Page:Wood carvings in English churches II.djvu/68



compared with the more characteristic woodwork of King's College, Aberdeen"; nevertheless it is very picturesque and interesting. The introduction of the centaurs indicates Renaissance influence; the foliage carving is a rather curious mixture of late Gothic and Classic forms, such as we find elsewhere in Scottish carved work of this period. The Scottish thistle is one of the chief motifs (67).

In the chapel of King's College, Aberdeen, is a considerable amount of fine oak carved work, by far the most extensive and best of its kind in Scotland. The chapel itself, in some of its features, bears the character of the parish church at Stirling and other Scottish works of the beginning of the sixteenth century. The carved stalls, monuments, and decorative work of the interior are of the same period, but may possibly have been brought from a distance, or executed by foreign workmen engaged (like the English plumber) by the bishop. The panels are all of different design, and shew a great deal of variety combined with a sufficiently uniform effect when the work is viewed as a whole. In some of them the details are based on floral forms—thistle, vine, oak, &c.—while the conventional French fleur-de-lis is also introduced.

At this point arises the question how far our stallwork was influenced by foreign design. It may be stated at once with confidence that of the great majority of the stalls the design is as thoroughly English as the oak of which they are built. We have seen that the flowing and ogee forms of the Ely tracery were designed not later than 1338, which is at least sixty years earlier than any work of the sort in France. We were able to see how by gradual modifications of the Ely design the craftsmen were able to advance slowly but assuredly to the stallwork of Lincoln, Chester, Nantwich, Carlisle, Ripon, Manchester, Beverley, Durham; the glorious chain of artistic success is complete; every link is there. But there are facts on the other side which, at any rate at Melrose, are beyond dispute or controversy. In 1846 a document was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, London, from West Flanders, relating to a dispute at Bruges between William Carebis, a Scotch merchant, and John Crawfort, a monk of Melrose, on the one hand, and Cornelius de Aeltre, citizen and master of the art of carpentry of Bruges, on the other hand. The latter had contracted to supply certain stalls and to erect them in the abbey church of Melrose, after the fashion of the stalls of the choir of the abbey church of Dunis in