Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:21:19.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thomas Gray’s contribution to the study of medieval architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Marion Roberts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of Thomas Gray’s admired poetic gifts was the ability to convey striking visual images with a very few, aptly chosen words. As Samuel Johnson put it, Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard ‘abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind’. The visual imagery in Gray’s poetry attests not only to his ability to use words, but also to his ability to use his eyes. Keen observation that underlies Gray’s poetic images also emerges in prose in his letters, journals, and notebooks. He wrote memorable descriptions of landscape. His discerning criticism of paintings is well known, as is his recording of extensive observations in the field of natural history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 36 , 1993 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Prefaces, Biographical and Critical (1781) in Johnson, Samuel, The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, ed. Chalmers, Alexander, XIV (London, 1810), p. 143 Google Scholar. Gray’s imagery and his knowledge of painting is discussed by Hagstrum, Jean H., The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry fiom Dryden to Gray (Chicago, 1958), pp. 287–314 Google Scholar. More recently see Maclean, Kenneth, ‘The Distant Way: Imagination and Image in Gray’s Poetry’, in Fearful Joy: Papers from the Thomas Gray Bicentenary Conference at Carleton University, ed. Downey, James and Jones, Ben (Montreal and London, 1974), pp. 136-45Google Scholar.

2 Butt, John, The Mid-eighteenth Century, The Oxford History of English Literature, VIII (Oxford, 1979), p. 72 Google Scholar.

3 For travel descriptions see passages quoted in Ian Jack, ‘Gray in his Letters’, in Fearful Joy, pp. 20-36. For Gray’s art criticism see Bell, C. F., ‘Thomas Gray and the Fine Arts’, Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, 30 (Oxford, 1945), 50–81 Google Scholar. For Gray’s interest in Linnaeus see Charles Norton, E., The Poet Gray as a Naturalist (Boston, 1903)Google Scholar.

4 Jones, William Powell, Thomas Gray, Scholar (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), p. 20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Rev. William Johnson Temple writing in the London Magazine, March 1772, less than a year after Gray’s death, quoted at length in Jones, Thomas Gray, p. vii.

6 Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Toynbee, Paget and Whibley, Leonard (Oxford, 1935)Google Scholar, p. 573, no. 272. Gray also visited Fotheringhay, Lowick, ‘& many other old places’ which he did not enumerate, Corresp., p. 572, no. 271 to Dr Thomas Wharton, 18 June 1758. Gray’s detailed observations made on this trip are recorded in Commonplace Books now preserved in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

7 Mason, William, The Poems of Mr. Gray, V (York, 1775), p. 339 Google Scholar.

8 Colvin, H. M., ‘The Origins of the Gothic Revival’, in Il Neogotico in Gran Bretagna (Rome, 1978), pp. 10–13 Google Scholar.

9 The Society of Antiquaries Minute Book, v, 21 February 1750. For a drawing dated 1749 of Barfeston in Charles Lyttelton’s ‘Book of Drawings of Saxon Churches’, see Cocke, Thomas, ‘Rediscovery of the Romanesque’, English Romanesque Art 1066-1200, Gallery, Hayward (London, 1984), pp. 360-65Google Scholar. The drawing (p. 373, no. 512) is illustrated p. 47.

10 Cocke, ‘Rediscovery’, p. 47. For a broader discussion see Franki, Paul, The Gothic (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar, and for additional bibliography see Dobai, Johannes, Die Kunstliteratur des Klassizismus und der Romantik in England (Bern, 1974-77), I: 1700-1750 (1974), pp. 527-28Google Scholar.

11 ‘Modern Gothic’ was John Evelyn’s term, as quoted in Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens … (London, 1750), p. 308.

12 Stukeley, William, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries and a friend of Wren, recognized the value of sectional drawings in the study of ancient buildings. An entry in his diary records the drawing of a section of King’s College Chapel in 1705: The Commentarys, Diary, & Common-place Book of William Stukeley & Selected Letters (London, 1980), pp. 34–35 Google Scholar. Stukeley published a site plan of Glastonbury Abbey, and a plan, elevation, and section of the kitchen there in Itinerarium curiosum (London, 1724), p. 144.

13 The Builder’s Dictionary was one of several useful glossaries published in the early eighteenth century, which include Moxon, Joseph, Mechaniek Exercises; or, the Doctrine of Handy Works … (London, 1703)Google Scholar; Neve, Richard, The City and Countrey Purchaser and Builder’s Dictionary (London, 1703)Google Scholar; Harris, John, Lexicon Technicum, or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1704)Google Scholar; and Salmon, William, Palladio Londinensis … to which is annexed, The Builder’s Dictionary (London, 1734)Google Scholar.

