THE Dial Exhibited Is Interesting, Both As a Good Example of A

XVIII.—On a portable Sundial of gilt brass made for Cardinal Wolsey. By LEWIS EVANS, Esq., F.8.A.

Read 21st February, 1901.

THE dial exhibited is interesting, both as a good example of a combination of dials, which was in the first half of the sixteenth centary considered to be the perfection of the diallist art, and of which early examples are almost unknown, and also because it was made for Cardinal "Wolsey. Nothing is known of its history, but it is said to have come from a village not far from Peterborough, and it was bought by me in London early in 1900. The instrument consists of a group of nine dials arranged on a hollow gilt brass block, which is 3^- inches high, 2^ inches wide and 1^- inch thick. (Plate XLV.). Its two sides are formed by parallel plates, which are If inch wide at the base and taper to a width of 1 inch at a height of f inch, above which point they expand into slightly irregular octagons measuring about 1 inch on each side. These plates are 1^ inch apart, and are connected together by fiat plates; each of these smaller plates measures about 1^-g- inch by 1 inch, with the exception of the base which is 1-^Q inch by 1|- inch. Dials are drawn on both of the side plates and on the seven upper facets of the block; on the horizontal plate at the top is drawn an horizontal dial for about latitude 52°, within a semicircle 1^ inch diameter. Just north of this is a stepped circular recess -^-g inch deep, which is f inch in diameter in its upper part, and YS inch below, and was made for a small compass; of this there now remains only the central pivot, and a line of declination which is marked on a white metal plate and shows a deviation of about 9° east. The step in the side of the recess was intended to support the glass. The upper facet, which slopes towards the south at an angle of about 52°, has an " upper polar dial" engraved on it; and on the side opposite and parallel to this on the underside of the block is an " inferior polar dial." These two planes will lie parallel to the polar axis when the dial is set in its true position, north and south. The upper facet which slopes towards the north, is inclined at an angle of about 38°, and has on it an " upper equinoctial dial," If inch diameter, and on the lower sloping plane opposite to and parallel to it on the underside of the block, is an " inferior equinoctial dial " 1J inch diameter. Both of these faces are parallel to the plane of the equator in which the sun appears to be at the time of the equinox. On the four vertical sides respectively, are drawn north, south, east, and west dials. VOL. LVU. 2 x

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 20 Oct 2018 at 21:02:20, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900014181 ARCHAEOLOGIA. VOL. LVII. ]PL. XLV.

PORTABLE SUNDIAL OF GILT BRASS MADE FOR CARDINAL WOLSEY.

Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, iqoi Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 20 Oct 2018 at 21:02:20, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900014181 332 On a portable Sundial of gilt brass made for Cardinal Wolsey.

Within the octagonal part of the east and west sides are inscribed circles 2^ inches diameter, within which are drawn oblique projections of the sphere for latitude 52°, showing horizontal and vertical lines, the pole, equator, tropics, and arctic circles; the hour lines of the east and west polar dials being drawn across the equator between the tropics, and stars being dotted about over the rest of the sphere. The gnomons for all the dials are formed by thin metal plates in the shape of right angled triangles, and they vary in height from J inch to ^ inch ; they are all perfect with the exception of that for the west dial, which has been broken. All the smaller dial plates have gothic ornamentation in their angles. The top plate, which is only ornamented in its northern corners, beyond the compass, has a broken moulding on it, and the same decoration reappears in company with scrolls of foliage on each side of the shields of arms which are engraved on the lower part of the side plates. The small sloping plates in the base of the instrument are not quite equal, the southern one being f inch deep and the northern 1 inch, and they make with the base angles of 62° and 57° respectively; this irregularity seems to be uninten- tional, and it certainly has nothing to do with any of the mathematical requirements of the instrument. On each of them is engraved a cardinal's hat, with cords crossed and intertwined; the tassels on one increasing as 1, 2, 3, 4, and on the other as 1, 3, 4, 5. On the lower part of each of the side plates, below the dial and sphere, are engraved shields; the top engrailed of four, the sides incurved, and the base rounded. That on the west side bears the arms of "Wolsey : Sable on a cross engrailed argent a lion passant purpure between four leopard's heads azure; on a chief or a Lancaster rose between two Cornish choughs. " In which cumbersome coat," to quote from an article by our Vice-President, Mr. Everard Green, Eouge Dragon, in the Nineteenth Century magazine, June, 1896, we " must see the Sable shield and cross engrailed of the Uffords, Earls of Suffolk; in the Azure leopard's faces those on the coat of De la Pole, Earls of Suffolk; in the purple lion, the badge of Pope Leo the Tenth; in the rose the Lancastrian sympathies of the builder of Cardinals' College (Christ Church, Oxford); and in the choughs, the reputed or assigned arms of St. Thomas of Canterbury, Argent three choughs proper. Thus in the cardinal's coat we see his county and its history, his religion and politics, his Christian name and his patron saint." In the shield on the east side is a representation of the arms of the cathedral church of York, as : Gules two keys in saltire argent and in chief a mitre or,

