Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 132 (2014), 147–158

The Minsterworth Embroidery

By TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

Introduction and Description On the wall at the south-west corner of the nave of St Peter’s church in Minsterworth is a glass- fronted display case containing an embroidered panel of considerable age and beauty. A plaque at the bottom of the case, evidently fixed to it in or soon after 1955, states: ‘This ancient embroidery, once forming part of an altar frontal, dates from the early 16th century and by tradition from the needle of Queen Katherine of Aragon, but it incorporates early figures from the 14th century.’ This description certainly arouses interest, but we now know that it is not entirely accurate. As this paper aims to convey, thanks to more recent research the history of this ancient artefact is much more complex and intriguing. Measuring approximately 1178 mm wide by 1500 mm tall, the panel is formed from numerous smaller pieces of red silk velvet sewn together with a linen panel running from the centre top to the centre bottom. It appears to form about three quarters of a priest’s chasuble or dalmatic,1 opened out flat so that the shoulder area of the original vestment is about a quarter of the way down the panel (Fig. 1). The red velvet is decorated with motifs representing seraphim on wheels, fleurs de lys, stylized thistles and water flowers, and double-headed eagles. The broad strip running down the centre of the panel (the original vestment’s orphrey strip) is embroidered with images of four figures: from the top, a male saint with cross and book, a king with sceptre and ermine- trimmed cloak, Saint Paul with book and sword, and a possibly Old Testament figure, each one standing inside a Gothic niche (Fig. 2). On a level with the shoulder area, and in the centre where the original neck hole of the garment would have been, is an oblong shape, filled in with an embroidered patch taken from a different embroidery. It is a section of the Crucifixion scene showing Christ’s torso and a depiction of blood spurting from Christ’s side to be collected in a chalice held by an angel (Fig. 3). The embroidery on the main panel is worked in the traditional English style known as opus anglicanum (literally ‘English work’), using polychrome silk floss and metal-wrapped threads, in various stitch styles, and with applied small stamped metal spangles. A border of tawny-coloured silk and wool fabric runs across the lower edge and most of the way up the two sides. The upper portions of the two side edges are bordered with matching (but modern) rayon fabric. The fabric edging along the top is also modern. Worn patches on one of the orphreys part way down the front of the garment may have resulted from the chasuble rubbing on the edge of the altar table over many years (Fig. 4).

1. The chasuble is a liturgical vestment worn by clergy for celebration of the Eucharist or Mass. It originated as a sort of conical poncho, i.e. an oval piece of cloth with a round neck-hole in the middle, extending to below the knees. It was later shortened to reach no lower than the wrists. The dalmatic is a similar garment but with sleeves and open sides. 148 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

Fig. 1. The Minsterworth embroidery (full view).

The opinion of the conservator who worked on the embroidery in 2010,2 endorsed by a textiles curator at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, is that the silk velvet is of Continental manufacture (probably French) and that the decorative work on it dates from the first half of the 16th century, before the Edwardian Reformation. The central panel of orphreys, however, looks to be English work from an earlier (probably 15th-century) vestment. The fabric of the border around three of the edges is identified as being of Continental manufacture, dating to the first half of the 17th century.

2. Wendy Toulson ACR, Textile Conservator: [email protected]. The Minsterworth Embroidery 149

Fig. 2. detail of ‘king’ orphrey.

In Gloucestershire Archives is a collection of correspondence from 1929–30 between the then vicar of Minsterworth (Canon C.O. Bartlett) and the Victoria and Albert Museum concerning the embroidery.3 This indicates that in May 1929 Revd Bartlett took the embroidery to the museum for assessment and was told that it dated from the late 15th or early 16th century. Soon after this, he sent it to the Royal College of Needlework for repairs. Quite remarkably, while the Minsterworth embroidery was at the School, the technicians there recognized that the partial Crucifixion scene in it matched a missing part of an identical scene in an ancient embroidered

3. Gloucestershire Archives [GA], P 368/1/IN 3/6. 150 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

Fig. 3. detail of the Crucifixion ‘infill’ in the neck-hole.

