Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
The west window remained unglazed, for some unknown reason, till as
late as 1879, when there arose a benefactor, Mr. Francis Stacey, a
Fellow of the College, who has left this noble memorial of his
generosity. The glass is by Messrs. Clayton and Bell, and the subject,
as is usual in west windows, is the _Last Judgment_. The heraldic
devices in the tracery are not those found in the older windows, but
comprise (in order) the Tudor Portcullis,[20] the Plantagenet Rose,
and the shields of King's College, Eton College, Cambridge University,
King Henry VI., King Henry VII., King Henry VIII., Queen Victoria, and
Stacey. There are also the shields of the See of Lincoln, whose Bishop
is _ex officio_ Visitor of the College, impaling Wordsworth (then
Bishop), and of Okes (then Provost of the College).
[Footnote 20: The Portcullis was adopted by Henry the Seventh as the
Tudor badge, to signify that his claim to the throne was double
(through his mother, Lady Margaret, as well as his wife), even as a
portcullis doubled the defensibility of a castle gate.]
The glass of King's College Chapel by no means exhausts the interest
of the building. The next point to be observed is the great organ
screen, erected during the brief ascendancy of the miserable Ann
Boleyn, whose initials are carved upon it. On either side of the
door-way, within, are emblazoned the twin shields of King's and Eton;
differing only in that the former bears three red roses, the latter
three white lilies (not fleurs-de-lys) on the sable ground beneath the
chief, with its lion of England and fleur-de-lys of France on their
respective red and blue. The organ itself was not put up till 1606,
but the nondescript Renaissance dragons supporting it show that the
case must have been in hand more than half a century earlier. They
are for all the world like Raphael's wonderful creations in the
Vatican. The great trumpeting angels on the top of the organ are
eighteenth century work. Originally much smaller angels stood there,
which in the seventeenth century were replaced by pinnacles. The doors
of the screen belong to the Laudian revival, and bear the arms of
Charles the First. The west door of the Chapel is of the same period,
but the north and south doors are the original ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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