Page:Wood carvings in English churches II.djvu/92



All the larger stallwork of the fifteenth century was, as we have seen, designed in two stories, rising into spirelets and pinnacles; at Windsor the double story, the spirelet and the pinnacle are all alike lacking. It is true that the original canopies were designed quite as much for the Knights of the Garter as for the Windsor Canons, and in the case of the former the design had to be accommodated to provide supports for the knights' helmets, mantles and swords; nevertheless this might have been accomplished without utterly breaking away from current design. The Windsor design, so far as English work goes, has no ancestry; its origin no doubt is to be found in the Netherlands. The Windsor stalls have been much tampered with. As Hollar's engraving in Ashmole's Institution of the Order of the Garter (1672) shews, over the westernmost bay on either side of the choir the canopies contained imagery and had a horizontal cresting; and all the other canopies consisted alternately of towers and spirelets; the knights being seated under the towers and the canons under the spirelets; but since the enlargement of the Order in 1786 all the spirelets have been converted into towers (71). All these towers are surmounted by wooden busts, of which the earliest go back to the time of Edward IV.; on the bust were placed the knight's helmet, crest and mantlings, which hid the busts from view; lower down, in front, hung his sword; banners were not added till a later period. At first the real sword and helm were put up; later, they were theatrical properties.



In Winchester cathedral is stallwork of rare beauty in the Lady Chapel, which was built in the time of Bishop Courtenay, 1486-1492. In some of its details it resembles the Windsor stalls, which were completed in 1483; it is therefore