A Short Account of King's College Chapel Part 1

A Short Account of King's College Chapel.

by Walter Poole Littlechild.

Preface.

THE success which has attended this little work from its first appearance, and the approval with which it has been received prompts me to issue a second and revised edition.

Regret has been expressed by some, that I omitted to give a description of all the windows, and that there were no ill.u.s.trations in the first edition. This I have endeavoured to remedy by giving the subjects of all the windows (with here and there a special note) and inserting some pictures of the Chapel both inside and out, also the arms and supporters (a dragon and greyhound) of Henry VII, crowned rose and portcullis, from the walls of the ante-chapel and the initials H.A. from the screen.

I am indebted to Messrs. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd., 1 Amen Corner, London, for the loan of the blocks of the former, which appeared in the late Sir William St. John Hope's book _Heraldry for Craftsmen and Designers_. The latter, together with three photographs of the Chapel, were specially taken for me by Mr. A. Broom. I wish also to thank the Provost of Eton, Dr. M. R. James, for permission to use some part of his description of the windows. I am also indebted to Mr. J. Palmer Clark for leave to reproduce the photograph of the ship in the window on the south side. I am also grateful to Mr. Benham and Dr. Mann for their a.s.sistance in compiling the lists of Provosts and Organists. I have again to thank Sir G. W. Prothero, Honorary Fellow of the College, for reading through the ma.n.u.script and proofs of both editions and for his valuable suggestions. In conclusion, I would ask for the kind indulgence of my readers for any errors that may be discovered in this little book, and shall be glad to have them pointed out to me.

W. P. L.

CAMBRIDGE, ST. JAMES' DAY, _July 25, 1921._

The Foundation

IN the year 1441 Henry VI[1] founded King's College for a Rector and twelve scholars. He remodelled his plan in 1443, and styled his foundation the College of St. Mary and St. Nicholas.[2] It was to consist of a Provost, seventy Fellows, or Scholars, together with Chaplains, Lay Clerks, and Choristers. The court was originally on the north side of the present chapel opposite Clare College, and was the home of many generations of Kingsmen until about 1825. In 1829 this court was sold to the University, and the buildings thereon were demolished to make way for an extension of the University Library; but the old entrance gateway was happily spared and incorporated with the new Library building, and stands there, as a "venerable and beautiful specimen of architecture," at the present day.

On St. James' Day, July 25th, 1446, the King laid the foundation stone of the chapel, and so began a building which, as a distinguished member of the college (Lord Orford) said, would "alone be sufficient to enn.o.ble any age." It has been cla.s.sed with the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster and Saint George's collegiate church at Windsor, as one of "the three great royal chapels of the Tudor age"; but there is no edifice, except Eton College Chapel, which forms in any way a fair subject of comparison with that of King's College.

The _style_ is rich perpendicular, marking the point where the last Gothic meets the early Renaissance. Nicholas Close has commonly been considered to be the architect. He was a man of Flemish family, and for a few years held the cure of the parish of St. John Zachary, which church stood on the west side of Milne Street, and probably so close to it that the high altar of the church was on ground afterwards enclosed within the western bays of the Ante-Chapel. Close, in 1450, was appointed to the See of Carlisle, and in 1452 transferred to Lichfield.

He certainly received from the King the grant of a coat of arms for his services, but it might fairly be said that John Langton, Master of Pembroke College, and Chancellor of the University, who also had the t.i.tle of "Surveyor," a term generally admitted to be synonymous with architect, has an equally strong claim. But Mr. G. G. Scott, in his essay on English Church Architecture, says "the man who really should have had the credit of conceiving this great work was the master-mason, Reginald Ely, appointed by a patent of Henry VI to press masons, carpenters, and other workers." According to Mr. Scott's view, "Close and his successors did the work which in modern days would be done, though less efficiently, by a building committee. But they were ecclesiastics, not architects; it is the master-mason, not the more dignified 'surveyor,' to whom the honour of planning the building should be attributed."

