The Cathedral Church of Oxford. Percy Dearmer
remaining of the high altar and choir was catalogued (only that the spelling was obscurer) as follows:—"Upon the high altar a here-cloth, 40s. Item, two altar-cloths, one of olde diaper, and the other of fine linen cloth. Item, a mass-book and a desk. Item, a great sacring bell. Item, 4 high latten candlesticks. Item, a canopy with a pix of copper. Item, 4 desks with two cloths of old silk. Item, a pair of organs, with a turned chain to the same. Item, 2 forms. Item, a canopy over the Dean's head of old silk. Item, 15 antiphoners and 9 grayells." After some more books comes:—"Item, a foot-cloth for the high altar of old tapestry." All the hangings of the side altars are enumerated, besides their vestments, candlesticks, etc. Thus the south choir aisle had "4 hangings for above and beneath the altar, whereof two of white satin Bruges, and the other two of yellow and red," and two altar-cloths; St. Lucy's Chapel had "two altar-cloths of old diaper, two hangings for the altar for above and beneath, the one of old needle-work, and the other of buckram"; the four altars on the north of the choir were hung with "dornaxe," diaper, yellow and white baundkin.
The description of some of the fourteen copes sounds very beautiful, for instance:—"2 copes of red silk, woven with sunbeams of gold;" "one cope of blue silk, woven with flower de luce, roses, and crowns of gold, and a whole suit to the same." There were also copes of purple and red, branched with gold, of red and white flowers, bordered with clouds, of red and green, of velvet and baundkin, and chamlet; and many suits of vestments besides; and tunicles, albs, and amices for the choristers.
The inventory also contains, among other items, heavy silver bowls and other vessels belonging to the "house plate," and the "church plate," which we here give in the original spelling:—"A pixe of the ymage of God, gilte, weing 33 oz. Itm. a highe standing pixe wth a cover gilte, weing 23 oz. dim. Itm. a crosse wth Mary and John and a fote to the same gilte, weing 114 oz. Itm. a ship [incense-boat] and a spone gilte, weing 12 oz. dim. Itm. two bassings parcell gilte, weing 92 oz. Itm. a halliwater [holy water] bokett, and a sprinkell, whitt syluer, weing 33 oz., 2 greatt sensors, and a litle sensor, whit syluer, weing 170 oz. Itm. two crowetts [cruets] of whit syluer, weing 8 oz. Itm. a little paxe gilte, weing 3 oz.; 4 chalesses, gilte, wth patentts, weing 95 oz. Itm. 3 chalesses wth patentt, whit syluer, weing 50 oz. Itm. a litle cros, parcell gilte, weing 51 oz. Itm. a crismatory gilte, not weighted. Itm. 2 gospells, plated wth syluer of thonesyde [the one side], not weighted. Itm. two maces for the preuelege, plated wth syluer vppon yeron [iron], not weighted. Itm. two virge roddes, plated wth syluer vppon yeron, not weighted; 4 rectors staves, the haadds of syluer wherof two gilte, not weighted. Itm. two stavis for the crosse, plated with syluer, not weighted."
When, in 1546, St. Frideswide's became the cathedral church of the four year old diocese of Oxford, the momentous change in its character left no mark upon its architecture. The great alterations in the fabric and fittings had either happened already or were yet to come.
During the deanery of Brian Duppa in 1630, the unhappy church suffered a sweeping restoration, which well-nigh destroyed its ecclesiastical character altogether. As Dean Duppa was a cultured man himself, and wrote a life of Michael Angelo, his work was all the more disastrous—a mere Philistine would have probably been content to let well alone. To begin with, he, "being minded to adorn it," says Wood, "did first take down all the old stalls in the choir, and in their places put up those that now are," those great ugly pews, that is, which Dean Liddell removed. Then, in laying down his new pavement, he removed many of the old monuments, "having most of them," continues the old antiquary, "Saxon inscriptions on them; which being looked upon by the dean and canons as old superfluous stuff, and unhandsome to be mixed with their new pavement, they did cause them to be thrown out of the church, as also those out of the cloister." The remaining monuments he moved to the aisles, having, with two exceptions, "duly deprived them of their brasses." Thus was a priceless record of the priory's history lost to us. Most of his work has during this century been undone; but one memorial of him remains, a valuable historical landmark, and full of the characteristics of its age—the Jonah window at the west of the north aisle of the nave.
