When the fox preaches...

The misericords of St George’s Chapel form one of the finest collections of 15th century carvings in the country. The carvers could choose what they wanted to depict, leading to scenes taken from bestiaries, literature and proverbs, and all aspects of human life. 

Depicted on the south side in stall 8 is a fox in priest’s garb, preaching to a flock of geese [SGC PH CCA.248]. The fox represents cunning and falsehood, and the geese the gullible and foolish congregation. The sly fox would lull the geese into a false sense of security with his soothing words, enabling him to make them his dinner. The moral of this story was that foolish people are seduced by false doctrines.

In the church, these representations were often used as warnings against the preaching of the Lollards, followers of a religious movement which began in the mid-14th century and continued to the Reformation. Continuing the story, the fox is suitably punished for his treachery. In the Windsor misericords this is depicted as three friars and a fox with a stolen goose being trundled in a wheelbarrow into the mouth of hell. 

The story of the preaching fox appears in the 12^th century tales of Reynard the Fox, and gave rise to the proverb “When the fox preaches, look to your geese”. The stories of Reynard the Fox had become popular in English folklore by the 14th century and would have been well-known to the carvers. The stories featured in many contemporary works of literature, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and in 1481, one of the earliest books printed by William Caxton was The Historie of Reynart the Foxe, a translation of a Dutch text. 

Many of the Reynard stories reflect in biting satire the peasant’s criticism and contempt for the upper classes and the clergy so, despite its use by the Roman Catholic Church as a propaganda weapon against reformers, this image could equally be seen as a message to the established church, that congregations were not prepared to put up with those corrupt members of the clergy who promoted their own concerns above the good of the people.

Eleanor Cracknell (Assistant Archivist)

On 28 March 1924, the day after the death of the renowned organist Sir Walter Parratt, the Dean and Canons of Windsor resolved to offer the post of Organist and Choirmaster at St George’s Chapel to Sir Henry Walford Davies. Walford Davies had served five years as a chorister at Windsor under the tutelage of Sir Walter Parratt, whom he much admired. He had since distinguished himself as a composer and performer of church music, studying under Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music and serving as Organist and Choirmaster at the Temple Church in London from 1898 to 1919. Yet, despite his fond memories of Windsor, Walford Davies did not accept the post at St George’s in 1924. It was not an easy decision, as he wrote to the Reverend Edmund H. Fellowes, a Minor Canon at St George’s whom Davies considered a friend: ‘I’ve thought uphill and downdale, and I am now sure that I must not accept dear Windsor, or the post which w[oul]d have brought us two into such lovely companionship’. Having assumed the Professorship of Music at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the Chairmanship of the National Council of Music for Wales, he did not feel it a propitious time to move away from Wales.

Fortunately for the Dean and Canons, Fellowes was on hand to fill the vacancy at Windsor until such time as a successor to Parratt could be found. A distinguished music scholar in his own right and a committed practical musician, Fellowes was willing to act as an interim director of music, drawing up the weekly service lists and training the choir, in addition to his duties as Minor Canon. Meanwhile, whilst the Chapel was undergoing major renovations, including the removal of the Chapel organ, the choir was accompanied on a small replacement organ played by Malcolm Boyle, a former chorister and organ pupil of Sir Walter Parratt, who later became organist of Chester Cathedral. Walford Davies was pleased to offer his advice to Fellowes on the instruction and direction of the choir, by letter and in person (‘I long to come and take a practice for you’ he wrote in April 1924) and this situation continued to everyone’s apparent satisfaction until 1927, when Walford Davies decided, after all, to take up the position of Organist at St George’s.

Letters deposited in the St George’s Chapel Archives in 1995 by Dr Watkins Shaw (SGC M.165/1-16) indicate the problems which arose as soon as Walford Davies decided to take up the post at Windsor, following an illness serious enough to confine him to a nursing home and to force his resignation from his Professorship at Aberystwyth. In an undated letter, Davies wrote of his sadness at finding himself and Fellowes seemingly at cross purposes, assuring his friend that ‘if I come it must be to fulfil and not to displace all the good that has been done in the dear place’.  However, differences in opinion, style and temperament were to cloud the relationship with Fellowes of which Davies had such high hopes. In relinquishing the direction of music whilst remaining a Minor Canon, Fellowes found that he and his successor held increasingly divergent views on the nature of the choral service and often regretted Walford Davies’ selection of music at Windsor. He was not alone in this, Charles Hylton Stewart, a fellow organist, expressing similar disquietude at Davies’ choice: ‘The [music] list you sent is the limit, Even Croft & Greene are represented by feeble things. What can be done? Such an example!’

