. The overall dimensions were 3.3 m high (nave shrine c. 3.8 m), 1.5 m wide (nave shrine 1.37 m) and 4.15 m long as a four-niche-per-side structure. This in plan looks too large, and a three-niche per side structure is better proportioned, at 3.27 m long, which is about the same length as the shrine from the nave.37 So many pieces of niche and niche vaults have survived, it has not proved possible to quantify them exactly, not least because some are built into a museum display.38 Christopher Wilson suggested that the shrine in the nave must have been one of the larger examples of its period, and though the reconstruction is somewhat smaller than he envisaged, being only one arch wide instead of two, it is still a large structure. This is especially so when it is compared to the reconstructed contemporary shrine of St Werburgh at Chester. It was also taller than the earlier shrine of St Alban. At Durham, the shrine base of St Cuthbert seems to have had two niches per side, as intimated in the description of it written in 1593.39 acknowledgements I would like to thank Andrew Morrison, formerly of the Yorkshire Museum, who commissioned the study of the shrine from the nave and provided a copy of the Harvey Brook catalogue. During the more recent study, Adam Parker from the museum was most helpful in providing access to the surviving parts from both of the shrines and in also providing a copy of the reconstruction drawing made by the late John Hutchinson. The study of the sarcophagus of St William was undertaken jointly with Christopher Norton, who also provided numerous other pieces of information regarding the shrines. Christopher Wilson kindly commented and discussed his previous work on the shrine in the choir. Glyn Coppack kindly translated the Latin text about the head shrine relic box of St William and discussed its significance. John Gough also commented on a late draft of the paper, for which I am very grateful.

notes 1. C. Norton, St William of York (Woodbridge 2006), 149–201. 2. ‘Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII: Preserved in the Public Record Office, The British Museum and Elsewhere’, eds J. Sherren Brewer, R. F. Brodie and J. Gardner (1828– 1912), 1541–52, 553, 22 Sept item 1192 The Privy Council. 3. C. Wilson, The Shrines of St William of York (York 1977), 10–11. 4. At the time of writing, some parts of the shrine of c. 1330 thought to come from the Minster nave can be seen in the basement gallery. The later 15th-century nave shrine fragments are not currently displayed. 5. Wilson, Shrines of St  William (as n. 3), 10; W. Harvey Brook, ‘Inventory for a Catalogue of the Museum of Medieval Architecture’ (unpublished MS in Yorkshire Museum), Book 3, 10.

23

stuart harrison 6. D. Phillips, The Cathedral of Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux: Excavations at York Minster, II, RCHME (London 1985). 7. F. Drake, Eboracum, or The History and Antiquities of the City of York (London 1736), 420. 8. Phillips, Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux (as n. 6), 124–29. Phillips and his team of archaeologists did a remarkable job of recording the archaeological deposits within the Minster during engineering works to stabilise its failing structure, and we must be thankful for their detailed recording of the sarcophagus. Note that fig. 21 in that volume shows the location of the sarcophagus incorrectly: It was actually found one bay further east between the first pair of nave piers. The sarcophagus was removed from the nave and is now displayed in the 12th-century western crypt. 9. The lead relic box containing the bones has recently been identified amongst material stored in the western chair store of the Minster. It is 900 mm long and has a small central raised cross on the lid made from two thin strips of lead soldered to the top at each end. The silk fragments are also part of the York Minster collection. 10. Erroneously described by Phillips, Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux (as n. 6), 127, as lime-wash. 11. Norton, St William of York (as n. 1), 149–50. 12. It may be the case that the first shrine structure was replaced following the opening of the sarcophagus in 1284, because it was not until 1330 that it was finally superseded by the later nave shrine. 13. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 8–9, 19. 14. T. Stubbs, ‘Lives of the Archbishops of York’, Historians of the Church of York, 2 (1886), Rolls Series, 417. 15. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 16, commented on their ‘inconsequential subject matter: They are in fact a jumble of subjects that the masons were used to carving in spandrel formats’. 16. A panel that has been misidentified in the past as David killing Goliath. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 16. 17. Norton, St William of York (as n. 1), 169–81. Norton explains the miracle story in detail and contrasts the differences between the two known accounts. He also discusses the rules and rituals surrounding the process of fighting duels, which also included using specially designed weapons. These are clearly what we see being used in the spandrel carving. 18. Norton had long thought this carving related to the story of Ralph and Besing, but it was Øystein Ekroll who noticed the partial remains of the thumb in the eye, which confirmed Norton’s theory. 19. This combat scene is unlikely to be another depiction of Ralph and Besing because they are fighting with conventional swords, not the special hammer-like weapons designed for trial by combat shown in the other panel. 20. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 16–17. 21. Ibid., 17. 22. In addition to this setting-out evidence, there is also graffiti on this corner springer, including a faint signature which looks like a version of Raughton but is too indistinct to be sure. Could this be a reference to Ivo de Raughton, master mason of the Minster when the shrine was being constructed? 23. J. S. Purvis, ‘Notes from the Diocesan Registry at York’, Yorks. Archaeol. J., 35 (1942), 392. 24. J. Fowler, ‘On a Window Representing the Life and Miracles of St William of York, at the North End of the Eastern Transept, York Minster’, Yorks. Archaeol. J., 3 (1873–74), 198–348. 25. I have to thank Sarah Brown for the suggestion that this was the shrine borne in procession. 26. A Description or Breife Declaration of all the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customes Belonging or Beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham Before the Suppression Written in 1593, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society, 15 (1842), Feretory description of 3–6, Master of 78–80, Suppression of 85–86. 27. Purvis, ‘Notes from the Diocesan Registry’ (as n. 23), 392. 28. I have to thank Glyn Coppack for this translation of the Latin text. 29. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 24, n23, quoting, The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society, 35 (1859), 125–27. 30. A situation that can be paralleled at Lincoln Cathedral, where the head of St Hugh was provided with its own separate shrine. 31. ‘Letters and Papers of Henry VIII’ (as n. 2), 1538, 158 item 409.

24

The shrines of St William of York reconstructed 32. M. Biddle, ‘Remembering St Alban: The Site of the Shrine and the Discovery of the Twelfth-Century Purbeck Marble Shrine Table’, in Alban and St  Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, eds M. Henig and P. Lindley (BAA Transaction 24 for 1999) (Leeds 2001), 124–61. 33. Given that the spoils from the dissolution of the shrines in England were generally removed to London for breaking up for the profit of the king, the retention of the head relic box and its conversion to money for the profit of the Minster might have been seen as a treasonable act. That it happened in the month following the king’s visit to York is surely significant in that once things had quietened down, the Chapter then acted to rid itself of the box and also profit in the process. 34. Wilson, Shrines of St William (as n. 3), 20–21, n 58. 35. Parts of the shrine base were reassembled in the Yorkshire Museum by Harvey Brook in the 1920s and may have had new cramps and therefore sockets put into them to hold the structure together. It is only in recent years that this structure has been dismantled and all the parts became available for study. Some were then put together in a new display in a new location and at the time of writing are completely hidden behind temporary boarding. It has, therefore, not been possible to examine all parts of the shrine base for this new study. 36. Christopher Norton has suggested to me that the height of the timber screen shown in the Hutchinson drawing is too high and that it was actually considerably lower. The scale of the kneeling figure shown in the drawing also seems to indicate that the structure is perhaps not drawn high enough, as it was 3.3 m high, or the figure is a bit too large. 37. Christopher Wilson is strongly of the opinion that the shrine base must have had four niches per side, given that seven niche heads have survived and the Leeds antiquary Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725) had one in his collection. Eight niche heads are required for a three-niche-per-side reconstruction and ten for a four-niche-per-side reconstruction. It is unfortunate that at the moment it is impossible to quantify the numbers of each type of surviving niche head, of which there were four types defined by their relative positions in the structure. 38. Even if it were possible to examine this display structure, the backs of the niche vaults are hidden from view, and it would be impossible to determine from which part of the shrine they originated without dismantling it all. 39. Description or Breife Declaration (as n. 26), 3; see comment above.

25

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster HILARY MOXON

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster has long remained a mystery. There is no documentary reference to its construction, and the earliest mention of the completed building is in 1295. Architectural features adopted from the church of Saint-Urbain in Troyes indicate that the design is unlikely to date from before the late 1260s or early 1270s. This paper investigates the extent to which the author’s database of connections and networks among archbishops and members of chapter can provide circumstantial evidence for its patronage. From this analysis, the likeliest candidate to have initiated the project emerges as William de Langton (succentor, archdeacon of York and finally dean from 1262 to 1279), motivated by his disappointment at his rejection as archbishop by Pope Clement IV and a desire to be associated with the liturgical and architectural contribution of his uncle, Archbishop Walter de Grey, to the life of the Minster. After Langton’s death in 1279 tensions continued in chapter, possibly originally forged in the Barons’ Wars in the 1260s. Only with the dismissal in 1287 of Langton’s successor, Dean Robert de Scarborough, by Archbishop John le Romeyn could the chapter-house project be revived and completed.

introduction York Minster’s octagonal chapter-house is one of a series of similar constructions in English medieval cathedrals (Fig. 1), differing from those in Lincoln, Westminster, Salisbury and Wells in that there is no central pillar supporting the roof. Its patronage has long remained a mystery, although the references to liturgy, Pauline theology, Mariology and hagiography in the glazing scheme indicate the clear role of ecclesiastical influences.1 While this does not preclude lay donations, as seen in the context of the heraldic design in the tracery,2 the degree of erudition and intellectual sophistication, together with the function of the building as a meeting place for chapter, would exclude purely lay origins. Questions of patronage are, of course, inevitably bound up with the date of the building. Brown has shown that the heraldic glazing design was probably complete by 12923 and commissioned a dendrochronological analysis of the beams in the chapter-house roof, most of which were from trees felled in 1288 and used in the green.4 The first secure documentary evidence of the chapter-house in use is in 1295.5

26

© 2022 The British Archaeological Association

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster

Fig. 1.  Chapter-house, York Minster: engraving of western interior Source: From Joseph Halfpenny, Gothic ornaments in the Cathedral Church of York (1795), pl. 102. © Chapter of York: Reproduced by permission

27

hilary moxon

links with saint-urbain, troyes If this evidence from the building itself provides approximate dates for the final stages of the chapter-house construction, it is necessary to look elsewhere for the dates of its conception. Stylistic links between the York chapter-house and the church of Saint-Urbain in Troyes have long been recognised,6 so its dating is also relevant. New research has now established a clear social link between the two institutions, suggesting a conduit for the transmission of architectural ideas. Founded by Pope Urban IV, building work in Troyes started by late 1263,7 and, after his death in 1264, his nephew, Ancher Pantaléon of Troyes, cardinal-deacon of Sta Prassede, committed himself to its completion. By 1266,8 most of the papal gift to Saint-Urbain was exhausted, so Pantaléon proceeded with an initial 500 pounds of his own money9 but then struggled financially until a dispute over land was resolved (in Saint-Urbain’s favour) in 1273 by Pope Gregory X. This enabled the Dean and Chapter to raise an extra 300 pounds annually from rents,10 after which the financial situation at Saint-Urbain improved. Pantaléon’s changing fortunes in funding Saint-Urbain probably involved York Minster, where he was a canon from c. 1262 until his death in 1286. Between 1266 and 1273, when finances at Troyes were at their most precarious, he made strenuous efforts to increase his income. By 1265 he was in possession of the prebend of Warthill (£10 annually in 1291)11 and also claimed that Pope Urban had collated him to a second York prebend, Wetwang (£120), already held by Thomas de Ludham, brother of the recently deceased Archbishop Godfrey de Ludham (d. January 1265).12 During the ensuing vacancy in York, Pope Clement IV (Urban’s successor and protégé) collated Pantaléon to a third York prebend, North Newbald (£53), even though William de Wickwane (then chancellor and future archbishop from 1279–85) also claimed possession.13 Given Clement’s selection of non-chapter member Walter Giffard to succeed Ludham as archbishop in 1266 (d. 1279), Pantaléon probably anticipated favourable treatment in what was to be a long-running dispute. Wickwane became involved in litigation against Pantaléon in 1266,14 but during the last few months of Clement IV’s papacy, Pantaléon and Giffard negotiated a settlement: on 2 November 1268 it was agreed that Pantaléon should receive a pension of 100 marks, forty annually from North Newbald and sixty from Wetwang, to be paid by the respective prebendaries.15 In return, Pantaléon surrendered his claims to both.16 The negotiations were sufficiently important to receive royal attention: on 21 September 1268, Henry III had confirmed that he would not use royal powers of collation during a vacancy to either of these prebends without the York chapter’s first having obtained security from any prospective canon for payment ‘of the said charges, for which payment to the cardinal the chapter, at the instance of the said Archbishop, had bound itself’.17 However, the arrangement was clearly made without agreement from the respective prebendaries or chapter and meant that Giffard was trapped between Ludham and Wickwane refusing to pay on the one hand and Pantaléon’s demands (with papal and royal backing) on the other. Pantaléon looked to the archbishop to settle the mounting debt18 because, in 1271, Giffard threatened both canons with excommunication if they failed to pay their respective contributions.19 The dispute continued for the next few months: Giffard at first attempted to pay the sums demanded, but on 31 July 1272 28

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster

he wrote pleading poverty and claimed that the late Pope Clement IV had let him pay by annual instalments.20 Gregory X’s reaction was to deprive Wickwane of North Newbald and instate Pantaléon,21 so, after seven years, the matter was finally officially resolved. Thus Pantaléon appears to have been particularly persistent in his claims for prebends in York in the late 1260s and early 1270s, the time when the finances at Saint-Urbain were especially tight. This coincidence of dates not only provides a context for the chapter-house design but also suggests the possibility that, in York, Saint-Urbain quickly became associated with an embarrassing and prolonged dispute involving Giffard, particularly intense because he had been imposed on York as Clement IV’s and Henry III’s protégé and might have been expected to meet their demands. the social context of the chapter-house project Given the lack of any written or visual sources indicating the origins of the chapter-house, this work is an examination into the activities of those individuals who may have played a role, together with their interpersonal relations during the likely construction period. In order to investigate this, the information contained in the Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae22 and the York Minster Fasti23 was extended by researching the churchmen associated with York Minster in contemporary administrative documentation, and a new database of almost 3,000 entries was compiled and analysed. As expected, only a handful of the 159 ecclesiastics in the second half of the 13th century can be shown to have been focused on York.24 As well as the three relevant archbishops, Giffard, Wickwane and John le Romeyn (1286–95), those who were most prominent in York were Thomas de Ludham, William de Wickwane (as chapter member until 1279), William de Langton, canon from 1242, dean from 1262 to 1279 and a nephew of Archbishop Walter de Grey (d. 1255), and Robert de Scarborough, archdeacon of the East Riding by 1262 and dean 1279–87/90. The Pantaléon dispute is just one indication of fraught interpersonal relations involving two main factions within the Minster, ultimately lasting from 1266 to 1290. Disagreements appear to have centred on the relationship between each archbishop and their respective dean and the degree of support each dean enjoyed in chapter. In the 1260s and 1270s, Giffard’s difficulties with Ludham and Wickwane were compounded by complaints the latter made about him to the pope.25 Both appeared to cooperate with Langton. On the other hand, the archbishop was supported by Scarborough: Giffard rewarded him with the benefice of Adlingfleet,26 appointed him to act in litigation on his behalf27 and, in January 1279, shortly before his own death in April, engineered Scarborough’s election to succeed Langton as dean.28 Later that year, Wickwane was a popular choice to succeed Giffard: he cast a courtesy vote for fellow-canon Hugh of Evesham but otherwise was supported by eighteen out of the twenty canons who voted.29 However, Scarborough, the dean he had inherited from Giffard, was one of the two canons to oppose his election,30 and Wickwane immediately retaliated by (unsuccessfully) challenging Scarborough’s appointment.31 Romeyn was one of the first canons to be installed by Wickwane, in 1279.32 In 1286, shortly after his arrival as archbishop, he demanded that Scarborough should demonstrate why he held extra benefices,33 mandated his officer to sequester Scarborough’s earnings from two of these34 and ordered a levy of one-quarter of the dean’s prebend for non-residence at Beverley.35 The dispute intensified: on 1 August 1287, 29

hilary moxon

while Romeyn was away from York, Scarborough’s followers, led by his nephew, Robert de Ughtred, forced themselves into the Minster, targeting Romeyn’s clerks, who were carrying out his (unspecified) orders, whereupon the residentiary canons resorted to issuing a plea to the citizens of York for assistance. This was clearly forthcoming: there was either a fight or a stand-off inside the cathedral,36 and the threat was averted. Romeyn retaliated by excommunicating Scarborough, sacking him as dean and as a member of chapter.37 The dispute between the two continued for the following three years,38 while the terms of Scarborough’s departure were being negotiated.39 Finally, in May 1290, Scarborough resigned as dean and vacated the deanery in return for an annual pension of 400 marks.40 These frictions may well explain Pope Nicholas IV’s reference in 1290 to the problems that all three archbishops had had with their chapters.41 York’s constitution, uniquely among those of other secular chapters, gave no role to the archbishop,42 who concentrated on building works elsewhere in the cathedral. Earlier in the 13th century Archbishop Walter de Grey (1215–55) remodelled the south transept and doubtless encouraged the treasurer, John Romanus (father of John le Romeyn), to rebuild the north transept and the tower. This left the nave as the only remaining part of the Romanesque Minster, dwarfed by later buildings, yet still housing the tomb of St William of York. Of the three archbishops relevant to the period under consideration, only Romeyn showed an interest in construction, and it was he who was to instigate the replacement of the nave in 1291. Among non-dean chapter members, there is no one individual canon who appears to have had the authority or will to launch the chapter-house project, so attention has focused on the deans. Given the felling of most of the roof timbers in 1288 and the fact that the heraldic scheme points to a design date by the early 1290s, the dean who seems the most likely was Robert de Scarborough.43 However, in view of his support for Giffard, it seems unlikely that he would have chosen to include the Saint-Urbain features that were associated with an awkward period in Giffard’s tenure. While he may have been tolerated as dean in 1279 as a result of Giffard’s machinations, there is no indication of any support from residentiary canons even before the 1287 attack on Romeyn’s clerks. The main reason to exclude his possible involvement, however, is the fact that it is unlikely he would have overseen the acquisition of oaks for the roof in 1288 when he was no longer even a chapter member and the terms of his resignation as dean were already being negotiated. william de langton, dean c. 1262–79 Although the evidence is purely circumstantial, the more likely candidate for involvement in the chapter-house project is William de Langton (also known as ‘de Rotherfield’), Scarborough’s predecessor as dean.44 From 1245 he was not the only relative to benefit from de Grey’s nepotism, but he seems to have been the favourite and/or the most able and was the only one to be promoted. It is plausible that he was a significant beneficiary of de Grey’s own estate: his own considerable wealth does not appear to have been achieved by an accumulation of royal appointments or benefices, with the exception of one of the latter for which de Grey obtained papal dispensation in 1254,45 held in addition to his prebend of Strensall.

30

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster

After Archbishop Ludham’s death on 12 January 1265, Langton was elected archbishop in March.46 He set off for the Curia immediately,47 even before royal assent had been issued on 1 April.48 There then followed a pause of several months before Pope Clement IV rejected his candidacy on the grounds of plurality. He had returned to York, empty-handed, by 6 December 1265.49 The real reason for Clement’s rejection of Langton is uncertain. There is no evidence that he held any benefices apart from the two to which he was entitled. However, there may have been some past history arising from the period when Clement was papal legate in England (1262–64). Langton was a supporter of Simon de Montfort in the baronial conflicts of the mid-1260s:50 he must have delayed his own election as archbishop in order to attend de Montfort’s Parliament in early 1265,51 and royal approval was obtained during the period that Henry III was under the control of the barons,52 while Thomas de Cantilupe, then another Montfortian, held the royal seal as chancellor.53 The previous August (1264), before he became pope, Clement had denounced Simon de Montfort and the support he was receiving from the English Church.54 Between them, Montfortian bishops influenced ‘vast swathes of central and southeast England’,55 and it is plausible that Clement, when pope, was anxious to prevent the spread of such influence into the northern province. In September 1266, his final offer of the pallium, to Walter Giffard, a rare royalist in the ranks of the bishops,56 would have satisfied Henry III on his liberation from Simon de Montfort’s control.57 It appears, therefore, that the official reason for Langton’s rejection may have thinly disguised an ulterior motive on the part of the papacy relating to the political situation in England. There are some indications of the extent to which other chapter members were involved in these disputes. Several non-residentiary canons supported the king, men such as Anthony Bek,58 William of Chauvent,59 Adam de Belstede (after a brief flirtation with the barons’ cause),60 William and Richard de Clifford,61 Edmund Mortimer,62 Robert Burnell63 and William de la Corner.64 Scarborough himself was granted eight oaks for his new church at Bewcastle and several appointments from Henry III and, later, Edward I,65 whereas there are signs that others supported de Montfort. During the few months when Henry III was under de Montfort’s control, Amaury, Simon’s son, was collated to the treasury,66 but within four days of Henry III’s release, in August 1265. he ordered Amaury’s removal.67 Even though Langton was still absent at the Curia awaiting the papal decision, chapter demonstrated a reluctance to comply with this royal demand, deduced from the king’s eventual expression of amazement at their dilatory tactics.68 Despite the fact that Amaury had only held the treasury for six months, he proceeded to spend the following twenty-five years attempting to recover it and described himself as ‘Treasurer of York and Earl of Leicester’ in his will in 1289.69 This connection may account for the ultimate inclusion of the de Montfort arms in the chapter-house, plausibly the result of a contribution Amaury made to the final stages of the heraldic glazing scheme.70 Langton’s subsequent career is, from the documentation, unremarkable. He returned to York. He witnessed the occasional document, including the creation of a chantry for Thomas de Ludham, with Wickwane as co-witness,71 and there is no further reference to his acting on a national platform. He died as dean on 1 July 1279, having declined election as Bishop of Carlisle the previous year.72

31

hilary moxon

His death in 1279 would have occurred well before the chapter-house was completed, but the social and political context suggests that he was more likely to be involved than Scarborough. Certainly he had means: his wealth was considerable. While there are no references to his being directly involved in financial transactions nationally, locally he or his executors had loaned sums on a considerable scale.73 After his death, however, there is an unusual pattern of activity concerning his estate. Initially relatively small sums were processed by his executors, followed by a break between 1281 and 1286. However, in 1286 and 1287 there were major transactions, reducing until 1291–92. Thus, on 11 March 1286, a bond was issued by Langton’s executors for a loan of £300;74 another was documented in November 1286 to Langton’s executors and Thomas de Grimston, archdeacon of Cleveland, also for £300, and one to a single executor the following year for 100 marks.75 Wickwane’s debts to Langton’s executors were settled: on 8 November 1287, his executors satisfied Langton’s in the sum of £618 10s.76 On the same day, Langton’s executors were paid £350 to settle a debt by Wickwane.77 Even allowing for some possible double counting, these are enormous sums: in total, Langton’s executors appear to have been acting in matters associated with his estate from 1279 until 1292, the largest transactions coinciding with the period of Romeyn’s pressure on Scarborough and shortly before the felling of the timber for the chapter-house roof in 1288. Further evidence of Langton’s wealth and of his artistic interests comes from the status and expense of his now lost tomb in what Norton has recently identified as the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor at the south end of the south transept (Fig. 2).78 Its material, style and location indicate his prestige, buried as he was not only adjacent to earlier archbishops but immediately to the west of the tomb that has recently been re-attributed to Archbishop Godfrey Ludham, the archbishop he doubtless felt he should have succeeded.79 His monument was probably one of the earliest known copper-alloy effigies in England,80 which Badham argues may have been less fine than similar, later royal tombs, but can still be placed ‘in the first rank of medieval monuments’.81 It is possible that only Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, had previously had such a tomb.82 There is also a clear sense of the high regard with which he must have been held in certain quarters. On 13 December 1283 came the culmination of Archbishop Wickwane’s attempts to establish the financial stability of future archbishops by arranging for the estates to be well stocked during any vacancy.83 This was an action of major importance for the province, given the poverty which had hampered most of the archbishops of the previous two centuries, and was organised ‘for the souls of our predecessor of happy memory, of Sir Walter de Grey and William of Rotherfield, sometime Dean of York’.84 Considerable sums were devoted to the creation of chantries and the payment of an obit in his name: Langton’s soul was better provided for than any other for whom we have information.85 His executors endowed a perpetual obit by granting land for William de Langton ‘of good memory’, from which the sum of £46 8s was to be paid on Langton’s anniversary, St John the Baptist’s day,86 and two chantries were founded for him at the altars of St Stephen and St John the Baptist.87 Most significantly of all, however, in 1292 a chantry was created at St Edward the Confessor’s altar,88 close to his tomb. After at least two years’ planning,89 a major grant of land in York was made on 21 September 1292 to support two chaplains. It was witnessed by six leading members of the chapter,90 in a ceremonial creation which 32

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster

Fig. 2.  The tomb of Dean William de Langton (d. 1279), by William Dugdale, 1641, College of Arms MS Dugdale’s Yorkshire Arms fol. 111v Source: Reproduced by permission of the Kings, Heralds and Pursuivants of Arms

was only paralleled in the 13th century by one for Walter de Grey in 1241 at the adjacent chapel of St Michael, possibly itself intended to mark the imminent completion of his south transept.91 Given that 1292 was probably the final date for the completion of the heraldic scheme in the glass,92 it is plausible that this major grant marked both the imminent end of the chapter-house project and a contribution made by the late dean. This cumulative circumstantial evidence suggests that Langton was probably originally responsible for the chapter-house project, possibly as a result of his disappointment at his failure to become archbishop in 1265. He may well have turned to a building project that was deliberately associated with his successful uncle, whom he had expected to follow as archbishop.93 The entrance to the chapter-house, unusually, is from the public area of the de Grey-inspired transepts which also functioned as the approach to the tomb of St William at the east end of the nave, their liturgical importance detectable from their popularity as the location for a majority of the chantries created for late-13th-century canons.94 As the main instigator in the successful canonisation of St William of York in 1226,95 especially after the failure in 1224,96 33

hilary moxon

de Grey would have acquired a special status among the canons in the institutional memory of the Minster.97 In the most scholarly assessment of the wall-paintings above the exit in the chapter-house, Norton suggested various possibilities, including that Walter de Grey could have been depicted because of his role in organising the York chapter.98 Similarly, the recurrent theme of virginity which has been identified in the chapter-house decoration can be particularly associated with de Grey’s reputation.99 Even if Langton were the likely instigator, there are no means of establishing precisely how the chapter-house was funded. While it would be a reasonable assumption that it was funded by chapter members, this is not borne out in the evidence. At Southwell there must have been a chapter decision for the canons to bear their share of their chapter-house building costs because, from 1288 until at least September 1290, Romeyn was exercised in its enforcement.100 If raising the funds from recalcitrant canons for the Southwell chapter-house were to prove so difficult, how much more so would a similar arrangement have been for York? Given the number of absentee canons, many overseas, the status of many of their family connections, the alacrity with which many of them engaged in litigation to protect or further their interests, and the signs of internal friction on a range of issues, it would have been remarkable if they had all, without exception, paid their contribution without demur. It would be reasonable to conclude that the chapter-house at York was funded differently from Southwell’s. The most plausible conclusion is that the funds were already in place for the early stage of construction, borne at least mainly by Langton, just as the north transept had been paid for by John Romanus.101 This would not exclude subsequent contributions from the laity, including a figure such as Amaury de Montfort, who had by then renounced his clerical status,102 or support from within chapter but would explain why, unlike at Southwell, there was no need for an archbishop to enforce a chapter decision. conclusion By a process of elimination and in the absence of direct evidence, it appears that the most likely instigator and early patron of the chapter-house was Dean William de Langton, supported in an undefined way by prominent members of the residentiary canons in chapter, such as William de Wickwane and Thomas de Ludham. The suggestion is that Langton was responding to his failure to become archbishop in 1265. His death in 1279, early in the construction period, was followed by a gap of several years, possibly caused by structural, managerial or political factors. The impression from the extensive, albeit circumstantial, evidence is that Archbishop John le Romeyn arrived in 1286 to find chapter-house projects in both York and Southwell stalled and the York vestibule, intended to link the chapter-house to the north transept, not yet started. The coincidence of timing suggests that he may have engineered the removal of an obstructive dean (Robert de Scarborough), negotiated the release of funds from Langton’s executors, encouraged lay contributions to enable completion of the project (including from Amaury de Montfort), initiated the construction of the vestibule103 and then embarked on his own ambitions for the rebuilding of the nave. The lack of direct evidence is acknowledged: with the exception of the archbishops, there are no registers, books of accounts or other documentary sources relating purely to York, so it has been necessary to construct a case in their absence. In addition to Langton’s role in the project, there are other intriguing uncertainties. Did Langton

34

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster

meet Ancher Pantaléon either in Rome in 1265 or when Pantaléon visited England (and possibly York) in 1269,104 and did they ultimately share hostility to Giffard, thus possibly explaining the Saint-Urbain features? Or was it simply the case that clever and artistically sophisticated people were reacting to architectural influences between these two great monuments? What involvement might Langton have had in planning the specific decoration of the chapter-house, such as the wall-paintings, carvings and glazing narratives, or was this a role taken on by others after he died? What, if anything, was the connection with the 1284 translation of at least some of St William’s relics away from the transept area to the east end of the choir, in the presence of Edward I, paid for by Anthony Bek on his consecration as bishop of Durham and while Robert de Scarborough was dean? If Langton were the source for the project, this could well be because of his personal disappointment at his failure to become archbishop connected to the enduring effect of the political turmoil of England in the mid-1260s and the intransigent alliances it may have created in the Minster. Despite the unanswered questions, the conclusion is that the chapter-house must not only be seen as reflecting the intellectual, artistic and theological interests of the time but as rooted in the political context of mid-13thcentury England. acknowledgements Professor Sarah Brown, Professor Jane Hawkes, Dr Jeanne Neuchterlein, Professor Christopher Norton, the late Professor Barrie Dobson.

notes 1. A. H. Moxon, ‘York Minster’s Chapter House and Its Painted Glass Narratives’, vol. 3 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2017). The research on which this paper is based is included as an Addendum to the hard copy of the thesis held in York Minster Library. 2. Ibid. 3. S. Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’. York Minster: An Architectural History c. 1220–1500 (Swindon 2003), 52–53. 4. Ibid., 297. 5. W. Brown, ed., The Register of John le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York 1286–1296, Surtees Society, 128 (Durham 1917), ii, 23. 6. R. Marks, ‘Stained Glass, c. 1200–1400’, in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200– 1400, eds J. Alexander and P. Binski (London 1987), 137–47; P. Binski, ‘The Imagery of the High Altar Piscina of Saint-Urbain at Troyes’, in Architecture, Liturgy and Identity: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, eds Z. Opačić and A. Timmermann (Turnhout 2011), 264–74, at 267–68; C. Wilson, ‘Not without Honour Save in Its Own Country? Saint-Urbain at Troyes and Its Contrasting French and English Posterities’, in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture, eds A. Gajewski and Z. Opačić (Turnhout 2007), 107–22, at 115, 120. 7. M. T. Davis, ‘On the Threshold of the Flamboyant. The Second Campaign of Construction of Saint-Urbain, Troyes’, Speculum, 59 (1984), 847–84, at 849. 8. J. Hayward, ‘The Church of Saint-Urbain at Troyes and Its Glazing Program’, Gesta, 37 (1998), 165–77, at 167. 9. Ibid. The French currency is indicated in words, not numbers. 10. Davis, ‘Saint-Urbain’ (as n. 7), 875–76.

35

hilary moxon 11. E. Cadier and J. Guiraud eds, Les Registres de Gregoire X et de Jean XXI: Recueil des Bulles de ces Papes (Paris 1960), 81; W. H. Bliss, ed., Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Papal Letters, I, 1198–1304 (London 1893), 308, 442–43. 12. W. Brown, ed., The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York 1266–1279, Surtees Society, 109 (Durham 1904), 6–7. 13. Cadier and Guiraud, Registres de Gregoire X et de Jean XXI (as n. 11), no. 81; Bliss, Calendar of Entries (as n. 11), I, 442–43. 14. W. Wickwane and C. R. Cheney eds, ‘The Letters of William Wickwane, Chancellor of York, 1266– 1268’, The English Historical Review, 47 (1932), 626–42, at 637–39. 15. Court of Chancery, Calendar of Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III: Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 6 (London 1901–13), 243–44. 16. Brown, Walter Giffard (as n. 12), 6, 7. 17. CPR: Henry III, 1266–72 (as n. 15) VI, 259; Brown, Walter Giffard (as n. 12), 243–44. 18. Brown, Walter Giffard (as n. 12), 116. 19. Ibid., 116–18, 138, 224–25. 20. Ibid., 117, erroneously given or transcribed as ‘1000’ marks a year. 21. Cadier and Guiraud, Registres de Gregoire X et de Jean XXI (as n. 11), no. 81; Bliss, Calendar of Entries (as n. 11), I, 442–43. 22. J. Le Neve, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: York, comp. D. E. Greenway (London 1991), VI, passim. 23. C. T. Clay, ed., York Minster Fasti. Being Notes on the Dignitaries, Archdeacons and Prebendaries in the Church of York Prior to the Year 1307, Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., Record Series, cxxiii and cxxiv (1957), passim. 24. The estimate for the number of residentiary canons at York Minster is between six and eight. See R. B. Dobson, ‘The Later Middle Ages 1215–1500’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 44–109, at 50. 25. Brown, Walter Giffard (as n. 12), 95. 26. Ibid., 30. 27. Court of Chancery, Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward I, vol. 4 (London 1893–1901), I, 254; Court of Chancery, Calendar of Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward I, vol. 4 (London 1900–08), I, 487. 28. W. Brown, ed., The Register of William Wickwane, Lord Archbishop of York 1279–1285, Surtees Society, 114 (Durham 1907), 3. 29. J. Guy, ed., Les Registres de Nicolas III, 1277–1280: Recueil des Bulles de ce Pape (Paris 1898), 407. 30. Brown, Register of William Wickwane (as n. 28), 305. 31. Ibid., 3. 32. Ibid., 2. 33. W. Brown, ed., The Register of John le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York 1286–1296, Surtees Society, 123 (Durham 1913), I, 197. 34. Ibid., 198. 35. Ibid., 360. 36. Ibid., 366, ‘[. . .] se hostiliter in ecclesiam ingerencium’. 37. Ibid., 367. 38. In March 1288, Scarborough was ‘interdicted for postulating’ in Brown, Register of John le Romeyn (as n. 33), 26. 39. Ibid., 372. 40. A. F. Leach, ed., The Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book of the Collegiate Church of S. John of Beverley, AD 1286–1347, Surtees Society, 108 (Durham 1903), II, 160. 41. Bliss, Calendar of Entries (as n. 11), 500. From this research, it appears Giffard’s problem was with a powerful clique in chapter, including the dean, Langton, while, for Wickwane and Romeyn, the obstacle was the following dean, Scarborough, himself relatively isolated in chapter. 42. K. Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages (Manchester 1967), 106.

36

The patronage of the chapter-house in York Minster 43. S. Perring, ‘Iconography of Buildings and the Politics of Crusading: York Minster Chapter House at the Eve of the Jewish Expulsion’, Church Archaeology, 15 (2011), 17–34, at 20. 44. J. Raine, ed., The Register or Rolls of Walter Gray, Lord Archbishop of York, Surtees Society, 56 (Durham 1872), 123. 45. E. Berger, ed., Les Registres d’Innocent IV: Recueil des Bulles de ce Pape (Paris 1911), 8236, 544; Bliss, Calendar of Entries (as n. 11), 308. 46. Thomas Wykes, Annales Monasterii de Oseneia, Chronicon vulgo dictum Chronicon Thomas Wykes: Annales prioratus de Wigornia, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, IV, 1864–69), 161. 47. Ibid. 48. Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1258–66 (as n. 15), V, 417. 49. Wykes, Chronicon Wykes (as n. 46), 184. 50. C. Bémont, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 1208–1265, trans. E. F. Jacob (Oxford 1930), 230; J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge 1994), 317. D. A. Carpenter, ‘St Thomas Cantilupe: His Political Career’, in The Reign of Henry III, ed. D. A. Carpenter (London 1996), 293–307, at 296, has shown that only two of the English bishops were ‘clearly on the king’s side’. The support of the Church for the barons is confirmed in S. Ambler, ‘The Montfortian Bishops and the Justification of Conciliar Government in 1264’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), 193–209. 51. W. H. Dixon and J. Raine eds, Fasti Eboracensis: The Lives of the Archbishops of York (London 1863), 7; Wykes, Chronicon Wykes (as n. 46), 161. 52. Bémont, Simon de Montfort (as n. 50), 233; Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (as n. 50), 311. 53. A. B. Emden, ed., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500, vol. 3 (Oxford 1957–59), I, 347. 54. J. R. Maddicott, ‘The Mise of Lewes, 1264’, The English Historical Review, 98 (1983), 588–603, at 595; Bémont, Simon de Montfort (as n. 50), 225; Ambler, ‘Bishops’ (as n. 50), 204–06. 55. S. Ambler, Bishops in the Political Community of England 1213–1272 (Oxford 2017), 177. 56. Ibid., 137. 57. A. H. Street, ‘The Control of English Episcopal Elections in the Thirteenth Century’, in The Catholic Historical Review, 12:4 (1927), 573–82, at 575. 58. Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1258–66 (as n. 15), V, 553, 649. 59. Ibid., 653. 60. Ibid., 574. 61. Ibid., 451, 466, 523; Emden, Biographical Register (as n. 53), III, 2162. 62. Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1258–66 (as n. 15), V, 404. 63. Chancellor of England, 1274–92. 64. Court of Chancery, CPR: Edward I, 1272–81 (as n. 27), I, 79, 94, 147. 65. Court of Chancery, Calendar of Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 14 (London 1908–38), XIV, 371; Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1266–72 (as n. 15), VI, 451, 534, 636, 658; Court of Chancery, CPR: Edward I, 1272–81 (as n. 27), I, 79 and 129. 66. Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1258–66 (as n. 15), V, 404. 67. Ibid., 436. 68. Ibid., 451. 69. Clay, York Minster Fasti (as n. 23), 25. 70. CHs2: D1 (lower). Moxon, ‘Chapter House’ (as n. 1), II, 351. 71. W. Page, ed., The Certificates of the Commissioners Appointed to Survey the Chantries, Guilds, Hospitals, etc, in the County of York, Surtees Society, 91 (Durham 1894–95), 35 and 39. 72. Guy, Registres Nicolas III (as n. 29), 283–84. 73. Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eboracensis (as n. 51), 310; Brown, Register of William Wickwane (as n. 28), 253, 260 and 319. 74. Brown, Register of John le Romeyn (as n. 5), II, 155. 75. Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eboracensis (as n. 51), 331. 76. Brown, Register of John le Romeyn (as n. 5), II, 162. 77. Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eboracensis (as n. 51), 321.

37

hilary moxon 78. S. Harrison and C. Norton, An Architectural History of York Minster c. 1070–1220 (London, forthcoming), Part 5, Chapter II. 79. S. Harrison and M. Sticht, ‘The Attribution of the Tombs of Archbishops Sewal de Bovill d. 1258 and Godfrey de Ludham d. 1264 Investigated and Reassessed for The Chapter of York Minster’ (unpublished report, November 2015 and revised January 2016), 7. 80. S. Badham, ‘A Lost Bronze Effigy of 1279 from York Minster’, Antiq. J., 60 (1980), 59–65, at 61. See William Dugdale’s Yorkshire Arms, 1641, London, College of Arms, fol. 111v, showing the monument before its destruction in the English Civil War. 81. S. Oosterwijk and S. Badham, ‘Monumentum Aere Perennius’? The Ongoing Search for Precious-Metal Effigial Tombs in Medieval Europe, 1080–1430’, Church Monuments, 30 (2015), 7–105, at 35. 82. Badham, ‘Lost Bronze Effigy’ (as n. 80), 63. 83. Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eboracensis (as n. 51), 325. 84. J. Raine, ed., The Historians of the Church of York and Its Archbishops (London 1886), III, 206: ‘pro animabus bonae memoriae domini Walteri de Grey praedecessoris nostris, et Willelmi de Rotherfield quondam decani Eboracensis’. 85. E. A. Gee, ‘The Topography of Altars, Chantries and Shrines in York Minster’, Antiq. J., 64 (1984), 337–50, passim. 86. N. J. Tringham, ed., Charters of the Vicars Choral of York Minster: I City of York and Its Suburbs to 1546, Yorks. Archaeol. Soc. Record Series, clviii (Leeds 1993), 49–50. 87. J. Raine, ed., The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees Society, 35 (Durham 1859), 290, 301. 88. Brown, Register of John le Romeyn (as n. 33), I, 283. 89. W. Brown, ed., Yorkshire Inquisitions, Vol. II, Yorks. Archaeol. Soc., Record Series, xxiii (1897), 115–16. 90. Tringham, Charters of the Vicars Choral (as n. 86), 295. 91. Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 87), 273–74. 92. Brown, Magnificent Fabrick (as n. 3), 52–53. 93. Moxon, ‘Chapter House’ (as n. 1), I, 53–57. 94. Ibid., I, 54 and III, 1136. Eighteen of the twenty-two whose locations have been identified were in the transepts. 95. J. E. Sayers, Papal Government and England During the Pontificate of Honorius III (1216–1227) (Cambridge 1984), 180. The result was that York Minster was provided with a ‘resident’ saint. Brown, Magnificent Fabrick (as n. 3), 11. 96. A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge 1997), 51; C. Norton, St William of York (Woodbridge 2006), 198–99. 97. Ibid., 195–96. 98. C. Norton, ‘The Medieval Paintings in the Chapter House’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 67 (1996), 34–51, at 40. 99. N. Dawton, ‘The York Chapter House: Notes on the Trumeau Virgin and the Iconographic Significance of the Building’, in Essays in Honour of John White, eds H. Weston and D. Davies (London 1990), 48–54. The current author agrees with his overall conclusion but not all of his evidence (Moxon, ‘Chapter House’ (as n. 1), I, 244). 100. Brown, Register of John le Romeyn (as n. 33), I, 370–71. 101. Brown, Magnificent Fabrick (as n. 3), 11. 102. M. Paris, Flores Historiarum III, ed. H. R. Luard (London 1890), 67. 103. A. Holton, ‘The Working Space of the Medieval Master Mason: The Tracing Houses of York Minster and Wells Cathedral’, in Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Construction History, II, n.d., 1586. 104. Court of Chancery, CPR: Henry III, 1266–72 (as n. 15), VI, 34, referred to as the ‘Cardinal Deacon of Sta-Prassede’.

38

The chapter-house roof of York Minster JULIAN MUNBY

The highly sophisticated timber framing that supports the vault and roof of the 13th-century chapter-house in York Minster is well known from the model in the chapter-house and the illustrated account by Quentin Hughes over 60 years ago, but neither of these fully explains the character or function of the structure. Opportunities to inspect the upper stages of the roof at close quarters have allowed a new description of the roof to be provided, from which it is possible to attempt an explanation of the order of construction and the possible intention of the master carpenter’s design. The dating of the roof by dendrochronology to the 1280s places it in a prime position in the chronology of the great period of technological innovation in the developments of structural carpentry in the decades around 1300. introduction The chapter-house roof is one of York’s great medieval treasures and one of the major monuments of English gothic carpentry and technology in the 13th century (Fig. 1). And yet while it has been long been known and studied, the extraordinary intricacy of its structure and construction has not been fully explained – and the question of its date has until recently been a problem. Although the chapter-house roof has been the subject of one paper and is included in the standard work on cathedral carpentry, it has suffered the fate (in common with so many great medieval roofs) of being virtually ignored in general works on the Minster: it merits one sentence in the latest detailed account of the architecture of the Minster. This account is based on a series of short visits over the last 30 years and is intended to provide a statement of current understanding and a new baseline for further study.1 previous studies A remarkable survey of the roof was carried out by the architect Quentin Hughes in the 1950s and published in 1955,2 and while useful, it is inaccurate in some details and did not attempt to show or describe the jointing which is the crucial aspect of how this extraordinary machine works (Fig. 2). Similar shortcomings beset the splendid scale model of the roof standing in the chapter-house and seen by every visitor (made by Bob Littlewood in 1955), which again does not clearly demonstrate the method of assembly while giving a very clear view of the general form. Thanks to the work of Cecil Hewett, medieval carpentry was placed firmly back on the agenda for medieval studies, and especially with his pioneering studies of cathedral carpentry and his insistence on the study of details such as the development of joints.3 It was his relentless interest in how things worked and were put together that inspired others to examine his notions about technological change and encouraged a whole © 2022 The British Archaeological Association

39

julian munby

Fig. 1.  General view of the chapter-house roof Source: MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4)

40

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

Fig. 2.  Cross-section of the chapter-house roof Source: Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 4

41

julian munby

new area of study. His powers of observation, illustration and description were only compromised (as in the case of his account of the York chapter-house) by limitations in the amount of time he had for first-hand study of the material. As it happened, the first visit of the writer in 1987 was subsequent to the lamentable fire of 1984 in the Minster and benefited from the presence of a temporary scaffold inside the building for the insertion of fire alarms, which allowed a rapid and safe examination of the upper parts at close quarters for the first time in thirty years, though at that time it proved impossible to encourage others involved in the study of the Minster to avail themselves of this rarely offered facility; since then a permanent stair has been installed. The observations made on this occasion and on subsequent visits hardly constitute the detailed re-examination of this structure that is still called for but do allow some preliminary conclusions on the functional significance of this extraordinary construction. Although there seem to have been few attempts over these years to study the roof carpentry, a careful investigation was undertaken by Gordon MacKay for his doctoral thesis in the University of Virginia, 2003, who made important observations on the structural carpentry in relation to other works of that era.4 date and phasing The date and phasing of the York chapter-house has always been a subject of debate and is perhaps not fully resolved now, even with an acceptable date for the roof carpentry. The elements to be considered include masonry, sculpture, glass and carpentry, but even the simple sequence of building, roofing and glazing cannot necessarily be entertained without discussion, and there have been many opinions of the dating of the glass and sculpture purely on art-historical grounds. With the publication of a definitive account of the chapter-house and a full rehearsal of all the dating issues, there is no need to repeat this here, save to note Eric Gee’s observations on the evidence provided by buttresses for a break and possible change of design.5 Strictly separate from dating is the consideration of the building sequence, which can be expressed as follows: I, chapter-house design; II, chapter-house commenced; III, chapter-house walls heightened; IV, roof and timber vault built; V, lead covering of roof; VI, completion of parapets; VII, glazing (at any time in Phases II–VI). Whatever date or intention pre-existed, it is argued here that the upward extension of the chapter-house walls and buttresses (III) was intended to provide for the present roof and that the present roof and vault could only have been constructed in a single campaign. The felling of timber used in the roof has been dated to 1288 (see below), and that means that the dating of glass and sculpture is perhaps of less concern for our purposes. Other dates of relevant historical events include the mention of the ‘new chapter [house]’ in April 1295 and the presence of the royal Chancery there in October 1296 (King Edward I was at York from 16 to 20 October 1296, and his Chancery sat in the chapter-house on 20 October); the Parliament held in York in 1298 met in the chapter-house.6 Later references linking to the Treasurer Orsini (Fitz Urse) (1335– 42) and lead repairs in 1367 have been shown to be somewhat illusory, and Brown

42

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

has concluded from the various strands of evidence that ‘the chapter-house was roofed soon after 1288, and may have been glazed by the early 1290s’.7 The patronage of the new chapter-house is discussed elsewhere in this volume by Hilary Moxon in relation to the turbulent Chapter politics of the later 13th century, providing a context for the completion of the project in the 1280s. the stone shell Whatever the intention of the builders at the outset (and that may have been for a stone vault with a central column), it is clear that when construction had reached a certain level, the decision was taken to vault and roof the chapter-house in timber, and this involved a change in design. Externally this presents itself as a marked outward thickening of the wall and the reconfiguration of the buttresses with a tall trabeated section (bonded into the masonry of the raised wall) and an upper pinnacle added above a flying buttress. Internally the spandrels between the window heads were filled with layers of large irregular rubble, corresponding with the thickened wall outside, and above this is a band of ashlar masonry with a series of small windows lighting the roof space.8 While the rubble has a less regular (and in places an almost curved) form, the ashlar is built to a more precise octagonal plan. In this upper section there are eight courses of ashlar masonry (six forming the window embrasures, and one each for sill and lintel), and above this two more courses forming a string and providing a level base for the roof carpentry. form and decoration of the timber vault The chapter-house is octagonal, and the timber vault is based on eight stone springers mounted on the columns and caps in the corner piers between the windows. The springers have seven ribs: two for the adjacent widows and five for the vault. From each springer there rise five wooden ribs: two to an outer ring of eight bosses, and three to an inner circle of sixteen bosses, and the same number of ribs converge on the one central boss. The vault ribs were infilled with a planked and painted ceiling, which was largely destroyed in 1798, leaving only fragments of three panels, showing figures representing Synagogue, St Edmund King and Martyr, and perhaps St William of York.9 The naturalistic sculpture of plant foliage in the bosses is particularly noteworthy. The structure of the timber vault is described later. roof structure The vault, roof base and higher elements are all interrelated in a manner that requires them to have been of one phase, even if constructed in different stages. A consistent type of carpenter’s marks is used throughout the roof to identify adjacent timber components, formed by a rase knife making circles of 90 mm diameter round a central point, with distinctive notation for each of the eight sectors consisting of circles and semicircular arcs touching or overlapping in various combinations.10

43

julian munby

The roof construction can best be described in terms of the seven phases that would have been followed in its erection. Timber structure Phase I: the scaffold (Fig. 3A) The primary working level for construction of the roof and vault was a high platform at the upper stage of the windows. Deep in the vault pockets can be seen large sockets or putlog holes in the lower level of the rubble masonry in the outer wall, some of which are still filled with protruding scaffold poles. Located each side of the window arch, each pair of these could have supported a working platform of planks or hurdles against each of the octagon walls. Access to this level was obtained through a door in the west wall out of the spiral stair rising from the chapter-house entrance up to parapet level, and this platform could have been used in the early stages until the vault was inserted, and especially in the first phase of roof construction. It is perhaps less likely that it represents the remains of a lower roof structure, though it may have been associated with the temporary covering for internal works. Timber structure Phase II: the timber base stage The main working level for the roof was formed at the head of the recently built ashlar walling. Supported from below by the eight masonry piers in the corners, a series of cantilever supports, based on tall corner posts, mounted a great square frame that provided a firm base for the construction of the roof and reduced to under 45 ft the 64 ft span between the walls.11 Phase IIA: Formation of the Base Square (Fig. 3B) Eight corner posts (13 × 12 in. / 330 × 305 mm) stand on the masonry piers in the internal angles of the octagonal walls of the chapter-house. They are the principal components of the cantilever supports for the base platform, and their heads are tenoned into hammer-beams that run back over the wall head (secured by being trenched over two wall plates) and forwards into the chapter-house (supported from below by two straight braces). A massive square base frame formed of four plates (14 × 13 in. / 356 × 330 mm) is mounted on these cantilevers, secured at four corners (B, B', D, D') with double tenons into the hammer-beams at a point immediately inside the edge of the wall and supported from below at mid-length by the cantilevers from the other four corners (Hughes fig. 3, section A A').12 The square is now turned into an octagon, formed by four plates of similar dimensions that are placed diagonally across its corners (and each tenoned into the square frame), and these are also given support from below by the intermediate trusses (Fig. 2, section X B). This arrangement (and the requirements of the next stage) calls for two different conditions of support from the cantilevers (with reference to the plan, Fig. 4): (i) At B/B' and D/D' the hammer-beams receive the ends of the square plates and curve down below the diagonals across the corners of the square to give them support.

44

The chapter-house roof of York Minster (ii) At A/A' and C/C' the hammer-beam passes below the square plates at mid-length to give them support. Although C/C' (on the north–south axis) carries the lower pair of tie-beams at the next stage and A/A' (on the east–west axis) the higher pair, they seem to have approximately the same arrangement at the wall head by being fixed to the wall plates.