In order that the windows of the aisles might be "beautified with glass, admirably well performed by the exquisite hand of Abraham Ling, a Dutchman, an. 1634," Brian Duppa and his chapter altered the whilom Perpendicular windows, sawing away "the fine architecture or crustation of those windows," and changing them from three lights with tracery to two plain lights, the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy" being the donor of part of the new glass. The priceless old glass, which had been set up by ancient priors of St. Frideswide's, and contained pictures of the life of "The Lady," besides the arms of many benefactors, was ruthlessly sacrificed. This act of vandalism has led to still more unfortunate reprisals in our own time; for Van Ling's old glass, which had great merits, was taken away at the last restoration, and replaced by some entirely uninteresting modern stuff (to say the least of it), while the tracery was remade into a respectable nineteenth century parody of the original Perpendicular.
The amiable and terrible Duppa also ruined the Decorated windows of three lights which terminated the aisles of the choir by converting them into his favourite two-light windows; and the beautiful four-light window of the Lady Chapel was similarly treated. The great north transept window was likewise impoverished in its tracery; and at the end of the seventeenth century the great east window was reduced from five to three lights by the same curious and unaccountable perversion of taste. One more memorial of Dean Duppa defaced the cathedral down to our time. This was the strange arrangement of stone screens by which the eastern chapels were separated from the transepts, and the most romantic feature of the church destroyed. They were particularly offensive, as they finished in a half-circle turned upwards, so that, with the Norman arch above, a complete circle was formed. However, the fine pulpit and organ-screen must be set down to the credit of this period.
Dean Duppa's successors signalised themselves, as far as the cathedral is concerned, only by the erection of monuments, some gruesome, and all heavy. Their work for the college was more considerable, and we shall enumerate it in our chapter on the Exterior.
A great deal of mischief was done to the painted glass during the Civil War, many of the windows being destroyed, and not one left quite perfect; but otherwise the church escaped pretty well. Indeed, in this orderly country a great deal more damage has been done by lawful authority than by popular riots.
Up till Dean Liddell's time the cathedral was in as bad a state as most of the other cathedrals of England. A writer in the "Ecclesiologist" for February 1847 thus bewails its then condition:—
"We now come to the present estate of the cathedral, which is more deplorable than can be imagined. It is really wonderful that the cathedral of an English diocese, and the chapel of one of our greatest colleges, should remain in a condition which would disgrace the meanest hamlet. In the first place, it will hardly be credited by those whose eyes have not witnessed the sacrilege, that a portion of the church is actually desecrated. In so vast a college the hire of a single room cannot be dispensed with, but the House of God must be defiled; a bay of the south transept and one of the adjoining chapels are blocked off to form a residence for the verger. On this subject we can hardly trust ourselves to speak.
"The fittings up of the choir are of the most wretched and irreverent description. The stalls are of seventeenth century work, and by no means a favourable specimen: those of the dean and canons are marked by canopies. The episcopal throne is meanness itself, and can hardly be distinguished without a most diligent search: on the prayer-books nearest to it, and nowhere else, are inscribed the words 'Christ-church Chapel,' as if to warn the Bishop off the forbidden ground. Nearly the whole area of the choir between the stalls is filled with benches looking west, and in which kneeling is all but impossible. These are occupied by the overgrown mass of undergraduates, and at the 'canons' prayers' partly by choristers. Further, that not an inch of available space may be lost, an arch on each side is blocked up by a gallery, which at surplice-prayers, when the students and commoners attend, is filled by the choir thus displaced. Finally, behind the stalls are some darksome dens, occupied by women, which greatly encumber the choir aisles. The screen [then blocking up the choir] is a cumbrous piece of work contemporary with the stalls,