The Medieval Painted Glass of Mersham

ft .;, . SH ; I I Si u*.: i t , • » • FIG. 1. MERSHAM. West Window, circa 1400. ( 81 ) THE MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. BY 0. R. 00TTN0ER. IT may be supposed that most Kentish antiquaries during the past fifty years have seen, and puzzled over, the strange west window of Mersham church. The problems presented by its unique tracery, and by the very fragmentary remains of painted glass which now exist in it, must have exercised many minds, and I may as well confess at the outset that the most dUigent research has served only to convince me of the impossibUity of offering at this stage a solution as complete as I had hoped for at the commencement of my enquiry. The admirable photograph, hitherto unpubhshed, by Mr. Aymer VaUance, F.S.A., which by his courtesy I am able to reproduce here (Fig. 1), and my own diagram of the arrangement of the stonework, viewed from inside the church (Fig. 2), wUl enable the appearance and arrangement of this unique window to be appreciated. It wUl be observed that only a smaU proportion of the ancient painted glass remains in situ. The lowest stage of the window (G—G in Fig. 2) consists of thirteen shield-shaped Hghts intended obviously to contain coats of arms. In these Hghts there remain :— G—(1) Azure three winnowing fans or, (for SEPTVANS), imperfect. (2) Pieces of ruby glass and remains of inscriptions, etc., from other parts of the window. (4) Part of an apostle and other fragments, to be described in detaU later. (12) Gules crusiUy argent, six boars' heads argent, (for SWTNBORNE), imperfect. (13) Argent on a fesse between three annulets sable 3 molets argent, (for FOGGE). 10B 82 MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. Information respecting some of the lost shields is given in a MS., dating from about 1750-60, by the Kentish antiquary Brian Faussett.1 In his time five coats of arms remained, and in addition to Septvans and Fogge he notes COTJRTENAY, with a label gules instead of the more usual azure ; ARUNDEL ; and, another shield, argent a fesse gules between six fleursde- Hs sable, the arms of the BARRY family of the Moat in Sevington. The absence of the Swinborne shield from Brian Faussett's notes is explained when we discover from Hasted's History of Kent that in his time it was in a window in the chancel; doubtless it was moved to its present position at the restoration of the church in 1878. The style and date of the shield leave me in no doubt that it was originaUy in the west window. We are thus able to fill in imagination six of the thirteen lowest Hghts of the window; and unless further MS. evidence should become available, there the matter is likely to remain. The style of the remaining glass, taken in conjunction with that of the stonework, enables one to fix a date of about the year 1400 for the whole window ; nor is there anything in the shields themselves to cast any doubt on this suggestion',; rather do they support it. The arms of the Fogge family of Repton Manor on the outskirts of Ashford, who are weUknown as benefactors to the Church, might be expected ; and the association of their shield with that of Septvans would be accounted for by the marriage of the Milton Septvans heiress to Sir Francis Fogge about the time when this window was under construction. The arms of the Archbishops Courtenay (1381-96) and Arundel (1396-1414) would be likely additions to a work of this character, since it seems to have been a frequent practice in Kent during the medieval period, at least in those churches which were associated, by appropriation or otherwise, with Christchurch, Canterbury, to place the Primate's arms upon ecclesiastical monuments of importance ; those of Arundel, for example, 1 I am indebted to Mr. V. J. Torr for information regarding this MS., which is now in private hands in London. E F G FIG. 2. MERSHAM. Diagram of West Window. " Tinted " portions represent old gla MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. 83 are carved upon the fonts in Heme and Sittingbourne churches. Sir Thomas Swinborne was Sheriff of Kent in the sixth year of Henry IV, and kept his shrievalty at Thevegate Manor in Smeeth, now caUed Evegate, a house which yet retains traces of its ancient construction. This Sir Thomas, who died in 1412, seems to have been the only member of his famUy, which was of Essex, to come to Kent. He was probably only a tenant at Thevegate of the Passeley famUy, who had held the estate from the thirteenth century at least, and who continued in possession untU in the reign of Edward IV their property passed by the marriage of a female heiress to the Pimpes of Nettlestead. The arms of Swinborne are usuaUy shown with three instead of five boars' heads (cf. the shield in the cloister at Canterbury, No. 167) but Mr. Ralph Griffin teUs me he has no