It will render the following remarks on the glass in New College Chapel more intelligible if I state, at the outset, that this building consists of an Antechapel, or Transept, and of a Choir, or Inner Chapel, at right angles to it. That the Ante-chapel is furnished with a central West window, having fourteen lower lights—the widest in the chapel—arranged in two tiers, and a head of tracery, to which no further allusion need be made: two smaller West windows, one on either side the last, each having eight lower lights arranged in two tiers, and eighteen tracery lights, six only of which are capable of containing figures; two windows on the North, and one on the South side, precisely similar to the last in size and arrangement; and two East windows, facing the smaller West windows, having twelve lower lights apiece—the narrowest in the chapel—and fourteen tracery lights, ten only of which are capable of containing figures; and that the Choir is furnished with five South, and five North windows, of the same dimensions and arrangement as the smaller West windows of the Antechapel.
I have been thus minute in noticing the relative widths of the lower lights of these windows, because the soundness of the conclusions at which I have arrived respecting the original arrangement of the glass in the chapel, in great measure depends on the fact of the lights of the two East windows being the narrowest, though of equal length with the others.
The remains of the oldest or original glazing are dispersed throughout all these windows, with the exception of the central West window; and from such an examination of them as time and circumstances have permitted, it appears to me that, when in a perfect state, the lower lights of the northernmost of the West windows, and of the two North windows of the Antechapel, contained representations of the Patriarchs and other worthies of the Old Testament—a single figure under a canopy occupying each light. That in like manner the lower lights of the two East windows of the Antechapel contained representations of the twelve Apostles, and of our Lord's Crucifixion, four times repeated. That similar representations of Old and New Testament and Church saints and worthies occupied the lower lights of the South and smaller West windows of the Antechapel, and most probably the lower lights of all the Choir windows; and
