Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/156

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NOTES AND QUERIES, .[is s. in. FEB. 24, 1917.

the Western States of America,' 1827; and a paper read before the Linnean Society, Nov. 17, 1812, entitled ' An Account of Four Rare Species of British Birds.'

W. H. MUIXENS. Westfield Place, Battle, Sussex.

WINCHESTER COLLEGE CHANTRY. (11 S. i. 368.)

IT would seem that no reply has yet appeared in these columns to MB. T. CANN HUGHES' s query of May 7, 1910, which related to some of the bosses in Fromond's Chantry. I recently came upon this query during a search for something else, and think that I must have overlooked it when it first appeared. It seems still to need some reply, in order that a misapprehension may be removed. For Mr. F. J. Baigent, whom I have seen more than once since the beginning of 1917, has happily done nothing to earn that prefix, "the late," which MB. CANN HUGHES gave to his name in 1910, when mentioning his article in The Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. x (1855), p. 159.

In 1898, as part of the work then done under the superintendence of John Oldrid Scott (cf. 11 S. xii. 435), the groined ceiling of Fromond's Chantry was freed from its post-Reformation coatings of whitewash, and all the bosses in the ceiling were either painted or gilded, those which are carved with arms being tinctured heraldically. Among the gilded bosses is the one about which MB. CANN HUGHES made special inquiry the boss which displays a monkey riding on a dog, and carrying across his shoulder a stick with a rabbit hanging from it. So far as I can learn, there is no pub- lished drawing of this boss. Possibly the animals would stand out better if, instead of being gilded, they had been painted in their natural colours, Just as elsewhere in the ceiling the head of Cardinal Beaufort was painted ; but one should be chary of criticizing a generous piece of work, which effected a great improvement in the interior of the Chantry.

Another gilded boss represents one of the many mediaeval tales about the fox. I am uncertain what this particular tale may be, but one fox seems to be offering a stolen goose to an ecclesiastic, while another fox seems either to be doing penance or to be

undergoing imprisonment. I cannot find any explanation of the boss in Mr. F. S. Ellis' s History of Reynard the Fox.'

The three bosses which MB. CANN HUGHES mentioned as forming Mr. Baigent's own illustration to his article are not in the ceiling. They occur in some ornamental stonework over the west door, the stonework which, as the article narrates, was brought to light again in 1854 by the removal of some bookshelves by which it had for many years been hidden. A few months later the stone- work round the door was painted in a style that I cannot praise. But the amelioration or removal of that colouring did not come within the scope of the works undertaken in 1898.

As regards the painting in 1898 of the arms in the ceiling, I doubt whether Scott's heraldry was in every case correct. For instance, one shield now bears Or, a cross gules, for De Burgh, Earl of Ulster. I would suggest that the carver intended it to be Argent, a cross gules, for St. George.

Another shield was painted in conformity with the idea that it bore " the arms of Sawsesele or Sawsefele," as given in Pap- worth's ' Ordinary of British Armorials,, p. 948, viz. : " Gules, three reaping hooks' blades argent, handles or." That this was then the accepted idea is evidenced by a list of the shields in the Chantry which was published in The Wykehamist for July, 1898 (No. 349, p. 441). Nothing, indeed, was known of any Sawsesele suggesting a likeli- hood that his arms would be found here. But it would seem that Scott or his advisers had made a shot about the shield after con- sulting Papworth. When and where did the family of Sawsesele or Sawsefele flourish ? I have to confess crass ignorance about it.

Eight years earlier Kirby had printed a list of the arms in the Chantry, in which the shield was said to be for " Palmer of Win- thorp. Argent, three palmers' staves sable, the rests, heads, and ends or." But Kirby 's list (' Annals,' p. 167) was, in the main, merely a copy of Charles Blackstone's, and so we are taken back to 1784, the year in which Blackstone completed his manuscript book of ' Benefactions to Winchester College.' In support of his " Palmer of Winthorp, Lincolnshire " (' Benefactions,' p. 146), Blackstone referred to ' Guillim's Heraldry,' but did not explain why the Chantry should possess the arms of this Palmer family. In fact, we have here another shot, and a poorer one than Scott's. The three weapons on the shield are not unlike reaping hooks, but have little resemblance to palmers'