doubt that these Mersham arms are merely a variant of the usual coat. The Barry or Barrie famUy, whose magnificent brasses, only the matrices of which now remain, were in Sevington church and were copied in the seventeenth century by Sir Edward Dering, were settled at the Moat in Sevington from very early times. Sir Roger de Barry was engaged in the expedition to Ireland under Henry II, where he was the first, as Camden and PhUipott record, " which manned and brought the hawk to hand ; and grew up to that repute, that he was caUed by the Irish Barriemore, or the great Barrie."1 His successor, WUHam de Barry, was one of the recognitores magnoe assises in the reign of King John ; and at the beginning of the fifteenth century the famUy were stUl in possession of their ancestral home, only the moat of which now remains, and were of considerable account in Kent. The arms in the Mersham window were probably those either of Sir WUHam Barry, who was Sheriff of Kent 16 Rio. II, 1393, or of Edward Barry, Esq., who according to Mr. Herbert Smith (Arch. Cant., Vol. IV) was, despite the pedigree by PhUipott in the Heralds' CoUege, Sir WUHam's 1 Villare Oantianum, 317. 84 MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. son. In 1628, when Sir Edward Dering made his drawings of the Sevington brasses,1 Sir WUHam's memorial remained only in part, but there were brasses to his two wives, IsabeUa Dering and Johanna, and of the wife of Edward Barry, Margaret Oxenbridge (d. 1400), with their arms. We have now to consider the series of Apostles which occupied twelve of the thirteen Hghts in row F, the thirteenth (F 7), larger than the others, having most probably contained a figure of our Lord or perhaps of the Virgin. By a tradition of the Church at least as old as the twelfth century the Apostles met together after Pentecost and composed the Creed which bears their name, each member of the company contributing a clause. In medieval art each Apostle, besides being distinguished by his attribute—the keys of Heaven for Peter, a lance for Thomas, a flaying-knife for Bartholomew, and so on—carries a scroll bearing his sentence, Peter always beginning the series with Credo in deum Patrem Omnipotentem creatorem caeli et terrae, and Matthias ending it with Et vitam ozternam. Amen. The extant remains of the Apostles at Mersham may be thus Hsted:— F—(1) St. Bartholomew, with knife, bearing a scroU lettered Ascendit ai czios szbri ai iuxtcra dei, etc. et He is wrongly labeUed at the bottom jarob3 maior. The Apostle wears a kirtle of white ornamented with smaU figures in yeUow stain, and over it a blue robe. The background, where it remains, is of ruby glass, and the fragments of canopy work are of white and yeUow stain (Fig. 3). (2) St. Matthias (correctly labeUed at foot), with part of scroU m srtmtam Jlmm, the dress simUar to that of Bartholomew, the canopy-work shghtly different in design. (13) Part of the figure of St. Thomas, with lance, in white and yeUow stain, and a fragment of his scroU bearing the letters ebi. 1 These drawings are reproduced in Vol. IV of Arch. Cant. FIG. 3. MERSHAM. St. Bartholomew, from light F6, now in hght Fl, West Window. MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. 85 The word et at the foot of St. Bartholomew's scroU has been wrongly inserted, and from its shape probably belongs to St. Matthias, helping to complete the inscription on his scroU, which should read et vitam azternam. Amen. One fragment of another Apostle, showing part of his robe, of white and yeUow stain, and his left hand, grasping a scroU on which remain the letters ritnm enncttt, has been inserted, upside-down, among other misceUaneous pieces in Hght G 4. The fragment of inscription will have formed part of the eighth clause of the Creed, Credo in spiritum sanctum. We are now in a position to attempt some sort of reconstruction of the range of Apostles. Light F 1 must have contained Peter, who was invariably placed first in the series ; and since Andrew, James and John seem always, though not necessarUy in the order given, to have foUowed Peter, we may assume that they occupied F 2, 3 and 4. Turning now to the fragment edi inscribed upon St. Thomas's scroU, I conceive that this can only represent the last part either of the word ascendit or descendit (the stroke over the letters indicating that an abbreviation is being made), and it must be the latter, since [Ascendit] ad celos, sedet ad dexteram [dei], etc. is the inscription stiU borne by St. Bartholomew. I therefore place St. Thomas in Hght F 5, and his inscription when complete would be Descendit ad inferna, etc., the fifth clause of the Creed. In Hght F 6 was St. Bartholomew, with the sixth clause, Ascendit ad caelos, etc. Lights F 8—13 present more difficulty, as the order in which the remaining Apostles were placed does not follow any very