A HISTORY OF NORFOLK intercession gifted with healing powers, and he himself had those powers over gout and ague. He is represented in one of the later paintings on the Cawston screen, and again on that at Gateley. In both instances he is habited as a doctor of divinity, holding in his left hand a boot out of which a devil appears to be emerging, a reference to the legend that he once conjured the devil into a boot.' Another of these holy personages was the saintly king Henry VI., who not only appears on four of the screens but in various wall paintings also. The reverence for him probably came in with the victory of the Red Rose on the field of Bosworth, and continued through the reign of the seventh Henry. Yet another exceptional personage was the Holy Maid of Ridiboun or Redbourn in Herts, of whom two accounts are extant : one, that she was probably a crippled girl of fifteen restored by recourse to the relics of St. Amphibalus, which were discovered in i 178 at the village in question ; or that she was a girl who in i 344 fell into the stream at that village, and being drowned in passing beneath the wheel of the mill was restored to life by St. Alban at the invocation of her parents. The image appears on a panel of the screen at Gateley. It has been said that the panels of the Norfolk, screens seldom exhibit groups of figures, and that their narrow limits contained only single effigies. This is true as a rule, but there are exceptions, and these are of considerable interest. A panel of the screen at Poringland contained, perhaps still contains, a painting of the Fall of Man, and on another the Expulsion from Paradise. The life of the Blessed Virgin has full illustration, though her figure does not often appear alone, but generally with the divine Child. Instances occur representing St. Anne instructing her. A remarkable representation of the Annunciation is to be found on the screen at North Walsham (Plate vi.). Our Lady stands in one panel, the flowering lily before her and the Holy Dove descending towards her, while in the next panel the Archangel Gabriel, a strangely winged figure, bends in reverence to deliver his message. The same subject is painted on the Loddon screen. The panels of that at Houghton-le-Dale exhibit quite a set of Holy Families ; St. Salome with St. James and St. John, St. Mary Cleophas with St. James, St. Joses, St. Simon, and St. Jude, and St. Elizabeth with St. John the Baptist. The first two of these three groups are to be found again on the south reredos of the screen at Ranworth.' On a fragment of another screen at Tacolneston is painted the tempta- tion and death of St. Anthony and the Annunciation.' The most curious of all these picture subjects are two on a portion of the screen yet existing at Sparham. The first exhibits two skeleton or corpse-like figures standing side by side : the one, a gallant of the time of Richard III. attired in the height of fashion of that period, holds in his fleshless right hand a flaming torch round which is twined a scroll bearing the words Sic transit Gloria mundi ; the other shows a lady, judging from her ' His figure appears on the walls of Witton Church amongst others, and on the screens at Barton Turf, Binham Abbey, Litcham, and Ludham.
- A List of Buildings having Mural Decorations (Science and Art Department, South Kensington Museum),
edited by C. E. Keyser, M.A., F.S.A. s jirch. Journ. (1901), Iviii. 47. Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd ser. xix. 142. 546