Fig. 3.  Initial phases of the chapter-house construction Source: Julian Munby; (3B after Hughes, Timber Roofs, as n. 2)

45

julian munby

Fig. 4.  Roof plan at lower level Source: Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 1

46

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

The inner ends of the hammer-beams also perform different functions in relation to the vault, as will be described later. The size and significance of the great base square, and therefore its role in the later stages of construction, seems not to have been fully appreciated, judging by the words and illustrations of both Hughes and Hewett (and indeed the model), and yet it must, as modified in the next stage, have been fundamental for the whole building operation. Phase IIB: creation of a working floor The next step in this phase was flooring across the inner octagon that has now been formed within the square, and this was achieved simply by laying joists as a continuation of the sole plates on the wall head (normally the short base of the triangle formed with the ashlar posts and rafters) across the pair of wall plates and inwards as far as the great square, into which they are tenoned. The diagonals forming the octagon being inside the square, a few additional joists were laid here between the diagonal and the square plates. All these joists are level with the upper surface of the base plates and so provided a level surface, and once this base structure was in place, almost two thirds of the space was now available as a working platform and could then have been floored with hurdles, while the open span to be covered by the roof structure had been reduced to less than 45 ft (13.7 m). Timber structure Phase III: spanning the gap and fixing the mast With the working platform established on a significantly smaller octagonal base, the central gap was spanned by pairs of tie-beams held at the outer ends by the great square and in the centre clasping the lower stage of the main mast; the first working floor was now completed (Fig. 4). The reduced 45-ft span across the octagonal base was a width that could more easily be crossed by available timber beams to support the central mast. This was achieved with two pairs of parallel tie-beams placed side by side across the base square at right angles, each 12 × 13 in. (305 × 330 mm): a lower pair running north–south (C/C') and an upper pair west–east (A/A'), both clasping the lower end of the mast (Fig. 5A). At the outer ends the pairs of tie-beams clasp a single tie-beam (superimposed on the hammer-beam) that extends from the outer edge (at the rafter foot) inwards as far as the first queen strut (Fig. 5B); in effect this is an extended sole plate of the principal rafter. Where it meets the ends of the paired tie-beams its width narrows as it enters between them, ending above the main square plate, where it is tenoned into the queen strut, although this is probably effected in a later phase. At this point the tie-beams are trenched over the square plate, which provides a housing to receive them, thus locking their outer ends. Unlike the upper (second and third) stages, where this arrangement is repeated, the ends of the tie-beams are not markedly curved or tapered at this level.13 The general arrangement of both pairs of tie-beams is the same at their outer extremities, and where they meet in the centre the upper pair (A/A') is trenched over the lower (C/C'), though it is hard to observe how the deflection is managed.14 Not

47

julian munby

Fig. 5.  Construction details in lower stage Source: (A–C) after MacKay etc.; (D) Julian Munby

only are the pairs of ties trenched vertically to each other, but they also horizontally clasp the central mast, which has housings on each side to receive the ties, and though detailed observation of this is partially obscured by floorboards, the interlocking of five large timbers must be almost unmoveable. The lower part of the octagonal mast is some 20 ft (6 m) tall, and at floor level it has four brooch stops and has become a square (14 × 16 ins / 356 × 406 mm) where it meets the tie-beams; it also continues down below them to hold the centre of the timber vault, receiving the vault ribs and supporting the central boss.15 With the addition of the mast the first stage floor could now be completed at this level, with the addition of four bridging joists between the tie-beams to form an inner square and longer radial joists spanning the distance to the great square and inner octagon. 48

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

Timber structure Phase IV: construction of the timber vault The completed floor of Phase III provided a working stage from which the vault could be fixed, though this must not only have been built from below, since part of its structure also required the presence, or simultaneous erection, of the next phase and the second stage (Phase V). The weight of the timber vault must largely be carried by the stone springers rising from the piers within the chapter-house, and the pier capitals are placed just below the springing of the window arches and just above the top of the solid buttresses on the outside. The timber vault commences about a metre above the springing in continuation of the stone ribs, with a superstructure currently obscured by insulation, that was (as stated above) partly or wholly replaced in 1798, but consists of ribs rising to a ring of sixteen bosses, and then continuing towards the centre. The vault bosses, and perhaps some part of the weight of the vault, are also supported from above, by timbers descending from the roof structure. Hughes stated that the vault ribs run into the central mast, though his sections (Figs. 2–4) show them rather running into the central boss (and similarly with the other bosses); he also claimed that the bosses are simply glued to the base of the posts (p. 484), which rather reduces the claim that the roof supports the vault (see Fig. 2). The vault has eight principal ribs rising from the buttresses between the window, four with bosses at the feet of the queen posts on the main tie-beams (Hughes Fig. 3), and four with bosses on the queen posts of the intermediate trusses (Fig. 2). The elaborate system of support for the queen posts, described further below, is largely unrelated to their part in securing the timber vault. There are also eight intermediate ribs at the window heads, each with two bosses, and more nearly horizontal as far as their inner bosses, from whence they rise to the centre. Their outer bosses are carried by posts descending from the main square base plate on either side of the hammer-beams, the posts being attached to the base plate with pegged lap-dovetail joints. The inner bosses on these ribs are carried on the feet of canted struts, descending some five feet below the intermediate joists (those forming a trapezoidal plan) and rising some four feet above them. Their canting profile is maintained by downwards bracing to the joists, round which they are probably trenched (Hughes fig. 2, section EX). Timber structure Phase V: addition of second stage The second section of the mast is added, together with the second stage of paired beams, and then the intermediate bracing between the first and second stages. A second section of the mast is mounted on the lower part, joined with a stopsplayed scarf with opposed double tenons secured by edge pegs and a single face peg (Fig. 5C).16 This middle section is about 28 ft tall (8.5 m) and passes through the second floor and almost as far as the third floor. Once again, the second stage is formed of two pairs of tie-beams locked round the central mast with trenches and tapered (from 12 to 14 in. at the centre to 8 in. at their outer ends) to be tenoned together into the principal rafters (Figs. 6–7). In addition to the clasping of the central mast (Fig. 8A), a further locking device is provided by clasping lock pieces pegged over the top of the paired tie-beams on each side of the mast (Fig. 8B), which would prevent or at least reduce the tendency to spread as the timbers 49

julian munby

Fig. 6.  Roof plan at Stage II Source: Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 2

50

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

Fig. 7.  General view of Stage II from below Source: MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4)

gradually seasoned in situ. The rafters, many of which are themselves in scarfed sections, have their first purlins at a level just below the second stage, and may have been added now. Before the pairs of tie-beams were locked together they were also clasped round the upper ends of the four principal (lower) queen posts, which were now inserted. They seem as much to be suspended from the second stage rather than offering any support, and indeed rise slightly above this level, while also descending to a point below the first stage, where the feet of the queen posts provide some support for the vault bosses (although Hughes stated that they were only glued onto the posts).17 The (upper) queen posts, which are added later, are fixed at second-stage level by pegs and by being trenched over one of the ties, and are further prevented from slipping down at the first stage by ‘compression wedges’ attached to their sides (as shown on Fig. 2). The queen posts are not just spacers between the stages (or indeed providing much vital support for the vault) but are part of a more elaborate system of secondary bracing whereby long raking outer braces [a] rise from the lower tie-beams to be joined by lap-dovetail joints onto the queen posts, and a series of inner braces [b] rise from the lower part of the queen post up to the central mast. The outer braces are also part of a scissors brace by the addition of an outward raking brace [c] passing through the

51

julian munby

Fig. 8.  Construction details in upper stages Source: (A-D) Julian Munby; (E) after MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4)

outer brace [a] to the principal rafter, passing also through the parallel inner principal [d] (called the ‘lower principal rafter’ by Hughes and, more correctly, ‘passing brace’ by MacKay); this rafter/brace [d] is also halved over the ends of both ties (Fig. 2). The inward leaning support given by the outer braces [a] is continued above by a further brace [e] lap-jointed to the top of the queen post and rising through the second stage to meet the mast some seven feet (2.13 m) above the floor (Fig. 2). These inward braces [e] are scissored with outward braces [f] rising from the mast just above the second stage and trenched over the brace [e], the upper queen post, and also the inner rafter/brace [d], before reaching the outer principal rafter. The arrangement with the

52

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

queen posts of the four intermediate trusses is similar to the four principals, though they only rest on single joists, round which they are trenched and pegged; the four intermediate ties are tenoned to the alternate faces of the mast, and there are the same braced scissors [e–f] radiating from the mast. The precise sequence of events in this phase, with potentially simultaneous construction of second stage, queen posts and vault, with or without the intermediate trusses and outer rafters, is not easy to determine, except that the braced elements (with their use of lap-dovetail joints) could all be added secondarily to existing components, whose mortice-and-tenon joints demanded simultaneous assembly. Timber structure Phase VI: addition of third stage The third section of the mast is added (which rises to the apex), together with the third stage of paired ties, the intermediate bracing between the second and third stages, and then the subsidiary stage of collar-beams just below the top. The third section of the mast, of around 22 ft (6.7 m) to the apex, is added with another scarf joint just below the third stage, which is once more formed of two pairs of tie-beams set at right angles, clasping the mast and tenoned into the principal rafters. The outer ends of the ties are each halved round the rafter and with a single tenon (Fig. 8C). As in the second stage, the intermediate trusses also have ties tenoned into the four alternate faces of the mast, just below the level of the paired ties. As also with the second stage, the locking in of the tie-beams to the principal rafters necessitated or at least preceded the insertion of the bracing between the second and third stages. A further series of inward braces [g] converge on the mast from the upper queen posts (Fig. 8D) and are pegged and trenched over one of the paired ties, while both the queen post and the inner rafter are pegged and trenched to each of the paired ties. As below, the queen post rises just above the third stage to permit this firm fixture, and in one instance ends with a tenon indicating a reused timber; the fixing at this level and the use of a wedge block at the second stage shows that the queen posts can only be added from above, though the sequence of adding braces and inner rafters is less certain. Timber structure Phase VII: addition of the subsidiary stage The upper part of the mast receives the eight collars forming the subsidiary stage, and the rafters converge on the top of the mast, which has an expanded and then tapered finial. The topmost section of the octagonal mast, added in the previous phase, continues up as a single piece to the apex. About midway, a subsidiary stage is formed by eight collars from the rafters tenoned into the mast (the four principal ones above the four secondary ones). Towards the apex, at about 6 ft (1.85 m) below the top, the mast expands from 14 to 20 in. (356 to 508 mm) and continues as a tapering octagon up to the apex. The inner rafters (not surveyed by Hughes at this stage) meet the mast just below the point of expansion, and the outer rafters rise to the apex and, as shown by MacKay’s survey, the mast in effect hangs on the ring of inner rafters (Fig. 8E).18

53

julian munby

rafters and roof covering Less has been said of the phasing of the purlins and common rafters providing support for the outer roof covering of lead. With the main construction of floors and staging dependent on the main pairs of cross-frames (A–A' and C–C'), it might be thought that the secondary frames (B–B' and D–D') that form the intermediate points of the octagon could all be added later with the rafters and purlins to form the roof covering. However, it is probable that this would have had to happen at each stage, and it is not certain how many of the principal or secondary rafters actually continue without break through the height of the roof without scarf joints. Additionally, the purlins are tenoned to the principal rafters, adding a further complication for sequencing the construction. On the other hand, with the analogy of the base plate providing a working level for the first stage, it may be noted that at both second and third stages the four intermediate principal rafters are joined by single horizontal joists tenoned to the central mast, providing a level at which the pairs of ties/collars may have been assembled. This could then suggest that the intermediate trusses were assembled first, one stage at a time, followed by the principal trusses. But if the principal rafters are not scarfed, then it is hard to see how they could have been raised without simultaneously assembling both the second and third stages, since their collars are tenoned into the rafters. Only the topmost collars at the subsidiary stage could have been added afterwards. Further investigation and survey is required to establish the construction sequence of principal and intermediate trusses. structure and jointing The constructional carpentry of the chapter-house roof is remarkable in its overall conception, although individual components are more commonplace. Gordon MacKay has shown that the roof was constructed almost entirely of long straight timbers, converted with square sections to a consistent scale of sizes: 16 ins [406 mm]: central mast; 13 ins [330 mm]: main double beams, ‘floor beams’, struts, main rafters; 10 ins [255 mm]: collar beams; 8 ins [203 mm]: inner rafters (passing braces), secondary rafters, braces, ‘floor’ joists; 6 ins [152 mm]: struts, braces.19

The key to the superstructure, both in terms of its function and its order of assembly, is the method of jointing used between members. More remains to be done on the analysis of the jointing (and especially the presence of scarf joints in the rafters), but some general observations may be made on this subject, which was virtually ignored by Hughes and only briefly considered by Hewett. Pegged mortice-and-tenon joints are used throughout the roof (e.g. to attach the struts to the central mast) and are sometimes doubled, as in the lower floor junctions and where the collars meet the principal rafters. The paired collars at both second and third stages meet together before they reach the principal rafter (Fig. 8C), and each collar is separately tenoned into the rafter and also clasps the side of the rafter. No evidence was seen of the rafters being split, so evidently the outward thrust of the collars was not as great as might be expected.

54

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

Open notch-lap joints are also common (e.g. where long braces meet the queen posts (Fig. 9A); the significance of their use is that they allowed a brace to be added to a post that was already in position since they could simply be dovetailed into a prepared mortice. The use of lap joints – often associated with carpentry of an earlier period – was here essential for the addition of secondary bracing members to the existing frame. Where members cross each other (e.g. the raking struts and the secondary rafters) they are commonly trenched, or halved over each other (Fig. 9B); this increased stabil� ity and also allowed timbers of a later phase of construction to be joined to existing timbers. A special use was made of trenching where the vertical members pass through the paired ties or collars (at all three stages). The vertical member is usually halved on one side to clasp one of the horizontal members and is held in place by the other horizontal (and sometimes also pegged) (Fig. 9C); in some instances (e.g. where the secondary rafters pass through the outer ends of the horizontals) the vertical member may be halved on both sides, and the horizontal also trenched to receive it (Fig. 9D). The central mast is similarly trenched to receive the halved collars at the second and third stages (Fig. 8A). Further analysis may show which of these trenched junctions

Fig. 9.  Joint details Source: Julian Munby

55

julian munby

were the result of simultaneous assembly and whether some members could have been added later. Two additional techniques are employed on the pairs of horizontal beams. One is the use of wedges to close the gap between horizontal and vertical (as shown by Hughes on the queen posts, Fig. 2), though some of these are new and are either additions or replacements. The other is the superimposition of a short locking piece over the pairs of collars at the second and third stages (Fig. 8B). The bracket is pegged down onto the top of the collars and overlaps them at each end to a greater depth, being wedged to the sides of the collars. This is an unusual technique (and possibly unique), though reminiscent of the means used to secure tiebacks with lock bars in riverside wharfs excavated in London.20 One further special construction is the use of hanging posts to give support to the timber vault (and its bosses) with pairs of tension braces to hold them at a particular angle by cross-trenching, an arrangement only likely to be found in precisely similar circumstances (and again likely to be unique). Scarf joints have been observed on the central mast where separate lengths were joined together, and one is illustrated by Hewett,21 who remarked with characteristic exactitude that it was a type ‘briefly advocated in the reign of Edward I’.22 The scarf (acting in compression) shows the usual inventiveness of such arrangements with opposed double tenons, although their precise form can only be guessed at (Fig. 5C). The principal rafters may not all be scarfed, but some at least of the secondary and common rafters are scarfed, just above the second stage, at approximately half their height. These appear to be stop‑splayed scarfs, with three or more face pegs (Fig. 5D). construction principles and function The York chapter-house roof has for long been an object of wonder and admiration but has escaped serious discussion of how it performs (or what was its intention), and despite Cecil Hewett’s claim that ‘the drawing explains everything’, neither the 2-D drawing nor the 3-D model offers an immediate explanation. MacKay has described the York roof as ‘a single 2-dimensional triangular king-post truss rotated three times to create four interlocked trusses’ (while noting that it had eight sets of unique marks), somewhat overdesigned and with redundant features, but built to survive.23 The performance of the roof over 700 years can be regarded as a success, as it has remained in situ with few signs of deflection or failure, and the vaulted ceiling of the chapter-house still stands. While the roof can be seen as a very complex system, which deserves further study, it also has a very simple aspect if the rafters and purlins are removed. The main principles would seem to be the reduction of span by the creation of a cantilevered base and the mounting of a fixed mast locked in position at several levels and braced both up and out to support the outer roof covering and down and out in the attempt to carry the load partly onto the wall tops, but especially down into the cantilevers and onto the masonry vault springers with their buttressed support. As MacKay’s analysis and computer modelling have shown, the mast or king post transmits very little force down onto the tie-beams, and ‘rather than gathering force into itself, actually works to redistribute force back out to the edges of the roof. The eight vertical braces, the heavy angled struts, and

56

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

the outer rafters actually convey most of the roof load down into the stone substructure’.24 Not without reason was the additional loading provided by the heightened buttresses. Although there appears to be no accurate drawn survey showing the roof, vault and walls in plan and section,25 it is clear from visual inspection of the interior and exterior that the masonry springer of the vault rises to the mid-height of the window tracery and is met by the flying buttress, while the base of the roof construction immediately above this is met on the outside by the trabeated section of the buttress. Whether the diameter and height of the masonry is equivalent to the height of the roof (which seems approximately to be the case) could be determined by accurate metric survey and might show the geometric basis of the design as a triangle on a circle (as has been demonstrated for the Hôtel-Dieu in Tonnerre, founded in 1293),26 in this case a triangle from the apex of the roof to the outer base of the buttresses.27 On the basis of existing information, the floor to ceiling height provided by Drake (67 ft 10 in. / 20.68 m) is almost exactly the height from that point on to the top of the roof as calculated from Hughes’s cross-section (67 ft 10½ in. / 20.69 m), and a circle of that diameter would pass approximately through the middle of the chapter-house walls and be tangential to the greater triangle described above.28 The height of the roof carpentry itself (19.25 m / 63 ft 2 in.) approximates to the interior diameter of the chapter-house, the interior width measured as 56 ft 6 in. / 17.22 m between the seating benches, with a given dimension of ‘16.8 m [55 ft 1½ in.] across the floor (19.2 m [63 ft] glass line to glass line)’, which as pointed out by Sarah Brown is ‘very similar’ to the chapter-houses of Westminster and Salisbury Cathedral.29 The dimension of the stone octagon in the roof space is approximately 60 ft (18.3 m).30 Without taking further any aspects of metrology (beyond stating the need for an accurate overall survey in the face of these conflicting measurements) it may be observed that 66 ft (20.12 m) is equivalent to the length of four standard perches. To what extent the presumed intention and actuality coincided is of course a different question (and with the analogy of Westminster Hall, it may in fact be impossible for experts to agree on). The provision of such a high roof was in a sense quite unnecessary, even if the vault had to be self-supporting, and other cathedrals managed with a low-pitched roof. However, in York, the position of the chapter-house was very prominent, facing directly towards the Bishop’s Palace, and as a symbol of the authority of the Dean and Chapter, the larger and bolder the building, the better. date and authorship The dendrochronology study was commissioned by the RCHME and was carried out by the University of Nottingham, whose results were only just issued and circulated by the RCHME shortly before it was absorbed by English Heritage. The results have been published in the Commission volume on the Minster.31 Eighteen samples were taken (ten primary and eight reused). Seven samples from primary timbers formed site chronology 01 of 154 rings, extending from 1135 to 1288. Crucially, one sample had complete sapwood and bark-edge of 1288, and all the other samples were consistent with that date. Three samples formed site chronology 02 of 204 rings 1053 to 1256, but none had complete sapwood, giving a felling date range of 1259–1306. Four samples of reused timber form chronology 03, ranging

57

julian munby

from 1081 to 1195, one sample having a heart/sapwood boundary at 1195 and likely felling date of 1210–45. The remaining four samples formed chronology 04, from 954 to 1150, one sample having a heart/sapwood boundary at 1146 and likely felling date of 1161–96. The date of the main roof construction can thus be said to be securely dated to 1288 or immediately thereafter, given the usual practice of the medieval carpenter in felling and using timber in close succession. Sarah Brown’s discussion of this dating adds the likely date of 1290 for the painted ceiling and the early 1290s for the glazing.32 Another paper in this volume discusses the date and patronage of the whole chapter-house campaign, with the suggestion that the most likely candidate to have initiated the project was Dean William de Langton (1262–79) and that the construction break in the 1280s caused by internal politics was perhaps only ended by the dismissal of Dean Robert de Scarborough in 1287.33 It is, as always, a moot point as to what direction may have been given to the carpenter and masons by the Dean and Chapter, but there can be little doubt that the unnecessarily high roof on the chapter-house was a deliberate choice. The name of the carpenter is of course lost to us, and Philip of Lincoln, appointed (or reappointed) in August 1346 as supervisor of the Minster carpentry, is somewhat too late to be a candidate.34 context and parallels Although a unique structure in England, the constructional details of the chapterhouse roof have analogies with the tower roof of Sompting Church, West Sussex, now dated the early 14th century.35 That too has double ties supporting the mast, as is also found earlier in the west towers at Andernach on the Rhine (c. 1200), and in a number of towers and spires in France and Germany.36 A particularly interesting example is the timber spire at Puiseaux (Loiret, between Paris and Orleans), with seven tiers of paired ties supporting the mast, although this has now been dated to c. 1483.37 The locking of vertical members to horizontals was common in France in the 13th century, and this combined with spanning wide central spaces to support the flèches at, for example, Notre Dame in Paris (restored by Viollet-le-Duc, and now lost), and much later in the 16th century at Amiens.38 The basic truss form used at York was not dissimilar to the much earlier main-span roofs of St Remi at Rheims and Notre Dame, Paris, with their tall braced king posts.39 In an English context, the York chapter-house seems to be a pioneering essay as a major roof construction spanning a wide space, and any equivalent constructions of vast cantilevered supports in the spire of Salisbury Cathedral and the Ely Octagon belong to later decades.40 The context is rather to be seen in the major innovative developments in roof carpentry that abound in the second half of the 13th century, at Stokesay Castle as an early example of gothic arch or cruck construction in the hall in c.1290, and in a more plain fashion at the monastic barn at Great Coxwell, now securely dated to 1291/2.41 At the Bishop’s Palace Chichester there is the astonishing use of paired cantilevers in the double hammer-beams in the kitchen roof of around 1300, while at Winchester the Pilgrims’ Hall of c. 1300 is a carpenter’s showpiece of varieties of available construction forms.42 MacKay has suggested that this innovative phase sees the transition from complex ‘overlap framing’, as seen at York, to a new style of ‘independent assembly framing’ seen at Chichester and

58

The chapter-house roof of York Minster

Winchester, with fewer timbers and simpler jointing systems.43 This would place York at the apogee of the older carpentry tradition while heralding the innovatory engineering of the new. In short, there is no need to plead influence from continental examples, even if York chapter-house may have derived in part from examples of French practice, for this was the great age of English Gothic carpentry.44 If nothing else, the York roof demonstrates again the extraordinary inventiveness of the medieval English carpenter, the variety of structures and jointing methods that were brought into use and above all the resilience of the structures that (escaping fire and beetle) can last 700 years and still function. And it is still deserving of further study.45 acknowledgements I am grateful to the former Chancellor, Canon John Toy, who facilitated my first access in 1987, and other Minster staff on subsequent occasions; to Sarah Brown for sharing the dendro results with me in 1999 and for her continuing interest in this work. Gordon MacKay, then undertaking research for a Ph.D. with the University of Virginia, investigated the roof in 1999 and has most generously shared his survey findings with me and both the text and illustrations of his thesis. The illustrations of Quentin Hughes are reproduced by kind permission of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. I have also benefited from discussions at York with Christopher Norton, Alexander Holton, and with John Gough, Chairman of the Fabric Advisory Committee, and with many others over the years.

notes 1. My first visit in 1987 coincided with the presence of a temporary scaffold. Previous versions of this paper have been given to the York Philosophical Society in 1995; to the AVISTA session at Kalamazoo in May 1999; and to Sarah Brown’s seminar on the York chapter-house in September 1999. 2. J. Quentin Hughes, ‘The Timber Roofs of York Minster’, Yorks. Archaeol. J., 38 (1955), 474–95. James Quentin Hughes (1920–2004) was then Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Leeds (later at Liverpool) and subsequently became the first Professor of Architecture in the Royal University of Malta, Daily Telegraph obituary, 18 May 2004. 3. C. A. Hewett, English Cathedral Carpentry (London 1974), 74–77; C. A. Hewett, English Historic Carpentry (Chichester 1980), 117–20; C. A. Hewett, English Cathedral and Monastic Carpentry (Chichester 1985), 107–10. 4. A. G. MacKay, ‘Changes in the Design of Centrally Planned Timber Frames during the English Middle Ages, AD 1250–1350’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2004), kindly made available to the writer. 5. S. Brown, York Minster, An Architectural History c. 1220–1500 (Swindon 2003), Chapter 2 ‘The Building of the Chapter House’, 46–85 (66–67 for buttresses). Previous studies with proposed dates include those of Harvey, Gee, Coldstream, and Pevsner, discussed by Brown. 6. W. Brown, ed., The Registers of John le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York 1286–1296, Part II, Surtees Society, 128 (Durham 1917), 23; Calendar of Close Rolls 1288–1296, 517; H. Gough, Itinerary of King Edward I, 1286–1307 (London 1900), 146. Despite previous claims, Parliament did not meet in the chapter-house in 1296; Parliaments in this period were first held in York in 1298, and before then in 1268; see W. M. Ormrod, ‘Competing Capitals? York and London in the Fourteenth Century’, in Courts

59

julian munby and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. S. Rees Jones (York 2000), 75–98, esp. 80, table 1; D. M. Palliser, Medieval York (Oxford 2014), 138 (for the 1268 Parliament), 141. 7. Brown, York Minster (as n. 5), 54; the correction about the supposed date of the leadwork was made by John Browne in his polemic text, Fabric Rolls and Documents of York Minster, or a Defence of The History of the Metropolitan Church’ (York, new edn 1863), 170. 8. Brown, York Minster (as n. 5), 68, fig. 2.28. 9. Ibid., 79, with reference to Christopher Norton’s interpretation of the description by the antiquary James Torre, in ‘The medieval paintings in the chapter-house’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 67 (1996), 34–51; see also P. Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster (Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers 9, London 1986), 81, and C. B. McCarter, ‘The Chapter House Ceiling’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 63 (1992), 31–38. The ceiling was first recorded by Joseph Halfpenny from the scaffold shortly before its removal on account of its poor condition: Gothic Ornaments in the Cathedral Church of York (York 1795), pls 95 (ceiling), and 102 (interior view). 10. As noted by Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 1 and pl. VI, and described and illustrated by A. Pacey, Medieval Architectural Drawing (Stroud 2007), 108–10, figs 4.10 and 4.13. 11. The octagon measures some 64 ft (19.5 m) corner to corner and 57 ft (17.4 m wall to wall); the central square is 45 ft (13.7 m), according to Hughes’ survey (and as measured internally in 2017 by the writer and John Gough, 43 ft 5 in. – 13.23 m). 12. Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 4, section X–B, omits the junction of the square with the hammer-beam. 13. Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), fig. 1, incorrectly shows the square plates superimposed on the paired ties (the model is correct in this respect); Hewett, Cathedral and Monastic Carpentry (as n. 3), fig. 103, shows the ends of the ties tapered but correctly observes the method of fixing. 14. Hughes’s section of C (fig. 4, Section CX) omits the sole-piece beneath the C tie-beam. 15. The boss was a feature that not even Hughes could reach to measure (his fig. 4). 16. The proposed form of the scarf joint is thanks to MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), fig. 53. 17. Hughes, ‘Timber Roofs’ (as n. 2), 484. 18. MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), 132, figs 79–81. 19. Ibid., 101. 20. G. Milne, Timber Building Techniques in London c. 900 to 1400: An Archaeological Study of Waterfront Installations and Related Material, London and Middlesex Archaeol. Soc. special paper 15 (1992), 85 and figs 14–15. 21. Hewett, Cathedral and Monastic Carpentry (as n. 3), fig. 103. 22. Ibid., 110. 23. MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), 112–13, who refers to a study showing that with modern materials the roof could have been built with 40% less timber and been almost 64% lighter. 24. MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), 131–37, and fig. 78. 25. F. Drake, Eboracum, or The History and Antiquities of the City of York (London 1736), pl. opp. p. 476: ‘over this is a spire of timber work, covered with lead, so excellent in its kind, that I have thought fit, for the honour of the carpenter’s art, to give a representation of it in the draught’ (not drawn to scale); J. Browne, The History of the Metropolitan Church of St. Peter, York (London and Oxford 1847), 94–108, included a measured section of one segment (pl. 76), correcting Drake’s measurements; J. Britton, History and Antiquities of the Metropolitical Church of York (London 1836), pl. xxxii gives an internal elevation of a chapter-house window. 26. N. Quénée, L’Hôpital Notre Dame des Fontenilles à Tonnerre (Tonnerre 1979), 29–32 (with a schematic cross-section at 32); E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, vol. VI (Paris 1875), 110, fig. 7 for a plain cross-section; see L. Courtenay, ‘The Hospital of Notre-Dame des Fontenilles at Tonnerre: Medicine as Misericordia’, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. B. S. Bowers (Aldershot 2007), 77–106. 27. Around 135 ft [41 m] high and 99 ft [30 m] across at the base.

60

The chapter-house roof of York Minster 28. Drake, Eboracum (as n. 25), 476, states that ‘the whole pile of this building is an octagon, of 63 feet [19.20 m] diameter, the height of it to the middle knot [i.e. boss] of the roof is 67’ 10” [20.68 m], unsupported by any pillar’; the external dimension without offsets can be calculated (from a metric plan kindly supplied by the Surveyor of the Fabric, Andrew Arrol) at 21.20 m (69 ft 6 in.), and the glass-to-glass line as 19.95 m (62 ft 2 in.). However, Browne, History of the Metropolitan Church (as n. 25), 100–01, commenting on Drake’s measurements, stated that ‘The chapter-house is 62 ft in diameter from the glass of the opposite windows: Diameter of angular internal area, 60 ft 6 in.; diameter of the circumscribing circle of the base of the external buttresses, about 99 ft’, and that ‘the height of the central boss from the floor is about 64 ft 6 in. The height of the lateral bosses is about 61 ft. The floor appears to be raised 7½ in. above that which was originally laid’. 29. Brown, York Minster (as n. 5), 47 (the measurements are respectively from Hughes, the writer with John Gough, and RCHM as quoted by Brown). 30. The wall below the cornice is 59 ft 8 in. +/−4 (Gordon MacKay); 59 ft on Hughes’s plan (fig. 1), and 61 ft 7in. on his section (fig. 3); the corner to corner measurement on Hughes’s section (fig. 4) is 63 ft 8 in. (19.4 m). 31. Brown, York Minster (as n. 5), 54, and App. 4: R. E. Howard, R. R. Laxton and C. D. Litton, The Date of the Chapter House Roof, 294–97, appendix 4. 32. Brown, York Minster (as n. 5), quoting J. Alexander and P. Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400 (London 1987), 346, cat. 344. 33. H. Moxon, ‘The Patronage of the Chapter-House in York Minster’, this volume; D. Greenway, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: Volume 6, York (London 1999), ‘List 2: Deans’, British History Online, pp.  7–13, online at: www.british-history.ac.uk/fasti-ecclesiae/1066-1300/vol6/pp7–13 [accessed October 2018]. 34. J. Raine, ed., The Fabric Rolls of York Minster: With an Appendix of Illustrative Documents, Surtees Society, 35 (1859), 165; he also occurs in the earliest fabric roll of c. 1360 (p. 1). 35. Hewett, English Historic Carpentry (as n. 3), 12–20; F. G. Aldsworth and R. Harris, ‘The Tower and “Rhenish Helm” Spire of St. Mary’s Church, Sompting’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 126 (1988), 105–44. 36. F. Ostendorf, Die Geschichte des Dachwerks (Leipzig 1908), 188–89, Abb.289, chapters 6 and 7. 37. C. Perrault, ‘Puiseaux (45) Église de Notre-Dame. Datation par dendrochronologie de la charpente du clocher tors’ (report of C.E.D.R.E, Centre d’Etude Dendrochronologie et Recherche en Ecologie, Besançon, August  2016); first illustrated by Ostendorf, Die Geschichte des Dachwerks (as n. 36), 236 Abb. 329, and H. Deneux, ‘L’Église de Puiseaux’, Bull. mon., 79 (1920), 230–49. 38. L. T. Courtenay, ‘Timber Roofs and Spires’, in Architectural Technology up to the Scientific Revolution, ed. Robert Mark (Cambridge, MA. 1993), esp. 220–23; the extent of restoration is discussed by L. T. Courtenay, ‘Viollet-le-Duc, et la flèche de Notre-Dame de Paris: La charpente gothique au xiiie et xixe siècle’, Journal d’Histoire de l’Architecture, 2 (1989), 53–68, translated in L. T. Courtenay, ed., The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals (Studies in the History of Civil Engineering) (Ashgate 1997), 313 ff. Amiens (dated 1529) is also illustrated by Ostendorf, Die Geschichte des Dachwerks (as n. 36), 259, Abb. 354; for a modern survey by M. Duvanel, see illustrations online at: http://cathedrale.gothique.free.fr/ Cathedrale_Amiens_3.htm and photographs at http://cathedrale.gothique.free.fr/Cathedrale_Amiens.htm [accessed October 2018]. 39. As noted by MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), 112; illustrated by Ostendorf, Die Geschichte des Dachwerks (as n. 36), 20–21, Abb. 36, 38. 40. Hewett, English Historic Carpentry (as n. 3), 141–45, 160–64. 41. Vernacular Architecture Group, ‘Tables of Tree-Ring Dated Buildings in England and Wales’, online at: www.vag.org.uk/dendro-tables/ [accessed October 2018]. 42. J. Munby, ‘Thirteenth-Century Carpentry in Chichester’ and ‘The Bishop’s Palace’ (R.A.I. Conference Proceedings, 1985), Archaeol. J., 142 (1985), 13–17, 32; J. Crook, ‘The Pilgrims’ Hall, Winchester. Hammerbeams, Base Crucks and Aisle-Derivative Roof Structures’, Archaeologia, 109 (1991), 129–59.

61

julian munby 43. MacKay, ‘Changes’ (as n. 4), 107ff; this concept is a significant contribution which can be no more than adumbrated here. 44. See the unpublished paper by C. R. J. Currie, ‘The Age of Carpentry: The New Art and Society in Plantagenet England’ (1989/91), text online at: www.cool.conservation-us.org/byauth/currie/medcarp. html [accessed October 2018]. 45. At the least some further survey is required to record accurately the internal dimensions of the masonry structure, and a detailed investigation of the carpentry at all levels is needed.

62

York Minster at the time of the Black Death The stained glass and chantry-chapel of Archbishop Zouche CHRISTOPHER NORTON

The 14th-century history of York Minster has long been dogged by two unresolved conundrums. The first concerns a set of reused stained glass panels of the highest quality whose original provenance and purpose have defied explanation. The second concerns the chantry-chapel, which is known from written sources to have been constructed by Archbishop William la Zouche (1340–52) but whose original location has never been established. Re-examination of these two long-standing problems indicates that the stained glass probably originated in Zouche’s chantry-chapel, and furthermore that it provides the best evidence so far of the design and appearance of the chapel. York Minster, as is well known, contains the largest collection of medieval stained glass in the country. Most of it originates in the Minster itself, though some of it has been acquired from other sources over the last 250 years, and some of it is of uncertain origin. To this last category belong some enigmatic reused panels of 14th-century date which are scattered around the Minster. All of the highest quality, and similar in style, they fall into at least three different groups. The first consists of magnificent over-lifesize images of saints set within elaborate architectural frameworks. A second group contains much smaller figures of apostles with symbols of their martyrdom beneath modest fictive gables.1 The third group, which is the subject of this paper, is intermediate in size. It contains eighteen more or less complete lights, each consisting of a figure of a prophet, apostle or saint standing beneath an arch with a prominent gable, on top of which is a scene from a narrative cycle. The scenes extend from the Infancy of Christ, through the Passion and Resurrection, to the Death and Coronation of the Virgin; but the cycle is incomplete, and the surviving lights are only part of what must once have been an even grander scheme. The lights belonging to this third group are to be found in five windows in the Lady Chapel, together with two panels in a window at the west end of the nave (Fig. 1). Some of them have been in their present positions since they were first recorded in the late 17th century; others have been moved around subsequently. They cannot have been designed for any of the existing Minster windows, since none are of the right dimensions. Their origin has remained a mystery.2

© 2022 The British Archaeological Association

63

christopher norton CHn3

Chapter House

North Transept

n5 n2

West Window w1

Nave

Tower

Choir

Lady Chapel

East Window e1

S4 S3 S2 s2 s35

South Transept

s10

So-called Zouche Chapel

Fig. 1.  Plan of the Minster windows showing the locations of the relevant stained glass in red Source: Janet Parkin

The lights in question are easily distinguishable from all other glass in the Minster, not just by their size and design but by their technique. The narrative panels are quite distinctive and immediately recognisable. Their background consists of coloured glass painted with foliate scrolls or other decorative patterns in the normal way; but the figures are composed not of richly coloured pieces of glass, as was normally the case, but of pale tinted glass painted with brown lines and wash. Instead of the linear facial features and drapery folds typical of earlier glass, the faces and vestments are painted with subtle gradations of brown wash which emphasise light, shadow and volume. This new style of painting, sometimes (not altogether helpfully) described as a more ‘painterly’ style, is characteristic of English art in different media from the 1330s and is closely comparable to the style of painting found in the figures of the Great West Window.3 However, its use on tinted glass to create grisaille figures which contrast strongly with the coloured backgrounds is very unusual. It is to be found neither in the west window nor in any of the other surviving York glass of the period. The most famous example of the painted grisaille technique is to be found in the manuscript Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, painted in France c. 1328.4 This grisaille figure-painting is the defining characteristic of these reused lights and is one reason why they have attracted the attention of many stained-glass specialists over the years. The remarkable quality and distinctiveness of this glass had been recognised since the 19th century, but it was not until 1956 that a separate study of it was published by J. A. Knowles.5 Knowles correctly identified most of the imagery; he analysed the style in some detail; he recognised that the glass differed in significant respects from the early-14th-century windows in the Minster; and he suggested that it was the work of glaziers new to York who were aware of recent developments in stained glass in France. All of this has found broad acceptance and has been built upon by later scholars. Not so his hypothesis concerning the original arrangement and location of 64

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

the glass. Knowles proposed that the entire series derived from a single, vast six-light window nearly seventy feet high which, he claimed, was set into the east wall of the new Lady Chapel of Archbishop Thoresby c. 1370. After about thirty years, he suggested, the entire window, both stonework and glass, was removed and replaced by the present east window, whose magnificent glass commissioned from John Thornton in 1405 can now be seen again in renewed splendour following its recent conservation by the York Glaziers Trust.6 The earlier glass, he suggested, was then reused elsewhere. This extraordinarily implausible scenario is open to so many objections that it need not be discussed at length. Suffice it to say that there is no evidence at all for an earlier east window having been constructed and glazed in Thoresby’s time (though one must evidently have been planned) and that Knowles missed the numerous technical and stylistic links between the glass in question and the glazing of the west façade of the Minster, which was commissioned in 1339 with funding from Archbishop Melton.7 The stylistic characteristics and dating evidence for the reused glass have subsequently been explored much more fully by the late Tom French, by David O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock, by Sarah Brown and others, and there is general agreement that it is very closely related to the west windows of the nave. Stylistic features evident in all of this glazing can be paralleled in stained glass and in other artistic media in this country and in northern France from about 1330, while widespread changes in figure-styles and in fictive architectural designs from around the middle of the 14th century mean that it is unlikely that the glass was manufactured much later than c. 1350. Knowles’s proposed date of c. 1370 is too late. French suggested a possible date in the 1330s, while O’Connor and Haselock inclined towards c. 1350. For want of a better term, the glass is often referred to as the c. 1340 glass.8 This much is generally agreed. But the question of the original arrangement and provenance of the glass continues to perplex. Knowles himself was far from confident about his east window hypothesis, admitting that it was in no way a final solution, merely a starting point for further research. More recently, French moved the discussion forward in his analysis of the glazing of the late-14th-century Lady Chapel clerestory windows.9 The four-light windows flanking the Great East Window (S2 and N2) no longer contain any medieval glass, but the three five-light windows on either side do. Windows S3 and S4 each contain five lights of the c. 1340 glass, while the others (S5 and N3–5) have glass of c. 1390 featuring standing figures of apostles and prophets. French observed that the c. 1390 glazing appeared to have been designed to complement the existing glass in S3 and S4. He therefore concluded that those two windows had been filled with the reused c. 1340 lights soon after the structure of the windows had been completed, probably in the 1370s. In addition, he suggested, S2 was probably glazed with c. 1340 glass at the same time, while its opposite number (N2) would have been glazed as part of the c. 1390 campaign. This means that the first appearance of the c. 1340 glass (or at least some of it) within the Minster can be pushed back to just a few decades after it was made. But the question remains as to the original purpose and location of the c. 1340 glass, since none of the hypotheses which have been put forward hitherto carries conviction. The gradual advance of scholarship on the Minster means that the time is ripe for a reappraisal. The recent availability of high-quality colour photographs of even the most inaccessible of the windows has proved invaluable, and it now appears that the solution to the question of the origin of the glass probably lies in the answer to one of the Minster’s long-standing architectural conundrums, the chantry-chapel of Archbishop Zouche. 65

christopher norton

the surviving glass Six lights of the c. 1340 glass can be seen in one of the windows in the north aisle wall of the Lady Chapel – the third from the east, window n5 (Fig. 2). This is a large, three-light window constructed in the time of Archbishop Thoresby, between 1361 and 1373. The c. 1340 glass was placed here by Dean Milner-White in 1953. It had previously been in the westernmost window of the south choir aisle, s10, a window of very similar design and dimensions constructed c. 1400. It was recorded there by James Torre in about 1690.10 Nothing is known of its earlier history, but there is no reason why it could not have been there since the window was made. The bottom parts of the lights of window s10 have been blocked with masonry ever since the window was built because of the presence of the contemporary vestry or treasury against the exterior of the aisle wall.11 Consequently, the three main lights in s10 are slightly shorter than those in n5, and when the c. 1340 glass was moved in 1953, additional panels were created to fill the extra space at the bottom of the three lights of n5. The c. 1340 panels are also considerably narrower than the main lights of both s10 and n5, and the wide borders which fill the spaces between the c. 1340 glass and the edges of the lights in n5 are of different origin and of no relevance to the present study. Each of the tall lights of n5 contains two original lights of c. 1340 glass, placed one above the other. The glass is substantially intact but very fragmented, and the very heavy leads from the 1953 re-leading have left the panels badly obscured and somewhat distorted. Some of the glass is also considerably darkened through corrosion. A sensitive restoration would transform its appearance, but enough can be seen in its present state to reveal its key features. The format of the lights is the same in each case. At the bottom there is a standing figure of a prophet set within a fictive architectural niche surmounted by a prominent canopied gable. Above this is a rectangular panel containing a narrative scene which occupies almost the entire width of the light, being flanked only by thin vertical strips of quasi-architectural design. Small corbels support low trefoiled arches surmounted by shallow crocketed ogee gables. The coloured backgrounds of the narrative panels extend up into the cusped heads of the lights above, thus linking the two firmly together. At the top, the cusped heads of the c. 1340 glass do not quite fit the stonework of the window, having been designed for cusping of a different shape. The lower three lights lack the cusped canopy panels. Window s10, with its slightly shorter main lights, was not quite tall enough to take two complete c. 1340 lights one above the other. The canopies were therefore omitted from the lower row of lights, leaving the upper row sitting immediately on top of the narrative panels of the lower row. There is, however, no doubt that the lights in the lower row did originally have canopies of the same type, since the little corbels at the top righthand and left-hand corners of their narrative panels are identical to the ones which support the canopies in the upper row of narrative panels. In their present state, the lights are divided into square panels which correspond in size to the width of the lights of the late-14th-century window into which they are set. As originally conceived, however, for narrower openings, the c. 1340 lights were framed as three rectangular panels of equal size, one above the other, surmounted by a cusped panel at the top. The bottom panel in each light extended up to the level of the shoulders of the prophet. The middle panel went from there to the bottom of the narrative scene, which occupied the whole of the third panel. The horizontal lead-lines

66

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Fig. 2.  Lady Chapel aisle window n5 with six reused lights of c. 1340 glass. The bottom row of panels dating from 1953 is not shown Photo: The York Glaziers’ Trust (YGT), reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

67

christopher norton

marking the original divisions between the panels are largely obscured on the interior by glazing bars, but they are clearly visible on the exterior (Fig. 3). The rectangular panels measure about 3 ft (c. 0.91 m) wide and about 3 ft 6 in. (c. 1.07 m) high, and the canopy panels are approximately 2 ft 3 in. (0.69 m) high. Each light of the c. 1340 glass therefore originally measured approximately 3 ft wide by 12 ft 9 in. high (c. 0.91 m × 3.89 m), though the dimensions may have been slightly distorted by the heavy leading. The prophets are (or were) identified by labels next to their heads, and they hold in their hands scrolls bearing texts from the Old Testament; but several of the labels and scrolls are damaged or lost.12 The inscriptions have white or yellow-stained lettering on a black ground. In places, fragments of inscriptions with the more normal black lettering on a white ground have been intruded from elsewhere. Reading from left to right, in the bottom row are Baruch or ?Jeremiah, ?Nehemiah and Joel; while in the top row are Zechariah, King David and Malachi. The precise identifications are of little importance for present purposes, though the absence of the major prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel is noticeable. All of the prophets wear similar robes and have hats, except for David, who is crowned.

Fig. 3.  Detail of the exterior of Lady Chapel aisle window n5, showing the lower set of reused panels of c. 1340 glass. The lead-lines which mark the edges of the original rectangular panels are arrowed Image: Janet Parkin based on a photo by the YGT, reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

68

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

The narrative panels read in chronological order as follows: the Entry into Jerusalem (bottom left); Judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver from the high priests (top left); Christ washing Peter’s feet (bottom centre); the Last Supper (bottom right); the Agony in the Garden (top centre); and a somewhat damaged scene which shows Christ standing in the midst of his apostles (top right). This has been identified as Christ calling his apostles at an early stage in his ministry or the Sermon on the Mount, which follows immediately after the calling.13 For all its importance in terms of New Testament teaching, the Sermon on the Mount is rarely depicted; and this is probably not what is represented here, since at the Sermon on the Mount Christ taught his disciples sitting down. On the left there are five apostles, including Peter. On the right there is another group of five plus a damaged area of the right size to have contained another head. One of the fragments in this area appears indeed to be part of an original head. But there is insufficient room for two more heads. So there were only eleven apostles. The number is not accidental and is significant. A full set of twelve apostles is shown in the scene of Christ washing Peter’s feet and in the Last Supper, but only eleven in the Agony in the Garden, because Judas had left by then. Later on in the cycle, in the scenes of Pentecost and the Death of the Virgin, which took place after Judas Iscariot had been replaced by Matthias, the apostles are again twelve in number. So this panel must represent an episode after Judas’s departure but before Pentecost. It is unlikely to be one of the post-Resurrection appearances, because Christ is not displaying his wounds, as he is in the Noli me tangere scene. It could represent Christ delivering the last discourses at the Last Supper after Judas had left, as recorded in St John’s Gospel. More probably it represents the moment at the end of the Agony in the Garden when Christ returns to the apostles, reproaches them for falling asleep, and announces his imminent betrayal.14 Either way, these six scenes present a coherent sequence from early on in the Passion narrative. The ten lights of the c. 1340 glass in windows S3 and S4 (Figs. 4 and 5) in the south clerestory of the Lady Chapel are in a much better state of preservation. The glass is less fragmented and the leading far less intrusive than in n5; and there is remarkably little sign of damage from the 1829 fire which destroyed the nearby wooden vault and roof. The figures in S4 include some early repairs of perhaps 18th-century date. These include the head of the angel in the central narrative panel; the heads of the two large figures of apostles in the second and third lights; and some drapery repairs in the narrative scenes painted in a pinkish wash. The restorers made a laudable attempt to match the style of the originals, and the repairs are fairly unobtrusive. For the rest, these lights give an excellent idea of their original appearance. The masonry of these windows is contemporary with the north aisle window, n5, as they belong to the first phase of construction of the Lady Chapel under Archbishop Thoresby. As already noted, the glass is believed to have been installed at that time, and it was certainly there by c. 1690 when it was recorded by James Torre.15 The mullions are taller than the lights of c. 1340 glass, and to make the glass fit the space, a panel of plain glazing has been placed at the base of each light between the bottom of the stained glass and the sill of the window. At the top, the c. 1340 glass extends right up into the cusping at the head of each light, which is slightly different in shape from the original cusped heads of the glass. The openings are considerably narrower than those of the aisle window, n5, and the c. 1340 glass occupies the whole width of the openings except for thin strips of plain glass down each side. Here too the glass is framed in square panels, but because the openings are narrower than in n5, the divisions between the 69

christopher norton

Fig. 4.  Lady Chapel clerestory window S3, omitting the bottom row of panels of plain glazing Photo: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

panels fall differently. The tall standing figures are divided in two at waist height, while the narrative scenes have been brutally sliced through nearly a quarter of the way up from their base, so that the bottom section of each scene is now framed with the top of the architectural gable below. Photographs taken before the panels were reinserted by Milner-White clearly show these divisions (Fig. 8), and some of the dam� age they caused. The original rectangular panel divisions can easily be traced in these photographs from the horizontal lead-lines which run beneath the narrative scenes and straight across the standing figures at shoulder height and on through the architectural frames on either side. These points will be of some significance later. The original panels were of the same height as those in n5. However, they were significantly narrower than the ones in n5, at only about 2 ft 3 in. (c. 0.69 m) wide. Each light therefore originally measured approximately 2 ft 3 in. by 12 ft 9 in. (c. 0.69 m × 3.89 m).16 These clerestory windows give a much better impression of the impact the glass would have had in its original setting. When placed side-by-side, the vertical format

70

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Fig. 5.  Lady Chapel clerestory window S4, omitting the bottom row of panels of plain glazing Photo: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

of the individual lights is transformed into a horizontal layered effect, with a prominent row of standing figures in canopied niches surmounted by relatively insignificant narrative panels above. The standing figures consist of eight apostles and two female saints. They have neither labels nor texts but carry attributes. From left to right, S3 contains five apostles: Sts Matthias, James the Less (or Matthew), John, Andrew and Bartholomew. The set continues in S4 with Sts Matthew (or James the Less), Thomas and Jude, followed by Sts Margaret and Helen. Some uncertainty attaches to the identification of St Matthew, St Matthias and St James the Less. In the first half of the 14th century the apostles appear with attributes only sporadically, and the c. 1340 glazing is one of the earliest examples where they all have attributes. But confusion often arises because individual apostles were not always shown consistently with the same attributes, while some attributes were shared by more than one apostle or migrated from one to another.17 The halberd, for instance, was the proper attribute of St Matthias. However, it is sometimes given to St Matthew, probably because of the similarity of their names. Matthias holds a halberd on the Butler-Bowdon cope

71

christopher norton

of c. 1335–45,18 and he should be the figure with the halberd in window S3a (Fig. 6). Matthew was believed to have been martyred with a sword, and he is shown on the opus anglicanum vestments variously with a sword pointing downwards with its tip on the ground, with a sword in his hand point upwards, or with a sword held by the lower part of the blade, hilt upwards. There appears to be no symbolic significance in the different positions or in having the sword sheathed or bare. But St Paul died by the sword, too, and he can be found holding one in a similar range of postures, while St James the Less also sometimes appears with a sword of some kind. In the stained glass of c. 1390 in the north Lady Chapel clerestory, window N4, he holds a sword point upright, while in the contemporary glass from Winchester College he holds one pointing downwards with its tip on the ground.19 On other occasions, however, he appears holding a small cross upwards, as on the Butler-Bowdon and Vic copes (among others). In the c. 1340 glass, the apostle in S3b holds a sword by the point hilt upwards, while the apostle in S3b (Fig. 7) holds one downwards with its point on the ground. From their attributes alone, these could be any two of Sts Matthew, Paul and James the Less. However, St Paul is almost universally shown bald and with a long beard. The apostle in S4a with the sword pointing downwards is definitely not bald. The one holding the sword upright in S3b is bald on top but has a tuft of hair in the centre of his forehead. Paul is sometimes shown in this manner but more usually with a completely bald forehead and crown. In the Great West Window, the original head of St Paul has unfortunately been lost, but in the east window of Selby Abbey, attributed to the same workshop, he was shown quite bald in front as well as on top.20 More than one apostle is depicted completely bald in some of the narrative panels of the c. 1340 glass. This suggests that Paul is not represented here, and the clinching piece of evidence is that the apostle in S3b lacks the long beard characteristic of St Paul. The apostle in S3b is here given to James the Less, the one in S4a to Matthew; but more important than their precise identification is the inclusion of St Matthias, who is frequently omitted from sets of apostles in favour of St Paul.21 The narrative panels fall into three groups. Firstly, from left to right in S3, above four of the apostles, are four scenes from the Infancy of Christ, namely: the Adoration of the Magi; the Massacre of the Innocents; the Presentation in the Temple; and the Flight into Egypt. The scenes in the fifth light in S3 and the first three lights in S4, above the other four apostles, concern the death and glorification of the Virgin, namely: the Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin, the Death of the Virgin, the Funeral of the Virgin, and the Coronation of the Virgin. The Funeral of the Virgin is sometimes said to be rare in the art of the period, but it occurs in manuscripts, wall-paintings and in opus anglicanum, and it had already been depicted in the Minster c. 1290 in the window of the Life of the Virgin in the chapter-house (ChHo n2).22 The last two scenes, above the two female saints, belong to the post-Resurrection narrative but are in reverse chronological order, namely: Pentecost and Noli me tangere. The Pentecost panel was identified by Knowles as the Ascension, but the tentacle-like feature in the middle is not the base of the cloud in which Christ was carried up to heaven, as he thought, but the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles. In the Ascension, the apostles are usually shown standing, as is the case in the west window, whereas at Pentecost they are generally shown seated, as here.23 Twelve apostles are shown, together with the Virgin Mary, who is seated centre-left, as often in this scene.24

72

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Thus, the ten lights in the two clerestory windows belong to three different points in the story. Adding to these the six lights in n5, we have four distinct groups, in narrative order as follows: • • • •

Four apostles with Infancy scenes Six prophets with Passion scenes Two female saints with post-Resurrection scenes Four apostles with scenes from the Death of the Virgin to her Coronation.

The iconographical division into four groups is corroborated by a close analysis of the design elements. All of the lights share the same format, but there are many variations in the details. These include the bases on which the figures stand; the side-shafts which flank them and continue up to the base of the narrative panels; the spandrels which fill the spaces between the upper parts of these shafts and the large gables above the heads of the standing figures; and the canopies above the narrative scenes at the tops of the lights. In addition, the colours merit attention. The panels employ an unusually large range of colours, which is comparable to the Great West Window but much more extensive than any of the earlier 14th-century windows in the nave. The robes of the standing figures are all of two main colours, among which a dark pot-metal orange predominates. But the combinations of colours in the vestments vary interestingly, as do the backgrounds to the figures within their niches. Analysing the variations in these different features across the sixteen lights, it becomes apparent that each of the four iconographical groups uses a distinct combination of elements, including in each case one or more elements which are unique to that group. Thus, in the lights with the four Infancy scenes (Figs. 6 left and 10), the figures stand on architectural bases consisting of a row of little round-headed arches. In three of the lights there is a diagonal section in rudimentary perspective extending slightly higher up at the left-hand side. In the fourth case, St John, his robes fall right to the ground covering this area, and the round-headed arches continue to the end. The broad, flat side-shafts contain little figures in niches set beneath fictive architectural canopies, all most delicately painted. All the panels have two such figures on either side, up to about the apostles’ shoulder-level. Above that point, the St John panel has a third tier of figures, while the other three lights have a tall two-light blind tracery design incorporating decorative florets. These are merely minor variations on a single basic design. All four lights have the same design in the spandrels, topped by a horizontal row of four quatrefoils with crenellations above, supported on left-facing crocketed corbels painted in simple perspective. At the heads of the lights, the narrative panels are all surmounted by the same canopy design incorporating a cinquefoil arch supporting a gable which is similar to but broader than the gable above the standing figures. Within the arch can be seen a fictive vault with two descending elements in the centre. This is very similar to the small perspective vaults above the heads of the archbishops in the Great West Window. Two of the apostles have orange undergarments with green on top. One stands against a red foliate background, the other against a red and orange lozenge-pattern. The other two have orange overgarments over pale blue or dark blue and are set against a green ground scattered with large orange six-pointed star-like flowers and smaller circles. In short, these four panels all share the same architectural features, while the colours of the standing figures are carefully matched.

73

christopher norton

The six lights with part of the Passion narrative have a different set of elements (Figs. 6 centre, 11 and 12). The prophets stand on rocky ground with scrawny plants growing out of it. The side-shafts lack the small figures in niches. Instead, the faces of the side-shafts are composed of rectangular openings alternating with two-light miniature traceried windows beneath tall gables. The tracery patterns are minutely detailed and consist of various geometric and curvilinear designs. The shafts are shown in perspective, with the sides facing the prophets visible at an angle. The spandrels of the main gable have a row of quatrefoils supporting crenellations similar to those in the first group, but in this case supported on a horizontal band decorated with foliage. A very similar motif can be seen in the west window flanking the large gables above the heads of the apostles. The canopies over the narrative scenes have shallow arches containing trefoil cusping of two-dimensional design, with no perspectival vaulting within, while the crocketed gables curve upwards to their apex in the manner of ogee arches. The trefoil cusping is comparable to that in the west window above the heads of the apostles. The prophets all stand against red grounds. Two of them have orange

Fig. 6.  Three panels of c. 1340 glass. Left: window S3, light a, St Matthias. Middle: window n5, light c, Malachi. Right: window S4, light e, St Helen Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

74

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

and green robes, but the other four have a very pale blue, almost grey, combined either with green or with dark blue. The overall colouristic effect is quite different from the apostles under the Infancy scenes. The two lights with the post-Resurrection scenes are different again (Figs. 6 right and 14). The two female saints are both robed in green and orange but are set against a red ground with blue stars which is found nowhere else. The side-shafts and spandrels are the same as in the group of apostles beneath the Infancy scenes, but the bases on which the saints stand consist of a horizontal row of quatrefoils in circles supporting a patterned quatrefoil surface which rises diagonally at the right-hand end. The most distinctive elements of the two post-Resurrection lights are the frames to the narrative scenes. At the bottom, a horizontal row of little quatrefoils provides a raised base for the scenes, which are capped by a horizontal row of crenellations. These two features significantly reduce the vertical space available for the scenes, and the figures within them are noticeably smaller than the figures in the other narrative panels. Above the crenellations, the canopies contain a triple-gabled architectural design. Finally, the four lights which culminate in the Coronation of the Virgin (Figs. 4, 5 and 15) share some features with the first set of lights with apostles and Infancy scenes. The side-shafts and the canopies above the narrative scenes are the same, but the other elements differ. The spandrels of the main gables have a perspectival design whose most prominent feature is a polygonal forward-projecting crenellated cornice. This immediately distinguishes these four lights from all the others. The bases all consist of a purely horizontal row of little round-headed arches. Two of the apostles are robed in dark blue and orange or purplish-orange. One has a green ground with small stars and large flowers, like two of the apostles with the Infancy scenes; the other has a chequer-pattern in red and green not found elsewhere. The two remaining apostles have a new combination of colours, namely orange and very pale blue/grey robes set against a red ground with orange stars. It is therefore clear that the glazing was carefully planned to combine an overall consistency of design and iconography, with a controlled variation in detail and colour. This provides important clues as to the original extent and arrangement of the cycle, and it also helps to situate the fragments of other lights from the c. 1340 glazing scheme which survive in three other windows in the Minster. The east window of the north aisle of the Lady Chapel (window n2) is glazed with mid-15th-century glass in honour of St Stephen (the dedicatee of the altar beneath it), but the central light has an intruded standing apostle from the c. 1340 series (Fig. 9 left) which was placed here sometime between the 1690s and 1730.25 It represents St James the Great in his usual pilgrim garb, with scallop-shells on his hat and pouch, and a staff by his right hand – which, however, is rather oddly clasped right next to the staff rather than round it. His vestments are blue and dark orange/murrey. The bottom of the panel is damaged, so the type of base cannot be determined. The sideshafts are of the same type as the other apostle panels, with exquisitely drawn little figures in niches, but the background is unlike any of the other surviving panels. It has an elaborate pattern of lozenge-shaped quarries divided by thin borders of blue glass, with little red circles at their intersections. This requires unusually elaborate leading, and the lozenges are painted with small creatures and monsters, with a group of musicians with instruments at the top. Knowles considered this background to be a replacement, but the very careful way in which it is fitted into the space suggests that it is original. The apostle in S3b has a lozenge background, albeit somewhat simpler, 75

christopher norton

while the intersecting coloured borders leaded up with separate pieces of glass can be compared to the designs (on a rather larger scale) in the bottom row of the Great West Window. The style of the painted lozenges would fit a date of c. 1340 without any difficulty. Above St James, the original gable over the niche is lost, and with it the accompanying spandrels. Instead, the niche is surmounted by a composite gable made up with pieces from a variety of sources. Fragments of the original main gable have been squashed down on top of the cinquefoil niche. The design appears to be identical to the other panels, except that there is a variation in the oculus. In the panels in S3 and S4 the oculi contain a cinquefoil with six little stars inside. In the broader panels in n5 with the prophets, the oculi contain a different cinquefoil, with one tiny star in the middle. But in n2 the oculus contains a quatrefoil (whose fourth lobe survives among some jumbled fragments in the left-hand border) with five stars. To either side of these gable fragments can be seen some pieces from the perspectival canopy design with pendant vaults identical to that which crowns the narrative scenes at the heads of the lights above the apostles in S3 and S4. These are accompanied by some pieces of blue foliate scrollwork, which would have continued downwards into the background of a narrative scene. Other fragments of pendant vaulting survive in the border on the right. These fragments (not all of which are shown in Fig. 9) all belong together, and they preserve the top and bottom of another light from the c. 1340 series. Similar remains, which also reached their present position sometime between the 1690s and 1730,26 can be seen in the matching window at the east end of the south Lady Chapel aisle (s2) (Fig. 7 right). At the top, the main gable has disappeared, but the nearly complete remains of a vaulted canopy of the same design as in n2 can be seen, this time with some pieces of red background glass. This therefore must have accompanied a narrative panel with a red foliate ground. The apostle again stands in a niche with the same type of side-shafts, the background is red, and the base is a variant on those found under the apostles in S3 and S4, namely a row of little roundheaded arches, but this time with a diagonal element in perspective on the right instead of on the left. The apostle carries a book and, in his left hand, what appears to be a large scallop-shell. He has therefore sometimes been identified as St James the Great. Two St James the Greats in the same set of apostles would be problematic. However, as Knowles pointed out, the lack of any pilgrim garb makes his identification as St James questionable. He cited an early-15th-century alabaster panel of the Ascension (with a Yorkshire provenance) in which St James the Great appears on the left dressed as a pilgrim with a scallop-shell on his hat, while St Simon stands on the right without the pilgrim garb holding a prominent scallop-shell in his hand.27 Simon was one of the apostles about whom least was known. On the opus anglicanum copes he is consistently represented holding a knobbly club. Since all the other twelve apostles are accounted for in the c. 1340 glazing except St Peter and St Philip (who is usually shown holding loaves of bread), this figure must be St Simon, as Knowles proposed. He is sometimes represented with a ship or a fish, perhaps because of his liturgical association with the nautical St Jude. The scallop-shell is perhaps an alternative marine attribute. The original rectangular panel division is particularly clear here, where a horizontal lead-line runs right across the glass at shoulder level. In the St James the Great panel the horizontal division at this level is less immediately obvious, since the glass is somewhat disturbed, but it can still be traced straight across. It is most evident to the left of the apostle’s right shoulder, where the complex leaded diamond background has an additional horizontal lead-line which marks the original 76

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Fig. 7.  Left: window S3, light b (detail), St James the Less. Right: window s2, light b (detail), St Simon Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

panel division. These features confirm that these panels do indeed belong to the same c. 1340 glazing scheme. They are of the same dimensions as the panels in the clerestory windows. The last pieces of the c. 1340 glass are to be found at the other end of the Minster, in the centre light of the westernmost window in the south nave aisle, s35 (Fig. 8 top). They were installed here by Dean Milner-White in 1951, having previously been in the late-13th-century St William window in the chapter-house (ChHo n3), where they had been recorded by Torre c. 1690. It is not known when they arrived there.28 Two scenes from the narrative cycle survive, immediately identifiable by the figures painted in grisaille. The first depicts the Annunciation, with the Virgin and the angel set against an elaborate architectural background. None of the original coloured background to the scene survives, but the plain blue replacement glass at the top suggests it had a blue ground. A vase of lilies stands between the two figures. Gabriel holds a speech-scroll, only the top half of which is original. It bears the second half of the angelic salutation in yellow-stain letters against a black ground: . . . plena dominus tecum. Behind the Virgin is a lectern on which is an open book. The right-hand page is ruled but blank, whereas the left-hand page contains nine lines of tiny but mostly legible writing: Domine [ne in] furore tuo

77

christopher norton

Fig. 8.  Top: window s35, light b, Annunciation and Annunciation to the Shepherds. Bottom left: window S4, light d, pre-restoration photo of the Pentecost scene. Bottom right: window s35, light b, pre-restoration photo of the Annunciation to the Shepherds Photos: Top – The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York; bottom – York Minster Archive, reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York

78

York Minster at the time of the Black Death arguas me neq(ue) [i]n ira tua [co]rripias [me. Mis [erere] mei.

