Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 15 March 2011

More on the Westminster chasuble at Wardour


Earlier this month I posted about the Westminster chasuble at Wardour and I now see that the New Liturgical Movement has a piece about it with a much better photograph than the one I managed to find. The article can be viewed here.

The accompanying notes show how the vestment ihas been assembled from two seperate ones. The main fabric can be associated with Catherine of Aragon's marriages at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but the embroidered orphreys are a generation older and appear to be linked, through Bishop Richard Beauchamp of Salisbury, with the marriage, which he performed, of Margaret of York, sister of King Edward IV, to Charles Duke of Burgundy in 1468 (not 1408 as it says on NLM).

Bishop Beauchamp was very much associated with the Yorkist court, and he is depicted on a particularly interesting and splendid roof boss of St George's Chapel Windsor kneeling with King Edward IV before one of the great relics of the chapel, the Welsh Cross Gneth. There is a picture and an article about the boss and the Cross Gneth here. As Bishop of Salisbury from 1450-81 and ex officio the Chancellor of the Order of the Garter the Bishop was extensively involved the the King's rebuilding of the chapel in the 1470s.

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