Plates 2.45-2.50: Chantry Chapels in Winchester Cathedral
Schnebbelie was commissioned to undertake this particular task on 12 April 1788 (SAL Minutes III.77). Richard Gough (1735-1809), then the director of the Society of Antiquaries of London, took a leading role in this process and is the author of the unsigned letterpress account that accompanied these engravings. Basire gave an estimate for engraving the drawings on 25 June 12th 1788 (SAL Minutes III.84). The engravings were published on 23 April 1789.
Plate 2.45 shows the chantry chapel of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, from the south; plate 2.46 shows the chantry chapel of Bishop William Waynflete (modern spelling) from the north; plate 2.47 shows the recumbent figures of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Wayneflete, seen from above; plate 2.48 shows details from the chantry chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete; plate 2.49 shows details from the chantry chapels of Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop Waynflete and Bishop Fox; and plate 2.50 shows the chantry chapel of Bishop Fox, from the south.
Objects:
Plate 2.45: The fifteenth-century stone-cage monument of Cardinal Beaufort still in situ in the south side of the retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral. More details are accurately described in the accompanying explanatory account by Richard Gough.
Plate 2.46: The fifteenth-century stone-cage monument of Bishop Waynflete still in situ in the north side of the retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral. More details are accurately described in the accompanying explanatory account by Richard Gough.
Plate 2.47: The cumbent figures of Beaufort and Waynflete viewed from above. The effigy of Beaufort is not the original fifteenth-century sculpture but "must postdate the civil war and probably belongs to c.1660-65" (Lindley 1993, 111). The original effigy was seen by Lieutenant Hammond in 1635 and destroyed in 1642. It was described as wood and was perhaps covered in silver plate, like the effigy of Henry V in Westminster Abbey (Quirk 1954, 8-9). The fact that the effigy is not original is not recognized in Vetusta Monumenta.
Plate 2.48: Details from the monuments of Beaufort and Waynflete. These are accurately described in the accompanying explanatory account by Richard Gough.
Plate 2.49: Details from the monuments of Beaufort and Waynflete and Fox. These are accurately described in the accompanying explanatory account by Richard Gough.
Plate 2.50: The sixteenth-century stone-cage monument of Bishop Fox, still in situ south of the feretory in the south choir aisle of Winchester Cathedral. The monument was described as "newly built" in December 1518 (Biddle 1993, 259). Neither the original drawing by Jacob Schnebbelie nor the engraving include the iron grille in front of the cadaver, which was put in place in 1522 (Smith 1988, 29), although Gough refers to it in his accompanying text (Gough 1789c, 4).
Transcription:
Plate 2.45: Monument of Cardinal BEAUFORT in WINCHESTER Cathedral.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus Soc. Antiquar. Londini / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, 23 April 1789.
Plate 2.46: Monument of Bishop WAINFLETE in WINCHESTER Cathedral.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus. Soc. Antiquar. Londini / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, 23d. April 1789.
Plate 2.47, First Panel: Bishop WAINFLETE.
Second Panel: Cardinal BEAUFORT.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus. Soc. Antiquar. Londini / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, April 23 1789.
Plate 2.48, Labels on Print:
A. Fascia under niches at the East end within Beaufort's Monument.
B. East end of Beaufort's Tomb.
C. Panels on the North & South sides of Beaufort's Tomb.
D. Ornaments on the fascia within & without Beaufort's Tomb.
E. Capital at the West end within Wainflete's Monument.
F. Pedestal at the North east corner of Do.
G. The Credentia on the South side within Do.
H. The East end of Wainflete's Tomb.
I. Grotesque figures on the fascia on the North & South sides & West end within Wainflete's Monument.
K. Fascia under niches at the East end of Do.
L.M. Spandrel over the North door of Do.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus. Soc. Antiquar. Londini. / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, April 23 1789.
Plate 2.49, Labels on Print:
A. On Fascia under the niches, within Bishop Fox's Monument.
B. Center niche at the East end, within Cardinal Beaufort's Monument.
C. Center niche at the East end, within Bishop Wainflete's Monument.
D. Center niche at the East end, within Bishop Fox's Monument.
E. Center of Ceiling, of Cardinal Beaufort's Monument.
F. Center of Ceiling of Bishop Wainflete's Monument.
G. Two Letters repeated four times over the Skeleton on Bishop Fox's Monuments.
H.I.K.L.M. Arms on Ceiling of Bishop Fox's Monument.
