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The Minsterworth Embroidery 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.
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