Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/590

484 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2 s. ix. D EC . n, 1921. were. Although he was described as a glass-stainer in 1823, this term probably was not intended to imply anything more than that he produced sheets of yellow glass by staining with silver to be after- wards cut on the wheel with stars and ornaments, as the fashion then was. The term glass-stainer in this case cannot have been used in the modern sense as a synonym for glass-painter. The elder Barnett' s ex- periments having ultimately proved success- ful, he took his sons into his confidence, and he and the eldest son, Francis, who had evidently been brought up to be a glass- cutter like his father, branched out as glass-painters under the title of Barnett and Son. Some time previous to 1846 the elder Barnett had ceased to reside at 16, College Street, and removed to 15, East Parade. Francis in the same year was living at 5, Mount Parade, the College Street premises evidently being devoted exclusively to business ('White's Direc- tory,' 1846). The family were Catholics and came into contact with J. A. Hansom (1802-1882), the noted Catholic architect of York, famous as the inventor of the hansom cab and founder of The Builder journal ; also with Mr. Maycock, likewise a Catholic, and an architect and brother-in-law to Hansom. Hansom,who erected many Catholic churches, employed the Barnetts for the windows of several of them, Maycock supplying the cartoons. One of their earliest works seems to have been a small window at Hessle, near Hull, from designs of the glass in the Temple Church, which had been executed by Wille- ment some time after the year 1840. In 1844, during the meeting of the British Association in York, Frank Barnett exhi- bited, in the Model Room of the Association, a copy 8ft. high of one of the lights in the ast window of All Saints, * North Street, representing St. Anne teaching the Virgin. In the following year the firm removed to Monkgate, to a house afterwards con- verted into a carriage repository by Mr. Mann, and in that year they undertook the restoration of one of the windows of the Chapter House. This window was the fourth or easternmost, and the restoration was carried out in the much-to-be-deplored fashion of the time by making an entirely new copy. What became of the original glass is not known. For this mode of treatment the glass -painters were not responsible, as it was the generally accepted method of dealing with old glass. A " Valued Friend," for example, in an article on stained glass in The Literary Gazette for September, 1826, after expressing his satis- faction at the way in which the authorities of Winchester College had similarly replaced the ancient glass in the chapel with copies by Bet ton and Evans of Shrewsbury, wrote : We only wish there were better reason to expect that the example of the Warden and Fellows of this venerable establishment were likely to be followed more extensively, and no- where, we suspect, is such an example more needed than at the sister institution of New College. Why the fourth window of the Chapter House should have been in a worse condition than the others it is difficult to say. Possibly it was not, as the intention evidently was to mete out similar punishment to the others, for Browne, in his History pub- lished in 1847 (p. 329), says that up to that time " the repair of one window only has been completed." The late Dean Purey- Cust, in his book ' York Minster ' (London, Isbister and Co., 1897, p. 34), says that Willement, under ^ whose directions the Chapter House was at that time being restored, " ruined the east window, which he had taken to pieces and found himself incompetent to put together again." In this the Dean must have been mistaken. Thomas Willement was a member of the Society of Antiquaries and had been executing windows since 1812 (vide 'A Concise Account of the Principal Works in Stained Glass that have been executed by Thomas Willement,' printed for private distribution, 1840), and he can hardly have been as incompetent as the above statement would lead one to suppose. Moreover, Browne, the historian of the Minster, although he gives a somewhat severe criticism of Willement's methods of re- storing the Chapter House, says not a word about this, but merely states that the fourth window is of modern workmanship, being painted by Messrs. Barnett of York from tracings carefully made from the original representations, which had become so much decayed as to render any attempt at satisfactory repair an impossibility (' Description of the Windows of York Minster, written 1859, pub. in 1915, p. 53). Again, the same author, in his ' History of York Minster,' 1847, p. 329, states that he himself undertook " to superintend execution of the work and to be answerable