Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/165

 n s. x. AUG. 22, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Berks, there was a St. Christopher in a very imperfect state, which has now disappeared. Tin -re is another at Bramley, Hants, which has been restored. At Pickering, Yorks, also the frescoes have been restored. St. Chris- topher walks in water full of fishes and mer- maids, and the shore has a chapel, a praying monk, some fishermen, -and a windmill.

E. E. COPE. Finchainpstead Place, Berks.

SNUFF-BOXES (11 S. viii. 148). Here is a clipping from The People, London, Sunday, 15 March, 1014, under ' The People Mixture,' p. 18. It may add an interest to the topic :

" Armada R-lic. A golden snuff-box en- graved with the arms of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the commander of the Spanish Armada, has been washed ashore during a storm at Vigo."

FREDERICK LAWRENCE TAVAEE. Pcndleton, Manchester.

0n

A Description of Brasses and Other Funeral 'Monuments in the Chapel of Magdalen College. By B. T. Giinther, Fellow of the College. (Oxford, printed by H. Hart for Magdalen College, 2s. 6d. net.)

MB. GUNTHER to whom we are already indebted for an historical description of the Chapel Porch of Magdalen, for an admirable and learned account of Oxford gardens, and for a charming book upon the Oxford country, of which he was editor and to which he contributed has produced a valuable little work which should appeal to many besides those who owe allegiance to the College of the Lilies.

In his Preface he acknowledges the assistance of the Bev. H. A. Wilson, Fellow and historian ot the College ; of the Bev. F. E. Brightman, Fellow ; and of Mr. H. W. Greene, sometime Fellow. Mr. Brightman not only lent careful rubbings of eight of the Brasses, but has con- tributed a much-needed note upon medieval academical costume, a subject which has fre- quently been misinterpreted even by experts.

The Chapel and its monuments have suffered many vicissitudes. In 16345 the floor was un- fortunately disturbed, in order that it might be covered whh black and white marble pavement- quarries. Some of the monuments which were relaid after this move were again disturbed when a new heating apparatus was installed in 1838, and several brasses were litted from gravestones and stored in the Bursary. Five of these were rescued by the piety of Dr. Macray, the latest o<l it or of the College Begister, and relaid in the Chapel during 1893. Sundry fragments still loose in 1911 were finally replaced by College order. Moreover, Dr. Bloxam records that in 1832 " tablets were removed from the clustered columns fof the Antechapel] and placed in some convenient situation." A cemetery for the members of the College who were not interred within the building was uncovered in St. John's

Quadrangle, just under the western wall of the Chapel. This has now been re-covered with turf. Mr. Giinther notes that, unfortunately, the spots selected for the relaying of the most inter- esting of the older brasses are just those most liable to be walked upon or to have Chapel furniture dragged over them, to the inevitable deterioration of the brasses. He suggests that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century originals should be preserved in a place of safety, or at- tached to a wall, and twentieth-century electro- types laid in their present places on the floor. It will be remembered that the magnificent brasses in Winchester College Chapel disappeared in Butterfield's restoration of 1874-5, and that by the munificence of Dr. Edwin Freshfield who> fortunately, when a boy in the School, had taken rubbings of them, they have been reproduced. Magdalen, at any rate, escaped the ruthless hand of Butterfield.

Mr. Gunther says of the ancient brasses, " Several bear portraits of the deceased en- graved with convincing clearness." We confess we are somewhat sceptical on this point. Mediaeval brasses appear to give us digni- fied studies of the habits in which men and women lived and moved lather than a record of their faces. A special type of countenance seems often to have been given to members of a par- ticular profession or rank in Society, or to have been fashionable in a particular district, or among a certain school of brass-engravers. It was not until the late and declining period that orasses became pictorial, and actual portraits of those commemorated seldom appear to have been attempted before the reign of Elizabeth.

The oldest funeral monument remaining within the College is the nameless and fractured tomb- stone, belonging to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, of some member of St. John's Hospital, which stood on part of the site of the present College. The fragments were found in the summer of 1913 in the middle of St. John's Quadrangle, and are at present in the Tower. They measure about 2 ft. across, and are identified by a cross cut upon the stone. The latest is a memorial brass of 1913 in the Chapel to a Demy. Boughly speaking, the seventeen extant brasses, or frag- ments of brasses, commemorate three Presidents, ten Fellows, one College Chaplain, one M.A. who was chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester, the College Visitor, one Scholar of Divinity, , and one Demy (scholar) who was ultimately Archdeacon of Salop. The funeral monuments of 1575-1855 commemorate eight Presidents ; the wives of two of these (Presidents Butler and Jenner) ; thirty - two Fellows ; one Chaplain : one Schoolmaster, viz., Thomas Collins, sometime Chorister, and for fifty years, until his death in 1723, Master of the College School the inscrip- tion on whose monument was written by the notorious Dr. Henry Sacheverell, sometime Demy and Fellow ; three Ushers ; two Clerks ; six Demies; three Commoners ; and one gentleman who appears to have been father of a Demy. There is another gravestone to one whofje connexion with the College is uncertain. No burial within the Chapel has taken place since the interment of President Ronth in 1854, all the later monuments being merely memorial. They commemorate one 1'p'siilcnt, six Fellows (one of whom was also a Professor), one Hon. M.A., one Schoolmaster