Documentary evidence for the process of commissioning works of art in England in the Middle Ages is extremely rare. This article will discuss a document that sheds important light on one particular instance of patronage. The text suggests that, in this case at least, the patron played an active role in the appearance of the work for which he was paying. Furthermore, it provides evidence for the patronal interests and wider concerns of one of the most powerful figures in the English Church between 1440 and 1450 and can be set in the wider context of episcopal commissions to add to the knowledge we have of the artistic patronage undertaken by this influential group.Footnote ¹

The document survives in a historical miscellany compiled by the fifteenth-century antiquary William Worcester, now in the British Library.Footnote ² Worcester was a professional secretary who spent his working life in the employ of Sir John Fastolf, a veteran of the French wars.Footnote ³ After Fastolf's death in 1459, Worcester administered his master's will and devoted himself to the antiquarian activity which has brought him to the notice of modern historians.Footnote ⁴ From 1478 until his death in the early 1480s Worcester rode around the country amassing documentary material on history and keeping detailed notebooks of his discoveries.Footnote ⁵ He sought out experts in each of the places he visited, sometimes writing down the information they gave him, at other times buying or begging documents.Footnote ⁶ Among these is the document that is the object of this study, bound in with other of Worcester's notes and collected papers.Footnote ⁷ Where Worcester obtained this document is unclear, although his Itineraries record that he visited Wells in 1478, where he studied a chronicle on the recommendation of one Master Richard Vowell.Footnote ⁸

It is likely that this document appealed to the historically-minded Worcester because it contains two biographical lists, one of the bishops of Bath and Wells, and one of the archbishops of Canterbury. The lists cover three sides of a bifolium which has been divided by a calendar in the current binding.Footnote ⁹ Despite its potential interest for Worcester, however, the document may have been a chance acquisition since the first page is the verso of the last folio of an extract from Higden's Polychronicon. This comprises book vii and the end of book vi and covers the period from the death of Harold to the reign of Edward iii; it is probably the document that Worcester sought to acquire. Lists of bishops were relatively common and at least one other, of the Saxon sees, and in Worcester's own hand, occurs in the same volume, at folio 53v. The list under consideration, however, is a selective one, drawn up for a very specific purpose. The final page contains instructions for the recipient, to ‘chese out xij of the archebisshoppes of Caunt(er)bury for iiij wy(ndows) and to chese out ix of the bisshoppes of Welles & Bath for iij wyndowes’ indicating that these lists are to form the basis of a figurative glazing scheme.Footnote ¹⁰ Furthermore, instructions are given for glazing three ‘dais’, or lights, at the foot of stairs with panes illustrating busyness, idleness and goodness. The east gable is to feature ‘the orden(a)nce’, probably the ordination of an archbishop, perhaps the patron himself.Footnote ¹¹

Although the document does not specify the scheme's patron, it is almost certain that it was written for John Stafford, who was promoted from the see of Bath and Wells to Canterbury in 1443. Stafford is the last bishop on each of the lists, with a biography more lengthy and flattering than those in any of the other entries. In fact, Stafford was the only archbishop of Canterbury to have been promoted from Bath and Wells during the fifteenth century, and the two lists directly reflect his concerns.

John Stafford is usually seen as one of the less interesting fifteenth-century archbishops of Canterbury, categorised as nothing grander than a competent administrator.Footnote ¹² Unlike his successors Kempe and Morton, he was not created a cardinal and he was not a great founder like his predecessor Henry Chichele, who established All Souls College in Oxford.Footnote ¹³ His name rarely appears in the chronicles of the period.Footnote ¹⁴ Stafford was the illegitimate son of Sir Humphrey Stafford of Southwick (Wiltshire), a difficult status which, it will be suggested, may have affected his artistic commissions.Footnote ¹⁵ He rose in the royal administration, becoming chancellor of England in 1432, and was rewarded with the bishoprics first of Bath and Wells and then of Canterbury, holding the latter see until his death in 1452.Footnote ¹⁶ No representations of him survive, and his brass in the Martyrdom at Canterbury Cathedral has gone, although the indented slab survives.Footnote ¹⁷