N.O.P.Q. Spandrels of Front of Do without.
R. Two Letters interwoven with the Branches on the suppermost fascia Fox's Mont.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus. Soc. Antiquar. Londini. / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, April 23 1789.
Plate 2.50: Monument of Bishop FOX in WINCHESTER Cathedral.
Schnebbelie del. / Basire Sc. / Sumptibus. Soc. Antiquar. Londini / Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, 23 April 1789.
Original Explanatory Account: Click here to read the original explanatory account for Plates 2.45-2.50.
Commentary by Lesley Milner, FSA: Plates 2.45-2.50 are engravings of three stone-cage chantry chapels situated within the east end of Winchester Cathedral, all of them created for bishops of Winchester. Two of these date from the fifteenth century and one from the sixteenth century. The following commentary will, firstly, discuss these gothic masterpieces in term of their original context, taking into account their function as envisaged by the men who commissioned them. Secondly it will consider their contrasting value to eighteenth-century scholars, artists and cognoscenti, including the fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL).
An understanding of the original context of these late-medieval chantry chapels is not possible without a knowledge of the history and function of the part of the cathedral in which they are located. Before the sixteenth-century Reformation, Winchester Cathedral was also the abbey church serving the Benedictine monastery dedicated to the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun. It was a major pilgrimage site because it housed the shrine of St Swithun, its Anglo-Saxon bishop. In the Norman cathedral his shrine was situated on a feretory platform behind the high altar. In the thirteenth century, in order to accommodate the large numbers of pilgrims seeking to get close to his relics, a three-bay retro-choir was built immediately to the east. However, between 1470 and 1490 a magnificent Great Screen was built to the east of the high altar, blocking the view of the shrine and prompting its relocation to the center of the retro-choir (Draper and Morris 1993, 178).
It was immediately to the south of the repositioned shrine that the chantry chapel of Cardinal Henry Beaufort was built between 1450 and 1476; Bishop William Waynflete placed his chantry on the north side before his death in 1486 (Draper and Morris 1993, 178).
The two monuments are wedged in between the second and third piers of the retro-choir’s south and north arcade. Beaufort died twenty-three years before the shrine’s installation, but the details of his will suggest that he intended to lie on this spot (Crook 1993, 64). Both men had earned the privileged location of their tombs through their magnificent endowments to the cathedral. It was Beaufort’s bequest to the monastery of Winchester that paid for Saint Swithun’s new shrine (Lindley 1989, 604).
An advantage of the inter-pier stone-cage chantry chapel of the type chosen by Beaufort and Waynflete was that it provided a self-contained private space, enclosed by stone screens, that had not been relegated to a side chapel but which could remain in close proximity to an altar or a shrine set in the center of a church. Beaufort’s will directed that three monks celebrate three daily masses for him and his royal relations, and ordered his executors to provide four sets of vestments, a gilt cross, his statues of the Virgin and the archangel Gabriel with the pot and lily, a golden chalice, a pair of ewers, a pair of candlesticks, a bell, and a gold pax for his chantry chapel and altar. He also left to the chapel’s altar a pair of silver candlesticks, a chalice, ewers, bell, and pax, all of silver gilt, two pairs of gilt basons, a silver holy-water pot of ten marks value, a pair of silver candlesticks, two missals, and his large breviary (Gough 1789a, 7-8).
Like their precedent, the chantry chapel of William of Wykeham (d. 1404) in the nave of Winchester Cathedral, the Beaufort and Waynflete chapels completely fill the vertical space of the arcade into which they are inserted. But, instead of looking like tall stone rooms, they resemble tombs because the upper third of their elevation consists not of wall, but rather of a complex mass of canopies, rising up in multiple stages, and crowned with pinnacles adorned with crockets. These dazzling examples of micro-architecture have close stylistic affinities with fifteenth-century font covers, such as the ones shown in Plate 3.25, but they also recall the canopies and niches of the Great Screen behind the cathedral’s high altar.
The stone-cage chapels were made high enough to allow for a reredos behind the altar containing the sculptured figures of saints and angels, affording the effigy, which faced it, a glimpse of heaven. These micro-chambers are covered by fan vaults, the central bosses of which, clearly visible by both officiating clergy and visiting pilgrims, contained the coats of arms of the deceased borne by angels, prompting prayers for their souls.
