WARWICK CASTLE.

sometimes lined with wainscot of curious carved boisserie on the panels, which afterwards became more adorned, and were hung with tapestry. At Warwick was a memorable suit of arras whereon were represented the achievements of the famous Guy Earl of Warwick.

419. The period of which we are treating was as celebrated for its bridge as for its military architecture, and exhibits as one of its

Fig. 197examples that famed curiosity the triangularly formed bridge of Croyland in Lincolnshire, erected over the confluence of three streams. Bridge architecture was in many instances so necessarily connected with the construction of a fortress, that it may almost, in this age, be taken as a branch of military architecture.

420. This style exhibits Arches, less acute and more open (fig. 198. from York Minster), the forms varying. Columns. The central and detached shafts now worked together into one, from experience of the weakness of those of the previous style, exceedingly various in their combinations. The Windows are larger, divided by mullions into several lights spreading and dividing at top into leaves, flowers, fans, wheels, and fanciful forms of endless variety. These marks are constant, but in the proportionate breadth there is much variation, for after having expanded in the reigns of Edward I. and II., they grew narrower again in proportion to their height in that of Edward III. and also sharper. The head was then formed of lines just perceptibly curved, sometimes even by two straight lines, sometimes just curved a little above the haunches, and then rectilinear to the apex. Eastern and western windows very lofty and ample, and splendidly decorated with painted glass. or Ceiling.. The vaulting more decorated. principal ribs spread from their imposts running over the vault like tracery, or rather with transoms divided into many angular compartments, and ornamented at the angles with heads, orbs, historical or legendary pictures, &c., elaborately coloured and gilded. Ornaments. More various and laboured, but not so elegant and graceful in character, as in the preceding style. Niches and tabernacles with statues in great abundance. Tiers of small ornamental arches are frequent. The pinnacles are neither so lofty nor tapering, but are more richly decorated with leaves, crockets, &c. Sculpture is introduced in much profusion, and is frequently painted and gilt. Screens, stalls, doors, pannelled ceilings, and other ornaments, in carved and painted wood.

Roof

The

421. The principal examples of the ornamented English style in cathedral churches, are at Exeter, the nave and choir. Lichfield, uniformly. At Lincoln, the additions to the central tower. At Worcester, the nave. York, nave, choir, and western front. At Canterbury, transept. At Gloucester, transept and cloisters begun. Norwich, the spire and tower. Salisbury, spire and additions. Bristol, the nave and choir. Chichester, the spire and choir. Ely, Our Lady's Chapel and the central louvre. Hereford, the chapter-house and cloisters, now destroyed. In the later part of the period, the choir at Gloucester; the nave at Canterbury Bishop Beckington's additions at Wells, and from the upper transept to the great east window at Lincoln. In conventual churches, for the earlier part of the period, the western façade of Howden (1320.), Chapel of Merton College, Oxford. Gisborne Priory, Yorkshire. Chapel at New College, Oxford. St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster. The additions to the pediments of the choir at Kirkstall, Yorkshire. St. Mary's in York. Kirkham in Yorkshire, and the choir of Selby, in the same county. For the later part of

the period, at Tewkesbury, the choir. At Ely Cathedral, St. Mary's Chapel. Croyland façade in Lincolnshire. Beverley Minster in Yorkshire. Chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford. Eton College Chapel, Bucks. Chapel on the Bridge at Wakefield in Yorkshire, built by Edward IV. in memory of his father Edward Duke of York; and the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick. In parochial churches, for the early part of the period, examples may be referred to at Grantham, Lincolnshire. Attelborough, Norfolk. Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire. St. Michael, Coventry. Truro, Cornwall. Witney, Oxfordshire. Stratfordupon-Avon, Warwickshire. St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. Boston, Lincolnshire; its remarkable lantern tower, which is 262 ft. high, was begun in 1309, and was in progress of execution during the whole reign of Edward III. The expense of it having been chiefly defrayed by the merchants of the Hanse Towns. St. Mary, Edmunds Bury, Suffolk. Maidstone, Kent; and Ludlow, Salop. For the later part of the period, St. Mary Overy, Southwark. Tharted and Saffron Walden, Essex. Lowth and Stamford, Lincolnshire. Campden, Gloucestershire. St. Mary Redcliff and the tower of St. Stephen, Bristol. Taunton and Churton Mendip, Somersetshire. Lavenham, Suffolk. Manchester College. St. Mary's, Oxford. Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire. Wakefield, Yorkshire. Doncaster, Yorkshire. Newark-upon-Trent. Heckington, Lincolnshire. Mould Gresford and Wrexham in Flintshire. Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Octangular towers of St. Margaret's, Norwich, and All Saints, York.

SECT. V.

FLORID ENGLISH OR TUDOR STYLE.

