The Arms of Richard II as shown in the windows at Westwell and Wateringbury

( 170 ) THE ARMS OF RICHARD II. AS SHOWN IN "WINDOWS AT WESTWELL AND WATERINGBURY BY RALPH GRIFFIN, F.S.A. IN February 1935 our member, Dr. William T. Storrs, wrote to the Secretary calling attention to two shields in glass in the upper part of the easternmost window in the north wall of the north chancel chapel in the Church of St. Mary at Westwell, near Ashford. These had been noticed by Dr. Storrs' brother, Lieut.-Colonel R. Storrs, whose attention had been attracted because he had seen in the Chapter House at Exeter a shield identical with one of those at Westwell. Dr. Storrs was proposing to offer a paper on the subject; but his photographs were not suitable for reproduction. Mr. Druce referred the question to me and some correspondence took place. Eventually Dr. Storrs, who had also noticed some similar glass at Wateringbury, :finding himself too busy, desired me to take over the task of writing an article on the subject. I should have preferred to ]eave it in the hands of Dr. Storrs and his brother: as it is I am naturally desirous to let them have all the credit which is their due. After some experiments Mr. G. E. Reason, whom I induced to do the photographic work, has secured most excellent photographs ; which enabled Messrs. Emery Walker, Ltd., to make the blocks for the illustrations in this paper. In Plate I is shown the upper part of the window at Westwell in question. The two lights at the top are filled with stained glass. Each shows a shield. Below this remains some brilliantly coloured canopy work, but from the rest of the window the stained glass is lost. The two upper lights are shown in Plate II and Plate III, from which it will be seen that the light to the left-hand of PLATE I. 1VESTWELL CHURCH, KENT. Top of window in N. wall of N. chantry, c. 1397. PLATE II. \\"ESTWELL CHURCH, KEKT. Detail of arms in window shown in Plate I. PLATE III. \\"ESTWELL CHURCH, KENT. Detail of arms in window shown in Plate I. THE ARMS OF RICHARD Il. 171 the spectator (Plate II) shows an impaled shield. The dexter half shows the arms of Edward the Confessor in pale with the royal arms of Richard II. The sinister half shows the arms of Anne of Bohemia, Richard's first wife who died in 1392. It will be convenient at once to blazon all these arms. Edward the Confessor's Arms were .Azure a cross :flory between five rnartlets or. The royal arms of Richard II were Quarterly: 1 and 4. Azure semy of lis or. 2 and 3. Gules three lions passant guardant in pale or. These beasts so presented are often described as leopards of England. The arms of Anne of Bohemia consisted of a shield which showed the arms of the Empire (or an eagle displayed with two heads sable) quartered with the arms of Bohemia (Gules a lion rampant with two tails argent crowned or). Passing to the light to the right hand side of the spectator (Plate III) it is seen that it shows the arms of the Confessor impaling those of his wife Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine. These are blazoned azure three crowns two and one or .1 It is perhaps here necessary to put in a paragraph about these arms of the Confessor and his wife who clearly lived at a time when arms were not used and indeed not known. But it was the habit at a very early date, within a century of the time when first the use of arms began, to assign arms to Saints and Heroes who could never have used them themselves. An outstanding instance is that of the Confessor whose arms appear in a magnificent rendering to be seen on the wall of the south aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey, where they must have been carved as early as 1259. The egregious Mr. Fox Davies would no doubt have denounced them as " bogus " and asked with a fine scorn for the grant of them by the College. Antiquaries who are more concerned with things as they are, accept them thankfully as indicating the actual practice of medieval times, to be construed as they would always have then been construed. These arms in the case of the Confessor appear 1 It is assumed that these are the lady's arms but it cannot be lost sight of that they are also ascribed to St, Edmund. 172 THE ARMS OF RICHARD II AS SHOWN IN to have been selected because on his silver pennies he commonly used a cross between four birds ; no doubt doves. The strong artistic sense of the medieval carvers would at once be shown by the addition of a :fifth bird to fill the point of the shield. Froissart thus speaks of the shield : " une croix potencee d' or et de gueules a quatre coulombs blancs au champ de l'escu. "1 Here he clearly calls them doves. How Berners translates the passage will be seen in Mr. Willement's extract cited below. The real point of interest however, is in the use made by Richard II of the arms of the Confessor who was his patron saint. There is a passage in Berners' translation ofFroissart, quoted by Mr. Willement at page 22 of his Regal Heraldry (London, 1821) which after setting forth that the Irish loved the Confessor more than any previous English King goes on to state that Richard " this yere past when he was in Irelande in all his armories