Sir Henry Walford Davies achieved several successes during his time at St George’s Chapel, the most notable of which was the commissioning and installation of a new, twin console Rothwell organ, which was inaugurated at a morning service on 4 November 1930. Davies composed a Te Deum for double choir and orchestra for this celebratory occasion, which was held in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary, and was gratified to receive a gracious message from their Majesties’ expressing their warm appreciation of the music performed at the service under his direction. However, irreconcilable differences in approach between the more traditional Dean and Canons and the flamboyant musician, led to an inevitable parting of the ways.  On receiving the Organist’s resignation at a meeting on 29 November 1931, Chapter minuted that ‘while regretting the resignation of Sir Walford Davies, they do not question the wisdom of his decision and accordingly accept it with a sense of deep gratitude for his services to St George’s throughout an important period in its history’.  His successor, Charles Hylton Stewart, whom Chapter described as a ‘devout Churchman …whose patience, tact and singular charm of manner won him the instant affection of all the members of the Foundation’ could not have been a greater contrast. Sadly Hylton Stewart’s employment at Windsor lasted only 3 months, brought to a sudden end by his death in November 1932 after a short and severe illness. Dr. Fellowes was again asked to step in to direct the choir until the arrival of the new Organist, William Henry Harris, in 1933.

Clare Rider, Archivist and Chapter Librarian

We are publishing a series of research guides on the Guide to Holdings section of this website. The guides contain information on the documents held at the St George’s Chapel Archives and Chapter Library, provide introductions to a range of topics relating to the history of St George’s Chapel, and suggest relevant secondary texts for consultation.

Research guides on the College of St George and the Properties of the College are now available to view online.

The first covers the history of the College, describing its initial foundation, the structure and positions of authority within the College, and the changes made over the years. The second describes the properties administered by the Dean and Canons of Windsor throughout England and Wales, the people responsible for their management, and the records held on these.

Amongst the 1352 Statutes drawn up by the Bishop of Winchester to regulate the newly established College of St George, Windsor Castle, is one which might at first sight have come from the 1960s, when mini-skirts and long-hair were all the rage:

Also we decree and strictly order that the Canons of the said Chapel residentiary in the same and also the Vicars and Clerks of the same do not wear their vestments ridiculous or remarkable for extreme shortness but touching at least the middle of the leg and do not wear their hair long or too much elaborated as effeminate persons but go about shaven that they may shew their ears open not covered with hair and have their tonsure of a becoming breadth.  (SGC IV.B.11 pp.35-36)

Clare Rider (Archivist and Chapter Librarian)

Dean Christopher Wren, father of the architect

In 1682 the Dean and Canons of Windsor called in Sir Christopher Wren to undertake an architectural survey of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, and to provide an estimate for the restoration work required. Sir Christopher Wren was no stranger to St George’s: his uncle, Matthew, and father, Christopher, had successively served as Dean of Windsor, from 1628 to 1635 and 1635 to 1659 respectively. The younger Christopher Wren (born in 1632) had spent much of his childhood in the Windsor Deanery. However, it was as a skilled surveyor and architect rather than as a former resident that he was invited back in 1682.  His five page report to the Dean and Canons “concerning the defects and reparations of this Chapel” was considered by Chapter at a meeting on 4 April 1682. It made depressing reading.    

Wren’s main concern lay in the condition of the external stonework, particularly the battlements, pinnacles and the “beasts” mounted on them. He wrote:
The Battlements in some places are loose enough and want pointinge, in some places fallen and alsoe the Pinnacles want pointing. The beasts which stand upon them broken and fallen in the gutters. The coapings of the Buttresses in many places take water and nourish weeds and want cleaning and pointinge, the north side most especially…

Indeed, he went so far as to recommend that the beasts on the west front be removed and replaced with forty-eight pineapples at a cost of £50 each:
I could wish the beasts on the west body of the Church which are all decayed & by falling break the lead might be taken of & in leiue of them Pineapples… added to coap the Pinnacles from weather, it would be a decent ornament & the charge not soe considerable as the advantage it would give the fabricke.

