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‘Looking unto Jesus’ Image and Belief in a Seventeenth-Century English Chancel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

LOUISE DURNING  and
CLARE TILBURY
LOUISE DURNING
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford OX1 3DR; e-mail: [email protected]
CLARE TILBURY
Affiliation:
115 Divinity Road, Oxford OX4 1LW; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper analyses the scheme of imagery designed in about 1638 by Christopher Wren, dean of Windsor, for the chancel of East Knoyle parish church in Wiltshire. While Wren's close association with Lancelot Andrewes and the Laudian circle makes this scheme understandable as ‘Laudian’, its particular combination of picture and text accommodated a broader range of beliefs. The study of the theological content of the scheme, and of its intended manner of reception, sheds new light on the function of imagery within the pursuit of the ‘beauty of holiness’, drawing attention to the role it could play in establishing an active understanding of the liturgy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 490 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Peter Lake, ‘The Laudian style: order, uniformity and the pursuit of the beauty of holiness in the 1630s’, in Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, Basingstoke 1988, 115–37.

2 See, in particular, Fincham, Kenneth, ‘The restoration of altars in the 1630s’, HJ xliv (2001), 919–40Google Scholar; Hunt, Arnold, ‘The lord's supper in early modern England’, Past and Present, clxi (1998), 39–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boulton, J. P., ‘The limits of formal religion: the administration of holy communion in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London’, London Journal x (1984), 135–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, Christopher, ‘Sacred space in England, 1560–1640: the view from the pew’, this Journal liii (2002), 286–311Google Scholar; Judith Maltby ‘“By this book”: parishioners, the prayer book and the established Church’, in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, 161–86; Merritt, J. F., ‘Puritans, Laudians, and the phenomenon of church-building in Jacobean London’, HJ xli (1998), 935–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The parochial roots of Laudianism revisited: Catholics, Anti-Calvinists and parish Anglicans in early Stuart England’, this Journal xlix (1998), 620–49Google Scholar.

3 But see Margaret Aston, England's iconoclasts, I: Laws against images, Oxford 1988; Peter Yorke, ‘Iconoclasm, ecclesiology and “the beauty of holiness”: concepts of sacrilege and the “peril of idolatry” in early modern England, circa 1590–1642’, unpubl. PhD diss. Kent 1997; and Graham Parry, The arts of the Anglican counter-reformation: glory, laud and honour, Woodbridge 2006.

4 Waylen, James, ‘Christopher Wren of East Knoyle, DD’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine iii (1857), 115–19Google Scholar. The earliest published account of the decorations is in Sir Richard Colt Hoare, The history of modern Wiltshire, London 1822–44, i. 182. They are not mentioned in Christopher Wren (ed.), Parentalia, or, Memoirs of the family of the Wrens, Farnborough 1965. See also Nicholas W. S. Cranfield, ‘Wren, Christopher (1589–1658)’, ODNB; Bennett-Stanford, J. M. F., ‘Families of East Knoyle’, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine li (1945), 386–404Google Scholar; John Aubrey, Brief lives, ed. Andrew Clark, Oxford 1898, i, 31, 403. The fullest account of Wren's life and career will be found in Davies, C. S. L., ‘Christopher Wren (1589–1658), dean of Windsor, his family and connections; patronage and careers during the civil wars, Interregnum and Restoration’, Southern History xxvii (2005), 24–47Google Scholar. We are grateful to have been able to read this article in advance of publication.

5 Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Lancelot Andrewes and the myth of Anglicanism’, in Peter Lake and Michael Questier (eds), Conformity and orthodoxy in the English Church c. 1560–1660, Woodbridge 2000, 5–33. See also P. E. McCullough, ‘Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626)’, ODNB, and the introduction to his edition Lancelot Andrewes: selected sermons and lectures, Oxford 2005, pp. xi–lviii.

