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like Yevele and Lote was at the same time Chief Mason
to the King. The "custos de la Loygge Lathomorum," warden or
resident master of the works (as Hoo had probably been), was in 1429
John Morys, while under him were 16 masons working in the "Loygge,"
and 3 apprentices; in 1428 there had been 20 masons, 6 setters, 2
apprentices, and 4 labourers, an even larger staff than that working on
the nave in 1396.20 It is nowadays recognized that the
term "lodge" was not in the Middle Ages used in any esoteric
sense, but meant simply the shed or workshop in which the masons hewed
the stone. None the less it is a matter of some interest to learn (from
so impartial a document as a lease) the precise position of the
"Masons' house called le loygge" at Canterbury.21
Of the later craftsmen named, the most important was
William Bonville, marbler of Corfe. The Bonvilles were a large and
influential Purbeck family at this time,22 and it has not so
far been possible to identify the marbler, but he evidently had an
extensive business, in spite of the competition of the alabastermen and
freestone masons, whose products had for many years been tending to
supplant those made from the native marble. Bonville's "marble
stones" for three Priors of Christchurch were among the last
representatives of their kind. |
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NOTES.
1 H.
C. Darby, etc.: Historical Geography of England, 1936, p. 284.
2 Cf. C. Woodforde,
"Glass-Painters in England before the Reformation," in Journal
of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, VI (October, 1935),
p. 64. Chapter Library MS. R.33, pt. i.
3 Chapter Library,
Box D., Rentals, etc.
4 I have assembled
what is known of his career as an appendix to "The Education of the
Mediaeval Architect" in Journal R. I. B. A., June, 1945.
5 A. Vallance: Old
Crosses and Lychgates, 1933, p. 102, and Figs. 130-131; F. H.
Crossley: English Church Monuments, 1933, p. 54; Count Paul Biver
in Archæological Journal, LXVII, 1910, p. 51 ff.
6 R. Willis: "Conventual
Buildings of .........Christ Church in Canterbury" in Archæologia
Cantiana, VII, 1868.
7 R. Willis: Architectural
History of Canterbury Cathedral, 1845, p. 117 ff; cf. A. Oswald:
"Canterbury Cathedral: the Nave and its Designer," in Burlington
Magazine, LXXV (December, 1939), p. 221 ff.
8 D. Knoop and G. P.
Jones: The Mediaeval Mason, 1933, pp. 118-121. The ancient custom
of assigning alternate feast days to the King and to the masons, found
in the Westminster Abbey fabric roll of 1253 (Willis in G. G. Scott: Gleanings
from Westminster Abbey, 2nd ed., 1863, p. 232) is explicitly defined
in an account of 1329, P.R.O., E.101-467-7(1): "When any workmen of
whatsoever condition or craft they may be shall stay upon the King's
work continuously as for a fortnight, three weeks, a month or more, and
two or more feast days shall occur ........ within the same time,
Sundays only excepted, the ing shall have one feast day beginning at the
first and the workmen the other in this manner, namely that the same
workmen shall take from the King on each such alternate feast day their
full and entire wages notwithstanding that they have |