Fig. 4. Worn patches on one of the orphreys on the former front of the cope. The Minsterworth Embroidery 151 Winchcombe altar cloth (Crucifixion scene just right of centre). Winchcombe Fig. 5. 152 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

Fig. 6. detail showing the patch inserted into the Crucifixion scene on the Winchcombe altar cloth. altar cloth from St Peter’s church in Winchcombe, which happened to be at the School for repairs at the same time (Fig. 5). The Winchcombe embroidery is made out of material from priests’ vestments, reassembled as an altar cloth. It comprises a patchwork of 23 embroidered orphrey figures and other devices not dissimilar to (and probably contemporaneous with) the Minsterworth panel. Significantly, the torso section of its Crucifixion scene is missing and has been infilled with other material (Fig. 6).4 Remarkably, this missing piece is now infilling the chasuble neck hole in the Minsterworth panel. The border of the Winchcombe embroidery is said to contain in its design the pomegranate badge of Queen Katherine of Aragon, hence it has been taken to be the handiwork of the queen (reputedly a fine needlewoman) or her entourage of ladies. From this, the Minsterworth embroidery has, rather hazardously, also been attributed to Queen Katherine.

Historical Research The early history of the Minsterworth embroidery (like others of its kind still preserved in churches or museums across England) is unclear, as is knowledge of how it survived for the best part of four centuries. The matter cannot be investigated without recognizing the impacts on church life in England of the fundamental changes brought about by the 16th-century Reformation: these began under Henry VIII, but became more radical under the young king Edward VI (1547–53). In particular, in 1547 a new Chantries Act was passed in Parliament abolishing all the traditional church chantries and the endowments and guilds that went with them and ordering the destruction of shrines, images and the decorative trappings of the old Church, including vestments. Soon after, a new Book of Common Prayer was published containing specific orders that in future the communion service should no longer be celebrated by a priest wearing traditional vestments, such as the cope and chasuble. The short reign of Mary I which followed (1553–8) brought a rescinding of these injunctions and saw the re-establishment of the old order, but the accession to

4. K. Buckland, ‘The Skenfrith cope and its companions’, Textile Hist. 14(2) (1938), 125–39. The Minsterworth Embroidery 153 the throne of Elizabeth I saw the return once again of the Reformist injunctions throughout the land. The Act of Uniformity of 1559, which abolished the Mass in all churches and the restoration of Edward’s prayer book, did however permit the use of the cope for Holy Communion.5 Priests and churchwardens of the time must have experienced repeated difficulties over what should be done with their church’s sacred vestments at any given time. There was also the continual risk of serious punishment for disobeying the rules. Certainly, by Elizabeth’s time, it was probable that many of the treasured pre-Reformation church objects would have been sold off, destroyed or even perhaps hidden away to await a return of the old order. Many vestments are known to have been cut up and incorporated into new items of adornment. The record relating to Minsterworth church in the 16th century is not without references to vestments. One of the chantries set up in the pre-Reformation church was that to St Mary and, in the early 1500s, the prominent Gloucester mercer John Cooke (or Coke) (d. 1528) in his will left to ‘our Lady services in Mynstreworth, where I was born’ a pair of vestments. These were among 16 pairs of vestments to be made and distributed in pairs to each of the parishes and religious houses in Gloucester, all to be ‘made nigh as like as it may be in colour and of one suit.’6 The will does not indicate the kind of vestments involved, nor whether they were to be made of new materials or old recycled pieces. It would not be unreasonable to expect that one of the pair was a chasuble and the other a cope. A while later, in 1563, the church in Minsterworth was evidently in possession of, and wished to use, a cope, since the churchwardens presented that: ‘… the curate refuseth to weare a cope at the ministration of the holy communion and sayeth no man shall make him use any suche or like superstition further on Sondayes…’7 Harking back to that is a letter sent in 1915 to the vicar (Canon Bartlett) by the then bishop of Gloucester (Edgar Gibson) concerning the cope. In it, the bishop notes: ‘I have looked up the passage about the cope. It is in a register of a visitation apparently by the archdeacon in 1563 [the text as above follows] … It is most curious that the cope should thus be mentioned – there is no other entry like it – and that it should still be in existence in the parish …’8 Despite the bishop’s final comment, the cope referred to here is unlikely to be the same garment now on display in Minsterworth church, which is clearly made up from a chasuble or dalmatic (thus the St Paul orphrey and upper sets of flowers, which would have hung down the priest’s back below the neck hole, are upside down). One has to assume that the parishioners of 1563 would have known the difference. Although some sources have referred to the Minsterworth embroidery having belonged to the pre-Reformation St Peter’s abbey in Gloucester, they would all seem to stem from the 1563 visitation return and, significantly, the bishop in his letter above stops short of actually associating the vestment with Gloucester abbey. The link with the Winchcombe embroidery and perhaps Queen Katherine of Aragon is intriguing. There is no evidence that the queen ever visited Sudeley castle in Winchcombe, but, as a devout Catholic, she may well have had a connection with Winchcombe abbey or, more likely,

5. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (Yale, 1992); E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (Yale, 2001). Both provide commendable reading about the impacts of the English Reformation, especially on rural church parishes. 6. GA, Hockaday Abstracts ccxvi (St Mary de Crypt, Gloucester). See also S. Draper, ‘Minsterworth’, draft VCH parish hist. online at www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/Gloucestershire. 7. GA, Hockaday Abstracts cclxxxv (Minsterworth); Draper, ‘Minsterworth’. 8. A small ledger book entitled Minsterworth Parish History Etc, handwritten in the early 1900s by Canon Bartlett (currently in possession of the author). 154 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT its greater neighbour Hailes abbey, possibly providing it with gifts of vestments.9 In particular, Hailes was famous because of the phial of Christ’s blood it possessed, a holy relic which became a considerable magnet for pilgrimage and the source of great wealth for that abbey. This relic of Christ’s crucifixion however became the subject of scepticism and even outright rejection by the Reformists and, in 1535, the blood was taken to London to be examined and declared to be fake. In 1538 the relic was ignominiously removed from its shrine at Hailes.10 At this distance from those times, one can only speculate as to what followed, but one possibility is that when the abbey altar cloth was brought to new use, zealous iconoclasts at Winchcombe removed the offending section of the Crucfixion scene showing the shedding of Christ’s blood, and replaced it with the innocuous scrap of embroidery we see today. What happened after that, and how the piece of embroidery from Winchcombe came to be in Minsterworth, is unclear, but a possible clue may lie in the person of Richard Pate ‘of Minsterworth’ (1516–88). Among his numerous high appointments, Pate was MP and Recorder of Gloucester but, in the 1540s he had been appointed under-steward and keeper of the manorial courts of a number of dissolved abbeys in Gloucestershire, including Hailes. In this capacity, he was also required to inquire into the treasures and other valuable possessions of all the church chantries in the county and, as a consequence, is believed to have personally benefitted from their suppression. From his will, we know that he held the lordship of Minsterworth with land and property there as well as having a lease on the parsonage of the parish. According to the will, all his possessions in Minsterworth passed to his granddaughter.11 In such circumstances it is not inconceivable that vestments and other ‘special items’ confiscated from monastic houses around the county, and retained by Pate, ended up in Minsterworth. Whatever the precise sequence of events was, it would appear that at some point during or soon after the Reformation the chasuble was partially cut up and then reassembled into its present form; presumably at this point the Winchcombe fragment was inserted. The dating of the border material would seem to indicate that the work was not completed until the first half of the 17th century. Conceivably, during some of this time, the previously treasured vestment may even have been hidden away for safety. It is likely that such embroideries were in due course put to various uses at different times. Often, they were reconstituted into altar cloths or communion table cloths and perhaps palls, but instances have been recorded of the article being employed as a decorative hanging on the pulpit.12 This may well have been viewed as an appropriate reuse, since the Reformation had led to an emphasis being placed upon the sermon instead of the sacraments and, in turn, on the importance of the pulpit. The possibility that the Minsterworth embroidery may have been used as a pulpit cloth or hang has been discussed.13 As noted earlier, the upper border is a modern addition, suggesting that the upside-down upper portion of the 16th-century embroidered velvet may have been folded under out of sight. Supporting this is the observation made by the conservator that

9. henry VIII is known to have visited Sudeley with different wives, but not, apparently, with Katherine of Aragon. 10. E.H. Shagan, ‘Selling the sacred: reformation and dissolution at the abbey of Hailes’, in Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), 165–76. 11. A.L. Browne, ‘Richard Pates, MP for Gloucester’, Trans. BGAS 56 (1934), 201–25. 12. See A.F. Kendrick, English Embroidery (London, 1913); C.E. Hartshorne, ‘English medieval embroidery’, Archaeol. Jnl. 1 (1845), 318–35. Churches believed, or thought, to possess copes converted into pulpit hangings include Cirencester, Hullavington (Wilts.), East Langdon (Kent), Shaldon (Hants.) and possibly Buckland (Worcs.) and Ling (Norfolk). 13. Pers. comm. between the author, conservator Wendy Toulson and Dr Frank Rhodes of Southampton ([email protected]). The Minsterworth Embroidery 155