definite rule. We have St. Matthias with the final clause of the Creed for F 13, and since Simon and Jude seem always to have been placed immediately before him I assign F 11 and 12 to them. The Apostle of whom so sorry a fragment remains in Hght G 4 wiU have occupied F 9, since he bears the eighth clause of the Creed, but to his identity we have no certain clue; at a guess I should say he is St. Matthew, who seems usuaUy to have borne the sentence expressing befief in the Holy Spirit. PhiHp and 86 MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. James the Less must have occupied the remaining two Hghts. AU twelve Apostles remained, though mutUated, in Parsons' time (1794); Hasted speaks of eight figures " pretty entire " a year or two later; a photograph that I have seen, taken about 1877, shows them very much as they are now ; and those who have thought that the restorers of 1878 were responsible for the destruction of much of the glass in this window would, therefore, seem to be in error. Dr. Francis Grayhng (Churches of Kent, i, 28) mentions 1860 as a date at which much more glass than we can now see remained in place, and it would appear that the 'sixties and early 'seventies must have witnessed considerable losses, (how caused we do not know), of the ancient material. Above the Apostles is a row of twelve quatrefoUs (E—E) in which remain half-length representations of angels playing upon musical instruments. No. 1 has a viol, No. 2 a harp, Nos. 7 and 12 horns, No. 10 a regal, or smaU hand-organ, and No. 11 a trumpet. The others are much damaged, but No. 8 seems undoubtedly to be playing a psaltery, a curious instrument whose popularity in the Middle Ages is evidenced by its frequent appearance in medieval art. It figures in the minstrels' gaUery at Exeter, but the finest representation of an angel playing it that I know of is that by Hans Memling on one of the panels of the shrine of St. Ursula in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. It is when we reach the tracery Hghts of our window that serious difficulties begin to appear. The Hghts numbered i—vi in Fig. 2, as weU as the three compartments in the centre, were fiUed in 1878 with what is known as " Cathedral glass ", the material, so beloved of our immediate ancestors, which the late Provost of Eton once said would deface the refreshment-room of the meanest of raUway stations. The only tracery Hghts retaining their ancient glass are those lettered A, B, C and D ; A and D have evangehsts' symbols, the eagle of St. John, finely drawn, in yeUow stain, on right, and the buU of St. Luke, lettered incus, and of a rich ruby colour, on left. Lights B and C contain very finely executed MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. 8*7 men-at-arms, carrying battle-axes, stretched at fuU length. It used to be thought that these figures were prostrate in adoration, an idea which gave rise to the conjecture that a representation of the Trinity once occupied the Hght between them ; but a recent examination at close quarters has shown me that the men are represented as sleeping, a clear indication that the Resurrection was formerly located in the central Hght. The subjects formerly occupying the other Hghts of the tracery are now unknown, and careful research has failed to suggest any clue to me. Some of the smaU pieces of glass coUected into Hghts G 2 and G 4 must have come from this part of the window, e.g. the fragments of inscriptions, fibc, ifta, and liter, which, with large pieces of ruby glass, apparently part of a garment, occupy G 2. The word fide is not found anywhere in the Creed, nor do the four letters which make up the word occur in the same order as part of any other word or words in that composition ; this lettering at least, then, did not form part of one of the Apostle panels. The letters Ma appear to have formed the beginning of the descriptive scroU of one of the lost Evangefists' symbols, Matthew or Mark ; whUe one is tempted to suggest that liter formed part of the word qualiter, and began an inscription describing an action taking place in some scene in the upper part of the window. The same word, though in French, comment, is used to begin the descriptions of the Httle scenes at the foot of the pages in Queen Mary's psalter (Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 2 B vn). But these clues, if such they may be caUed, are too slender to enable any sohd theory to be bruit upon them. The other two Evangefists' symbols must, of course, have appeared somewhere; and I myself incline to the behef that above the Resurrection appeared the Nativity and the Crucifixion,1 thus demonstrating the three greatest festivals of the Church, whUe the Orders of Angels occupied the 1 As in the great west window of York Minster, where these subjects, with the Annunciation, appear above a row of Apostles, surmounted by our Lord and the Blessed Virgin as King and Queen of Heaven. This work, however, is of the Decorated period. 