Figure 18 : St Agnes . Thurbern ’ s Chantry , tracery light of south wall window by Matthew Hutton , who visited the college on 21 January 1685 . 9 Both reveal a lost fragment that indicated the involvement of a woman in its commission . Below the central two donors who pray at a table facing one another was once a short inscription ‘ Orate pro Agnetis uxoris eius …’, meaning ‘ Pray for Agnes his wife …’. Her husband ’ s name , and hence her identity , was sadly lost by the time Hutton saw the glass in 1685 . Agnes is also alluded to in the tracery lights at the top of the window , where her name saint is depicted just right of the centre . St Agnes is identified by her attributes , holding a text in one hand and feeding a lamb with the other ( fig . 18 ).
As with most studies of medieval stained glass , we do not have all the pieces of the puzzle . The fifteenth-century window that originally stood by its side may have revealed the answer , but all that is known of its appearance and subject — probably Wykeham ’ s consecration — is taken from Hutton ’ s short description , and a single fragment of glass showing the torso of St Denis , which is to the same scale as the female saints at the top of the window . Perhaps it was full of sainted bishops , providing a clear division between male and female figures in each . Without a full programme , it cannot be known for certain .
Afterlife of the Glass . Although the glass is now back in Thurbern ’ s Chantry , it has spent almost half its existence in other parts of the school . Hutton ’ s description of 1685 records the sixteenth-century glass in the south wall beside the fifteenth-century window . By this time structural issues caused by the failure of the tower , built over the west bay of the chantry , had begun to take effect . Multiple attempts were made in the following century to remedy this problem , eventually leading to the removal of all the glass in Thurbern ’ s . By 1759 , the
Figure 19 : Glass from Thurbern ’ s Chantry reassembled in Fromond ’ s Chantry ( archives , 14 / 6 / 61 )
western window had been walled up and in 1772 , the glass of the eastern window was removed and placed in the east window of Fromond ’ s Chantry in the adjacent cloister ( fig . 19 ). However , the donor panels were too large for the window tracery . To make the glass fit , the figures were cut in half from the waist down and even then , they were
Medieval Glass at Winchester College 13