6 These two men were to play central roles in the advancement of avant-garde churchmanship, not least through their editing of the authorised edition of Andrewes's works: XCVI sermons by the right honorable and reverend father in God, Lancelot Andrewes, late lord bishop of Winchester, London 1629 (RSTC 606). On this see McCullough, Peter, ‘Making dead men speak: Laudianism, print, and the works of Lancelot Andrewes, 1626–1642’, HJ xli (1998), 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Wren's later preferments to chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles i, to dean of Windsor and Register of the Garter, were largely shaped by his brother's influence.

8 Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica or enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths, London 1646 (Wing B5159), Bodleian Library, Oxford, 02·26. Art. Seld.; Francis Bacon, Sylva sylvarum or a natural history in ten centuries, London 1635 (RSTC 1172 ), Bodl. Lib., Arch. A.d.27. Wren interleaved this latter book to allow himself more expansive dialogue with the text. See also Cole, Rosalie, ‘Dean Wren's marginalia & early science at Oxford’, Bodleian Library Record vi (1960), 541–57Google Scholar.

9 Bacon, Sylva sylvarum, interleaf opposite p. 256. This conversation occurred when Wren, as domestic chaplain, was with Andrewes during a summer diocesan visit at Farnham Castle, one of the bishop's residences.

10 Ibid.

11 For the circulation of manuscript notes and copies of Andrewes's unpublished writings see McCullough, ‘Andrewes’, ODNB.

12 The original arch is visible in Jane Seymour's watercolour of the church interior, dated 1845 and now in East Knoyle village hall. Letters and plans relating to the alterations carried out by Thomas Wyatt and David Brandon are preserved in the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office: WSRO, East Knoyle St Mary, 536/19. In a letter to the rector, Wyatt described his intentions as ‘bringing more into view the chancel and communion table’ by forming ‘an equilateral chancel arch with proper mouldings 13 feet wide and in the centre of the chancel which the present arch is not’: Thomas Wyatt to Revd Charles Wriothesly, 23 May 1844.

13 WSRO 536/18H. The plan is reproduced in VCH, Wiltshire, iii, facing p. 96. It was most probably drawn by Dr Wren: see later discussion in the text of his skill as a draftsman.

14 Transcriptions of overseers' and churchwardens' accounts, 1608–74 (incomplete), WSRO 536/45, accounts for 1637–8, 1617–18, 1618–19.

15 ‘Restored to the parish by Rich. Due the church goods which have beene in his custodie about tenne yeares last paste viz one silver boule two small silver plates two flagons and one linnin table cloth one pewter basin. The last of Marche 1657 and delivered to the newe Churchwardens': WSRO 536/45, transcription of a lost original made in 1836 by the Revd Robert Milton, rector of East Knoyle. Only Mervin's paten survives: J. E. Nightingale, The church plate of the county of Wilts., Salisbury 1891, 60.

16 For the removal of the plaster ceiling see A. W. Blomfield, ‘Specification of Works at East Knoyle’, 1875, WSRO 536/19. Blomfield was otherwise careful to preserve as much as possible of the plaster wall decorations. Fragmented cherub heads from the original ceiling, discovered in the 1960s, are currently on display in the church.

17 BL, ms Add. 22084, fos 9v, 24v, 25, 54v (numbered from rear).

18 Ibid. fo. 54v. The Trinity and the Glory may be assumed to have been part of the ceiling decoration over the east end.

19 See his copy of Pseudodoxia at pp. 62–3, 140, 197, 215, and Sylva sylvarum at pp. 47, 62, 73, 228. The perspective device is described and illustrated in Philosophical Transactions xlv (1669), 898–9. He had also made a portable sundial for Sir William Herricke in 1613: Bodl. Lib., ms Eng. Hist. c.481, fos 67–8. Wren's father was, according to his marriage certificate, a ‘painter-stainer’: London marriage licenses, 1521–1869, ed. Joseph Foster, London 1887, 1511. We are grateful to Cliff Davies for this reference.