How can the glazing scheme shed light on Stafford's patronage? At first glance, some of the bishops included in the lists are idiosyncratic choices. Among the archbishops of Canterbury, Stigand is included, while Lanfranc and Anselm are omitted. Anselm was one of the most important saints of Canterbury, so his exclusion here is perplexing. For Wells, the emphasis is on pre-Conquest bishops, with only a few of the later period included. A close examination of their biographies, however, reveals that many were chosen to a very specific brief: they had followed careers close to Stafford's own. Furthermore, those bishops who had held both Bath and Wells and Canterbury are separated out at the head of the Bath and Wells list. This both emphasises their similarity to Stafford and highlights where duplications between the two lists occur, an important consideration if figures are to be selected for a glazing scheme. One of these men, Athelm, is highlighted in the Canterbury list by a pointing hand and given a longer biography than Wulfhelm or Leomingus, the others who held both sees, drawing attention to his royal service as well as his holding of the two sees. A pointing hand also indicates the instruction for the patron to choose bishops from the lists for the windows. Athelm was presumably a particularly strong candidate for inclusion in the scheme. A further name on the Canterbury list, Alphege, is noted as abbot of Bath, probably the reason for his inclusion, although his presence can also be explained by his status as one of Canterbury Cathedral's martyr saints.

Thomas Becket and Walter Reynolds of Canterbury had, like Stafford, held the post of chancellor to the king of England. Although Becket's name would probably be found in almost any selective list of the archbishops of Canterbury, the accompanying biography notes his position as the king's chancellor alongside the ecclesiastical positions that he held. The reason for the inclusion of others is harder to determine. A few – Stigand, Duduc and Giso – had held high royal office, although not one to which Stafford was appointed. Edmund of Abingdon was a saint, but may also have been included for his holding of the treasurership of Salisbury since this is the only biographical fact noted against his name. Stafford had held a number of offices at this cathedral.Footnote ¹⁸

Two of the last names on the Canterbury list may show another of Stafford's concerns: his status as a member of a noble family, albeit an illegitimate one. Stafford required papal permission to hold church office and obtained a dispensation to do so before 1398.Footnote ¹⁹ At the same time, he retained close connections with his family, co-operating with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Stafford, to pass lands to Abbotsbury Abbey in Dorset in September 1429.Footnote ²⁰ It is in this context that the inclusion of William Courtenay and Thomas Arundel can be explained. Both are defined primarily as members of noble families, Courtenay as the son of the earl of Devon and Arundel as the son of the earl of Arundel. For the compiler of the list, who was evidently working to meet Stafford's concerns, the illustrious church careers of these men were secondary to their noble background, and that Stafford was to be a member of the company suggested that the archbishop, too, had a worthy pedigree.

The Bath and Wells list is especially interesting, since the compiler's own source can be identified.Footnote ²¹ All the biographies except Stafford's own are extracted from the Historia major, an account of the bishops of Bath and Wells written at some time after 1408.Footnote ²² The Historia major was based on two earlier biographical lists, the Historiola (which ends its account in 1174) and the Historia minor (which concludes with the accession of John Harewell in 1367).Footnote ²³ The account in the Historia major ends with the translation of Stafford's predecessor, Bishop Bubwith, to Bath and Wells. It was possibly written during Stafford's tenure of the see, and was therefore conceivably even commissioned by Stafford himself. At the very least its use by the compiler of the British Library list suggests that the text of the Historia major was available to Stafford and his circle.Footnote ²⁴

The biographies in the British Library list are not direct copies of the Historia major, but rather extract certain information and phrases from this text. Athelm's biography provides a good example. Many of the phrases are borrowed directly from the Historia major's account of Athelm's episcopate.Footnote ²⁵ Furthermore, the information that Athelm was afterwards archbishop of Canterbury is also available in the Historia major passage and, although the phrasing is different in the two texts, this can partly be explained by the need of the author of the British Library document to create a list from the continuous prose of the Historia major, where Athelm's translation to Canterbury is used as an introduction to the account of his successor, Wulfhelm. With the exception of Stafford, who is not included in the Historia major, all the biographical notes derive from the Historia, but the writer has made an error in his compilation of the biography assigned to Godfrey. Here, he has copied the biographical details of Godfrey's successor Robert, specifically referring to his work in reforming the church of Wells. Godfrey's own episcopate was not a happy model: opposed by his own archdeacon in a land dispute, he failed to win the support of the king and died before he could resolve the impasse. It seems probable that the compiler intended to include Robert, whom he erroneously called Godfrey.