This is the opening verse, and the first two words of the second verse, of Psalm VI, which reads thus in the Douai-Reims translation of the Vulgate: O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, nor chastise me in thy wrath. Have mercy on me.

The patterning under the arch beneath which the Virgin stands has a painted decorative design comparable to the lozenge background to St James the Great. The fictive architecture employs perspectival details in a purely decorative manner, the different parts of the building being grouped together to form a flat backdrop which in no way produces an illusion of interior space. This exemplifies very clearly the manner in which perspectival elements are deployed in the architectural frames and canopies of the c. 1340 lights (and in the west window) as interchangeable components in basically two-dimensional, decorative designs. Ultimately, this kind of representation of the Annunciation, including the iconography of the angel kneeling in front of the Virgin and the head of God the Father peering through the window, can be traced back to earlier 14th-century Italian sources, transmitted no doubt via French art in the manner associated with Jean Pucelle and contemporary stained glass.29 The second scene, which is exceptionally well preserved except at the base, depicts an angel appearing to a shepherd. It has a red background, and the top right-hand and left-hand corners include corbels and arch springers which are identical to those which support the canopies with perspectival vaults in the narrative scenes above the apostles. Milner-White interpreted this scene as the Annunciation to Joachim of the forthcoming birth of the Virgin. He also found what he claimed to be the fragmentary remains of a third panel depicting the Marriage of Joachim and Anna, and he enhanced them to make them approximate to this episode. He placed the reconstructed panel in the same light as the other two panels, claiming to have rediscovered a window of the early Life of the Virgin. These claims have had a long afterlife. The supposed remains of the Marriage of Joachim and Anna were found by Milner-White in the bottom left-hand corner of the late-13th-century Virgin window in the chapter-house (ChHo n2, panel 1a).30 It is not known how long they had been there. The panel was an appalling jumble of pieces, among which the only coherent elements were a fine bearded head on the left-hand side accompanied by the upper part of a body with grisaille draperies. The style is compatible with the c. 1340 glass, but not enough survives to hazard a guess at the iconography. Opposite, on the right, there was a single piece of glass with a female head wearing a short, close-fitting head-dress characteristic of the late 13th century and the first half of the 14th; but the painting style is harder, more linear than the c. 1340 glass, and it probably does not belong. Milner-White inserted in the middle a third, bearded head which he had found elsewhere, to represent the Jewish priest officiating at the wedding. The style is similar to the c. 1340 glass, but the head is covered with a tight-fitting cap tied under the neck, typically worn by workmen, servants 79

christopher norton

and malefactors. It is certainly not a Jewish priest. In short, the panel is an invention of Milner-White’s. The identification of the scene with the angel and the shepherd as the Annunciation to Joachim has gained a certain currency and has been cited in support of the idea that the narrative cycle exhibits a particular Marian emphasis.31 The much more common scene of the Annunciation to the Shepherds from the Infancy of Christ is regularly depicted at this period in just this way, with a single large shepherd gesturing towards the angel, accompanied by a second (usually much smaller) figure playing the bagpipes or some other musical instrument.32 Examples may be found, for instance, on several of the opus anglicanum copes. It has been claimed that the clothes worn by the principal figure would be more appropriate for Joachim than for an ordinary shepherd. However, the shepherds in scenes of the Annunciation to the Shepherds generally wear clothing of a similar type, sometimes with ornamental fringes, as on the Pienza cope or on some embroidered red-velvet panels with scenes from the Life of the Virgin in the Victoria and Albert Museum.33 Compared to the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Annunciation to Joachim is a very rare scene. Joachim tends to be shown sitting down, as in an early-15th-century panel in window s9 in the south choir aisle; and there is nothing in the c. 1340 glass that points to it being him. The matter would be put beyond doubt if the scroll held by the angel contained any words, but it is blank.34 Until any evidence can be adduced otherwise, the panel should be taken to represent the Annunciation to the Shepherds. So Milner-White’s alleged infancy of the Virgin window cannot be substantiated from the surviving glass. The base of this panel was reconstructed by Milner-White. Pre-restoration photographs (Fig. 8 bottom) show that, as it came out of the chapter-house window, it had been cut off horizontally straight across the panel, at a level immediately beneath the feet of the lower sheep on the right, through the lower legs of the standing shepherd and the shoulder of the boy on the left. Much of a horizontal lead-line at this level is still evident in the panel, though slightly concealed by Milner-White’s repairs. Everything below this line was inserted by him. The truncation of the base of the panel at this point corresponds exactly to the divisions which were made at the bottom of the narrative panels in clerestory windows S3 and S4 when they were fitted into square frames, as described above. Something similar also happened at the base of the Annunciation scene, though rather more survived of the original glass below the cutoff point, and was replaced by Milner-White. These earlier interventions demonstrate that these two Infancy panels had been treated in just the same way as the glass in the Lady Chapel clerestory windows. The simplest explanation is that these two scenes originally belonged with the fragments of c. 1340 glass in n2 and s2. The Annunciation would go with the remains of the canopy with the blue ground above the figure of St James the Great, while the Annunciation to the Shepherds would go with the red-ground canopy above St Simon. This would give two nearly complete lights of c. 1340 glass (Fig. 9). They are very similar to (and the same size as) the four lights with apostles and Infancy scenes and the second set of four lights with apostles from the Death of the Virgin sequence. However, three details in these two lights have no parallel elsewhere: the oculus with the quatrefoil in the gable above St James the Great; the lozenge-pattern background to his niche; and the base on which St Simon stands. These variations indicate that these two lights belong to a different design group from the other lights; but the

80

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Fig. 9.  Window I of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

81

christopher norton

physical changes to the framing shows that they had a similar history to the glass in the clerestory windows S3 and S4. reconstructing the glazing scheme The eighteen surviving lights contain an incomplete narrative cycle running from the Annunciation to the Coronation of the Virgin, accompanied by ten apostles, six prophets and two female saints. There are obvious gaps in the story and in the sets of standing figures, but enough survives to reconstruct the original scheme (see Table 1).

Table 1 Reconstruction of the glazing scheme Missing elements are given in italics Current location

Standing figure

Narrative scene

Window I n2b and s35b

St James the Great

Annunciation

–

St Peter or Philip

Visitation

–

St Philip or Peter

Nativity

s2b and s35b

St Simon

Annunciation to the Shepherds

S3a

St Matthias

Adoration of the Magi

S3b

St James the Less

Massacre of the Innocents

S3d

St Andrew

Flight into Egypt

S3c

St John the Evangelist

Presentation in the Temple

n5a

Baruch or Jeremiah

Entry into Jerusalem

n5a

Zechariah

Judas and the thirty pieces of silver

n5b

?Nehemiah

Washing of Peter’s feet

n5c

Joel

Last Supper

n5b

King David

Agony in the Garden

n5c

Malachi

Jesus admonishes the apostles

–

Prophet or saint

?Kiss of Judas

–

Prophet or saint

?Flagellation

–

Prophet or saint

?Carrying of the Cross

–

Prophet or saint

?Crucifixion

Window II

Window III

Window IV

Window V

82

York Minster at the time of the Black Death Current location

Standing figure

Narrative scene

Window VI –

?St Mary Magdalene

?Resurrection

S4e

St Helen

Noli me tangere

–

?St Katherine

Ascension

S4d

St Margaret

Pentecost

S3e

St Bartholomew

Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin

S4a

St Matthew

Death of the Virgin

S4b

St Thomas

Funeral of the Virgin

S4c

St Jude

Coronation of the Virgin

Window VII

As we have seen, Tom French argued that the glass in the Lady Chapel clerestory (S3 and S4, Figs. 4 and 5) was placed there around the time of the construction of the windows c. 1370, and he suggested that the adjacent window to the east (S2) was filled with glass from the c. 1340 series at the same time. This makes a great deal of sense. S2 is only a four-light window, so an additional four apostles there would complete a set of twelve. If the aim when the glass was installed was to emphasise the apostles rather than the narrative scenes (which are hard to read at that height), this would explain why the last two scenes (S4 d–e) are out of narrative order: they belong to the lights with the two female saints, who seem to have been placed thirteenth and fourteenth in the sequence to fill the two spaces left after the twelve apostles. The eight complete lights with the apostles, as noted above, were arranged in two groups in narrative order, namely four Infancy scenes followed by four scenes from the end of the cycle culminating with the Coronation of the Virgin. This pattern suggests that the four apostles presumed to have been in S2 would have been accompanied by four scenes from earlier in the story. When first recorded by James Torre c. 1690, window S2 had already been disturbed; but one of the lights he saw can definitely be identified as belonging to the c. 1340 series. The second light was described by Torre as containing a ‘holy person habited Or and Blue, and above him 2 women before a church, the one habited Argent, the other Or and Argent’.35 The format of a saint surmounted by a narrative scene containing figures robed in white and gold can only refer to one of the lights of the c. 1340 glass. Torre’s descriptions are generally held to be reliable, even though he was seldom able to identify the scenes he recorded. A narrative scene containing just two female figures is relatively unusual, and it suggests the Visitation, a scene in which Mary and Elizabeth are sometimes shown greeting each other in front of a building or buildings, as on the Bologna cope. This would complement perfectly the two dismembered lights from the clerestory described above, whose narrative scenes had already been moved to the chapter-house by Torre’s time. St James the Great with the Annunciation, which almost invariably starts cycles of the Infancy of Jesus, would have been in the first light, followed by the Visitation. St Simon with the 83

christopher norton

Annunciation to the Shepherds would have been in the fourth light, while the missing third light would have contained the Nativity, an essential element of any Infancy sequence. The two lost scenes were presumably supported by the two missing apostles, St Peter and St Philip. The two missing lights in all likelihood had the same design details and colours as the surviving lights with St James the Great and St Simon, thereby forming another distinct group of four lights. Eight scenes from the Annunciation to the Flight into Egypt would constitute a coherent and complete Infancy cycle. The lights with the apostles thus appear to have been designed in sets of four: two sets with Infancy scenes and one set with the scenes from the Death of the Virgin cycle. This suggests that they were designed for fourlight windows (Figs. 9, 10 and 15). Christological cycles often move straight from the Infancy to the Passion; and Passion cycles generally begin with the Entry into Jerusalem, so the six lights with the Passion scenes would have followed on directly. These are the broader, 3 ft lights, and the (at first sight surprising) difference in width can be explained if they were designed not for four-light windows but for three-light windows. Three 3 ft lights are the equivalent of four 2 ft 3 in. lights, in each case giving 9 ft (c. 2.74 m) of glass within a window opening of around 10 ft (c. 3.05 m), assuming 4–6 in. mullions. Variation of window design within an overall unity of bay design is a characteristic feature of English Gothic architecture of the late 13th century and the first half of the 14th. For an example which incorporates different numbers of lights of differing widths, one need look no further than the nave of St Mary’s Abbey, York, a work of the 1280s and early 1290s. There, the nave aisle bay design is consistent throughout, but the actual windows alternate between a three-light design and a twolight design with broader lights.36 The c. 1340 glass was evidently designed for a set of windows in the same tradition. The six Passion lights would therefore have taken up two whole windows (Figs. 11 and 12). The allocation of six narrative scenes to the early part of the Holy Week narrative suggests that the Passion sequence was fairly extensive. The missing lights would have been chosen from such scenes as the Kiss of Judas, Jesus before the high priest or Pilate, the Flagellation, the Carrying of the Cross, and then moving on to the Crucifixion, the Deposition, the Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection. As a minimum, it is suggested that one whole four-light window is missing, culminating in the Crucifixion (Fig. 13), followed by a four-light Resurrection sequence (Fig. 14). Half of this survives in the form of the two lights with standing female saints surmounted by the Noli me tangere and Pentecost scenes, with the Resurrection and the Ascension the most probable candidates for the two missing lights. The missing Crucifixion window would have contained four more standing prophets or saints of the church, while the two lost lights from the Resurrection window presumably incorporated two more female saints. St Katherine is an obvious candidate, as she was regularly paired with St Margaret. St Helen, who discovered the remains of the True Cross, is sometimes paired with St Mary Magdalene, who clung to the foot of the cross, as on the Butler-Bowdon cope and the wall paintings of c. 1325 in the chancel at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire.37 Pentecost is the natural conclusion of the biblical post-Resurrection story. The addition of episodes of the death and glorification of the Virgin is common in medieval art, and the four surviving scenes surmounting the last four apostles form a coherent conclusion to the cycle (Fig. 15). The Assumption of the Virgin is not always represented, whereas the Coronation of the Virgin is almost invariably the final scene. 84

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Window II

Adoration of the Magi

Massacre of the Innocents

Flight into Egypt

Presentation in the Temple

St Matthias

St James the Less

St Andrew

St John the Evangelist

Fig. 10.  Window II of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

85

christopher norton

Window III

Entry into Jerusalem

Judas and the thirty pieces of silver

Washing of Peter’s feet

Baruch or Jeremiah

Zechariah

?Nehemiah

Fig. 11.  Window III of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

86

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Window IV

Last Supper

Agony in the Garden

Jesus admonishes the apostles

Joel

King David

Malachi

Fig. 12.  Window IV of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

87

christopher norton

Window V

?Kiss of Judas

?Flagellation

?Carrying of the Cross

?Crucifixion

Prophet or Saint

Prophet or Saint

Prophet or Saint

Prophet or Saint

Fig. 13.  Window V of the reconstructed cycle. Four lost Passion scenes above figures of prophets or saints Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

88

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Window VI

?Resurrection

Noli me tangere

Ascension

Pentecost

?St Mary Magdalene

St Helen

?St Katherine

St Margaret

Fig. 14.  Window VI of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

89

christopher norton

Window VII

Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin

Death of the Virgin

Funeral of the Virgin

Coronation of the Virgin

St Bartholomew

St Matthew

St Thomas

St Jude

Fig. 15.  Window VII of the reconstructed cycle Photos: The YGT reproduced by kind permission of the Chapter of York Image: Janet Parkin

90

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

So the glass could have been accommodated in seven windows containing twenty-six narrative scenes supported by twelve apostles, up to ten prophets and up to eight saints. The sequence would have been very similar in extent and in the choice of scenes to the cycle on the lost opus anglicanum cope from St Peter’s in Rome. The chancel paintings at Chalgrove contain a similar number of scenes which extend likewise from the Annunciation to the Coronation of the Virgin. There, however, the Nativity, Passion and Resurrection scenes, on the north side of the chancel, are fewer in number, while the sequence from the Death of the Virgin onwards is considerably longer, so as to fill the south side of the chancel.38 The Marian emphasis reflects both the physical context and the fact that the church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The narrative scenes in the York glass do not divide into two matching sequences in this way. This number of scenes would mean that the twelve lights with apostles and the two with female saints, which were placed in the Lady Chapel south clerestory windows S2–S4 in about 1370, constituted about half of the original scheme. The panels now in n5 with the prophets and the Passion scenes were too wide to fit into the Lady Chapel clerestory windows, and the remaining Lady Chapel clerestory windows were filled c. 1390 with a new set of prophets and apostles, continuing the earlier idea, but with figures on a considerably larger scale and without any narrative scenes.39 Only a few years later, it seems, the six c. 1340 lights with prophets were installed in the wider lights of the newly built south choir aisle window, s10. These were clearly selected as a coherent set. What happened to the rest, which included the pivotal Passion scenes, there is no way of knowing. Perhaps they were installed somewhere else.40 The surviving lights therefore provide enough evidence to reconstruct the original c. 1340 cycle and make sense of their partial reuse in the eastern arm of the Minster a few decades later. Other reconstructions of the cycle are possible. Physical constraints, or the whim of the designer or patron, meant that windows were not always of uniform size. Although apostles usually came in sets of twelve, there were sometimes thirteen of them, including both Matthias and Paul. An additional apostle would allow the possibility of a five-light window – perhaps at the end of the cycle, with the Assumption included before the Coronation of the Virgin. The lost Passion and Resurrection scenes could be reconstructed differently. It is neither possible nor necessary to be categoric. The general size and shape of the scheme is clear. looking for the provenance of the glass Where could such an extensive, expensive, high-quality set of windows have been intended for? Various proposals have been made, none of which is really convincing. Tom French suggested that the glass had been inserted into the windows of the 12th-­ century choir c. 1335.41 This had been constructed by Archbishop Roger of Pont l’Evêque between the late 1150s and c. 1175 (Fig. 16) and was demolished and replaced in stages from the 1360s onwards. Some of its glass could therefore have been available for reuse in the Lady Chapel clerestory in the 1370s. French hypothesised that each of the c. 1340 lights had been inserted into one of the lower-level windows of Roger’s choir, which, he calculated, would have had just enough windows to accommodate the whole scheme. He also suggested that this reglazing might have been prompted by the promotion of the cult of St William of York. William’s relics had been translated into the choir in 1284, and Archbishop Melton paid for a new stone base for his shrine around 1330. This hypothesis was put forward partly as a solution to another great 91

christopher norton

conundrum in the history of the Minster’s stained glass, namely the provenance of the panels of 12th-century glass which were reused in the clerestory windows of the nave in the second quarter of the 14th century. It seemed like an elegant solution to two problems at once: the old 12th-century glass was taken out and made available for reuse in the nave, and the new c. 1340 glass was installed instead, only to be reused in its turn a few decades later. Unfortunately, this idea will not stand up to scrutiny. A narrative cycle spread around the entire east end in twenty-six (or more) different windows would have been more or less impossible to follow. In any case, the c. 1340 lights would not have fitted the windows of Roger’s choir. These have recently been reconstructed from surviving fragments. They were broad, round-headed single lancet windows measuring about 5 ft 3 in. (c. 1.60 m) wide:42 the wrong shape and far too wide for the c. 1340 lights. Furthermore, Roger’s choir was demolished in stages. The easternmost bays as far back as the east side of the eastern crossing were taken down in the 1360s in order to make way for Archbishop Thoresby’s Lady Chapel; but the rest of Roger’s choir back to the central tower remained standing for several decades longer.43 So only the windows of the easternmost part of the 12th-century choir would have been available for reuse in the 1370s, and it would have been odd if these contained the start and end of the cycle but none of the panels from the middle. An alternative hypothesis – which seems not to have occurred to French – is that the old choir was refenestrated with mullioned windows, in whole or in part, as happened in other great churches from time to time. There might just have been space for seven or more mullioned windows in the part of Roger’s choir that was demolished in the 1360s, but they would have had to have been distributed around the building in such a way as to make the cycle very difficult to follow. Furthermore, the aisle bays as currently reconstructed would not have been tall enough to accommodate traceried windows of this size.44 Both scenarios also come up against other objections. Archbishop Melton’s new shrine structure was placed over the original tomb of St William at the east end of the nave, not in the choir, and there is no evidence for significant alterations in the choir associated with William’s cult at this time. There is nothing in the iconography of the glazing which points to a connection with him – William himself did not even appear in the glass, so far as we know. In the 1330s and 1340s all efforts were being directed towards the completion of the nave.45 The foundation stone had been laid in 1291, but the work was still far from finished. Melton focused his financial support entirely on the nave (where he was to be buried in 1340), not just St William’s tomb but also the west front and the west window. Even with his help, the project dragged on through the 1340s. An investigation in 1345 revealed lamentable problems: unfinished stonework, rain coming through the roof, pilfering of materials by the workforce, and so on. Work continued into the 1350s, and the west end was left with its towers unfinished when attention moved to the new east end of Archbishop Thoresby in the 1360s. In the circumstances, there would have been no funding for cosmetic improvements to the east end, particularly on this scale – French calculated that the c. 1340 glazing scheme would have been of similar extent and similar price to the Great West Window, for which Archbishop Melton granted 100 marks. Furthermore, it is unlikely that there would have been any desire to upgrade the old east end at this time. In his will of 1348, Thomas Sampson, one of the senior canons, left money so that a new choir could be begun within the year, adding that he had often discussed it with the master mason, Thomas de Pacenham, and the keeper of the fabric, Thomas de Ludham.46 With this on the agenda, upgrading or redecorating the old 92

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

east end would have been a waste of effort and money. French himself subsequently expressed doubts about his hypothesis.47 David O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock proposed a solution which avoided these difficulties: the chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels, popularly known as St Sepulchre’s.48 This too had been constructed by Archbishop Roger of Pont l’Evêque, towards the end of his archiepiscopate in the 1170s. The chapel was located within the precinct of the archbishop’s palace, inside the gateway and close by the northwest corner of the nave of the Minster. It had its own complement of thirteen canons, distinct from those of the Minster. One of their functions was to pray for the soul of Archbishop Roger, making the chapel effectively an early chantry-chapel on a grand scale. On a day-to-day basis there were many links between the canons of the chapel and the personnel of the Minster, and there were liturgical connections as well. But the chapel remained throughout under the control of the archbishops rather than the Chapter.49 So close to the Minster was it that it was affected by the enlargement of the nave from 1291 onwards. The broad new north nave aisle impinged upon the palace precinct, resulting in alterations to the chapel. In 1333 Archbishop Melton granted a licence for the enlargement of the chapel.50 It may be that this amounted in practice to a complete rebuilding, though the precise location, size and design of the chapel have yet to be determined. The chapel with its college of canons survived until 1547, after which it was redundant and in due course disappeared. A finely wrought doorway surmounted by a statute of the Virgin and Child in the penultimate bay of the north aisle of the nave gave access to the chapel and serves as a reminder of the close physical and institutional connections which previously existed between it and the Minster. Although it is questionable whether the c. 1340 glass really has a special Marian emphasis, as has been claimed on the basis of the alleged Joachim panels, it is nonetheless true that the narrative cycle, with its focus on the Infancy and Passion stories as well as the Death of the Virgin sequence, would have been entirely appropriate for a chapel dedicated to the Virgin which was also popularly associated with the tomb of Christ. The enlargement or rebuilding of the chapel would have provided an occasion for a new cycle of glazing; a chapel served by thirteen canons could easily have had seven or more windows; and archiepiscopal patronage would explain the outstanding quality of the glass. There is only one problem with this otherwise extremely plausible hypothesis – but a seemingly insuperable one. It was previously believed that the c. 1340 glass was placed in the east end of the Minster after the Reformation, when the chapel was suppressed. However, now that Tom French has argued convincingly that the glass in the Lady Chapel clerestory was placed there c. 1370, it seems inexplicable that it would have been available for reuse then. Removing the glazing from the chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels would have rendered it inoperable. It would merely have solved the problem of the Lady Chapel glazing by creating an equally large one in the chapel. There remains the possibility that some of the other glass in the Minster dating to c. 1340 whose provenance is unknown could have come from the chapel after its abolition at the Reformation. Faced with this difficulty, some years ago in conversation with Tom French I wondered whether the glass might have come from another church in the close dedicated to the Virgin, the church of St Mary ad Valvas; and he pursued the idea in a short note. This was an unimportant parish church whose advowson belonged to the Dean and Chapter. It stood somewhere in the vicinity of the east end of the Minster and is believed to have been demolished in the mid-1360s. Its name has been taken to refer 93

christopher norton

to its proximity to a door or doors in the old east end of the Minster; but there is no evidence for any doors in the east end of the 11th- or 12th-century Minster, and no trace of the church has been found under or near the present east end of the Minster. It seems more likely that it took its name from the gateway into the close at the end of College Street and that it disappeared as a consequence of a reordering of this part of the close in connection with Thoresby’s enlarged Lady Chapel. That at any rate was the belief of James Torre, who stated that it had been demolished in 1365. Its glazing could therefore have become available for reuse in the Lady Chapel clerestory at just the right time.51 But the hypothesis does not carry conviction. A new glazing scheme incorporating seven or more windows in a minor parish church would imply major alterations, if not actual rebuilding. It is hard to envisage the cash-strapped Dean and Chapter carrying out work of this kind and commissioning such expensive stained glass at a time when they were struggling to complete the Minster nave. The difference between an ordinary church glazing scheme and the c. 1340 windows may be gauged from the chapel of the Vicars Choral in the Bedern, which was also under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter. Dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin and St Katherine, it was constructed (or reconstructed) in the 1340s and had glass of the period.52 This survived in situ until the early 19th century and was fortunately recorded by various antiquaries in the 17th and 18th centuries.53 There were three windows on either side, with the glass in the main lights apparently arranged in a banded format consisting of a single narrative scene (no doubt set within a fictive architectural framework) with decorative grisaille panels above and below – a smaller-scale version of the windows in the nave of the Minster. The narrative panels included a Christological and Marian cycle. It started on the north side with the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi in a two-light window, followed by two three-light windows containing the Arrest of Christ, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, followed by the Ascension, Pentecost and the Last Judgement. The three windows in the south wall reflected the chapel’s dedication, with windows to St Katherine, the Virgin, and a damaged window apparently containing a Trinity image. The Virgin window contained the Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin, the Funeral of the Virgin and the Assumption. This formed as it were a coda to the narrative panels in the north wall. Together with the north-side windows, it constituted a version of the cycle found in the c. 1340 glass, but much shorter in extent and simpler in format. The c. 1340 glass must have come from a much grander building. It seems that what is needed is a building which was somehow connected to the Minster but not the responsibility of the Dean and Chapter – a building of sufficiently high status to merit such outstanding glazing yet at the same time sufficiently dispensable to have lost its glass within a few decades. A solution to this conundrum can be found in another building which is itself one of the mysteries of the architectural history of the Minster: the chantry-chapel of Archbishop Zouche. archbishop zouche and his chantry-chapel William la Zouche was elected archbishop shortly after the death of Archbishop Melton in 1340. His election was challenged by a minority of the Chapter, whose alternative candidate was supported by the king, and it was not until 1342 that he was consecrated by the pope at Avignon and took up the reins of office. Zouche had himself worked in the royal administration since 1328, spending some years as clerk in the 94

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

Great Wardrobe before being appointed Controller of the Great Wardrobe in 1334. He went on to be Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1335 and Treasurer of the Exchequer in 1337–38, so he had access to the highest levels of the court.54 Within the Wardrobe he was responsible for providing and maintaining the rich fabrics and embroideries for clothes, hangings and coverings of all kinds which were an essential part of court finery. The Wardrobe accounts for the period, some of which bear Zouche’s name, give an idea of the magnificent and costly products which were being commissioned by Edward III and his household. In 1330, for instance, Zouche submitted an account for the commissioning of three quilted bed-covers for Queen Philippa’s state appearance after childbirth, which cost in total £60 7s 6½d. The sole surviving specimen of English embroidery made almost certainly for the king himself is the fragmentary horse trapper now in the Musée de Cluny which, even in its dismembered state, gives an impressive sense of courtly display. Dating to the 1330s, it may well have passed through Zouche’s hands. A similar piece which was commissioned for Edward III in 1328 cost almost £15, while another one a year later cost over £27. These figures put into perspective the sum of 100 marks (£66 13s 4d) given by Archbishop Melton for the glazing of the Great West Window in 1339. This was little more than Queen Philippa’s three state bed-covers and was exactly the same price as an embroidered cope commissioned by Queen Isabella in 1317 as a present for Pope John XXII.55 The magnificent opus anglicanum copes preserved in museums and church treasuries across western Europe are some of the greatest liturgical vestments ever made. The Great Wardrobe accounts contain little direct information about ecclesiastical embroideries, but their manufacture involved the same materials, techniques and craftsmen and -women as secular items; and fabrics and embroideries could be adapted for both purposes. In 1371, for instance, the Minster paid for a set of bed-hangings which had belonged to Queen Philippa to be made into thirteen copes, four tunicles and one chasuble.56 Zouche must have been familiar with a wide range of products, and he must have known some of the men and women who produced them. The trade seems to have been largely based in London, and it involved close collaboration with some of the finest artists and designers in the country, to say nothing of the astonishing technical skill of the embroiderers themselves. This was also a period when the Palace of Westminster was a hive of activity of artists and craftsmen of all kinds, as Edward III continued work on St Stephen’s Chapel. Zouche would have been at the centre of artistic life in England at the time.57 In the 1330s the court, the royal administration and parliament transferred to York for some time. In 1333 Zouche accompanied the Wardrobe to York, where it remained during the Scottish campaigns of the next two years.58 It was against this background that Zouche was appointed to a canonry at York in 1335; and the following year he was made dean. Consequently, he held the senior dignity at the Minster at the time that the commission for the Great West Window was prepared. Minster canons were mostly non-residentiary, as were many deans, and in the absence of the Chapter Act Book for the period it is not known what role Zouche played in the affairs of the Minster. All the same, the question arises as to the role he may have played in the west window commission. His experience of costly artistic projects and his contacts among the leading artists of the time could have been very useful. After assuming the office of archbishop in 1342, Zouche is not known to have played any significant part in the continuing efforts to complete the nave, nor is he recorded as having made any financial contributions. A new archbishop could incur 95

christopher norton

heavy expenses, particularly if, as in his case, his election was contested and he had to get papal approval in person. The journey to Avignon would have exposed him to the important artistic projects, some of them in Italianate styles, being carried out by the Avignon popes, but it would have left him badly out of pocket. On his way to Avignon, Zouche was kidnapped. He was only released on payment of a ransom, which would have done nothing to help his finances. It is probably not a coincidence that Archbishop Melton’s munificent grants to the Minster fabric fund came towards the end of a long archiepiscopate (1316–40), by which point he could have built up a considerable surplus from the archiepiscopal revenues. Similarly, it was nearly a decade into his archiepiscopate before Archbishop Thoresby began his generous annual contributions towards the cost of the new Lady Chapel. Zouche did not last nearly as long as either Melton or Thoresby, and he died with considerable debts.59 In 1346 Zouche was created Warden of the Scottish March during Edward III’s absence in France, and the same year he joined forces with Henry Percy and Ralph Neville to defeat the Scots at the Battle of Neville’s Cross. Zouche himself led one of the divisions of the army and was accompanied by Canon Thomas Sampson, who wrote an account of the battle.60 Two years later, the Black Death reached England, prompting Zouche to issue a warning to the diocese about the impending catastrophe. It reached York in May 1349 and continued unabated until the feast of St James the Great (25 July). It was during this time, while staying at his residence at Ripon, on 28 June 1349, that Zouche drew up his will.61 In the circumstances, his platitudinous remark that nothing in human affairs is more certain than death, nothing less certain than the hour of one’s death, had a particular edge. The will gives the impression that it was drawn up in a hurry, as well it might have been, since in essence it contains just a single provision concerning the arrangements for his burial and chantry foundation. Everything else was left to the discretion of his executors. He specified that his body should be buried in the Minster, and he left 300 marks (£200) for the establishment of a perpetual chantry in honour of St Mary Magdalene and St Martha, to be served by two priests. He referred to a separate ordinance setting out his instructions for the chantry, which was in the hands of his executors. This has not been preserved. In the event, Zouche survived the first onslaught of the Black Death and was able to start work on his chantry-chapel himself.62 In an exchange of letters in April, probably in the year 1350, he requested and was granted permission from the Chapter to erect a chapel at his own expense on the south side of the choir. It was to be built without obstructing or disfiguring the Minster, and the Minster’s master mason, who was planning the chapel, was to be in charge of the work.63 Between November 1350 and May 1352 payments are recorded totalling over £150, indicating that the structure was well advanced. After a lengthy illness, Zouche died on 19 July 1352. Five days earlier, no doubt at his dying request, the Chapter issued a formal licence consenting to his plans. This confirmed that the chapel was to be dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and St Martha, that it was located next to the south side of the choir of the Minster, that it was of admirable workmanship, but that it was not yet completed. It also gave permission for the wall of the Minster adjoining the west end of the chapel to be pierced by one or two arches and for doors to be installed in the openings – that is to say, for a single or double doorway to be constructed, the latter presumably along the lines of the earlier double doorway from the north transept into the chapter-house vestibule, or the later doorway in the south aisle of the choir. Permission was also given for access through the new doorway for masons and other craftsmen working 96

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

on the chapel, and in due course for the chaplains and others attending services in the chapel. The licence, however, makes it clear that the institution of the chantry itself with its two chaplains had yet to be established. There is also an important proviso that the archbishop, his heirs and executors, should cover not only the costs of erecting the chapel but also of its future maintenance in perpetuity, including its walls, windows, locks, doors, roof and roof-coverings. Since the chapel was still unfinished at the time of his death, Zouche’s body was laid to rest within the Minster by the altar of St Edward the Confessor. This altar, whose location has been the subject of considerable speculation, was in the southernmost chapel on the east side of the south transept, where some of his archiepiscopal predecessors were buried.64 Although nothing is stated explicitly, a certain froideur is apparent in the relationship between the archbishop and the Chapter. Unusually for a man of his position, Zouche did not appoint a single senior clergyman, from the Minster or anywhere else, as an executor. His executors were headed by Ralph Neville, lord of Raby, one of his fellow commanders at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, and Roger la Zouche, the archbishop’s brother, followed by three knights and some lesser clergy, probably members of his household. Roger la Zouche had also fought at Neville’s Cross, as had the first of his three knightly executors, Marmaduke Constable, who was actually knighted on the day of the battle.65 The licence for his chantry-chapel, which Zouche extracted from the Chapter on his deathbed, demonstrates his anxiety about its willingness to see the project through to completion. The Chapter, for its part, in issuing its licence, stated three times over that the costs of the chapel and its future maintenance for all time had to be borne by the archbishop, his heirs and executors, since the Chapter and its successors had no intention or desire to have any financial obligations towards it, ever. The entry on Zouche in Thomas Stubbs’s continuation of the Chronica Pontificum, written not many years after Zouche’s death, is notable for its omissions. Whereas both Melton, his predecessor, and Thoresby, his successor, are lauded for their personal qualities, their religious devotion, and their conscientious performance of their archiepiscopal duties, nothing is said of Zouche’s character or ecclesiastical achievements as archbishop. Instead, the chronicle mentions his collaboration with Ralph Neville and other barons in defeating the Scots at Neville’s Cross; it records a flood at the bottom of Micklegate in 1349; and it notes the arrival of the Black Death in York later the same year – without mentioning anything of Zouche’s response to the crisis. It concludes with his plans for the chantry-chapel, his death and his burial in the Minster, rounding off the entry with a derogatory remark about his executors. Whether the business of the chantry-chapel was in any way a cause of coldness between the archbishop and his executors and the Chapter or merely a symptom of it, there is no way of knowing. The unimaginable horrors of the Black Death could have caused any number of tensions, even if the difficulties did not go back to earlier in Zouche’s archiepiscopate, perhaps even to the dispute over his election. With his background in the royal administration, Zouche may simply have preferred the company of lay people. So where exactly was Zouche’s chapel, and what became of it? James Raine summed up the matter correctly over a century and a half ago:66 It was an appendage to the old . . . choir [of Archbishop Roger], and when that portion of the church was removed the chapel fell with it. Another building took its place, and rose up close to the old site.

97

christopher norton

The replacement building referred to by Raine is the sacristy which was constructed towards the end of the 14th century to serve the new Perpendicular choir. In his time, it functioned as the chapter clerk’s office. In 1934 it was restored and dedicated as a chapel and is now known as the ‘Zouche Chapel’ (Fig. 1). It is one of the many mysteries of Minster historiography that the idea should have persisted down to the present day, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that this structure was designed and largely built in the time of Archbishop Zouche to serve as his chantry-chapel. That particular canard has been laid to rest by Sarah Brown and need never be mentioned again.67 Yet the question of the location and likely form of Zouche’s chantry-chapel has still not been resolved. To answer it, it is necessary to look more closely at the 12th-century choir of Archbishop Roger (Fig. 16). Unlike the present east end, this was a two-storey structure, with the liturgical choir and presbytery raised above a crypt which extended to the eastern extremity of the building. The general layout of Roger’s choir has long been known, but it is only very recently that its plan has been worked out in detail.68 It was an aisled structure with five bays east of the central tower, followed by an eastern crossing flanked by two small square eastern transepts. Beyond that were two further bays, the second of which formed an ambulatory across the width of the building. The east wall had a small chapel at the end of each aisle and a larger projecting chapel in the middle, perhaps of polygonal form. It has been suggested that Zouche’s chantry-chapel was located on the south side of the liturgical choir, between the two transepts. It would have been difficult to insert a chapel here without it impinging on the adjacent parts of the building. In particular, it would have blocked out most of the light from the windows in the south aisle of the crypt, as well as the adjacent transept windows. The excavations carried out in 1966–73 beneath the south choir aisle of the present building uncovered the remains of the south aisle wall of Roger’s crypt and the ground immediately outside it. There was no sign of any structure there.69 In the medieval sources, as in modern parlance, the word ‘choir’ can be used architecturally to refer to the liturgical choir, which was situated (as now) in the bays east of the central tower, or it can refer to the whole east end of the building. The place to look for Zouche’s chantry-chapel is in fact to the east of the eastern transept of Roger’s choir, in an area which has never been excavated, lying partly beneath the south aisle of the present Lady Chapel and partly outside.70 The crypt of Roger’s choir contained five altars, all of them dedicated to female saints. The Lady Chapel was in the centre, flanked by the chapel of St Katherine to the north and the chapel of St Mary Magdalene to the south. The chapel beneath the north-eastern transept was dedicated to Sts Cecilia, Agnes and Petronella, its equivalent on the south to Sts Agatha, Lucy and Scholastica.71 Zouche was particularly attached to the cult of St Martha. Perhaps he felt an affinity with the saint who was considered the model of the active life and who had confessed to Jesus that she was distracted by her many tasks. In February 1344 he issued instructions for her feastday to be celebrated throughout the diocese with an office of nine lessons appropriate for a virgin. He also offered an indulgence of thirty days for anyone who went to church to celebrate it.72 The altar at the east end of the south crypt aisle was dedicated to Martha’s sister, St Mary Magdalene, so a location immediately adjacent would have been entirely appropriate for Zouche’s chantry-chapel. Its joint dedication to St Mary Magdalene and St Martha perhaps suggests that he intended it to replace the pre-existing, rather small chapel of St Mary Magdalene. The most likely site for his chantry-chapel is attached to or adjacent to the south-east corner of Roger’s crypt. 98

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

The obvious position for the single- or double-arched doorway which was to have been pierced through the wall of Roger’s choir is the last bay at the east end of the south crypt aisle. A vestibule here could have led from the crypt ambulatory straight into the westernmost bay of the north wall of the chapel, or via a dog-leg into its west wall. In this position the chapel would have been essentially a free-standing structure within the Minster cemetery and sufficiently removed from the eastern transept, the south aisle and the Lady Chapel not to overshadow them, thereby fulfilling the Chapter’s stipulation that the chapel should not encumber or disfigure the Minster. A three-bay chapel would have had seven or eight windows, depending on whether the entrance impinged on the fenestration, and would have measured in the region of 45 ft by 20 ft (c. 13.7 m × 6.1 m) internally (Fig. 16). A chapel of this size would

Fig. 16.  Plan of York Minster c.1350 (in black), showing Roger’s choir at crypt level and the presumed location of the Zouche chapel (in grey), with the 1360s Lady Chapel overlaid (in white outline). The detail shows the suggested arrangement of the windows. The plan of the central projecting chapel of the 12th-century east end is conjectural Image: Lesley Collett after reconstruction by Christopher Norton

99

christopher norton

have been rather larger than the majority of surviving chantry-chapels, but these tend to have been constructed within the fabric of existing buildings or alongside their exterior walls – and therefore have far fewer, if any, windows. However, for a precedent for a separate archiepiscopal chapel linked to the Minster, Zouche needed to look no further than the chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels at the opposite corner of the building. The window(s) in the end wall(s) could have been wider than the side windows. This would allow for an extra prophet or saint with an additional Passion scene, or a thirteenth apostle with another scene from the Death of the Virgin sequence. Depending on the precise number, size and position of the windows, various arrangements could be envisaged. Perhaps the most plausible option would be a seven-window cycle, with the entrance in the west wall and the narrative unfolding clockwise around the chapel. Placing the Nativity window at the east end of the south wall would mean that the standing figures of the apostles, although located at the beginning and the end of the sequence, would all appear in adjacent windows, followed by the windows with the prophets facing each other across the west end of the chapel. The window with standing figures of female saints would flank the altar on the north side, and the window above the altar would comprise the Death of the Virgin sequence culminating in the Coronation of the Virgin. Such an arrangement would provide an appropriately female emphasis for a chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and St Martha. Depending on the height of the vestibule, the west wall could have had a smaller window whose glass did not form part of the main cycle; or it could have been windowless, just as the west wall of the chapter-house is windowless because of its vestibule. St Mary Magdalene is represented in the Noli me tangere scene. She may also have appeared at the base of the cross in the Crucifixion and would have been among the Three Marys at the Sepulchre, if that was included. She and Martha may have figured among the standing saints along with St Margaret and St Helen; but even if not, the absence of Martha from the glazing would not be a problem, for it was customary for the patron saint(s) of a church to be represented along with the Virgin Mary on the east wall, flanking the altar.73 The reredos provided another possible locus for imagery relating to the altar’s dedicatees. For the rest, the iconography of the glazing accords with what we know of Zouche’s devotional interests. The ordinance of 13 February 1344 in which he instituted the office in honour of St Martha contains a lengthy exposition of his liturgical concerns.74 He starts with Good Friday, which he says should be a double feast throughout the diocese. He enjoins all faithful people to attend church on that day and adore the holy cross, and to abstain from all sinful activity, all levity, indeed from all business and manual labour, all agricultural work, and so on. There then follows an even longer exhortation concerning the liturgical celebration of the Virgin Mary, including saying the Office of the Virgin and celebrating the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The latter was to be celebrated in the manner in which it was celebrated in the chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels, which he describes as ‘our chapel’. He ends by granting indulgences of forty days for anyone who attends church with due piety on Good Friday and on the feast of the Conception. This interest in the veneration of the Virgin and the observance of Good Friday finds a visual parallel in the Marian content and the extended Passion cycle in the stained glass. The inclusion of St Helen holding the True Cross reflects his devotion to the cross. At one point in his 1344 ordinance, he explains that praise which is

100

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

offered to the Mother of God is praise offered to God himself. He continues with a rhetorical question: For who among the faithful who confesses the Incarnation, the Advent of the Lord, his Nativity, Humanity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension in the flesh does not also recognise his mother, the glorious blessed Virgin Mary, to be most worthy of all praise, in accordance with the teaching and doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles?

The sentiment is entirely conventional. All the same, this sounds almost like an iconographical brief for the stained glass. It is not known whether Zouche’s chantry-chapel was ever completed or its glass installed. This is not a matter of great moment, for preliminary design work for the glazing could have started as soon as the design for the chapel had been drawn up, and the actual manufacture of the windows could have been put in hand as soon as the window tracery was in position. What is certain is that, finished or unfinished, the chapel was demolished within a few years. In 1361 John Thoresby laid the foundation stone for the new Lady Chapel.75 Planning for this great project must have been in hand for some years, and one of the first problems to be resolved would have been Zouche’s chantry-chapel. It stood on the line of the south aisle wall of the new Lady Chapel, whose foundations smashed right through the middle of it. This does raise a question as to Zouche’s choice of location for his chapel. Thomas Sampson’s will of 1348, mentioned above, shows that plans for an enlarged east end had been under discussion for a number of years. It is generally supposed that the advent of the Black Death put an end to the project, coming as it did at a time when the Chapter was already suffering from building fatigue from the new nave which had been under construction ever since 1291. When Zouche drew up the plan for his chapel in 1349, there may have seemed no possibility of ever starting work on the new east end. But sentiments can change rapidly, and Thoresby’s arrival could have been the catalyst. However, there is another possibility. It may be that the new east end which had been envisaged in the 1340s would not have been a replacement for Archbishop Roger’s eastern arm but an enlargement of it.76 Thoresby gave as the principal reason for his new east end the inadequacy of the existing Lady Chapel. This was in the central projecting chapel in the crypt, and it must have seemed rather mean compared to the magnificent Lady Chapels that had been constructed in the previous decades at Ely and elsewhere. It would, however, have been perfectly feasible to attach a grand new Lady Chapel to the existing east front without having to rebuild the whole of Roger’s choir back to the crossing. This could have been done without impinging on the site of Zouche’s chantry-chapel; and the Chapter’s insistence that his chapel should not obstruct the Minster may have referred forward to the plans for a new Lady Chapel as much as backward to the existing building. If this is correct, it would make sense of Zouche’s choice of location for his chapel; and it would mean that it was only Thoresby’s adoption of a far grander project for rebuilding the entire east end which necessitated the destruction of Zouche’s chapel. Whatever the truth of the matter, it must have become apparent very rapidly to Zouche’s executors that his chapel had no future. The chantry foundation in honour of St Mary Magdalene and St Martha with its two chaplains could in theory have been moved to elsewhere within the Minster, but it was never established. In his chronicle, Thomas Stubbs complained that Zouche’s tomb in the chapel of St Edward the

101

christopher norton

Confessor had for a long time after his burial been covered with nothing more than stone paving slabs, ‘proof’, he claimed, ‘of the ingratitude of his relations and of others to whom in his lifetime he had been a generous benefactor’.77 But the difficulty was probably not all on one side. In June 1353, less than a year after Zouche’s death, his brother Roger publicly acknowledged that he owed Archbishop Thoresby £1,000, the sum to be levied in default of payment from his lands and chattels in Leicestershire.78 This was an enormous sum for a middle-ranking knight to owe the archbishop, and it must surely relate in some way to Zouche’s archiepiscopal revenues. It was normal for archbishops to advance the interests of their clerical familiares. Zouche perhaps had focused on being a benefactor to his family by birth and his close associates. Stubbs indeed states as much; and Zouche’s will gave his executors absolute discretion to dispose of the residue of his estate as they wished, and to reward his family, friends, tenants and members of his household, each according to his merits. Perhaps Roger la Zouche had felt that his own merits surpassed those of anyone else. One way or another, he seems to have benefited to an exceptional degree from his brother’s resources, and repaying the huge sum of £1,000 must have put a great strain on his finances. This could explain why he and his only son leave little trace in the historical record thereafter. This makes it rather less surprising that Zouche’s executors never established the chantry foundation in his memory or erected any monument over his tomb. They could have salvaged something from the debacle by selling off the fabric of the chantry-chapel as building material and transferring ownership of the stained glass to the Minster – perhaps as part payment of what was owing to Thoresby. It is perhaps no coincidence that the glass was reused in the Lady Chapel clerestory and in the south choir aisle window s10, since these are very close to the spot where Zouche’s chantry-chapel had so briefly stood. As for his body, as far as is known, it remained in the unmarked grave where it had been laid. To conclude: the chantry-chapel of Archbishop Zouche offers a solution to the mystery of the reused glass. Conversely, the reconstruction of the glazing scheme provides a window into the lost building. Designed and constructed in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, at a time when very few new buildings were being commissioned, it belonged to a crucial period of change in English medieval architecture when new ideas were emerging which were to crystallise into the style known today as Perpendicular. It would therefore be very interesting to know more about it. Perhaps one day some fragments will turn up in the foundations of Thoresby’s Lady Chapel. A date of 1349–52 for the reused glass means that the style of glazing exemplified by the west windows of the nave commissioned in 1339 was still in fashion in York a decade later. The numerous remains of other windows of similar style in and around the city, and as far afield as Beverley and Carlisle,79 demonstrate the high volume of production of stained glass in this period. There are still no examples of this style which are definitely earlier than the west front glazing, and it may well be that it was that prestigious and highly visible commission for the Minster which brought the new style to York. It has sometimes been suggested that the Black Death killed off the glaziers who were producing windows of this type, but the new evidence indicates otherwise: production continued at a very high level of technical and artistic skill into the early 1350s. This dating also means that the York glass is exactly contemporary with the glazing commissioned by Edward III for St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster. This, the most prestigious glazing scheme of the time, commissioned by Zouche’s royal patron, has sadly disappeared. The handful of known fragments shows that it was in 102

York Minster at the time of the Black Death

a style similar to that of the York glass. Although its design and iconography are not recorded, the York glass gives an idea of the artistic quality and overall richness of effect which would no doubt have been evident at St Stephen’s Chapel.80 As for Archbishop Zouche, it turns out that his real memorial is not the chapel which wrongly bears his name, but the remains of what we might now call the Zouche glass. acknowledgements This article would not have been possible without the high-resolution digital photographs taken by Nick Teed of the York Glaziers Trust. The reconstructions of the original windows have been drawn by Janet Parkin of the York Glaziers’ Trust. I am indebted to Sarah Brown, Director of the York Glaziers Trust, for providing the images for research and publication, and to her and Tim Ayers for reading the paper in draft.

notes 1. D. E. O’Connor and J. Haselock, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 313–93 at 383–85 and S. Brown, Stained Glass at York Minster, 2nd edn (London 2017), 54–55 for the large standing saints. The smaller martyrdom panels in window s35 (S. Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’. York Minster, An Architectural History c. 1220–1500 (Swindon 2003), 290) have attracted little attention. 2. O’Connor and Haselock, ‘Stained and Painted Glass’ (as n. 1), 378–83; Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 54–57, 60–61. 3. T. French and D. O’Connor, York Minster: The West Windows of the Nave (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi) (Oxford 1987), which should be consulted for all subsequent references to the west window. 4. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters collection, MS 54. 1. 2. See L. F. Sandler, ‘A Follower of Jean Pucelle in England’, Art Bulletin, 52 (1970), 363–72; C. Norton, ‘Klosterneuburg and York: Artistic Cross-Currents at an English Cathedral, c. 1330’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 46–47 (1993–94), 519–32, 821–24; R. Marks, Stained Glass in England during the Middle Ages (London 1993), 158–59. 5. J. A. Knowles, ‘Notes on Some Windows in the Choir and Lady Chapel of York Minster’, Yorks. Archaeol. J., 39 (1956–58), 91–118, citing earlier literature. 6. S. Brown, Apocalypse – The Great East Window of York Minster (London 2014); Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1, 65–73); S. Brown, The Great East Window of York Minster  – An English Masterpiece (London 2018). 7. French and O’Connor, West Windows (as n. 3); S. Brown, Stained Glass at York Minster, 1st edn (London 1999), 48–54; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1), 49–56. 8. T. W. French, ‘Observations on Some Medieval Glass in York Minster’, Antiq. J., 51 (1971), 86–93 citing the opinions on dating of previous authors; O’Connor and Haselock, ‘Stained and Painted Glass’ (as n. 1), 378–85; Norton, ‘Klosterneuburg and York’ (as n. 4), 519–24; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 7), 52–55, 58–59; Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 165–66; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1), 54–57, 60–61. Unless otherwise stated all of the evidence pertaining to the glass in question can be found in these works, which for simplicity’s sake will not be cited systematically in what follows. 9. T. French, ‘The Glazing of the Lady Chapel Clerestorey’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 66 (1995), 40–51. 10. J. Torre, ‘The Antiquities of York Minster’, York Minster Archives, L 1/7, 93–94; E. Milner-White, ‘The Return of the Windows’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 25 (1953), 25–37 at 25–26. Knowles, ‘Notes’ (as n. 5) was published soon after Milner-White moved the glass to n5, but he referred

103

christopher norton to it as if it was still in s10. The current contents of all the Minster windows are usefully listed in Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 280–93. 11. The vestries are discussed by Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 170–76; see also C. Norton, ‘Richard Scrope and York Minster’, in Richard Scrope – Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Donnington 2007), 138–213 at 138–42. 12. The texts are printed in Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 282. The text from Zechariah 9.9 (Ecce rex tuus venit mansuetus) is given in the form cited in Matthew 21:5, referring to the Entry into Jerusalem. The scene depicting the Entry is, however, in another light. 13. Knowles, ‘Notes’ (as n. 5); C. Davidson and D. E. O’Connor, York Art: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art Including Items Relevant to Early Drama (Kalamazoo 1978), 67, who illustrate four of the narrative scenes. 14. An incomplete opus anglicanum panel in the British Museum of c. 1320–30 (C. Browne, G. Davies and M. A. Michael eds, English Medieval Embroidery  – Opus Anglicanum (New Haven and London 2016), 64, 184–85) has a similar scene that has been identified as the calling of the apostles. It shows Christ seated on the right addressing a group of eight apostles and (in what has been described as an extremely unusual sequence) is immediately followed by the Arrest of Christ and the Flagellation. A similar scene, but with a central seated Christ, appeared on the magnificent cope formerly at St Peter’s in Rome (Browne et al., English Medieval Embroidery, 202–03). It has been described as the Sermon on the Mount, but it appears alongside the Entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper, with the sequence continuing with the Arrest of Christ and Christ before Pilate. In both cases the position of the scene in a Passion sequence strongly suggests that it represents a similar moment to the panel in the York glass. 15. Torre, L 1/7 (as n. 10), 101–02; French, ‘Lady Chapel Clerestorey’ (as n. 9). The tracery lights had no figural glass when recorded by Torre and are now filled with modern plain glazing. 16. The difference in the widths of the window-openings and of the c. 1340 panels within them is almost impossible to appreciate when standing in the Minster, but it can be seen clearly in the measured elevation drawings in J. Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Metropolitical Church at York (London 1819), pl. xxiv (reproduced in Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), fig. 4.10) and in J. Browne, The History of the Metropolitan Church of St Peter, York, vol. 2 (London 1847), pls CXXX and CXXXI. 17. T. Ayers, The Medieval Stained Glass of Merton College Oxford, (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi) (Oxford 2013), I, 44–49, discusses the iconography of the apostles in this period. Much of the literature on the subject relates to the 15th century, by which time different attributes had come to be standard in some cases. For some continental parallels, see F. Baron, ‘Collèges apostoliques et couronnement de la Vierge dans la sculpture avignonnaise des XIVe et XVe siècles’, Revue du Louvre, 3 (1979), 169–86. 18. For all of the opus anglicanum work cited hereafter, G. Christie, English Medieval Embroidery (Oxford 1938) is still indispensable. For up-to-date scholarship and bibliography with excellent colour photographs, see Browne et al., English Medieval Embroidery (as n. 14) and M. A. Michael, ed., The Age of Opus Anglicanum: Studies in English Medieval Embroidery (London and Tournhout 2016). 19. Davidson and O’Connor, York Art (as n. 13), 124; P. Williamson, Medieval and Renaissance Stained Glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London 2003), 48. 20. D. O’Connor and H. Reddish Harris, ‘The East Window of Selby Abbey, Yorkshire’, in Yorkshire Monasticism – Art and Architecture from the 7th to 16th Centuries, ed. L. R. Hoey (BAA Transactions 16, 1995), 117–44, pl. xxviiD. 21. A useful comparison is provided by the set of twelve apostles in the tracery lights of window N10 in the choir clerestory, dating to c. 1410 (Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 285). These hold attributes, some of which are the same as in the c. 1340 glass, while others are typical of 15th-century iconography. As some of them carry scrolls with their names, there is no doubt about the majority of the identifications, including Philip with a large cross, Simon with an oar, and James the Less with a fuller’s club. The apostle holding a large halberd should be Matthias, while the lost twelfth figure was presumably Jude. 22. N. Morgan, ‘Some Iconographic Aspects of Opus Anglicanum’, in The Age of Opus Anglicanum (as n. 18), 90–115 at 102–04; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1), fig. 15. 23. Correctly identified by Davidson and O’Connor, York Art (as n. 13), 101. 24. The unpainted repair in brown glass to the right of Christ’s head presumably represents the twelfth apostle. Part of the head seems to have been incorporated into Christ’s head at the top left.

