Britton, John: The architectural antiquities of Great Britain: represented and illustrated in a series of views, elevations, plans, sections, and details, of ancient English edifices ; with historical and descriptive accounts of each (Band 5) (1835)

KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. 147

!l°n ^as been displayed in them, that not any two are alike. Below every niche,
in the lower range of pannelling, large shields are introduced; these are now
£ a'n' but as originally intended, were to have been sculptured with the heraldic
brings of the royal personages whose figures were placed in the corresponding
niches.

^■ing s College Chapel, at Cambridge, the next building of which the period of
ection is uncontested, is one of the most magnificent triumphs of architectural
Science in the kingdom. It was commenced by King Henry the Sixth about the
year 1443? and, with the exception of the vaulting and ornamental details of the
Astern part, may properly be considered as of the age of the founder, the whole
shell of the fabric having been carried on during the intervening reigns in confor-
lIllty to the original design.53 In this edifice we possess one of the earliest
Stances, upon a grand scale, of that enlargement of windows, which, when
^Ventually carried to an extreme, as in the Lady Chapel at Gloucester, and in
etlry the Seventh's, at Westminster, give to the sacred structure " the appearance
°^ a glass lanthorn."54 Here, however, the otherwise too powerful glare of light
Is so finely mellowed by the rich tints of the painted glass, that there is no danger
j* the excitement of such a disparaging idea. The undue depression of the arch
ls supposed by our best antiquaries to have been a main cause of the declme of the
tinted style, and in the windows and vaulting of this chapel, we have an early
Sample of such depression ; but as the lowering of the arch has not been carried to
eXcess, the proportions are not unhandsome. The tracery, though more geometrical
an flowing, is full and agreeably varied. In this edifice there are no side aisles,

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ut as the vaulting is wholly of stone and of immense weight, the buttresses are
Carried out to an extent which must have appeared ungraceful, if the architect had
^ot judiciously contrived to fill each of the intervening spaces with a small chapel.

ut the great interest of this building, architecturally considered, is in the

But little progress was made in the building during Henry's life, the civil dissensions of his reign

f0 ntmg that attention to his college which he had purposed ; but in his Will he left minute directions

w^lts c°nipletion as it now appears, with the exceptions as mentioned in the text. Henry the Seventh

ajj greatest contributor to this edifice, as his arms, badges, and supporters, profusely spread over

6 Western half of the fabric, decidedly evince, independently of the evidence of original records yet
■^served.

V»de Milner's " Treatise," &c. p. 114.

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