Page:Wood carvings in English churches II.djvu/67

 of the vertical line makes it likely that the stalls were put up rather after than before the Black Death (43).

At All Saints', Hereford, is a range of stalls of remarkable beauty. They have the bowing ogees, the compound cusping, the intersecting wavy tracery of the first half of the fourteenth century; yet the cusping and tracery are not in the early manner. In the cathedral the bowing ogees meet at an angle of nearly 45°; at All Saints', they project but slightly, meeting with a very obtuse point. All Saints' has ogee canopies under a coved horizontal tester with supporting shafts, as in the cathedral. In the latter the cornice of the tester on the south side has a perforated battlemented parapet; that on the north (43) has brattishing; at All Saints' both sides have brattishing, but the pattern is not the same. Hereford suffered much from the Black Death of 1350, and it is not likely that a parish church would be able to afford such costly stalls before the last quarter of that century. We may suggest 1380 as a probable date. It must be remembered that nearly all changes in mediæval design originated with the stone mason; it was some time before they were caught up by the craftsmen in other materials (44).

To the exquisite stallwork of Abergavenny the remarks made on that at All Saints', Hereford, again apply; it is redolent of the inspiration of the first half of the fourteenth century; but its effects are gained in a totally different way: this also may be assigned to the last quarter of the fourteenth century; say c. 1380 or later (46).

The stalls at Wingfield, Suffolk, might date from 1362, when the church was made collegiate; but much work was done in the time of Michael de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Catherine Stafford; he died in 1415; the badges of Wingfield and Stafford—a wing and the Stafford knot—are seen on the arches between the de la Pole chapel and the chancel. The design of the stalls and desks is such as might be expected early in the fifteenth century, especially in East Anglia, where fourteenth century design lingered long (46).

At first sight the Norwich stalls might seem to belong to the first half of the fourteenth century; as in the stalls of Chichester, the lower canopies have ogee arches; while there is a second story above, as at Ely. The exuberance of earlier design is present in the cusping and the crockets; notice how the crockets vary from bay to bay, one set being actually composed of hawks. Nevertheless supermullions rise from the apex of each minor arch of the window tracery of the spandrils,