Wren’s total estimate for the restoration work was £1,012 which he suggested should be spread over seven years. The Dean and Canons were guided by the majority of Wren’s recommendations, undertaking a major programme of building works including the removal of the “beasts”. However, whether for financial or for aesthetic reasons, Chapter did not take up his suggestion of replacing them with pineapples.

Clare (Archivist and Chapter Librarian)

Stallplate of Charles Brandon, KG

Charles Brandon (1484-1545) was a close personal friend of King Henry VIII who granted him the title of Duke of Suffolk along with many other honours. He was made famous by his great command in the French Campaign of 1513, after which was appointed Knight of the Garter. His stall plate can be seen in the seventh stall on the north side of the Quire in St George’s Chapel. He was also famously known for his marriage to Mary, sister of Henry VIII and widow of Louis XII, King of France. However this royal marriage which took place without the King’s permisson was viewed an offence against royal etiquette. As a result Charles and Mary were banished to the Brandon estates in Suffolk. But the King’s displeaure was quickly forgotten and Brandon advanced to high honour and was successful in becoming Master of the Horse in 1513, as well as receiving many valuable grants of land.

Charles Brandon died of unknown causes and was buried at St Georges Chapel on the King’s wishes, although in his will he had requested to be buried at Tattershall in Lincolnshire. A black marble slab now marks his burial place in the South Quire Aisle, bearing an inscription with his name, title, date of death and marital status. The arms of Brandon and his wife, Mary, are contained in two circles engraved at the top of the ledger stone. The current inscription is the third: previously there have been two others, which are both now non-existent. The first inscription, recorded by Ashmole, had disappeared by 1749 and was replaced by a second, suspected to have been the work of Henry Emlyn. The present inscription was carved in 1947-8.

Layla Holden, Chloe Roach, Mollie White (Windsor Girls’ School)

Detail from the monument to Princess Charlotte

The monument built in the memory of Princess Charlotte (1796-1817) that presides in the Urswick Chapel in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, was constructed by M.C. Wyatt. The money required to cover its cost was raised through private subscription as early as 1817, the same year as the Princess’s death. A list of subscribers who donated money was published in The Times newspaper in 1818. Subscribers were urged to write their names legibly on their subscription papers as mistakes were sometimes unavoidable when the newspapers were written and subsequently printed (The Times, 13th January 1818).

There were certain members of the public, however, who felt the money being raised could be used towards greater causes. One reader of The Times brought forward this suggestion in a letter to the editor: ‘The season is now approaching when the opera is to open: in support of its ballets, female children, from the age of 6 to 16, are brought forward: their remuneration for a season of 60 nights, is not more than 41.4s for each child: here is gain at the expense of eternal happiness, interdependent of the vice which is disseminated by their intercourse with those of their own age.’ (The Times, 25th December 1817). Another writer earnestly pleaded that the monument (whatever it turned out to be) should at least ‘…record in some measure the virtues of the distinguished personate to whose memory it is raised. It is not to be the mere mausoleum of her exalted rank, nor the funeral urn of her personal grace and accomplishments; – it is to express the esteem entertained for qualities of another order.’ (The Times, 13th February 1818).

According to an entry in the register of Chapter Acts, services in St George’s were disrupted and even cancelled in consequence of the work being undertaken in the Chapel for the erection of the Monument (SGC VI.B.9). It was finally unveiled in 1824, seven years after the Princess’s death. Over the years it has needed various restoration work – it was cleaned in 1844 by request of the Office of Works (SGC XVII.61.29 (b)) and in 1849 a pinnacle was restored over the tomb by local stone mason and builder, Thomas Bedborough, for the price of £25 (SGC VI.B.10)

Frances O’Donnell (Archives volunteer)

In October 1642, Colonel John Venn and twelve companies of foot soldiers took possession of Windsor Castle on behalf of Parliament. With Parliamentary troops occupying the Castle, it was merely a question of time before Governor Venn would seek to have the Royalist Dean and Canons ejected from the Lower Ward.  The House of Lords attempted to preserve the College of St George from harm, ordering the Speaker to write to Colonel Venn “to take care that there be no disorders and disturbances made in the Chapel at Windsor; and that the evidences, registers, monuments there and all things that belong to the Order of the Garter, may be preserved without any defacings; and that he permit the Prebends to live in their own houses”. However, it was not to be and on 23 May 1643 the Dean and Canons, accepting the inevitable, petitioned the Lords that “they may have liberty to carry forth all their goods, utensils, household stuffs and books to their several abodes, and that an order might be made for their safe conveying and quiet enjoying of the same”.