Whilst a desire for balance and symmetry clearly dictated the similarity between the two pendant chantries, the salient differences nonetheless signaled the different status of their occupants. Cardinal Beaufort was of royal birth. The son of John of Gaunt, he was grandson of King Edward III and uncle of King Henry V. His chantry chapel was the first of the pair and its canopies and pinnacles closely emulate those which surmounted the tomb of his father in St Paul’s Cathedral, London (Fehrmann 2011, 82). Beaufort’s chapel is largely made of the luxury material, Purbeck marble. It has been convincingly argued that his original effigy—reported, in 1635, to be of wood—was covered in gold and silver leaf like that of King Henry V in Westminster Abbey (Quirk 1954 8, 9). Bishop Waynflete’s chapel is made entirely of Caen stone and his effigy, also stone, is less visible, partly hidden behind a screen that is absent in Beaufort’s chapel. Nevertheless, Waynflete’s coat of arms is as conspicuously displayed as Beaufort’s. A subtle hint to his cultural tastes and learning may be the collection of grotesque figures carved on the fascia of the north, south and west sides within his chapel. They most closely resemble the strange creatures that inhabit the margins of contemporary luxury Flemish manuscripts, for instance Jean Froissart’s Chroniques of 1470-1472 (British Library, Harley MS 4379).
Despite these proclamations of status, the prevailing message of the monuments of both Beaufort and Waynflete is their hope for the salvation of their souls. The upper part of Beaufort’s tomb bore, until the seventeenth century, a brass band containing the words "Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas" (I would be troubled if I did not know of thy mercies) (Gough 1789a, 2; Milner 1839, 100). The text gains in significance with the knowledge that it came from the antiphon for Matins for the first Sunday of Lent, a time for reflexion and repentance. Similarly, Bishop Waynflete’s effigy signifies his hope for forgiveness. He holds a heart in his hands. Such a device was relatively common in medieval memorial brasses, where the heart was usually inscribed with a text. Amongst many examples is the mid-fifteenth-century brass in the abbey church of St Albans where the priest, Robert Beauner, holds a heart inscribed with the words from Psalm 51, "Cor mundum crea in me deus" (Make me a clean heart, O God) (Busby 2006). Joan Marey’s memorial brass in Sheldwich, Kent of 1431 is inscribed "ihc me’cy" (Jesus, have mercy) (Macklin 1907, 210, 211; Badham 2020, 867, 869). There is no record of a painted inscription on the heart held by Bishop Waynflete. It is likely that this has been worn away.
In 1513, Bishop Fox planned his chantry chapel. Like Beaufort he had royal connections, having served as a close advisor and diplomat to King Henry VIII (Smith 1988, 27). He had made magnificent endowments to Winchester Cathedral, which were used to improve much of the east end (Draper and Morris 1993, 189). It was therefore fitting that his chantry be located in the presbytery aisle which he himself had remodeled, on the south side of the altar where the monastic morrow mass was held, situated in the feretory, a locus sacer of profound spiritual significance (Milner 1839, 98).
The Fox chantry chapel, created between 1513 and 1518, continues the traditional design of the Beaufort and Waynflete chantries in that it is a stone-cage chapel of the over 6 meters in height, a tall, narrow rectangle. It contains an altar and, above the altar, a reredos originally filled with statues. The identity of the dead occupant of the chapel, Richard Fox (Bishop of Winchester 1501-1528), is made clear by the abundant use, carved in stone, of his personal heraldic device (the pelican) together with his coat of arms, his motto (Est Deo Gratia), and his initials.
However, the differences between Fox’s chantry chapel and those of his immediate predecessors far outstrip the similarities, suggesting a deliberate rejection of the Beaufort and Waynflete chapels’ design in favor of the older design represented by the chantry chapel of Bishop William of Wykeham (d.1404). Like this, but unlike the Beaufort and Waynflete chantries, Fox’s chapel is a stone box, enclosed by walls. Even though the upper part consists entirely of windows, these originally were filled with stained glass that obscured the view of the interior (Milner 1839, 97). From the outside the monument must have looked fabulously rich, but also, compared to the Beaufort and Waynflete chapels, somewhat forbiddingly private and exclusive.