104

York Minster at the time of the Black Death 25. In about 1690 Torre, L 1/7 (as n. 10), 64–65 recorded a narrative scene where the apostle now is; T. Gent, The Antient and Modern History of the Famous City of York (York 1730), mentions the apostle for the first time. E. Milner-White, ‘Restoration of the East Window of the Minster, York’, Antiq. J., 30 (1950), 179–83 at 182; Knowles, ‘Notes’ (as n. 5), 105–06, 118. 26. Torre, L 1/7 (as n. 10), 81–82 saw a different panel here c. 1690. See also references in note 25. 27. Knowles, ‘Notes’ (as n. 5), 105, and see F. Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters (Oxford 1984), 290. 28. Torre, L 1/7 (as n. 10), 70v; E. Milner-White, ‘The Windows’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 24 (1952), 11–14; E. Milner-White, ‘The Resurrection of a Fourteenth-Century Window’, Burlington Magazine, 94 (1952), 108–12. I am indebted to Hilary Moxon for confirmation that Milner-White’s belief that the glass had been moved to the chapter-house from the west end of the nave in 1658 is without foundation. However, he did correctly identify the panels as belonging to a distinct scheme, even though he had yet to see the other panels in the series, which he only reinserted into the Lady Chapel windows n5, S2 and S3 in the following years. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 299, notes that several of the windows in the chapter-house were repaired in 1692–97. 29. See references in note 4. 30. There are photographs of these panels prior to their insertion in s35 by Milner-White in the York Minster Archives. 31. O’Connor and Haselock, ‘Stained and Painted Glass’ (as n. 1), 381; Davidson and O’Connor, York Art (as n. 13), 35; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1), 55. However, caution as to Milner-White’s interpretation was expressed by Peter Newton, by French, ‘Observations’ (as n. 8), 90, and Marks, Stained Glass in England (as n. 4), 71. 32. The piece of glass with the bottom of the bagpipes was found out of position by Milner-White and relocated by him. 33. Browne et al., English Medieval Embroidery (as n. 14), 207, 222; Michael, Age of Opus Anglicanum (as n. 18), 26. On Joachim iconography, see also K. E. Haney, The Winchester Psalter – an Iconographic Study (Leicester 1986), 82. 34. In the 15th-century glass at Great Malvern, the angel appearing to Joachim bears the inscription Reverte ad coniugem tuam et invenies eam habentem in utero from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (G. McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford 1936), 107 and fig. 43). 35. Torre, L 1/7 (as n. 10), 101. This light had disappeared by the time Gent saw the window in 1730. Milner-White, ‘Restoration of the East Window’ (as n. 25), 182, stated that this window was cannibalised to repair the east window, which contains many insertions of glass stylistically comparable to the c. 1340 glazing and the Great West Window. Although this is no more than a supposition, it has often been repeated. See also below, note 53, on a likely source of some of this glass. 36. RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, IV, Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse (London 1975), pls 4–6. 37. R. W. Heath-Whyte, An Illustrated Guide to the Medieval Wall Paintings in the Church of St Mary the Virgin at Chalgrove in the County of Oxfordshire (Chalgrove 2003), 80–83. 38. Heath-Whyte, Chalgrove (as n. 37). 39. French, ‘Lady Chapel Clerestorey’ (as n. 9); Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 7), 59–63; Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 166–67; Brown, Stained Glass (as n. 1), 62–65. 40. Torre c. 1690 saw what may have been two more narrative panels in window s10, the window which contained the six lights with the prophets now in n5. The tracery of the window contains three large hexagonal openings (Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 83) which would have been large enough to contain narrative scenes, with some trimming. The highest of the three, according to Torre, was glazed with new white glass, but the other two contained figural scenes. In one ‘stands an old man and a youth bowing to him. Also an angell hovering over them with an escrowle [scroll] in one hand and a wreath [?] in the other all habited argent’. In the other ‘stand 4 men in white habitts. One seems to be a Lady Abbess fretté [?] from her waste downwards and another her cross-bearer mytred [?] vert’. The white or argent vestments of the figures might suggest narrative panels from the c. 1340 cycle. Interpreting Torre’s descriptions often requires a certain amount of imagination. The second scene could have been the Carrying of the Cross, with the ‘cross-bearer’ Christ and the man who ‘seems to be a Lady Abbess’ one of the women

105

christopher norton of Jerusalem. The other could perhaps have been a scene from the Resurrection sequence, the scroll being possibly the thin Resurrection banner at the top of the staff held by Christ. 41. French, ‘Observations’ (as n. 8). 42. S. Harrison and C. Norton, ‘Reconstructing a Lost Cathedral: York Minster in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Ecclesiology Today, 40 (2008), 53–59, fig. 5; S. Harrison and C. Norton, The Architectural History of York Minster, c. 1070–1220 (forthcoming), Part 4. 43. C. Norton, ‘Richard II and York Minster’, in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. S. Rees Jones (York 1997), 56–87, pl. 2; Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 139–41; Norton, ‘Richard Scrope’ (as n. 11), fig. 2; S. Harrison and C. Norton, York Minster – An Illustrated Architectural History 627 – c. 1500 (York 2015), 22–23, 40–43. 44. See Harrison and Norton, ‘Reconstructing a Lost Cathedral’ (as n. 42), fig. 5, and the new plan of Roger’s choir in Harrison and Norton, York Minster (as n. 43), 20–22. The detailed evidence for the reconstruction of Roger’s choir will be published in Harrison and Norton, Architectural History (as n. 42). 45. C. Wilson, The Shrines of St William of York (York 1977); Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 92–93; and for the most recent research, the article by Stuart Harrison in the present volume. 46. J. H. Harvey, ‘Architectural History from 1291 to 1558’, in History of York Minster (as n. 1), 149–92 at 160; French, ‘Observations’ (as n. 8), 91 note 2, citing the register of Archbishop Zouche (Borthwick Institute, fol. 335v): ‘lego fabricae novi chori ecclesiae Cathedralis Ebor. xx  li sterlingorum, ita quod incipiant opus infra annum effectualiter, prout saepius dixi Domino Thomae de Loudham et Thomae de Pacenham’. For some of Sampson’s activities as residentiary canon in the 1340s, see F. Harrison, Life in a Medieval College – The Story of the Vicars-Choral of York Minster (London 1952), 179–92. 47. French, ‘Lady Chapel Clerestory’ (as n. 9). 48. O’Connor and Haselock, ‘Stained and Painted Glass’ (as n. 1), 378–85. 49. A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘The Chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels, Otherwise Known as St Sepulchre’s Chapel at York’, Yorks. Archaeol. J., 36 (1944–47), 63–77. 50. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 93. 51. T. French, ‘A Further Note on the Glazing of the Lady Chapel Clerestory’, Friends of York Minster Annual Report, 67 (1996), 73–75; B. Wilson and F. Mee, The Medieval Parish Churches of York: The Pictorial Evidence (York 1998), 110 however, cite a reference to the church as still in existence in 1376, its parish having been united to that of St John del Pyke in 1365. The supposed remains of the church which were excavated in 1968, a short distance to the east of the east façade of the Minster, probably belonged to a secular building. The church itself was arguably further from the Minster, by the entrance to the close (C. Norton, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at York and the Topography of the Anglian City’, JBAA, 151 (1998), 1–42 at 22–23 and notes 91 and 96). 52. D. A. Stocker, ‘Bedern Chapel’, and D. O’Connor, ‘The Bedern Stained Glass’, in The Vicars Choral of York Minster: The College at Bedern, ed. J. D. Richards (The Archaeology of York, 10/5) (York 2001), 541–58, 559–75. 53. It seems likely that some of this glass ended up in the Great East Window of the Minster. It was removed in 1816–19 and was intended by Dean Markham for use in the Minster. The east window was restored a few years later and contains much reused glass dating to c. 1340. 54. Zouche’s career is outlined in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004), LX, 1012–14. 55. For these and other commissions, see L. Monnas, ‘Embroideries for Edward III’, in Michael, Age of Opus Anglicanum (as n. 18), 36–73. 56. J. Raine, ed., Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees Society, 35 (Durham 1859), 126. 57. On links between opus anglicanum and other artistic media, see also M. A. Michael, ‘Creating Cultural Identity: opus anglicanum and Its Place in the History of English Medieval Art’, JBAA, 170 (2017), 30–60; K. Staniland, ‘Court Style, Painters and the Great Wardrobe’, in England in the Fourteenth Century, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium) (Woodbridge 1986), 236–46. 58. M. Ormrod, ‘York and the Crown Under the Three Edwards’, in Government of Medieval York (as n. 43), 14–33; W. M. Ormrod, ‘Competing Capitals? York and London in the Fourteenth Century’, in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, eds S. Rees-Jones, R. Marks and A. J. Minnis (York 2000), 75–98. In 1333/4 the royal Wardrobe was attacked while at York.

106

York Minster at the time of the Black Death 59. Zouche’s debts (or at least some of them) are recorded in the Close Rolls for 1353. On 27 April the executors of the will of Archbishop Melton (d. 1340) were pursuing an unpaid debt of 1,000 marks owed by Zouche as dean and by Geoffrey le Scrope, knight. On 28 June his brother Roger la Zouche (his executor) acknowledged that he owed Archbishop Thoresby £1,000. See Calendar of Close Rolls 1349–1354, 593, 602, and on Melton and Thoresby’s finances, Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 92–94, 138–44. 60. D. Rollason and M. Prestwich, eds, The Battle of Neville’s Cross 1346 (Stamford 1998). 61. Translation in Browne, History (as n. 16), I, 127; Latin text printed from Zouche’s register in J. Raine, ed., The Historians of the Church of York and Its Archbishops, (Rolls Series 71) (London 1879–94), III, 271–73. 62. The documentation is summarised in Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 170–71. The pertinent documents were first published in translation by Browne, History (as n. 16), I, 127–32. The Latin texts are printed in Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 56), 168–70 and Raine, Historians (as n. 61), III, 273–74. 63. By then Thomas de Pacenham had probably been replaced as master mason by William Hoton senior, who in turn was succeeded by his son, William Hoton junior, in 1351. See Browne, History (as n. 16), I, 129; Harvey, ‘Architectural History’ (as n. 46), 190 and J. Harvey, English Medieval Architects – A Biographical Dictionary down to 1550, 2nd edn (Gloucester 1984), 150, 225–26. 64. His place of burial is given in the Chronica Pontificum (Raine, Historians (as n. 61), II, 419). The location of the altar of St Edward the Confessor is discussed in Harrison and Norton, Architectural History (as n. 42), Part 5.II. See also Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 37–43, 170–71. 65. Rollason and Prestwich, Neville’s Cross (as n. 60), 135–36. 66. Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 56), 169 note. 67. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 170–76. 68. Harrison and Norton, York Minster (as n. 43), 20–23, 30–31. For full discussion, see Harrison and Norton, Architectural History (as n. 42), Part 4. 69. Harrison and Norton, Architectural History (as n. 42), Part 4. 70. The extent of the 1966–73 excavations is shown on D. Phillips, The Cathedral of Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux – Excavations at York Minster, II (RCHME) (London 1985), 32, fig. 7. The underpinning of the eastern bay of the south Lady Chapel aisle wall was carried out with minimal archaeological recording. The easternmost bay of the south aisle contains a large post-medieval burial vault. 71. The identification of the crypt altars is discussed in Harrison and Norton, Architectural History (as n. 42), Part 5.II. 72. Printed in Raine, Historians (as n. 61), III, 254–60. 73. R. Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud 2004), 64–85. 74. See above, note 56, and Raine, Historians (as n. 61), III, 261–65, for additional instructions concerning the liturgical celebration of the Virgin Mary, all inspired by Zouche’s own ‘zealous devotion’ to the glorious Virgin. 75. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 138–44. 76. I am indebted to Tim Ayers for this suggestion. 77. Raine, Historians (as n. 61), II, 419. 78. See reference in note 59. 79. French and O’Connor, West Windows (as n. 3), 18–23; D. O’Connor, ‘The Medieval Stained Glass of Beverley Minster’, in Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. C. Wilson (BAA Transactions 9), 62–90; D. O’Connor, ‘ “The Dim Shadowing of the Things Which Should Be”: The Fourteenth-Century Doom in the East Window of Carlisle Cathedral’, in Carlisle and Cumbria – Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, eds M. McCarthy and D. Weston (BAA Transactions 27), 146–74; Marks, Stained Glass in England (as n. 4), 158–59. 80. French and O’Connor, West Windows (as n. 3), 22 and pl. 31c – d; Marks, Stained Glass in England (as n. 4), 161. St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, is the subject of a major research project under the direction of Professor Tim Ayers. Some fragments in a very similar style have recently been found at Westminster Abbey (R. Marks, ‘The Medieval Glazing of Westminster Abbey: New Discoveries’, The Burlington Magazine, 161 (2019), 9–17, figs 18–19.

107

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster ALEXANDER HOLTON

The Great East Window of York Minster has been rightly proclaimed as an ‘English Masterpiece’ for the outstanding quality, artistry and ingenuity of its stained glass, executed with great skill between 1405 and 1408 by a workshop led by John Thornton of Coventry. This paper is the result of close archaeological appraisal of the masonry and sculpture of the east front of the Minster, of which the window forms the principal part, carried out between 2006 and 2016 during a major campaign of stonework conservation and repair. It aims to place the creation of the window and its glazing within a much firmer constructional context than has hitherto been possible, shedding important new light on the building sequence of the façade and the structural challenges that the medieval builders had to overcome. The findings presented here have far-reaching implications for the understanding of the planning of the window and its relationship to the complex iconography of the stained glass. introduction and research context York Minster’s Great East Window forms the didactic and artistic climax of the cathedral’s late-medieval eastern arm. The eastern arm, containing the choir, presbytery and Lady Chapel, was rebuilt in two main stages between 1361 and c. 1420 to replace the earlier 12th-century arrangements, which, in the eyes of the Chapter, had become unfit for purpose.1 The startling richness and complexity of the medieval glazing of the window has rightly attracted comprehensive attention from scholars, most recently brought to its latest iterations during a major conservation programme between 2005 and 2018.2 Its ingenious narrative, telling the beginning and the end of the world within the main lights below a representation of God in Heaven in the tracery, is now comparatively well understood, while the celebration of its creative designer, John Thornton of Coventry, is also firmly cemented in the literature. So too are the documented dates of its creation and completion by Thornton within the chronology of the eastern arm – between 1405 and 1408 – which can be derived with certainty from the specific terms of the glazing contract and the fact that the completion date itself is recorded in the glass at the apex of the window.3 However, while the message of the east window glazing, the timing and terms of its procurement and Thornton’s contribution are now relatively clear, the circumstances leading into the glazing contract – the conception of the iconography of the window, the design and creation of its huge masonry frame and the numerous individuals responsible – are much less certain. This is not surprising, given the protracted (and at times politically volatile) period between the proper commencement of the rebuilding of the eastern arm under Archbishop John de Thoresby in 1361 and the eventual 108

© 2022 The British Archaeological Association

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

fabrication and installation of the glazing from 1405.4 Envisioning a new east end to mirror the Minster’s newly completed nave, Thoresby had been responsible for the initial four-bay eastward extension of the existing 12th-century choir to form a new presbytery and Lady Chapel, hastily carried out in the 1360s and said to have been completed by his death in 1373.5 The overall architectural design and construction was led for the most part by the master mason William Hoton the Younger, who was succeeded (apparently upon Hoton’s death) by Robert Patrington in January 1369.6 Responding to the arrangement of the west end of the nave, Thoresby’s eastern termination, or east front, made provision for a gigantic east window above the Lady Chapel altar, which would eventually act as a spectacular reredos to the choir screen and rood.7 The screen and rood were built within the second main phase of construction of the eastern arm – the new four-bay western choir infill (between Thoresby’s work and the central tower) that replaced and absorbed the earlier 12th-century provisions. The building of the western choir did not follow on seamlessly at the point of Thoresby’s death but was instead delayed until c. 1394 and is not thought to have been completed until c. 1420.8 The glazing of the east window in 1405 thus marks a significant out-of-sequence return to the first phase of rebuilding, when the focus of construction work ought to have been centred on the new bays of the western choir. This heralds the enduring question as to whether Thornton was either carrying out a retrofit exercise within a masonry frame planned and completed many years previously (as implied by the documented narrative) or otherwise that the glazier was in fact responding to a much more recent and expansive brief from the Chapter that was intimately co-ordinated with the stonework programme. These questions matter as they have the potential to manoeuvre the wider contextual position of the window and the creative and patronal framework in which it was brought into being. This paper attempts a response to these questions as informed by a detailed reappraisal of the archaeology of the east front and Great East Window carried out by the author between 2006 and 2016 during the major stonework repair programme, which also coincided with the phased conservation of the glazing.9 Important new light will be shed on the sequence of the development of the façade and its evolutionary design, and while no attempt is made here to provide solutions to the ongoing conundrums of patronage, this analysis will nonetheless add new structure to the debate by more firmly defining the timeframe and constructional context within which the development and execution of the Great East Window took place. It will argue that the masonry of the window, with its enigmatic tracery head and ornate sculptural surround, was designed and created after 1385, with close acknowledgement to the intended subject matter of the glazing, and most probably sometime from the mid1390s onwards. By reference to the archaeological sequence of the four-bay eastern termination in its entirety, it will also show that the installation of the masonry and sculptural orders was part of a much more extensive adaptation and stabilisation of a structure that had indeed reached a substantial form of completion under Archbishop Thoresby some years earlier. the architecture of the east front and great east window The east front is a sheer wall of stone and glass, with the Great East Window as its vast and intricate centrepiece (Fig. 1). The elevation was built incrementally in clear horizontal layers with a powerful acknowledgement of verticality and the burgeoning 109

alexander holton

Fig. 1.  York Minster, the east front Photo: Alexander Holton

110

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Perpendicular style. The main buttresses either side of the window are virtually continuous, save for a distinctive break in form in their upper levels, where the final stages are carried upon skeletal supports rather than solid masonry. The corner turrets and central buttresses are all finished with tall spirelets, encircled at broach-level by carved and sculpted coronas. The façade incorporates much reused 12th-century stone from the old choir and from what was the redundant Archbishop’s Palace at Sherburn-in-Elmet.10 The massing of the east front is lightened incrementally with faceted niches, blank arcading above the aisle windows, and moulded recessed panels within the spandrels above the east window itself. Only two of the niches are considered to have certainly contained sculpture – until the 19th century, the donor figures of Vavasour and Percy were set north and south in the outermost niches of the first tier.11 At the same level, there is a frieze of seventeen carved busts beneath the Great East Window. These imposing carvings combine biblical characters flanked by a crowned figure to the south and a mitred figure to the north.12 These are most likely a depiction of the heads of Church and State aligned with Christ and the Apostles accompanied by Prophets – a message that would not be unexpected on a secular cathedral such as York.13 The frieze is structurally bonded at each end into the adjacent buttressing and therefore assumed to have been installed during the main build of the 1360s. Above, there are two obvious construction breaks – at the outer turrets and aisle parapets, where the top stages were finally added in the 15th century with the aisle vaults, and at the springing point of the Great East Window itself. Here, the casement expands somewhat awkwardly on the window jambs to include fifty-eight delicately carved voussoirs of alternating kings, canopies, lion masks and foliage that conclude with Christ and the Virgin at the apex (Fig. 2). These voussoirs depict Christ’s Royal Ancestors, the Kings of Judah, beneath the Coronation of the Virgin.14 Above the coronation scene is an assumed Green Man15 and above that a seated figure believed to be St Peter residing as patron of the church in Heaven, and now fully renewed as such.16 Turning westwards into the aisles and clerestories of Thoresby’s east end, the initially plain treatment at aisle level transforms into an external screen and walkway arrangement above, providing an attractive flush wall within the interior arcades. The screening of the first bay of the clerestory is straightforward and solid, with the bays running west fully cusped and pierced (Fig. 3). Inside, the position of the clerestory window mullions and mouldings are slightly offset from the triforia arrangements below.17 Previous interpretations have tentatively suggested that the break at the east window springing point, together with the anomalous clerestory design, marks the transition in master mason from Hoton the Younger to Robert Patrington in 1369.18 Such is the difficulty of qualifying the building sequence that Sarah Brown has cautiously leaned towards the Great East Window tracery falling into the same period, while John Harvey19 and David O’Connor20 instinctively favoured a date closer to the start of the 15th century. Inside, the façade is indented with niches and again dominated by the Great East Window (Fig. 4). The outward masonry of the window is stiffened by an internal screen with transom-walkway just below tracery level, accessed from a narrow wall passage from the central buttress turret on the south side. Within the soffit or inner order of the arch runs a series of eight crowned busts below foreshortened canopies. Fourteen angels, also under canopies, with their hands raised in prayer and adoration are set immediately within the surrounding outer order (Fig. 5).21 111

alexander holton

Fig. 2.  York Minster, the Great East Window, external view looking south towards the building-break at springing point Photo: Alexander Holton

112

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 3.  York Minster, eastern arm, south elevation showing design differences between terminal and subsequent clerestory bays. The same arrangement is reflected on the north side Photo: Alexander Holton

Fig. 4.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal view showing the sculpted orders to the main arch, inner screen and transom-walkway Photo: Alexander Holton

113

alexander holton

Fig. 5.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal view at high level showing the sculpted orders to the main arch, north side Photo: Alexander Holton

114

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

the post-medieval repair history Like nearly every part of the Minster, the east front and Great East Window have been subjected to successive campaigns of repair and retreatment on varying scales throughout the post-medieval period. It is not within the bounds of this paper to revisit these episodes in detail. Nonetheless, some rehearsal is required because interventions since construction must first be filtered away to leave the primary medieval archaeology as the position from which subsequent analysis and interpretation can be proposed with greater confidence.22 Repairs down to c. 1800 Before the 19th century, repairs and interventions on the east front were comparatively light and tended to be focused on maintaining only the most vulnerable elements at high level, such as pinnacles and parapets, typically co-ordinated with major work to the roofs.23 A more exceptional event was the reconstruction and renewal of the façade’s high south-east pinnacle, which was brought down by a lightning strike in 1745.24 Such was the overall modesty of these repairs that the necessity for major work was identified by the architect and lord mayor of York, John Carr, during the first known comprehensive condition survey of the Minster carried out from 1770, and presented to Chapter in 1773.25 Carr found the east front and east window affected by stone deterioration (both inside and out) and prescribed action in the form of repointing, cramping, plaster filling of decay and stone renewals, all of which were subsequently carried out.26 The nineteenth century The Carr-era repair works to the east front and east window in particular were sufficient to extend the life expectancy of the stonework for another generation until they were tackled more comprehensively by the master mason William Shout between 1824 and 1827.27 During this phase of work, extensive refacing of the south side of the east front was carried out (especially to the niches and carved ornament), together with high-level work to the pinnacles and parapets. Stone was also cleaned and oiled.28 Perhaps most significantly, Shout carried out substantial work to the Great East Window, which included the renewal of the external mullions, the first tier of tracery and the interior transom-walkway, while keeping the remainder of the medieval work above in situ. A number of the exterior voussoirs were renewed at the same time.29 Shout also undertook to remove the floriated ornaments on the horizontal sections of the tracery during the striking of the scaffold (presumably as an expedient to unify the new work with the old), for which he was openly berated by the York antiquary John Browne.30 Following an appeal to the Dean and Chapter by Browne, a number of the ornaments were reinstated, but only as far as the scaffold still remained.31 Shout employed buff-yellow magnesian limestone from the Tadcaster region for all of his stone renewals.32 The restoration of the façade would have doubtless continued into its northern half following completion of the east window works had it not been for the catastrophic destruction of the roof and interior of the eastern arm at the hands of Jonathan Martin, who set the choir ablaze on 1 February 1829.33 Thereafter followed a major 115

alexander holton

campaign of repair and reinstatement into the 1830s, under the direction of the architect Robert Smirke.34 While much irreversible damage was done by the fire, Smirke was able to report that the east window itself had ‘suffered very little injury’.35 Stone from the Drake and Archbell quarries continued to be used, together with quantities from Thevesdale (or Vavasour’s, near Tadcaster) and also the whiter Huddleston, which was used solely for interior work.36 A section of substantial restoration on the east front was also carried out in Roche Abbey stone in 1836. This comprised the complete dismantling and substantial (if not total) renewal of the south-east corner stair turret and spirelet, above the level of the aisle roof.37 The post-fire restoration was completed in 1838, and attention returned (under the direction of Robert Smirke’s son, Sydney) to the programme of regular repair on the east front. This covered the comprehensive refacing of the buttress north of the east window, sections of the aisle termination, parapet and pinnacle works, and the dismantling and renewal of the north-east corner stair turret and spirelet (in a manner matching the previous works on the corresponding turret to the south). This was all carried out from 1847 and completed in the 1850s.38 Following a report on the fabric by Sydney Smirke in 1842 observing the poor performance of the Tadcaster stones, only material from Huddleston was used for the works.39 The twentieth century External fabric of all periods did not fare well in York’s increasingly potent industrial environment, and by the 1890s another round of stonework repair was underway on the east front. In an attempt to avert the inherent vulnerabilities of the Minster’s magnesian limestone, alien geologies from Lincolnshire – Ketton and Clipsham – were introduced by the architects, and the stone was routinely cleaned and oiled as a protective measure.40 Parapet and refacing repairs were carried out to the east front with these stones in a protracted, piecemeal programme from 1897 until the 1950s.41 This included the extensive restoration of seven of the seventeen carved busts beneath the east window in Ketton stone. Thereafter followed the now-famous York Minster restoration campaign, under the direction of Sir Bernard Feilden from 1967 until the end of his tenure in the 1970s.42 Serious concern over the structural stability of the Minster led to major engineering works, including the underpinning of the central tower and east front, which was consciously recorded as exhibiting an outward eastward lean for the first time. As part of the remedial operations, the Great East Window tracery was permanently restrained in situ with stainless-steel cables, and the interior given a coat of pale limewash or slurry. The façade was also extensively water-cleaned in 1971, and localised stonework repairs were subsequently carried out. Magnesian limestone (Huddleston, and then Cadeby) was gradually phased back into use for renewals by Feilden, which is locally evident on the east front. Prior to the most recent campaign, repairs and reinstatements above the south aisle were also carried out in Cadeby stone in the 1990s.43 the archaeological sequence re-examined A crucial starting point in unravelling the medieval build-sequence of the east front and Great East Window during the recent repair campaign was the increasing awareness of the deeply inherent structural deficiencies within not only the façade but 116

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

also Thoresby’s east end in general. The 1960s underpinning work by Feilden had revealed the foundations to be hurried and insubstantial,44 and close examination of the stone-by-stone photogrammetry of the east front, aisle and clerestory elevations in 2005 showed that the builders had been hampered by associated problems in the superstructure throughout. These included the fact that the east front had leaned progressively eastwards out of plumb both during and after construction. The photogrammetric survey enabled the accurate measurement of the angles of tilt of both the eastern faces of the masonry along with the horizontal bed joints of all the individual stones of the elevation and flanking aisles. Overall, it was found that the façade had accrued an eastward inclination of 700 mm on the south side and 500 mm on the north.45 Appraisals of the fabric by the surveyor during the early stages of the 2005 campaign concluded that the east front had begun to lean early on and that the masons had attempted a series of intermediate corrections up to the springing level of the Great East Window. By this point, the façade was leaning by approximately 1o. A check in construction was thought to have taken place before the remaining upper levels of the façade were built to an improved vertical plane. Thereafter, over the subsequent 600 years, the wall continued to move eastwards. As a result, the masonry below springing point gained a further tilt of 2o, and the levels above 1o. Importantly, these patterns of tilt could be used to explain better the main building phasing and subsequent repairs, whereby those areas that reflected adjusted or corrected bedding planes towards horizontal and plumb were key indicators of remedial change (Fig. 6). Geological and tooling analysis, together with opening up of the struc�ture during repair and the separating out of the post-medieval interventions, indicated that this had all occurred within the medieval period.46 Tilt analysis and examination of coursing patterns confirmed that the building of the east front had been staggered ahead of the aisles and clerestories and then connected at key stages, followed by a significant campaign of reactive unpicking, modification and reinstatement along the main buttress turret returns towards the clerestories, and also the central turret tops.47 It is within this framework of structural issues and medieval reparations that the context of the Great East Window can be further developed. Beginning the dissection of the evidence and sequencing of the east window and working outwards, tooling, geologies and weathering patterns were able to ratify the extent of Shout’s 1820s interventions, which comprised an array of half- and full-depth renewals at tracery level, abundant mortar or ‘plaster’ repairs to medieval stones and the complete replacement of the outer mullions and bridging stones of the internal transom-walkway below. Importantly, having masterfully retained the medieval tracery and internal screenwork in situ while carrying out the work, Shout had been compelled to respect and repeat the existing coursing patterns and junctions of the window units with the jambs, thereby preserving the integrity of the medieval relationships between the two. Originally, the outer mullions and internal screenwork had been cut abruptly into the main jambs of the window (Fig. 7), while the base of the internal screen also truncated and replaced the terminations of the canopies of the Lady Chapel reredos at ground level. Similarly, the internal voussoir carvings at the apex appear to have been trimmed upon installation to fit them into a pre-existing aperture (Fig. 8). These factors, coupled with differences in the moulding systems between the window units, the jambs and the external break at springing level, suggest that the window frame, casement and external and internal sculptural orders were conceived separately to the main structure as a clear departure from what was 117

alexander holton

Fig. 6.  York Minster, the east front, photogrammetric survey of the south elevation of the central south buttress flanking the Great East Window. The red dashed line indicates vertical plumb, the shaded areas show zones of masonry exhibiting tilt-correction Image: Alexander Holton

118

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 7.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal view looking north showing the abrupt junction between the internal screenwork at transom level (left) and the main jambs Photo: Alexander Holton

originally envisaged in 1361. This hypothesis was further confirmed by the recording of surviving medieval banker marks across the interior faces of the window masonry. This disclosed patterns of repetition across the main arch orders, tracery and internal screenwork, down to the junction with the reredos (Fig. 9).48 Stone-by-stone recording in the south passage providing access down to the transom-walkway of the window from the buttress turret stair offered additional confirmation that the final design of the east window was a deviation from the 1360s concept and, perhaps more importantly, that it had been carefully considered relative to the overall subject matter of the 1405 glazing.49 As shown in Fig. 10, the detailed recording revealed that the passage steps had originally passed down to the window to then terminate at a level higher than the present transom-walkway. The steps had then been subsequently modified and extended downwards to the present walkway level. The purpose of setting the transom lower down was to ensure the clear visual division of the main iconographical themes of the glass. These themes are summarised 119

alexander holton

Fig. 8.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal view at apex level showing the sculpted orders to the main arch. Note the paring-in of the canopy stones to enable fit Photo: Alexander Holton

Fig. 9.  York Minster, the Great East Window, summary record of each type of mason’s mark across the principal medieval elements of the window and the orientations in which they may be found Image: Alexander Holton

120

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 10.  York Minster, stone-by-stone analytical record of the south stairway to the transom-walkway of the Great East Window Image: Alexander Holton and Gareth Dean

in Fig. 11, which shows that if the transom-walkway had been installed at the height of the openings as originally conceived (reflected by the unmodified level of the stair access on the north side, Fig. 12), the Old Testament scenes would have been forced into the Apocalypse Cycle below, undesirably blending these distinctive strands within the powerful and very deliberate narrative of the glazing scheme.50 Further evidence for a co-ordinated and complementary approach between the stone and glass is apparent in the message of the inner and outer orders of carvings around the east window arch – the fourteen angels and eight kings surround God and Heaven in the tracery glazing, extending a collective representation of Heaven outwards and beyond the glass in three dimensions.51 Following cleaning and removal of failing coatings, very little evidence of any damage to the internal masonry as a result of the 1829 fire was noted, bearing out the contemporary reports of the time.52 All the carvings within the arch were confirmed as primary work, and the medieval masonry of the window was also found to be a hybrid of geologies. While the tracery and carved orders were identified as buff-yellow Tadcaster (‘Thevesdale’) stones, the internal screenwork incorporated paler, more crystalline material that is consistent with the alternative source of Huddleston. This is in fact significant, as the first lease agreement between the Minster and the Langton family to use stone from Huddleston was not formed until 1385, thereby providing an apparent 121

alexander holton

Fig. 11.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal photogrammetric drawing summarising the principal iconographic themes of the glazing. The horizontal dashed line indicates the previously anticipated level of the transom had the design of the window and the south stairway to the present transom-walkway not been adapted Image: Alexander Holton

122

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 12.  York Minster, the Great East Window, internal view at transom-walkway level looking north, showing the unaltered threshold height of the stairway down from the wall passage Photo: Alexander Holton

terminus post quem for the creation of the masonry of the Great East Window.53 This use of Huddleston stone can be readily distinguished from the recycled 12th-century material used in the east end (and also the 19th-century restoration work) by its later medieval claw-tooling, fresher appearance and increased bed-height.54 The extent of post-1385 intervention was not confined to the installation of the Great East Window masonry alone. The photogrammetric tilt analysis combined with investigations on site revealed substantial reworking across the façade at high level after, it seems, the primary 1360s build had been completed. Concealed behind the recessed spandrel masonry directly above the Great East Window, the remains of an earlier niche arrangement were found that matched the detail and profile of the niches below the major building break at springing point (Fig. 13). The outer cladding to the spandrels was structurally associated with the casement and apex-niche of the east window and further defined by its clear departure from the main coursing patterns 123

alexander holton

Fig. 13.  York Minster, east front, external detail at spandrel level (north side) showing exposed and mutilated faceted stone originally installed to follow the masonry profile below and subsequently concealed by further medieval cladding stones Photo: Alexander Holton

of the façade and strong toothing-joints each side of the arch. This indicated that the Great East Window had coincided with a major refacing exercise, taking in the spandrels above the arch, which continued into the upper levels of the main buttresses. Here, it was found during dismantling of the south spirelet and buttress facings that the corona sections were in fact clad around mutilated mouldings to the broach stones 124

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 14.  York Minster, the east front, temporarily removed medieval broach-stone from the south central spirelet, showing partly mutilated moulding detail subsequently concealed by the installation of the medieval corona stage to the buttress summit. The upper, more weathered section represents the area that had remained clear above the corona Photo: Alexander Holton

that would have originally been left exposed (Fig. 14). This corresponded to zones of tilt correction and inconsistent bonding in both the larger (Huddleston) ashlars of the turret facings down to aisle level as well as the upper buttress projection itself and its intermediate skeletal support. Further relevant late-medieval intervention was recorded behind the blank screenwork masonry of the first bay of the north clerestory during the recent temporary dismantling and repairs. A mutilated cusped trabeation, forming the structural bridge between the inner clerestory wall and outer plain screen, was revealed to show that this bay had originally been pierced to match its counterparts running west (Fig. 15). Medieval Huddleston, tilt-correction and straight-jointing was observed in the plain screen section, together with infilling of a major movement crack with medieval tooled stones to the clerestory window itself. Taken together as an interrelated group, these interventions show that most of the east front and connecting clerestory had been practically finished to full height in the first instance, and probably by 1373. This gives greater weight to the clues in the fabric rolls and the view of the contemporary chronicler, Thomas Stubbs, that the Lady Chapel had been completed by the time of Thoresby’s death. A second and major 125

alexander holton

Fig. 15.  York Minster, the easternmost bay of the north clerestory during repair in 2006. The external plain screen has been temporarily dismantled to reveal the previously concealed and mutilated cusped trabeation (centre) Photo: Alexander Holton

phase of remedial work then followed that can be tied to the installation of the Great East Window masonry, inside and out (Fig. 16). This covered the window units and its internal and external voussoirs and main apex niche, the spandrel cladding, the upper stages of the central buttresses and the simplification and stiffening of the easternmost bay of the clerestory screen. From a purely practical perspective, the intention of the builders must have been to increase the masonry loading at high level to counteract the progressive eastward lean and separation of the façade from the main body of the Lady Chapel. Indeed, it is tempting to think that the installation of the window had been purposefully delayed, at least in part due to serious concerns over stability. It is impossible to say with certainty whether an earlier east window that had subsequently failed had existed before the present arrangement, though the lack of any evidence in the jambs for an earlier scheme seems to suggest this is unlikely.55 126

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

Fig. 16.  York Minster, the east front, photogrammetric survey overlaid with proposed key phases of development Image: Alexander Holton

The incorporation of medieval Huddleston stone into the corrected masonry places this secondary phase after 1385. This implies that Patrington’s contribution may have been limited to the more lightweight and decorative clerestory design (which does deviate from the treatment of the triforium inside), as opposed to the entire upper level above the springing-point and the east window. Here, the plain treatment of the external screen in the easternmost bay was not a stylistic break between designers but rather a pragmatic response to a structural problem of some considerable concern. A third and final phase then followed by c. 1420 when the aisle terminations and corner turrets, together with the internal stone and brick vaults, were eventually completed.56 Like the case of the east window, it is conceivable that these works were also withheld for as long as possible to avoid premature loading of these equally vulnerable areas of the façade. concluding thoughts From a purely archaeological and architectural perspective it is difficult to be any more exact with the dating of the east window masonry and sculpture, other than 127

alexander holton

placing it after 1385. However, from a tentative and more art-historical viewpoint, the latter does share certain similarities with painted details within the east window glazing itself that may be enough to infer it was following a design language current in the 1390s and early 1400s (as opposed to the 1380s). Shared traits include the crown, niche and lion-mask details common between the sculpted voussoirs and the border art of the Apocalypse panels, together with the varied treatment of hair and beard styles on figurative elements to incorporate straightforward, shallow waves as well as tighter curls.57 If these comparisons are accepted as valid, it would suggest that the detailed design and execution of the stonework might conveniently fall sometime during the documented period of renewed building activity at the Minster from 1394 to (at the very latest) 1408, when the east window glazing was completed by Thornton’s team.58 An agreed masonry design, at least, may have even been in place by 1399, when an inventory within the first fragmentary fabric roll after 1371 records that significant quantities of materials (including glass for the ‘great windows of the choir’) were being stockpiled.59 Having a design in place at this point would surely have enabled a more precise quantity of glass to be calculated and ordered at a firmer price. Further, it is perhaps no coincidence that expenditure at the stone quarries was also exceptional at this time. If these closing remarks are accepted, it becomes reasonable to place fresh emphasis upon Hugh de Hedon as the likely master mason of York Minster’s Great East Window. Yet irrespective of the specific identity of the master mason, what is clear is that the masonry team as a whole was a group of craftspeople of immense skill who are deserving of a share in the genius and celebration of one of Europe’s most treasured achievements in medieval architecture.60 This is not only in terms of the design and execution of the masonry to serve the complex iconographical requirements of the east window but also for the successful arrest of the inherent structural problems of the east front via a series of discreet yet highly important interventions that were subsequent to the main build carried out under Archbishop Thoresby. Until the recent phase of analysis these critical alterations had gone completely undetected, yet one might now argue that without them the Great East Window of York Minster as we know it may have never come into being at all. acknowledgements This paper stems from a programme of doctoral research generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council carried out between 2006 and 2010 under the invaluable supervision of Dr Kate Giles at the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Many individuals and organisations provided assistance, encouragement and advice along the way, to whom I will always be very grateful. In particular, I would like to thank Sarah Brown, Prof. Christopher Norton, Dr Jane Grenville, Dr Peter Gouldsborough and Dr Gareth Dean at the University of York for their expert input and guidance ahead of, and also during, the preparation of this paper. My sincere gratitude also extends to Lee Godfrey, John David, Andrew Arrol, Stuart Harrison, Prof. Christopher Wilson, Geoffrey Randerson and Dr Jenny Alexander for their contributions during the course of my studies, and after. Special thanks are owed to the staff of York Minster Works Department generally for teaching me so much and to the Dean and Chapter of York for accommodating my research and professional involvement throughout the 2005–16 conservation programme. Finally, 128

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster

I thank my family for all their kindness and support, and it is to them that this paper is dedicated.

notes 1. S. Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’. An Architectural History of York Minster c. 1220–1500 (Swindon 2003), 137–67, provides a comprehensive literature review and exploratory narrative on the history, patronage and architectural development of the Lady Chapel and western choir. 2. See S. Brown, The Great East Window of York Minster: An English Masterpiece (London 2018), and S. Brown, Apocalypse: The Great East Window of York Minster (London 2014). 3. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS L1/7, 7. James Torre (1649–99) transcribed a translation of the medieval Latin contract from a Chapter Act Book that was subsequently lost. See also Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 218. 4. See C. Norton, ‘Richard Scrope and York Minster’, in Richard Scrope: Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Donnington 2007), 138–213. 5. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 138–41 pieces together the chronology of the building of the Lady Chapel from the known documentary sources. See also Brown, The Great East Window (as n. 2), 7–10, and T. W. French, ‘The Dating of the Lady Chapel in York Minster’, Antiq. J., 52 (1972), 309–19. 6. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 161. See also J. H. Harvey, English Mediaeval Architects: A Biographical Dictionary Down to 1550, 2nd edn (Gloucester 1987), 229. 7. C. Norton, ‘Sacred Space and Sacred History: The Glazing of the Eastern Arm of York Minster’, in Glasmalerei im Kontext  – Bildprogramme und Raum Funcktionen, Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg 2005), 167–81. 8. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 169. 9. See A. B. Holton, ‘The Archaeology and Conservation of the East Front of York Minster’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2010), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The masonry repair project continued beyond the funding and completion period of the thesis. New discoveries continued to be made as areas of the building were exposed and repaired, enabling conclusions presented in the thesis to be further refined and brought together into the present publication. 10. Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 157. This efficient reuse of material is most obvious within the plainer lower stages of the elevations (inside and out) as smaller ashlar units finished with diagonal plain-axe tooling that is typical of 12th-century work. During the course of the recent repairs a number of these units were found by members of the York Minster Works Department to be inverted carved sections, including examples of chevron ornament. Examination of exposed high-level buttress cores by the author also revealed that 12th-century material had seen continued use well into in the later stages of the medieval build programme. 11. A description of the statues while still in situ is given by J. Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Metropolitical Church of York (London 1819), 45. The iron fixings associated with the Percy statue and Arms were recorded during the 2005–16 repairs. The carved remains of a helm and parts of a lion were identified at the head of the niche, consistent with the Percy heraldry. A new lion helm was subsequently installed that was designed and carved by Mr M. Coward. 12. A recreated cast of the mitred figure was attached to the weathered medieval background during the 2005–16 repairs. 13. The seventeen busts were extensively restored in 1914–15, although a photographic record was made prior to the work being carried out (which remains framed at York Minster Stoneyard). It was suggested at the time that, on geological grounds, some of the carvings had already been replaced in the 18th century. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 140–41. Antiquaries interpreted the central thirteen figures as Christ and the Apostles, flanked at each end by Edward III and Archbishop Thoresby and two princes of the time. However, there are no obvious characteristics in either the crowned or mitred figure to suggest specific identities, and the ‘prince’ figures with their headdresses are more consistent with images of prophets than contemporary royal figures. There were also seventeen prophetic books of the

129

alexander holton Old Testament, matching the total number of busts present. See T. Gent, The Antient and Modern History of the Famous City of York (York 1730), 58; F. Drake, Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York (London 1736), 484–87; J. Browne, The History of the Metropolitical Church of St. Peter, York (London 1847), 277; and Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 138, 228. 14. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 229–32. The lion masks are the emblem of Christ and the Kings of Judah – Revelation 5:5 ‘see, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed’. The foliage, or more specifically vines, form the family tree and also represent Christ – John 15:1 ‘I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener’. The royal ancestry is drawn from the (abridged) Genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1:1–17. The eighteen seated kings represent eighteen of the nineteen Kings of Judah of the expanded genealogy that were actually related to Christ, from David to Jehoiachin. 15. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 139. The Green Man was reinterpreted and restored in 1915 upon a very weathered background, and so its primary form and meaning still remain uncertain. 16. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 233–34. Antiquaries consistently referred to the original weathered medieval figure (now on display within the Minster Close) as Archbishop Thoresby as patron of the building of the Lady Chapel. This was clearly erroneous, not least as close inspection of the figure revealed the presence of a triple-tier papal tiara. Among the general tendency of antiquaries to refer to such figures as earthly rather than heavenly patrons, the tradition of specifically referring to the figure as Thoresby may have also grown from a more active attempt to mask the papal connotations connected with it post-Reformation. In this context, the systematic removal of similar tiara emblems from both the glazing and heraldic shields within the Minster should also be noted. 17. The author is grateful to Mr S. Harrison, York Minster Cathedral Archaeologist, for drawing attention to two blocked openings at the bases of the central buttress stair turrets, roughly at clerestory level. Although they might be considered to anticipate an earlier clerestory arrangement with an inner walkway, they are aimed slightly inbound and are therefore more likely to be associated with temporary works access during construction, or even the installation of the stone charges which carry the timber vault at this level. 18. See Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 161–62. 19. J. Harvey, ‘Architectural History from 1291 to 1558’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 163–65 and pl. 58. 20. D. O’Connor, ‘The Architectural History’, in York Minster: The Great East Window, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (Great Britain), ed. T. French (Oxford 1995), 2. 21. A similar arrangement, i.e. angels under canopies with hands raised flanking a regal image, may be seen on the tomb of Edward III in Westminster Abbey, executed in the 1380s. See M. Duffy, Royal Tombs of Medieval England (Stroud 2003), 148. 22. For a comprehensive account of the east front’s repair history, see Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9). 23. See J. Raine, The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees Society, 35 (Durham 1859), 115, for references to the repair of high-level elements in general in 1570. For the re-leading of the east end roof in 1758, see York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS E3/124. For the repair and/or renewal of the east front parapets, see York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS  E3/130 and YML/E3/132, and York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS E3/136. 24. See J. Hildyard, An Accurate Description and History of the Metropolitan and Cathedral Churches of Canterbury and York, from their First Foundation to the Present Year (London 1755), 143. 25. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS A4(1)a2. 26. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS E3/159, which records extensive plastering and redecoration to the interior of the east end between Mart. 1793 and Mart. 1794. This included repairs to the east window. The work was part of the major refurbishment of the Minster interior, when much of its carved ornament was recorded by the carpenter Joseph Halfpenny in 1795, who had also carried out the full renewal of the nave ceiling. See D. M. Owen, ‘From Restoration Until 1822’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 249–50. As part of the redecoration the Minster interior was treated with ‘a composition of quick lime and yellow ochre, in a ratio of twenty to one, mixed

130

The constructional context of the Great East Window at York Minster with stale milk, and water’. See C. Wild, Twelve Perspective Views of the Exterior and Interior Parts of the Metropolitical Church of York (London 1809), 4. 27. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS E10 Day Book of William Shout and associated commentaries captured in York, York Minster Library and Archive, Add. MS 93/2, and Browne, History (as n. 13), 319–20. A number of Shout’s original planning and setting-out drawings for the east front works also survive in York Minster Library and Archive. 28. A tradition of using linseed oil to protect decaying stonework was sustained at the Minster until the later 20th century. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 111. 29. Shout renewed at least three voussoirs for certain, and probably six. This included the lowest king on the right-hand or north side, which most likely represented King David with the harp and was replaced by a copy of a medieval figure from further up in the order. The subject of the copy may have appeared sufficiently similar in posture to the figure that it replaced. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 232. 30. Browne, History (as n. 13), 319–20. 31. The remainder of the missing ornaments were finally reinstated during the 2005–16 repairs. 32. The main supply of stone until the 1840s was from the quarries of Michael Drake and Thomas Archbell in the Tadcaster area. Stone was also gained from Scott’s quarry and Bramham Moor (which may have included Smaw’s quarry). See C. E. Brooke, ‘The Stones of York Minster’ (unpublished Diploma in Conservation Studies, University of York, 1976), 63–64. Unfortunately, the stones selected by Shout and or the quarries did not weather well in the polluted atmosphere of York and have been the focus of repair and renewal ever since, far over and above the replacement of primary medieval work. 33. See O. Chadwick, ‘From 1822 until 1916’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 274–75 for an explanation of these events. 34. This included the complete reroofing and revaulting of the eastern arm and replacement of internal furniture, fixtures and ornament. Substantial stonework repairs to the clerestory parapets, cornice and external screenwork of Thoresby’s east end were carried out. 35. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS B3/3/1, 5, and York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS B3/3/4. 36. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS B3/3/6, 37, 116. 37. York, York Minster Library and Archive, Add. MS 93/2, 201. 38. York, York Minster Library and Archive, Add. MS 91 and associated setting-out drawings in York Minster Library. 39. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS B3/4/4/3. 40. I. Curry, ‘Caring for Durham Cathedral and York Minster’, in Heritage and Renewal: European Cathedrals in the Late Twentieth Century, ed. P. Burman (York 1997), 51. 41. The combination of two world wars, economic depression and a post-World War II depletion of appropriate craft skills had a significant detrimental impact on the maintenance regime at the Minster. These circumstances generated a major backlog of essential repairs by the time Sir Bernard Feilden carried out his landmark condition survey in 1965. 42. B. M. Feilden, The Wonder of York Minster (York 1976). 43. Stone from the quarries of Highmoor (near Tadcaster) and Warmsworth (near Doncaster) were used for the most recent east front repairs. Lepine limestone from France was used for the new apex figure of St Peter. 44. Feilden, York Minster (as n. 42). 45. York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS AA/RCA/RS/E.1 12 Jan 06, 1 and York, York Minster Library and Archive, MS AA/pm/832/02/CFCE, 2. 46. Claw-chisel or claw-axe marks preserved within the concealed beds of weathered stones and core material can be regarded as a key signature of late medieval work at York, together with heavy punched finishes for roughing-out work. Dragged or abrasive finishes over claw-dressing to impart a smoother finish to interior work were also employed until the late 15th century. Post-medieval tooling comprises plain bolster finishes, in a ribbon or diagonal pattern, followed by the reintroduction of rubbed and claw finishes again in the 20th and 21st centuries. The most recent work on the east front was generally finished

131

alexander holton with claw tools on visible faces, with simpler drafts and punching to beds to differentiate this phase from previous work. 47. The medieval pattern of building and mis-coursing in the lowest stage of the south aisle and east front was lost when this area was refaced in the 1970s. However, it is discernible in record photographs taken prior to the repairs. See Holton, ‘East Front of York Minster’ (as n. 9), 185. The practice of building the main elevation ahead of the aisles etc. is not unusual. For an example elsewhere, see T. Ayers and G. Sampson, ‘The Middle Ages’, in Salisbury Cathedral: The West Front, ed. T. Ayers (Chichester 2000), 15. 48. The author is very grateful to Mr  B. Morris, former York Minster stonemason, for his diligent recording of the marks during the cleaning of the east window masonry in 2013. 49. For a detailed appraisal of the complex numerology and meaning of the Great East Window, see Norton, ‘Sacred Space and Sacred History’ (as n. 7), 173–78. This study has uncovered the ingenious system of number symbolism and theological intent underlying the entire scheme. See also D. O’Connor, ‘Iconography’, in York Minster: The Great East Window, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (Great Britain), ed. T. French (Oxford 1995), 6–11 and Brown, The Great East Window (as n. 2), 51–67. 50. Whether or not a window with inner screenwork and transom-walkway was envisaged from the outset is a matter of continued debate, especially as the Minster’s Great West Window has similar openings within its reveals. In the case of the west window these do not relate to any internal screen or walkway and were likely only needed as part of a temporary works arrangement, centring etc., during building. However, as no complete high-level circulation is possible from south to north in Thoresby’s east end without the transom-walkway connecting the buttress turrets at clerestory level (the triforium passages terminate abruptly against the east wall), it is conceivable that the permanent access provisions that exist here were intended in some form from the very beginning. 51. There are fourteen angel voussoirs surrounding the tracery and fourteen angels in the tracery lights. There are also eight crowned busts and (at least) five kings in the glazing. The eight crowned busts may also represent the eight souls ascending to heaven that were saved from the Great Flood in 1 Peter 3:20. 52. Some slight pinking of the mouldings to the outer order of the internal arch was identified, caused by the burning of clay and ferrous content within the mineralogy of the stone during the fire. The affected areas were those closest to the timber vault as it initially burned in situ, after which the ceiling is likely have collapsed to the ground, removing the immediate threat to the window itself. 53. See E. Gee, ‘Stone from the Medieval Limestone Quarries of South Yorkshire’, in Collectanea Historica: Essays in Memory of Stuart Rigold, Kent Archaeological Society (Maidstone 1981), 247–55, for the documentary evidence for the medieval quarries used for building the Minster, and also Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 169–70. 54. The advantage of greater bed-heights may have been a factor in the transition from using Tadcaster stone to Huddleston in the late 14th and 15th centuries at York. 55. See O’Connor, ‘The Architectural History’ (as n. 20), 2, for a similar yet less substantiated view. 56. For the dating of the vaults, see Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 149, 210. 57. Such similarities can only remain tentative and generalised due to the technical advantages or limitations of the media in question (stone or glass) and the artistic dexterity of the craftspeople behind the respective works. 58. Close comparison can also be drawn between the York carvings and late-14th-century manuscript sources depicting kings. These include Westminster’s Liber Regalis, which Paul Binski has dated to the 1390s. See P. Binski, ‘The Liber Regalis: Its Date and European Context’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, eds D. Gordon, L. Monnas and C. Elam (London 1997), 232–46. An external voussoir bearing a sword or staff within the right-hand or north order also bears some resemblance to the Westminster Abbey portrait of Richard II dated to c. 1395 given in N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven and London 1997), pl. 21. 59. See Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 23), 18; Brown, ‘Magnificent Fabrick’ (as n. 1), 176; Brown, Apocalypse (as n. 2), 13. 60. Hedon was made free of York in 1394 and was master mason of the cathedral until 1407. See Harvey, Mediaeval Architects (as n. 6), 133.

132

Looking for John Thornton The Great East Window of York Minster revisited SARAH BROWN

The recent conservation of the Great East Window, complemented by a programme of research and recording, has facilitated a reconsideration of the role of the master-glazier John Thornton, contracted in 1405 to lead the team responsible for the making of the window. Past preoccupations with the role of Thornton as glass-painter, the author of a ‘Thornton style’, has obscured his importance as designer and manager of one of the most ambitious glazing schemes ever conceived. Close scrutiny of the window has also shed new light on workshop practices, the use of cartoons, the glazier’s table and the collaborative nature of the late medieval glazing workshop. introduction ‘We may suppose this man to have been the best artist in his time, for this kind of work, by their sending so far for him’. So wrote Francis Drake, author of Eboracum or the History and Antiquities of the City of York from its Origins to the Present, published in York in 1736. This is one of the earliest acknowledgements in print of John Thornton’s claim to authorship of the Great East Window of York Minster of 1405–08, and the first to publish an illustration of it.1 This is not only the largest expanse of medieval glass in England (Fig. 1), it is also one of the largest and most ambitious medieval windows ever made in terms of its complex and multi-layered iconography, which encapsulates the history of the world from Creation to the Apocalypse and Second Coming of Christ, and beyond. The conservation of the window by the York Glaziers Trust between 2011 and 2017 has been complemented by new research, not all of it yet published. Work by Christopher Norton and Nigel Morgan, for example, building on foundations laid by David O’Connor, Tom French and Jill Rickers, ensures that the meaning of the Great East Window and its place in the overall glazing scheme of the eastern arm of the Minster can be understood as never before, while the archaeological investigation of the east front has shed new light on its architectural framework.2 Additionally, and of significance for future research, a new high-resolution photographic record has ensured that for the first time the whole window can be published in colour.3 Many aspects of the window’s conception are unlikely to have been devised by the glazier, and the existence of a ‘theological adviser’, whether a member of Chapter or a representative of the window’s donor, may be assumed. The intermediary mechanisms through which John Thornton was made familiar with key iconographic sources can only be guessed at, but they were probably in the form of small-scale patterns, sometimes called ‘vidimuses’, that were the standard and legally binding appendages to a © 2022 The British Archaeological Association

133

sarah brown

Fig. 1.  The Great East Window of York Minster, following conservation 2011–187 Photo: Nick Teed, York Glaziers’ Trust (YGT), reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

134

Looking for John Thornton

medieval glazing contract but which do not survive for the Great East Window.4 The ‘vidimus’ was often prepared outside the glazing workshop and handed over to glaziers for transmission and translation at full size into stained glass, a process glimpsed in relation to glazier John Prudde’s execution of the glazing for the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick.5 However, an examination of the few surviving English examples, all of them later in date, reveal the huge gap between a ‘vidimus’ and a viable stained glass window. The small scale of the drawing admits relatively little detail (especially of heraldic information or inscriptions, for example) and never indicates structural essentials like leading and position of ferramenta. While it is not my intention to argue that the ‘vidimus’ was never the work of the glazier or that Thornton had no role in preliminary planning of the images depicted in the Great East Window, the focus of attention in this paper will be his role in closing the gap between the small-scale sketch design and the full-size reality. the documentary evidence In Drake’s account, as in that of Thomas Gent, the glazier is given precedence over the donor, who remained unnamed, in a reversal of the concepts of agency that would have been recognised in the Middle Ages.6 The 17th-century York antiquary James Torre (1649–99) had correctly identified Bishop Skirlaw’s arms in panel 1e but had nonetheless described the donor figure as a pope.7 Indeed, Walter Skirlaw (c. 1330– 1406), bishop of Durham, has only been widely acknowledged as the window’s donor since the 1970s.8 Drake and Gent, of course, had identified Thornton’s role thanks to Torre’s unpublished notes on York Minster, compiled by c. 1690.9 Torre had enjoyed unfettered access to the muniments of the Minster and provides two versions of the content of the glazing contract drawn up in 1405 between Thornton and the Dean and Chapter, one a Latin transcription and the other an English translation.10 At about the same time Matthew Hutton, antiquary and great-grandson of the archbishop of York of the same name, made another Latin transcription of the same document.11 It is important to note that all three versions were derived not from the actual contract document itself but from a summary of it enrolled into a book of Chapter Acts for the period 1390–1410, which has not survived. The fact that the document being summarised is called an indenture suggests that the original contract was in a standard medieval format, with two identical copies on a single parchment, cut into two along a jagged (indented) line, with one half retained by the client and one by the craftsman.12 The three 17th-century versions are themselves a précis of the medieval record and give slightly different dates (10 October, 10 August and 10 December 1405), although French has demonstrated that the December date is most likely to be correct.13 Torre and Hutton agree on the same main facts: 1 2

The name and city of origin of the glazier: John Thornton, glazier of Coventry. The amount of time allowed for the completion of the commission – three years from the date of signing. 3 The rewards offered to John Thornton: 4s per week for the duration of the contract, 100s/£5 per year for each of the three years and a final bonus of £10 sterling on satisfactory completion.

135

sarah brown

The order of priority of Thornton’s responsibilities is also made explicit: 1 He was obliged to ‘portray’ with his own hand [my italics] ‘historical images  & other painted works’, not otherwise specified, so presumably defined in an approved set of ‘vidimuses’. 2 He was to paint some of the glass himself, as ordained by the Dean and Chapter. 3 He was to recruit a workforce sufficient to the task and was to source all materials required, all at the expense of the Dean and Chapter, acting as he would if he were bearing these costs himself.

