It is to the country church, too, that we may often look for lovely examples of old heraldic glass, which has escaped the destruction of other subjects that were deemed more superstitious (pls. I, II, and III).
[Illustration: PLATE I. ARMS OF MILTON ABBEY FROM A WINDOW IN IBBERTON CHURCH DORSET, C. 1475 (FROM ARCHAEOLOGIA, VOL. XLVII.)]
[Illustration: PLATE II. SHIELDS IN STAINED GLASS OF THE 14TH CENTURY WITH THE ARMS OF (1) JOHN, EARL OF KENT (2) JOHN OF GAUNT AS KING OF CASTILE, AND (3) SIR WILLIAM ARUNDEL, K.G.: IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM.]
[Illustration: PLATE III. SHIELDS IN STAINED GLASS OF THE 14TH CENTURY WITH THE ARMS OF (1) MOWBRAY (2) BEAUCHAMP, AND (3) AUDLEY: IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM.]
But the student is not restricted to ecclesiastical buildings in his search for good examples of heraldry.
Inasmuch as there never was such a thing as an ecclesiastical style, it was quite immaterial to the medieval master masons whether they were called in to build a church or a gatehouse, a castle or a mansion, a barn or a bridge. The master carpenter worked in the same way upon a rood loft or a pew end as upon the screen or the coffer in the house of the lord; the glazier filled alike with his coloured transparencies the bay of the hall, the window of the chapel, or that of the minster or the abbey; and the tiler sold his wares to sacrist, churchwarden, or squire alike.
The applications of heraldry to architecture are so numerous that it is not easy to deal with them in any degree of connexion.
Shields of arms, badges, crests, and supporters are freely used in every conceivable way, and on every reasonable place: on gatehouses (figs. 3, 95, 96) and towers, on porches and doorways, in windows and on walls, on plinths, buttresses, and pinnacles, on cornice, frieze, and parapet, on chimney-pieces (figs. 8, 94) and spandrels, on vaults and roofs, on woodwork, metalwork (figs. 6, 7), and furniture of all kinds, on tombs, fonts, pulpits, screens, and coffers, in painting, in glass, and on the tiles of the floor (figs. 1, 9, 14).
[Illustration: FIG. 6. Heraldic candle-holder, etc. from the latten grate about the tomb of King Henry VII at Westminster.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7. Firedog with armorial bearings.]