88 MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. flanking Hghts. I know weU enough that I cannot advance a shred of evidence in support of this behef, which, indeed, is not very generaUy shared by several eminent authorities who at my invitation have favoured me with their own ideas on the subject. Their opinion seems in general to be that something simpler—perhaps censing angels with a Httle heraldry—occupied the tracery Hghts. Another solution which seems to me plausible, and one that has long been held by the Rector of Mersham, is that the Trinity appeared in the central quatrefoU of the tracery. In this connection it is interesting to recaU that at South Creke in Norfolk is a window having the Trinity in the tracery in conjunction with four figures of Apostles bearing Creed-scrolls, and two angels. Most of the old Kentish topographical writers mention the window, but though they describe the Apostles and the coats of arms they fight shy of any description of the tracery. Brian Faussett, Parsons, Cozens, PhUipott, are sUent both in print and MS. on this point, and even Sir Edward Dering, who was especiaUy active at Sevington, scarcely a stone's throw away, has nothing in his notes about Mersham. The hope remains that in some hitherto unnoticed MS. or notebook, something may yet survive. Several other windows in Mersham church retain interesting remains of medieval glass. The second window from the west on the north side of the nave, which has a segmental head, contains border pieces of conventional fifteenth century type in the heads of its two cinquefoUed Hghts, with the sun and moon, the former with a round jovial face. Most of this is in white and yeUow stain, but there are a few pieces of good blue. The first window from the west on the north side of the chancel, square-headed, with two cinquefoUed Hghts and no tracery, has more considerable remains, also of the fifteenth century (Fig. 4). On left we see St. Christopher carrying the Christ-child, below him St. George IrilHng the dragon, and in the right hand light St. Edmund Rich (Archbishop of Canterbury 1234-40). Both Hghts have Fw. 4. MERSHAM. Window on North side of chancel: St. Christopher, St. George, St. Edmund Rich. Fifteenth century. MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. 89 borders of beautiful coloured pieces alternating with squares of white glass which in the left-hand light bear the initials H and W, crowned, and in the right-hand hght I and T, several times repeated. An elaborately-executed crown (incomplete on right) occupies the central foil at the top of each Hght. In the picture of St. Christopher, the background of which is of conventional quarries, the ChUd is carrying an orb (now partly broken and patched with an unrelated piece of glass) whUe the saint traverses a river fiUed with fish, flowing between banks on which grow plants and flowers. Below, the larger figure of St. George has lost its head, which has been replaced by a piece of glass from some other source, showing on right part of the robe of a figure and on left a Hly (evidently part of an Annunciation scene); the weU-known red cross banner of the saint is introduced on right. This window is remarkable for its restrained and dehcate execution, being almost entirely of white and yellow stain, as in the fifteenth century panels of St. Michael at Kingsnorth and St. Margaret at Fordwich ; colour, except for the borders, being introduced only on the red cross banner. The second window on the north side of the chancel retains in the heads of the main Hghts, and in aU the tracery lights except that on the extreme left, a simple monochrome border. The remaining tracery light has pieces of ruby glass and a few letters of an inscription, not belonging here and from their style perhaps once in the west window. The earhest glass in the church is in the east window of the south chancel, where in the heads of the main hghts there remain the tops of two fourteenth century canopies with crockets and finials, having a background of ruby. In conclusion, I am happy to express my best thanks to Mr. Bernard Rackham, F.S.A., of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and to Mr. G. McN. Rushforth, F.S.A., of Malvern, for kind repfies to queries submitted to them. Mr. Ralph Griffin, F.S.A., has, as on innumerable other occasions, been my much appreciated helper in matters heraldic ; 90 MEDIEVAL PAINTED GLASS OF MERSHAM. whUe to the Rector of Mersham, the Rev. Canon G. Brocklehurst, my especial thanks are due for much kindness and hospitaHty received on many visits to his church. Without the co-operation which Canon Brocklehurst has unstintingly accorded me at aU times, this paper could never have been written.