The Tapestries from Canterbury Cathedral

( 67 ) THE TAPESTRIES FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. BY AYMER VALLANCE. IN the loan Exhibition of French Art, held at Burlington House, London, in the opening months of 1932, were included two tapestries, numbered in the catalogue 27 and 32 respectively, which should be of peculiar interest to Kentish folk, inasmuch as they once formed part of the furniture of Canterbury Cathedral. They were lent for exhibition by the Cathedral of Aix in Provence, to which they now belong, and of which they decorate the quire and south aisle. The particular pieces exhibited in London form part of a series depicting the Life of our Lord. The material is mainly wool, with the occasional introduction of silk, to give variety of texture, and to heighten the effect in places here and there. The technique of the process is that known as haute lisse, which means that the tapestry is hand-woven in an upright loom, the weaver being stationed at the back, and seeing the face of the web, so long as it is in progress, only by reflection in a mirror through the vertical threads of the warp. Such is the method invariably employed for tapestries of any size. For smaller pieces, in contradistinction to the haute lisse, the alternative process of basse lisse is used. When employing this method the weaver sits, as at an embroidery frame, and looks down on to the face of the web, stretched out horizontally. Among the tapestry hangings of Reims Cathedral is a piece in which the Blessed Virgin is depicted as a young girl, seated, and weaving at just such · a basse lisse as here described. The history of these tapestries has not been uneventful. Originally made, or rather finished, in 1511, expressly for Canterbury Cathedral, as internal evidence, in the shape of shields, badges and inscriptions, shows, they were presented, 68 THE TAPESTRIES FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. a right princely gift, some by Richard Dering, cellarer of the community, the others by Prior Thomas Goldstone the Second. Dering's tapestries hung, according to William Somner (1640), who saw them all in situ, above the quirestalls on the north side, and Goldstone's on the south side. The stalls of the quire of Canterbury, unlike those of many cathedrals and larger churches in this country, such as Beverley, Carlisle, Chester, Ely, Gloucester, Lancaster, Lincoln, Manchester, Nantwich, Ripon, ,vinchester and Windsor, were uncanopied overhead, so that there was ample space behind and above for hangings to depend against the stonework of Prior Eastry's side screens. For the north side, as the inscription, formerly existing in the border of the tapestry, recorded, Ricardus Dering hujus ecclesire commonachus &, Oelerarius me fieri fecit Anno Dom M illesimo quingentesimo undecimo ; while for the south side Thomas Goldstone hujus ecclesire Prior sacrreque Theologire Professor, me fieri fecit Anno Dom Millesimo quingentesimo undecimo; and another account says that he gave tres pannos pulcherimos opere de arysse subtiliter intextos ortum virginis cum vita et obitu ejusdem clare et splendide configurantes. These hangings are repeatedly mentioned in the Cathedral Inventories. Thus on 10th April 1540 there occurs " Item one " (i.e. one set of) " faire new hanging of riche tapestrie cont' " (containing) "vj peces of the Story of Christ and or Lady". In 1584 there are scheduled "Hangings of Arras roonde about the Chore", and again, at the Metropolitical Visitation in 1634, " Six peices of arras hanging." They remained intact all through the Reformation changes until the end of August 1642, when, a report having reached the headquarters of the Parliamentary party that the authorities of Canterbury Cathedral had collected a store of arms and ammunition to fortify the church against intruders, a body of Puritan troops, under the command of Col. Edwin Sandys, was despatched to take possession of the place. Yielding to superior force, those in charge of the Cathedral handed up the keys. Whereupon the soldiers invaded the building and proceeded to deface its fittings and THE TAPESTRIES FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. 69 ornaments. On the second day the iconoclasts "further exercised their malice upon the Arras hangings of the Quire, representing the whole Story of our Saviour, wherein observing the figlll'es of Christ, . . one said ' Here is Christ ', and swore that he would stab Him, which they did accordingly so far as the figures were capable thereof, besides many other villainies". The slashings and other damage mentioned explain how it is that the set of tapestries proves, at the present day, to be imperfect. Having, on 13th December 1653, by means of "The Instrument of Government", in effect a coup d'etat, constituted himself Protector, and having thus obtained virtually absolute control, Oliver Cromwell began to carry out a fresh Reformation of Religion, in the process of which the Cathedral tapestries were taken down from their plac􀂹 and carried away from Canterbury. The record of the exact date of their removal has not been found, but it would seem to have been between the closing weeks of 1653 and the early part of the year 1656. An interior view of the Cathedral, painted in oils on canvas, now in the possession of Mr. W. D. Caroe, F.S.A., inscribed " Thos. Johnson jecit. Canterbury Quire as in 1657. Ye prospecte from ye Clock1 House " (i.e. under the . central tower or from the top of the pulpitum) was exhibited at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on 1st December 1910, and again at the Exhibition of British Primitive Paintings, held at Burlington House in October and November 1923. This painting shows the quire as it was after having been stripped of its tapestries, though it also shows quite distinctly the iron hooks on which they were suspended. There were two sets of hooks, one set on the enclosing stone screens of the quire; and another set, consisting of a couple of hooks, one of wbioh was some distance above the other, on the inner face of each column on either side of the quire. These hooks might well have been provided to hold the horizontal beams or rods on which the tapestries were hung. Mr. Oaroe considers that not the pillar hooks, but the hooks 1 The clock was removed in 1760. 70 THE TAPESTRIES FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. on Eastry's screens, fulfilled this purpose. Hung in that position the tapestries certainly would have served the practical, utilitarian function of excluding draughts which might penetrate the openwork of Eastry's screen wall. Rev. C. E. Woodruff, however, says distinctly that the tapestries were "suspended from hooks fixed in the pillars above the traceried stonework of Prior Eastry'i:; lateral screens."1 Anyhow, all the hooks were removed, presumably in 1836, by Mr. George Austin, surveyor and architect to the Dean and Chapter, and their places patched with new stone, a valuable historical record being thereby obliterated. In the minutes of the Chapter of Aix in Provence it is recorded that on 4th April 1656, for the sum of 1200 crowns, Canon de Mimata, of Aix, purchased in Paris for the quire of the Cathedral church, to which he was attached, a set of tapestries depicting the Life of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. Considering the prevailing vogue in taste at the moment (as manifested by the Palace of Versailles, begun under Louis XIV in 1661) it is a marvel that anyone then living should have admired the Canterbury tapestries sufficiently to care to spend a sou on the acquisition of them. The precise origin of these tapestries seems to have been unknown to their new owners, or, if lmown, it was not entered at the time in the Chapter minutes, and in the end came to be forgotten, or at best but a vague tradition. But " the manuscript history of the town of Aix, written at the end of the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth, says that this tapestry had belonged (servi) to the church of St. Paul in London, or to some quite other cathedral church in England ( toute autre l,glise catMdrale d'Angleterre)." The above quotation is from the pen of M. Fauris de Saint Vincens, an eminent French antiquary of his day, who, in 1816, published a "Memoire sur la Tapisserie du chr.eur de l'Eglise Oathedrale d'Aix." M. de Saint Vincens sums up his inquiry with the following significant passage : " J' ai longtemps d()11,te si une tapisserie, sur laguelle on voit les armoiries de trois wrckeveques de Oantorbery, 1 Memorials of Oanterbury Oathedral, p. 279. THE TAPESTRIES FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. 71 n'auroit pas ete distinee d 7,a, Metropole de Cantorbery, plut8t qu'd 7,a, cathe

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