MANOR-HOUSES AND ROYAL CHAPELS •
Hearted had been on the throne when Lincoln and Wells were de-
signed, and Henry HI, the Saintly King as Rome called him, ruled
when Salisbury and the new Westminster Abbey were designed.
Simon de Montfort stood up against Henry III, a hero of the national
English cause against too papal a policy, when the Angel Choir was
added to Lincoln Cathedral. Less than a hundred years later, Edward
III, who was crowned in 1327 and died in 1377, accepted with pleas-
ure the honour of membership in the London Guild of the Merchant
Taylors, i.e. the cloth merchants of the City. This is an eminently
revealing fact, especially if it is viewed in conjunction with commer-
cial and industrial developments in the Netherlands, Germany,
Tuscany and Catalonia. In England the age of Edward III saw a rapid
development of business enterprise. Flemish weavers were called
into the country, trade interests played a considerable part in the
vicissitudes of the Hundred Years War, Vast capitals were accumu-
lated by men such as Dick Whittington and John Poulteney, whose
country seat was Penshurst. In fact more of the manor-houses of the
late Middle Ages were owned by merchants or their descendants
than is usually realised. After the decimation of the old aristocracy
caused by the Wars of the Roses, the proportion o£nouveaux riches
amongst the peers of the realm grew ever more rapidly, until in the
council of sixteen whom Henry VHI named to reign for his little
son, not one was a peer of twelve years* standing.
Thus by 1500 the most active patrons of art were the king and the
towns. The Crown had, about 1330, built St. Stephen's Chapel in
the Palace of Westminster which was burnt in 1834. Judging from
surviving drawings it must have been a building of great artistic
importance. Then in the isth century Henry VI and VH built Eton
College Chapel (begun in 1441), King's College Chapel, Cambridge
(begun in 1446), Henry VII and VDI St. George's Chapel, Windsor
Castle (begun in 1481), and Henry VQI the Chapel of Henry VII at
the east end of Westminster Abbey (1503-19). They are buildings
of extremely simple exteriors and plans, but with plenty of master-
fully executed decoration. The contrast is especially poignant at Cam-
bridge. To design this long, tall, narrow box of a college chapel
(pi. xxn), no spatial genius was needed. There is no differentiation
at all between nave and choir. The decoration too is repetitive, the
same window tracery is used twenty-four times, and the same
panelled fan-vaulting motif. They were rationalists, the men who
designed and enjoyed these buildings, proud constructors, of a bold-
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