With the Dean and Canons departed, Colonel Venn set about plundering the Chapel, from a combination of religious and financial motives. The coat of mail belonging to Edward IV, with its surcoat of crimson velvet decorated with pearls and rubies, was seized from above his tomb and much of the woodwork and metalwork removed, including the brass statues designed for Henry VIII’s unfinished tomb. In September 1643 the organs and stained glass in the Chapel were defaced and many of the furnishings were destroyed or sold. The Chapel plate was melted down and coined to finance Fairfax’s northern campaign. But all was not lost. The Dean, Dr Christopher Wren, father of the famous architect, managed to recover and preserve the three registers of the Order of the Garter (the Black, Blue and Red Books), and these are now held in the Chapel Archives.  Meanwhile the Poor Knights of Windsor, an integral part of the College of St George since its foundation in 1348, were allowed to remain in residence in the Castle. Although depleted in number and in financial distress, they kept the spirit of the College alive throughout the Commonwealth and were there to greet the new Dean, Bruno Ryves, and his fellow Canons at the Restoration in 1660.

Clare (Archivist and Chapter Librarian)

Lighting in Denton's Commons

In 1829, the Dean and Canons of Windsor reached agreement with the Windsor Royal Gas Light Company to install gas lighting in the College, namely in the Dean’s Cloister, Canons’ Cloister, Denton’s Commons and the Horseshoe Cloister. Two years earlier at a meeting of the newly formed gas company in November 1827, a shareholder mentioned that “it was the intention of the Dean and Canons of Windsor to light the Cathedral and Cloisters with gas”.  The Windsor and Eton Express reporter who attended the shareholders’ meeting was enthusiastic about the introduction of resin gas lighting to the Royal Borough, with the sanction of King George IV.

The endorsement of the Dean and Canons may well have assisted the gas company in its endeavours to win over the resistant element in the town’s population and before long the College benefited from improved lighting in the Cloisters. Indeed, in June 1830 the Canon Steward sought an estimate from James Bedborough, one of the founding trustees of the company and joint proprietor of the Windsor gas works, for fixing six additional gas lamps in the Cloisters.  Although gas was not introduced into the Chapel itself until sometime later, James Bedborough supplied gas to the College for an annual fee which, in the early 1830s, amounted to £80. By 1838 the Windsor Royal Gas Light Company was supplying the Dean and Canons with gas for seventeen lamps. James Bedborough, originally a stone mason employed by Sir Jeffrey Wyattville on George IV’s major reconstruction of Windsor Castle, became a man of influence in the town, not only as a supplier of gas lighting but also as a property developer, railway speculator, Alderman and Mayor. His son, Thomas James Bedborough, was to be employed by the College during the 1840s restoration of St George’s Chapel, following in his father’s footsteps as a stone mason, builder, gas company director and member of the town council. 

Clare (Archivist and Chapter Librarian)

In November 1894 the Thames Valley experienced some of the worst flooding it had seen in the nineteenth century. Philip Frank Eliot, then Dean of Windsor, recorded his experience of the floods in a letter to his mother, dated 18 November 1894, which is preserved in St George’s Chapel Archives [SGC M.148/1]:

‘We are in a terrible plight here on account of the floods. Looking from my study window I can see the whole country for miles like a great sea with trees growing out of it. All the lower parts of the town are under water. There are whole streets where no house can be reached except in a boat. And yesterday the clergy were going about in boats to bring bread and food to the people. Four of the Churches are flooded, and there can be no service in them today. You might have thought that we up here in the Castle would be out of reach of any trouble from a flood. But yesterday morning we were informed first that the gas works were all under water and that we could have no gas, and then that the engine which pumps up the water to supply all our houses was also drowned, and that we could have no supply of water!

‘Then our Choir School was all flooded, and the boys had to be taken out. I took possession of Lord Normanby’s house and put some 14 boys there, and we have 3 with us, and the rest were sent home to their friends. No trains can enter or leave the South Western Railway Station. Eton is all under water, and the boys have all been sent home. But I am thankful to say that the water is now beginning to subside. There has not been so bad a flood for 50 years. And I am afraid there will be a good deal of distress and sickness afterwards.’

John (Archives Assistant)