14 Wren’s survey of Salisbury was available in print as early as 1719, when it appeared in a guidebook on Salisbury published by Richard Rawlinson. See Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 2nd edn (London, 1978), p. 926 Google Scholar. Defoe, Daniel, who mentioned Wren’s survey in his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London, 1724)Google Scholar, Letter III, may have read it in Rawlinson’s guidebook but did not mention his source.

15 Apart from William Stukeley’s Glastonbury kitchen (see note 12), sections did not commonly illustrate church histories until after Francis Price’s publication on Salisbury Cathedral in 1753 (see note 18).

16 Wren’s ideas on Gothic were usually mentioned by anyone who wrote on the subject, including Warburton, William, The Works of Alexander Pope Esq. in Nine Volumes Complete, 2nd edn, III (London, 1751), p. 268 Google Scholar; Warton, Thomas, Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, 2nd edn (London, 1762), pp. 185 ff.Google Scholar; Gough, Richard, Anecdotes of British Topography (London, 1768), p. 270 Google Scholar, to mention only a few.

17 Corresp., pp. 407-08, no. 192.

18 Price, Francis, A Series of Particular and Useful Observations, Made with Great Diligence and Care, upon the Admirable Structure, the Cathedral-Church of Salisbury (London, 1753)Google Scholar. Gray referred to Price in unpublished notes on Salisbury Cathedral now in private hands.

19 Observations was favourably mentioned by Gough, Richard, Anecdotes of British Topography (London, 1768), p. 525 Google Scholar. James Essex studied Price’s book closely: see his notebooks, British Library, MS Add. 6768, pp. 155–73.

20 Gray’s description of the orders on the exterior of the Pitti Palace reveals a knowledge of classical architecture as well. See Tovey, Duncan, Thomas Gray and his Friends (Cambridge, 1890), pp. 216-18Google Scholar.

21 Notes and essays in his Commonplace Books (hereafter CPB) provide a record of Gray’s scholarly interests from 1737to 1761. Because Gray did not date the entries, Roger Martin, who studied the Commonplace Books in detail, provided a minimal chronology by correlating entries wherever possible with Gray’s poetry. See Martin, Roger, Chronologie de la vie et de l’œuvre de Thomas Gray (London and Paris, 1931), pp. 136, 138-39Google Scholar. According to Martin Gray was investigating the history of Saxons and Normans and the genealogies of English monarchs in the 1740s.

22 From this time on Gray took summer tours in various parts of England, visiting major cathedrals and abbey churches as well as notable smaller churches in each area. Places that he visited include Warwick (1754), Winchester (1755), Fenland (1758), Suffolk (1761), York (1762, 1765, 1767), Winchester, Salisbury (1764), Glamis (1765), Canterbury (1766), Suffolk and Norfolk (1767), Carlisle (1767), Kent (1768), Kirkstall, Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford (1770).

23 CPB, pp. 843-57. Gray wrote on the left-hand pages, keeping those on the right free for supplementary notes to be added whenever new information was available. For example, his entry on the tomb of William the Conqueror, presumably written early in 1758, was later annotated with observations taken from Smart Letheuliller’s commentary on the Bayeux Tapestry, published in Anton Ducarel’s Normandy in 1767.

24 Sandford, Francis, A Genealogical History of the Kings of England (London, 1677)Google Scholar; Dart, John, Westmonasterium (London, 1723)Google Scholar and The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury (London, 1726). Grayprobably consulted Bernard de Montfaucon’s Les Monumens de la monarchiefrancoise (Paris, 1729-33), which he mentioned in a letter to Walpole dated March 1754. See Corresp., p. 392, no. 186, and CPB, p. 844.

25 For example, Gray’s description of the tomb of Edward III in Westminster Abbey: ‘Over the tomb from pillar to pillar runs a Gothic state with hanging arched-work, scalloped, knobed and pinacled and crowned with fleurs-de-lys.’ CPB, p. 847; this and subsequent quotations from the Commonplace Books are made with the kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

26 CPB, p. 844, he discussed the changing fashion of beards, and shapes of helmets. He defined Hauberk: ‘or Habergeon of mail-work, was the armour in general use at the time of the Conquest. It was a texture of small links of steel, that covered the whole body and limbs, and adapted itself to all their motions, having a hood of the same piece with it, that came over the whole neck and head upon occasion, setting close round the face …’.

27 CPB, pp. 891-932. Gray mentioned his antiquarian studies in a letter to Wharton, 8 March 1758, Corresp., p. 565, no. 268. He seems to have gathered a great deal of information on tombs and cathedrals before he made his trip to the Fenland in May-June 1758. A few entries on abbey churches that follow notes made during the trip suggest that Gray intended to continue his survey of medieval buildings but then gave up the idea. In 1759 Gray moved to London for a short time to continue to take advantage of the newly opened Library of the British Museum and at that point his interests turned to heraldry. See Jones, Scholar, p. 110.