Fig. 7. Location of areas of slight wear on the embroidery, possibly due to prolonged fretting over carved projections on the pulpit. the colours of the embroidery threads on the St Paul figure are better preserved than those on the other figures, perhaps suggesting that this part of the embroidered panel has been exposed to less light. In addition, there is the suggestion of a fold line just above the neck-hole insert with the fold passing through two areas of wear (Figs. 1 and 7). This is not to say that the panel necessarily hung from Minsterworth’s pulpit, but there is evidence that it may have. The five-faceted finely-carved wooden pulpit in Minsterworth church today dates from the Jacobean period and displays typical decorative features for that time. If the embroidery were used on this particular pulpit, it would be wide enough to cover one complete facet of the pulpit with extra width to go partly around two adjacent sides. Also the embroidery’s length from top to bottom matches the distance from just below the top parapet of the pulpit to its base. The aforesaid two small worn patches on the panel are approximately 47 cm apart (Fig. 7). It so happens that on the Minsterworth pulpit, there are carved projecting pilasters also around 47 cm apart, roughly approximating to where the worn patches appear on the embroidery. Conceivably, the wear patches observed on the embroidery therefore resulted from the material fretting on those wooden projections over a long period (Figs. 8 and 9). The upper frame of the pulpit displays numerous holes, some doubtless caused by wood-boring insects, but several more prominent holes exist which could have resulted from nailing associated with a pulpit hang. 156 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

Fig. 8. Jacobean pulpit in Minsterworth church, showing dimensions of key features.

Subsequent History After the 1563 reference, there is nothing in the records of Minsterworth church to reflect the existence of the embroidery for the next 300 years or so. Even a report of the new church’s consecration in the Gloucester Journal of 24 September 1870, whilst noting several objects retained from the old church, makes no reference to the embroidery. Its presence in the church is first alluded to around 1886.14 The correspondence between the bishop and vicar of Minsterworth in

14. M.E. Bagnell-Oakley, ‘Ancient church embroidery in Gloucestershire’, Trans. BGAS 11 (1886–7), 246– 59. The Minsterworth Embroidery 157

Fig. 9. A representation of how the embroidered panel might have been used as a pulpit hang.

1915 confirms that by then the embroidery was a subject of interest and that its significance was appreciated. In 1930, Canon Bartlett recorded in his personal notes that in that same year it had been exhibited at a Church Congress in Newport where ‘it was much admired’. He also records that, when he retired soon afterwards, he handed the embroidery over to the churchwardens. Later, in a St Peter’s parish magazine of August 1939, the newly-arrived incumbent, Revd Brockwell, records: ‘During the long vacancy, Mr A. Phelps [churchwarden] took charge of what is perhaps our greatest art treasure, the famous Minsterworth portion of a 14th-century cope. We shall have to decide how best to preserve and exhibit this treasure.’ 158 TERRY MOORE-SCOTT

There is no record of what steps were taken by the church to preserve the embroidery, but we know that the sealed display case in which it is still displayed in the church was installed in or soon after 1955. Just before this, in 1953, the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum marked the celebration of Elizabeth II’s coronation with an exhibition of ‘priceless treasures’ from the Tudor period, including paintings, furniture, tapestries and numerous examples of ecclesiastical artwork from that time. Item no. 295 in the exhibition catalogue was a ‘mutilated cope or chasuble (probably the latter)’ which had been loaned to the exhibition by St Peter’s church, Minsterworth. After a brief description, the catalogue entry notes that: ‘The vestment is supposed to have originally belonged to St Peter’s abbey Gloucester, and at the Dissolution to have been given to Minsterworth, where it was in 1563. The other half of this piece is in the possession of Winchcombe parish church.’15 In 2009 the church became concerned about the deteriorating condition of the embroidery in its case and initiated a project to have it professionally conserved and remounted. The purpose of this was not just to halt the deterioration, but also to preserve this precious possession for the benefit of future generations. It is remarkable that this ancient artefact has held on tenaciously to survival for so long.

Acknowledgements The author is immensely indebted to textile conservator Ms Wendy Toulson ACR, whose findings and subsequent observations regarding the embroidery have contributed significantly to this article. Sincere thanks are also due to Dr Frank Rhodes of Southampton for his keen interest in the subject and his comments which first suggested the possible use of the embroidery as a pulpit hang.

15. Elizabeth I and the Royal Houses of Tudor and Stuart: Art Treasures from Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds, 16 May to 18 July 1953 (Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum Temporary Exhibitions Catalogue, 1952–3), item 295 under ‘Ecclesiastical Art’.