Wood Carvings in English Churches II/Chapter 8

Hardly anything in a cathedral has so venerable a history as the throne and chair of the Bishop, of wood or ivory. The origin of this type of Bishop's chair goes back to Pagan Rome. There the greater officials had two official chairs, both portable; one, the "sella curulis" in which they sat while administering justice; the other, the "sella gestatoria" in which they were carried in procession. The "sella curulis" was a folding chair with crossed legs like the chair of Dagobert in the Hotel Cluny, Paris: chairs of this form are still in use in many Continental cathedrals.

The "sella gestatoria" was a kind of sedan chair, shaped like a settle; with high back and usually without arms; it was provided with rings through which were passed staves when it was borne in procession. Similar is the Pope's chair in St Peter's, Rome, last shewn in 1867 (112). It is said to have belonged to the Senator Pudens and to have been used by St Peter. Whether that be so or not, it is undoubtedly very ancient, and its legs may be of the Apostolic age; they are of yellow oak, worm-eaten, and chipped by pilgrims who carried away bits as relics; the seat and back are of acacia wood and are of a later period. This back is ornamented with ivory panels carved to represent the Labours of Hercules; the panels are probably of the ninth century, for among the decorations is a bust with a crown bearing fleurs de lis, and what seems to be a portrait of Charles the Bald. Very similar is the chair in which St Silvester is represented as seated in the dome of the apse of St John Lateran, where the mosaics are those of 1291, copied probably from the original ones executed in 428. Similar chairs also appear in the mosaics of Sta. Pudentiana and other Roman basilicas, and in those of Santa Sophia, Constantinople.



In the Archbishop's chapel at Ravenna is preserved a chair made for Maximian who was Archbishop of Ravenna from 546 to 556. It is in wood entirely covered with plaques of ivory, arranged in panels, with Scriptural subjects—among others the story of Joseph—and figures of saints richly carved in high relief. The plaques have borders with foliated ornaments, birds and animals, flowers and fruit, filling the spandrels.



At Lincoln is a wooden chair, which appears to be c. 1300; it has recently been placed in the Chapter House and is now used by the bishop at diocesan synods (114). It is possible that since several Parliaments met at Lincoln, between 1265 and 1327, that this may be the royal chair: it may well have been used also at the great trial of the Knights Templars, which was held in the Chapter House in 1310. It is only original up to the level of the arms; the lions, the back and the canopy are modern.

In Hereford cathedral is an ancient wooden chair, once coloured in red and gold; it is composed of fifty-three pieces; not counting the seat of two boards and the two circular heads in front; it has been variously ascribed to the twelfth or fourteenth century; but no doubt is Jacobean, belonging to the same class of chairs as those enumerated in the following paragraph (114). At Stanford Bishop church, Hereford, is a rude chair or settle, of oak without nails. It is said to have been traditionally called "Old Horstin's chair," and therefore has been supposed, very improbably, to be the identical chair seated on which St Augustine received the British bishops in Herefordshire c. 600 A.D., greatly exciting the ire of the irascible Celts by not rising from his seat to receive them. In the Canterbury Museum Dr Cox has recently deposited a mediæval chair believed to be of great antiquity.

A few examples remain of what are supposed to have been abbots' chairs. In the Bishop's Palace at Wells is preserved a chair of remarkable type, said to have been used by the Abbot of Glastonbury. In the College, Manchester, is or was an ancient chair of the same baluster shape; and a very similar one formerly was to be seen in Agecroft Hall, Manchester. In the cottage at Zaandam, Holland, is a baluster chair, formerly used by Peter the Great. Another chair of this type, but of simpler form, is that once used by John Bunyan, and now preserved, together with his pulpit, in the meeting house of the Independent Congregation at Bedford. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is an arm-chair with balusters of turned ash. All these chairs are of seventeenth century date; no abbot of Glastonbury can have sat in the chair in the Bishop's Palace at Wells (115, on the left).

A chair from Glastonbury, bearing an inscription, and in date c. 1530, is now in the chapel of the Bishop's Palace at Wells; modern copies of it may be seen in hundreds of churches. It is inscribed Monachus Glastonie and Johannes Arthurus; a similar chair was formerly in Southwick Priory, Hampshire (115). An abbot's chair, reputed to have belonged originally to Peterborough cathedral, stands in the south chapel of Connington church, Hunts, where it is said to have been brought from the collegiate church of Fotheringhay, and is said to have been the last chair in which Mary, Queen of Scots, sat previous to her execution. From Little Dunmow priory came the chair now in Great Dunmow church, Essex; its trefoiled arcading shews that it was made in the thirteenth century. In it, up to 1907, were chaired the married couple "who had not repented them, sleeping or waking, of their marriage in a year and a day." The first recorded claim for the happy-marriage prize was made at the Priory in 1445 (116).





A magnificent and well-preserved seat is to be seen in St Mary's Hall, Coventry, and is assigned to the middle of the fifteenth century: it is of oak. From the mortices at one end and the discontinuance of the lower pattern it would seem to have been attached to a set of stalls, and to have belonged therefore originally to some church or chapel (117).