28 Gray seems to have used Willis, Browne, Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester… (London, 1727, 1730)Google Scholar, although in his correspondence he mentioned only Willis’s earlier History of Mitred Parliamentary Abbies …, 2 vols (London, 1718-19). See Corresp., p. 585, no. 277, dated August 1758. Beginning in the middle of Willis’s Survey with Lincoln, Gray followed Willis’s order through Ely, Oxford Cathedral, and Peterborough. Then Gray turned to York, where Willis began his Survey, and followed Willis through ten cathedrals. At this point Gray introduced Bath Abbey, which is not in the Survey, and thereafter continued to use Willis out of order, preferring to group buildings by geographical area.

29 Corresp., p. 572, no. 271.

30 CPB, p. 894, a densely written page opposite the page of notes on Ely that Gray had taken from Browne Willis.

31 CPB, p. 944. The bays in question were rebuilt after the central tower fell in 1322; further east is thirteenth-century work.

32 CPB, p. 844.

33 See Cocke, ‘Rediscovery’, p. 362.

34 Somner, William, The Antiquities of Canterbury, 2nd edn revised and enlarged by Battely, Nicolas (London, 1703), p. 86 Google Scholar, quoted William of Malmesbury’s statement characterizing Norman building as novum genus aedificandi, and p. 93, stated that building upon arches was Roman, not Saxon, practice, reintroduced by Normans. In his A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, first published in 1598, John Stow wrote that after a fire in 1086 the cathedral church of St Paul was built with arches and vaults, ‘a kind of workmanship brought in by the Normans, and never known to the artificiers of this land before this time’. See Stow’s Survey of London, with an Introduction by Wheatley, H. B., Everyman’s Library (New York, 1980), p. 34 Google Scholar. Drake, Francis, Eboracum: or the History and Antiquities of the City of York, from its Original to the Present Times (London, 1736), p. 258 Google Scholar, countered these statements with a reference from Bede that ‘Saxons were no strangers to stone buildings’.

35 Bentham, James, The History and Antiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely (Cambridge, 1771)Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., pp. 15-31. Gray read the pages of Bentham’s Introduction that concern Saxon buildings shortly after they were printed. He wrote to Bentham to acknowledge that Bentham ‘has proved his point against the authority of Stow and Somner’. Corresp., p. 863, no. 399*.

37 Cocke, Thomas, ‘Pre-nineteenth-century Attitudes in England to Romanesque Architecture’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 36 (1973), p. 82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The custom of giving the foundation date of a building regardless of the date of the structure under discussion persisted until the early nineteenth century.

38 Cocke, Thomas, ‘The “Old Conventual Church” at Ely. a False Trail in Romanesque Studies?’, in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers, n.s. VIII (London, 1986), pp. 77–86 Google Scholar.

39 Two letters from Bentham to Lyttelton in 1758, printed in William Stevenson’s second edition of Bentham’s History of Ely (Norwich, 1812), pp. 7-9, indicate that initially Bentham believed as did Somner that Saxon and Norman buildings were significantly different in size, materials, and methods of construction. A second letter, dated 24 June 1758, concerns a discussion that Bentham and Lyttelton had at Ely about the date of the ruined building and states their conclusion that ‘the pillars and arches now remaining … were the original ones of the Church built by St. Etheldreda’. When Bentham published the Introduction to his book, he had adopted Lyttelton’s point of view, a revision of Somner’s interpretation of Malmesbury: the Normans did not import entirely new methods of construction but merely built bigger buildings. See also Stevenson’s A Supplement to the First Edition of Mr. Bentham’s History … (Norwich, 1817), p. 33.

40 Bentham, History of Ely, 2nd edn, ‘Addenda’, pp. 9-10. If Essex had written the text to accompany the plate, why was it not printed in the first edition? William Cole remarked that Bentham wanted to write everything himself. See Davis, William, An Olio of Bibliographical & Literary Anecdotes and Memoranda (London, 1814), pp. 124–25 Google Scholar.

41 Essex seems not to have questioned the date and included the building at Ely in a list of Saxon churches in his notebooks, British Library MS Add. 6770, p. 89.

42 Corresp., p. 863, no. 399*, and note 31.

43 Quoted by Cocke, ‘Rediscovery’, p. 362.

44 For Gray’s notes on volume 1 of Walpole’s Anecdotes see The Works of Thomas Gray, ed. Mitford, John, v (London, 1843), p. 210 Google Scholar. For further clarification see the note to letter 320 in Corresp., p. 696.

