Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/331

 12 S. IX. OCT. 1, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 269 snobbishness in his disposition, "to a gentleman rather than to a citizen. I was so lame," he continues, " I could not walk about the house with them though they saw it tout par tout, but I quickly found they had their hand too much upon their halfpenny. . . . The house cost my father and me 600Z. and I have often had 400Z. bid for it but I wish I had now 3501. for it and it should go." Later he wrote : " If I can neither sell my house nor get my debtors to pay me there will soon be an end of all. Coals and corn are both a-wanting to me and I have no money to buy them with. I am so straitened that it had not been possible to have sub- sisted but for the charitable relief of some gentlemen," and he mentions Dr. Ashenden and his wife, Dr. Nicholas Tempest, and Sir George T. as contributors to his relief. He lived for two years more, until in the autumn of 1709 death terminated his sufferings. The registers of St. Martin-cum- Gregory record his burial on Oct. 25 of that year. Charles Townley, a member of the old family of that name who then resided in York, and a mutual friend of Gyles and Thoresby, wrote shortly after- wards to the latter : "I suppose you have read of the death of good Mr. Giles our glass -painter without leaving any behind him to transmit to .posterity that art." Dallaway, in his ' Observations on English Architecture,' tells us that " William Price the elder . . . was Giles's most able scholar and successor." With the exception of this statement, however, there is no evi- dence which shows that the Price family had any connexion with York, and though the elder Price might have been a pupil of Gyles's father Edmund (b. 1611, d. 1676), he was more of a contemporary than a successor of Henry. The elder Price lived till the year 1722, but he was executing work for Christ Church, Oxford, in 1696, was Upper Warden of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters on Glass the year following, and was Master in 1699 ('Hist, of the Worshipful Com- pany of Glaziers,' ed. by Chas. H. Ashdowri), in which year, considering the rooted English prejudice against any but grey- beards being placed in positions of worship or trust, he cannot have been much less than fifty years of age, whilst Gyles himself was only fifty -four in that year. Gyles made his will on July 3, 1709, describing himself as a " glass -painter," this being the earliest example of the use of that term in connexion with the craft in York (vide note, ante, 12 S. viii. 485). He directed that his house in Micklegate should be sold to pay his debts, any balance to be divided equally between his wife and daughter the wife's portion to be invested in an annuity for her, and any other goods to go to his daughter. To his " young- Cozens Rachell and Jane Stocdale, five shillings each," and to his two nephews, Samuel and James Smith, whom he ap- pointed his executors, the former " a picture of his mother now in my custody, and to the 3 d James Smith a picture of a Battell hanging now in the stair-case." Will proved Feb. 22, 1721. Davies, ' Walks through the City of York,' p. 174, states that his " drawings and a large quantity of curious painted glass came into the posses- sion of his nephew, Mr. Smith the bell-founder and one of Thoresby's convivial party in June, 1702," Gyles had his portrait painted or drawn several times. In the catalogue of the con- tents of Thoresby's Museum, added to the ' Ducatus Leodiensis,' amongst the portraits were those of " Old Tho Par " who died in 1635, said to be aged 152 " and Mr. Henry Giles, the noted Glass-Painter, all these in Oil Colours upon Wood or Cloth." Amongst the prints was " Mr. Hen. Gyles' Historical Draught for Windows," whilst amongst the copper plates and other articles in metal was " The picture of Mr. Henry Gyles the famous glass -painter at York wrote in mezzotint o by the celebrated Mr. Francis Place when that art was known to few others. Bought with other curiosities of Mr. Gyles' executors." It would seem that this was the original copper plate and not a print or impression from it. It was evidently intended as an advertisement, for under the portrait is the inscription, " Glass painting for Windows as Armes, Sundyals, History, Lanskipt, &c. Done by Henry Gyles of the City of York." The feeling that, in some way or other, it is discreditable for an artist to advertise, is of quite recent growth. In 1826 we find the great master of English landscape painting issuing from 35, Charles Street, Fitzroy Square, " A Scale of Mr. Constable's Prices for Landscape," by which it appears that a picture eighteen inches long cost 20gns. two feet 40gns., two feet six oOgns., and three feet 60gns., whilst " in larger sizes the price will be regulated by circumstances de- pending on time and subject " (Handbill in