Dating the Misericords of Fairford 149
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Dating the Misericords of Fairford 149 APPENDIX Dating the Misericords of Fairford Gloucestershire’s parish church of St. Mary, Fairford is renowned for its collection of early sixteenth-century stained glass, yet it also has a small but charming misericord collection.1 The example of a woman beating her husband is particularly notable, as this subject is represented in nearly the same form at another Gloucestershire church: Tewkesbury Abbey, thirty miles away [figs. 2.2 and 2.3]. The iconographic differences between the Fairford and Tewkesbury examples are few: in the Fairford version, the wife has an elaborate headdress and the man is shown wearing shoes. The Tewkesbury example dates to the middle of the fourteenth century, while the dating of the Fairford collection is not only more ambiguous, but represents a sort of quagmire.2 The misericords here have been problematic since antiquarians began the task of dating, categorizing, and compiling surviving material from the time of John Leland (1506–1552), chaplain and librarian to Henry VIII. The church and its fabric now reside within the diocese of Gloucester, which was founded during the English Reformation in 1541 from parts of the Diocese of Hereford and the Diocese of Worcester.3 Between 1271 and 1276, Tewkesbury successfully petitioned Gregory X for his support in appro- priating the church of Fairford; thus began a longstanding relationship between the 1 On the stained glass program, see Hilary Wayment, The Stained Glass of the Church of St. Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire, Society of Antiquaries of London Occasional Paper n.s. 5 (1984); Sarah Brown, Fairford Parish Church: A Medieval Church and Its Stained Glass (Stroud: Sutton, 1997); David Verey and Alan Brooks, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds, 3rd edition (London: Yale University Press, 2002), 360–69. The misericords are catalogued in G. L. Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 48–49; see also Francis Bond, Wood Carvings in English Churches, I: Misericords (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910), 227; and Charles Cox and Alfred Harvey, English Church Furniture (London: Methuen & Co., 1907), 259. 2 Charles Tracy suggests in “‘English Gothic Choir-Stalls to c. 1400,” PhD dissertation, University of London, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1984 (pp. 155, 173) that Tewkesbury Abbey’s choir stalls can be dated to ca. 1340–1344. He re-cites this dating in English Gothic Choir-Stalls, 1200–1400 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1987). On the dating of the Tewkesbury collection, see also Remnant, Catalogue, 52–53; and Charles Cox, Gloucestershire (London: Methuen & Co., 1914), 203. 3 A Dictionary of English Church History, ed. Sidney Leslie Ollard (London: Mowbray & Co., 1919), 2nd revised edition, 650; The London Gazette, October 7, 1836. See also Caroline Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540–1580 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 9–58. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004341203_009 150 Appendix two.4 It is difficult to conjecture whether this historic relationship may have led to col- laboration and artistic copying between the two misericord collections in the ensuing two centuries, yet the possibility should not be ruled out. If indeed so, the “dialogue” between the Tewkesbury and Fairford “husband-beating” examples exposes a histori- cal narrative about a regional style and preference for certain kinds of subject matter.5 Broader diocesan connections further reveal that the strongest comparative formal evidence for dating the Gloucestershire examples comes from contemporary ana- logues found primarily in Worcestershire. Such connections, when examined critically, reveal what amounts to a regional tradition of late-medieval English woodcarving associated with Worcester. This tradition may be similar in scope to the Ripon School first posited by J. S. Purvis in the first half of the twentieth century,6 though more research must be undertaken before asserting it is a veritable “school.” It is here associ- ated with Worcester in acknowledgment of the previous affiliation of the Gloucester- shire examples with the Worcester diocese preceding the creation of a separate diocese in the sixteenth century. This essay discusses the Fairford collection and certain errors and inconsistencies that have plagued its dating in order to place it within the context of other examples in the region. … To paint a fuller picture of the confusion surrounding the dating of misericords in Gloucester, one ought to begin in an unlikely place: the small parish church of St. Michael in Duntisbourne Rouse, Gloucestershire. St. Michael possesses five miseri- cords, each depicting a bearded, leonine head and abstracted, foliate supporters. There are a few possibilities regarding their origination. One theory holds that they were carved specifically for this church shortly before 1300 upon the establishment of a 4 Worc. Epis. Reg. Orleton, fol. 54d. 5 In 1314, the manor at Fairford passed to the Le Despenser family. The earlier church here may have been built under the Despensers, who were also great builders at Tewkesbury. James Bennett, The History of Tewkesbury (London: Longman & Co., 1830), 81–82; 103–6. 6 J. S. Purvis proved the existence of a Ripon School of carving, which also established the practice of using imported prints in England. Purvis, “The Use of Continental Woodcuts and Prints by the Ripon School of Woodcarvers,” Archaeologia 85 (1935): 107–28; idem, “The Ripon Carvers and the Lost Choir–Stalls of Bridlington Priory,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 29 (1929): 157–201. See also Juanita Wood’s argument against Frances Bond, who dismissed the notion that misericords were ever carved by schools in favor of the idea that collections tended to be locally made: J. Wood, Wooden Images: Misericords and Medieval England (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999), 25–26..