20 Parentalia, 142; Kerry Downes, The architecture of Wren, London 1982, 120 n. 10.

21 The plan is reproduced and transcribed in English orders for consecrating churches in the seventeenth century, ed. H. L. Wickham Legg (Henry Bradshaw Society xli, 1911), pp. lxix–lxxi. At his trial Laud claimed that the plan had been sent by Andrewes's household chaplain, whom Julian Davies takes to be Christopher Wren: William Laud, Works, ed. J. Bliss and W. Scott, Oxford 1847–60, iv. 251; Julian Davies, The Caroline captivity of the Church: Charles I and the remoulding of Anglicanism, 1625–1642, Oxford 1992, 209.

22 Dominick evidence, 27 Apr. 1647, BL, ms Add. 22084, fo. 25. He recalled receiving the instruction ‘shortly after the beginning of the P[ar]liam[en]t’. Dominick's son Andrew was by this time married to Wren's eldest daughter.

23 ‘genes xxviii 16/ jacob awaked and/ sayd svrely ye lord/ is in this place. how/ dreadfuvl is this/ place this is noe/ other bvt ye hovs/ of god and ye/ gate of heaven’ (see fig. 1, D). In general Wren's texts are quotations, abbreviations or paraphrases from the King James Version, except for Psalms, where the Prayer Book version has been preferred. There are some errors in the biblical references.

24 English orders, 50–66, 122–9, 148–88. See also Andrew Spicer, ‘“God will have a house”: defining sacred space and rites of consecration in early seventeenth-century England’, in Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (eds), Defining the holy, Aldershot 2005, 207–30.

25 See, for example, the illustration in the Bishop's Bible (1568). In Wren's image, Jacob's large and prominent crook, lying beside him as he dreams, is also a departure from the customary attribute of a traveller's staff and may be intended as a further typological reference to Christ as the good shepherd.

26 The motif could have been derived from the famous west front of Bath Abbey, although the example of William Marshall's frontispiece to Henry Isaacson's Jacob's ladder, London 1638 (RSTC 1839.5) is suggestive. This (unacknowledged) translation of Bellarmine's De ascensione mentis in deum (1615) was given its new title by Isaacson, a former member of Andrewes's household and his biographer. McCullough suggests that the introduction to Isaacson's edition may have been written by Andrewes himself: ‘Henry Isaaacson’, ODNB.

27 The emphatically altar-like appearance of the stones has led some writers to assume that the scene represents the Sacrifice of Isaac, despite the Jacob text above the image: Bryan Little, Sir Christopher Wren: a historical biography, London 1975, 18; Adrian Tinniswood, His invention so fertile: a life of Christopher Wren, London 2001, 8–9; Cranfield, ‘Wren’, ODNB; Parry, Glory, laud and honour, 92.

28 ‘genes • xxviii • 18 [sic]/jacob vowed a vow and/ sayd ye lord shall bee my/ god and these stones/ shall bee gods hovse and/ of all that thov shalt/ give mee i will svrely/ give the tenth vnto/ thee’ (see fig. 1, G).

29 ‘• i • kings verse. • 3/ the lord sayd i have/ halowed this howse to/ pvt my name there/ • esay • lvi • verse • 7 •/my howse shalbe called/ the howse of prayer/to all nations/ • i pet • ii verse • 5/yee also as living stones/ are bvilt vp a spiritval howse’ (see fig. 1, C).

30 See, for example, Matthew Brookes's emphatically Calvinist Paul's Cross sermon, The house of God, London 1627 (RSTC 3836), 6–9, where the contrast between the physical and spiritual church, and the stones of which they are built, is a central theme.

31 The textual play upon prayer, incense, sweet odour and sweet smell provides a metaphorical evocation of the actual use of incense, a practice with which Wren would have been familiar from services in Andrewes's London chapel, but perhaps controversial in a parish church setting. See the description of utensils on the 1623 sketch plan: English orders, pp. lxix–lxxi.

