140 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

116. For instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer of the early thirteenth century. Under the commands of the Sheriff of Wiltshire, he is thus ordered to make some alterations in a room for Henry the Third. He is to “wainscot the King’s lower chamber, and to paint that wainscot of a green colour, and to put a border to it, and to cause the heads of kings and queens to be painted on the borders; and to paint on the walls of the King’s upper chamber the story of St. Margaret, Virgin, and the four Evangelists, and to paint the wainscot of the same chamber of a green colour, spotted with gold.”*

Again, the Sheriff of Wiltshire is ordered to “put two small glass windows in the chamber of Edward the King’s son; and put a glass window in the chamber of our Queen at Clarendon; and in the same window cause to be painted a Mary with her Child, and at the feet of the said Mary, a queen with clasped hands.”

Again, the Sheriff of Southampton is ordered to “paint the tablet beside the King’s bed, with the figures of the guards of the bed of Solomon, and to glaze with white glass the windows in the King’s great Hall at Northampton, and cause the history of Lazarus and Dives to be painted in the same.”

117. And so on; I need not multiply instances. You see that in all these cases, the furniture of the King’s house is made to confess his Christianity.¹ It may be imperfect and impure Christianity, but such as it might be, it was all that men had then to live and die by; and you see there was not a pane of glass in their windows, nor a pallet by their bedside that did not confess and proclaim it. Now, when you go home to your own rooms, supposing them to

* Liberate Rolls, preserved in the Tower of London, and quoted by Mr. Turner in his History of the Domestic Architecture of England.2

¹ [Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. iv. § 53.]

² [For the full title of this work, see above, note on p. 19; the quotation here is from p. 211 of the book.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]