In addition, all the multiple canopies of the exterior of Fox’s chantry chapel originally contained the figures of saints, as though Richard Fox were summoning up as many as possible of the heavenly company to pray for his soul. The need for such prayers is made startlingly clear by the horrifying sculptured cadaver, grim and decaying as in death, set in an arched recess on the exterior of the chapel. Beside it, to emphasise its identity, lie a mitre and a crozier, the symbols of Fox’s office in life. Such transi figures were included in the tombs of royalty, bishops and nobles in England from the early fifteenth-century (King 1987), but the message of Fox’s is made sterner still by the fact that his chantry did not contain a tomb – his body was buried inside the chapel beneath the floor— and there was no effigy representing him as he was in life.
Balancing the frightening scene of future annihilation are the frequent visual references to the means by which Fox hoped to be saved: Christ’s death on the cross, and the miraculous transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s body during mass. Fox’s choice of the pelican stems from the belief that the bird, like Christ, sacrificed her body to feed her children. Above the altar in the chapel, angels hold the arma Christi(symbols of the Passion) together with the chalice and the wafer of bread representing the Eucharist. Their message is reinforced by the inscription below, "O SACRUM CONVIVIUM IN QUO CHRISTUS SUMMITUR" (O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received). These words are the opening to the antiphon sung at Vespers on the feast of Corpus Christi, the festival celebrating Christ’s body. For Fox and his contemporaries, the final words of the antiphon held an appropriate message. They state that through the efficacy of Christ’s body futurae gloria nobis pignus datur: a promise of future glory to us is given.
The differences between this chapel and the earlier ones of Beaufort and Waynflete can, to a degree, be explained by the passage of time. Fox’s chantry, begun in 1513, is more than thirty years later. Bishop Fox was "intimately concerned with the royal works and was directly in touch with all the latest artistic trends at court. Henry VIII instructed that the windows of King’s College Cambridge should be laid out "in such frame and condition as my Lord of Winchester shall devise" (Lindley 1988, 33). There are close affinities between work designed by the King’s Master Mason, William Vertue (d. 1527), and the chantry chapel. Indeed, a drawing of the Fox chantry chapel has been convincingly attributed to Vertue (Smith 1988, 29, 30).
Nevertheless, those features that dominate the chapel, such as the super-abundance of saints, the cadaver figure, and the multiple visual reminders of the passion and body of Christ, have older origins and may be explained, in part, by the circumstances of the chapel’s commission. In 1513 Fox made legal provision for the place “wherein the Bishop hath chosen his sepulture” on the eve of his departure for France as part of a military campaign (Smith 1988, 27). He was concerned lest he be taken prisoner or die and be unable to finish his college at Oxford that was soon to be named Corpus Christi College. Perhaps the chantry chapel was planned by a man who was beset by a very real fear of immediate death, a fear that is less obviously present in the chantries of Beaufort and Waynflete. Fox, however, returned safely from France and from 1516 spent the rest of his life at Winchester. The eighteenth-century scholar John Milner recorded that the long hours spent by Fox in his chantry chapel during those years earned it the name “Fox’s study” (Milner 1839).
Within fifty years the English church had broken with Rome when Parliament recognized Henry VIII as Head of the Church of England (1534). English monasteries were dissolved between 1536 and 1540. A program of systematic iconoclasm whereby all the tombs and shrines of saints were destroyed, together with sculpture and stained glass, was to have a profound effect on all English churches. At Winchester, at 3 A.M. on Saturday, 21 September 1538, the shrine of St Swithun was demolished, leaving the chapels of Beaufort and Waynflete flanking empty space, deprived of the purpose of their location (Crook 1993, 66). The monastery which served the cathedral was dissolved in 1539.
In 1543 the King’s Book, A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man, stated that Masses should now be sung for "the universal congregation of Christian people" and not for the souls of specified individuals (Lindley 2011, 287). Throughout the kingdom of England, chantry chapels lost their purpose: "these great machines of prayer and intercession seem to have been left abandoned, the exoskeletons of vanished doctrines and practices" (Lindley 2011, 297).
During the course of the next century, the chantry chapels of Beaufort, Waynefleet and Fox lost many of those features that had been considered to be of the highest importance. The wooden effigy of Beaufort was stripped of its coating of precious metal (Quirk 1954 8-9). Almost all the statues on all three monuments were destroyed, probably following the orders of the noted iconoclast Robert Horne (c.1520 – 1579), Bishop of Winchester from 1560 until 1580 (Smith 1988, 28). The stained glass of Bishop Fox’s chantry chapel was smashed during the English Civil War (Milner 1839, 97).