In Bishop's Cannings church, Wiltshire, is a remarkable seat believed to be a "carrel," or desk and seat, such as used to be employed by monks when at study in their cloister; it may have been brought from some monastic house. "It consists of an upright panel, with some fifteenth century moldings at the top and sides; against this panel is constructed a seat, facing sideways, with a flooring, a back the ordinary height of a pew, a door facing the panel, and a sloping desk facing the seat." With this description may be compared that of the monastic carrels given in the Rites of Durham;


 * "In the north side of the cloister from the Corner over against the Church Door to the corner over against the Dorter door was all finely glazed from the height to the sole within a little of the ground into the cloister garth, and in every window three pews or carrels where every one of the old monks had his Carrel, several by himself, that when they had dined they did resort to that place of cloister, and there studied upon their books, every one in his carrel, all the afternoon unto evensong time; this was their exercise every day. All their pews or Carrels was all finely wainscotted and very close, all but the forepart, which had carved work that gave light in at the carrel doors of wain scot. And in every Carrel was a desk to lie their books on; and the Carrels was no greater than from one stanchion of the window to another."



On the inner side of the large panel are a variety of brief admonitory sentences, painted in Latin black letter on the thumb and four fingers of a rudely outlined hand, inscribed at the cuff Manus meditationis; beginning on the thumb with Nescis quantum, Nescis quoties, Deum offendisit. Below the hand with its pious sentences on the respective points of each finger, two cocks are painted, the one white and the other black; from their beaks proceed two labels, bearing further ejaculations (118).





In St Paul's church, Jarrow, is a very rude seat known as the chair of the Venerable Bede; he was a monk of Jarrow, and died in 742; only the sides and seat and the crossbar at the top are original. Mr Mickethwaite was of opinion that it was originally a settle; and it seems hardly likely that the chair can have survived from the eighth century, especially as the monastery of Jarrow was repeatedly burnt by the Danes; but it is of an exceptionally hard oak, and bears marks of fire, and has had its present designation for several centuries. It will be noticed that the standards have been whittled away by relic hunters (119). At Lutterworth is a well-known chair; the tradition is that it was used by John Wyclif, and that he was smitten with paralysis while sitting in it hearing mass, on Holy Innocents' day, 1384, and was carried in it to the rectory hard by, where he died on the last day of that year. A brass plate on it records the tradition; but the chair is plainly Jacobean and of domestic origin; there is another chair in the chancel of exactly the same shape and pattern (120).

At Kidderminster Baxter's chair is preserved; on it is the following inscription:—"Rev. R$d$ Baxter born n$r$ Shrewsbury in 1615 and died at London in 1691. Chaplain to King Charles II. Rev. T. Doolittle, M.A. S$r$ H. Ashurst B$t$, Kidderminster, A. 1650 D." Baxter speaks of Mr Thomas Doolittle, born in Kidderminster, as "a good schollar, a godly man, of an upright life and moderate Principles, and a very profitable serious Preacher." To Sir Henry Ashurst, Bart., Sylvester dedicated his Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1696. He also stood by Baxter in the day of his trial and distress, paid the fees for his six counsel, and when the trial before Judge Jeffries was over, led Baxter through the crowd, and conveyed him away in his coach. He was also Baxter's executor, and it is possible the chair may originally have belonged to him. At Beeston Regis, Norfolk, is a fine old seat, now used by the parish clerk (119); it would seem to be of the period of the work at Balsham and elsewhere (3). At Winchfield, Hampshire, is another old seat of rude and early design (116).



Stone seats are occasionally found. Where they are placed south of the altar, they are probably sedilia; but not when they are placed in the western bay or bays of the chancel or in the nave. At Barnack the remains of a stone seat were found on the west wall of the Pre-Conquest tower; it had formerly an oak seat and oak slabs on either side: a stone seat occurs also in the west wall of the nave of Old Radnor church. A stone seat is not uncommon in the western bays on the south side of chancels; the object of this is not clear; perhaps it was to provide a seat for the priest while reading his office; in later days, as we have seen, oak stalls were common in parish chancels, and the priest would read his office in one of these. Several examples occur. There is a rude example in the Pre-Conquest church of Corhampton, Hampshire. Others, probably of thirteenth century date, occur at Warlingham, Surrey, and Halsham and Sprotborough, Yorkshire. At Lenham, Kent, is one with solid stone arms, and with a cinquefoiled canopy of later date.