Royal Benefactors

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING EAST FROM PROVOST STALL]

BESIDES the founder, whose misfortunes hindered the completion of his work, four successive kings aided in its erection. When Henry was taken prisoner at St. Albans in 1455, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick promised to supply funds for the college buildings. For a time they kept their word, and some part of the 1,000 a year promised by Henry from the Duchy of Lancaster continued to be paid; but the defeat of the King at the battle of Towton in 1461 and the subsequent overthrow of the Lancaster dynasty checked progress. "After a long time spent in hiding in secret places, wherein for safety's sake he was forced to keep close, he was found and taken, brought as a traitor and criminal to London, and imprisoned in the Tower, and eventually suffered a violent death. He was buried at Chertsey Abbey, but his body was afterwards removed to Windsor Castle."[3] Still, the idea was there, and it remained for a later generation only to imitate and complete. In 1483, just before Edward IV's death, we find that nearly 1,300 had been spent on the chapel, about 1,100 given by the King, and 100 by Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor of England, formerly a Fellow of the College, but it is not stated how the deficit was met. Richard III, on his accession, resumed the work with great vigour. Between May and December, 1484, about 750 was spent, nearly all of which was provided by the king.

It is stated that in the year 1506 sufficient progress had been made in the building to admit of the performance of divine service, at which Henry VII and his mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond, Foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges, who were on a visit to Cambridge, were present; and it is said that John Fisher, President of Queens' College, Bishop of Rochester, took part as chief celebrant. Professor Willis, in _The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge_, takes exception to this statement. He is of opinion that, as the Screen and Stall work was not finished until 1536, and as the old Chapel[4] did not fall down until 1537 (in fact it was used on the eve of the day on which it fell), it is unlikely that the new chapel was used for service until that time. He further quotes Dr. Caius to strengthen this view.

Henry VII, who has been credited with an excessive tendency to acc.u.mulate treasure, was, next to the Founder, much the largest contributor. A short time before his death in 1509[5], moved perhaps to emulate the liberal example of his pious mother, he gave 5,000 to the college, with instructions to his executors to finish the building. May we not also think that Richard Fox, Founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Bishop of Winchester from 1500 to 1528, who was Henry VII's constant adviser, Privy Seal, and one of his executors, had something to do with this mark of Henry's generosity and favour? This sum of 5,000 was probably all spent by the beginning of 1512, when the King's executors made over to the Provost and scholars, in 1511-12, a second sum of 5,000.

Thus in 1515, in the 7th year of King Henry VIII's reign, the stonework of the chapel was completed; it had cost, in the present value of money, about 160,000. The stone used in the construction is of different kinds. The white magnesian limestone from Huddlestone in Yorkshire is that which was chiefly used in the lifetime of the Founder. The lower part of the walls was built of this; the upper part was built with stone brought from Clipsham in Rutlandshire in 1477. A third kind, from Weldon in Northamptonshire, was used for the vaulting of the choir and ante-chapel, executed in 1512 and the following years. The north and south porches were vaulted with a magnesian limestone, more yellow in colour, from the Yorkshire quarry of Hampole.

The outside measurement of the chapel from turret to turret is 310 feet, the said turrets being 146 feet high. The four westernmost b.u.t.tresses on the south and five on the north side are ornamented with heraldic devices, crowns, roses, and portcullises, while on the set-offs separating the stages are dragons, greyhounds, and antelopes bearing shields.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SCREEN FROM WEST END]

Inside, the chapel is 289 feet long, 40 feet wide from pier to pier, and 80 feet high from the floor to the central point of the stone vault.

The _tracery_ of the roof is a fine specimen of the fan-vault which is rarely to be found in Continental architecture, but is the peculiar glory of the English style. It can truly be said that stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density and suspended aloft as if by magic, while the fretted roof is achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.

Similar roofs appear in Bath Abbey (the architect of which was Dr.

Oliver King, a member of King's), in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster, in Sherborne Minster, and in the ambulatory of the choir of Peterborough; but the earliest example of this kind of vaulting is the cloister of Gloucester (1381-1412), of which the late Dean Spence speaks in the following lines:

"Old Gloucester's peerless cloister, once the haunt Of mitred Abbot and of monk in cowl.

Above we see the long fan-traceried arch; Beneath are letter'd stones and human dust."