Although the chantry chapels at Winchester Cathedral were allowed to remain in the same locations, their surroundings underwent profound change. At 3 A.M. on Saturday, 21 September 1538, the shrine of St Swithun was demolished, leaving the chapels of Beaufort and Waynflete flanking empty space, deprived of the purpose of their location (Crook 1993, 66). During the course of the next century, all three chapels lost many of those features that had been considered to be of the highest importance. The wooden effigy of Beaufort was stripped of its coating of precious metal (Quirk 1954 8-9). Almost all the statues on all three monuments were destroyed, probably following the orders of the noted iconoclast Robert Horne (c.1520 – 1579), Bishop of Winchester from 1560 until 1580 (Smith 1988, 28). The stained glass of Bishop Fox’s chantry chapel was smashed during the English Civil War (Milner 1839, 97).
Nevertheless, the chantry chapels themselves were not allowed to disintegrate. In this respect, the chapels of Waynflete and Fox, which were kept in repair by their Oxford collegiate foundations, Magdalene and Corpus Christi, fared better than Beaufort’s, of which it was said in 1789 that “a horse-load [of pinnacles] has fallen, or been taken down, and are kept in one of the neighboring chapels” (Milner 1839, 100). Beaufort’s effigy was replaced in the seventeenth century (Quirk 1954 8,9; Lindley 1993, 111). In 1788 all three monuments were impressive enough to attract the attention of the SAL. On the basis of Schnebbelie’s recordings we can infer that the Beaufort and Waynflete chapels had not lost all of their painted surface.
On 12 April 1788 the council of SAL issued orders to Jacob Schnebbelie to go to Winchester and make drawings of "the two curious Monuments in the Cathedral there, viz. that of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Wainfleet [sic]" (SAL Minutes III.78). On May 6th these orders were amended to include the monument of Bishop Fox (SAL Minutes III.80). According to a bill submitted by Schnebbelie, he went to Winchester on June 11th. On June 25th Gough, then the Director of the Society, produced Schnebbelie’s seven drawings, and it was recorded that “this charge for making the same, amounting to £23.6.0. deemed reasonable, was accordingly ordered to be paid” (SAL Minutes III. 83). The minutes of the same meeting included the estimate, by the engraver Basire, for engraving the seven works: £21.0.0 each for the elevations of the chapels, £4.4.0 for the eye view of Beaufort, and £5.5.0 for that of Waynflete and £8.8.0 each for the two pages of "arms devices etc." It was decided that the engravings were to be on six plates of the size of the volume "Monumenta Vetusta" (SAL Minutes III.84). The expense of copper and for writing was not included in the estimate. The engravings were published on 23 April 1789 and were accompanied by long commentaries authored by Richard Gough.
No firm evidence exists to show how or why the late-medieval chantry chapels at Winchester attracted the interest of the SAL. However, the prime mover in this respect was undoubtedly the Society’s director, Richard Gough. As shown elsewhere, his anxiety about the loss of monuments was expressed in his Sepulchral Monuments;"In a few years more we shall have no foundation left for such a work," he declared, listing several monuments that are "crumbling away without having been drawn" (Gough 1799, 1.3-4; Heringman 2020). It was Gough's personal mission to study and protect the nation’s medieval heritage. After Vetusta Monumenta's revival by him in 1780, the print series published three monuments in Westminster Abbey, included in Volume II (Plates 2.29-35) followed in 1786 by further medieval subjects (Plates 2.36-2.37 and 2.39-2.40). By the time of the commission for the Winchester chantry chapels, Gough had published the first volume of his Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (1786) and was working on a second volume. He had already used Schnebbelie as a draughtsman for the tomb of Archbishop Morton at Canterbury Cathedral, signed "Schnebbelie 1787." (Gough 1796, Plate 121, 2.2.342).
Although it would not be until 1796 that the volume of Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain devoted to the fifteenth century was published, the inclusion of late medieval masterpieces in Vetusta Monumenta evidently stemmed from Gough’s own enthusiasm.His introductory words on the Beaufort chapel makes clear that he considered late Gothic work to be better than early Gothic. He describes it as "one specimen of that perfection to which Gothic architecture seems to have been brought about the reign of Henry IV" (Gough 1789a, 1). He deems Waynflete’s chapel to be "the second specimen of the improvement of Gothic architecture in the fifteenth century" (Gough 1789b, 1) whilst Fox’s chapel is "a most finished specimen of improved Gothic" (Gough 1789c, 4).