As the biography of Athelm demonstrates, even where the author of the British Library document took directly from the Historia major, that borrowing was selective. In part this is due to the briefer nature of the biographies in the later text, which run to no more than a few lines each. At the same time the choices made by the compiler of the British Library document reinforce the conclusion that the bishops included in the list were chosen with regard to Stafford's own career. For the later bishops to hold the see, a place of burial is often given in the Historia major, yet this information is consistently omitted from the Stafford document, perhaps because Stafford, having been appointed to Canterbury, was unlikely to be buried at either of the seats of his former see. In the biographies of Reginald and Jocelin of Wells, notices of the foundations of the hospitals of St John in Bath and Wells are copied from the Historia major, again using similar wording. Reginald's founding of new prebends at Wells is omitted, as is Jocelin's securing of rights for his successors. Stafford had minor dealings with both hospitals during his tenure of Bath and Wells, which may have been a partial justification for the inclusion of this information.Footnote ²⁶ He may also have held a special interest in these foundations dedicated to his name saint, but if so it is unrecorded. Other authorial decisions are more perplexing. We have seen that the holding of offices in common with Stafford appears to have encouraged a figure's inclusion, but John Droxford's holding of the treasurership of England, mentioned in the Historia major, is omitted from the British Library document in favour of a reference to his building works in his diocese.

The list was clearly not compiled by Stafford himself, since the author concludes with instructions to the archbishop as patron. As such, it shows the employment of a scholarly researcher or advisor who had presumably been asked to compile the options from which Stafford could choose. Such advisors are rarely, if ever, recorded and there is little evidence for their role in England. Furthermore, we know that the archbishop was regarded as a patron of scholars since Tito Livio dei Frulovisi, the Italian humanist, employed extreme flattery in an attempt to win Stafford's support while the latter was bishop of Bath and Wells.Footnote ²⁷ In the present case the writer was probably a native scholar since he reverts to English when not using Latin, suggesting that this is his first language. Although no record of a scholarly circle surrounding Stafford survives, there is good evidence that his episcopal contemporaries presided over such groups. When George Neville, archbishop of York, was arrested by Edward iv in 1472, it was noted in the Paston letters that ‘som þat are greete klerkys and famous doctorys of hys, goo now ageyn to Cambrygge to scoolle’.Footnote ²⁸

There is no indication of the intended location of the scheme, but it may well have been designed for the hall of the archiepiscopal palace at Croydon, which Stafford remodelled after his elevation to Canterbury.Footnote ²⁹ His arms, and those of his family, can still be seen on the roof corbels and on the roof itself. It is interesting, in the context of the document, that the arms of both Canterbury and Bath and Wells appear in the hall, emphasising, as the author of the document had done, Stafford's connection to each see.Footnote ³⁰ The hall has three windows down its north side and four down the south; each is of a simple three-light design. The specifications of twelve bishops for one side and nine for the other would therefore fit exactly, if they occupied a light each. A large window was recorded in the east wall of the hall before it fell down in 1830, which would fit with the instruction for imagery to be set in the east gable.Footnote ³¹ That the scheme was intended for a hall rather than a chapel may also be indicated in a short phrase rubbed almost to illegibility at the foot of one of the folios, which appears to include the word ‘Aule’.Footnote ³²

Unfortunately, nothing of the glazing in the hall at Croydon survives and there is no evidence that the windows ever held such a scheme. The palace had fallen into disrepair by the late eighteenth century and was sold to a private investor.Footnote ³³ By 1818 the great hall was being used to bleach linen.Footnote ³⁴ As a print of 1829 illustrating the interior of the hall shows, no glass remained in the windows by the early nineteenth century: they were covered with wooden slats, presumably for ventilation of the bleaching hall.Footnote ³⁵ It is not the execution of the scheme which is of interest, however, but its conception. The importance of the document in describing the planning of a commission can hardly be overestimated. And the scheme itself holds some interest in the history of episcopal patronage.

Comparable evidence for episcopal involvement in the commission of a glazing scheme can be found in the vidimus for a window designed for Cardinal Wolsey around 1525 and now in Edinburgh, in the National Gallery of Scotland.Footnote ³⁶ Like the British Library scheme, the planned work does not survive, and it is not known if it was ever executed, although it has been suggested that it was intended for Wolsey's chapel at York Place.Footnote ³⁷ The Edinburgh drawing is a plan for a large window, with thirteen lights in two tiers. Scenes of the Passion, from the ‘Carrying of the Cross’ to the ‘Ascension of Christ’ are flanked by standing saints in all'antica niches. The design is liberally annotated in a contemporary hand, with an alternative set of scenes to be placed in the lights; these annotations are likely to reflect the requests of the patron or his agent.Footnote ³⁸ The British Library plan acts as a verbal basis for discussion in the same way that the Edinburgh drawing acts as a starting-point for negotiations over Wolsey's planned window.