and devices, he left the bering of the armes of England, as the lybardes and flour delyces quarterly, and bare the armes of this Saint Edwarde, that is a crosse patent golde and goules with four white martenettes in the felde." This differs in two small points from other authorities in that it makes the martlets white and their number four and not five. Moreover it suggests that the birds were not doves but martlets. The example at Westminster and the shield on the great brass at Felbrigg, Norfolk, of Richard's standard bearer, Sir Simon Felbrygge, K.G., show five birds. Incidentally Sir Simon's brass also shows his wife, lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Bohemia; and moreover a shield of the Confessor impaling Richard's royal arms and another showing these arms and those of Anne arranged per pale exactly as shown in Plate II at Westwell. 2 The question next arises is it possible to get an approximate date for the Westwell window from the use of these arms 􀁫 The Confessor nowhere appears on Richard's great 1 Tome 4, chap. lxiii., p. 188, edition of 1574. 2 The birds at Felbrigg are martlets. At Westminster they certainly are not: they are probably intended for doves, No shield like that at Westminster in this respect has been noted except in the Malvern glass as set forth at p. 135 of Mr. Rushforth's magnificentproduction, Medieval Ohrietian Imagery. G. McN. Rushforth, F.S.A. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1936. PLATE IV. WATERIKGBFRY CHURCH, KENT. \\"indow in C\. wall of \'est.ry. PLATE V. W ATERINGBURY CHURCH, KENT. Panel in window shown in Plate IV. WINDOWS AT WES'.rWELL AND WATERINGBURY 173 seals and the passage in Froissart suggests the shield was adopted when the King went to Ireland "this yere past," which must mean about 1395 or 1396. The celebrated Wilton diptych shows the King kneeling (with his saints behind him) to the Virgin and her babe, with supporting angels charged with the King's badges. On the back of the picture is a coat of arms showing the Confessor impaling the Royal arms exactly as shown at Felbrigg and on the dexter half of Plate II from Westwell. The Confessor in person appears as one of the King's supporting saints :but his arms do not appear on the front of the picture. This diptych is now one of the glories of the National Gallery. At the time it was acquired by the nation, much discussion took place as to its provenance and date. Miss M. V. Clarke, F.S.A. (whose loss we are now so gteatly deploring) was inspired to investigate the date of it by an approach from a new angle that of the heraldry and badges which it presented ; and contributed a valuable article on the subject to the Burlington Magazine for June 1931 (No. CCCXXXIX, Vol. LVIII). From this much help has been derived in writing the present account. While Richard II seems to have added the Confessor's · arms to his own on his signet about 1395 it is extremely probable that he publicly assumed the addition of the arms of the Confessor to the anterior part that is the dexter side of his shield of the royal arms about the same time as he created in 1397 :five dukes and a duchess : for the dukes very certainly after that creation assumed to themselves the Confessor's shield which they impaled on the dexter side of their own shields as used before. The King at the 'same time gave them all a cap of estate. These dukes were (1) Edw. Plantagenet, Earl of Rutland, created Duke of Aumarle (Albermarle). He took the Confessor's arms with probably a label of three points. (2) Thos. Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, took the arms undifferenced; as did (3) his rival, Henry of Bolingbroke who became Duke of Hereford. (4) Thos. Holand, Duke of Surrey, who impaled the Confessor's arms with a border argent. (5) John Roland, 15A 17 4 THE ARMS OF RTCHARD II AS SHOWN IN Duke of Exeter, impaled the Confessor's arms with a label of three points argent. This creation of dukes is much commented on by a writer in the Annals of Richard II in the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Albans, Vol. 28 in the Rolls Series, the entry being in the third portion of that volume at p. 223. The writer who certainly had no friendly feeling to Richard goes on after the paragraph relating to the five dukes to say in Latin (here translated): "So proud was the King and so puffed up by vain thoughts that he now exceeded all bounds. He regarded himself as so much higher than he had ever been before that he changed the arms that had been his and such as he had inherited from his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He added to them the arms of St. Edward so that the full arms of the Saint were in the anterior part of the shield and the rest only presented the arms of his ancestors." The chronicler thus suggests that these impalements did not come into prominence much before 1397, the date of the creation of the Dukes. So the windows at Westwell may be dated c. 1397 with some confidence. And there is good internal evidence that this fits very well for Hasted (Vol. III, p. 210) says of Westwell: " This church was antiently an appendage to the Manor of Westwell, and as such was part