The window itself confirms that it was completed within the three years stipulated in the contract, as the date 1408 appears in Roman numerals in glass at the top of the window.14 The presence in the window of the artist’s ‘monogram’, proposed by Benson, was ‘debunked’ by the late T. W. French.15 Historically, it has been the pursuit of John Thornton the glass-painter that has exerted the greatest allure, and most writers have concentrated on constructing a corpus of work attributable to the hand of John Thornton, starting, perhaps unsurprisingly, with John Alder Knowles’s earliest publications on the subject in the 1920s.16 Knowles’s aim, as a loyal citizen of York and the son of one of its most important 19th-century glass-painters and restorers, was to build the narrative for a York School of Glass Painting, prominent in the title of his 1936 book, in which Thornton features as the outstanding artistic celebrity of the late medieval city.17 By the 1970s Thornton was being given the credit for most of the 15th-century glass in the Minster and city churches of York, not to mention schemes throughout the Midlands and north of England.18 Others have examined the issue from the other end of the stylistic telescope. In the 1930s Bernard Rackham and Gordon McNeil Rushforth considered the evidence of a ‘Thornton’ style closer to his native Coventry, and in particular in the fragmentary remains in the city and in the east window of Great Malvern Priory.19 This has been pursued further by Heather Gilderdale Scott.20 This paper will contend that a preoccupation with the concept of Thornton the painter has overshadowed and obscured the complex nature of his role and, indeed, the true magnitude of his achievement. The objective of this paper is therefore to re-examine the evidence for Thornton’s identity and activity in the context of the only firmly documented work that can be attributed to him, based on a more rigorous and contextualised interrogation of the technical evidence of the window itself. Can we now get any closer to answering some key questions about the nature of Thornton’s authorship of the window, including: 1 2 3 4

When, how and why did John Thornton first come to York? How many people worked on the window, and how much of the window was painted by John Thornton? (And does this question really matter?) What was John Thornton’s role in ‘portraying’ the window? Was Thornton responsible for other windows in York Minster?

when, how, why? If the window was indeed completed by the end of 1408 and the contract was signed only late in 1405, is it possible to discern any evidence as to the gestation of the project? 136

Looking for John Thornton

The insertion of the window tracery of the Great East Window into the east wall belongs to the second phase of east-end construction, resumed only in 1394 after a break of over twenty years.21 That the work progressed quickly is demonstrated by the inclusion of the personal arms of Archbishop Richard Scrope, accompanied by those of Bishop Walter Skirlaw, in the arcade spandrels of the first south bay of the new work, suggesting that the men were jointly supporting the progress of the fabric. Scrope had become archbishop only in March 1398. He was a member of an important local baronial family, the Scropes of Masham, and in the aftermath of his election, members of the archbishop’s immediate family became significant patrons of the Minster and were able to appropriate St Stephen’s chapel at the east end of the north aisle as a family mausoleum.22 As a senior canon lawyer, Scrope had helped to construct the justification for the deposition of Richard II in 1399, although by the summer 1405 he was in conflict with Henry IV and lost his life as a result.23 In the early years of the new reign, however, Archbishop Scrope focused his energy on his pastoral duties and involved himself very actively in the promotion of the building project begun in the 1360s by Archbishop John Thoresby. In this he was supported by the senior bishop of the northern province, Walter Skirlaw, the donor of the east window.24 The fabric roll for 1404 records Archbishop Scrope’s gift of £7 16s, equivalent to the annual wages of an additional mason.25 Is there any evidence of his interest in stained glass? I have recently argued that Scrope was the donor of a quasi-typological window in the Minster’s north nave aisle (n4), close to his own tomb and within sight of the Great East Window, although the visual evidence of what is left of this glass shows that it is not the work of the Thornton workshop.26 His interest in the medium is further suggested by the fact that from the monastic library at Durham, Scrope borrowed a 12th-century illuminated manuscript illustrating Bede’s life of St Cuthbert, an image cycle of direct relevance to the subject chosen for the south-east transept window.27 Scrope had come to York after a decade’s tenure as Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, where the cathedral priory is known to have had an extensive late-14th-century apocalypse cycle on the walls of the chapter-house.28 Of course, Walter Skirlaw had also held the See of Coventry, albeit for barely a year in 1385–86, nearly twenty years before the Great East Window was commissioned. If we envisage Thornton as an artist in his prime when he came to York, it is hard to see how someone who would then, at very best, have been a teenage apprentice could have come to the notice of a bishop. The bequest of 6s 8d to Thornton in the will of the archbishop’s brother, Stephen, Lord Scrope of Masham (d. 1406), strengthens the admittedly circumstantial evidence that it was Scrope patronage that brought Thornton to York.29 It is clear that by 1399, only a year after Scrope’s arrival as archbishop, glazing matters were under consideration. In that year an inventory of the cathedral’s building stores records a very large quantity of white glass and a smaller quantity of coloured glass for the great windows of the choir, meaning, presumably, the Great East Window, the St William and the St Cuthbert windows, which far exceed all others in size.30 While this in itself does not prove Thornton’s involvement in the project at this date, recent chemical analysis of the glasses of the Great East Window is of considerable relevance to this issue. A research project led by Professors Ian Freestone (Cardiff and UCL) and Tim Ayers (York) has analysed the chemical composition of both white and coloured glasses used in the manufacture of the Great East Window. The white glass was found to be of remarkably consistent composition across the whole window, commensurate with a single exceptional consignment, such as is suggested in 137

sarah brown

the 1399 fabric roll reference. The composition of the coloured glasses was found to be significantly different from those used in earlier glazing campaigns in the Minster, pointing to a new source of supply coming in around the year 1400.31 It is tempting to hypothesise that the arrival of a new master glazier documented as entrusted with the management of supply of materials had a bearing on this change. If we can begin to answer the questions when and how Thornton became involved, we can hypothesise as to ‘why’. The reasons behind the decision to entrust this prestigious project to a ‘foreign’ artist deserves some scrutiny. It was certainly not unknown for ‘outsiders’ to be brought in to lead especially prestigious or challenging commissions, as apparently happened in 1351–52 at the royal chapel of St Stephen at Westminster, when Master John de Chestre was put in overall charge of a team, which at its height numbered 41 glaziers, drawn from all over the country.32 It was a strategy not without risk, however. In 1407, barely two years after the Great East Window contract had been signed, the Westminster mason William Colchester was given charge of the Minster stone yard at the instigation of Henry IV, and he and his assistant, William Waddeswyck, were attacked by disgruntled local masons.33 J. A. Knowles suggested that the decision to bring Thornton to York reflected a shortage of skilled glaziers in the city in the aftermath of the plague of 1391.34 This does not stand up to closer scrutiny of the register of Freemen, which shows that despite the losses of the Black Death, early-15th-century York had plenty of glaziers and glass-painters. In fact, the numbers of glaziers admitted to the freedom of the city had actually increased in the plague’s aftermath.35 Barrie Dobson has suggested that in order to replenish the depleted ranks of craftsmen in the city, there may have been some relaxation of the regulation of apprenticeships.36 Could this have impacted adversely on the quality of the stained-glass craftsmanship in the city? Perhaps, in the 1360s and 1370s,37 but the quality of the glazing installed in the Minster in the years immediately before the Great East Window, normally attributed to glazier John Burgh, compares favourably in quality to prestige projects elsewhere, notably those executed for William of Wykeham at Winchester, for example.38 In fact, John Burgh continued to be employed by the Minster throughout and beyond the period in which the Great East Window was being made. That John Thornton offered his patrons a very special set of skills, not matched among native York glaziers, is the inescapable conclusion. For Knowles and others, these pre-eminent skills were those of the painter, reflecting, perhaps, a modern preoccupation with the cult of the individual artist but also an acknowledgement of the extraordinary painterly qualities of the window. The contractual stipulation that he must paint at least some of the glass confirms that Thornton was indeed a practising glass-painter and that his skills in this regard were highly valued. However, we cannot escape the fact that he was actually allowed to delegate this role to others. Even a superficial study of the painting styles shows that at least three and probably four painters were entrusted with principal figures, with perhaps another painter working on the architectural structures in the window. There were at least two hands at work in the painting of the ubiquitous ‘seaweed’ foliage used to fill in the backgrounds.39 Can the work of Thornton the glass-painter be identified? What criteria might the medieval Chapter have used to ordain his personal attention? Could the status of the figure depicted be a guide? By this reckoning, all of the figures (and especially the heads) of God himself, and by extension those of Christ (nineteen surviving), might fall into this category, and yet they have not all been painted by the same hand (Figs. 2 and 3). Similarly, the figures of St John, the 138

Looking for John Thornton

Fig. 2.  The head of God in panel DD1 Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

139

sarah brown

Fig. 3.  The head of God in panel 5h Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

narrator of the Apocalypse narrative, who survives in nineteen out of the eighty-one Apocalypse panels, are not the work of a single painter and were not even painted from the same cartoon. Quality and visual prominence might also be a guide. The famous image of St Edward the Confessor in panel 1d, for example, is undoubtedly one of the most accessible and also one of the most admired ‘portraits’ in the whole window and remains a strong candidate to have been by the hand of the master. However, many of the figures in the tracery, i.e. furthest from the viewer, are also 140

Looking for John Thornton

impressive and characterful and show no absence of quality because they are relatively further away. One of the aspects of the painting requiring the greatest skill and the most consistent precision and attention to detail is the painting of the numerous biblical texts, observed and recorded in detail during the recent conservation. While some painted ‘words’ are merely lines designed to look like writing when seen from a distance (e.g. in panels 10c, 8g and 2f), the many lettered scrolls of Latin scripture are executed expertly, with a high degree of textual accuracy, even though most could never have been read from the ground (Fig. 4). The Latin is punctuated with appropriate abbre� viation marks and word spacers and texts are set out between fine guide-lines such as scribes would have prepared in the copying of a script onto a page of velum. This is not a device required to aid the painting of glass. Any guide-lines required by a glasspainter would have been set out either on the cartoon, to be ‘read’ through the transparent glass placed over it, or would have been traced onto the exterior of the glass itself, to be followed when the glass was held up to the light, guide-lines that would normally be removed before firing.40 So this approach to setting out is employed solely in order to ensure that the texts in the window authentically replicate the appearance of a page in a book or a lettered velum scroll. The enrichment of capital letters and

Fig. 4.  Latin text scrolls in panel 3d Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

141

sarah brown

the pen flourishing embellishments are also comparable to the work of a professional scribe. In at least one instance, in panel 1b, the letters of the name ‘Lucius’ have been painted over the top of the underlying ermine texture of the King’s tippet, which shows that it was added as a second phase in the painting of the piece and suggests that the text was entrusted to a specialist painter. It could be argued that the Word of God would have been a priority subject in the eyes of the Dean and Chapter, but as with all other attributions, this must remain a speculation, although with interesting implications for the Latin literacy of the highly skilled glass-painter entrusted with this aspect of the window.41 We are forced to conclude that Thornton the glass-painter remains elusive. However, what can be said with some conviction is that the Great East Window is a product of exceptional and consistent artistic quality, attributable to Thornton, who exerted the quality control implicit in his contract, making the Great East Window a project indebted to Thornton’s leadership and example, setting a new benchmark for the glass-painters of the city of York and underlining the essentially collaborative nature of medieval stained glass design and production. & he shall portray the said window with his own hand The discussion of painting style has been in danger of overshadowing the issue of design, which was actually the very first of the responsibilities assigned to Thornton, that of ‘portraying with his own hand’ the images in the window, a task that he could not delegate to another. While this might refer to the preparation of small-scale preparatory drawings, it should be remembered that this wording is contained in a document that triggered the actual creation of the window, a process with a very tight timescale. Examination of documents for the creation of medieval works of art in other media is helpful in elucidating the term ‘portraying’. The wardrobe accounts of Edward III relating to the manufacture of costly opus anglicanum pieces for the royal household, for example, consistently distinguish between the design and the execution of the works. Painters well known for their work in other media, including Hugh of St Albans, associated with the wall-paintings in St Stephen’s Chapel, were regularly paid for ‘portraying’ the designs onto the base fabrics, ready for over-stitching by the embroiderers.42 Examples of worn or damaged embroideries reveal the very complex underdrawings, executed in ink by the painters, sometimes displaying details that the embroiderers chose to ignore.43 It is clear, then, that in this context ‘portraying’ meant the textile equivalent of the creation of a full-size cartoon, in a process described in more detail by Cennino Cennini in his late-14th-century treatise on painting.44 In other words, this is a step beyond any small-scale ‘pattern’ or ‘vidimus’. An important 15th-century English reference makes clear the precise meaning of the word ‘portraying’ in the context of stained glass. A 1443 inventory of stores pertaining to the works at the palaces of Westminster and Sheen describes two ‘portreying tables of oak, two tables of poplar and 11 trestles used for glazing works’.45 This is a reference to the whitened tables on which the full-size stained glass cartoons were marked up, as described in the 12th-century treatise by the pseudonymous monk, priest and author known as Theophilus.46 The high status, that of ‘mastery’, conferred by the responsibility for ‘portraying’ the window is implied in the prioritisation of tasks identified in Thornton’s contract and is also borne out in the earlier St Stephen’s glazing accounts.47 Master John de 142

Looking for John Thornton

Chestre consistently received the highest wages of all the glaziers and fulfilled a role comparable to that of Thornton in its scope and responsibility. He worked with five others, also termed master, all of them defined by their role in drawing designs on the glazing tables. In the hierarchy of payments made to the Westminster glazing team, the designing on the whitened tables was entrusted only to those termed ‘master’ and was more generously remunerated than those painting glass and those ‘breaking and fitting’ the glass.48 Although no records survive for the organisation and remuneration of his team, we might expect a similar hierarchy to have existed in Thornton’s workshop, although, in contrast to John de Chestre, apparently he was allowed no assistance in the preparation of the portraying tables needed to make over 300 precisely dimensioned panels of stained glass. This sort of hierarchy of status and reward is also found in the financial structure of the opus anglicanum workshops.49 However, both Thornton’s contract and the St Stephen’s Chapel accounts underline one important point of difference between the activities of designers in stained glass and other media. In the elite English glazing workshop, the ‘portreying’ process was not entrusted to painters but remained an integral part of the master glazier’s skill set, and continued to be so into the 16th century.50 The portraying table combined the function of template, cartoon, cutline-drawing and glazier’s workbench, processes afforded separate physical ‘props’ in modern glazing practice. Evidence of the combination of these functions can be seen on the medieval glazier’s table at Girona in Catalonia (Fig. 5), the subject of recent re-evaluation by Anna Santolaria Tura.51 It has often been observed that single cartoons were used repeatedly within a single glazing scheme. The Girona tables were certainly used repeatedly, and the Westminster glazing accounts refer to the washing of the tables there (with ale), a process that allowed new designs to be laid out on the tables as the project progressed. Physical evidence of this same process can be seen on the 14th-century Girona table. The outline of the canopy gable remains relatively pristine, while the area immediately below, on which a succession of different standing figures were marked out, is dirty and stained by comparison.52 This process of washing and adapting the table helps to explain a long-standing mystery concerning the panel order of the Great East Window. Writing in the 1690s, antiquary James Torre had noted that four panels at the end of row 9 and beginning of row 8, depicting the angels blowing four of the seven trumpets described in Revelation 8: 7–13, were in the wrong Biblical order.53 Torre had recorded them in the order Second Trumpet (in 9j), Third Trumpet (in 8a), Fourth Trumpet (in 8b), First Trumpet (in 8c). This was long assumed to represent some undocumented intervention in the window’s past in which a number of the panels had been removed, only to be returned in the wrong order.54 Accordingly, after the Second World War, Dean Milner-White returned the panels to what is undoubtedly their correct biblical order. Only recently was it realised that this cannot explain what Torre saw. Each of the top six rows of the Apocalypse section of the window has its own distinctive canopy design. It was observed, however, there are actually ten panels framed in a ‘row 9’ canopy design and only eight panels framed in a ‘row 8’ canopy.55 The second and fourth angels in the Biblical sequence have both been framed in row 9 canopies, whereas they should both be framed for locations in row 8, while the first angel, which should be framed for row 9, is framed for row 8 (Figs. 6 and 7). Only the third angel is correctly framed for its location in row 8. Nor was this an isolated example of a ‘production error’. It recurs in row 2, for example, where panel 2c has 143

sarah brown

Fig. 5.  A section of the 14th-century glazier’s table, Museu d’Art, Girona Source: Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de Catalunya, photo Carles Aymerich, 2013

144

Looking for John Thornton

Fig. 6.  The first angel (panel 8c), framed in a canopy appropriate to row 8, although it should be located in panel 9j Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

been framed in a row 3 canopy. The most plausible explanation, and one supported by both the Westminster accounts and the evidence of the Girona table, is that in the preparation of a new design it was normal practice to wash the York tables in such a way as to remove the narrative but to preserve the repeated framing canopy, thereby minimising the amount of new work to be drawn out. In these few instances, 145

sarah brown

Fig. 7.  The fourth angel, panel 8b, framed in a canopy appropriate to row 9. Its correct place in the sequence should be 8c Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

it looks as if Master John Thornton drew out the new narratives inside the wrong architectural frame and that the panels were installed in the wrong Biblical order, and remained so until Dean Milner White intervened in the 1950s. The 21st-century Chapter of York authorised the return of the panels to the order in which we believe Thornton installed them and Torre recorded them. In contrast to the practice described in Theophilus’s 12th-century treatise, the Girona table reveals very clearly that by no means all the information required to 146

Looking for John Thornton

cut glass, arrange lead lines and paint detail was provided by the master glazier as he prepared the cartoon. Rather than see this as an oversight on his/her part, we are able to glimpse here the nature of the working relationship between the master and the close-knit and, in Thornton’s case, hand-picked collaborators with whom the master worked, and there are sound technical reasons, including economy in glass-cutting, that explain why the master would cede degrees of autonomy to his trusted team members. In our close examination of the Great East Window, we have noted numerous examples of the exercise of this kind of workshop autonomy, so that in visualising Thornton’s lost cartoons we may imagine that they resembled the Girona survivors. It can be seen, for example, that the figures that inhabit the architectural framing of the narrative panels were based on the same cartoon outline but, even in the same panel, were executed by different painters, with different patterns of cutting and leading, different embellishments and, in one instance, a different language on the lettered scrolls. This difference is observed to occur consistently on opposite sides of the panels, suggesting that labour was divided in such a way as to facilitate ease of movement around the physical workspace. A realisation of Thornton’s essential role as leader, manager and chief designer, able to work with a complex body of source material, in no way denies him a significant and personal contribution to the creative process. Many years ago, David O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock noted some of his unique adaptations of well-worn iconographic models, including his handling of Revelation Chapter 1, in which St John is instructed to write to the seven churches, represented in panel 11f not as angels but as bishops. Many more have emerged as the conservation of the window has proceeded, exemplified in the treatment of panel 7f (Figs. 8 and 9). In Thornton’s version, the woman clothed in the sun stands on the moon, her head wreathed in a crown of stars. She is menaced by a seven-headed ruby dragon, and her motherhood is indicated by her gesture and her loosely laced dress, although her son has been safely delivered and is raised to Heaven by an angel. The stained-glass scene shares with the analogous manuscripts the depiction of a dragon with an elaborately curling tail. Prior to restoration, the stars mentioned in the text, and numerous in the analogous manuscript images, were nowhere to be seen. Careful examination of the grozed edges of the original blue glass of the panel’s background revealed the sockets that once held them and showed that Thornton’s heaven once contained not a crowded constellation but only three stars, one of which was caught in the coils of the dragon’s tail. While this kind of adjustment might have been suggested by Thornton’s unidentified theological adviser, it feels very much like the response to medium and materials that would occur to the experienced stained-glass designer and makes Thornton’s composition a very literal visualisation of the text of verse 4: ‘And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth’. The revisualisation and reinvigoration of the Biblical narrative is surely one of Thornton’s greatest contributions to the Great East Window. thornton after the great east window In the 1950s, Coventry historian Joan Lancaster published documentary evidence of Thornton’s residence and property holding in his native city, showing that in 1413 he took out a sixty-year lease on a house in St John’s Bridges. She suggested on the strength of this evidence that Thornton did not stay in York after the completion of 147

sarah brown

Fig. 8.  The woman clothed with the sun (panel 7f), before conservation Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

the Great East Window but returned to continue his business in his native city.56 To set against this is the fact that in 1410 Thornton was admitted to the freedom of the city of York and was still alive in 1433, living in a house belonging to the Dean and Chapter, which Knowles assumed was one of those located in nearby Stonegate.57 This is the last reference to him in the documentary record in either city. Thornton’s enrolment in the York freemen’s register, only after the completion of the Great East Window, makes most sense if he was planning to stay in York with the option of 148

Looking for John Thornton

Fig. 9.  The woman clothed with the sun (panel 7f), after conservation Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

working outside the Minster’s immediate jurisdiction. It seems likely that in holding property in Coventry and York, Thornton was operating businesses in both cities. All previous writers on the Minster’s glass have assumed that other 15th-century Minster windows can be attributed to John Thornton.58 By the 1970s, Thornton was also being given the credit for much of the other 15th-century glass in the city churches of York.59 On what basis can these attributions be made? No comprehensive stylistic assessment of the Great East Window has yet been achieved, and a description of the ‘Thornton style’ has not got much beyond remarks concerning the subtle 149

sarah brown

modelling, long noses with bulbous tips, small mouths and the use of seaweed diaper. As I have suggested above, the assessment of painting style is, anyway, an imperfect tool for identifying the personal contribution of John Thornton to the Great East Window, and even more problematic if applied to entirely undocumented windows. It is undeniably the case that painters recruited by Thornton to work on the Great East Window also worked on other Minster windows in the period c. 1408–20, notably the huge St William window of c. 1414 in the north-east choir clerestory (n7) and some of the choir aisle windows (especially n8–n10 and s9). The picture in the western choir clerestory (probably glazed c. 1408–15), on the other hand (windows N8–N11 and S8–N11), is far more complicated, with some diminution in quality and the appearance of some hands that are not found in either the Great East Window or the St William window. The approach to narrative and the reuse of distinctive compositional devices, the one aspect of the Great East Window that can be attributed with confidence to Thornton himself, is a far more helpful indicator of authorship. The constraints of the cartooning process at this time suggest that shared design features are likely to be indicative of shared origins within a small and close-knit circle of craftsmen and collaborators, such as the circle of a cathedral works department, mentored and directed by an influential master. On this basis, the St William window can be confidently attributed to John Thornton.60 As a more-or-less entirely new narrative cycle of 100 scenes, constructed from the collation of two main sources but far exceeding the size of any pre-existing St William narrative, it could be argued that this window cried out for an imaginative and inventive designer like Thornton. It displays the same narrative editing skills as the Great East Window, including the compression of events into single compositions, one of the most ingenious being in panel 7c (formerly 8a), in which the deaths in the same year (1153) of St William’s enemies Archbishop Henry Murdac, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III, events that cleared the way for William to be reinstated as archbishop of York, are represented as three simultaneous but carefully differentiated death-bed scenes (Fig. 10). In panel 17a (formerly 16d), a woman dressed in a tightly buttoned and belted robe is poisoned by eating a frog concealed in a loaf of bread. In the same panel she is also immediately depicted suffering the ill-effects, standing with her robe open and her belt removed. The adjoining scene shows her cured at the tomb of St William, the frog expelled on the pavement. Numerous examples of the adaptation of sections of cartoons devised for the Great East Window and reused in the St William window can be observed. This includes elements in the scene of St John preaching and teaching in panel 11c of the Great East Window with panel 3c (formerly 2b) of the St William window (Figs. 11 and 12), while the numerous horses depicted in both windows are clearly from the same stable. While the reuse and adaptation of cartoons within a single glazing scheme is quite common, their reuse across different schemes and over a longer period of time are less common and suggestive of the retention of models and patterns within a single workshop or circle of collaborative associates such as a cathedral workshop. In conclusion, the realisation of the limitations of our knowledge about Thornton’s role as a glass-painter in no way diminishes the greatness of his achievement. Indeed, an obsession with the undeniably outstanding painterly qualities of the window has led to a misunderstanding of the nature of medieval workshop practice and has obscured the variety, complexity and responsibility of the roles he fulfilled. We can

150

Looking for John Thornton

Fig. 10.  The death of St William’s enemies. St William window panel 7c (formerly 8a) Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

now refocus our attention on his genius as the man who single-handedly designed one, and probably two, of the greatest and most ambitious stained glass narratives in medieval Europe, which in the case of the dated Great East Window involved the production of at least two complex narrative panels every week for three years, and who as mentor, manager and leader set new standards for stained-glass design and creation in the city of York, an influence that extended far beyond the city’s boundaries and is a legacy with which we live today. acknowledgements My greatest debt is to my colleagues at the York Glaziers’ Trust, with whom I have shared the exciting exploration of the Great East Window over many years. Particular thanks are owed to Nick Teed for his outstanding photography, a lasting resource invaluable to those who can no longer examine the panels at ground level. I am also grateful to colleagues Professor Christopher Norton and David King for discussion of earlier drafts of this paper.

151

sarah brown

Fig. 11.  St John teaching, panel 11c Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

152

Looking for John Thornton

Fig. 12.  Clergy seal a document. St William window panel 3c (formerly 2b) Photo: Nick Teed, YGT, reproduced with the kind permission of the Chapter of York

notes 1. F. Drake, Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York from its Origins to the Present (York 1736), 527. Publication of Drake’s expensive folio volume, completed by 1730, was delayed by the pre-emptive publication of Thomas Gent’s cheaper octavo volume, The Ancient and Modern History of the Famous City of York (York 1730). 2. T. French, York Minster: The Great East Window, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Summary Catalogue 2 (Oxford 1995); D. O’Connor, ‘Iconography’, in Great East Window, 6–11; J. Rickers, ‘Glazier and Illuminator: The Apocalypse Cycle in the East Window of York Minster and its Sources’, Journal of Stained Glass, 19 (1994–95), 269–75; C. Norton, ‘Sacred Space and Sacred History, the Glazing of the Eastern Arm of York Minster’, in Glasmalerei im Kontext – Bildprogramme und Raum Funktionen, ed. R. Becksmann (Nuremberg 2005), 167–81. Not all of this research has yet been published, notably the iconographic research by Professor N. J. Morgan, who presented it most recently at the University of York symposium ‘A Decade of Discovery: The Great East Window of York Minster – Ten Years On’ (10 November 2018) in his lecture ‘The East Window: Old Testament Scenes, the Apocalypse and the Ages of the World’.

153

sarah brown 3. S. Brown, The Great East Window of York Minster: An English Masterpiece (London 2018). 4. H. Wayment, ‘The Great Windows of King’s College Chapel and the Meaning of the Word “Vidimus” ’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 69 (1979), 53–69; G. M. Leproux, ed., Recherches sur les peintres-verriers parisiens (Paris 1993), 35. See also S. Brown, ‘The Medieval Glazier at Work’, in Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass, eds E. C. Pastan and B. Kurmann-Schwarz (Leiden and Boston 2019), 9–22. 5. In 1447 Richard Beauchamp’s executors supplied patterns to the king’s glazier, John Prudde, which were to be redrawn into full-scale designs for glass. A. R. Myers, ed., ‘The Contracts for the Making of the Tomb of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick 1447–54’, English Historical Documents, vol. IV, 1327–1485, online at: www.englishhistoricaldocuments.com/document/view.html?id=1601. 6. Drake, Eboracum (as n. 1), 527; Gent, Ancient and Modern History (as n. 1), 149. 7. York, York Minster Library and Archive (YMLA), MS L1/7, f. 48v. 8. As late as 1927 Harrison suggested that the donor figure was that of Archbishop Henry Bowet. F. Harrison, The Painted Glass of York (London 1927), 128. 9. Torre’s notes remained unpublished at his death in 1699. They were acquired from his widow by Archbishop John Sharpe (d. 1714), whose executors presented them to the Minster Library. J. Broadway, ‘Torre, James (1649–1699), Antiquary’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online at: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27561 [accessed 10 May 2018]. 10. YMLA MS LI/2, part II, f.34 and YMLA MS LI/7, f.7; French, Great East Window (as n. 2), 153. 11. London, British Library, MS Harley 6971, f. 141v; French, Great East Window (as n. 2), 153–54. 12. S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk, ‘ “Cest Endenture Fait Parentre”: English Tomb Contracts of the Long Fourteenth Century’, in Monumental Industry, eds S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk (Donington 2010), 187–236. 13. French, Great East Window (as n. 2), 2–5. 14. In panels Z1 and Z2, Brown, English Masterpiece (as n. 3), 106. 15. G. Benson, ‘The Ancient Painted Glass in the Minster and Churches of the City of York’ (Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for 1914, York 1915), 87; T. W. French, ‘John Thornton’s Monogram in York Minster’, Journal of Stained Glass, 19:1 (1989–90), 18–32. 16. See J. A. Knowles, ‘John Thornton of Coventry and the Great East Window in York Minster’, Notes and Queries s12–VII:140, 18 December 1920, 481–83 and s12–VIII:150, 26 February 1921, 171–73. 17. J. A. Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School of Glass Painting (London 1936), 212–21. 18. For example, in 1972 Peter Gibson suggested that the best 15th-century glass in All Saints, North Street, should be associated with Thornton. ‘The Stained and Painted Glass of York’, in The Noble City of York, ed. A. Stacpoole (York 1972), 67–224, at 168. 19. B. Rackham, ‘The Glass-Paintings of Coventry and its Neighbourhood’, The Walpole Society, 19 (1930–31), 89–110; G. McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford 1936), 47–104; J. A. Knowles, ‘John Thornton of Coventry and the East Window of Great Malvern Priory’, Antiq. J., 39 (1959), 274–82. 20. H. Gilderdale Scott, ‘The Painted Glass of Great Malvern Priory’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2008); H. Gilderdale Scott, ‘John Thornton of Coventry: A Reassessment of the Role of a Late Medieval Glazier’, in Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity, eds L. Monckton and R. K. Morris (BAA Transaction) (Leeds 2011), 223–39; H. Gilderdale Scott, ‘Glaziers at St Michael’s’, in St Michael’s Coventry: The Rise and Fall of the Old Cathedral, eds G. Demidowicz and H. Gilderdale Scott (London 2015), 119–25. 21. S. Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’. York Minster: An Architectural History c. 1220–1550 (Swindon 2003), 176–80. 22. B. P. Vale, ‘The Scropes of Bolton and Masham c. 1300–c. 1450’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1987); C. Norton, ‘Richard Scrope and York Minster’, in Richard Scrope, Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Donington 2007), 138–213, at 156–66. 23. G. E. Caspary, ‘The Deposition of Richard II’, Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Canon Law, (Boston 1963), 180–201; W. M. Ormrod, ‘An Archbishop in Revolt: Richard Scrope and the Yorkshire Rising of 1405’, in Richard Scrope, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Donington 2007), 28–44.

154

Looking for John Thornton 24. The importance of Scrope patronage in bringing Thornton to York was first suggested by Knowles but was examined more rigorously by Norton in ‘Richard Scrope and York Minster’ (as n. 22), 145–56. 25. J. Raine, ed., The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees Society, 35 (1859), 24. 26. S. Brown, ‘Archbishop Scrope’s Lost Window in York Minster’, in Saints and Cults in Medieval England, ed. S. Powell (Donington 2017), 299–317. 27. London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 26; M. Baker, ‘Medieval Illustrations of Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 16–49. 28. M. Gill and R. K. Morris, ‘A Wall-Painting of the Apocalypse in Coventry Rediscovered’, The Burlington Magazine, 143:1181 (August 2001), 467–73. 29. J. Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 3, Surtees Society, 45 (1864), 31–37. 30. Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 25), 18–19. 31. I. Freestone, J. Kunicki-Goldfinger, H. Gilderdale-Scott and T. Ayers, ‘Multi-Disciplinary Investigation of the Windows of John Thornton, focusing on the Great East Window of York Minster’, in The Art of Collaboration: Stained Glass Conservation in the Twenty-First Century, eds M. Shepard, L. Pilosi and S. Strobl (London and Turnhout 2010), 151–58. This was expanded in Freestone’s lecture ‘The Great East Window: Composition, Technology and Origins of the Glass’ (University of York symposium ‘A Decade of Discovery: The Great East Window – Ten Years On’, 10 November 2018). 32. T. Ayers, ed., The Fabric Accounts of St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster 1292–1396, vol. 2 (Woodbridge 2020), I, 43. 33. J. Harvey, English Medieval Architects: A Biographical Dictionary Down to 1550 (Gloucester 1984), 66–67. 34. Knowles, York School (as n. 17), 212; F. Collins, ed., Register of the Freemen of the City of York, vol. 1, 1272–1558, Surtees Society, 96 (1897) and R. B. Dobson, ‘Admissions to the Freedom of the City of York in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, 26:1 (1973), 1–22. 35. Between 1307 and 1349 only four had been admitted, while between 1350 and 1399 the names of sixteen were enrolled, rising to twenty between 1400 and 1449. See ‘The later Middle Ages: Admissions to Freedom’, in A History of the County of York: The City of York, ed. P. M. Tillott (London 1961), 114–16. British History Online, online at: www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/city-of-york/pp.114–116 [accessed 5 May 2018]. 36. Dobson, ‘Admissions to the Freedom’ (as n. 34), 17. 37. The small number of Minster windows that can be attributed to this period (e.g. s2) display some diminution in quality of both materials and artistry. 38. D. O’Connor and J. Haselock, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass’, in A History of York Minster, eds G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1979), 370–73. 39. I am grateful to my colleagues at the YGT, and particularly to Janet Parkin and Anna Milsom, for discussion of these issues. 40. These external guide-lines are often observed by conservators, but one of the earliest published observations and interpretations is S. Trümpler, ‘Rückseitige Vorzeichnungen auf Glasgemälden’, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Newsletter 45 (1994), 36–39. 41. Only an extremely fine line can be drawn in glass paint using a quill. The scale and breadth of the letters, together with ‘drag’ marks in the paint itself, make it clear that these texts were painted with a brush. Either a scribe was trained as a glass-painter, or a glass-painter had acquired skill as a scribe. 42. K. Staniland, ‘Court Style, Painters and the Great Wardrobe’, in England in the Fourteenth Century, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge 1986), 236–46; L. Monnas, ‘Embroideries for Edward III’, in The Age of Opus Anglicanum, ed. M. A. Michael (London 2016), 37–73. For Hugh of St Albans, see P. Binski, Medieval Craftsmen: Painters (London 1991), 12–14. 43. K. Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen: Embroiderers (London 1991), 23. 44. Cennino Cennini, Il Libro Dell’Arte, L. Broecke trans. and ed. (London 2015), 215. 45. L. F. Salzman, ‘Medieval Glazing Accounts’, Journal of British Society of Master-Glass-Painters 3 (1929–30), 25–30. 46. C. R. Dodwell, Theophilus: The Various Arts (London 1961), 47–48. 47. Ayers, Fabric Accounts of St Stephen’s Chapel (as n. 32), 1129.

155

sarah brown 48. Chestre was paid a weekly wage of 7s. Other masters drawing up designs were paid 12d per day. Glass-painters were paid only 7d per day, while those engaged in ‘breaking and fitting glass’ were paid 6d. 49. Monnas, ‘Embroideries for Edward III’ (as n. 42), 46, 54–5, 57. 50. For the early-16th-century glazing of Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at Westminster and for the later work at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, ‘vidimuses’ for translation into full-size cartoons were supplied to the royal glaziers. R. Marks, The glazing of Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey’, in The Reign of Henry VII, ed. B. Thompson (Stamford 1995), 157–74; H. G. Wayment, The Windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain, Supplementary vol. 1 (London 1972), 123–25. 51. A. Santolaria Tura, Glazing on White-Washed Tables – vitralls sobre taules de vitraller: la taula de Girona (Girona 2014). For the fragment of a table surviving in Brandenburg, see K. J. Maercke, ‘Überlegungen zu drei scheibenrissen auf dem “Böhmischen Altar” im Dom zu Brandenburg’, Östereichiche Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege, 40 (1986), 183–89. 52. J. A. Lasarte, J. Vila-Grau, et al., Els Vitrals de la Catedral de Girona, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Catalonia 2 (Barcelona 1987), 78–79, and Santolaria Tura, Glazing on White-Washed Tables (as n. 51), 64–65, for UV images showing underlying designs replaced by later adaptation of the Girona table. 53. YMLA MS L1/7, ff. 46r – 46v. 54. French, Great East Window (as n. 2), 11. 55. This observation was first made by Laura Tempest of the York Glaziers Trust. 56. J. C. Lancaster, ‘John Thornton of Coventry, Glazier’, Journal of British Society of Master-Glass-Painters, 12 (1958–59), 261–63. Lancaster’s article was first published in 1956 in the Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society. 57. Collins, Register of Freemen (as n. 34), 115; Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 25), 54; Knowles, York School (as n. 17), 217. 58. O’Connor and Haselock, for example, were prepared to attribute to ‘Thornton and his workshop’, all windows in the choir area west of and including the choir transepts (‘Stained and Painted Glass’ (as n. 38), 373–74), a conclusion largely shared by Richard Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (London 1993), 181, who excluded only the St Cuthbert window from this assessment. 59. For example, in 1972 Peter Gibson suggested that the best 15th-century glass in All Saints, North Street, should be associated with Thornton. Gibson (n. 18), 67–224, at 168. 60. This was the conclusion reached by Tom French, as much based on design as painting style: T. French, ‘The Thornton Workshop’, York Minster: The St William Window (Oxford 1999), 12–15.

156

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York GARETH DEAN AND JAYNE RIMMER

This paper discusses the standing and excavated evidence for late medieval vernacular buildings in York. It focuses on new work that uses dendrochronology and digital technologies and discusses how this is bringing new insights into our understanding of the form, function and uses of the smaller late medieval buildings in York. introduction York has a large collection of vernacular buildings that survive from the late medieval period. These take the form of timber-framed buildings, which would have commonly had jetties to their upper storeys and tiled roofs. Though the term ‘vernacular’ can be taken to mean a range of everyday architectures, it is used here to refer specifically to the domestic buildings in which ordinary people lived, worked and carried out their daily lives. Around 200 extant structures fall into this category.1 Alongside these relatively intact structures are a further unquantifiable number of surviving fragments of buildings that are the remains of nearly five centuries of subsequent alteration and rebuilding. In addition, given the ever-increasing body of evidence for late medieval houses uncovered through archaeological excavation, York is without doubt an exceptional case study for the investigation of late medieval houses. Particularly important among the standing and excavated evidence are the examples of dwellings which are often limited in size and generally do not have open halls as part of their plan. These buildings were commonly built in rows along street frontages, down the sides of plots or in courtyard spaces. Rather than the open hall being the prominent aspect of their layout, the design of these buildings focused on multifunctional, affordable spaces that could accommodate shop and workshop uses as well as domestic functions. In recent years, the application of new techniques and innovative approaches to the study of standing and excavated buildings has furthered our understanding of this important collection. Dendrochronology (the scientific method of dating timber-framed structures), coupled with the examination of the surviving structures and any available documentary evidence, has provided precise information about the construction dates of buildings. Geographic Information Systems, used as a means to integrate excavated evidence with documentary and cartographic data, has also been shedding new light on the use and development of medieval properties and tenements alongside their form and construction. By bringing together the research undertaken by buildings archaeologists and field archaeologists in this way, it is possible to offer © 2022 The British Archaeological Association

157

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

new insights into the function of late medieval urban buildings and to highlight the role of adaptability and flexibility in late medieval domestic life. the standing and excavated evidence for vernacular buildings in york A good starting point for understanding the range and character of the surviving evidence for late medieval buildings in York are the inventory volumes compiled by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (hereafter RCHME).2 Based on extensive fieldwork and documentary research carried out from the 1950s to the 1970s, these important publications were the first to quantify the extent and nature of the historic buildings surviving within the city from the medieval period onwards.3 The study found that timber-framed houses dating from the early 14th century onwards were present in the largest numbers in Petergate, Stonegate, Goodramgate and the Shambles, though there were others distributed across the city as a whole.4 The extent of the surviving medieval remains in York was said to have ‘exceeded expectations’, though it was also cautioned that several centuries of change and adaptation ‘have left disappointingly little evidence of the purpose and method of use of the older domestic and commercial buildings’.5 Particularly problematic was the lack of original evidence for heating and fireplaces. Only a small number of buildings (fifteen in total) were confidently identified as having open halls, along with a handful of others in a fragmentary condition. Four first-floor halls were also identified. Particularly prominent among the surviving buildings were the rows of two- or three-storey dwellings or shops built under a single roof, either as stand-alone buildings or as part of larger complexes.6 The largest three-storey examples of rows of houses have been dated to the 15th century. These are generally arranged in parallel with the street frontage in front of larger dwellings occupying the rear of a plot. There are examples of these at nos 28–32 Coppergate (Fig. 1), nos 41–45 Goodramgate (Fig. 2) and nos 47–51 Goodramgate (see map, Fig. 3). Nos 28–32 Coppergate has two parallel ranges: a three-storey jettied range to the street frontage which would have accommodated shops on the ground floor and a rear range which housed an open hall.7 The building was originally longer, with two further bays to the north-east. The rear range was accessed from a passageway between two of the units in the front range, identified by a porch formed from an unusually deep jetty which projected as far out as the second-floor jetty. Each of the shops had integral timber-framed shop frontages at ground-floor level, which originally had arched-headed windows. A lack of evidence at either ground or first floor for direct access between the street frontage shops and the rear range suggests that they were occupied separately.8 At nos 47–51 Goodramgate, the street frontage row of shops was positioned in front of a timber-framed rear range of four (originally five) bays, aligned at right-angles to it, which took the form of a Wealden House. In these examples, the commercial value of the street frontage was maximised with a row of shops, and the rear element was reserved for a larger building in single occupation as a domestic property. A number of two-storey examples also survive.9 Among this group is the earliest-known domestic timber-framed building in York. Lady Row, nos 64–72 Goodramgate (Fig. 4), has been dated by documentary evidence to 1316 and is arguably the most well-known example of a long range of urban small houses in 158

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 1.  Nos 28–32 Coppergate, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

the country. The row is seven bays long, though it may originally have been longer.10 Buildings of this kind were usually divided internally into a number of smaller, self-contained units which typically had a single room to the ground floor and a single room to the first floor, open to the roof. In addition to Lady Row, there are further examples at nos 12–15 Newgate; nos 1 and 2 All Saints’ Lane with no. 31 North Street (All Saints’ Cottages); and nos 30–32 Goodramgate and nos. 11–12 College Street.11 In addition to the RCHME survey, this group of buildings was also the subject of an 159

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 2.  Nos 41–45 Goodramgate, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

160

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 3.  Map of York showing the buildings and sites identified in this article Image: © Gareth Dean

161

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 4.  Lady Row, nos 64–72 Goodramgate, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

article by Philip Short, published in 1979, which analysed their construction dates, carpentry techniques and construction methodologies.12 He also drew attention to a building account dated to 1335 for a further row of houses, since demolished, constructed alongside the parish church of St Martin Coney Street.13 The study of urban vernacular buildings was very much in its infancy when the RCHME carried out its investigations in York, and there were only a few parallels known elsewhere. William Pantin’s work on late medieval house forms, which was at the forefront of research into urban buildings of the period, focused on larger examples.14 He had, however, drawn attention to Tackley’s Inn in Oxford, a three-storey example of a row of shops situated in front of a separately occupied rear range, similar to nos 28–32 Coppergate.15 As more investigations of late medieval buildings in larger towns are carried out, it is becoming increasingly clear that surviving examples of two-storey ranges of smaller properties, particularly those dating to the 14th century, are quite rare. There are examples of long ranges in other towns and cities such as nos 34–50 Church Street, Tewkesbury, nos 157–62 Upper Spon Street, Coventry, and nos 2–13 Gildencroft, Norwich, but these all date to the 15th century and later.16 This means that the York evidence for ranges of small houses is especially important. The 162

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

interpretation of these simple and rather humble dwellings can, however, be challenging from the standing evidence alone. The removal of original internal fixtures and fittings such as chimneys, staircases or internal partitions means that it can be incredibly difficult to ascertain how the single ground floor or upper rooms were used by their occupants. It is only through a combination of buildings archaeology, excavation and documentary research that we are now beginning to understand them further. As with any form of evidence, the below-ground archaeology can add considerably to our understanding of late medieval vernacular buildings. Access to information from excavations is increasingly available through online resources, notably the Archaeological Data Service grey literature library, which means that there is a wealth of information from commercial excavations relating to the form and character of medieval buildings that can be explored.17 However, the retention, modification or subsequent replacement of buildings along the street frontage limits the opportunities to excavate and record evidence for earlier buildings because it is often destroyed, or access is limited. It is the areas behind buildings on the street front that are often less disturbed by later alterations, and information from work here has driven interpretations of the use and function of medieval tenements. However, in some cases well-preserved deposits associated with street frontage activity do survive, particularly where they have been protected beneath early standing buildings, where rebuilding has been limited or cellars have not been added. Another limitation on evidence is that most excavations are small in scale and development-led. These rarely allow the opportunity for the extensive excavation and recording of whole tenements. However, there are exceptions such as the excavations at St Andrewgate in York, which produced evidence for street front buildings dating from the 12th to the late 14th century.18 Where excavations do occur on street fronts, the evidence is, by its very nature, predisposed toward the ground floors of buildings. Peter Addyman undertook a key study of the potential of below-ground archaeology for the study of late medieval architecture in York.19 He drew on the York Archaeological Trust excavations of medieval buildings in the city and used examples from Aldwark, Skeldergate and Coppergate, which have since been published in detail.20 Addyman discussed the archaeological evidence with a focus on the development of construction methods, from the earth-fast timber buildings of the 10th and 11th centuries to the introduction of stone sill walls and the use of sill walls and padstones from the mid-13th century. Subsequent excavations in the city have added considerably to the corpus of below-ground evidence for York’s medieval vernacular architecture; however, although several sites have been published, many still await analysis.21 A review of York’s medieval vernacular architecture supported many of Addyman’s original conclusions.22 Analysis of the below- and above-ground archaeology indicates that construction methods varied across the city, often within the same street and between adjoining properties. These variations may reflect different periods of construction but perhaps also properties under different ownership. The standard construction method for later medieval vernacular architecture was designed to support timber-framed buildings, with foundations consisting of either a continuous sill wall or interrupted sill wall made of limestone blocks or a mixture of tile and stone rubble bonded with lime mortar. Interrupted sills have padstones usually made of limestone blocks. The construction methods for foundations recorded in excavations can also be observed in the surviving medieval buildings in York, although it is through archaeology that 163

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

the most detailed understanding of construction methods can be recorded. It is timely to review the work on vernacular buildings below the ground, as approaches to the study of buildings are changing. These changes are driven by new approaches within archaeology to the use of material culture, with greater consideration of the use of artefacts to determine activities and provide insights to develop a fuller understanding not only of outline form and function but also of the varied and multiple uses of structures in daily life.23 approaches to the study of urban vernacular buildings The use of dendrochronology in the study of timber-framed buildings has had a significant impact on the understanding of the construction and development of individual structures, as well as the broader knowledge of the chronology of carpentry methodologies in late medieval buildings, from place to place.24 In York, it has the potential to refine further the dates previously assigned to buildings and ultimately to challenge and improve the understanding of the development of timber-framed construction practices within the city. The dating of timber-framed buildings, as with other kinds of buildings, relies on the identification of stylistic details or carpentry and construction techniques and comparing them with other buildings of known date. Documentary evidence, if available, is also crucial in ascertaining the date of a building. Where there are no particular architectural embellishments, which is often the case with more humble dwellings, or where a construction technique is known to span a long period of time, it can be very difficult to identify anything other than a broad date for a building. Archaeologists need to develop methodologies that allow the integration of archaeological, documentary, cartographic and other evidence to challenge the arbitrary spatial and temporal boundaries imposed by developer-funded archaeology.25 Over the last thirty years, archaeologists have increasingly begun to use computer software called GIS (Geographic Information System). The benefit of GIS is that it allows the creation of multilayer and multiscale data that are geo-referenced (assigned realworld geographic co-ordinates). There has as yet been a limited application of spatial technologies such as GIS to medieval towns. The potential has been demonstrated, although the majority of explorations of urban landscapes have focused on periods later than the Middle Ages.26 The use of GIS has the potential to help overcome the problem that often hampers the interpretation and analysis of excavated evidence for vernacular buildings, which is, due to the nature of urban excavations, rarely conducted on a scale sufficient to allow a tenement or building to be examined in its entirety. Using GIS to study medieval buildings therefore provides a powerful tool for analysis, providing more sophisticated interpretations of tenements, structures and their uses. Dendrochronology and standing buildings Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating as it is otherwise known, is the scientific method of dating timber based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings, or growth rings.27 Where it is successful, the technique provides an accurate felling date for the timbers used in the construction of a building. It is important that this date is not confused with the construction date of a building itself. Timber-framed buildings 164

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

were generally constructed using unseasoned timber, that is, timber that had been newly felled. Tree-ring dating assists in the estimation of the construction date of a timber-framed building because the structure is likely to have been built within a short period after the timbers had been felled. It is therefore best used in the analysis of late medieval vernacular buildings alongside architectural and stylistic evidence for dating, along with any information gleaned from historical sources. York, and North Yorkshire more broadly, has historically proved to be a challenging area for the successful application of tree-ring dating.28 This is because the timbers used in buildings across the region often have widely spaced tree rings which do not match well against the reference chronologies used in the scientific dating process. Indications are that these timbers were from local woodlands, though further research is needed in order to identify sources of supply. Despite this, a number of late medieval domestic buildings in York have been successfully dated using these methods.29 These are: no. 2 Coffee Yard (Barley Hall); nos 10–11 Shambles; no. 60 Stonegate; nos 64–72 Goodramgate (Lady Row); nos 1 and 2 All Saints’ Lane with no. 31 North Street (All Saints’ Cottages); and nos 30–32 Goodramgate and nos 11–12 College Street.30 The tree-ring dating results have refined the estimated construction dates for each of these buildings. For example, nos 10–11 Shambles comprises a two-storeyed timber-framed block to the street frontage with an open hall to the rear.31 The open hall had previously been given a broad estimated date of the 15th century. Tree-ring dating placed the felling date of the timbers used in the construction of the open hall to within the period 1395–1440, that is, to the end of the 14th or the first half of the 15th century. Though the tree-ring dating results returned a date range rather than a specific single date, they have placed the likely date of the construction of this building to within the first half of the 15th century. A further example is no. 60 Stonegate, a three-storeyed range arranged parallel with the street frontage (Fig. 5).32 The date of the building had previously been estimated as the early or mid-14th century. Documentary evidence identified that the site was acquired by the Vicars Choral of York Minster in 1278. In 1415, it was identified as the ‘site with shops built on it and chambers above’, and the rents generated from the building supported the chantry of St Andrew in the Minster. The building has been tree-ring dated to 1322/23, allowing it to be attributed confidently to the early 14th century. In other cases, tree-ring dating has pushed back the estimated construction dates of buildings by up to a century, such as at Barley Hall, no. 2 Coffee Yard (Fig. 6). This building comprises two timber-framed ranges orientated at right-angles to each other.33 One of the ranges contains a two-bay open hall, and the other forms a storeyed cross-wing. When the building was first surveyed by the RCHME, it was in a semi-derelict condition, and not all of the internal timbers were exposed. A ballpark date of the 15th century was given for both ranges. The building was purchased by York Archaeological Trust in 1987 and reopened in 1993 following a comprehensive renovation project.34 The timbers were sampled for tree-ring dating during the renovation works. The timbers in the storeyed range were dated to 1359/60, and the hall range was identified as having been built from timbers with a range of dates from between 1425 and 1451, with a later phase of alteration or adaptation in 1515.35 The tree-ring dates, coupled with the architectural analysis of the building and documentary research into the ownership of the site, has enabled a more nuanced understanding of the use of the building over time. In 1361, a building on this site was linked 165

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 5.  No. 60 Stonegate, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

with the Priory of St Oswald’s, an Augustinian priory in Nostell, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire.36 It was referred to in a documentary source as a ‘hospitium’, suggesting that it was used as urban accommodation for the priors of Nostell, who were canons prebendary at York Minster. The two-storey range is closely aligned in date with this reference and could well have formed part of the building described in the document. By 1466, the priory had leased out a building on the site to a private tenant, William Snawsell, who became lord mayor of York in 1468. The construction of the new hall range has been associated with this later change of use. GIS and integrated archaeological analysis Through GIS, it is possible to bring together documentary, cartographic and archaeological data as individual layers to a single digital map. GIS also operates as a database, allowing the addition of textual and archaeological information to the spatial data. This can be used to run queries to isolate information by different categories such as ownership, date, artefact type or specific archaeological layers. An example of the flexibility and potential of GIS for the study of medieval buildings is research in Petergate, a street rich in medieval timber-framed structures dating from 166

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 6.  Barley Hall, no. 2 Coffee Yard, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

the 14th to the 16th century, commonly of three storeys, that give a good impression of the character of the medieval street.37 At nos 62–68 Low Petergate, GIS was used to analyse documentary and archaeological information, drawing together a number of different programmes of work. The first investigation was undertaken by the RCHME prior to the demolition of buildings in 1957–58, which included the demolition of the Fox Inn, located at no. 66 Low Petergate, probably built in the second half of the 15th century, which had four unjettied storeys with its gable facing the street and a two-storeyed block containing a first-floor hall at the rear. During this work excavations were undertaken by L. P Wenham, with subsequent investigation undertaken by York Archaeological Trust during renovation and new building work in 2004.38 Research by Sarah Rees Jones on the documentary evidence for tenements within Petergate has given insights into ownership and occupation in the medieval period.39 The work at nos 62–68 Low Petergate presented various challenges in interpretation to analyse and draw together the information. These included the difficulty of assimilating trenches excavated at the street frontage with those to the rear of the tenements; the problems extracting comparable data from the records of excavations carried out in two different periods (1957–58 and 2004); and combining this with the documentary records from the medieval period. Overall, the data suggested well-preserved evidence for a street-front building, dated to the late 13th and early 14th century, with evidence for a more ephemeral earth-fast building at the rear. Using 167

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

GIS to create different layers (archaeological, cartographic and documentary) and as a database allowed the interrogation and integrated analysis of the evidence for tenement boundaries to identify contemporary evidence for activity. This approach provided a contextual overview of the development of each tenement, as well as its relationships with adjoining tenements. This led to a more advanced understanding of the development and use of the tenements from the 13th to the late 15th century and indicated that in some of the tenements lighter industrial activities, perhaps associated with the finishing of objects, took place at the front of the properties, with heavier industrial activities focused to the rear of the properties, often in ephemeral structures, with evidence for large-scale furnaces used for melting copper alloy, casting, tiled working areas and quenching pits.40 For example, a tenement engaged in large-scale metalworking at the rear also produced contemporary evidence for the building at the street front. The excavations identified successive clay and mortar floors to the front, while the rear room had a floor of limestone pieces and crushed limestone. The front room was used as a workshop, probably for lower-temperature activities such as working copper-alloy sheet and, perhaps, the finishing of cast items.41 The evidence also indicates that the tenements were not all engaged in the same activity. The residents of the adjoining tenements were also working in iron, which could suggest the manufacture of knife blades, belt fittings and rivets. The leather-working waste and the evidence for recycling of rivets from scabbards could suggest the manufacture of sheaths. The archaeology also correlated with the documentary reference to horners working in the area, which describes the tenement at the corner of Hornpot Lane and Petergate as occupied by Thomas the Horner in the late 13th century.42 The excavations of the tenements associated with Thomas identified, just behind the street frontage range, a large horn-working pit. Horn, and the associated evidence for bone plates, indicated the manufacture of knife handles. The ability to use GIS to assess the dating, artefact assemblages, structural and occupation evidence across a group of tenements indicates that from c. 1250 to c. 1400 the artisans living in the tenements were collaboratively working across different trades to make a finished item or items associated with the cutlery trade.43 The sharing of activities to produce a finished item has implications for how we think about social interactions between the occupants, primarily on a business basis, but this may also have led to the development of close personal ties between households. Heather Swanson argues that the cutlers’ authority in the 14th century was enhanced by the control that they had over subsidiary industries, particularly the sheathers; the close relations implied by the shared production of items for the cutlery trade may not always have been harmonious.44 The use of layers and the addition of tabular data within GIS enhance the ability to analyse the spatial data from multiple archaeological trenches alongside the documentary and cartographic evidence. This arguably allows analysis of the urban landscape as a whole, moving freely between the intra-site analysis of a tenement to the inter-site analysis of adjoining tenements, and potentially the city, across a range of temporal periods. GIS is therefore a powerful tool for the analysis of medieval buildings, allowing the interrogation of the architectural and documentary evidence alongside artefact assemblages and moving beyond the descriptive analysis of building forms and craft/ domestic activities to the impacts these have on the evolution of the medieval streetscape and social interactions.45 168

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

new insights into smaller housing The investigation of rows of small houses through the standing remains and belowground archaeology enables a more sophisticated understanding of the form and function of these important buildings. The use of dendrochronology and GIS analysis in these investigations sheds further light on their design and dating, coupled with an understanding of internal features such as hearths and chimneys, as well as floor surfaces and the layouts of internal rooms. Design The surviving two-storeyed examples of rows of smaller houses in York at nos 64–72 Goodramgate (Lady Row), nos 12–15 Newgate, and nos 1 and 2 All Saints’ Lane with no. 31 North Street (All Saints’ Cottages) were all built by parish churches on churchyard boundaries. In 1316, William de Langetofte, the vicar of Holy Trinity Goodramgate, was granted permission to build a row of houses in the southern part of the churchyard.46 Nos 12–15 Newgate have also been linked with a document dated to 1337, which granted permission for chaplain Sir Hugh le Botoner to build rentable houses on the churchyard of St Sampson’s church facing Newgate.47 Although he was permitted to build there because this part of the churchyard was unused for burials, excavations adjacent to this building identified a series of burials immediately below the construction level of the row, probably dating to the 13th or early 14th century.48 All Saints’ Cottages are situated on the north side of the parish church of All Saints’ North Street and, although there is no surviving medieval documentation to confirm their foundation, they have continually been owned and rented out by the church. It was not only parish churches which were building properties of this kind. The rental accounts of large institutional landlords in York such as the Vicars Choral of York Minster and the York Bridgemasters show that they held a large number of cottages and shops among their property holdings.49 The buildings in the rent accounts were generally organised by street, and shops and cottages were often identified in groups of six or more, with similar if not identical rental values, indicating that they related to rows of smaller dwellings. Ranges of buildings were economical to build, which, much in the same way as the modern brick-built terrace, made them especially attractive to developers and investors looking to profit from the rent of housing.50 The basic timber-framed design of a long range divided by trusses, in which individual units shared party walls and a single roof, was economical in terms of building materials and could be erected relatively quickly and easily. Such ranges could be adapted in length and area to suit any shape or size of plot. They could be aligned in parallel with the street frontage or at right-angles to it and could also occupy corner plots. Lady Row, for example, is arranged in parallel with the street frontage, along a belt of vacant land on the south side of the church of Holy Trinity Goodramgate. All Saints’ Cottages are positioned at right-angles to the main street frontage. These ranges were especially suited to long, narrow plots such as the strips of lands available on the boundaries of churchyards. It is perhaps no accident that those which have survived are those built by the church on churchyard boundaries, which have come under less pressure for redevelopment. The archaeological evidence shows that the footings for rows of houses often consisted of shared stone sill walls running along the front and rear of properties, as 169