422. "There is," as Dr. Henry observes, "a certain perfection in art to which human genius may aspire with success, but beyond which, it is the apprehension of many, that improvement degenerates into false taste and fantastic refinement. The rude simplicity of Saxon architecture was (ultimately) supplanted by the magnificence of the ornamental Gothic; but magnificence itself is at last exhausted, and it terminated during the present period in a style, which some, with an allusion to literature, denominate 'the Florid.' is a style censurable as too ornamental, departing from the grandeur peculiar to the Gothic, without acquiring proportional elegance; yet its intricate and redundant decorations are well calculated to rivet the eye, and amaze, perhaps bewilder, the mind." The period of the style is from 1460, to the dissolution of the religious houses in 1537, and comprehends, therefore, the reigns of Edward IV. and V., Richard III., Henrys VII. and VIII.

It

423. The ecclesiastical buildings of this æra are few. Somersetshire, a county devoted to the cause of the House of Lancaster, from the gratitude or policy of Henry VII., boasts perhaps more churches than any other county in the florid style; still they are very few, and the superb chapel which that monarch erected at Westminster is the best specimen that can be adduced for giving the reader a proper and correct idea of the Florid or Tudor style. There is doubtless an abundance of examples in oratories, porches, and small chapels, sepulchral sacella and the like; but beyond them we could cite very few entire sacred buildings; and those will be hereafter appended to this section as in the preceding ones. In civil, or rather domestic architecture, the case was far different: a very great change took place; and we shall endeavour to place a succinct account of it from the Rev. Mr. Dallaway's work, to which we have already been much indebted. The fifteenth century exhibits to us a number of vast mansions of the noble and opulent, wherein the characteristic style of the immediately preceding castles was not entirely abandoned, but superseded and mixed up with a new and peculiar one. The household books of the nobility which have come to our knowledge, indicate a multitudinous set of servants and retainers, for the reception of whom a great area of ground must have been covered, and in which provision, by the number of apartments, was made for a noble display of hospitality. This circumstance, of course, induced a gorgeous style peculiar to the earlier Tudor æra, of most of whose splendid mansions no memorial now exists but in the records of the times. But for the purpose of bringing a view of the whole subject under the eye of the reader, a brief recapitulation will here be necessary. The first palace of the Norman kings was the Tower of London, which was a strictly military residence. At Westminster was a palace of William Rufus, to whom Westminster Hall owes its original foundation. At Oxford a palace was built by Henry I., and at that place he kept his Christmas in 1115, as in 1229 and 1267 Henry III. did in the vicinity at Woodstock. It was at this place that Henry II. built a house of retirement, which has furnished the subject of some well-known legends. Henry III. is said to have refounded the palace at Westminster, which was much enlarged by Edward III. This, from the time of Rufus, its founder, to the reign of Richard II., to whom it owed its completion in the state apartments, with its magnificent hall and bijou of a chapel (St. Stephen's), had attained a greater extent than any contem

porary palace in Europe. Edward III., besides erecting his suburban palace at Kennington, had re-edified and greatly extended Windsor Castle as a habitable fortification. Henry IV. inherited John of Gaunt's castle of Kenilworth and the Savoy in London, to both of which he made great additions. His gallant and victorious son was too much occupied with his military affairs to pay much attention to such matters; but many of his commanders, by the exorbitant ransoms they exacted of their French prisoners, were enabled to construct mansions of vast extent in those counties where their revenues commanded influence. Of these, as signal examples, may be cited Hampton Court in Herefordshire by Sir Rowland Lenthal; and Ampthill, Bedfordshire, by Sir John Cornwal Lord Tanhope. At Greenwich, a palace of great beauty, in the early part of the reign of Henry VI., was built by the regent Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, which, from its superiority over others, was by its founder called Placentia or Plaisance. This was completed by Edward IV., and is now remembered as the birthplace of Queen Elizabeth. The Lord Treasurer Cromwell expended a large sum on his residence at Tattershall in Lincolnshire, and at Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire, as did Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Boteler, respectively, at Sudley in Gloucestershire, and Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, all of which are now either destroyed or only in ruins. Additions were made by Edward IV. to Nottingham Castle, and by his brother Richard III. to Warwick Castle and that of Middleburg in Yorkshire.

424. Upon the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII., on the ruins of a former palace at Shene in Surrey, which after the repairs he bestowed upon it was destroyed by fire, built a palace, whereto he gave the name of Richmond, in allusion to his former title, a name which was afterwards given to the beautiful town on the Thames, in its vicinity. The dimensions of the state apartments in this splendid building, whereof not a vestige now remains, are to be found in the Survey of 1649, when it was offered for sale by the Commissioners of Parliament. They abounded with bay windows of capricious formation, with rectangular and semicircular projections, producing a picturesque effect; and to add to its fantastic appearance, there were many octangular towers, surmounted with cupolas of the same plan, whose mitres as they rose were fringed with rich crockets. They were bulbous in their general form, thus bearing a resemblance in contour to the royal crown of the period.