32 These words clearly gave particular cause for concern to the Sequestration Committee since they are specifically addressed in the plasterer's deposition, but they derive from Augustine (De tempore, sermon 226) and were widely used by writers of all persuasions. See, for example, George Abbott, An exposition upon the prophet Ionah, London 1600, 223, where the source is cited in a marginal note; Lancelot Andrewes, A patterne of catechistical doctrine at large, London 1641, 163; and Nicholas Ling, Wits common-wealth, London 1598, 12–13.

33 In making the angels fly beside the ladders rather than move upon them, as in all the previous representations of this scene, Wren distinguishes between the subsidiary role of the angels and the central meaning of Christ as the ladder. For a discussion of beliefs about angels in the period see Alexandra Walsham, ‘Angels and idols in England's long reformation’, in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham (eds), Angels in the early modern world, Cambridge 2006, 132–67.

34 William Guild, Moses unuailed: or those figures which serued vnto the patterne and shaddow of heauenly things, pointing out the Messiah Christ Iesus, briefly explained, London 1620 (RSTC 12485), 37 (for 33). Andrew Willet's Hexapla in Genesim, London 1608 (RSTC 25683), 302–3, ‘The divers expositions of Iacob's ladder’, contains a useful summary of the variety of allegorical and typological readings of the image then current.

35 Register of the committee of sequestrations for Wiltshire, 1644–7, BL, ms Add. 22084, fo. 9v, 22 July 1646. Giving evidence against Dr Wren, one John Mifflin recalled that there was ‘against the communion table the picture of Christ upon the crosse and a crucifix’.

36 McCullough, Lancelot Andrewes, pp. xxxiii–xxxv.

37 Ibid. pp. xl–xliv, 378–9.

38 This figure has been imagined by a number of writers to be a portrait of Wren himself, though such an intention is most unlikely. Not only is the figure's costume secular rather than clerical, but the accepted convention in this period for depicting an individual in such a context was through heraldry, portraits appearing only on monuments: Tinniswood, Wren, 8; Cranfield, ‘Wren’, ODNB; Parry, Glory, laud and honour, 92.

39 XCVI sermons, 553–90.

40 ‘Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.’

41 XCVI sermons, 558, 559.

42 Ibid. 560, 564.

43 [Lancelot Andrewes], Scala coeli: nineteen sermons concerning prayer, London 1611 (RSTC 605), 107–9.

44 Here, Wren's text conflates the Geneva Bible and King James Version translations.

45 XCVI sermons, 365–82.

46 Ibid. 381, 367–8.

47 See, for example, Henry Hawkins, Partheneia sacra, Rouen 1633 (RSTC 12958), 100–1,‘The Iris’; George Wither, A collection of emblemes, ancient and moderne, London 1635 (RSTC 25900 d), 28, ‘His altiora’. For examples of emblematic strategies in popular devotional literature see Tessa Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge 1991, passim.

48 Karl-Josef Höltgen, introductory note (unpaginated) to Henry Hawkins, The devout hart, Ilkley 1975.

49 For the work at Peterhouse, and at other Oxford and Cambridge college chapels in the 1630s, see Yorke, ‘Iconoclasm’, ch. iii. The construction of the new chapel was begun in 1628, while Matthew Wren was Master, and the internal fitting completed under his successor, John Cosin, from 1634.

50 In its thematic richness it is, for example, far more ambitious than the exactly contemporary plaster decoration on the chancel ceiling at Abbotsbury, Dorset, which combines images of angels with heraldry of the Strangways family. It does, however, bear comparison with the more elaborately conceived painted decorations installed in the chancel of Glenfield church in Leicestershire in 1639–40. We are grateful to Kenneth Fincham for drawing this scheme to our attention and for his generosity in sharing knowledge and insights. The Glenfield scheme is analysed in Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547– c. 1700, Oxford 2007.