This small stained glass addition to a larger plain window on the north side of the chancel of Holy Trinity, Penn, has always been a bit of a mystery. It names ‘Duc D’Orleans 1415’ at the top and ‘Richard Waller 1415’ at the bottom and is clearly designed to commemorate a Waller family tradition that their ancestor had fought at the battle of Agincourt and taken the Duke of Orleans prisoner. Its shape might suggest that it was originally designed to go over a door.
There are no Wallers in the Howe, Curzon or Penn family history, but the 1st Earl Howe’s widowed mother, Baroness Howe, married again in 1812 to a Jonathan Wathen Phipps (1769-1853) whose grandmother was a Waller. He changed his name to Waller two years later in recognition of his maternal family’s illustrious pedigree and soon after was made a baronet by the Prince Regent. He was appointed Oculist to the Royal Household in 1796, serving as the eye doctor to George III, George IV and William IV as well as founding one of London’s earliest eye hospitals, the Royal Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye. He later became Groom of the Bedchamber to William IV.
A key to the mystery has recently been spotted by Earl Howe in Ruth Hayward’s biography of Sir Wathen Waller (‘Phippy’ published in 2014 by Brewin Books). In 1820, Sir Wathen Waller was despatched on a shopping expedition to Paris by Princess Sophia, fifth daughter of King George III. Waller’s notebook listing his various purchases has survived and in it there is an entry showing a payment of 3,600 francs for several panes of stained glass from La Sainte Chapelle on the Ile de La Cité in Paris. The chapel, which dates from the 13th century, had suffered some vandalism during the French revolution, and it would appear that the fragments of glass had landed up with a Parisian antiques dealer. Some long time after he got home, Waller presented this stained glass to King William IV who came to the throne in 1830. The King in turn gave it to Lord Howe (then Lord Chamberlain to the Queen), who used it in the refurbishment of the East window of St James the Greater Church in Twycross near Gopsall in Leicestershire, then the Howes’ main estate. Could it be that some of the odd bits of glass not used in Twycross ended up in Penn?
St. James the Greater, Twycross
A note by the National Churches Trust records that Twycross church was restored by Earl Howe in 1840 and that the stained glass of the East window had originally come from Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, Saint-Denis near Paris, Le Mans cathedral, and Saint-Julien-du-Sault in Burgundy. They had been arranged by Thomas Willement, a prominent Victorian stained glass artist. Whereas Twycross is a magnificent example of a traditional and complex east window, our Penn Waller window is very simple, but pleasing. It has only three parts using medieval glass and overall it looks as if it was carefully designed for the particular purpose of celebrating the Waller/Agincourt history and the Waller/Howe connection through marriage.
There is a twenty year gap between the Paris shopping expedition of 1820 and the 1840 restoration of Twycross church. It would seem very possible that Sir Wathen Waller commissioned someone, perhaps Thomas Willement, to design the Penn window soon after his return from Paris. He was already married to Baroness Howe, had changed his name by then and may have been keen to proclaim both the Waller and Howe connections to an aristocratic society, some of whom saw him as a social upstart. Our former Vicar, The Revd Oscar Muspratt, supposed that the window had come from the top of a door in one of the Penn/Waller houses and this could well have been the case. Sir Wathen died in 1853, long after his wife, and the 1st Earl Howe could have then arranged to install the window in Penn Church, perhaps at her request or in memory of her.
However, there is still one other aspect to be considered. The Waller window in Penn Church is exactly the same width as the outside window to which it is secured. Is this just a lucky chance or was the Waller window designed specifically to fit in the existing width with the small size and shape dictated by the few pieces of medieval glass available? Or was the existing window altered to make the Waller window fit? The window in the wall of the Lady Chapel directly opposite is the same size and shape and the two windows seem to have been designed as a complementary pair. Were both altered to accommodate the Waller window?