425. The Tudor style, in domestic architecture, is thus divided by Mr. Dallaway. "1. That just alluded to; 2. The variations under Henry VIII.; 3. The Elizabethan style" (which will form a separate section), "as it admitted of Italian ornament in the designs of John of Padua and his followers, until the time of Inigo Jones.

426. The reign of Henry VIII. supplies numberless instances of the gorgeous expense to which the nobility and gentry proceeded in the productions of our art. The example set by the monarch himself was witnessed in no less than two royal mansions, each large enough to contain his numerous retinue. The following are the palaces that were built

or repaired by Henry VIII. —

1. Beaulieu, or Newhall, Essex.

2. Hunsdon, Herts, originally built by Sir John Oldhall, temp. Edw. IV

3. Ampthill, Bedfordshire.

4. Nonsuch, Surrey.

5. York Place, Whitehall, Westminster.

6. Bridewell and Blackfriars, London, for the reception of the emperor Charles V.

7. St. James's, Westminster.

8. Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, the jointure of the divorced Queen Catharine of Arragon.

9. Sheriff Hutton, Yorkshire, given for the residence of Henry Duke of Richmond, the king's
natural son.

10. King's Langley, Herts.

It was natural that the courtiers of such a monarch should vie with each other in erecting sumptuous houses in the provinces where they were seated. Wolsey, besides the progress he had made, at the time of his fall, in his colleges at Christchurch, Oxford, and Ipswich, had completed Hampton Court, and rebuilt the episcopal residences of York House (afterwards Whitehall), and Esher in Surrey. Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, in his palace at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, almost rivalled the cardinal, and perhaps might have done so entirely if he had not been hurried to the scaffold before his mansion was completed. Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, rose under the orders of the Duke of Suffolk (Charles Brandon). The Duke of Norfolk and his accomplished son, the Earl of Surrey, were, as appears from the descriptions of Kenninghall, Norfolk, and Mount Surrey, near Norwich, magnificent in the mansions they required for their occupation. We shall merely add the following list (which might, if it were necessary, be much augmented) of some other mansions of note. They are 1. Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. 2. Cowdray, Sussex, destroyed by fire in 1793. 3. Hewer Castle, Kent. 4. Gosfield Hall, Essex, perfect. 5. Hengreave Hall, Suffolk, perfect, and whereof a beautiful work has been published by John Gage, Esq. (now Rookwode), a descendant of its ancient possessors. 6. Layer Marney, Essex, now in ruins. 7. Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, in ruins. 8. Hunsdon House, Herts, rebuilt. 9. South Wingfield, Derbyshire, dilapidated. 10. Hill Hall, Essex, built by Sir Thomas Smyth, in 1542. 11. Wolterton (see fig. 199.)

in East Barsham, Norfolk, in ruins. 12. Harlaxton, Lincolnshire, perfect. 13. Westwood, Worcestershire, perfect.

427. In a very curious tract, entitled, "A Dyetorie or Regiment of Health," by Andrew Boorde, of Physike Doctor, 8vo., first printed in 1547, the following directions are given how a man should build his house or mansion; from which it appears that there were certain leading points for the guidance of the architect, founded, of course, they were on the habits of the time. "Make," says our friend Andrew, "the hall of such fashion that the parlor be annexed to the head of the hall, and the buttyre and pantrye at the lower ende thereof; the cellar under the pantrye sett somewhat at a base; the kechyn sett somewhat at a base from the buttrye and pantrye; coming with an entrie within, by the wall of the buttrie; the pastrie house and the larder annexed to the kechyn. Then divyde the logginges by the circuit of the quadrivial courte, and let the gatehouse be opposite, or against the hall doore; not directly, but the hall doore standyng abase of the gatehouse, in the middle of the front enteringe into the place. Let the prevye chamber be annexed to the great chamber of estate, with other chambers necessary for the buildinge; so that many of the chambers may have a prospecte into the chapell." Some of the principal innovations in the early Tudor style, were the introduction of gatehouses, bay windows, and quadrangular areas, matters rather incompatible with buildings constructed for defence. The materials of these palaces and mansions were of freestone and brick, according to the facility with which from the situation they could be procured. Sometimes, indeed often, these materials were mixed. Moulded brickwork and terra cotta were introduced for ornamental parts by Trevigi and Holbein towards the end of the period, or, perhaps strictly speaking, at the end of it. The brickwork was occasionally plastered and pointed as at Nonsuch. At Layer Marney and other places, bricks of two colours highly glazed were used for variegating the surface, and were formed into lozenges. The chimney shafts seem to have exhausted invention in the twisted and diapered patterns into which they were wrought, and decorated with heads and capitals and cognizances of the founders. The gateways were prominent features in these edifices, and the most expensive ornaments were lavished on them. That at Whitehall, designed by Holbein, was constructed with differently coloured glazed bricks, over which were appended four large circular medallions of busts, still preserved at Hatfield Peveril, Herts. This gateway contained several apartments, among which not the least remarkable was the study wherein Holbein chiefly received his sitters. The gateways at Hampton Court and Woolterton were very similar to this.