of the possessions of the Priory of Christ Church in Canterbury to which it was appropriated in the 21st year of K. Richard II anno 1397 with the King's and Pope's licence, towards the support of the fabric of that church, to which Abp. Arundel consented." It does not seem unlikely then that this window was put up as a memorial of the King's bounty and was inserted shortly after 1397. At any rate it was in position before 1399 when Henry IV succeeded. Hasted's account of the glass (ibid.) is indifferent .. Parsons' account is even worse. The window in Wateringbury Church to which attention has been called is in the vestry to the north of the chancel. The window is not old and is filled with glass for the most part modern. It is in the north wall and is shown complete PLATE VI. \•VATERI􀀢C:BURY CHURCH, KENT. Roundel at top of window shown in Plate IV. WINDOWS AT WESTWELL AND WATERING BURY 17 5 in Plate IV, which shows a panel of stained glass (shown larger in Plate V) with above it a roundel of stained glass (shown larger in Plate VI). Looking at Plate V it is noticed that it has quarries of lozenges each showing the letters C.R. and a crown very highly decorated which suggests a date temp. Charles I. Below is a shield of the arms of the Confessor impaling the Royal Arms in a. form differing from the form above in that the first and third quarters do not show semy de lis but three lis a form adopted in England in the time of Henry IV, c. 1405. This shield does not seem to be of the same date as the crown as jt gives the impression of being somewhat earlier and the style in which the supporters are shown-apparently two peers of parliament in their robes-confirm that impression. Below is an angel crowned, holding a schedule or scroll with a sentence the meaning of which cannot be determined.1 The connection of Watering bury with Richard II appears to arise through the abbey of St. Mary Graces, near the Tower of London, which had a grant of the manor from Edward III through feoffees. These were discharged by Richard II by letters patent in his twenty-second year (1398) and he enlarged the grant to one in pure and perpetual alms for ever. It might well be that the Abbot and convent would put up in this. church a memorial of the fact in the arms of their benefactor ; but the form of the first and third quarters shows that such commemoration did not take place before 1405. Here again "restorers" have made matters obscure by their vagaries, for the roundel of stained glass at the top of the window at Wateringbury has no apparent connexion with the panel below. It shows (Plate VI) the arms of the Merchant Adventurers with supporters and motto but no crest. These arms as given by Welch2 are Barry nebuly of six a.rgent and azure a chief quarterly gules and or on the gules 1 The first three words are reasonably clear. They are De Solomon Jae. The rest is illegible. A careful tracing was made of the letters and submitted to Mr. A. W. Clapham and Mr. H. S. Kingsford; but they could not make any suggestion as to the meaning they were intended t.o convey: so the case seems hopeless. 2 Ooat Armour of the Livery Companies by Charles Welch, F.S.A. Privately printed, London, 1914. Plate 99, p. 35. 15B 176 THE ARMS OF RICHARD II. a lion passant guardant or ; on the or two roses gules barbed vert. The supporters are Two pegasi argent with wings indorsed each charged on the wing with three roses in pale gules. The motto is in French : Dien nous adventu,re donne bonne. On this it may be observed ; first, that the quarters in chief are shown in various ways, for the two roses are often in the first and fourth quarters; and the leopard of England in the other two. This can be observed on brasses at Stone by Dartford, 1574; Boxford, Suffolk, 1610; and Bodmin, Cornwall, 1633. At Wateringbury it at first seems as if this variation was originally there ; but on looking at the leopard of England it is noticed that this looks to the sinister and therefore the more probable solution is that the chief has here been releaded the wrong way out and that originally the shield was as given by Welch. Secondly ; as to the supporters it is observed that there are only two roses in fess on the wing of each pegasus. When the illustration given by Welch is examined it is seen that that is right though it is contradicted by the letterpress. It is more probable that here the supporters at Wateringbury are right. They are heraldically described as pegasi. Whether this is the plural that should be used in ordinary speech need not here be discussed. How the shield came to be in Wateringbury Church cannot now be settled. Enough is not known of the members of the company to identify any special person in that parish as being a Merchant Adventurer. .All that can be said is that Hasted (Vol. II, 280) gives many names like Giles Bridges, Sir Martin Bowes and Oliver Style who were great merchants and might well have belonged to the Company. In the case of a roundel put by " restorers " in a place where it certainly was not originally, without leaving any indication of the place where they found it, it is hopeless to attempt to recover this part of the history of the parish.