The same words can be applied to this chapel, for here we have the long fan-traceried arch, and beneath are stones and human dust, for many members of King's and others are buried within its walls.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry was born at Windsor in the year 1421. When Henry V was informed that Catherine had borne him an heir he asked: Where was the boy born? At Windsor was the reply. Turning to his Chamberlain, he gave voice to the following prophetic utterance:

"I Henry born at Monmouth, Shall small time reign, and much get; But Henry of Windsor shall long reign and loose all.

But as G.o.d will, so be it."

[2] The preamble to the charter granted by Henry in January 1441, and confirmed by Act of Parliament in February of the same year, as translated, reads as follows:--

"To the honour of Almighty G.o.d, in whose hand are the hearts of Kings; of the most blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of Christ; and also of the glorious Confessor and Bishop Nicholas, Patron of my intended College, on whose festival we first saw the light."

[3] In the College Library may be seen a small piece of silk in which his bones were wrapped, and which was taken from the coffin by the late Sir W. H. St. John Hope in the presence of Dr. M. R. James, when it was opened on the 4th November, 1910.

[4] The accounts show that a chapel existed from the beginning, and that it stood between the south side of the old court and the north side of the present Chapel. It consisted of a chancel, nave, and ante-chapel, and had a door at the west end, and east and west windows. It was richly fitted up; and numerous allusions to plate, hangings, relics, service books, vestments, choristers and large and small organs, show that the services were performed with full attention to the ritual of the day.

[5] He was buried in his chapel at Westminster beside that of his wife, Elizabeth of York. Lord Bacon says "He lieth at Westminster in one of the stateliest and daintiest monuments of Europe both for the chapel and the sepulchre. So that he dwelleth more richly dead in the monument of his tomb than he did alive in Richmond or in any of his palaces."

Work of Freemasons

IT may be that some of my readers are members of the Masonic body. Mr.

John Proctor Carter, sometime Fellow of King's and Eton, in writing a history of the chapel, published in 1867, writes thus: "So many learned authors have been at fault when they have ventured into the obscurity which envelops the history of the Freemasons, by a gang of whom this chapel, in common with, at all events, a large number of mediaeval buildings were erected, that to say a word upon the subject may seem presumptuous. The theory of a traditional science, confined entirely to the members of a secret society that had ramified over the whole of civilised Europe, and to whom developments in architecture were due, has been pushed to extremity by some writers. By a natural reaction others have been led to discredit altogether the existence of such a society, and to consider the masonic fraternity merely as one of the various trade corporations or guilds whose relics have descended to our own day.

But apart from the argument drawn from universal belief, there is probably sufficient evidence to show that the Freemasons were distinguished to some extent from other guilds, partly by the possession of peculiar secrets, and partly by their religious character. They seem to have been as it were the knight-errants of architecture, and to have travelled from city to city and country to country in the exercise of what they must have deemed a half sacred profession."

Ample proof has been adduced that Henry VI was not only a Mason himself (having been admitted a member of the fraternity in 1450), but did a good deal for the craft; and Freemasonry has much to thank him for. In a history of Westminster Abbey, written by the late Dean Farrar, is to be found the following: "Even the geometrical designs which lie at the base of its ground plan are combinations of the triangle, the circle, and the oval." Masons' marks are to be found in various places on the walls in chapel.

The Windows

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHIP WINDOW]

AS I have previously mentioned, the building was begun in 1446, but, owing to the long Civil Wars, it dragged on until 1515; and it was in that year that a contract was entered into with one Barnard Flower, to glaze the windows "with good, clene, sure, and perfyte gla.s.s, according to the old and new lawe," or, as we should put it, the Old and New Testament. Barnard Flower died between July 25, 1517, the date of his will, and August 14, 1517, the date when the will was proved, having completed only four windows, one of which is generally believed to be that over the north door, while a second faces the organ on the same side. He describes himself as "Barnard Floure, the Kinges glasyer of England, dwelling within the precynt of Saint Martin hospitale, in the Burgh of Southwark, in the county of Surrey." In 1526 two contracts were entered into with other firms to complete the rest of the windows, which was done in 1531. Among the names of those who entered into the last contract were two Flemings. Windows of a similar kind, although smaller, are to be found at Fairford in Gloucestershire; these date from about 1490.