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Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and the Gardens of Adonis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
Extract
In the architectural description in the Victoria County History of the superstructure over the tomb of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), in St. Albans Abbey, there is a drawing by our late Fellow, the Rev. E. E. Dorling, of a frequently repeated ornamental detail that is called ‘a device of daisies in a standing cup’, and there rightly said to be one of the duke's badges, for it was observed that it was used not only in conspicuous decorative bands, but also as the cresting of the coronets over the duke's arms (pls. xiv and xv). In 1796 our famous Director, Richard Gough, also noted and figured this badge, which he described as ‘wheat-ears in vases on pedestals’, and he suggested that it was the device of Abbot John Whethamstede who, he thought, had built the tomb. Chauncey (1700) and the later historians of Hertfordshire made no reference it it; Weever (1631) did not notice it, nor did Sandford (1677), whose beautiful, but in this respect inaccurate, illustration of the canopy shows the device as an angel's head with wings.
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1946
References
page 118 note 1 V.C.H. Herts. ii, 494. Cf. also Mrs. Maude C. Knight's excellent account of the tomb and this badge, St. Albans & Herts. Archit. & Arch. Soc. Trans, ii, N.S., 1903-1914, p. 81Google Scholar.
page 118 note 2 Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, ii (1796), 142Google Scholar.
page 118 note 3 I have to thank Mr. H. S. London for this information, and for much help in connexion with the College of Arms MSS. mentioned here.
page 118 note 4 Hope, W. St. J.. Stall Plates, 1901, pl. LVIIIGoogle Scholar.
page 119 note 1 Cf. College of Arms L. 14, p. 105 and Vincent 173, f. 13; also Archaeologist, lxxvi, pl. XXII.
page 119 note 2 For the tomb see Registrant Abbatiae Johannis Whetehamstede, Rolls 28, 6, i, p. 470; cf. also English Chronicle of Reigns of Richard II—Henry VI, Camden Soc., pp. 117–18. For the building accounts in B.M. Claudius A. VIII, f. 195, see Vickers, Kenneth, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, London, 1907, p. 439Google Scholar.
page 120 note 1 Of Montacute, when it became Sir Thomas Wyat's property, Leland says suas coepit paullatim expandere cristas, suggesting the more general sense of new decoration and gayer appearance. Naenia in mortem Thomae Viati (Itinerary, 3rd ed., 1769, ii).
page 120 note 2 Pauly-Wissowa, vii, pt. i, p. 807; Frazer, , Golden Bough, ‘Adonis, Attis, Osiris’.Google ScholarRochette, Raoul, Rev. Arch. viii (1851), 97.Google Scholar The illustration here, a vase in Karlsruhe, is taken from Deubner, Ludwig, Attische Feste, Berlin, 1932, pl. 25, 1Google Scholar.
page 121 note 1 Loeb Library trans., ii, 399.
page 121 note 2 Migne, xxiv, iv, 774 (Comm. Isaiah xviii, cap. lxv, v. 3).
page 121 note 3 Adagia, 1, iv.
page 121 note 4 Hist. de Deis Gentium, op. ed., 1696, i, col. 412 C–D.
page 121 note 5 In addition to the Cygnea Cantio passage above, cf. Leland, Collectanea, ed. 1770, iv, 131.
page 121 note 6 Pliny, , N.H., xix, 4, 19Google Scholar.
page 121 note 7 De Re Hortensi Libellus, Paris, 1535, pp. 8–9Google Scholar.
page 121 note 8 Scholia in Aphtonii Sophistae progymnasmata, 1546.
page 121 note 9 F.Q. III, vi, 29; cf. Bennett, J. W., M.L.A. xlvii (1932), 46 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 122 note 1 Paradise Lost, ix, 440.
page 122 note 2 1 Henry VI, 1, vi.
page 122 note 3 For Whethamstede's scholarship see Weiss, R., Humanism in England during the 15th Century, Oxford, 1941. pp. 30–8.Google Scholar When I was writing this paper most of Whethamstede's surviving writings were not available for study.