Gough himself indicated that he owed his admiration for late Gothic to the influence of Horace Walpole, stating that "we may allow this period for the improvement alluded to; of which Mr. Walpole refers for specimens to Canterbury Cathedral, the fretwork in the small oratories at Winchester, and the part behind the altar at Gloucester" (Gough 1789a, 1).
By 1788 Gough had already been engaged with Winchester Cathedral for some years. As shown elsewhere, he was probably instrumental in the decision of the Council of the SAL to commission the artist John Carter (1748-1817) to record material from Winchester Cathedral in the summer of 1784 (Nurse 2011, 229-30), resulting in the publication of engravings of the Winchester font in 1786 accompanied by a commentary by Gough himself (see Plates 2.39-2.40). In 1779 John Milner, a Roman Catholic priest and antiquarian scholar, had settled in Winchester (Husenbeth 1839). Although the first volume of Milner’s The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester was not published until 1798, similarities between the accounts of Gough and Milner on the Beaufort, Waynflete, and Fox chapels show an interdependence between the two. On the recommendation of Gough, Milner was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1790. That Gough himself visited Winchester to see the chantry chapels is indicated by the fact that in his commentary he speaks of the "grate" (iron grille) in front of the cadaver on Fox’s chapel, something he could not have known from Schnebbelie’s drawing because the artist omits it (Gough 1789c, 4).
In many ways the eighteenth-century connoisseurs’ and artists’ attitude towards the chantry chapels was poles apart from that of their medieval forebears. Schnebbelie’s drawings, faithfully reproduced in the engravings, show them divorced from their settings in Winchester Cathedral (SAL Red Portfolio: Hampshire, T-Z, fols. 4, 6-9, 11). The artist occasionally sacrificed accuracy in favor of beauty. Beaufort’s chapel is seen as perfect, not in a state of disrepair. The cadaver of Fox’s monument lacks grimness. Rather than places of prayer for the souls of sinners, the chapels have become monuments to the great men whose tombs they contain.
This is also the case in the explanatory account for the images provided by Gough. The majority of Gough's account concentrates on the worldly success of the men who occupy the tombs, providing valuable information about their careers as diplomats, politicians, and advisors to the kings of England. Just occasionally he touches on the original role of the chapels—as, for instance, when he records the provision made by Beaufort in his will for his chantry, or when he notes the former inscription on Beaufort’s tomb, "Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas" (I would be troubled if I did not know of thy mercies), although Gough erroneously ascribes it to Psalm xxvii. 13 (1789a, 2). Gough also notes that the frieze of angels in Fox’s chapel hold the instruments of the Passion, and records the inscription "O SACRUM CONVIVIUM IN QUO CHRISTUS SUMMITUR" (O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received), but without commenting on the significance of these details (1789c, 5).
Perhaps the greatest difference between the attitude of late-medieval and eighteenth-century viewers is that the latter group appreciated the chapels principally as important works of art. Gough praised Fox as though he were an eighteenth-century cultivated patron: "The bishop appears to have had a good taste for architecture and its ornaments, and cultivated the ornamented and improved Gothic style which began about the reign of Henry VI and of which the presbytery, side ailes, and outward east end of the choir of this cathedral, built by him, as our Lady’s chapel here by Silkstede, are elegant specimens" (1789c, 5). Gough’s description of the medieval chantry chapels is masterly, and Schnebbelie’s drawings showed off their beauty to such an extent that, on 7 March 1789, the artist was able to write to Gough, "Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Wm Chambers have seen the drawgs [sic] of the Winchester Monuments and were pleased to express very great approbation. Sr Wm thought it a pity that such beautiful pieces of Gothic Architecture should be so neglected as little notice to be taken of them while our students were sent abroad to study the dull Greetian [sic] – Sr Joshua said they were the most elegant things of the kind he ever saw, he was sorry he had not seen them before..." (SAL MS 267 fol.63).
In this respect the inclusion of the three late medieval chantry chapels in Vetusta Monumenta certainly contributed to their survival. This is particularly true of Beaufort’s chapel. Described in 1789 as having lost many of its pinnacles, by 1839 it had been restored: "The representative of Cardinal Beaufort's family has redeemed it from the stigma here deservedly expressed, he having directed the restoration of the chantry; to commemorate which, the Dean and Chapter have affixed an inscription to the walls of it" (Milner 1839, 100).
Today, in the Protestant cathedral of Winchester the late-medieval stone-cage chantry chapels are still separated from their original purpose, but thanks to eighteenth-century scholars they are highly valued as works of great beauty.
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