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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Originally made, or rather finished, in 1511, expressly for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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