MEDIAEVAL PAINTING Suthred the last king of the East Angles, the foundress of the monastery of Chich, who was martyred by the Danes in one of their inroads.* Far better known, however, and the saint to whom the greatest devotion was paid in East Anglia, was St. Edmund, who is frequently represented in the screen paintings. He usually appears crowned and in royal robes, and carrying an arrow, the instrument of his martyrdom, but in these paintings no incidents of his legend seem to have been portrayed. Of other English saints figured, but not peculiar to Eastern England, may be named St. Oswald, St. Dunstan, St. Edward the King and Martyr, St. Edward the Confessor, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and St. John of Beverley." As to the foreign saints it seems likely that the representation of some of these may have been due to the intercourse between East Anglia and the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Amongst those placed in this class may be named St. Gudule,' St. Hubert,* and St. Genevieve of Brabant,^ St. Wandragesilaus,* and St. Willebrod ^ ; but with others the reason for their selection is not so clear, such as, for instance, St. Louis, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Joan of Valois, and St. Wilgefortis. It is possible that the pictures of the patron saints of certain trades might have been the gift of persons practising those trades; for example, St. Blaise,' the patron of wool combers, might have been offered by a member of that trade, an important one in Norfolk in the middle ages. Another reason also may account in part for the great variety in the choice of saints figured on the screens, and that is that many paintings may represent patrons of the donors. Some instances can be cited for this view. On the screen at North Burlingham, where in each panel the name of the donor is given with the usual prayer, one in which occurs the figure of St. Cecilia has the inscription yoannis Blake et Cecilie uxoris sua upon it, a fact sufficient to show that the wife of John Blake had, with her husband, given the painting of her patron saint.' Again, though not so clearly but yet with scarcely less certainty, the same conclusion may be drawn, where, on the screen at Aylsham, the figure of one of the donors of the work, Thomas Wymer, has accompanying it in the very next panel the effigy of St. Thomas, quite out of order with the rest of the company of the Apostles there displayed. It would occupy far too much space in this paper to enumerate the many saints who, reverenced throughout the Christian world, are pictured upon the Norfolk screens, and it must suffice to refer to those works in which a list of such may be found.*" But some exceptional personages represented upon them may receive a passing word of notice. Though they may not be considered saints, considerable devotion was paid to them, and pilgrimages made to spots honoured by their remains. Master John Schorn, a canon in the Augustinian Priory at Dunstable, and Rector of North Marston in Buckinghamshire in 1290, was the chief of these, and his effigy is to be seen on several screens. The waters of a well at Marston were through his 1 Figured on screens at North Elmham and Barton Turf.
- The last-named is portrayed on the screen at Hempstead.
s Screen at Walpole St. Peter's. * Screen at Litcham. ' Horsford St. Faith's ; the identification is somewhat doubtful however. 6 Screen at Horsford St. Faith's. ' Oxborough. 8 Screen formerly in St. James's Church, Norwich, and another at Hempstead. 9 J^orf. Arch. (1852), iii. 19. 10 F. C. Husenbeth's Emblems of Saints (Norf. and Norw. Arch. Soc). 2 545 69