Last, we have the Coronation chair at Westminster, which has a long, if somewhat unreliable history behind it. The stone beneath it is said to have been the one on which Jacob's head rested at Bethel; from whence it travelled to Egypt, and thence to Spain, Ireland and lastly Scotland. King Kenneth of Scotland had the following inscription engraved on it in Latin verse:—

a prophecy curiously fulfilled on the accession of James I. to the English throne (121). On the upper surface of the stone is a rectangular groove large enough to receive an inscribed plate. Edward I. found the stone in 1296 at Scone abbey, where the Scotch kings had always been crowned on it. He carried it to London, and in 1300 Master Adam, the king's goldsmith, was working at a bronze chair to hold it. But when this was nearly finished, the king altered his mind and had a copy of it made in wood—the present chair—which cost 100s., by Master Walter, the king's painter. The chair has lost the quatrefoils in front, and the lions are of recent date. It originally stood in the same position as a bishop's chair, i.e., at the back of the High altar and in front of the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and facing to the west. It is made of oak, fastened together with pins; the surface was first covered over with the usual gesso; then gold was applied by means of white of egg, and burnished; then minute dots, forming diapers of foliage, beasts, birds, &c., were pricked on the surface of the gold, taking care not to penetrate it, with a blunt instrument before the ground and gilding had lost their elasticity; a most tedious and delicate process. A second chair, modelled on the older one, was made on her coronation for Mary II., Queen of William III. It used to stand by the side of the king's chair, but has been moved to the easternmost recess of Henry VII.'s chapel. In Winchester cathedral is the chair which was used by Mary I. on her marriage with Philip of Spain, which was solemnised in the Lady chapel: it is now placed in Bishop Langton's chapel (122). Very similar is a chair preserved in York Minster, which, owing to the shield attached in front, is probably not older than the time of Richard II.: the cushion is stuffed, and covered with green velvet; the shield also is covered with leather, the upper part of which has been torn away, and the lines upon it are but slightly stamped. At Constance is shewn a similar chair of Martin V., who was elected Pope there in 1417.





In addition to the above, chairs are often placed in the presbytery to the north of the altar. These were occupied by the preacher during morning or evening service, till his turn came to ascend the pulpit and deliver the sermon. Of these the greater number no doubt have been presented by the owner of some manor house or parsonage, or have been picked up in recent years in some second-hand furniture shop. This is probably the case with the interesting chair which is known to have been for nearly a century in the Mainwaring chapel of Higher Peover church, Cheshire; it bears not only the name, but the portrait and initials of the owner. The inscription is DORATHY MAYNWARING; she married Sir Richard Mainwaring of Ightfield, Salop, High Sheriff of that county in 1545. Most of the chair is older than her time; Dorothy seems to have had it put together of old bits of carving, adding her name and portrait, and the raven, the crest of her father, Sir Robert Corbet. She lived at Ightfield, and it was probably when that branch of the family became extinct that the chair was brought to Higher Peover church, and placed in the Mainwaring chapel. At the top are holes for holding sconces in which tapers would be placed (123).

At Penshurst there used to be a chair with a bust on the inner panel of the back; the tradition was that it belonged to Sir Philip Sidney. At Puddletown, Dorset, a chair has been in the chancel for very many years; it is of Elizabethan date, and was probably brought from some hall or manor house. "The tall narrow back, the broadening seat, the vertically straight, but horizontally angled arms are those of the French caqueteure type rarely seen in England. The strap carving of the back is of the best; while the twin greyhounds with averted heads that fit the curved top of the chair no doubt have reference to the original owner" (124). At Upton, near Castor, there are two chairs in the chancel; on one of which is inscribed "A.D. 1700—Joane Browne—Want Not." The other has the initials J. D.; the Doves were Lords of the Manor at that time (130). In Redenhall church, Norfolk, is one of two chairs brought there from Canterbury cathedral by Archbishop Sancroft on his expulsion from the see in 1615; it is of a curious pattern common in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in which the back is hinged and can be turned over to convert the chair into a table. Archbishop Sancroft is buried at Redenhall, which, by the way, possesses perhaps the finest church tower of any village in England and an exceptionally fine ring of ancient bells. The other chair is kept at Gawdy Hall, the seat of the Sancrofts (125).

In many cases the chair is a composite product, made up of fragments of screens, bench ends and the like; this seems to be the case with the chairs in the churches of Bridford, Devon, and Othery, Somerset; that at Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, appears to be put together out of the fragments of a screen (126). In the Chapter House of Gloucester cathedral are two chairs, on the inner panels of the back of which are carved "The Last Supper" and "The Ascension" respectively; the panels were presented in the time of Dean Law, and, provided with a framework, now form part of two chairs.



Where, however, the chair has a representation of some ecclesiastical subject, the presumption is that it was made for the church in which it is placed. In Cartmel Priory church is a fine chair on the back of which is represented the Resurrection; below are seen the Roman soldiers; above, Christ shews the wounds in His hands (127). At Sanderstead, Surrey, Abraham with uplifted sword is about to slay Isaac; on the right is shewn the ram, on the left an angel. The same subject appears, better carved, on the back of one of two chairs brought from a church in Suffolk, now pulled down; on the other chair is a representation of what looks like the Temptation (128). In Halsall church, Lancashire, are two beautiful chairs with the initials IHS; beneath them is a scroll on which is inscribed Ecce quomodo amabat (128). In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a similar "winged" chair, which bears the initials IPI and the date 1670. In the chancel of Combmartin church, Devon, is a mahogany chair with wheat and grapes, apparently referring to the sacramental bread and wine; it had been for many years in the family of the present incumbent, Rev. F. W. Jones, and was presented by him to the church; it is possible that it was originally made for a church (129).