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

well as the external and internal dividing walls, for example at Aldwark, Silver Street, Grape Lane and Little Stonegate (see below).51 At the southern end of Grape Lane, the excavated row had a rear sill wall constructed of limestone blocks that extended across four plots. The individual tenements within the building were defined by sill walls constructed of tile and limestone that presumably would have supported lath and timber partitions. The internal sill walls indicate each tenement within the row measured 10 ft (3 m) wide, and although the frontages of the building were beyond the limit of excavation, this size compares well with surviving 14th-century rows in York. At no. 9 Little Stonegate, evidence for what may have been a row of small houses dating to the mid-to-late 13th and the early 14th century was excavated. These buildings had footings of clay, tile and limestone blocks, with floor surfaces consisting of clay, sand and mortar and several hearths of tile and clay. The excavations showed these buildings had an industrial use associated with casting of copper-alloy objects.52 Excavations adjacent to the standing portion of nos 12–15 Newgate have shown that rows of houses were also extended over the course of the late medieval period, presumably as they proved to be profitable investments. The three properties excavated at the south-eastern end of the row showed that the rear wall was constructed as part of the initial development and formed a substantial limestone sill wall. This was dressed and finished to a high standard and undoubtedly also formed the boundary wall for the burial ground of St Sampson’s Church (Fig. 7a and 7b). Divisions between the properties within the row were indicated by low stone sill walls abutting the rear wall. The excavations showed that the row was not built in one phase, with the unit formerly abutting nos 12–15 Newgate initially marking the end of the row. This unit was modified to incorporate a substantial brick-lined cess pit after the initial construction of the row, which was subsequently filled in and the row extended with three further tenements in the 15th century.53 The majority of the cottages in a row of small houses would have been arranged as one-up, one-down dwellings with a single open space at ground- and first-floor level and each unit accommodated in a single bay between two cross-frames. Although these structures were built to a common design, the York evidence shows that there were a number of subtle but important differences in the plan and layout of each row, as well as individual cottages within them. Lady Row comprises a series of one-up, one-down units, divided by the bay divisions, and is jettied to the main street frontage. The first-floor area is open to the roof. The central cottage is an exception, having been arranged across two bays and therefore being twice as large as the others. The open, unframed central truss at first-floor level forms a centre-piece that was finished to a higher quality of carpentry than any of the other trusses in the row, suggesting that this room may have been designed with the pretensions of a first-floor hall.54 Nos 12–15 Newgate (Fig. 8) and All Saints’ Cottages (Fig. 9) are similar to Lady Row in the respect that the majority of the cottages within each row were probably one-up, one-down dwellings occupying a single bay. However, nos 12–15 Newgate have an external jetty to both the front and rear of the building, which meant that the upper room was substantially larger than the ground-floor area.55 Although limited in space, there would have been a clear distinction between the architecture of the two floors in that the first floor would have been a larger space open to the roof with more access to light and the ground-floor area would have been more restricted. All Saints’ Cottages are the only example of a row of two-storey dwellings in which one of the units in the row contained an open hall from floor to roof. The row comprises three 170

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 7A.  Boundary wall of the former burial ground, St Sampson’s Church, York: looking north-east Photo: © York Archaeological Trust

171

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 7B.  Boundary wall of the former burial ground of St Sampson's Church, York, looking south-west Photo: © York Archaeological Trust

dwellings, two of which were arranged as one-up, one-down cottages jettied out on one side into All Saints’ Lane. The third cottage in the row, strategically positioned on the corner of All Saints’ Lane and North Street, is arranged at right-angles to the other two cottages and is larger and more sophisticated in its overall design. This cottage is two-bays wide and jettied out on two sides towards both street frontages, and has an open hall. One of the bays within the cottage forms a two-storey wing, while the other forms a hall open from the ground to the apex of the roof. To further emphasise the difference between this cottage and the others, the corner post on no. 31 North Street is decorated with carved quatrefoils and flowers. The architecture of the standing examples shows not only that the basic design of a row of multiple units under a single roof was extremely flexible but also that the design of individual units within a row could be diverse and could range from the very simplest one-up, one-down dwelling to the more sophisticated structure incorporating an open hall. The simple plan of timber-framed rows of houses also meant that their internal spaces were very flexible. Internal spaces could be subdivided or amalgamated and rearranged over time, depending on the needs of individual tenants. The repair and maintenance accounts of the Vicars Choral and the York Bridgemasters show that timber partitions with daub and plaster or lath and plaster infill panels were often inserted into houses on their estates.56 At Lady Row, the bay divisions between each of the individual cottages, particularly at ground-floor level, are incredibly light on their internal framing. The absence of internal studwork to the ground-floor trusses between nos 64 and 66 Goodramgate also suggested that bays could be easily opened or closed 172

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 8.  Nos 12–15 Newgate, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

depending on the requirements of the occupants. At first-floor level, the wide studwork facilitated the insertion of doorways in closed trusses, such as in no. 68 Goodramgate. Dating Tree-ring dating at Lady Row, All Saints’ Cottages and a further row of houses at 30–32 Goodramgate and nos 11–12 College Street (Fig. 10) has furthered our 173

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 9.  All Saints’ Cottages, nos 31 North Street and 1–2 All Saints’ Lane, York Photo: © Jayne Rimmer

understanding of the construction dates of these buildings.57 Lady Row is dated to 1316 based on documentary sources.58 It has been linked with a charter dated to 1315, in which the parishioners of the parish church of Holy Trinity Goodramgate requested permission to construct a range of houses 128 ft by 18 ft within their churchyard.59 Permission was granted the following year. Tree-ring dating confirmed the date of the building as 1316.60 It also revealed a number of timbers used in the construction of the building dated to 1311 and 1315. All of these timbers were original to the building and showed no sign of reuse. This suggested that the range had been constructed using timbers of multiple felling dates, and probably from multiple sources. This finding is particularly important to the study of the construction of late medieval timber-framed buildings because it is often thought that newly felled timber bought wholesale from a single source was used in building projects. The identification of such minute details in the fabric of the building is often impossible. Tree-ring dating at Lady Row has therefore exposed evidence for building practices, as well as confirming the date of construction. Tree-ring dating at All Saints’ Cottages has also substantially revised the widely known estimate for the construction date of this building. Though there are no 174

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 10.  (a) Nos 30–32 Goodramgate and (b) 11 and 12 College Street, York Photos: © Jayne Rimmer

175

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

surviving late medieval documents to link this building with the church, it has been continuously in the ownership of All Saints’ North Street and was probably built in this context. The timber frame was dated by tree-ring sampling to 1398.61 It was probably built at the very end of the 14th century or beginning of the 15th century. This resolved previous disagreements over the construction date of the cottages. The RCHME dated the building to the second half of the 15th century, whereas Philip Short suggested an alternative date within the first half of the 15th century.62 Tree-ring dating shows that Short’s estimated date was closer to the actual date of construction, though it was probably earlier than even he had assumed. Nos 30–32 Goodramgate and nos 11–12 College Street occupy a plot of land to the corner of College Street and Goodramgate which was formerly owned by the Vicars Choral of York Minster and known as ‘Cambhall’.63 A building account documenting the apparent construction of a range or ranges of smaller houses dating to 1360–64 has been linked with these surviving structures.64 Tree-ring dating analysis has ascertained that the majority of the timbers sampled from this building fell within the date range 1294–1318.65 At least one of the timbers was dated to 1298, and a second to 1308. The structure has seen much alteration and adaptation over time, particularly in the roof, where the majority of the samples were taken. There is always a danger with identifying a precise date of construction in a building which has seen a lot of change on a relatively small number of secure tree-ring-dated samples. However, these results tentatively suggest that timbers used in the construction of the building date to the early 14th century rather than the later 14th century. The building account of 1360–64 provides details about the payments made in relation to the construction of buildings on the Cambhall site.66 They show that, as well as newly felled timber, a significant amount of stockpiled, pre-seasoned timber was purchased during the construction project. A timber-framed building was even taken down elsewhere and brought to Cambhall for use in the new project. This could account for the earlier dates identified through tree-ring dating. However, a further piece of documentary evidence could support an earlier date for the building. In 1298, the Vicars Choral acquired Cambhall from Archbishop of York John le Romeyn, who bequeathed it to them on his death in 1296.67 The plot was described as a ‘stone messuage with buildings’.68 A date of 1298 sits within the date ranges identified during the tree-ring dating. Could it be that this range was constructed following the transfer of the site to the Vicars Choral? They were certainly investing in rows of smaller houses around this time.69 Regardless of how this range of buildings is ultimately interpreted, it is an exciting prospect that there may be standing late medieval buildings in York, either small or large, which are earlier than Lady Row. Tree-ring dating is therefore incredibly important for the future investigation of timber-framed buildings in York. The application of the technique has the potential to challenge the long-held assumptions about building dates and to refine further our understanding of how buildings were constructed and changed over time. Hearths and chimneys One problematic area for the interpretation of rows of houses, and late medieval buildings in general, is the provision of heating. This has largely centred around the lack of surviving evidence for heating and cooking facilities within standing structures. As storeyed dwellings, they are unlikely to have had open hearths, and this has led 176

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

some commentators to suggest that these buildings were not inhabited at all, rather that they functioned as lock-ups, with shops and workshops on the ground floor and storage areas to the first floor.70 Others have suggested that, if they did have a domestic function, then their occupants may have bought their meals ready-prepared from cook shops and other outlets rather than cooking in their own homes.71 It is possible, of course, that only the first floor of these structures was heated by a chimneystack, or by portable equipment such as a brasier. All of these suggestions are plausible: the architectural evidence shows that these simple structures were by their very nature incredibly adaptable, and the uses of these buildings could have been equally varied and flexible. The evidence for the function of the ground- and first-floor spaces of timber-framed rows, particularly in the form of original heating arrangements, has often not stood the test of time.72 The lack of survival of early chimneys is partly because they could be comparatively ephemeral, with flues built of lath, rough plaster or brick, as recorded in documents from London, York and Sandwich.73 It is also likely that the insertion of brick stacks has removed evidence for earlier heating arrangements; excavations have shown the fireplaces were often in the same location.74 Smoke-blackening within the roofs of standing structures can often be a sign of the position of early heating facilities, though these can be difficult to identify securely in urban buildings which have seen a high turnover of tenants over time. Hearths are commonly recorded in the excavation of tenements within York, usually constructed of edge-set tiles bonded with clay or mortar. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the position of hearths within buildings could change over time, as they were moved in association with the relaying of floors or changes to the organisation of space within tenements. To take nos 12–15 Newgate as an example, the earliest phase of the excavated tenements had a sequence of clay floors interspersed with tips of silts and mortar with tile hearths. The hearths were set slightly forward from the rear wall of the row, which may have allowed room for a fireback to protect the external wall of the tenement. In excavated tenements in Grape Lane, hearths were found to move within structures associated with the relaying of floors. For example, in Structure A, by the 15th century the hearth had moved to a position abutting the external wall. To protect the wall from the effects of the fire, tiles and stones were bonded against the sill wall to provide a fireback (Fig. 11), unlike the earliest hearth, which was located against the internal division within the tenement (Fig. 13). One of the common repair tasks undertaken by institutional landlords in rented property was the insertion of louvres. Louvres are often thought to have been structures mounted on roofs, though it is possible that ventilation systems could have been installed in other parts of the building, and perhaps even in walls.75 It is in the 15th and 16th centuries that there is archaeological evidence for the insertion of more permanent fireplaces with the addition of brick chimney stacks. The addition of brick stacks involved alterations to the rear walls of properties, and this was shown in excavations in Grape Lane and Little Stonegate. Structure B in Grape Lane (Fig. 11) and a tenement in Little Stonegate both had a padstone and interrupted rear sill wall. In both tenements, the sill wall was removed on one side of the padstone to accommodate a tile hearth which projected back from the rear wall of the building. Around the hearth and abutting the rear of the property were the fragmentary remains of the brick chimney stack. It was unclear in both excavations whether the hearths were used for domestic or industrial activity; they could have been for either.76 177

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 11.  Plan showing 15th- and 16th-century excavated structures A and B to the southeast side of Grape Lane, York Image: © Gareth Dean

178

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Across York, hearths, often with an industrial function, have been recorded in buildings fronting the street as well as in ephemeral buildings in the back lands behind tenements. That tenements were also flexible in the organisation of space is indicated by the movement of hearths within buildings, although a position against the external wall seems to become more common from the 14th or 15th century. The evidence for ground-floor hearths and the possibility that they had smoke hoods has implications for how the rest of the building is understood. Where hearths were placed against internal divisions, any chimney running through the building would also split the first floor into two spaces; whether this would have been formalised with a partition on the first floor is unknown. The movement of hearths therefore had implications for the upper floors, perhaps leading to the reorganisation of spaces at this level. It is also possible that industrial hearths were multifunctional, serving domestic functions at the end of a working day. Floors, rooms and function The excavated evidence for the street front buildings provides insights into the various uses of the ground floors of buildings. Excavations in York have shown accumulations of floor surfaces that correlate with the documentary evidence for the laying of floors, through the deposition of bands of mortar and clay.77 Activities carried out on upper floors are often lost to the excavator, with artefacts associated with buildings or associated rubbish pits often residual, but there may be debris from life and work in the immediate vicinity.78 However, the relaying of floors has the potential to preserve evidence associated with activity within a building, and differences in floor surfaces within buildings can indicate different rooms or areas used for different functions. Taking the example of a possible row of house excavated in Grape Lane (Fig. 12), internal divisions were represented by sill walls, and the position of fixtures or structures associated with their use were indicated by groups and lines of stakeholes. Each of the properties within the row showed the ground floors were used for metal-working, as indicated by slag and mould fragments from casting copper alloy, probably with raised forges and bellows. Another possible row of cottages was excavated in Little Stonegate and also appeared to be used for metal-working. In the 14th or 15th century the properties were cleared, and new tenements were constructed to a better standard, with sill walls consisting of shaped limestone blocks mortared together (also seen in the construction of the sill walls at nos 12–15 Newgate), which may suggest a row of tenements was constructed at the street frontage. Within the properties there was again evidence for floor surfaces of clay and sand, with several tile hearths recorded and continuing evidence for metalworking.79 Two tenements (Fig. 13) excavated on the south-east side of Grape Lane, which did not form part of the row discussed above, and dated to the 14th–15th centuries, reflect the variations in construction and use of properties within the same street.80 Structure A comprised three sill walls consisting of a single course of limestone blocks with a central post-pad. Internal divisions were indicated by differences in floor surfaces, dividing the street front into two narrow rooms with a larger room spanning the full width of the building at the rear. On either side of these partitions, there were layers of clay or compact deposits of sandy material containing quantities of tile and traces of mortar, which probably represent the remains of floors. This is based on the similarities with the documentary descriptions for floors, which record 179

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

Fig. 12.  Plan showing the excavated remains of a possible row of 14th-century small houses to the south-east side of Grape Lane, York Image: © Gareth Dean

180

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 13.  Plan showing 14th-century excavated structures A and B to the south-east side of Grape Lane, York Image: © Gareth Dean

181

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

the importation of barrows of earth that could be skimmed with mortar.81 Variations in the characteristics of the floor deposits within Structure A indicate different uses of the rooms. One of the two front rooms had multiple floors with lensed layers of clay with inclusions of ash, mortar and charcoal, and evidence for a series of timber posts or stakes around which had accumulated a series of ashy deposits as well as an area of burnt clay. Artefacts recovered from these deposits included casting waste, copper-alloy buckles and pins. There was no clear evidence of a hearth, but the evidence for posts might represent the frame of a bellows associated with a raised forge or hearth; a similar interpretation was proposed for posts and burnt areas in a copper-alloy workshop dated to the 14th or 15th century in St Andrewgate.82 The other front room was heavily truncated by later disturbance, but the surviving floor deposits consisted of compact light brown clay and sand with inclusions of tile and charcoal flecks; notably, there was no evidence of burning. The rear room had a floor of yellow mortar, crushed limestone and compact brown clay with a hearth of edge-set tiles, adjacent to the internal division with the front rooms, which appears to have been replaced or repaired on at least one occasion. There were no spreads of ash or heat discolouration of the floors, but artefacts collected from this area included copper-alloy objects and copper-alloy sheet fragments. It is possible that this room also operated as a workroom using lower temperature activities, such as the cold working of metal or the finishing of objects through filing and sanding.83 There was a higher quantity of pottery in the deposits associated with this room in the form of jugs, and a bead from a rosary was also recovered. It is possible this room was multifunctional, serving as both an industrial and domestic space. The second tenement, Structure B, was of a similar size but was of a different construction. It shared one wall with Structure A, and the rear wall foundations consisted of an interrupted sill wall with padstones, while a continuous limestone sill wall formed the south-west side of the building. The dwarf wall between the padstones in the rear wall was constructed of stone with tile. On the south-west side of Structure B was an alley that gave access to the rear of the tenements. Unlike Structure A, there was no clear evidence for internal divisions, and the ground floor appears to have been used as a metal-smith’s workshop, predominantly for copper alloy and perhaps iron-working. A possible working area was located towards the front of the building, with tentative evidence for the base either for an anvil or bellows and a raised forge. Within the rest of the building there was patchy evidence for sequences of floors made of clay or limestone chippings and fragments of tile, suggesting several relaying or repair events. Some of these surfaces at the rear of the building showed evidence for burning, and at least one contained copper-alloy waste. While the Grape Lane properties appeared to have the front ground-floor rooms used as workshops, a tenement excavated on the north-east side of Little Stonegate also dated to the 14th–15th century suggests the creation of specific spaces within buildings for industrial activity (Fig. 14). The room at the front of the tenement showed no evidence for industrial or craft activity, but divisions of space within the property from different floor surfaces, and a space at the rear of the tenements, may have indicated the presence of stairs to the first floor. An outshot to the rear of the street-front building had a tile hearth positioned against the external wall, adjacent to which was a hardstanding of tile and stone. There was a block of limestone near the hearth which may have formed the base for an anvil. Near the anvil was a line of posts/stakes, the function of which is unclear but may have been associated with 182

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

Fig. 14.  Plan showing late-14th-century excavated structures to the north-east side of Little Stonegate, York Image: © Gareth Dean

183

gareth dean and jayne rimmer

lathes or other structures associated with craft activities. The floors within the building were of burnt clay and spreads of sand. Artefacts associated with these floors included 14th-century pottery and evidence for copper-alloy working indicating the production of dress fittings.84 The excavated evidence therefore indicates that the small houses of York did not just provide domestic or commercial space. Some trades, such as the metalworkers, leave a clear signature in the archaeological record, but consideration needs to be given to other trades which might not be so apparent. This can include leather-workers or bone-workers, who may only be represented by the discarded artefacts associated with their craft, as seen in excavations at Petergate, for example.85 conclusion: the future study of late medieval housing in york The RCHME volumes for York are a lasting resource which will continue to play an important role in the investigation of late medieval buildings in York. The reassessment of many standing buildings through documentary research and archaeological investigation, along with the discovery of many more examples through excavation as well as documentary research, means that our knowledge of late medieval buildings has expanded significantly since these volumes were published. In future, a general survey of new research into vernacular buildings of late medieval York, both through the study of standing structures and excavation, would offer an important update to the work of the RCHME. The application of new techniques such as tree-ring dating and GIS is also challenging some of the early interpretations of the dating and use of the buildings. A more nuanced and careful consideration of the excavated material evidence for vernacular buildings, be it artefacts, building techniques, the evidence for internal divisions, or the location of features such as hearths, can add to our understating of the use and function of ground floors. It also raises questions as to how we integrate the evidence from standing buildings, documentary sources and excavated evidence to gain as full a picture as possible of the form, function and uses of urban medieval buildings. In terms of the application of dendrochronology, timber-framed buildings in York are under-sampled compared to other medieval cities, and there is much scope for continuing this work further.86 The use of GIS in an urban context to interpret and analyse excavated evidence for medieval tenements and integrate it with documentary and cartographic evidence is also in its early stages, and there is potential to undertake further work on the excavated evidence in York, but also in other cities. The results from these studies have the potential to reveal information about individual buildings but also to further the understanding of the social and economic development of the city and areas within it. This is especially important for the future examination of smaller buildings, where it is only through the combined use of excavation, documentary and standing building evidence that we can really understand how they were used both in the late medieval period and, more broadly, over their lifetime. acknowledgements Jayne Rimmer would like to thank the owners and tenants of nos 64–72 Goodramgate (Lady Row), nos 30–32 Goodramgate and nos 11–12 College Street, and nos 1 and 2 All Saints’ Lane with no. 31 North Street (All Saints’ Cottages) for allowing access to 184

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York

their properties. The tree-ring dating was carried out with funding from the Vernacular Architecture Group, the Society for Medieval Archaeology and the National Trust. Both authors wish to thank York Archaeological Trust for their support with this research and Sarah Rees Jones for her invitation to contribute to this volume and for her comments on an early draft of this article.

notes 1. S. Rees Jones and D. Palliser, ‘York 1272–1536’, in The British Historic Towns Atlas Volume V York, ed. P. Addyman (Oxford 2015), 46. This estimate is based on the buildings covered in the RCHME volumes for York. 2. Information on later medieval buildings is found predominantly in volumes III and V: RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, III South-West of the Ouse (Oxford 1972); RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, V: The Central Area (London 1981). 3. For a history of the RCHME see A. Sargent, ‘ “RCHME” 1908–1998. A History of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England’, Transactions of Ancient Monuments Society, 45 (2001), 57–80. 4. RCHME, The Central Area (as n. 2), lviii–lxxv. 5. Ibid., xxi. 6. Ibid., lvii–lxii. 7. Ibid., 128. This building was later resurveyed: RCHME, ‘Historic Building Report 28–32 Coppergate, York, North Yorkshire’ (unpublished report T.B. No. 13279, London 1988). 8. J. Grenville, Medieval Housing (London 1997), 182–83. However, as part of the building has not survived, the potential for additional access points between the two ranges should not be completely ruled out. 9. RCHME, The Central Area (as n. 2), LVII–LXII. 10. Ibid., 143–45, monument 222. 11. Ibid., 143, monument 215; 171, monument 291. RCHME, South-West of the Ouse (as n. 2), 98–99, monument 104. 12. P. Short, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Rows of York’, Archaeol. J., 137 (1979), 86–136. 13. Ibid., 120–24. 14. Pantin’s most influential essays of the 1960s were: W. A. Pantin, ‘Medieval English Town-House Plans’, Med. Archaeol., 6–7 (1962–63), 202–39; W. A. Pantin, ‘Some Medieval English Town Houses. A Study in Adaptation’, in Culture and Environment, Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox, eds I. L. L. Foster and L. Alcock (London 1963), 445–78. 15. RCHME, ‘Historic Building Report 28–32 Coppergate’ (as n. 7). 16. A. Quiney, Town Houses of Medieval Britain (London 2003), 255–68. See also J. T. Smith, ‘English Town-Houses of the XVth and XVIth Centuries’, in La maison de ville à la renaissance: Recherches sur l’habitat urbain en Europe aux XVe et XVIe siècles, eds A. Chastel and J. Guillaume (Paris 1983), 89. 17. http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/ 18. R. Finlayson, Medieval Metalworking and Urban Life at St Andrewgate, Archaeology of York 10/7 (York 2004). 19. P. Addyman, ‘Vernacular Buildings Below the Ground’, Archaeol. J., 136 (1979), 69–75. 20. R. A. Hall, H. MacGregor and M. Stockwell, Medieval Tenements in Aldwark, and Other Sites, Archaeology of York 10/2 (London 1988); R. A. Hall and K. Hunter-Mann, Medieval Urbanism in Coppergate: Refining a Townscape, Archaeology of York 10/6 (York 2002). 21. For example see G. Dean, ‘Silver Street’ (unpublished report, York Archaeological Trust, 2005); G. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2012); Finlayson, Medieval Metalworking (as n. 18); K. Hunter-Mann, ‘22–24 Swinegate, York’ (unpublished report, York Archaeological Trust, 1992); N. Macnab, ‘The Wise Man Built His House Upon? Excavations at 9 Little Stonegate’,

185

gareth dean and jayne rimmer Interim, 23:1 (1999), 6–12; N. Macnab, Anglo-Scandinavian, Medieval and Post Medieval Urban Occupation at 41–49 Walmgate, York (https://yorkarchaeology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/41-49Wlamgate-AYW1.pdf) [accessed January 2019]; B. Reeves, ‘62–68 Low Petergate, Assessment report on an Archaeological Excavation’ (unpublished report, York Archaeological Trust, 2006); N. Macnab and D. T. Evans, ‘Former Primitive Methodist Chapel, 3 Little Stonegate, York’ (unpublished report, York Archaeological Trust, 1999). 22. R. A. Hall, ‘Secular Buildings in Medieval York’, in Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III: Der Hausbau, ed. M. Gläser (Lübeck 2001), 77–99. 23. R. Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge 2012), see chapter 4. 24. S. Pearson, ‘Tree-Ring Dating: A  Review’, Vernacular Architecture, 28 (1997), 25–39; S. Pearson, ‘The Chronological Distribution of Tree-Ring Dates, 1980–2001: An Update’, Vernacular Architecture, 32 (2001), 68–69. 25. C. Cessford, ‘Post-1550 Urban Archaeology in a Developer Funded Context: An Example from Grand Arcade, Cambridge’, in Crossing Paths or Sharing Tracks? Future Directions in the Archaeological Study of Post-1550 Britain and Ireland, eds A. Horning and M. Palmer (Woodbridge 2009), 318; D. Wheatley and M. Gillings, Spatial Technology and Archaeology: The Archaeological Applications of GIS (London 2002), 18. 26. For example K. Lilley, ‘Mapping the Medieval City: Plan Analysis and Urban History’, Urban History, 27 (2000), 5–30; K. Lilley, C. Lloyd and S. Trick, ‘Mapping Medieval Townscapes: GIS Applications in Landscape History and Settlement Study’, in Medieval Landscapes, eds M. Gardiner and S. Rippon (Macclesfield 2007), 27–42; K. Lilley, ‘Urban Mappings: Visualizing Late Medieval Chester in Cartographic and Textual Form’, in Mapping the Medieval City, ed. C. Clarke (Cardiff 2011); K. Lilley, ‘Mapping Truth? Spatial Technologies and the Medieval City: A Critical Cartography’, Post-Classical Archaeologies, 2 (2012), 201–24; K. Lilley and G. Dean, ‘A Silent Witness? Recovering the Landscapes of Medieval Towns Through Spatial Technologies and Material Culture’, J. Medieval History, 41:3 (2015), 273–91. 27. EH, Dendrochronology: Guidelines on Producing and Interpreting Dendrochronological Dates (Swindon 1998). 28. Personal communication, Cathy Tyers, Alison Arnold and Robert Howard. 29. The result of tree-ring dating in buildings in the United Kingdom are published in an online database: Vernacular Architecture Group (VAG), Dendrochronology Database [data-set] (York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor], 2018), https://doi.org/10.5284/1047564. 30. Ibid. These buildings have been identified through a location search for ‘York’ [accessed December 2018]. 31. RCHME, The Central Area (as n. 2), 214, monument 423. 32. Ibid., 225, monument 471. 33. Ibid., 232, monument 485. 34. C. Kightly, Barley Hall York (York 1999), 1–3. 35. Ibid., 4. 36. Ibid., 5–12. 37. RCHME, The Central Areas (as n. 2), 19; L. P. Wenham, ‘Excavations in Low Petergate’, Yorkshire Archaeol. J., 44 (1972), 65–113. 38. G. Geddes and I. Mason, ‘62–68 Low Petergate: A  Report on a Programme of Historic Building Recording’ (unpublished report, York Archaeological Trust, 2004); Reeves, ‘62–68 Low Petergate’ (as n. 21); Wenham, Low Petergate (as n. 37); Pantin, ‘Medieval English Town-House Plans’ (as n. 14). 39. S. Rees Jones, ‘Property, Tenure and Rent: Some Aspects of the Topography and Economy of York’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 1987). 40. Reeves, ‘62–68 Low Petergate’ (as n. 21). 41. D. T. Evans, ‘Trench 6 (service trench)’, in Reeves, ‘62–68 Low Petergate’ (as n. 21), 102–19; Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21), 209–10. 42. Rees Jones, ‘Property, Tenure and Rent’ (as n. 39). 43. G. Dean, ‘Space for Neighbourhood: Social Identity and the Built Environment in Medieval York’, in Spatial Cultures: Towards a New Social Morphology of Cities Past and Present, eds S. Griffiths and A. von Lünen (London 2016), 54–64.

186

Archaeology and the investigation of vernacular buildings in late medieval York 44. H. C. Swanson, ‘Craftsmen and Industry in Late Medieval York’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 1980), 198. 45. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21); G. Dean, ‘GIS, Archaeology and Neighbourhood Assemblages in Medieval York’, Post-Classical Archaeologies, 2 (2012), 7–30. 46. Short, ‘Rows of York’ (as n. 12), 91. 47. Ibid., 117; RCHME, The Central Area (as n. 2), 171, monument 291. 48. Dean, ‘Silver Street’ (as n. 21). 49. York Minster Archives, VC 4/1, VC 6/2; P. M. Stell, ed., York Bridgemasters’ Accounts, The Archaeology of York 2/2 (York 2003). 50. J. Rimmer, ‘Small Houses in Late Medieval York and Norwich’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2007–08), 29–63, 234–39. 51. Hall, MacGregor and Stockwell, Aldwark (as n. 20); Dean, ‘Silver Street’ (as n. 21); Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21). 52. Macnab, ‘The Wise Man’ (as n. 21). 53. Dean, ‘Silver Street’ (as n. 21). 54. RCHME, Central Area (as n. 2). 55. Ibid., 171, monument 291. 56. Rimmer, ‘Small Houses’ (as n. 50), 145–46. 57. A project to date these buildings using dendrochronology was carried out by Jayne Rimmer between 2011 and 2014. A further range, 99–101 Micklegate, York, was sampled for tree-ring dating but did not return a date because the rings were spaced too widely apart to cross-match with the available reference chronologies. References to the tree-ring dating reports are cited as relevant below. Short summaries of these results can also be found in the VAG, Dendrochronology Database (as n. 29). 58. RCHME, The Central Area (as n. 2), 143–45, monument 222. 59. Ibid. Also discussed in Short, ‘Rows of York’ (as n. 12), 86–96. 60. A. Arnold and R. Howard, ‘Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers from 64–72 Goodramgate (Lady Row), York’ (unpublished dendrochronology report, the Nottingham Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory, 2011). 61. A. Arnold and R. Howard, ‘Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers from Church Cottages, no. 31 North Street and nos. 1  & 2 All Saints’ Lane, York’ (unpublished dendrochronology report, the Nottingham Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory, 2012). 62. RCHME, South-West of the Ouse (as n. 2), 98–99, monument 104; Short, ‘Rows of York’ (as n. 12), 124–30. 63. Borthwick Institute, ‘Plan of Property belonging to the Vicars Choral of York situated in Goodramgate and College Street in the City of York’. The plan is dated to 1833. 64. Grenville, Medieval Housing (as n. 8), 164; C. Fraser, ‘The Building Account of the Vicars Choral: The Development of Benet Place and Camhall Garth, York, 1360–64’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of York, 1994). 65. A. Arnold and R. Howard, ‘Further Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers from 32 Goodramgate, York’ (unpublished dendrochronology report, the Nottingham Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory, 2014). 66. Rimmer, ‘Small Houses’ (as n. 50), 29–63. 67. N. Tringham, ed., Charters of the Vicars Choral of York Minster: City of York and Its Suburbs to 1546, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 148 (Leeds 1993), 99–100, note to charter 162. 68. Ibid. and 150–1, charters 162 and 268. 69. S. Rees Jones, ‘Historical Background to the Aldwark/Bedern Area’, in Aldwark (as n. 20), 56. 70. L. Alston, ‘Late Medieval Workshops in East Anglia’, in The Vernacular Workshop, eds P. S. Barnwell, M. Palmer and M. Airs (York 2004), 38–59; H. Clarke, S. Pearson, M. Mate and K. Parfitt, Sandwich: The ‘Completest Medieval Town in England’ – A Study of the Town and Port from its Origins to 1600 (Oxford 2010), 191; D. Keene, ‘Shops and Shopping in Medieval London’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in London, ed. L. Grant (BAA Transaction 1984) (Oxford 1984), 36. 71. M. Carlin, ‘Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England’, in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, eds M. Carlin and J. Rosenthal (London 1998), 27–51. 72. Smith, ‘English Town-Houses’ (as n. 16), 96.

187

gareth dean and jayne rimmer 73. Rimmer, ‘Small Houses’ (as n. 50), 143; J. Schofield, Medieval London Houses (London 2003), 115; S. Pearson, ‘Medieval Houses in English Towns: Form and Location’, Vernacular Architecture, 40 (2009), 9; Clarke et al., Sandwich (as n. 70), 186; Quiney, Town Houses (as n. 16), 109. 74. D. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester (Oxford 1985), 177. 75. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21), 47–48. 76. Ibid., 160; Macnab, ‘The Wise Man’ (as n. 21). 77. Gilchrist, Medieval Life (as n. 23), 120–21. 78. C. Gerrard, Medieval Archaeology (London 2003), 224; V. M. LaMotta and M. B. Schiffer, ‘Formation Processes of House Floor Assemblages’, in The Archaeology of Household Activities, ed. P. M. Allison (New York 2010); J. Schofield, London 1100–1600 (Sheffield 2011), 94. 79. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21), 149–50, 161–63; Macnab, ‘The Wise Man’ (as n. 21). 80. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21), 143–55. 81. Stell, Bridgemasters’ Accounts (as n. 49), 98; Rimmer, ‘Small Houses’ (as n. 50), 49. 82. Finlayson, Medieval Metalworking (as n. 18), 901–02. 83. R. F. Tylecote, The Early History of Metallurgy in Europe (Harlow 1987), 209–18; H. Hodges, Artifacts: An Introduction to Early Materials and Technology (London 1989), 64–79; C. Blair and J. Blair, ‘Copper Alloys’, in English Medieval Industries, eds J. Blair and N. Ramsey (London 2001), 85–9; Finlayson, Medieval Metalworking (as n. 18), 885. 84. Dean, ‘Urban Neighbourhoods’ (as n. 21), 155. 85. Reeves, ‘Low Petergate’ (as n. 21); Wenham, ‘Low Petergate’ (as n. 37). 86. Personal communication, Cathy Tyers.

188

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants DAVID HARRISON

York’s position as the North’s major trading, administrative and religious centre depended on its road as well as river connections. By the late Middle Ages, the city was linked to all parts of the county by a dense network of roads and mainly stone bridges, which are plotted below in a comprehensive map. In York itself, the importance of road transport is indicated by the number of bridges, not only Ouse Bridge but several over the River Foss. The construction and maintenance of roads and bridges was largely left to local initiative and often that of local merchants. The bridges were not only key pieces of infrastructure but also central to the life of the community. At Tadcaster Bridge, the sheriffs of York met kings and processed with them to the city. At a number of bridges there were chapels and utilities. Ouse Bridge, on which stood St William’s chapel, the council chamber, a clock, a market and the public lavatories, was at the centre of city life and remained so until 1810, when the bridge and other structures were demolished. Medieval York was the largest city in the north of England and its greatest centre of secular and ecclesiastical administration as well as a trading hub. Good communications were essential to these functions. York was a port, and goods were carried to and from the city by river: building stone was brought from the Tadcaster area, and lead, bought at Ripon, was carried by water from Boroughbridge.1 The citizens of York explained that the River Ouse was the very life-blood of their economy: The water of Ouse is a highway and the greatest of all the King’s rivers within the kingdom of England, and for the use of merchants in ships with diverse merchandise from the high sea to the city of York, and other places within the county.2

Road transport was also important to the city, and probably increasingly so in the later Middle Ages, as it was in other parts of England.3 York was at the centre of the Yorkshire road network. Major roads spread out from the city in all directions: to the important port of Hull in the east; to Malton and Scarborough to the north-east; to Durham and the north, with roads to Richmond and the north-west branching off after crossing the Swale at Catterick; to the west to Knaresborough and through the Skipton Gap to Lancashire; to Wakefield and the south-west via Tadcaster; and the busiest of all to the south. These roads had to cross the many rivers flowing from the Pennines as well as the Derwent and its tributaries to the east, and a large number of impressive bridges and, where necessary, causeways were constructed. Unfortunately, the medieval road network of Yorkshire has not been mapped; in contrast, the main outline of major Roman roads can readily be traced. As an © 2022 The British Archaeological Association

189

david harrison

inevitable result, historians ignore the former and give prominence to the latter. It is often assumed that the Roman roads maintained their importance in the Middle Ages, and this has led to maps of medieval Yorkshire regularly showing Roman roads even when they were little or not at all used. In fact, much of the road network of medieval Yorkshire, as elsewhere in England, differed to a very considerable extent from the Roman.4 Medieval roads can be traced in a number of ways: through references to them, for example to the via regia at a particular place, through itineraries and through locating the sites of medieval bridges. The large number of medieval bridges makes it clear that there was a dense network of important roads, and the frequency with which some bridges appear on itineraries provides evidence of the key routes; Fig. 1 is the first attempt to map the medieval bridges of the county and vividly illustrates this point. The most important crossing of the Aire on the road between the north and south of England was not the Roman one at Castleford but at Ferrybridge (Fig. 2), which provided a shorter route to Doncaster and the south. This was the key bridge taken by Edward IV on his way to the Battle of Towton.5 The bridge is mentioned by the early 13th century, when it was clearly important, as the custos pontis (bridge warden) received one of the earliest royal grants to collect tolls for its repair, often referred to as pontage grants.6 Vital to the effectiveness of the crossing was the causeway towards

Fig. 1.  Map of the medieval bridges of Yorkshire Source: Drawn by Jill Atherton, based on information supplied by David Harrison

190

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Fig. 2.  The medieval Ferrybridge from the West Riding Book of Bridges, 1752. The bridge was demolished c. 1800 Source: West Yorkshire Archive Service

Brotherton through the marshes north of the river, to which later grants refer.7 Detailed drawings of the bridge with its pointed arches are included in the West Riding ‘Bridge Book’ of 1752. It was demolished about fifty years later, John Carr submitting the winning entry for the construction of the new bridge in his seventies.8 For centuries travellers going south along the North Road from Boroughbridge went via the bridges at Wetherby and Ferrybridge, and from York by Tadcaster and Ferrybridge. Leland described this route travelling south, indicating where the medieval road turned away from the part of the Roman road still in use: Thus by the strait crest of Watheling Street a three miles or more, and then leaving it on the right hand I went to Brotherton. . .; and then by a causey of stone with divers bridges over it to dreane the low medow waters on the lift hand into Aire ryver, about a mile to Fery-bridge.9

While these routes were fixed and stable for long periods, elsewhere there was a range of options – with some roads more popular at different times. Margaret Harvey has made use of a remarkable court case from 1360 to shed light on the journeys made by over forty people from County Durham to York, a distance of about fifty miles. About one-third of the travellers were clergy, but there was also a maker of ecclesiastical vestments and several butchers and fishmongers. Many made the journey in a day, even in winter: two priests set off on 2 February from Darlington before sunrise and 191

david harrison

arrived at York just after vespers. While some travellers said people on good horses could do the journey in a day, another often walked the same distance.10 Everyone went via Northallerton, where they had to cross Brompton Beck over a bridge and causeway. While the Beck was a minor stream (the bridge had one arch when Leland saw it), it is a sign of how important the road was that a pontage grant was made for the repair of the ‘Northbrigg and causeway’ in 1358.11 On the other hand, there were several roads from York to Northallerton. One went to the east of the River Swale via Thirsk, possibly going along the altam viam through Easingwold and Sessay, where a small medieval bridge over Birdforth Beck still stands.12 The alternative route crossed the Swale at Thornton and Topcliffe; this latter route was still in use in 1603, when James I’s Queen, Anne of Denmark, passed this way.13 In the early 14th century there had been a third now-lost road via a bridge at Myton-on-Swale, the site of the Battle of Myton, 1319, which led both to Topcliffe to the north-east and the Great North Road to the north-west. However, the bridge was out of use by 1354. Land had been given to the abbey of St Mary’s, York, for building and maintaining the bridge, but it had failed to do so, taking funds from a ferry boat there. At the Dissolution the abbey was still extracting an annual income from the ferry.14 At the River Tees there were a bewildering number of crossings. The 14th-century Gough map shows the crossing at Croft (Fig. 3), where a splendid medieval bridge survives, but it was described as dangerous in 1355, which may explain why many

Fig. 3.  Croft Bridge, showing the late medieval elevation; it was widened upstream to designs by John Carr c. 1795 Photo: Dr Ivan Hall

192

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

of the people recorded in the court case crossed the river further downstream. Some used Neasham ferry.15 Others went between Sockburn and Smeaton, but the miller’s ferry there was said to be not really for horses; nevertheless, a ferry at this site remained important in later centuries, and it was used by Leland in the 16th century even though Croft Bridge was then useable.16 Beyond Smeaton there had been a bridge at Pounteys (near Middleton One Row), but it disappeared at some point in the Middle Ages. In 1991, Rolfe Mitchison and Bob Middlemas, specialist divers, discovered the foundations of the bridge; they were certain it was not Roman, as no Roman coins were found there, whereas, in contrast, 5,000 had been found near the Roman bridge at Piercebridge on the same river.17 East of Pounteys there was a bridge at Yarm – according to Leland, built or rebuilt c. 1400 by Walter Skirlaw, bishop of Durham.18 The surviving bridges at Croft and Yarm are superb vaulted stone structures, albeit Yarm Bridge owes its survival to the failure of a large iron bridge which was built to replace it: the thrust of the iron arch erected in September 1805 was too great for the abutments, and the arch collapsed in January 1806.19 By 1500, while there were still a few major timber bridges in Yorkshire, mainly on the lower reaches of the Nidd and Swale, stone bridges like those at Croft and Yarm were typical in Yorkshire, as in the rest of England.20 A considerable number of other stone bridges with medieval remains survive in Yorkshire, ranging from relatively short single spans over small water courses such as Sessay, to multi-arch structures with spans of up to 10 m such as North Bridge, Ripon (Fig. 4),21 to those with tremendous spans of over 20 m, of which Piercebridge (Fig. 5), some distance downstream from the Roman structure and built c. 1500, is the finest surviving example. Some of the bridges were constructed with ribbed arches, others were unribbed. There is no relationship between the number and size of the arch spans and the use of ribs.22 We know about the structure of medieval bridges not only from the surviving structures but also from images of medieval bridges which survived until the late 18th or early 19th century, when many were demolished to speed up the movement of road traffic.23 Among the most popular subjects was Ouse Bridge, York, with its great central arch of the 1560s (Fig. 6).24 To summarise, there was a network of roads and impressive bridges which enabled medieval York to function as the most important transport hub in the north of England. Who paid for this infrastructure, and in particular, what role was played by the people of York? Any answer has to be impressionistic; we only have relevant information for a small number of bridges. There were three main sources of support: firstly, a public obligation, secondly, tolls and, thirdly, private donations. In Domesday Book there is a reference to the performance in the city of ‘the three works of the king’ (bridge-building, maintaining fortifications and military service), but by the late Middle Ages the burden of building and repairing bridges in this way had become relatively uncommon. The crown seems to have ceased to impose new obligations of this type, possibly even before the Norman Conquest. Indeed, between the late Saxon period and James I’s payment for the construction of the bridge at Berwick on Tweed near the Scottish border, there is virtually no evidence of the crown taking the lead in the construction of a major bridge. Rather it was left to local initiative. The crown responded to requests for assistance, usually by granting the right to take tolls on goods passing over or under the bridge for its repair, and less frequently by offering materials such as timber from royal forests.25 Similarly, bishops provided indulgences 193

david harrison

Fig. 4.  North Bridge, Ripon. A much-repaired multi-arched bridge which probably contains some medieval masonry Photo: David Harrison

to those contributing to the repair or reconstruction of bridges, as Archbishop Walter de Grey did for Wetherby Bridge in 1233.26 Often it fell to local inhabitants to undertake the repair of the bridges in their neighbourhood: in 1345 the men of Wakefield paid £2 to obtain a grant of pontage for three years for the bridge (Fig. 7); the surviving bridge is of this period.27 There is also a good deal of evidence for the role played by very wealthy individuals. Eleanor de Percy is the person probably commemorated by the sublime Percy tomb in Beverley Minster.28 In 1316 she was described as the late wife of Henry de Percy, executrix of the will of Richard of Arundel (her brother), beginning to build and repair Wetherby Bridge for his soul.29 A medieval bridge survives, possibly the structure she built, just visible between widenings both upstream and down. The Historic England listing argues the earlier parts may be 13th century, but the dates provided in the listings for medieval bridges are often unreliable, and Wetherby Bridge could equally be 14th century. Other wealthy builders of bridges include, as we have seen, Bishop Skirlaw of Durham, who is said to have paid for the bridge at Yarm. Bolton Priory paid for

194

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Fig. 5.  Piercebridge, a superb bridge with large spans which was built c. 1500 in succession to a five-arched bridge Photo: David Harrison

bridges by its estates at Kildwick (Fig. 8) across the Aire and Bolton on the Wharfe, the latter on the road to Skipton.30 York merchants also played a part. Most prominent were the very wealthiest. It is impossible not to highlight Nicholas Blackburn Senior, mayor in 1412, who spent astonishing amounts of money. His chief work was Catterick Bridge (Fig. 9), which was the key crossing of the Swale for traffic going north to Durham and north-west to Richmond and beyond; he had been born in Lancashire before moving to Richmond and from there to York. A contract dating from 1421 has survived for this bridge, describing in detail how it was to be constructed.31 The bridge was not the first on the site; it was to be built between the new bridge of ‘tree’ and the old bridge of stone. At the end of the bridge was the chapel of St Anne, which after the Reformation had many uses and for a time was a coal shed for an inn. While the contract provides remarkable details of the process of construction, much is puzzling. The bridge was to have three arches, like that at Barnard Castle, but it is unclear what this means; the spans of the arches at Barnard Castle would have been much less than those of

195

david harrison

Fig. 6.  Old Ouse Bridge, York, William Marlow, c. 1763; the large central arch replaced two 13th-century arches which collapsed in the 1560s. St William’s chapel and council chamber were behind the buildings on the left-hand side. The bridge was demolished c. 1810 Source: York Museums Trust

Catterick. The present Catterick Bridge has four arches, and much rebuilding went on in the 16th century, though the two central arches may possibly retain some work from the earlier period. It is possible to see the whole bridge in early photographs, such as the one taken by Jervoise in the1920s; this is impossible today because of the trees and vegetation which have been allowed to grow up, which also endanger the bridge as it reduces the waterway.32 The value of the contract was the large sum of 260 marks, and this excludes Blackburn’s expenditure on materials and haulage. Yet within five years he was providing 500 marks for stone bridges at Thornton (where one of the roads to Durham crossed the Swale) and Kexby (where the Hull road crossed the Derwent). Interestingly, they were to have ‘chapels and other things which affect the safety of the bridge’ so that they suffer no ruin or decay for forty years.33 The codicil to his will indicates that Blackburn had also rebuilt Skip Bridge, where the main road to the west and the Skipton Gap crossed the River Nidd. It provided that, I will and ordain that if any mischance or defect in workmanship befall, God forbid that it should, to Catterick Bridge, Kexby Bridge, Thornton Bridge, or Skip Bridge, within four years following my death, my executors are to sue them that by recognisance are bound to maintain

196

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Fig. 7.  Wakefield Bridge and chapel, built c. 1350 Photo: Rudi Winter, Creative Commons

them; and if they that are bound use their strength and power well to make good the faults in the said bridges, as far as their means will extend, rather than the said bridges fall I will that my executors of God’s goods and mine, by the best advice and counsel they can get themselves, amend the faults so that the aforesaid bridges, with God’s grace, do not in any way fall down.34

In 1435 Blackburn’s wife, Margaret, continued the support for the bridge: I will that, if my said husband’s goods (my portion being previously deducted) be insufficient for the repair and maintenance of the bridges of Kexby and Catterick, then I will that my said executives pay, for the fulfilment of my said husband’s will, to the fabric of the bridge of Kexby £100. Item I will that they pay to the fabric of Catterick Bridge £100, on the conditions written below. . .35

No other York merchant dedicated such large sums to bridges as Blackburn Senior, but others made sizeable contributions. About 100 late medieval Yorkshire wills contain references to bequests to roads and bridges. Many are for the key roads and bridges described above, with perhaps an emphasis on assisting communications near the place of origin. Bequests for the repair of roads indicate that these were more than the rights of way or tracks which made themselves. 197

david harrison

Fig. 8.  Kildwick Bridge, built by Bolton Priory in the early 14th century Photo: David Harrison

It is not possible here to outline all the bequests to roads and bridges, but the following gives a sense of the commitment of the York mercantile elite to overland communications. Like Blackburn, several of those making significant bequests were immigrants to the city. John Gisburne in 1385 left money to repair bridges in the vicinity of York and the road to Boroughbridge over Hessay Moor; and Robert Holme in 1396 left a legacy to improve the roads to Tollerton (on the road to Thornton), to repair the bridge at Thornton and to build a new bridge over the Derwent between Elvington and Sutton and repair the road to Kexby Ferry (in the next century the ferry was replaced by a bridge). Richard Russell left money in 1435 for the repair of roads and bridges in a 10 league radius of York, and John Carr left £10 ‘to making of ways within the franchise of York’. In 1405 Thomas Graa, former mayor, left money for Tadcaster causeway, and in 1407 William de Vescy, wool stapler, left funds for the Tadcaster road.36 The bridges on the roads to York were not only essential to communications, but they also had a role in important ceremonials. At Tadcaster Bridge, which marked the limit of the Ainsty of York (an area outside York which had been annexed to the city), kings were met by the city sheriffs and then processed to the city. In 1483, Richard III visited York. For a month, preparations were made for his reception. The wealthier citizens contributed nearly £450 to buy presents for Richard and the queen. On arrival, the sheriffs met the king at Tadcaster Bridge, the mayor and chief citizens at ‘Brekles mills’, and the rest of the city at St James’s Chapel on The Mount. The 198

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Fig. 9.  Catterick Bridge, commissioned by Nicholas Blackburn of York. There is a detailed contract for its construction from 1421. The bridge was rebuilt in the second half of the 16th century, but may contain original material Photo: David Harrison

cavalcade entered by Micklegate Bar and was entertained by pageants as it passed through the streets. An official welcome was extended to the king by the mayor, and he was received by the dignitaries of the Minster at its west door. Richard took up residence in the archbishop’s palace, and a week of feasting and entertainment followed.37 In 1486 the sheriffs and two aldermen met Henry VII at Tadcaster Bridge, ‘the extremities of the boundes of this franches’.38 In 1603 James I was met ‘at the east-end of Skip-bridge, which was the utmost boundes of the libertyes of the cittie of Yorke’.39 The tradition continued under Charles I. In 1633 he ‘was met on Tadcaster-bridge by the sheriffs . . . and conducted by them to the city’.40 There were several bridges in the medieval city. It is one of the signs of the importance of road transport and the effort put into road infrastructure in the Middle Ages that bridges were often densely concentrated on short sections of rivers (albeit smaller rivers) in cities. By 1300 there were five bridges over the River Wensum in Norwich.41 Similarly, at York there were four bridges quite close together over a relatively short section of the River Foss, despite the expense of constructing and maintaining them. Beginning upstream, two bridges carried roads to the north-east. One was the 199

david harrison

important Monk Bridge (Fig. 10), which into the 19th century was some distance from the city. The bridge is recorded by the 1150s, and may have been built long before, but was rebuilt after 1150, as Payne’s painting shows three pointed arches, the same number recorded by Leland.42 Next was Layerthorpe Bridge (Fig. 11), which was next to the Layerthorpe pos�tern gate but was on a relatively minor road. It existed by 1309 and had five arches in Leland’s time.43 In 1556 a sum of £14 14s 3d was spent on the bridge, which was repaired again in 1570. It was seriously damaged in the siege of 1644, patched up with planks but not substantially repaired until 1656, when parts were rebuilt.44 There is little evidence about the upkeep of these bridges, but it is possible they were repaired by the city from its ‘bridge’ endowment. Downstream of Layerthorpe Bridge was the large expanse of the King’s Fish Pond; at its southern end was Foss Bridge, which existed by the 12th century. It was the key crossing of the river, taking the roads to Beverley and Hull and to Bridlington via Stamford Bridge and the wolds. Its somewhat curious location by the great fish pond is well conveyed in the city’s charter of 1393: considering that the bridge over the king’s fishery (vivariam) of Fosse is so weak that without great repairs it cannot endure, the king has hereby granted to the said mayor and citizens, that they may place piles and piers (columnas) of stone in the said fishery for a distance of 100 feet beyond the space which the said bridge now occupies in the said fishery to strengthen and support the said bridge and the houses thereon, and the chapel which they propose in future to

Fig. 10.  Monk Bridge, York, William Payne, 1785–95, showing the bridge shortly before demolition Source: York Museums Trust

200

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Fig. 11.  Layerthorpe Bridge. Michael Angelo Rooker, 1746–1801. The bridge was rebuilt in 1829 Source: York Museums Trust

build thereon for chaplains to celebrate for the king and his heirs and the souls of his progenitors and for the mayor and citizens; and that they may carry stone, timber and other materials over (ultra) the head of the dam of the said fishery by boat or other-wise for the said work.45

The Charter of 1393 licensed the mayor and citizens the right to acquire land to the value of £100 to pay for the upkeep of the Ouse and Foss bridges, the chapel on Ouse Bridge (the Foss Bridge chapel had not been built in 1393) and also ‘other bridges in the suburbs’. An endowment for the maintenance of the bridges may well have existed long before the charter, but the arrangements were now formalised. Accounts of bridgemasters relating to the Foss and Ouse bridges survive from soon after 1393. They are an impressive series comparable to those relating to Exeter, London and Rochester, with twenty-seven rolls for Ouse Bridge from 1400 to 1499 and seventeen rolls for Foss Bridge from 1406 to 1488. The duties of the bridgemasters were laid down in their oath, which indicates that they were responsible for collecting the rents of the properties assigned to the bridges and for paying the expenses of St William’s 201

david harrison

chapel. Unlike the other major series of bridge accounts, they record little expenditure on the maintenance of the bridge.46 It seems that the repairs for Foss Bridge required in 1393 had not been completed, as several grants of pontage were issued on behalf of the bridge, which was described as ruinous, between 1402 and 1411.47 On the north-east side of the bridge, Nicholas Blackburn founded a chapel dedicated to St Anne, the same dedication as the chapel on Catterick Bridge. Situated near the then-new hall of the mercers (now the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall), Dobson has described the chapel as a ‘memorial to the golden age of the city’s overseas mercatores’. Three of the great men of the York elite established expensive chantries in the chapel: Nicholas Blackburn, Alan de Hamerton, who founded his chantry in 1412 while Blackburn was mayor of York, and Robert Holme Junior, who was a mercer and had been mayor in 1413–14, founded his chantry in 1428. In all cases the expense was large.48 The bridgemasters’ accounts for Foss Bridge describe occasional minor repairs to the chapel but no expenditure on the chaplains or vestments; these were attended to by the City Chamberlains, who in the 1530s were still paying the stipends of the chantry priests, who were living in houses on the bridge. By the mid-15th century there were houses and shops: nineteen tenements on the south-west side of the bridge, twenty-three on the north-east side.49 Finally, there was a minor crossing at Castle Mills further downstream. There were mills to the south-east of the castle from the 12th century. At some point the river was dammed in this area, and it was possible to cross over the mill sluice and dam towards Fishergate. According to the York Historic Atlas, this crossing existed by 1402. It was replaced in 1583 by a wooden bridge for footmen and horsemen, which was destroyed during the siege in 1644 and subsequently rebuilt in wood.50 The crossing went through a series of rebuildings, ending in the present large structure, carrying the A1036. The demolition of the other Foss bridges was associated with making the Foss navigable. Following the Foss Navigation Act 1793, Monk Bridge was rebuilt in 1794 and Foss Bridge in 1812.51 There are, surprisingly, no surviving images of the latter despite its great importance in the history of the city. Of the demolished bridges, the York Art Gallery has a lovely image of Monk Bridge and the view towards the Minster by William Payne of 1790. The bridge had three visible medieval arches, probably with hood moulds and moulded arch rings. The Foss Navigation Company constructed a new, enlarged, central arch at Layerthorpe Bridge, but it damaged the structure, and in 1829 a complete rebuilding was thought necessary.52 Images of Layerthorpe survive both before and after the construction of the large central arch; they indicate that at the time of this construction the hipped roof of the postern was replaced by battlements. The major crossing in the city was Ouse Bridge. Its history is well known from the works of modern historians, including Norton, Palliser, Rees Jones, and Wilson and Mee’s lavishly illustrated publication.53 The Roman bridge lay to the south of Stonegate, but a new crossing on a new alignment, similar to present one, was created during the Viking period. The construction of a stone bridge is connected with St William. He was King Stephen’s candidate for the archbishopric and reputedly a hospitable, genial archbishop but was opposed by the Cistercians and others, who persuaded the pope to depose him in 1147. He was forced into exile, but in 1153, his enemies – the pope, his successor as archbishop of York, Murdac (who was supported by Mathilda), the abbot of Fountains and St Bernard of Clairvaux – all died. 202

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

Reinstated by the new pope, William returned to York in triumph in 1154.54 The whole city flocked onto Ouse Bridge to see him return, so many people that the bridge collapsed, throwing the crowd into the river. As recorded in the early-13th-century Vita of St William, miraculously not one person who fell into the river was drowned. It is likely the bridge was rebuilt in stone, as St William’s chapel associated with it was of stone; illustrations of the chapel show sculpture ascribed to c. 1180 (Fig. 12), and fragments survive in the Yorkshire Philosophical Museum. The decision to build the chapel is likely to be related to rivalry with Becket, who was killed in 1170 and canonised in 1173. Thirty-three of the miracles at William’s tomb occur in 1177 in what looks to have been part of an orchestrated campaign. The chapel was probably rebuilt about the time of William’s official canonisation by the pope in 1226.55 The reconstruction of the chapel may have also involved further work on the bridge, as the chapel rested on extended arches on the west side of the bridge; and

Fig. 12.  St William’s chapel during demolition, showing Romanesque features, Henry Cave, 1815–20 Source: York Museums Trust

