1. Donors and Patrons - Representation of
p. 16 - Not all representations of donors conformed to the modes described above. The most vainglorious of the variants are the twenty-four representations of Henry de Mamesfeld in the chance glazing of Merton College chapel (c 1294). In the early fourteenth-century Pilgrimage window at York Minster (nXXV) male and female figures lead horses with their riders holding flags or lances. The closest parallel is a destroyed composition in the east window of Drayton Basset church in Staffordshire. This depicted Ralph, Lord Basset of Drayton (d. 134213), wearing a heraldic surcoat over armour and carrying a banner with his arms; his wife Joan presented him with his helmet and on the left side of the panel an esquire held his horse, caparisoned with the Basset of Drayton arms. Both the York Minster and the Drayton Basset scenes are related to the well-known image of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (d. 1345) in the Luttrell Psalter (BL MS Add. 42130) and to tombs in Exeter Cathedral and Minster-in-Sheppey, Kent. Another unusual composition is the figure of Thomas Spofford, Bishop of Hereford (1421 - 48), kneeling before St Anne and the Virgin in the east window of Ross-on-Wye in Hereford & Worcester. Spofford had a particular devotion to St Anne; he was formerly represented with her in lost windows at Catterick in North Yorkshire and Ludlow. In the Ross-on-Wye glass Spofford is offering his heart to the saint, which associates the panel with monumental brasses depicting the deceased with a heart in his/her hands; most of these hearts represent their souls.
8. The International Style c1350 - 1450
p.187 - The collegiate church of Battlefield in Shropshire was founded in 1409 on the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury, in which Henry IV triumphed over the Percy family and the Scots. Antiquarian records show that the windows included figures and lives of saints such as George, Nicholas and John the Baptist, in addition to Chad and Winifred who were popular in the area. The evidence of lost donor figures and inscriptions suggests that much of the glazing dated from c1434-45. In 1749 the remaining glass was removed and much of it destroyed. A century later most of the surviving fragments found their way to the nearby parish church at Prees (window nIl); the few pieces remaining at Battlefield have been gathered in the vestry. Their style exhibits the characteristics of the Thornton version of International Gothic, but with much the same loss of elegance observable in the York glass of the period. A similar judgement can be applied to the heavily restored figures of four saints and the donor, Thomas Spofford, Bishop of Hereford (1421-48), in the east window at Ross-on-Wye in Hereford & Worcester; these come from the east window of the Bishop's Chapel at Stretton Sugwas. Spofford previously had been abbot of St Mary's Abbey in York and would have been well-acquainted with the work of Thornton and his followers. The window is probably contemporary with the Battlefield glass.
M Caviness and E R Staudinger - Stained Glass before 1540: An Annotated Bibliography, Boston 1983
D Evans, A Bibliography of Stained Glass, Cambridge 1982
G Marshall, Some remarks on the ancient stained glass in Eaton Bishop church, co Hereford, Trans. Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club (1921-23), pp 101-14.
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