instead of the correct form of : Gules two keys in saltire argent and in chief the ancient papal tiara of one crown or, the tiara standing for the cap of St. Peter." There are some other examples still existing in York Minster of the mitre appearing in the York church arms, but they are of later date than Wolsey. The crown which now usually usurps the place of St. Peter's cap seems to have been first used by Archbishop Holgate in 1545. Wolsey, who was made a cardinal on September 10th, 1515, became archbishop of York on September 15th, 1518; he died on November 29th, 1530, so that the dial must have been made sometime during the twelve years from 1518 to 1530. There is no direct evidence about the instrument itself to show who was its maker, but some of the numerals and other details seem to suggest German workmanship, and I have myself little doubt that it was made by the celebrated diallist Nicholas Kratzer (born 1487, died 1550). Nicholas Kratzer was born at Munich, and after studying at Cologne and taking a degree at Wittemberg came over to England, and having become acquainted with Eichard Fox, bishop of Winchester, " Was made by him Fellow of his College called Corpus Christi, and admitted thereunto on the fourth of July 1517. About that time he reading Astronomy in the University by the command of K. Hen. VIII. was soon after made by Cardinal Wolsey his Mathematick Reader when he first settled his lectures there."b From which it seems that he knew Cardinal Wolsey and was under some obligation to him. Cuthbert Tunstal, afterwards bishop of Durham, who was himself a mathematician and author of a book on arithmetic, in writing to Wolsey in 1520 speaks of Kratzer as " deviser of the Kinges horologies," and he is known to have made dials when at Oxford, one of which was put up in the garden of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. This dial has long since vanished, but a careful drawing of it exists in a MS. by Hegge in the College Library (Plate XLVI.), which is reproduced in the History of Corpus Christi College by our Fellow, Thomas Fowler, D.D., President of the College and Vice-Chancellor of the University (8vo, Oxford, 1893). A copy of this reproduction together with a photograph from the MS. is exhibited to-night, as is also a photograph taken from another MS. by Nicholas Kratzer himself, De Horologiis, which is preserved in the same library. It will be noticed that there is a very great resemblance between Hegge's drawing of Kratzer's Corpus dial and Wolsey's dial, and that a shield of arms of the a See a paper on tlie Insignia of an Archbishopric, also by Mr. Everard Green, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd S. xvi. 394-404. b A. a Wood, Athenm Oxonienses.

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SUNDIAL BY KRATZER FORMERLY AT CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.

Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, ipoi.

cathedral church of Winchester is shown below the east dial in the former, in the same position as the church of York arms in the latter; and that except for the fact that the dials on the top are different, and that a dial takes the place of one of the cardinal's hats, there is not much difference between the two. The dial in Kratzer's own manuscript seems to be almost identical with the upper part of Wolsey's dial, and the inclination and type of the numerals, especially of the 4 and 7 (^,/\() are the same in both; a somewhat important similarity at a period when as yet there was no very definite custom amongst mathematicians as to the form and position of some of the Arabic numerals. The hour numbers in the smaller dials are also arranged in narrow bands or circles as in Wolsey's dial, and the gnomons both in this and Hegge's drawing are also for the most part triangular. Both the dial in Kratzer's MS. and the gilt brass dial now exhibited are very similar to the woodcut of a block of nine dials on page 80 of Munster's book on dialling. Its title is: " Compositio | horologiorum, in piano, muro, truncis, anulo, con | cavo cylindro & variis quadranti- | bus, cum signorum zodiaci & di j versarum horarum inscri | ptionibus : autore Se- | bast. Munstero. | Basilese in officina Henrici | Petri mense Martio an. | MDXXXI," and it was the first book on dialling that was ever printed, and one which formed the basis of many subsequent works. There is no projection of the sphere shown in Munster's woodcut, and the dial gnomons take the form of rods instead of triangular plates; also the illustration does not show any compass, though one is mentioned in the description in chapter XXXI. (p. 78.) : " Alii addunt adhuc plura, nempe pixidem sub horizontali, & cavatura, quandam oblongam in superficie polari." The engraving in Munster's book would alone have been almost enough to fix the date of this block of sun-dials as being made in the first half of the sixteenth century had the shields of arms been absent. The German appearance of the workmanship of the dial, taken with the circumstances of Nicholas Kratzer's life, his acquaintance with Wolsey, the very marked similarity to the dial and the numerals given in his MS., the fact that he was one of the most celebrated diallists of his time and is described by Outhbert Tunstal, himself a mathematician, as " deviser of the Kinges horologies," that the portrait of Kratzer by Holbein, now in the Louvre, shows him with a very similar block of dials in his hand, seem to me to give a cumulative mass of evidence that the Wolsey dial was actually made by him and is fully enough to justify me in the assumption that I have made, that this gilt brass block of nine dials, which was certainly made for Cardinal Wolsey between 1518 and 1530, is, so far as can be ascertained, the only existing dial made by Nicholas Kratzer and a very worthy specimen of his workmanship and design.