203

david harrison

work was also being undertaken in the following decade, as Archbishop Grey provided indulgences for it in 1233.56 The bridge had six arches, the great central arch of the 1560s, constructed after a catastrophic flood, replacing two medieval arches. By the early 13th century, as we have seen, the bridge possessed an endowment, and there is no reference after Domesday Book to any ancient obligations to repair it. These obligations may have ceased, as at other bridges, when Ouse Bridge was rebuilt in stone.57 While a little over 100 bridge chapels have been identified in the whole of England, they were the norm at major urban bridges.58 Many played an important role in their towns or cities, such as St Thomas’s chapel on old London Bridge. Like St Thomas’, St William’s was a well-funded institution.59 It had an accomplished interior with two aisles and elaborate carving. The Ouse Bridge bridgemasters supervised what the 1393 Charter described as their common chapel, and its chaplains and other ecclesiastics celebrated divine service. An inventory of 1509 survives, which gives a good idea of its splendid interior. Its possessions include chalices, pattens, altar cloths (‘som better, som warse’), frontals, Lenten ‘baners’ to cover the rood and images of the Virgin and saints, numerous vestments and six surplices for the children in the choir. In the 1430s the gold and silver Corpus Christi shrine of Holy Trinity Priory was moved to the chapel and shown to important visitors.60 Unusually, we have some interesting insights into the regular use of the chapel. One of the witnesses in the 1360s court case, William de Munketon, stressed the centrality of the chapel, noting that coming from York, merchants heard Mass on the Ouse Bridge. On the other hand, a butcher of York said bluntly ‘men who travel rarely hear mass . . . especially such as he saw doing these day’s journeys, that is common men such as merchants with their packs and bundles’. There may have been a difference between the mercantile elite and butchers.61 Worship at the chapel ceased at the Reformation, but the building survived as long as the bridge. The construction of Ouse Bridge was part of the first great age of stone bridges. Others built in the 11th and 12th centuries included Grandpont, Oxford; Exe Bridge, Exeter, parts of which survive; and the series of bridges across the Severn floodplain at Gloucester and old London Bridge, which have been demolished. However, unlike these structures, which were on the boundary of or outside the urban area, Ouse Bridge was in the centre of the city, with important consequences: the bridge was at the very heart of civic life. The only comparable situation was at Bristol, where the chapel was unusually at first-floor level, stretching the entire width of the bridge and beyond, supported on bridge piers extended into the river. The road ran underneath the chapel, with ground-floor rooms on either side; in one, the city council met.62 As – or even more than – at Bristol, Ouse Bridge was an important centre of civic government. Large gatherings, such as meetings of the larger council or the common citizens, met in the Guildhall off Coney Street. But the council, composed of the richer and more prominent freemen, the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs, met in the council chamber next to the chapel on the bridge, with a door between this chamber and the chapel.63 As a result of proximity of chapel and chamber, in the words of Dobson, there can be ‘no doubt that in effect the chapel of St William was synonymous with the chapel of the community of York whose council chamber was literally next door’.64 From 1321 to 1331, a chapel which previously had had no chantries acquired four. Thus the council acquired a body of chaplains who sang Masses at times to meet the convenience of aldermen. According to Dobson, the chaplains were 204

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants

providing services for the living as much as the dead.65 In the chamber were seats for the aldermen and cushions. The lord mayor had a separate chamber, and there was a room for the town clerk.66 Under the chapel were the civic prisons, called kidcotes, first referred to in 1396, but they could have existed much earlier. Their windows can be seen in some images. The conditions were dreadful, with the added danger that the prisoners were at risk of drowning when the river was in flood.67 Eighteenth-century illustrations show a small clock tower and steeple on top of the chapel. The city’s clock had stood there since the 14th century (see Fig. 6). A reference probably from the 1390s mentions ‘the houre of ten [being] smyten of the clok at the chapel on House bryg’. In 1428, in response to a complaint that butchers were not opening shops on Sundays, they were ordered to keep their shops open until 8 o’clock.68 Opposite the chapel and council chamber, at the south side of the west end of the bridge, was the hospital known as the maison dieu or ‘domus dei’. Several of the records refer to women at the hospital. In the 1440s the bridgemasters’ accounts record ‘And to poor women in the maison dieu on Use Bridge’; other references are to the distribution of bread on Fridays. Near the maison dieu at the west end of the bridge was a toll booth (a small house), which Mayor Graa built in 1368.69 The same mayor installed in an arch under the hospital public toilets, referred to as ‘novae latrinae, Anglice, les New Pryves’. In 1544 Alice Grethede was paid 2s per year ‘for kepying cleyn the pyssing holles’.70 Bridges were seen as ideal places for toilets, and these were to be found at several bridges at this period. In 1343–45, for example, they were installed in the ‘pixie house’ Exe Bridge.71 The wardens spent £11 on toilets on London Bridge in 1382–83. William of Worcester refers to a ‘privey’ on Avon Bridge, Bristol, and on Welsh Bridge, Shrewsbury, there was a ‘comen pryveys for men and women for their eassments’.72 On Foreign Bridge Gloucester in the 16th century there was a ‘comyn jaks’.73 Graa also built seven shops opposite the chapel on Ouse Bridge.74 Some of the finest shops were here, and the area has been described by Rees Jones as ‘the Bond Street of medieval York where the well-equipped gentleman could acquire the necessary luxuries of life’.75 There were houses too, such as the Fairfax family stone hall on the bridge.76 The bridge was also frequently a central part of processions and festivals, and even punishments. Rees Jones notes that by the 14th century, one of the two key processional routes went from Micklegate via Ouse Bridge to the Minister. She thinks it likely this route had been used by the Norman and Angevin kings and was followed from 1322 by the new procession to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, which spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 14th century.77 In 1486 Henry VII entered the city at Micklegate and passed onto Ouse Bridge, where he was greeted by six kings, representing the six previous Henries.78 Alas, in the late 18th century, city authorities throughout England became obsessed with increasing the speed and flow of traffic in the city in manner not unlike the postWorld War II period.79 In 1793–95, houses at both ends of the bridge were demolished. Fortunately, nothing came of the city’s petition to the House of Commons in 1801 seeking permission to take down the city walls and bars and to use the materials and profits for rebuilding Ouse and Foss Bridges.80 However, when asked to consider widening the bridge, Thomas Harrison of Chester examined the bridge and argued it had 205

david harrison

to be demolished.81 The remarkable antiquary John Carter vigorously opposed the plans, possibly the first recorded conservationist effort to preserve a historic bridge. He noted that the reasons urged for the overthrow of the bridge ‘is want of room for the rapid dash of equestrians and barouche drivers, improving the ready communication btw the city and the raceground’. Carter suggested a bypass bridge, arguing ‘by this procedure the bridge and chapel may be preserved to the man of constant habits and become a bridle way for old remembrance and surefooted gratitude’.82 Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful, and the old bridge and the civic buildings were demolished c. 1810, and the civic life associated with it disappeared. As a result, the new bridge’s sole function became to ensure the speedy passage of traffic. In many respects this was unnecessary, as Carter’s proposal for a bypass bridge was implemented. Lendal Bridge opened in 1863, and Skeldergate followed in 1881.83 Nevertheless, the situation can change, not least because of these two bridges. In many places ancient bridges have been successfully pedestrianised while more recent structures carry the motor traffic; the Charles Bridge, Prague, is probably the most outstanding and inspirational example. Ouse Bridge could once again be a place for people at the heart of the city, not just a means of ensuring the speedy passage of motor vehicles.

notes 1. Victoria History of the Counties of England: The City of York, ed. P. M. Tillott (London 1961), 97; see D. M. Palliser, Medieval York, 600–1540 (Oxford 2014), 5–8. 2. Public Works in Medieval Law, 2, ed. C. T. Flower, Selden Society, xl (London 1923), 253, 258–59. 3. Road transport may have been displacing water transport in the later Middle Ages, at least in upper reaches of river systems. For example, following the construction of a series of bridges at and near Abingdon, stone for the construction of Eton College from Taynton (near the Upper Thames) was carried by road to Henley before being transferred to boat (D. F. Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400 to 1800 (Oxford 2004), 204–06; Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Oxford, 7, ed. M. D. Lobel (London 1962), 27–39. 4. Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 49–56. 5. C. Gravett, Towton 1461 (Oxford 2003). 6. Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (London 1891–): 1225–32, 173. 7. CPR (1358–61) (as n. 6), 296. 8. West Yorkshire County Record Office, Book of Bridges belonging to the West Riding of the County of York, QD1/461; E. Jervoise, The Ancient Bridges of the North of England (London 1931), 103. 9. L. Toulmin Smith, ed., The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–43, vol. 5 (repr. London 1964), i, 88. 10. M. M. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York (and Back) in the Fourteenth Century’, Northern History, 42:1 (2005), 119–30. 11. Toulmin Smith, Itinerary of John Leland (as n. 9), i, 68; CPR (1358–61) (as n. 6), 110. 12. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York’ (as n. 10), 123. 13. M. Brayshay, ‘Long-Distance Royal Journeys: Anne of Denmark’s Journey from Stirling to Windsor in 1603’, Journal of Transport History, 25:1 (2004), 1–21; see below for bequests to Thornton bridge. 14. Public Works, 2 (as n. 2), 270–73. 15. CPR (1354–58) (as n. 6), 329; Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York’ (as n. 10), 123. 16. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York’ (as n. 10), 124; Toulmin Smith, Itinerary of John Leland (as n. 9), i, 68. 17. R. Mitchison and B. Middlemas, Pounteys Bridge Investigation, 1991, Mid-Tees Research Project, online at: www.reiverenglish.com/midtees/wp/ponteys-bridge/.

206

Medieval Yorkshire roads, bridges and York merchants 18. Toulmin Smith, Itinerary of John Leland (as n. 9), i, 68. 19. Jervoise, Bridges of the North (as n. 8), 59. 20. Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 136–40. 21. North Bridge, Ripon, is of many dates, but probably contains some medieval remains. 22. D. F. Harrison, ‘Medieval Bridges’, Current Archaeology, 2 (1990), 73–6. 23. D. Harrison, ‘The Fate of Medieval English Bridges Since 1770: Demolition, Survival and Preservation’, Proc. Institution of Civil Engineers – Engineering History and Heritage, 166 (2013), 45–54. 24. Many of the extant images of old Ouse Bridge are illustrated in B. Wilson and F. Mee, The Fairest Arch in England, Old Ouse Bridge, York, and Its Buildings: The Pictorial Evidence (York 2002). The York Museums Trust holds a superb collection of images. 25. Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 184–221. 26. J. Raine, ed., Register of Archbishop Gray of York, Surtees Society, 56 (1870), 60. 27. CPR (1343–45) (as n. 6), 549. 28. N. Dawton, ‘The Percy Tomb Workshop’, Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. C. Wilson (Leeds 1989), 121–32. 29. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office (London 1916–68): 1307–49, 228; CPR (1313–18) (as n. 6), 449. 30. Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 162. 31. The contract is published in L. F. Salzman, Building in England Down to 1540 (Oxford 1952), 497–99; for a detailed discussion of the contract, see Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 131–35. 32. Jervoise, Bridges of the North (as n. 8), fig. 44. 33. CPR (1422–29) (as n. 6), 410. 34. The Latin Project, The Blakburns in York, Testaments of a Merchant Family in the Later Middle Ages (York 2006), 17–21. 35. Ibid., 33. 36. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 97; J. Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge 2002), 151; R. B. Cooke ed., ‘Some Early Civic Wills of York’, Yorkshire Architectural Society, 8 (1906), i, 26–7, 45; ii, 6–7. 37. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 61. 38. York House Books 1461–1490, ed. L. C. Attreed (Stroud 1991), 478, and cf. 482. 39. F. Drake, Eboracum: Or, the History and Antiquities of the City of York (1736), 131. 40. Ibid., 134. 41. S. Cocke and L. Hall, Norwich Bridges Past and Present (Norwich 1994). 42. British Historic Towns Atlas, V: York, ed. P. Addyman (Oxford 2015), 27; S. Rees Jones, York: The Making of a City 1068–1350 (Oxford 2013), 159; VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 202; Toulmin Smith, Itinerary of John Leland (as n. 9), i, 54. 43. Ibid. 44. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 519. 45. Calendar of Charter Rolls (1226–1516), vol. 6 (London 1903–27): 1341–1417, 336–37. 46. York Bridgemasters’ Accounts, trans. and ed. P. M. Stell (York 2003), 41–8. 47. CPR (1401–05) (as n. 6), 166, 352; CPR (1405–08), 171; CPR (1408–13), 52, 274. 48. R. B. Dobson, Church and Society in the Medieval North of England (London 1996), 276–77. 49. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 518. 50. Historic Towns Atlas, York (as n. 42), 78. 51. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 519. 52. Ibid. 53. C. Norton, St William of York (York 2006), viz. 166–67; Rees Jones, York (as n. 42); Palliser, Medieval York (as n. 1); Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24). 54. For the political background, see Palliser, Medieval York (as n. 1), 101. 55. Norton, St William (as n. 53). 56. Raine, Register of Archbishop Gray of York (as n. 26), 60–61. 57. Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), 191–92.

207

david harrison 58. D. Harrison, ‘English Medieval Bridge Chapels’, Ecclesiology Today, 52 (2015), 7–8; Harrison, Bridges (as n. 3), identified about 100 bridge chapels but subsequently more have been identified by D. Harrison, P. McKeague and B. Watson, who are compiling a gazetteer of bridge chapels. 59. For the London Bridge chapel, see C. Wilson, ‘L’architecte bienfaiteur de la ville. Henry Yevel et la chapelle du London Bridge’, Revue de L’Art, 166 (2009–4), 43–51. 60. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 46–47. 61. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York’ (as n. 10), 122. 62. Harrison, ‘English Medieval Bridge Chapels’ (as n. 58), 11. 63. Palliser, Medieval York (as n. 1), 200–01. 64. Dobson, Church and Society (as n. 48), 275. 65. Ibid., 276. 66. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 50–1. 67. Ibid., 52–3. 68. Ibid., 48; clocks in late medieval York are discussed in C. Humphrey, ‘Time and Urban Culture in Late Medieval England’, in Time in the Medieval World, eds C. Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod (York 2001), 105–18. 69. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 54. 70. Ibid. 71. S. Brown, The Medieval Exe Bridge, St Edmund’s Church, and Excavation of Waterfront Houses, Exeter, Devon Archaeological Society Monograph 1 (Exeter 2019). 72. J. Dallaway ed., Antiquities of Bristow (Bristol 1834), 68, 72–73; W. A. Leighton ed., ‘Early Chronicles of Shrewsbury, 1372–1603’, Trans. of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 1st series, 3 (1880), 251. 73. J. Rhodes, ‘The Severn Flood-Plain at Gloucester in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods’, Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 124 (2006), 14. 74. Rees Jones, York (as n. 42), 267. 75. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 16, quoting S. Rees Jones, Property Tenure and Rents: Some Aspects of the Topography and Economy of Medieval York (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 1987). 76. Rees Jones, York (as n. 42), 280–81. 77. Ibid., 267. 78. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 51–52. 79. Harrison, ‘The Fate of Medieval English Bridges’ (as n. 23). 80. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 517. 81. Harrison, ‘The Fate of Medieval English Bridges’ (as n. 23), 51. 82. Wilson and Mee, Old Ouse Bridge (as n. 24), 64–66. 83. VCH: City of York (as n. 1), 520.

208

The early-sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York LISA REILLY AND MARY B. SHEPARD

This study considers how the church of St  Michael-le-Belfrey, with its specifically late medieval spatial disposition and extensive yet under-studied early-16th-century glazing programme, highlights the changing dynamic of late medieval lay piety, particularly in port cities such as York. The distinctive style of the standing figures of saints in the windows, characterised by their unusually expansive proportions and sensitive modelling, creates a vigorous presence, frequently with a sense of sculptural physicality. Though they have been marginalised in the current scholarly literature, analysis of these figures reveals the participation of their wealthy donors and artists in a broader artistic matrix, with links to continental prints and sculptures. The visibility of the aisle windows with standing figures of saints, patronal inscriptions and donor figures throughout the nave ensured that their donors, many of whom were wealthy York merchants, would remain in the prayers of their fellow parishioners in a bid to reduce their time in purgatory. Thus, these saintly images – affective, physically robust and occasionally engaging in direct eye contact – forged a potent connection between ‘parochial worship and membership in the eternal community of the saved’. The parish church of St Michael-le-Belfrey figures prominently in the city of York’s urban landscape. Immediately adjacent to the south side of the Minster (Fig. 1), it is visible to all who approach the cathedral.1 Upon entering the church, its spacious, evenly lit and stylistically uniform interior, in tandem with a well-preserved programme of stained-glass windows, is particularly striking (Fig. 2).2 Such spaciousness and uniformity are quite distinct from neighbouring earlier medieval parish churches, such as Holy Trinity Goodramgate. Prior to its early-16th-century rebuilding, the church of St Michael-le-Belfrey likely had a similar additive plan, with a series of separate spaces much like that seen at Holy Trinity. Today, it stands as an exceptional example of a late-medieval parish church, with a remarkable programme of stainedglass windows commissioned, in most cases, by known patrons and executed in the 1520s–30s, on the eve of Henry VIII’s reconfiguration of the Church in England. A study of this church building, with its specifically late medieval spatial disposition and extensive early-16th-century glazing programme with patronal inscriptions and distinctive style, provides a window into the world of late-medieval lay piety. Francis Drake, writing in the early 18th century, identified St Michael-le-Belfrey as situated within the Minster Close and ‘appendant to the revenues of the dean and chapter’.3 Technically, the church stood outside its parish boundaries and formed part of the southern wall of the Minster Close. Yet despite this proximity, St Michael-leBelfrey was not solely an auxiliary structure of the cathedral, ministering to the lay © 2022 The British Archaeological Association

209

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 1.  The Parish Church of St Michael-le-Belfrey, located adjacent to York Minster Photo: Lisa Reilly

Fig. 2.  Interior view of St Michael-le-Belfrey, looking towards the altar Photo: Lisa Reilly

tenants of the Minster.4 It maintained independent parish rolls comprised of the most prominent freemen of the city, many of whom are portrayed as donors in the windows or cited in inscriptions – now lost, but known from manuscript sources.5 The parishioners’ diversity reflected the rural and urban nature of the parish. The parish was extensive and included areas both outside and inside the city, including Clifton, Bootham and Rawcliffe, as well as part of Grape Lane, Stonegate and Petergate.6 The wealthy parishioners included goldsmiths, drapers, vintners, clergy, booksellers, 210

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

yeomen and husbandmen, in addition to Minster staff and craftsmen among its members.7 Many of the city’s aldermen and lord mayors belonged to this parish. Despite the parish’s affluence, visitation documents reveal a history of struggles between the Dean and Chapter and parish over who was responsible for the church’s maintenance. To this end, the relationships between the parish and the Minster are today unclear. The church of St Michael’s was visited regularly by the dean or his representative beginning in 1409, at which point the parishioners claimed the church was in danger of collapse.8 For just over 100 years, until 1510, complaints continue about the building’s condition, including those about the glass. Rain was reported as coming in through the damaged windows, which were also so dark that it was necessary to use candles, even during the day.9 In 1416, several parishioners testified to the dilapidated condition of the buildings: The same compt agst. the nave and tower. Item sunt defectus notorii in fenestriis, tam In vitro quam ligaminibus in singulis fenestris navis ecclesiae.10

Later, in 1472, complaints were registered about the condition of books and vestments.11 Finally, in 1510 an assembly ‘of inquisitors sworne of this parich’ found:  . . . that the body of the said church of Sanct Michaell is not convenient for dyvyne serves to be done in and ferefull to the parichynge to syt in, sxcept thar be many in the church . . . also the said church is so newynous and the tymber tharaof in diverse partes of the stepull rotten, and defective in this that it ranys in thar stalles and upon thame being at dyuyne service, in trobling tham in thar devocions, and in gret wyndes as hath beyne of late, fereid tham to abyde to here dyvyne service. . . . Item that wher of old custome it hath beyne used that evere yere at the festers of whitsonday and Sanct Peter day the kirk was wont to be strewed with ryshes by the chaumberlane of the mynster and now it is not soe. . .

The list continues with complaints about holes in the windows, faulty locks, the lack of attendance of the parish clerk and the deterioration of books and vestments.12 Although some exaggeration may be expected, their veracity is supported by the fact that work at the building site began in 1525.13 The final visitation in 1519 recorded few complaints.14 Given the parish’s status, the complaints as well as the low level of donations to the church suggests that the building, which parishioners saw as among the most important in the city, was – in their view – the responsibility of the Dean and Chapter. Some sort of misunderstanding may have existed about who was responsible for funding fabric repairs or restoration.15 It is also possible that the Minster administration was simply not concerned about the condition of the church. Once Archbishop Wolsey appointed a dean known for his conscientious attention to his capitular duties, Brian Higdon (r. 1516–39), rebuilding of the church followed.16 By 1525, the Dean and Chapter were paying for the work on the church.17 The window inscriptions, described in greater detail below, further attest to the Minster clergy’s particular interest in the church. A recent study describes the pre-16thcentury church as one that developed in stages, as is typical of many parish churches, with significant parts of the east end dating to the later 14th century.18 The original church probably consisted of a tower, a nave with aisles and a chancel.19 The church seen today is largely that built by the Dean and Chapter in the early 16th century.20 While it was long believed that the previous church was completely razed and a new 211

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

one built in a single campaign, probably under the direction of John Forman, the master mason of the Minster 1523–58, a more recent analysis suggests that this was not the case.21 The current six-bayed church features a wide nave without a distinct chancel (Fig. 3). A widely spaced arcade separates the nave from the two side aisles and creates a sense of open unified space. While the building is not literally a hall church, as the side aisle ceilings are lower than those of the nave, the effect is similar, as the nave elevation has no gallery or triforium but simply a row of clerestory windows above the tall, widely spaced four-centred arcade arches. Angels ornament the springing of the arcade arches, with blind tracery filling the spandrels. Beneath each of the clerestory windows is an inset pair of blind tracery panels. The original nave and aisle ceilings are no longer visible, although they may simply be covered by the current flat panelled ceiling. The floor was replaced in both the 18th and 19th centuries.22 The exterior is also fairly uniform, although the south side, which forms the boundary wall for the Minster precincts, is decorated with a series of shields containing arms relevant to the Dean and Chapter below the windowsills. Three-stage buttresses, which include projecting gargoyles, separate the bays. The clerestory, rising just slightly above the aisle roofs, is barely visible. The western façade was rebuilt in 1867. It closely follows the facade known to have been in place since at least 1705.23 The extensive 14th- and 16th-century glass is all that remains of the medieval interior, apart from reused 16th-century woodwork, now used as benches but originally part of the choir furnishings.24

Fig. 3.  Floor plan of St Michael-le-Belfrey Source: From An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, 5 (London, 1981), www.britishhistory.ac.uk/rchme/york/vol5/xxxix-lvii

212

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Despite the generally agreed upon uniformity of effect, Anthony Masinton points to extensive inconsistencies in the coursing as well as other details, based on his close reading of the fabric, to suggest that the present building is not entirely new but relies heavily on the fabric of the early church.25 Masinton states: In summary, the exterior stonework includes substantial amounts of in situ fabric in the east and north walls while the south wall appears to have been entirely built at one time. It appears likely that at least the easternmost two bays of the north aisle are a separate building campaign added to old fabric in the north and east walls. It is also possible that the western half of the westernmost bay was an addition as well. . . . The evidence of coursing patterns from all three walls indicates that the windows were, in general, prepared separately from the walling (except in the easternmost two and a half bays of the north aisle) and that they were inserted in the east and north walls into or on top of older fabric. . . . Therefore the present church depends on the fabric of the previous church.26

Thus, the present church reflects key aspects of its predecessor in its general dimensions, position and orientation. In addition to questioning the idea that the post-1525 church is a completely new structure, Masinton suggests that it is neither the product of a single construction campaign nor a single designer. He offers a closer reading of the Minster fabric rolls than some earlier scholars. James Raine, in his mid-19thcentury edition of the fabric rolls, identifies the rebuilding of the Belfrey as the main masonry project sponsored by the Minster from 1525 to 1536.27 More recently, Olivia Saunders supports this view with testamentary evidence, which she interprets as indicating that construction work in the church was preventing its regular use; Masinton points out that the fabric rolls from this period only mention St Michael-le-Belfrey by name in 1525–26, with a complete gap in the surviving roles between November 1519 and November 1525 and further gaps in 1526–27, 1528–29 and 1532–35.28 The rebuilding seems to have taken ten to twelve years, based on the fabric roll entries concerning it and the inscriptions in the window, several of which are dated.29 The Dean and Chapter spent a great deal of money on the rebuilding of the church. In 1527–28, the beginning of the rebuilding period, four carpenters were employed and paid £10 5s 8d, the glaziers £3 10d and the plumbers £7 16s 3d.30 Another entry from 1528 totals the costs for the rebuilding in that year at £104 4d.31 By 1535–36 no new stones were purchased by the Dean and Chapter, although workmen were still being employed at St Michael-le-Belfrey.32 Masinton believes that the renovation of the church was not the product of a single campaign but occurred in stages. He suggests that the two easternmost bays of the north aisle were erected, possibly on the site of a vestry mentioned in 1409, in a single campaign.33 According to his analysis, the current south aisle is 3–4 ft wider than its predecessor. Masinton proposes that the current plan was regulated by a geometric system similar to one used at St Martin-le-Grand, Coney Street, which had the effect of regularising the church.34 The plan of the current church is much more regular than that typically found at most medieval English parish churches, such as Holy Trinity Goodramgate. Its interior elevation and plan create a very different effect as well. Rather than a series of small compartments, as seen at Holy Trinity, St Michael-le-Belfrey has a very open, spacious interior in which aisle and chancel as well as east and west ends are all visible from the nave. The widely spaced four-centred arcade arches enhance the visibility of the aisle windows with their monumental standing figures. This change in the spatial quality of the late medieval parish church is not unique to St Michael-le-Belfrey. Similarly, open interiors are found in hall or hall-like churches 213

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

such as St Mary, Beverley, and St Peter and St Paul, Lavenham. The shift in spatial sensibility can be linked with changing devotional practice. While considerable evidence of the topography of the earlier church, such as the location of altars and images, can be gleaned from wills, such evidence is scant for the post-1525 church. Masinton suggests that the greater emphasis on bequests for funerary and burial arrangements rather than specific images points towards ‘a more open corporate and inclusive means of obtaining intercessions’.35 Rather than perpetual chantries, lavish funerals were funded, perhaps with the intention of attracting as large an audience as possible to pray for the soul of the deceased, as would the lights placed around the burial place. In part, what has been described as the ‘theatre’ of the dead served as a means of demonstrating social status for wealthy parishioners.36 These rituals were intended to make sure as many intercessors as possible participated, thus reducing the suffering in purgatory of the deceased. The invocations represented by the window inscriptions further exhorted the public to pray on behalf of the donors to alleviate their time in purgatory. In addition, as figures who had once been human and were now celestial, saints in the late Middle Ages were perceived as capable of understanding ‘the needs and concerns of their suppliants’.37 During this period, parishioners expanded the collection of images beyond that of the patronal saint and the Virgin in their churches as they sought to commemorate and honour their personal protector.38 While the new spatial organisation provided an ideal setting for the staging of these elaborate funerals, visible to all, as Masinton suggests, it actually enhanced the visibility for all rituals and liturgy – including the stained-glass images of saints lining the aisle walls, together with the requests for prayers inscribed on their donor images. Thus, the entire parish – living and dead – was drawn into one community in the newly configured space of the 16th-century church. The congregation was surrounded by calls to pray for the windows’ donors, presumably through their chosen intercessor saints depicted above the image of the patron and their inscription. The emphasis on prayers for the dead to reduce their time in purgatory in the late medieval church was profound. As Colin Richmond notes: ‘To walk into a parish church around 1500 was to enter . . . an ante-chamber of purgatory. Almost everything was labelled with the names of local souls who required assistance, almost everything in use was an aide-memoire; and almost every great recollection was a benefit to those recalled’.39 While surviving interior furnishings at St Michael-le-Belfrey are scant apart from the windows, the images of the donors and their accompanying inscriptions clearly support Richmond’s claim. Although the rebuilding of the church was the responsibility of the Minster, the stained-glass programme – the last commissioned in York on the eve of the Dissolution – apparently fell to the parish and a series of wealthy individual donors. Like the building fabric, the medieval glass currently in the church is not the product of one campaign or period of glass production but can be divided into three principal groups: a b c

214

The East Window with 14th-century glass. A group of 16th-century panels depicting the life of Thomas Becket, now in the north aisle, towards the east end. Part of this group is now also in the Chapter House of the Minster.40 A series of standing saints from the early 16th century associated with named patrons in both the north and south aisles (Fig. 4).41

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 4.  Interior view of St Michael-le-Belfrey, showing the nave south aisle figures as they are now installed Photo: Lisa Reilly

A study of the stained glass of St Michael-le-Belfrey is critical for several reasons. First of all, it is among the latest cycles of medieval stained glass in England, given its date of 1530–36. Secondly, the glass has clearly identified lay patrons. A study of these patrons, the iconography of the glass and the role of this wealthy parish with its strong ties to the neighbouring Minster contributes significantly to our understanding of late-medieval lay piety and parish life in England. Furthermore, St Michael-le-Belfrey provides an important record of changing conservation practices for stained glass, as the windows were extensively restored shortly after World War II using what are now regarded as controversial practices.42 Today, we cannot be sure that any of the glazings are installed in their original locations. Recently the medieval parish church, long relegated to the margins by art historians as an inferior reflection of great churches such as York Minster, has begun to receive serious scholarly attention.43 Holistic study of the parish church and the extensive amount of related evidence provides the opportunity for understanding more clearly lay devotional practice and the role art had in its making.44 Although ideal, the type of all-inclusive approach suggested by Paul Binski and others – which considers the parish church as a setting for religious life in its entirety, including the architecture, stained glass, wall paintings, furniture and altar fittings – is not always possible. At St Michael-le-Belfrey, surviving evidence of original church furnishings beyond the stained-glass windows is sparse. 215

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Much of the dating evidence for these windows is provided by the inscriptions testifying to the gifts of patrons, originally recorded by Roger Dodsworth in the early 17th century.45 Modern transcriptions were inserted into the windows as part of the post-World War II restoration. By Dodsworth’s time, several of the original inscriptions were already damaged, but his recording suggests a dating range of 1530–36, beginning with the window dedicated to William Beckwith, his brother and their wives and ending with that to Christopher Seele in 1537. John Coltman’s laying of the foundation stone in 1525 is also recorded by Dodsworth, albeit incorrectly transcribed by the restorers as 1514. His window must post-date 1533, the year of his appointment as sub-treasurer. These dates fit together with evidence from the Minster Fabric Rolls, which places the start of building construction in 1525–26. Payment is made in 1531–32 for iron window bars for the new church and then in 1535–36 for iron bars for the great west window. Dodsworth does not provide a specific location for the inscriptions, but he does indicate on which side of the church each inscription is located. In some cases the current location was chosen to match the location of donor quarries in situ at the time of restoration, with donor initials, such as in window sVI, where Thomas Marsar’s initials are found. The nave aisle figures themselves are characterised by a careful sense of modelling and expansive proportions (Fig. 5). While the figures are fairly uniform in their scale and use of stippling and shading, there are some differences in the treatment of details such as facial characteristics and hair, suggesting that several artists were responsible for the glazing. A close examination of one of the better-preserved figures, St George from the south aisle (Fig. 6), establishes the main features of this 16th-century glass. His solemn face, similar to that of the adjacent figure of St Martin (Fig. 7), features finely drawn heavy lidded eyes, clearly arched eyebrows and careful shading through the use of stippling. St George’s eyes have been painted with a great deal of detail, which is particularly evident in their pupils. The colours are richly saturated. His armour is blue and his kirtle green and yellow, highlighted by a red belt. Silver stain accents the hilt of the saint’s sword, as well as the saint’s halo. Most of the shading is stippled, with some cross-hatching. For example, the upraised sword has a twisted rope pattern on the hilt and a stipple-shaded shaft. On his shield is drawn the red cross of St George. The dragon upon which he treads is red, with stipple shading and light green fins. Its tail is spiny and covered in tentacles. St George stands above the dragon in a dynamic three-quarters angle pose that enhances his sense of three-dimensionality. Even the bolt which attaches his visor to the helmet displays a skilful use of perspective, increasing this distinctive sense of physicality. Indeed, these qualities combined – range of colouring, sense of modelling and three-dimensionality – pose a notable contrast with earlier approaches, such as the 14th-century panels found in the East Window of St Michael-le-Belfrey or, further afield, the mid-15th-century glass from the East Window of the Beauchamp Chapel (1447–64), St Mary, Warwick, with their deeper colours and flattened forms.46 Finally, the fragments found at his feet and throughout the other windows in this series suggest that some figures originally stood on a field of grass and plants, while others occupied a tiled plinth with an architectural base and an inscription labelling the saint. There is no suggestion of a canopy or other frame for the upper part of the panel. The figure may have stood against a series of plain or, based on limited survivals, decorated quarries, perhaps not unlike the early-16th-century windows in the chapel at the Tudor house of Cotehele in Cornwall.47 216

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 5.  Window sV, with St George, St Martin, a bishop saint, and St Christopher. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

217

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 6.  St George, window sV, 3a-4a. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

Sixteenth-century stained glass in England has received limited treatment in the scholarly literature. In part, this is due to its chronological position at a moment of transition. On the edge between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant England, it is often viewed neither as medieval nor as Renaissance. Earlier writers on the stained glass of St Michael-le-Belfrey generally disparaged its early-16th-century glass. For example, John A. Knowles, writing in 1936, dismissed the Belfrey windows, stating: ‘York glass reaches its final depth of degradation in the windows of St Michael-le-Belfrey Church, which are coarse in character and brutal in execution’.48 Both Knowles and more recently Richard Marks have suggested that the stained glass at St Michael-le-Belfrey demonstrates ‘an awareness’ of the work of ‘foreign glass-painters active in England’ at the time.49 218

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 7.  St Martin, window sV, 3b-4b. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

This assessment of the 16th-century glazing at St Michael-le-Belfrey strictly in terms of foreignness is a provocative one. Without question, the nave figures at the Belfrey are distinctive. A comparison of the contemporary figure, possibly of St Paul (Fig. 8), from the parish church of St Oswald at Kirk Sandall, South Yorkshire, demonstrates how figures from the Belfrey are unusually expansive and sensitively modelled, creating a vigorous presence.50 For example, the Belfrey’s St Martin rotates his upper body as he slashes outward with his sword, dividing his cloak before us, the viewer. Similarly, his undamaged eye gazes directly into our space, and we meet it as we look up from the nave. Martin’s ermine-trimmed cloak, extravagantly plumed chapeau and chic leather boots give him an air of currency. The deeply modelled folds, particularly in his sleeves and in the flopping boot cuffs, emphasise a kind of active presence very 219

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 8.  St Paul?, window nIV, 2c. Church of St Oswald, Kirk Sandall Photo: Gordon Plumb

different from the Kirk Sandall figure. The latter stands frontally, with his head turned from the viewer. His thinly sloping shoulders and arms are both closely held against the body. He clasps the hilt of a sword in his right hand, with a girdle book firmly grasped in the left. Both objects are tightly framed by his blue mantle. He is emblematic, contemplative and clad in generic biblical garb. On the contrary, St Martin is demonstrative, a man of action, fashionably dressed. Like St Martin, the turning postures and gestures of the St Michael-le-Belfrey figures fill their lancet openings, both vertically and horizontally, as opposed to the contemporary Kirk Sandall figure, who stands impassively within a framing architectural canopy. What accounts for such striking variances? Rather than view the nave glazing at St Michael-le-Belfrey strictly in terms of foreign glass painters, it is perhaps more instructive to consider these figures within a broader artistic matrix active in England at the time. Exceptionally, the St Michael-le-Belfrey nave aisle figures suggest an awareness of contemporary continental trends, with their active poses, careful modelling and three-dimensionality as well as the use of landscapes and/or plant forms for their bases. Northern visual culture, especially prints which were widely available in England generally and in York more particularly, with its precocious print trade 220

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 9a.  St Peter, window sIII, 3b-4b. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

centred on the Minster precincts at this date, features figures characterised by animated or active poses, as well as the use of landscape settings or beds of plants for the base of the scene.51 This awareness is evident by comparing the monumental figure of St Peter from the Belfrey (Fig. 9a) with Martin Schongauer’s engraving of the saint from c. 1470–82 (Fig. 9b). There is a striking similarity in the use of a three-quarters pose, stippling to create a powerful sense of three-dimensionality and the sculptural quality of the deep, heavy folds of the drapery. Similarly, the head of St Ursula (Fig. 10a) can be compared with Schongauer’s drawing of Mary Magdalene, c. 1470 (Fig. 10b) in its use of careful shading to create the figure’s deep-set downcast eyes and smooth brow, as well as her pursed lips. Similarly, the two images of St Christopher at St Michael-le-Belfrey (one in window nVI and one in window sV) speak to a consciousness of continental print culture. The 221

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 9b.  Martin Schongauer, St Peter, from a series of the Twelve Disciples, c. 1470–82, engraving Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago

222

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 10a.  St Ursula (detail), window nVI, 4d. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

Fig. 10b.  Martin Schongauer, Mary Magdalene, c. 1470, drawing Photo: Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Florence

223

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

St Christopher (Fig. 11a), now on the north side of the church, evokes an older St Chris� topher type – one much reproduced in York, with similar images at All Saints North Street and Holy Trinity Church – where the saint advances through the water, one knee up, while turning his head back and up to gaze at the Christ Child on his shoulder, not unlike the Buxheim St Christopher, c. 1450 (Fig. 11b).52 While the poses themselves differ, one can also see the same sense of purposeful striding forward through the water, the movement of the cloak billowing out behind the Christ Child, the distinguishing headscarf, notched staff and the powerful sense of three-dimensional modelling between the St Christopher in profile from the Belfrey’s south side (Fig. 12a) and Albrecht Dürer’s image from c. 1503–04 (Fig. 12b). The Christ Child in Schongauer’s engraving of St Christopher similarly looks out to meet the gaze of the viewer (Fig. 12c).

Fig. 11a.  St Christopher, window nVI, 3b-4b. St Michaelle-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

224

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 11b.  Unknown south German artist, The Buxheim St Christopher, c. 1450, coloured woodcut Photo: John Rylands Library, © The University of Manchester

The dynamism of the Belfrey figures also evokes a sense of sculptural physicality. The enveloping deep folds of the Virgin Annunciate’s dress, for example (Fig. 13), work to depict the sense of a body standing within a sacred space, as does the pedestal upon which she stands. Similarly, she stands on a tiled floor atop an architectural plinth that calls to mind sculptural figures. Indeed, the pose of the York St George (Fig. 6), with his upraised right arm and shield grasped firmly in his left hand as well as his turning, active pose, is strongly reminiscent of contemporary sculpture, such as the depiction of St George from the early-16th-century chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey (Fig. 14).53 This sculpture, located on the triforium level of the chapel, is part of the largest surviving group of sculptures from Tudor England.54 They have been described as ‘characterised by an extreme boldness of carving in depth, by vigorous and often forbidding facial expressions, and by the extraordinary 225

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 12a.  St Christopher, window sV, 3b-4b. St Michael-leBelfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

variety and intricacy of the headgear’.55 Formally, the Westminster St George demonstrates clear similarities with the Belfrey figure in these qualities as well as its pose, sense of movement and downward gaze. In particular, they share the distinctive gesture of the raised sword-arm, with the blade aligned behind the warrior’s back. Both works show the saint’s opposite hand grasping his shield as the dragon curls around George’s legs. The sculptures from Henry VII’s chapel are also regarded as stylistically close to the six surviving bronze statuettes on the tomb grate for Henry VII. The grate itself is known to be by a Dutch smithy, and the bronze statuettes are also believed to be the product of a sculptor from the Low Countries. Given their 226

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 12b.  Albrecht Dürer, St Christopher in the Wilderness with a Flight of Birds, c. 1503– 04, woodcut Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum, London

similarities to the bronze statuettes, the stone figures, including that of St George discussed here, are, like the now-lost glazing programme for the chapel, believed to be by Netherlandish artists.56 As Kim Woods has amply demonstrated, considerable quantities of continental sculpture for the open market in a variety of price ranges were being imported into England at this time.57 Much of her discussion focuses on London, where, for example, ships arrived from Antwerp with hundreds of stone images, as well as less expensive cast pipeclay statues.58 Significantly, Woods also chronicles how images from the Low Countries – including uncommissioned works – were also brought to port in eastern cities such as Boston and Hull.59 In addition, as at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, it was not unusual to find Netherlandish sculptors working in England from the early 15th century.60 Indeed, Woods acknowledges that there seems to be considerable cross-fertilisation at work between the English and Netherlandish carvers.61 227

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 12c.  Martin Schongauer, St Christopher, 1469–82, engraving Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Thus, we can more productively assess the composition and style of the stainedglass standing figures in the nave aisle windows of St Michael-le-Belfrey in relationship to this influx of continental images into England. The three-dimensional quality, poses and costume of the Belfrey images suggest an awareness of print or sculptural models such as the St George figure from Westminster, with its Netherlandish associations. While the glass painters working at St Michael-le-Belfrey may have been 228

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 13.  Virgin Annunciate, window nVI, 3c-4c. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

229

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 14.  St George, nave south side, 3rd bay from the east, triforium figure no. 93, Westminster Abbey, Abbey Church, Henry VII Chapel, London Photo: The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

230

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Fig. 15.  Mary Magdalene, window nIV, 2b, Church of All Saints, Darton Photo: Brian Sprakes

locally trained, they also had a variety of possible avenues for learning about new motifs and modes of figural representation, as did their wealthy patrons. These types of influences are evident in other examples from Yorkshire, such as at the church of All Saints, Darton, rebuilt in 1517 by Thomas Tickhill, prior of Monk Bretton monastery (1504–23).62 The surviving glass at Darton includes a figure of Mary Magdalene (Fig. 15) similar, particularly in her facial features, to female figures such as St Ursula at St Michael-le-Belfrey. A further connection between the two sites is suggested by the presence of distinctive large-scale glazier marks on figures, suggesting they were made by the same glazing atelier. St Michael-le-Belfrey clearly can be seen as participating 231

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

Fig. 16a.  Peter Gibson, modern setting of the John Coltman testimonial, as transcribed by Francis Drake, window sV, 1b-1c. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

Fig. 16b.  Device of John Coltman, window sV, 2a. St Michael-le-Belfrey, York Photo: Gordon Plumb

in this larger artistic movement, which integrates ideas and influences from a variety of media and sources into a local glass-painting tradition. Morphologically speaking, such figures seem to be active presences within our midst. Rather than residing two-dimensionally within the window-wall, they can be 232

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

seen as extending themselves into the space of the congregation, which in turn can be interpreted as forging relationships between the Holy and the devout in what Kate Rudy has called a ‘public visual environment’.63 The involvement of patrons in the creation of this ‘public visual environment’ raises the issue of the heightened visibility of the figures due to the spatial quality of the new church and the relationship to devotional practice with reference to purgatory. While it is frequently suggested that patrons selected the content for their windows, leaving the realisation of the window up to the artist, might we consider that St Michael’s wealthy parishioners, living in a major port with regular access to the continent, which was also a centre for the printing trade, would have had regular access to continental images? Certainly, as Graves points out, control over iconography and congregational space at this time increasingly passed into the hands of the laity.64 At St Michael-leBelfrey, the inclusion of two images of the same saint – St Christopher – argues that individuals chose the saints for their own windows rather than paying for part of a pre-determined holistic programme for the church. So on the one hand, the early-16th-century patrons and glaziers of St Michael-leBelfrey chose to create a traditional programme of standing monumentally scaled figures with inscriptions exhorting us to pray for the clearly identified patron of each window. So too, the architecture of the new church enhances the presence of these figures and inscriptions with its nearly universal visibility. As discussed at the beginning of this study, the church was rebuilt or, as Masinton prefers to describe it, reformed in the early 16th century. What probably was a typically subdivided building constructed over several centuries was remade into a more unified space in which the entire church is equally visible from virtually anywhere within it.65 The result was a remarkable coalition of style and composition with functionality. The standing nave-aisle figures are visible to all, almost regardless of their location. Although we cannot be entirely sure of the scale and legibility of the original inscriptions, fragmentary remains in the south aisle suggest they also were quite legible. As Masinton points out, the creation of this unified space comes at a moment when the trend toward corporate piety, in contrast to the more individualised prayer for one’s soul typified by bequests to images, lights and chantries, was gaining strength in England.66 In these windows we see very public exhortations to pray for the souls of the donors beneath the dynamic figures of saints each patron had presumably selected. For example, in the south-side windows, the following invocation was found: Of your charity pray for the soule of Mr John Coltman late subtreasurer of the church of Yorke and clerk of St. Peter’s workes . . . of the first stone towards the building this church it was the yere of our Lord MCCCCCXXV.67 This message was reinforced by the inclusion of shields or other devices, such as the initials of John Coltman, joined by a cord (Figs. 16a and 16b). Similarly, the south-side windows contained an inscription, dated 1530, dedicated to William Beckwith and his wife, Jane, as well as his brother Ralph, a goldsmith. Kneeling donor figures like the ones now placed above these devices were intended to be understood as William and his wife with other family members.68 The north-side windows contained an inscription to local goldsmith Martin Soza and his wife, Ellen, while an inscription to glazier William Tomson was recorded by Dodsworth in the south-east window, flanking the altar.69 All the donors of these windows were men of some rank and wealth. Four were members of the cathedral chapter, including Hugh Ashton, whose inscription was recorded by Dodsworth but has not been restored to the church.70 The other four 233

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard

inscriptions mention leading parishioners and their families. Two of these were mayors and chamberlains,71 and three were sheriffs.72 Two were merchants, one a goldsmith and another a draper.73 One was a glazier.74 Their counterparts from the chapter also held esteemed positions and must have been wealthy to have been able to afford to make such generous donations to St Michael-le-Belfrey. Their positions provide a visual link between them and the church. No less than two probably supervised the rebuilding of the church, at least partially, and all of them would have been involved with the parish by virtue of its capitular status and their official duties. While the current arrangement does not reveal which standing saints were associated with which inscription, or even which donor portrait, we can reasonably assume that the patron of each window had a voice in selecting the saints depicted. The emphasis here is on a shift toward more open, corporate and inclusive means of obtaining intercessions. At St Michael-le-Belfrey, these offerings are clearly on display and intended to be witnessed by as many as possible.75 The inclusion of donor names and their association with the patronage of an ambitious and highly expensive programme of stained glass highlights the changing dynamic of later medieval society, with its rising merchant class, particularly in port cities such as York. This active construction of sacred space as also social space has been observed by Pamela Graves to have been practised not by established seigneurial families, but by merchants and those aspiring to gentry status amongst the wealthy of yeoman origin. The established discourse of patronage was, from this time, increasingly used by such people to establish their own claims to respectability, wealth and secular status.76

In the case of St Michael-le-Belfrey, this individual mercantile patronage, boldly advertised through the extensive use of inscriptions, augments patronage by the neighbouring cathedral rather than a local lord or nobility. This series of windows with large, carefully rendered, single standing saints, detailed inscriptions and donor images advertises many elements related to the status of the donors. Firstly and foremost is their wealth, displayed in some cases by the costumes of the donor figures and suggested by the elaborate and fashionable dress of saints such as George and Martin, as well as the scale and quality of the windows themselves. Secondly, is the suggestion of their literacy through the use of lengthy inscriptions proclaiming their gift. As argued elsewhere, York was remarkable both for its level of literacy in the late Middle Ages as well as its connections through trade with continental Europe.77 The effect was also spatial, however. Certainly, the placement of such expansive, engaging figures in the nave speaks to the communal notion of a community of saints, an idea evoked by William Caxton in his opening page for his late-15th-century translation of and illustrations for The Golden Legend. The hall-style fabric of St Michaelle-Belfrey, with its tall, wide arcade arches, enhances the visibility of the holy presence of saints originally depicted in the aisle windows. Positioned above the parishioners’ heads but below the east window, their role as intercessors for the laity is made manifest. Their monumental scale makes them ideally positioned for personal reflection and contemplation by the congregation. As a whole, this programme becomes a kind of integrated image system in which prayer activates the holy figures portrayed in the windows. The saints are literally and metaphorically foregrounded in the worshippers’ presence as the church, a house of God, becomes, in Gary Gibbs’ words, ‘ . . . an image of heaven’.78 234

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York

Perhaps we can see a kind of corollary in the growing popularity of printed images at the time. For example, William Caxton’s English edition of The Golden Legend, probably printed in 1484, begins with a prayer for his patron, William FitzAlan, the 9th Earl of Arundel and supporter of the house of York: And I shall pray unto Almighty God for his long life and welfare, and after this short and transitory life to come into everlasting joy in heaven; the which he send to him and me and unto all them that shall read and hear this said book, that for the love and faith of whom all these holy saints have suffered death and passion. Amen.79

In this way, focused contemplation of the images of saints and their legends, as recorded by Caxton, is aligned with receiving the blessings of Heaven, both here on Earth and for eternity (an idea also realised in the Henry VII Chapel). This approach allows us to consider the nave windows of St Michael-le-Belfrey as evincing a dynamic realisation of holy presence – a kind of visual mnemonic, as described by Sally Badham in Seeking Salvation, which would keep the deceased donors in the prayers of later generations.80 This was further reinforced by obit lists, bede rolls, chantries and other prayers. It also supports the idea of an affective devotional space in which a synergy exists between the window-wall and the presence of parishioners within. Like the pages of The Golden Legend, each lancet unfolds with the active presence of a saint, contemplation of which promised heavenly reward. One can see it as a vitreous analogue to the description made in 1500 by a Venetian observer that Englishwomen brought their books of hours to Mass and orally recited the prayers ‘in the church, verse by verse, in a low voice, after the manner of churchmen’.81 Thus, the figures of saints residing within the nave windows, articulated with their energetic poses, can be understood in terms of their affective qualities. They constituted a bridge between the earthly and divine but also between the past and the ongoing. They are not passive onlookers but instead exhort us to pray for former and current parishioners. By actively integrating themselves into the parishioners’ midst, these sainted figures occupying the nave windows of St Michael-le-Belfrey – affective, physically robust and occasionally engaging in direct eye contact – functioned as both collective and personal witnesses in what Ellen Rentz has called the ‘visual rhetoric of the parish’. As such, they forged a potent connection between ‘parochial worship and membership in the eternal community of the saved’.82

notes 1. A. W. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space: Priorities, Perceptions and the Presence of God in Late Medieval Yorkshire Parish Churches’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2006), 62, records the building as 56 ft or 17 m south of the Minster nave. 2. J. Harvey, York (London 1975), 97, describes it as one of ‘the finest parish churches of the reign of Henry VIII anywhere in the country’. 3. F. Drake, Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York (London 1736), 338, 570. 4. S. Rees Jones, York: The Making of a City 1068–1350 (Oxford 2013), 70. 5. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 157, fols. 18v–21r and MS Dodsworth 161, fols. 39r–40r. 6. G. Benson, ‘Notes on the Church and Parish of St Michael-le-Belfrey’, Yorkshire Architectural Society, 37 (1923/4), 105, and P. M. Tillot ed., Victoria History of the Counties of England: The City of York (London VCH 1961), 312, cited also by Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 63.

235

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard 7. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 62. 8. J. Raine ed., The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees Society, 35 (Durham 1859), 246–7. The original fabric rolls have also been consulted, given that Raine’s volume is not a complete transcription, nor is it always accurate. York Minster Library E3/38–43. 9. Ibid., 261–63. 10. Ibid., 248. 11. Ibid., 253. 12. Ibid., 261–63. 13. Benson, ‘St Michael-le-Belfrey’ (as n. 6), 108 and Drake, Eboracum (as n. 3), 338, both discuss the dates for the rebuilding period in some detail. 14. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 76. 15. Ibid., 77–78. It was not until 1586 that the relationship between the Minster and the fabric was formally recorded. 16. B/E: York and East Riding (New Haven 1995), 172; RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York: The Central Area, V (London 1981), 36. For recent studies of the architecture of the church, see Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1) in particular chapter  2: ‘the Spatial Envelope of St Michael-le-Belfrey’ and C. M. Gibson, ‘The Rural and Urban Experience of Perpendicular Architecture in the Parish Churches of the East Riding of Yorkshire, c. 1370–c. 1550’ (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of York, 2012). For Brian Higdon, see C. Cross, York Clergy Wills 1520–1600: I Minster Clergy, vol. 1 (York 1989), 35–37 and W. A. J. Archbold, ‘Hygdon, Brian (d. 1539)’ rev. A. A. Chibi, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford 2004); online edition, ed. D. Cannadine, January  2008, online at: www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14338 [accessed 17 July 2017]. 17. O. Saunders, ‘Minster and Parish: The Sixteenth Century Reconstruction of St Michal-le-Belfrey in York’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of York, 1996), 13–14. 18. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 78. 19. Benson, ‘St Michael-le-Belfrey’ (as n. 6), 107. 20. The gallery was added in 1785, and the west front and north and south doorways were restored in 1867 by F. F. Jones. A bell tower, long ago destroyed but represented by a turret (remaining in 1972) on top of the gable of the south transept, gave the name ‘le belfrey’ to the church. VCH: City of York (as n. 6), 396. 21. J. Harvey, ‘Appendix: The Architects of York Minster from 1291 to 1558’, in The History of York Minster, eds C. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (Oxford 1977), 188, 192. He was an architect of importance who was also master mason to the archbishop for works at Cawood and Southwell. 22. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 64. 23. B. Wilson and F. Mee, The Medieval Parish Churches of York: The Pictorial Evidence (York 1998), fig. 98. 24. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 63–64. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Taylor Collection also has two unpublished wooden tracery panels identified as from the church of St Michael-le-Belfrey, dated to the 15th century. Many thanks to Amy Gillette for bringing these to our attention. 25. See Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 69–93, for his detailed study of the building fabric. 26. Ibid., 72–73. 27. Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 8), 100n, 101n, 102. 28. Saunders, ‘Minster and Parish’ (as n. 17), 12–14, discussed in Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 75. See p. 74 for discussion of fabric rolls gaps. 29. Although the present inscriptions are modern, they generally follow the transcriptions made by Roger Dodsworth, a 17th-century antiquary. See n. 5. 30. Raine, Fabric Rolls (as n. 8), 102. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 107. 33. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 78. 34. Ibid., 81–83.

236

The early sixteenth-century stained-glass programme of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York 35. Ibid., 87. No perpetual chantries were founded in York after 1510. 36. R. Dinn, ‘Death and Rebirth in Late Medieval Bury St  Edmunds’, in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. S. Bassett (Leicester 1992), 151–69: 155. 37. R. Morris, Image and Devotion (Stroud 2004), 92. 38. Ibid., 91. 39. C. Richmond, ‘Religion’, in Fifteenth Century Attitudes, ed. R. Horrox (Cambridge 1994), 183–201: 186. 40. For the Becket series at St Michael-le-Belfrey, see E. Milner-White, Sixteenth Century Glass in York Minster and in the church of St Michael-le-Belfrey (York 1960), and more recently, R. Koopmans, ‘Early Sixteenth-Century Stained Glass at St Michael-le-Belfrey and the Commemoration of Thomas Becket in Late Medieval York’, Speculum, 89:4 (2014), 1040–100. Helen Bower discussed the conservation of these panels in ‘An archaeological investigation, documentation and reconstruction of the Becket cycle stained glass from York Minster CH I and St Michael le Belfry nV, York’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of York, 2010). 41. For a historiography of the stained glass at St Michael-le-Belfrey, see L. Reilly and M. B. Shepard, ‘ “Sufferance fait ease en temps”: Word as Image at St Michael-le-Belfrey, York’, Word & Image, 32:2 (2016), 220. 42. P. Gibson, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass of York’, in The Noble City of York, ed. A. Stacpoole (York 1972), 197–200. Gibson (1929–2016) also discussed his extensive reordering of the windows in a personal interview with the authors in 2010. 43. See, for example, P. Binski, ‘The English Parish Church and its Art in the Later Middle Ages: A Review of the Problem’, Studies in Iconography, 20 (1999), 1–25; R. Gilchrist, Medieval Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge 2012); C. P. Graves, ‘Social Space in the English Medieval Parish Church’, Economy and Society, 18:3 (1989), 312–33; C. Burgess and E. Duffy eds, The Parish in Late Medieval England, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 14 (Donnington 2008). 44. Binski, ‘The English Parish Church’ (as n. 43), 3. 45. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Dodsworth 157, fols. 18v–21r and MS Dodsworth 161, fols. 39r–40r. 46. See R. Marks and P. Williamson eds, Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547 (London and New Haven 2003), 225–26. 47. B/E: Cornwall (New Haven 2001), 57. For images, see also www.cornishstainedglass.org.uk/ mgsmed/church.xhtml?churchid=30 [accessed 4 June 2018]. 48. J. A. Knowles, Essays in the History of The York School of Glass-Painting (London 1936), 14. 49. R. Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (Toronto and Buffalo 1993), 226. 50. See B. Sprakes, The Medieval Stained Glass of South Yorkshire, CVMA Great Britain, Summary Catalogue 7: South Yorkshire (Oxford 2003), 60–61. 51. For a more detailed discussion of the print industry in late medieval York, see R. Davies, A Memoir of the York Press with Notices of Authors, Printers, and Stationers, in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Westminster 1868) and S. Perring, ‘The Cultural Landscape of York the Minster Close c. 1500–1642’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2010), 246, 262–63. 52. P. Parshall and R. Schoch, ‘Origins of European Printmaking’, in Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public (New Haven 2005), 153–56. 53. P. Lindley, ‘Two Late Medieval Sculptures at Eton College’, in Gothic to Renaissance: Essays on Sculpture in England (Stamford 1995), 156–69. These works date to the early 16th century; Philip Lindley associates them with courtly patronage by either Henry VII or Henry VIII, both of whom employed a cosmopolitan workshop of artists. See Lindley, ibid., 164–67. 54. P. Lindley, ‘ “The singular mediacion and praiers of al the holie companie of Heven”: Sculptural Function and Forms in Henry VII’s Chapel’, in Westminster Abbey: The Lady Chapel of Henry VII, eds T. Tatton-Brown and R. Mortimer (Woodbridge 2003), 280–81, fig. 38. 55. L. Stone, Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth 1972), 229. Cited also in Lindley, ‘Henry VII’s Chapel’ (as n. 54), 287. 56. Lindley, ‘Henry VII’s Chapel’ (as n. 54), 293, and ‘Two Late Medieval Sculptures’ (as n. 53), 166. H. Dow, The Sculptural Decoration of the Henry VII Chapel Westminster Abbey (Durham 1992), 73–94,

237

lisa reilly and mary b. shepard disagrees, as does K. Woods, Imported Images: Netherlandish Late Gothic Sculpture in England, c. 1400– c. 1500 (Donington 2007), 132, n. 121–22. 57. Woods, Imported Images (as n. 56), esp. Chapter 2, ‘Importing Continental Sculpture into England in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, 106–42. 58. Ibid., 112. 59. Ibid., 113–15. 60. Ibid., 127–35. 61. Ibid., 130. 62. Sprakes, South Yorkshire (as n. 50), 26–27. 63. K. Rudy, ‘Images, Rubrics, and Indulgences on the Eve of the Reformation’, in The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400–1700, eds C. Brusate, K. A. E. Enenkel and W. S. Melion (Leiden 2011), 443. 64. Graves, ‘Social Space’ (as n. 43), 317. 65. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 89. 66. Ibid., 86–89. 67. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 157, f. 18v and MS Dodsworth 161, fol. 39v. 68. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 157, f. 18v and MS Dodsworth 161, fol. 40r. 69. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 157, f. 20v and MS Dodsworth 161, fol. 39v. 70. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Dodsworth 161, f. 39r. 71. Including John Elwald (see R. H. Skaife ed., The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi (Durham 1872), 80) and William Beckwith (see R. H. Skaife, York City Library, Catalogue of Lord Mayors, Bailiffs, Lord Mayors, Sheriffs, and Members of Parliament, M22, fol. 125). 72. William Beckwith (Skaife Y.C.L. f. 62r.), Martin Soza (M. Sellers and J. Perey eds, York Memorandum Books, Surtees Society, v. 4 (Durham 1914), 137) and John Lister (Skaife, Y.C.L., MS 22, fol. 291). 73. These were John Elwald (see, Gibson, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass of York’ (as n. 42), 196); William Beckwith (M. Sellers, York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers (Durham 1918), 154); Martin Soza (see his inscription in window nIV); John Lister (Skaife, Y.C.L., MS 22, fol. 400). 74. J. A. Knowles, ‘Glass Painters of York viii: The Thompson Family’, Notes and Queries (27 August 1921), 164. 75. Masinton, ‘Sacred Space’ (as n. 1), 87. 76. Graves, ‘Social Space’ (as n. 43), 312–33. 77. Reilly and Shepard, ‘Word as Image’ (as n. 41), 218–34. 78. G. Gibbs, ‘New Duties for the Parish Community in Tudor London’, in The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, eds K. French, G. Gibbs and B. Kumin (Manchester 1997), 168. 79. W. Caxton, The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, 1483, from the Temple Classics Edition by F. S. Ellis (London 1931) and digitised in the Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/ goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume1.asp [accessed 4 June 2018]. 80. S. Badham, Seeking Salvation: Commemorating the Dead in the Late-Medieval English Parish Church (Donington 2015), 20. 81. E. Rentz, Imagining the Parish in Late Medieval England (Columbus 2015), 152. 82. Ibid.,150.