428. We will here digress a little on the bay window which, as generally understood, was simply a projecting window between two buttresses (whence its name, as occupying a bay of the building), and almost universally placed at the end of the room. It was invented about a century before the Tudor age, in which it usually consisted on the plan of right angles intersected by circles, as in the buildings at Windsor by Henry VIII., and at Thornbury Castle. When placed at the end of a great hall, it extended in height from the floor to the ceiling, and was very simple and regular in its form. In a MS. at the Herald's College relating to an entertainment given at Richmond by Henry VII., the following passage occurs, and may be taken as descriptive of one of the purposes to which it was applied. "Agaynst that his grace had supped: the hall was dressed and goodlie to be seene, and a rich cupboord sett thereup in a baye window of IX or X stages and haunces of hight, furnissed and fulfilled with plate of gold, silver, and regilte." Carved wainscotting in

panels, generally of oak, lined the lower part of the halls with greater unity of design and execution than heretofore; and it now found its way into parlours and presence chambers with every variety of cyphers, cognizances, chimeras, and mottoes, which in the castles of France about the age of Francis I. were called Boisseries. Of these some curious specimens still remain in the hall and chambers of the dilapidated mansion of the Lords de La Warre at Halnacre in Suffolk. The area or court was quadrangular, and besides the great staircase near the hall, there were generally hexangular towers containing others: indeed, they were usually to be found in each angle of the great court, rising above the parapets, imparting a pleasant and picturesque effect to the mass of building, and grouping well with the lofty and ornamented chimneys of which we have above spoken.

Fig. 200. TUDOR ARCH, ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL.

429. It is melancholy to reflect upon the disappearance of these mansions which were once the ornaments of the provinces, and now one by one falling fast away by the joint operation of what is called repair and by decay. Most of their remains have been removed to raise or to be incorporated with other buildings for which they might have well been spared.

430. The characteristics of the style are arches, universally flat, and wide in proportion to their height (fig.200.). Windows, much more open than in the last period, flatter at the top, and divided in the upper part by transoms, which are almost constantly crowned with embattled work in miniature. The ceilings or vaultings spread out into such a variety of parts, that the whole surface appears covered with a web of delicate sculpture or embroidery thrown over it; and from different intersections of this ribbed work, clusters of pendant ornaments hang down, as Mr. Millers observes, like "stalactites in caverns." The flying buttresses are equally ornamented, and the external surfaces of the walls are one mass of delicate sculpture. The ornaments, as may be deduced from the above particulars, are lavish and profuse in the highest degree. Fretwork, figures of men and animals, niches and tabernacles, accompanied with canopies, pedestals, and traceries of the most exquisite workmanship, carried this style to the summit of splendour; and all these combined, had, perhaps, no small share in producing the extinction it was doomed to undergo.

431. Before proceeding to give the examples in this style, to which the reader will be referred, it may be as well to mention that Scotland boasts of many fine specimens of ecclesiastical architecture. The abbeys of Melrose and Kelso, founded by David I., as well as those in Dryburgh and Jedburgh, all in Roxburghshire, prove that the art advanced to as great perfection north of the Tweed, as it did in England. Roslin and Holyrood chapels, the first whereof was erected by Sir William St. Clair, for richness and variety of ornamental carvings cannot be exceeded. Its plan is without parallel in any other specimen of the fifteenth century. The latter was finished by James, the second of that name, in 1440, and is a beautiful example with flying buttresses, which are more ornamented than any even in England.

432. Examples of the Florid Gothic or Tudor style are to be seen at the cathedral churches of Gloucester, in the chapel of Our Lady; at Oxford, in the roof of the choir; at Ely, in Alcock's chapel; at Peterborough, in Our Lady's chapel, and at Hereford, in the north porch. In conventual churches, at Windsor, St. George's chapel; at Cambridge, King's College chapel; at Westminster, King Henry VII.'s chapel; at Great Malvern, in Worcestershire, the tower and choir; at Christ Church, Oxford, the roof of the choir, and at Evesham Abbey, in Worcestershire, the campanile and gateway.

433. For parochial churches, except in some very few specimens in Somersetshire, and there perhaps only in parts, we are unable to refer the reader to a complete specimen, in all its parts, of the Tudor style. The pulpit and screen at Dartmouth, in Devonshire, are worthy of his notice.

434. We shall close this section by a tabular view of the founders and dimensions of the different cathedrals of England, extracted from Dallaway and other authors.