As well as being paralleled in the Edinburgh drawing, the Stafford scheme falls into a tradition in which bishops sought to assert their place within episcopal genealogies and especially within the sacred lineages of their sees. A few years after Stafford's death, a group of sainted archbishops would be placed among the figures in the tracery lights of the great north window overlooking the Martyrdom at Canterbury Cathedral.Footnote ³⁹ These figures have been attributed to the patronage of Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop 1454–86. As bishop of Bath and Wells, Stafford would have known the scheme of episcopal effigies placed in the choir aisles at Wells, which represent a twelfth- or early thirteenth-century attempt to argue the lineage of Wells as an episcopal seat.Footnote ⁴⁰ The most interesting comparison with the scheme planned by Stafford, however, is to be found in the glass at All Souls College, Oxford, which was founded by Stafford's predecessor and patron Archbishop Henry Chichele and King Henry vi in 1438.Footnote ⁴¹ As a protégé of Chichele, as well as his successor at Canterbury, Stafford surely knew this scheme, which was originally in the Old Library at All Souls. Now much restored and replaced in the two west windows of the antechapel, the scheme comprised sixteen kings, the four Latin Doctors and twelve archbishops of Canterbury. Just as the Croydon scheme obviously refers to Stafford's career, so that at All Souls presents the inheritance of Henry vi in a carefully selected programme.Footnote ⁴²

In commissioning such schemes, both Chichele and Stafford were representing themselves as part of an episcopal family, in what may be termed a genealogy of authority. Similar commissions have been noted by Maureen Miller in her study of Italian episcopal palaces, and the importance of membership of an episcopal lineage for English bishops is clear in their commissions.Footnote ⁴³ Displays of lineage were common in the windows of English halls, as Richard Marks has noted.Footnote ⁴⁴ The hall, where the lord both met with his household and entertained visiting guests, was an obvious site for an impressive display of credentials.

Unlike most laymen, however, bishops were sometimes in a position to claim their succession to saints or near-saints. At Lincoln, William Smith (1495–1514) was the dedicatee of a life of Robert Grosseteste, a popularly revered bishop of Lincoln who had not quite made it to formal canonisation.Footnote ⁴⁵ One of Smith's seals features the Virgin Mary, who is traditionally found on almost all Lincoln seals of this period.Footnote ⁴⁶ But the Virgin is flanked by two episcopal figures, who do not appear on the others. They are named on the plinths on which they stand as St Birinus and St Hugh. Beneath, Smith himself kneels in prayer flanked by his personal arms and those of the see. The implications of this unique combination of saints are clear. In featuring Birinus and Hugh flanking the Virgin Mary, to whom his cathedral church was dedicated, Smith was tracing his episcopal authority back to the see's beginnings at Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, where it had been established by St Birinus, Dorchester's first bishop.Footnote ⁴⁷ St Hugh, canonised in 1220 and the principal focus of pilgrimage at Lincoln itself, was frequently cited as a model of episcopal conduct. It is notable that Smith makes this assertion of the antiquity and divine nature of his position on his seal, the object that carried his authority on documents. Any doubt as to the identity of the saints was removed by having their names engraved underneath them, a device rarely used on episcopal seals.Footnote ⁴⁸

Stafford's scheme includes a number of saints and in emphasising his place in the sacred genealogy of the Canterbury episcopate he was, therefore, participating in a trend common to a number of his contemporaries. A direct parallel to Smith's acknowledgement of his see's origins at Dorcester can be found in the Stafford document which emphasises Bishop Jocelin's connection to Congresbury, first seat of the bishop in Somerset. However, the scheme includes figures who were never canonised, or even the subject of popular cults, and demonstrates a personal visual agenda in which Stafford placed himself in the saintly and earthly inheritance of his see. This can be related to two other examples of Stafford's patronage.

