Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/162

 128 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vm. FEB. 12, 1021, as one of his (Witton's) executors and pro- bate of whose will was granted Mar. 31, 1451, to "Matilda wife of John Chamber lately deceased." To "Fr. William Wencelay, monk, my son," he bequeathed six silver spoons, 20s. in money and " a small mazer set with silver," with the proviso that the testator's wife was to hav-e the use of it during her life. He left various sums to the vicars and chaplains of St. Helen's Church in Stonegate, where he desired to be buried "before the crucifix." To his son Richard he left his business, but the latter died the same month as his father. John Chamber was thus left without any male heir to succeed to the business, his other son being in religion. Who carried on the business after his death we do not know, but his successor would no doubt be found amongst his three workmen, William Inglish, Robert Hudson, and Thomas Coverham ; whom, in his will he calls "my servants " and to whom he bequeathed 5s. by equal portions. All three appear before the Lord Mayor in 1463-4 as representatives of the "hole craft of glasyers ", and presumably therefore they were masters, when new ordinances were granted. Chamber evidently enjoyed a wide reputation as a glass painter. In 1449 he executed windows for the parish church of St. Mary Magdalene in Durham (Durham. Account Rolls, ed. by Rev. Canon Fowler, Surtees Soc., vol. ii. p. 408). In John Chamber the younger we most pro- bably have the outstanding genius who executed the masterpieces of glass-painting such as the west window of St. Martin-le- Grand, Coney Street (dated 1437), and others done between the date at which we must presume the death of John Thornton (c. 1435) and the middle of the fifteenth century. (Will, Reg. Test. D. and C. Ebor./i. 266.) Ricardus Chambre, glasier, fil. Johannis Chaumbre, glasier. Son of John Chamber the younger (free 1414, died 1451), and Matilda his wife. Richard Chamber's wife was called Margaret, to whom John Chamber the younger bequeathed "his blood red girdle adorned with silver," and to" Richard Chamber, my son, my green girdle adorned with silver and all the instruments and utensils belonging to my shop if he shall be living and he shall happen to return." As likely as not Richard Chamber (whose name appears in the Freemen's Roll of 1447 so that he was presumably 24 years of age in 1450) and John Witton (who was evidently an apprentice with Richard's father, whom Witton in his will calls my "master," though John Chamber in his will dees not mention Witton along with " hi& servants " William Inglish, Robert Hudson, and Thomas Coverham, thereby showing that Witton was an apprentice at the time) had gone abroad together on the completion, of their indentures in order to complete their artistic training by foreign travel.* Richard Chamber and John Witton^made- their respective wills one on the 10th and the other on the llth of June, 1450, and each desired that his body should "be buried with church burial where God shaE dispose for me " without specifying a particular church as was the usual custom. Probate of the two wills was granted within four days of one another, one on Mar. 31, and the other on Apr. 3, 1451. These facts- taken together point to their having met with a violent death in company and they were probably either drowned at sea or died together in battle, possibly in one of the last fights of the Hundred Years War. Richard Chamber in his will (Reg. Test. D. and C. Ebor., i. 267) bequeathed to his- parish church of St. Helen in Stonegate IQd. for tithes and oblations forgotten and made his. father and another his executors, the former however pre-deceased him by a. few days. JOHN A. KNOV:LES. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. At Armscot, co. Worcester, a small hamlet near Ilmington, the children went round to the farms singing for apples, which were kept for Shrove Tuesday fritters. The lines ran : Good morrow, Valentine, t vl;' _ First its yours, then its mine, t_i^|T V^ 1 Please give us a valentine, o J. HABVEY the son of the house who would eventually have to> take over his father's business and who had there- fore to keep up to date and in touch with the latest art movements on the continent. There is reason, to believe that Witton like Chamber was in the the above position. He cannot have been a poor boy for he leaves a fair amount of property arid ari annuity to his father for life. Valentin Bouch. glass- painter of Metz (died 1451) had evidently travelled in Italy as he bequeathed to Herman Foliq, whom he calls his " old workman" "twelve pieces of portraiture of Italy or of Albert" (Le Vieil. 'L'Art de la Peinture sur Verre.' p. 95). The remarkable similarities in design and details of glass on the continent to glass of very slightly later date in England can only be accounted for by such an hypothesis. There would be little difficulty i getting a passage across, as ships were continually crossing.
 * This was evidently the custom in the case of