238

The material world of the York plays RICHARD BEADLE

The York Corpus Christi Play, performed in the streets of the city from the late 14th to the mid-16th century, consisted of a Creation to Doomsday cycle of around 50 pageants, each one of which was financed and produced by one or more of the city’s craft organisations, or ‘mysteries’ (hence their popular designation, mystery plays). Correspondences between the products, services and other activities of the crafts and aspects of the biblical and apocryphal subjects dramatised in the pageants have sometimes been noted, but the extent of their occurrence, and the rationales for the relationship between craft and pageant have yet to be systematically addressed. This study enumerates and analyses more examples of the phenomenon than have hitherto been observed and offers a variety of approaches designed to encourage further enquiry. The fact that a number of the biblical and apocryphal episodes that form the subject matter of pageants that make up the York Corpus Christi Play were, in some sense, ‘appropriate’ to the craft organisations that financed and staged them has been a matter of passing comment ever since the days of the Victorian editors and antiquaries who first paid serious attention to medieval drama. It was one of the features that led them to be dubbed ‘mystery’ plays (a designation now commonly a source of confusion and misunderstanding), and the phenomenon was not confined to York. As E. K. Chambers, compiler of the first major synoptic history of early drama in the British Isles, remarked: Some endeavour after dramatic appropriateness is visible in the apportioning of the . . . plays among the crafts. Thus Noah is given to the shipwrights (York, Newcastle), the watermen (Beverley, Chester), the fishers and mariners (York); the Magi to the goldsmiths (Beverley, Newcastle, York); the Disputation in the Temple to the scriveners (Beverley); the Last Supper to the bakers (Beverley, Chester, York); the Harrowing of Hell to the cooks (Beverley, Chester).1

For the most part, any perceived correspondence between the activities of a craft and the subject matter of its play was (and in many quarters perhaps still is) thought to be a matter of ‘trade symbolism’, as if the annual performances at York, Chester and elsewhere were little more than an opportunity for a kind of primitive advertising, or ‘product placement’.2 Only rarely has the relationship between the activities of a craft and the nature of its pageant been investigated in a detailed or textually exact way.3 However, the attention now being paid by scholars in a variety of fields to what is broadly termed the material culture of the past suggests that the time may be ripe to look more closely at this aspect of the early drama in York.4 Non-textual objects of many kinds associated with the day-to-day activities of the crafts and their products manifest themselves in the scripts, staging and iconography of the plays in complex ways that, for the most part, remain to be investigated in detail.

© 2022 The British Archaeological Association

239

richard beadle

Such an enquiry prompts a variety of questions, not all of which can be entered into fully within the scope of the present paper. Among them would be the vexed issue of how these fitting associations between crafts and their pageants first arose during the almost entirely obscure process whereby large-scale civic plays involving craft organisations first came into being, at York and elsewhere, during the latter half of the 14th century.5 Might they have been sought out by the crafts themselves, in order to furnish a corporate expression of their new-found identities in terms of religious art, in much the same way as the wealthy urban individuals who were beginning to commission paintings and stained-glass windows found ways of including reference to themselves in the compositions? Such an explanation sorts well, on the face of it, with the York Shipwrights’ success in inserting details of the material workings of their craft into the divine scheme of salvation expressed by the cycle as a whole: it projects God, as a master craftsman, instructing his apprentice Noah in the construction of the ark, which, as the vessel of salvation, was a familiar typological symbol of the Church. The text of their pageant makes ostentatious reference to the technical vocabulary of medieval shipbuilding in God’s instructions to Noah, and Noah continues to use similar terminology as the parts of a prefabricated ark (which, in a piece of felicitous wordplay, he calls his ‘craft’) are brought together around him by mute stagehands.6 The same explanation, does not, on the other hand, fit at all comfortably (to modern perceptions, at least) with the materiality of crafts which seem to have had a more equivocal or difficult relationship to the subject matter of pageants which were deemed nonetheless to be ‘appropriate’ to them.7 Tanners (sometimes known in York and elsewhere as Barkers), for example, appear regularly to have been associated with pageants of the Creation of the World and the Fall of the Angels, though for reasons not immediately evident to the modern eye: fraternities of Tanners brought forth the Fall of the Angels not only at York but also at Beverley, Chester and (if one accepts that at least some of the plays collected in the Towneley Manuscript were seen there) probably at Wakefield.8 The likeliest explanation of this widespread association is that the acrid stench of tanneries, where hides were steeped in concoctions of oak bark, faeces and urine, was suggestive of the atmosphere of hell. At York, Lucifer and the rebellious angels speak of themselves as having fallen into ‘filth’ (Pageant 1, line 106; cf. lines 60, 132), a word which, as well as its modern generalised sense, bore the specific meaning of ‘excrement’.9 Viewed from this perspective, the persistent association of the Tanners with the Fall of the Angels might have the appearance of being less than complimentary to the craft. It is worth looking at the case of the York Tanners in a little more detail. Around the turn of the 14th century, when the York cycle as we now know it was taking shape, the Tanners were a numerous and prosperous craft.10 Their pageant, the first in the sequence, was a spectacular one, showing God creating heaven, earth and hell to the accompaniment of a choir of nine orders of angels singing the Te deum, and Lucifer with his cohorts falling into the pit, changing from angels to devils in the process. The set was elaborate, the cast large (and trained in liturgical singing), and the special effects impressive; it must have been costly to produce it annually. The distinction of bringing forth the first pageant in the Corpus Christi Play (which they continued to do until its demise in the latter half of the 16th century) must have lent the Tanners a degree of prestige, of the same kind that the Mercers enjoyed when they produced the finale of the cycle with the equally spectacular Doomsday.

240

The material world of the York plays

It is interesting to contrast this kind of cultural prestige with the indifferent status of the Tanners in York in more quotidian matters. In common with traditional societies across many cultures, the medieval English town tended to separate from the rest of the community those who trades involved dealing with animal carcases, body fluids and faeces, chiefly butchers and leather workers. Because their trade involved using raw animal hides, excrement (that of dogs, humans and birds was held to be best for their purposes) and urine, tanners as a group were in various ways set apart, both socially and physically.11 Tanners in York tended to be confined to their own quarter of the city, in the parish of All Saints, North Street, between Micklegate and the west bank of the Ouse, as the surviving street names in the vicinity show: Tanner Row, Tanners Moat, Barker Lane.12 The trade was no doubt assisted by the presence of one of the city’s chief dunghills nearby on Toft Green, in the western angle of the city walls.13 Spatial confinement was also reflected in a degree of separation in other spheres of life: tanners were not encouraged to involve themselves in civic government, few of them sought or achieved political influence of office holders, and only one is recorded as holding the mayoralty during the medieval period. On the other hand, it was partly the nature of their craft that ensured that tanners had a monopoly of a large tranche of the leather trade generally, allowing them to operate independently of mercers and merchants in sourcing their raw materials and to pursue prolonged demarcation feuds with the other major leather craft, the Cordwainers.14 What remains of other forms of artistic patronage associated with York’s Tanners is impressive, notwithstanding the ambiguous status of the occupation as a whole. They played a large part in the building of their parish church of All Saints, North Street, where many of them were buried. By the 15th century it was attracting some of the wealthiest patronage in the city, and significant quantities of its once outstanding adornments in painted glass survive.15 It is there that one may still see the remnants of a once fine window representing the Nine Orders of Angels, figures who feature prominently in the Tanners’ pageant. Each order leads a procession of representative souls of the blessed to Paradise, and behind the Cherubim and Seraphim (who have speaking parts in the play) come certain townsfolk, including an artisan bearing the tools of his trade, generally taken to be a tanner.16 The York Tanners’ and Shipwrights’ pageants were composed by different playwrights, but both knew of the crafts for whom they wrote before setting out on their respective compositions, and both customised their scripts accordingly, but in rather different ways. Noah, the archetypal shipwright, apprenticed to the divine artificer Himself, learns the precise technical vocabulary of his craft, enabling the playwright to expand imaginatively upon his theme in ways not available to the dramatist engaged by the Tanners. The latter’s allusions to the noxious atmosphere and unpleasant materials associated with tanneries are necessarily oblique, generalised and euphemistic (confined to stench, fumes and ‘filth’), operating by analogy rather than direct identification with the infernal regions depicted in the pageant. As such they simply function denotatively, signalling no more than the fact of the craft’s possession of the pageant and their responsibility for a spectacular and successful production involving this subject. It is difficult to see how such allusions could have been intended to reflect negatively or ironically upon the craft itself. The same must be true in other cases where equivocal associations between crafts and aspects of their pageants have, from the perspective of modern cultural

241

richard beadle

commentary, been suspected. A case in point is the Tilethatchers’ pageant of The Nativity (no. 14), which begins with the arrival of the holy family at the stable in Bethlehem, represented by the superstructure of the pageant wagon upon which the play was performed. Joseph observes the ruinous condition of the building and comments specifically on the poor state of the roof above their heads, which is open to the elements: ‘þe ruffe is rayued [split open] aboven oure hede’ (Pageant 14, line 18). Though it has been suggested that such a reference is paradoxical, that it reflects adversely on the Tilethatchers, the staging and iconography of the episode tell a different story.17 The hole in the roof of the Tilethatchers’ pageant wagon would certainly draw attention to the nature of the craft’s activities and to the materials involved, but it also possessed hermeneutic and dramaturgic functions in relation to the action of the play. The ruinous state of the stable in Bethlehem, very commonly represented in northern European art of the time, was understood exegetically to signify the flawed, postlapsarian state of the world and humanity under the Old Law, into which the incarnate Redeemer is about to be born. Representations of the scene in various media sometimes include angelic roofers on the superstructure of the stable beginning the work of repair to which Jesus will devote himself.18 Though there are no speaking parts other than those assigned to Joseph and Mary in the surviving Tilethatchers’ script, we know from other sources that their pageant involved a role for at least one angel positioned conventionally on the roof of the set, watching over the birth taking place beneath. His task was to sing an anthem accompanying the moment of the Incarnation and to lower a light through the hole in the roof to illuminate the newborn infant, details of the action which the dramatist borrowed from the narrative of the event in the Revelations of St Bridget, a 14th-century source which he followed closely in other respects.19 Viewed from this perspective, there seems no reason to regard the Tilethatchers’ association with their pageant in an ironic light. On the other hand, the metatheatrical means whereby their ‘presence’ in the performance was manifested are certainly more subtle and oblique than those at the disposal (for example) of the Shipwrights’ dramatist, relying as they do on a degree of basic exegetical and iconographic knowledge on the part of the audience. The association of the Tilethatchers with the subject matter of their pageant is but minimally scripted and exists merely as a passing remark about a poorly maintained roof in the course of some naturalistic dialogue. Most of its significance was conveyed to the audience by visual means, as a feature of the set, serving as a reminder that religious drama in this period functioned as one of the visual arts and that it possessed much in common with them iconographically. Indeed, the association between a craft and the subject of its pageant could be expressed entirely by visual means, in terms of the set, costuming and the stage properties, without recourse to any verbal allusion in the script. A striking example exists in the shape of the Woolpackers and Woolbrokers’ pageant of the Supper at Emmaus (no. 40), depicting one of Jesus’ miraculous post-Resurrection appearances to his disciples, the narrative of which occurs only in chapter 24 of St Luke’s gospel. Woolpackers and woolbrokers served as middlemen between the growers of wool, scattered widely over the moors, fells and wolds of the northern counties of England, and the numerous urban crafts and merchants involved in medieval York’s highly developed textile industry. Very little documentary information concerning their activities has survived, though there is some archaeological evidence of their existence in the numerous wooden bale pins used to secure their woolpacks, identified during recent excavations in the city.20 242

The material world of the York plays

The text of the Woolpackers and Woolbrokers’ pageant provides no direct indication of why these crafts should have been associated with the Supper at Emmaus. Two of the disciples meet on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus and, whilst they are lamenting Jesus’ passion and death, he suddenly joins them, unrecognised, as a mysterious stranger who affects to be unaware of the events they are describing. On reaching their destination all three sit down to a meal, in the course of which Jesus (in eucharistic manner) breaks bread and then suddenly vanishes from sight. In a flash, the disciples realise that it is the risen Lord that they have been entertaining. Though the dialogue accompanying this action tells us nothing as to why wool dealers might have anything to do with the play, the reason for their association with it would probably have been made very obvious to the audience through the costuming of the actors. Notwithstanding the silence of the scriptural narrative on the point, exegetical, iconographic and dramatic tradition dictated that the two disciples, and likewise the mysterious figure whom they encounter on the road, were understood to be pilgrims, very familiar figures in medieval life.21 As a consequence, they were pictured in the visual arts and in plays suitably clad and accoutred for pilgrimage, with staffs, scrips, scallop shells, wide-brimmed hats and, in many cases, wearing the northern European pilgrim’s characteristic shaggy woollen overgarment known as a sclavin or slavin.22 Notable images of the disciple-pilgrims clad in sclavins appear in the 14th-century Holkham Bible (British Library) where they have the appearance of wearing sheepskin cloaks and headgear with the wool side facing outwards.23 Though one cannot prove that the actors in the Woolpackers and Woolbrokers’ pageant wore costumes illustrating the craft’s principal commodity, it would be surprising (bearing in mind the conventional iconography of the scene) to learn that they did not. The relationship of these crafts and many others to the subject matter of their pageants should also be seen in more general contexts. It is clear that all of the crafts were strongly identified with their pageants in various ways, irrespective of whether or not the subjects were of the ‘appropriate’ type. In the first place this was a matter of nomenclature. Individual pageants are mentioned fairly frequently in the documentary sources of the period, chiefly the city’s volumes of record known as the Memorandum Books and the House Books, maintained by the Common Clerk. In records of this kind the pageants were almost invariably identified by the name of the sponsoring craft and very seldom by their subject matter.24 The same is true of the civic volume known as the Register of the Corpus Christi Play, a consolidated record of almost its entire text (and the basis of modern editions) compiled from the individual ‘originals’ or prompt copies held by the crafts in c. 1476–77; this volume was also held by the Common Clerk, the civic official charged with the practical arrangements for the play. Here, the heading to each pageant (which also provides the running-title to the script that follows) takes the form of the sponsoring craft’s or crafts’ names, and only three of the 47 plays thus recorded are also provided with titles.25 The crafts also took steps to identify themselves with their pageants as part of the visual impression created by the performance annually on Corpus Christi day. It was evidently customary for a craft to display its insignia or identifying symbol in some form on its pageant wagon, and a number of liveried masters in each craft accompanied their vehicle on its progress from station to station along the ceremonial route through the city where performances took place.26 The verbal and visual means whereby the identities of the crafts were foregrounded wherever the pageants were spoken of, documented or performed are striking. In such a context, the question of whether or not the subject of the play 243

richard beadle

a craft produced answered in some way to their professional activities is of secondary importance. That the makers of gloves, say, brought forth a pageant on the subject of the murder of Abel by Cain (one of the three given a title in the Register, Sacrifium Cayme et Abell) is of less significance than the fact that their production was known alike to its audience, and to the civic authorities who organised the Corpus Christi play as a whole, as the Glovers’ pageant. The nature of the identification seems to have been just as strong as it was in cases where there was some manifest association between craft and subject, such as the Shipwrights and Noah. It is also worth bearing in mind that some of the associations between crafts and their pageants at York arose for reasons unrelated to their day-to-day activities. The Carpenters, for example, appear to have acquired their involvement in a pageant on the subject of The Resurrection (no. 38) not because of some aspect of woodworking but because many of those who followed such trades (who also included Cartwrights, Wheelwrights, Joiners, Carvers and Sawyers) identified themselves with a religious gild accommodated by the Augustinian friary in Lendal, the ‘holy fraternity of the Resurrection of Our Lord’. The Carpenters of York are known to have possessed a corporate identity with a religious aspect from at least the mid-12th century, many decades before the Corpus Christi Play came into existence, which (in the light of later references) seems likely to have involved a devotion to the Resurrection.27 Other associations between crafts and their pageants may well have come into existence along such lines.28 It is sometimes thought that the nailing of Christ on the cross in the pageant entitled Crucifixio Christi in the Register (no. 35) belonged to the Pinners because this craft would have been associated with producing the nails used during this macabre episode, but this is unlikely to have been so. The thick, heavy nails of the type referred to in the text were the stock in trade of other crafts (the Nailers and the Ironmongers), whereas pinners dealt in wire and the much smaller pointed objects made of it, such as fishhooks, buckles, mousetraps and the metal components of woolcards, as well as pins.29 Prior to 1422 the Pinners were not associated with the nailing of Christ on the cross (which was a separate pageant funded by the Painters, Stainers and Goldbeaters) but with its raising and the display of the crucifix to the audience, to the accompaniment of the soldiers’ mockery. Documentary and archaeological evidence indicates that many pinners were concentrated in the city-centre parish of St Crux, whose church was dedicated to this image.30 St Crux (extending from the eastern end of the Pavement towards the end of Colliergate and Whipmawhopmagate but demolished in 1886) maintained a fraternity devoted to the worship of the crucifix; and it was also the Pinners’ church, for it was here that they maintained a votive candle, first put in place soon after 1349 in thanksgiving for survival from the Black Death.31 Again, it seems likely that the craft’s association with its pageant lay originally in a special object of fraternal devotion rather than an aspect of their trade. Other significant dimensions to any consideration of the craft–pageant relationships at York ought to be mentioned before we refocus attention on more cases where there were artistically and didactically productive associations between crafts and the subjects of the pageants they brought forth. In the first place, it is important to note that the number of crafts involved in staging the cycle was much greater than is generally appreciated. The usual source of information on this point is the Register containing the text of the cycle as a whole, which, in the headings and running-titles to the individual pageants (all reproduced as they appear in the manuscript in the modern edition), gives the impression that each of them was produced by one or, at 244

The material world of the York plays

most, two crafts, an impression which in some, but by no means all, cases is accurate. Some of these references to the pageants, identifying one or two leading crafts, were evidently nominal, and perhaps partly a matter of clerical convenience. It is clear from other documentary sources that in a significant number of cases smaller, subsidiary crafts – which were often but not always or not necessarily related to the nominal sponsor – contributed to a particular production. The most important of these sources is the document known as the Ordo Paginarum, drawn up by the Common Clerk in 1415, long before the Register of the text was commissioned (c. 1476–77), and retained for reference at the back of the city’s principal Memorandum Book (A/Y).32 Here, a brief description of the subject and cast of each pageant is accompanied not only by the name of its principal sponsoring craft but in some cases also by a list of other crafts that contributed to the production. Where the Register seems to indicate that the fifty pageants that went to make up the cycle were supported by some sixty crafts, the Ordo, together with other documentary sources that make reference to the plays, reveals that over time the number of crafts actually involved in staging the performance was upwards of 100.33 Thus no. 26 (The Conspiracy), according to the Register, is simply the Cutlers’ pageant, whereas the Ordo and other sources reveal that the Bladesmiths, Sheathers, Scalers (makers of knife hafts) and Bucklermakers were also involved. The pageant depicting The Woman Taken in Adultery followed by the Raising of Lazarus (no. 24) is attributed to ‘the Cappers &c.’ in the Register, but (as we learn elsewhere) the ‘&c.’ consists of the Plumers (feathermongers), Pattenmakers, Pouchmakers, (leather) Bottlemakers, Horners and (felt) Hatters.34 As we shall see, it was sometimes the nature of one or more of these subsidiary crafts rather than the nominally leading craft that provided a cue for a dramatist to express an association with the subject matter of a pageant. Finally, one should also keep in mind that not every pageant in the Corpus Christi Play at York was produced by a craft organisation. A significant exception existed in the case of the seventeenth pageant in the sequence, depicting the Purification of the Virgin at the Temple in Jerusalem, which, down to an unknown date sometime in the mid-15th century, was performed at the expense of one of the city’s major religious institutions, the hospital of St Leonard. This ancient establishment, believed to date from before the Norman Conquest, occupied a large site between the west end of York Minster and the River Ouse. It lay within an ecclesiastical liberty, outside the secular jurisdiction of the city, and was thus excluded from the kind of control exercised over the craft organisations by the municipal authorities. How and why the hospital undertook to bring forth one of the pageants in the Corpus Christi Play is unknown, but it is nonetheless possible to discern a link between one of the institution’s main functions and the subject matter of its pageant.35 By the 15th century, the value of its endowments having dwindled, the hospital had taken to selling corrodies to wellto-do citizens, who could thus guarantee themselves care during their old age in what we would nowadays describe as sheltered accommodation.36 The situation of these people and of other elderly folk whom the hospital traditionally took in could be thought of as conspicuously analogous to that of two figures who feature prominently in the pageant, the ancient priest Simeon (who inaugurates the Nunc dimittis) and Anna the prophetess, who are living out the end of their lives within the precinct of the Temple in Jerusalem.

* * * * * 245

richard beadle

It emerges from the foregoing discussion that the issue of craft–pageant associations in the York cycle is a complex one, especially inasmuch as it may involve latent artistic factors alongside more obvious pragmatic considerations. Taken as a whole, they are not susceptible to unitary, or purely material, explanations such as those that see them as determined by socio-economic theory or cultural politics. It is worth bearing in mind that the playwrights from whom the scripts were commissioned (and there were evidently a number of them) must have been aware that historically adventitious circumstances had precipitated new creative opportunities. Almost all of the crafts for whom they worked had achieved an organised existence (in so far as it was expressed in written ordinances and regulations) only very recently, in the decades following upon the Black Death of 1349–50.37 Only in this era might the idea have developed that sometimes a craft’s practical activities could in some way answer to the characters, or the events, or the physical objects involved in the scriptural and apocryphal narratives that the playwrights were being called upon to dramatise. The shape and organisation of the play-cycle itself was also a novelty at the time. A few vernacular plays based on scriptural subjects have survived or are recorded across Europe from the 12th century onwards; but there is very little to suggest that anyone thought of developing or agglomerating them into cyclical sequences of the kind found in contemporary pictorial narratives. The Corpus Christi cycles of certain northern English towns, consisting of a Creation to Doomsday structure subdivided into numerous short episodes, first heard of during the last quarter of the 14th century, appear to be something of an original departure in dramatic tradition.38 From the playwrights’ perspective, the craft–pageant associations that began to manifest themselves in later 14th-century York offered opportunities for imaginative development that are best described in theatrical and literary terms. They may, for example, appear as dramatic conceits involving special effects, stage business, gestures, properties and costumes; or alternatively they are sometimes to be observed in the form of artfully placed allusions, embedded in the verbal texture of a script or expressed as a nexus of diction or imagery connected with the activities of a craft. A striking and perhaps unexpected instance of one York dramatist’s ingenuity in this respect is to be seen in the Plasterers’ pageant, the second in the cycle, depicting the Creation of the World.39 A Plasterers’ pageant is first heard of in 1390, and the script (the work of a later copyist who preserved the archaic features of its language and dialect) probably dates from about that time. Soon afterwards, in the early years of the 15th century, the Plasterers began effectively to merge with the other building craft with whose activities their own frequently overlapped, the Tilethatchers, who were commonly involved in laying bricks (‘wall tiles’), as well as roofing. Eventually, in 1422–23, it was agreed that the two crafts should jointly bring forth both the pageants of the Creation and the Nativity. By the time the Plasterers’ text came to be copied into the Register in around 1476–77, there were in fact rather few craftsmen who still described themselves as plasterers on the Freemen’s Roll.40 Nonetheless, the identity of the original craft was still strongly reflected in the nature of the script that had been designed for them almost a century earlier. It was a most unusual and original composition, unique in the cycle. Not only did it provide for only one speaking part, but it also implied the use of elaborate stage machinery designed to show how the Word of God, the divine artificer, progressively manifested itself in the material form of the world, and all that was in it, as the work of the five days of creation unfolded. From out of the inchoate waters emerge first the firmament, then the solid 246

The material world of the York plays

earth, followed by trees, flowers, and so forth, the sun and moon above, fish in the waters, birds in the air, and animals on the land, all operated by mechanical means from behind the scenes. The actor who plays God is in effect in dialogue, not with another speaker but with a series of surprising and delightful special effects built into the set on which he stands. The pageant thus takes the form of an extended theatrical conceit based upon the ultimate nature of the plasterer’s craft: ‘Just as the plasterers caused solid form to emerge from formless liquid in their daily labour, so too God’s work causes the dry land to appear from the waters’.41 Scope for elaborated imaginative development of the craft–pageant association that one sees in the case of the Plasterers or (as mentioned earlier) the Shipwrights was available to the dramatists in only a few cases. Often it was a matter of embedding verbal and visual allusions to the materiality of the processes or products of a craft in incidental but no less significant ways. Those that associate the Goldsmiths with the Three Kings (no. 16), the Vintners with the Marriage at Cana (no. 22A) or the Bakers with the Last Supper (no. 27) have long been obvious, though in the latter case the significance of the Waterleaders’ contribution to the production, alluded to in the inclusion of the Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet, with the unusual added motif of St Martial of Limoges bringing him water, has generally been overlooked.42 Symbolic objects as stage properties associating pageant and craft appear in more cases than has often been appreciated. In no. 6, The Expulsion, the angel who exiles Adam and Eve from Eden would be equipped with the flaming sword of Genesis 2:23 that is his invariable adjunct in the iconography of the scene in the visual arts, and a product of the Armourers who financed the pageant, the necessary special effect being achieved by wrapping the weapon in a cloth soaked in pitch or rosin. The appropriateness of Noah’s Flood to the Fishers and Mariners (no. 9) is plain enough, but its local relevance to those who navigated the notoriously treacherous shallows of the lower Ouse and Humber Estuary is reinforced by the non-scriptural motif of Noah using a plumb-line to gauge the depth of the waters (Pageant 9, lines 199–200). In no. 18, the Marshals would have been well placed to provide the animal (traditionally a donkey or ass) on which a boy-actor, playing a Mary unused to riding, unsteadily exits the playing space at the end of the Flight into Egypt (Pageant 18, lines 205–06). Barber-surgeons in York displayed the bowl universally symbolic of their craft outside their premises, and such an object is very likely to have featured in their pageant of The Baptism (no. 21): John the Baptist is often shown performing the affusion with a similar vessel in the visual arts of the period.43 The script provided for the Tapiters and Couchers (no. 30, Christ before Pilate 1: The Dream of Pilate’s Wife), crafts involved in the manufacture of bedding and similar upholstery, included not one but two bedroom scenes, showing a drunken and licentious Pontius Pilate and his egregious wife, Dame Percula, retiring to their respective beds on the night Jesus is captured and brought to their palace. In the closing pageant of Doomsday (no. 47), brought forth by the Mercers, the bodies and souls of the dead are reunited to face their final judgement and bring with them rolls of account and books of reckoning – objects naturally associated with mercantile activities – in which their good and bad deeds are enumerated.44 Other specific stage properties or features of costuming associated with certain crafts sometimes carry the kind of strong symbolic and didactic significance possessed by the merchants’ account books that feature in the Doomsday pageant. Pageant no. 33, Christ before Pilate 2: The Judgement, one of the longest and most elaborate in the cycle, is the last of the succession of trial scenes in which Jesus is verbally and physically 247

richard beadle

abused in the course of his Passion, depicting the events leading up to the judgement of Pontius Pilate. Particular prominence is given to the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and to Pilate’s washing his hands of the affair. Though this pageant stands in the name of the Tilemakers in the Register of the text, they were in fact the leaders of a consortium of seemingly miscellaneous and minor crafts involved in sponsoring it. These included the Turners (of small wooden objects), the Bollers (bowlmakers), the Ropers, and the Hairsterers, who manufactured items such as whipcord and haircloth from horsehair and hemp. It is possible that these oddly assorted subsidiary crafts associated themselves with this pageant because some of their products were objects that appear in the iconographic tradition of the Arma Christi, or Instruments of the Passion, commonly illustrated in the visual arts of the time: the crown of thorns, not necessarily a makeshift item but often a skilfully turned and almost ornamental wooden object of the kind shown (for example) in Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Crowned with Thorns (London, National Gallery); the bowl containing the water with which Pilate washed his hands, to which the text draws attention; the ropes used to bind Jesus’ hands as he is led from one location to another; and the cords used for the whips with which he is scourged.45 Another of the Instruments of the Passion provides a remarkable special effect in the pageant of The Death of Christ (no. 36), brought forth by the Butchers, a craft who (like the Tanners) were set apart socially because of the nature of their trade, specifically its routine need for direct physical contact with blood. They nonetheless produced this centrally important and no doubt prestigious pageant, which in the York version includes the legendary episode of Longinus, a blind ‘knight’ who substitutes for the Roman soldier of the gospels, whose task it was to administer the coup de grace by piercing Jesus’ side with a spear. The property spear used at York must have been a specialised device incorporating a reservoir containing a dark red liquid, which at the moment of the piercing is made to flow down the shaft to stain Longinus’ hands. He wipes his eyes, and his sight is miraculously restored in an instant, upon which he exhibits his ‘bloodstained’, butcher-like hands directly to the audience. The butchers of York seem to have been particularly devoted to this episode, and especially to the spear of the Passion, for some of them bequeathed small silver replicas of it as votive objects to their local church of Holy Trinity, King’s Square, which once stood at the top of the Shambles, where their premises were concentrated.46 The mimetic exhibiting of the Precious Blood to the audience by the Butchers’ Longinus was both a gesture towards their craft and a eucharistic allusion of the kind found in many of the Passion and Resurrection pageants, where Jesus’s open wounds and the wetness of his blood are repeatedly emphasised. These and other similarly cohesive features serve to reinforce the cycle as a design specific to the feast of Corpus Christi, the occasion on which it was performed annually. Another instance where the materiality of the play-Christ’s body is linked to the typical activities of the sponsoring craft occurs in the Scriveners’ pageant of Doubting Thomas (no. 41). Thomas’s failure of belief in the Resurrection evaporates when he inserts his finger into the open wound in Jesus’s side and brings it out stained dark red. Thomas speaks with great feeling to the audience as he shows them that the blood is still wet, a guarantee of the truth of the Resurrection and the Real Presence of the Holy Blood in the transubstantiated eucharist. Poems and sermons of the time commonly developed a conceit whereby Christ’s blood was imagined as the ink in which he has written a charter that guaranteed the 248

The material world of the York plays

redemption and salvation of the faithful. One of the main tasks of scriveners was to copy, authenticate and seal such documents, and their fingers must often have been stained with ink as they practised their trade.47 If space permitted, many other instances of craft–pageant associations could be explored, particularly those where the costuming of certain pageants answers to the activities of various crafts associated with the production of textiles in late medieval York.48 Sufficient, however, has already been said to indicate the complex ways in which such associations manifest themselves both within the textual substance of the York cycle and in what we can legitimately infer as to its visual realisation on stage from the text and from external documentary and iconographic sources. Contemporary audiences would have registered them (indeed, would have probably taken them almost unconsciously for granted) in much the same way as they did other features of the dramaturgy that we group under the modern term ‘metatheatrical’. As is often noted, plays of this period were not designed to foster the naturalistic experience of total illusion that was later to become largely conventional in western dramatic tradition. Instead, they tended to incorporate a variety of self-referential devices that enabled them to comment reflexively on their own content or narrative, sometimes quite explicitly, most often by means of having the actors address the audience directly, as it were half in and half out of character. The audience’s perceptions of time and place were by these and other means manipulated in such a way that scriptural events of the remote past in distant lands, and equally an indeterminately located future event like the Last Judgement, were perceived to be occurring in the here and now of the medieval city.49 The doctrinal and didactic significance of the material dramatised was often expressed in terms of contemporary devotional and liturgical practices familiar to the audience from their own routine religious observances.50 In such a context is it not surprising to find that the dramatists found ingenious ways of incorporating allusions to the material world of their daily lives – the skills, the processes and often the symbolic objects involved in their crafts, the environments in which their crafts were pursued, and the products which they manufactured or traded – into this picture of a larger reality that told the story of the fall and redemption of their race and directly implicated their spiritual lives.

notes 1. E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, vol. 2 (Oxford 1903), 117–18. 2. A. D. Justice, ‘Trade Symbolism in the York Cycle’, Theatre Survey, 31 (1979), 47–58, offered a brief survey of many but not all of the relevant associations from this point of view and requires modification in point of fact in some cases. More recently there have been signs that less anachronistic and more analytical ways of thinking about the phenomenon are in the air; see, for example, the more sophisticated approach taken to certain instances by K. Ashley, ‘Sponsorship, Reflexivity and Resistance: Cultural Readings of the York Cycle Plays’, in The Performance of Middle English Culture, eds J. J. Paxson et al. (Woodbridge 1998), 9–24. Associations between the crafts and their pageants are noted as they arise in the Commentary (vol. II) to the most recent edition of the cycle: R. Beadle ed., The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, vol. 2, Early English Text Society [hereafter EETS], SS 23–24 (Oxford 2009–13); citations by pageant and line number below are from this edition (Text, vol. I). 3. For an example see R. Beadle, ‘The Shipwrights’ Craft’, in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. P. Neuss (Cambridge 1983), 50–61, 151–52.

249

richard beadle 4. N. Rogers, Medieval Craft and Mystery: Discovering the People behind York’s Mystery Plays (York 2012), is an introduction to this aspect of the subject aimed at the general reader, attractively illustrated with artifacts from recent archaeological excavations in York. 5. Differing views on this point are summarised briefly in the discussion of the origins of the cycle in Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, xxi–xxiii. 6. Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. I, 40–44, vol. II, 41–48. 7. Ashley, ‘Cultural Readings’ (as n. 2), 17–18, mentions some examples that might be thought to belong in this category but not the one that follows. 8. See P. Meredith, ‘The Towneley Pageants’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, eds R. Beadle and A. J. Fletcher, 2nd edn (Cambridge 2008), 152–82 (at 163). 9. Middle English Dictionary, s.v. filth, 2a (a). Popular didactic treatises of the time such as the Prick of Conscience commonly enumerated immersion in ‘filth and stink’ in the list of the pains in store for the damned in hell; Richard Morris’s Prick of Conscience, eds R. Hanna and S. Wood, EETS OS 342 (Oxford 2013), line 6557. 10. In addition to sources cited in Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, 1–2, see J. Knowles, ‘Heritage and Symbolism: The Romans and Tanners in Fourteenth Century York’, in Fourteenth Century England IX, eds J. Bothwell and G. Dodd (Woodbridge 2016), 67–86. 11. Traditional methods of tanning, even if they have now been superseded by more hygienic procedures, can still be the object of personal repugnance and social stigma. Well into the 20th century a squeamish D. H. Lawrence was put off buying a pair of sandals in the market at Oaxaca by their smell, which suggested to him that the leather had been tanned using human excrement (see ‘Market Day’, in Mornings in Mexico (London 1927), and in Japan to this day it is still customary before marriage, in some quarters, to engage a private investigator to check that one’s fiancé(e) is not descended from a family of tanners. 12. D. M. Palliser, ‘Medieval Street Names of York’, York Historian, 2 (1978), 2–16 (at 11, 16). 13. A. Raine, Mediaeval York: A Topographical Survey based on Original Sources (London 1955), 244– 45. For the locations of this and other major dunghills in the city, see G. King and C. Henderson, ‘Living Cheek by Jowl: The Pathoecology of Medieval York’, Quaternary Journal, 341 (2014), 131–42 (at 135). 14. H. Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England (Oxford 1989), 54–57. 15. B. Wilson and F. Mee, The Medieval Parish Churches of York: The Pictorial Evidence (York 1998), 26–32. 16. E. A. Gee, ‘The Painted Glass of All Saints’ Church, North Street, York’, Archaeologia, 102 (1969), 151–202 (at 170–74). 17. ‘Can this really be considered propaganda for the thatchers’ guild? . . . surely the ironic connection with the sponsoring craft was obvious’; Ashley, ‘Cultural Readings’ (as n. 2), 17. 18. G. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. J. Seligman, vol. 2 (London 1971), 81–82. 19. For these and other details, see the commentary on the pageant in Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, 97–108, and further references there. 20. Examples of these items are illustrated in Rogers, Medieval Craft and Mystery (as n. 4), 70. 21. The two disciples are styled Peregrinus in the character designations in the script. In lines 70–71 (which paraphrase the dialogue in Luke 24:18) one of them asks Jesus ‘Why, arte þou a pilgryme, and haste bene | At Jerusalem. . . ?’ where ‘pilgryme’ is the conventional medieval Christianised rendering of the Vulgate peregrinus, ‘stranger’. A late-14th-century panel of painted glass, formerly in the church of St Saviour, Saviourgate, York (now in All Saints, Pavement), depicts Jesus dining at Emmaus clad as a pilgrim. For further explanation and documentation, see Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, 387–88. 22. See the Middle English Dictionary, s.v. sclavin(e), n. 1 (a) ‘A cloak, esp. a pilgrim’s cloak or mantle’, with numerous illustrative quotations. 23. The Holkham Bible Picture Book: A Facsimile, commentary by M. P. Brown (London 2007), fol. 36r. 24. Relevant passages from these and other documentary sources are excerpted in Records of Early English Drama [hereafter REED]: York, eds A. F. Johnstone and M. Rogerson (Toronto 1979). 25. See The York Play: A Facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290, together with a facsimile of the Ordo Paginarum section of the A/Y Memorandum Book, introduction by R. Beadle and P. Meredith, and a note on the music by R. Rastall, Leeds Texts and Monographs, Medieval Drama Facsimiles, 7 (Leeds 1983). A digital reproduction of the manuscript is now also available on the British Library website.

250

The material world of the York plays 26. See Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, xxx–xxxiii, and the commentaries on the individual pageants that follow, passim. 27. See Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, 359–60, and further references there. 28. Not, however, that claimed by Justice, ‘Trade Symbolism’ (as n. 2), 48, for the association between the Cordwainers and The Agony in the Garden (no. 28), which rests on a misunderstanding of the Latin of their ordinances; see the original printed in York Memorandum Book A/Y, vols. I – II, Surtees Society, 120, 125 (Durham 1912–15), ed. M. Sellers, vol. I, 188 (there is no ‘feast . . . of the Vigil of the Apostles’). 29. Swanson, Medieval Artisans (as n. 14), 72. 30. Wilson and Mee, The Medieval Parish Churches of York (as n. 15), 62–69; Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Yorkshire [vol. 4, hereafter VCH: Yorks.]; The City of York, ed. P. M. Tillott (London 1961) [hereafter VCH: York]; E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’ (VCH: York 1961), 81; Raine, Mediaeval York (as n. 13), 191. 31. It was still in place in 1494; see York Memorandum Book A/Y (as n. 28), vol. I, 87; Raine, Mediaeval York (as n. 13), 91. 32. The document is much damaged, and in places a palimpsest of successive modifications; see the facsimile in Beadle and Meredith, The York Play (as n. 25), and the attempts at transcription in REED: York, 16–26 (as n. 24), and Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, passim, in the headnotes to the commentaries on the individual pageants. 33. The term ‘craft’ is applied to all the groups under discussion here, for want of a better. The precise extent to which it should be used, however, is unclear, since the question of how many artisans pursuing the same occupation it took to be designated a craft (complete with ordinances, searchers etc.) seems seldom to have been explicitly or systematically addressed, either historically or in modern scholarship. 34. Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II, 191–94, 208–11. 35. VCH: Yorks (as n. 30), vol. III, 336–45; Raine, Mediaeval York (as n. 13), 113–6. 36. P. H. Cullum, Cremetts and Corrodies: Care of the Poor and Sick at St Leonard’s Hospital, York, in the Middle Ages (York 1991), passim. 37. The York Memorandum Books (see the work referred to in n. 28 above, together with York Memorandum Book B/Y, vol. III, ed. J. W. Percy, Surtees Society, 186 (Durham 1973)) contain the registrations of 142 ordinances of 74 different crafts, beginning in 1380. All are extracted, summarised and dated in T. Sataka and K. M. Longley, ‘Some Characteristics of the Craft Ordinances in Late Medieval York’, The Aoyama Journal of International Politics, Economics and Business, 7 (1987), 149–71, and ‘Crafts and Fraternities in Late Medieval York’, The Aoyama J. International Politics, Economics and Business, 8 (1988), 46–67. 38. R. Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (London 1972), Chapter IV, 54–76, ‘The Development of the Cycle Form’, considers in more detail what little evidence there is for dramatic precedent to the Corpus Christi Plays. 39. Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. I, 9–14, vol. II, 8–14. 40. VCH York (as n. 30), 115; D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford 1979), 173. 41. Thus K. Yates, in an illuminating commentary on this pageant, ‘The York Work of the Five Days’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 38 (1999), 115–26 (at 119). Some idea of the technical resources that could be brought to bear in a production of this kind are evident in the contemporary description of the flattering mechanical pageant exhibited to Henry VII on his visit to York in 1486, which showed, ‘craftelye conceyvid, a place in maner of a heven of grete joy and angelicall armony. Vnder the heven shal be a world desolaite [uninhabited] full of treys and floures, in the which shall spryng vp a rioall rich rede rose, convaide by viace [controlled by mechanical means], vnto the which rose shall appeyre another rich white rose, vnto whome, so being togedre, all other floures shall lowte [bow down] and evidently yeue suffrantie [pay homage], shewing the rose to be principall of all floures  .  .  . and þervpon shall come fro a cloude a crowne couering the roses, after the which shall appeir a citie with citisyns with the begyyner of the same callid Ebrauk. . . ’; REED: York (as n. 24), 139, punctuation and glosses added. 42. See Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. I, Pageant 27, lines 39–41, vol. II, 223–24. 43. York Memorandum Book A/Y (as n. 28), vol. I, 209; Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art (as n. 18), vol. I, 142–43, and fig. 383.

251

richard beadle 44. The imagery of accounting and account books in the context of Doomsday scenes is well brought out by V. A. Kolve, ‘Everyman and the Parable of the Talents’, in The Medieval Drama, ed. S. Sticca (Albany, NY 1972), 69–98; for the physical appearance and content of such documents, see L. Jefferson, The Medieval Account Books of the Mercers of London: An Edition and Translation (Aldershot 2009), passim. 45. On the objects encompassed by the Arma Christi see Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art (as n. 18), vol. II, 184–97, and L. H. Cooper and A. Denny-Brown eds, The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (London and New York 2014). 46. Raine, Mediaeval York (as n. 13), 42–43. Holy Trinity, King’s Square was demolished in 1937; see Wilson and Mee, The Medieval Parish Churches of York (as n. 15), 44–47. 47. Scriveners and textwriters are known to have inhabited the neighbourhoods of Minster Gates (near the ecclesiastical centre of the city) and Ouse Bridge end (near the municipal administration’s offices on the bridge); see S. Gee, ‘The Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders of York Before 1557’, Trans. Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 12 (2000), 27–54 (at 33–34). 48. The contribution of the textile crafts to the cycle in this respect could form the subject of a separate enquiry; see for example the commentaries and notes on pageant nos 24 (the Cappers’ Woman taken in Adultery), 25 (the Skinners’ (furriers) Entry into Jerusalem), 30 (the Litsters’ (dyers) Christ before Herod), 34 (the Shearmen’s Road to Calvary) and 45 (the Weavers’ Assumption of the Virgin) in Beadle, York Plays (as n. 2), vol. II. 49. See V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford 1966), 101–23. 50. P. M. King, The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Cambridge 2006), passim.

252

INDEX Page references in bold italic refer to illustrations

Amiens (France), cathedral flèche, 58 Andernach (Germany), west towers, 58 Barnard Castle bridge, 195 Beckwith, William, 216, 233 Bek, Anthony, bishop of Durham, 2, 6, 31, 35 Belstede, Adam de, 31 Beverley (Yorkshire) Minster, Percy tomb, 12, 194 St Mary’s church, 214 Blackburn, Margaret, 197 Blackburn, Nicholas, mayor, 195 – 98, 199, 202 Bolton priory, 194, 198 Boroughbridge, 191 Botoner, Hugh le, chaplain, 169 Browne, John, antiquary, 115 Burgh, John, glazier, 138 Burnell, Robert, 31 Buxheim St Christopher, 224, 225 Cantilupe, Thomas de, 31 Carr, John, 198 Carr, John, architect, 115, 191, 192 Carter, John, antiquary, 206 Catterick bridge, 195 – 97, 199, 202 Caxton, William, The Golden Legend, 234, 235 Chalgrove (Oxfordshire), wall painting, 84, 91 chantries, 31, 32, 65, 93, 94, 96 – 100, 165, 202, 204, 214, 233 Chauvent, William of, 31 Chester, St Werburgh’s abbey, shrine, 23 Chestre, John de, glazier, 138, 143 Chichester (Sussex), Bishop’s Palace roof, 58 Clement IV, pope, 28, 29, 31 Clifford, Richard de, 31 Clifford, William de, 31 Colchester, William, mason, 138 Coltman, John, 216, 232, 233 Corner, William de la, 31 Cotehele (Cornwall), 216

Coventry (Warwickshire) cathedral priory, wallpainting, 137 Croft bridge, 192, 193 Darton (Yorkshire), 231 Dodsworth, Roger, antiquary, 216, 233 Drake, Francis, historian, 2, 57, 133, 135, 209, 232 Dűrer, Albrecht, 224, 227 Durham cathedral, St Cuthbert’s shrine, 16, 23 Edward I, king of England, 42 Edward III, king of England, 95, 102 Ely (Cambridgeshire) cathedral, Lady Chapel, 12, 101 Feilden, Sir Bernard, 116, 117 Ferrybridge, 190, 191 Forman, John, master mason, 212 Giffard, Walter, archbishop of York, 28 – 31, 35 Girona (Spain), Museu d’Art, glazier’s table, 143, 144, 145, 147 Gisburne, John, 198 Graa, Thomas, mayor, 198, 205 Great Coxwell (Oxfordshire), barn, 58 Gregory X, pope, 28, 29 Grethede, Alice, 205 Grey, Walter de, archbishop of York, 5, 29, 30, 32 – 34, 194, 204 Grimston, Thomas de, archdeacon of Cleveland, 32 Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lincoln, 32 Hailes (Gloucestershire) abbey, shrine base, 17 Hamerton, Alan de, 202 Harrison, Thomas, architect, 205 Hawton (Nottinghamshire), Easter Sepulchre, 12 Hedon, Hugh de, master mason, 128 Henry III, king of England, 28, 29, 31 Henry VIII, king of England, 2, 17, 19 Higdon, Brian, dean of York, 211 Holme, Robert, mayor, 198, 202 Horner, Thomas the, 168 Hoton, William the Younger, master mason, 109, 111

253

index Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, 64 Hutton, Matthew, antiquary, 135 Kexby bridge, 196 – 98 Kildwick bridge, 195, 198 Kirk Sandall (Yorkshire), 219, 220 Langetofte, William de, vicar of Holy Trinity Goodramgate, 169 Langton, William de, dean of York, 29 – 32, 33, 34, 58 Lavenham (Suffolk), 214 Leland, John, 191 – 93, 200 Lincoln, Philip of, carpenter, 58 Lincoln cathedral, shrine, 24 n. 30 Ludham, Godfrey de, archbishop of York, 28, 31, 32 Ludham, Thomas de, 28, 29, 31, 34, 92 Marsar, Thomas, 216 Martin, Jonathan, 115 Melton, William, archbishop of York, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 65, 91 – 97 Milner-White, Eric, dean of York, 66, 70, 77, 79, 80, 143, 146 Montfort, Amaury de, 31, 34 Montfort, Simon de, 31 Mortimer, Edmund, 31 Munketon, William de, 204 Murdac, Henry, archbishop of York, 1, 150, 202 Myton-on-Swale bridge, 192 Neville, Ralph, lord of Raby, 97 Nicholas IV, pope, 30 Northallerton bridge, 192 opus anglicanum, 72, 76, 80, 91, 95, 104 nn. 14 & 18, 142, 143 Orsini (Fitz Urse), treasurer of York, 42 Pacenham, Thomas de, master mason, 92 Pantaléon, Ancher of Troyes, canon, 28, 29, 35 Paris, Notre Dame, flèche, 58 Patrington, Robert, 109, 111, 127 Percy, Eleanor de, 194 Piercebridge, 193, 195 Pounteys bridge, 193 Prudde, John, glazier, 135 Pucelle, Jean, 79 Puiseaux (France), timber spire, 58 quarries Bramham Moor, 131 n. 32; Cadeby, 116; Clipsham, 116; Drake and Archbell, 116; Egglestone/Teesdale, 2, 15; Highmoor, 131

254

n. 43; Huddleston, 116, 121, 125, 127; Ketton, 116; Lepine, 131 n. 43; Roche Abbey, 116; Scott’s, 131 n. 32; Thevesdale, 116, 121; Vavasour, 116; Warmsworth, 131 n. 43 Raine, James, 97, 98, 213 Raughton, Ivo de, master mason, 24 n. 22 Rheims (France), St Remi, 58 Richard III, king of England, 198, 199 Ripon, North bridge, 193, 194 Roger of Pont l’Evȇque, archbishop of York, 91, 93, 98 Romanus, John, treasurer of York Minster, 30, 34 Romeyn, John le, archbishop of York, 29, 30, 32, 34, 176 Russell, Richard, 198 St Albans, Hugh of, painter, 142 St Albans (Hertfordshire) abbey, shrine base, 17, 23 Sampson, Thomas, canon, 92, 96, 101 Scarborough, Robert de, dean of York, 29 – 32, 34, 35, 58 Schongauer, Martin, 221, 222, 223, 228 Scrope, Richard, archbishop of York, 137 Scrope, Stephen, lord, 137 Seele, Christopher, 216 Selby (Yorkshire) abbey, east window, 72 Sessay bridge, 193 Sherburn-in-Elmet, Archbishop’s Palace, 111 Shout, William, master mason, 115, 117 Skip bridge, 196, 199 Skirlaw, Walter, bishop of Durham, 135, 137, 193, 194 Smirke, Robert, architect, 116 Smirke, Sydney, 116 Snawsell, William, mayor, 166 Sompting (Sussex), tower roof, 58 Southwell (Nottinghamshire), chapter house, 34 Soza, Martin and Ellen, 233 Spillesby, Robert, master mason, 19 Stokesay (Shropshire), castle, 58 Stubbs, Thomas, chronicler, 97, 101, 102, 125 Tadcaster bridge, 191, 198, 199 Theophilus, 142, 146 Thomas of Bayeux, archbishop of York, 4 Thoresby, John de, archbishop of York, 65, 66, 69, 92, 96, 97, 101, 102, 108, 109, 111, 125, 128, 137 Thoresby, Ralph, antiquary, 25 n. 37 Thornton, John, glazier, 65, 108, 109, 128, 133 – 56 Thornton bridge, 192, 196, 198

Index Tickhill, Thomas, prior of Monk Bretton, 231 Tomson, William, glazier, 233 Tonnerre (France), Hôtel-Dieu, 57 Torre, James, antiquary, 66, 69, 77, 83, 94, 105 n. 40, 135, 143 Troyes (France), Saint-Urbain, 28, 29, 30, 35 Ughtred, Robert de, 30 Urban IV, pope, 28 Vescy, William de, wool stapler, 198 Waddeswyck, William, mason, 138 Wakefield bridge, 194, 197 Warwick, Beauchamp chapel, 135, 216 Westminster abbey, Henry VII chapel, 156 n. 50, 225, 226, 228, 230, 235 St Stephen’s chapel, stained glass, 102, 103, 138, 142, 143; wall paintings, 142 Wetherby bridge, 191, 194 Wickwane, William de, archbishop of York, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34 William of York, saint, 202, 203; shrines, 1 – 25, 3, 5, 6, 8 – 11, 14, 15, 18, 20 – 22, 33, 35, 91, 92, 203 Winchester (Hampshire) College, glass, 72 Pilgrims’ Hall, 58 Windsor, St George’s chapel, 227 Yarm bridge, 193, 194 York city Corpus Christi Play, 239 – 52 crafts and Corpus Christi Play, 239 – 52 domestic buildings Aldwark, 163, 170 All Saints’ Lane nos 1 – 2, 159, 165, 169 Coffee Yard no 2 (Barley Hall), 165, 167 College Street nos 11 – 12 (Cambhall), 159, 165, 173, 175, 176 Coppergate nos 28 – 32, 158, 159, 162 Goodramgate, 158; nos 30 – 32 (Cambhall), 159, 165, 173, 175, 176; nos 41 – 45, 158, 160; nos 47 – 53, 158; nos 64 – 72 (Lady Row), 158, 162, 165, 169, 170, 172 – 74 Grape Lane, 170, 177, 178, 179, 180 – 82 Hornpot Lane, 168 Little Stonegate, 170, 177, 179, 182, 183 Micklegate nos 99 – 101, 187 n. 57 Newgate nos 12 – 15, 159, 169, 170, 171 – 73, 177, 179 North Street no 31 (All Saints’ Cottages), 159, 165, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174 Petergate, 158, 166 – 68, 184; Low Petergate nos 63 – 68, 167

St Andrewgate, 163, 182 Shambles nos 10 – 11, 165 Silver Street, 170 Stonegate, 148, 158; no 60, 165, 166 religious buildings All Saints, North Street, 224, 241 All Saints, Pavement, 250 n. 21 Bedern chapel, 94 Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, 174, 209, 213, 224 Holy Trinity, King’s Square, 248 Holy Trinity priory, Micklegate, 204 Maison Dieu, Ouse bridge, 205 St Anne’s chapel, Foss Bridge, 202 St Crux, 244 St Leonard’s hospital, 245 St Martin-le-Grand, Coney Street, 162, 213 St Mary ad Valvas, 93 St Mary’s abbey, nave, 84 St Michael-le-Belfrey, 210, 212; stained glass, 209 – 38, 215, 217 – 19, 221, 223, 224, 226, 229 St Saviour, 250 n. 21 St William’s chapel, Ouse bridge, 196, 201, 203, 204, 205 topography Barker Lane, 241 Castle Mills bridge, 202 College Street, 94 Council Chamber, Ouse bridge, 196, 204, 205 Foss bridge, 200 – 02, 205 King’s Fish Pond, 200 Layerthorpe bridge, 200, 201, 202 Lendal bridge, 206 Monk bridge, 200, 202 Ouse bridge, 193, 196, 201 – 05; Precentors Court, 2, 7 Skeldergate bridge, 206 Tanner Row, 241 Tanners Moat, 241 Toft Green, 241 Yorkshire Museum, 2, 7, 13, 15, 18, 25 n. 35, 203 York Minster chapter house, patronage, 26 – 38, 27; roof, 39 – 62, 40, 41, 44, 47, 49, 53, 54 choir, 12th century, 92, 98, 99 Great East window, masonry, 108 – 32, 110, 112 – 14, 118 – 25, 127 St Sepulchre’s chapel or chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels, 92, 93, 100 stained glass chapter house, 72, 77, 79, 80 Great East window, 133 – 56, 134, 139 – 41, 145, 146, 148, 149

255

index Great West window, 64, 72, 73, 76, 92, 95 Lady Chapel, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 91, 93, 102 nave, clerestory, 92; south aisle, 77; west end, 63 St Cuthbert window, 137, 156 n. 58

256

St William window, 23, 137, 150, 151 – 53 south choir aisle, 66, 80, 91, 102 Zouche chantry chapel, 65, 96 – 98, 99, 100 – 03 Zouche, Roger la, 97, 102 Zouche, William la, archbishop of York, 94 – 98, 100 – 02