The first is provided by Stafford's installation feasts as bishop of Bath and Wells and archbishop of Canterbury, menus for both of which survive.Footnote ⁴⁹ At each feast, every lavish course was accompanied by a ‘sotelte’, a table decoration usually of sugar or paste, which proclaimed Stafford's elevation to each see in a carefully coordinated visual display.Footnote ⁵⁰ When he was installed as bishop of Bath and Wells in 1425, Stafford's feast consisted of three courses. The first course was accompanied by a model of a doctor of law, no doubt representing Stafford in his pre-episcopal state. The second featured a model of an eagle, standing not only for royalty and authority, but for Stafford's name saint, John the Evangelist. The third course celebrated Stafford's achievement, with a model of St Andrew, the patron saint of Wells Cathedral, the see to be held by the new bishop. The same emphasis can be found at the banquet to celebrate Stafford's elevation to Canterbury, when a subtlety of St Andrew, with the bishop kneeling before him, accompanied the first course, again representing Stafford before his appointment to the archiepiscopal office. The second featured a tableau of the Trinity with St Thomas Becket, St Augustine of Canterbury and the archbishop, accompanied by the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, signifying not only Stafford's inheritance from the two sainted archbishops, but also his jurisdiction over these two important religious houses. Both Thomas and Augustine appear in the glazing scheme: as the most revered and the first archbishop respectively, their inclusion in both the feast and the glass is easily explained. The third and most glorious model accompanied the third course: a godhead in a golden glory, with the holy ghost, with St Thomas kneeling below, the sword of the martyrdom emerging from his mitred head and a crowned S.T., standing both for St Thomas, and the first two letters of the new archbishop's name. To the right, Mary held a mitre, to the left stood John the Baptist, another of Stafford's name saints. The whole was censed by four angels. The appearance of such extravagant subtleties at feasts was common, but the record of those at Stafford's two installation feasts gives us an idea of the programmatic nature of those banquets, and of the importance placed on establishing Stafford's place in the hierarchy. The subtleties chart his rise from doctor of law to successor of Thomas Becket in a carefully devised programme, which, like the glazing scheme, places emphasis on the honourable inheritance of his position. This culinary pageant would have taken place in the hall of one of Stafford's episcopal palaces, just as it was probably the hall of one of his palaces which provided the setting for the more permanent glazing scheme.

The second example shows Stafford confronting his illegitimate origins. His mother, Emma, was later to become a nun and, when she died, Stafford built an elaborate chantry chapel to her memory on the north side of North Bradley parish church in Wiltshire. Care was taken to give a balanced exterior appearance and the north window stands proud of the main wall in an elegant ‘bay’ design, emphasising the delicacy of the walls. On the interior, the wooden roof is carved with quatrefoil panels with floral and hunting scenes, the latter a traditional aristocratic activity. The sill of the north window has been lowered to allow for Emma's memorial, which takes the form of an incised slab depicting a nun with a dog at her feet, the pose itself a badge of courtliness. Throughout the chapel, Stafford appears concerned to associate himself with his mother. She is defined in the inscription on her slab, and in glass which was recorded in the chapel in the seventeenth century, as the mother of the archbishop.Footnote ⁵¹ John Aubrey recorded that Stafford, himself, was represented in the glass along with the remains of an inscription which appears to have recorded his role in building the chapel.Footnote ⁵²

While Stafford's right to be placed with the illustrious archbishops of Canterbury was displayed ephemerally in his installation feasts and permanently in the glazing scheme, at North Bradley he created a miniature aristocratic memorial for his mother, elevating her status as a holy woman and an archbishop's mother in a manner which emphasised the respectability of his own origins. The care taken with the chapel perhaps suggests that its building was an act of filial affection, but it also served to provide Stafford with a monument to a familial heritage which was compromised by his illegitimacy. As such, it can be set alongside the presence of the nobles William Courtenay and Thomas Arundel in the Canterbury list for the glazing scheme. The archbishop himself was buried with his episcopal family at Canterbury. The matrix of his brass survives in the floor of the Martyrdom, where Thomas Becket had fallen, a popular site for episcopal burials.Footnote ⁵³ In death, he defined himself primarily as an archbishop of Canterbury and, specifically, as a successor of Becket.

Thus a short, slightly scrawled, document collected, perhaps by accident, by William Worcester, can tell us a great deal. Its existence serves as rare evidence for part of the planning process behind a late medieval artistic project, showing a patron who was closely involved with the creation of his commission. It adds to the knowledge we have of the decoration of episcopal halls in the later Middle Ages, much of which has been lost by decay or subsequent renovation. Set alongside other works it provides further information about Stafford's interests and concerns in his artistic commissions; more widely, an understanding of the glazing scheme described can contribute to our knowledge of episcopal artistic patronage in the later Middle Ages.