45 Gray’s use of the terms ‘Saxon’, ‘Norman’, and ‘Gothic’ was not consistent. He called Winchester Cathedral and Kirkstall Abbey ‘saxon’, Kelso ‘semi-saxon’. His essay on Romanesque is entitled ‘Gothica Architectura’, which he explained as ‘Saxon or old Norman’ (see note 53). He called York Cathedral the ‘great school of the Goths’, and described the beauty of ‘good Gothic’ during the time of Henry III. Corresp., p. 920, no. 209, p. 1126, no. 519, and Tovey, Thomas Gray, p. 264.

46 His original entry on Peterborough on page 895 is brief, listing the measurements of various parts of the building and the building activities of a few abbots. He called the west front ‘magnificent… esteemed the first in England in beauty’, a comment that echoes statements in the expanded version of Defoe’s A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 3rd edn, III (London, 1742), p. 28. Gray recorded that the nave and cross-aisles as well as the west front were all built by Abbot Benedict about the time of the end of Henry II’s reign. But after Gray had viewed the building, he revised the information by entering observations and references to published sources on the facing page 896. Here Gray wrote that he believed that the choir and east side of the transept dated from the first half of the twelfth century, being plainer than the rest of the fabric to the west. He also observed ‘that the whole Front, & last arch of the Nave, are of a different architecture from all the rest, being probably the work of Walter de St. Edmund, who is said to have dedicated the church anew, in 1236’.

47 CPB, p. 940. 3 : ‘The same ornament appears on some arches of the Nave in Wyndham Abbey church in Norfolk; & (as I remember) in Norwich-Cathedral’; 5: ‘or Ambulatory’; 7: ‘As in the Great-Tower of Norwich-Cathedral’.

48 CPB, pp. 943-46 and The Works of Thomas Gray in Prose and Verse, ed. Gosse, Edmund, reprint edn (New York, 1968), pp. 295–302 Google Scholar; see also note 53.

49 Gray would have known old St Paul’s from Hollar’s illustrations in William Dugdale’s History of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, 1658. Hereford was illustrated in two plates by Hollar in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, III (London, 1673).

50 Quotations are from CPB, pp. 939 and 945.

51 The heraldic terms chevron, nebule, and billet are French in origin. Lozenge is English and nail-head, German. Zig-zag is French in origin and seems to have been prevalent in England in the early eighteenth century.

52 Gosse, Works, pp. 300-01. Gray’s estimate of thirty-five years and two abbots is too condensed, according to the most recent study of Peterborough Cathedral by Reilly, Lisa, ‘The Architectural History of Peterborough Cathedral’ (doctoral thesis, New York University, 1991), pp. 202-03 and 239-40Google Scholar.

53 Mathias, Thomas, who first printed Gray’s essay, gave it the title ‘Architectura Gothica’, and as such it was reprinted by Mitford, John. See The Works of Thomas Gray with Memoirs of his Life and Writings by William Mason to which are subjoined Extracts Philological, Poetical and Critical from the Author’s original Manuscripts selected and arranged by Thomas f ames Mathias, II (London, 1814), pp. 98–103 Google Scholar, and Mitford, Works, V, pp. 325-32. Edmond Gosse felt that Mathias’s title was inept and retitled it ‘Essay on Norman Architecture’. See Gosse, Works, p. 294. William Powell Jones observed that Gray began ‘an article on Gothic architecture which unfortunately ended with what should have been merely an introduction, namely a criticism of the Norman architecture that preceded the Gothic in England’: Thomas Gray, p. 114.

54 Gray was not alone in seeking an understanding of medieval architectural styles. In addition to James Bentham, who is discussed below, Thomas Wharton, in a long footnote in the second edition of his Observations on the Fairy Queen, pp. 185 ff., tried to make sense of changes in medieval architecture and art to the time of Henry VIII, using such terms as ‘Saxon’, ‘Gothic Saxon’, ‘Saxon Gothic’, ‘Absolute Gothic’, ‘Ornamental Gothic’, and ‘Florid Gothic’. His essay uses specific examples, and he sought for medieval terms in Chaucer and Piers Plowman, but his dating and descriptions of architectural details are far from clear. See Frew, John M., ‘James Bentham’s History of Ely Cathedral: a Forgotten Classic of the Early Gothic Revival’, Art Bulletin, 62 (1980), pp. 290-92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Mathias, Works, II, pp. 98-103.

56 Although Bentham’s introduction was well received by antiquaries, some believed that he had not written the architectural sections. A correspondent to Gentleman’s Magazine, 53 (1783), p. 375, stated unequivocally that the author was Thomas Gray. In a reply to Gentleman’s Magazine the next year, pp. 243-44, Bentham countered that he had never seen Gray’s essay, and that he had already completed his essay before he sent some pages of it to Gray in 1764-65. Bentham admitted taking ‘hints’ from Gray’s reply but pointed out that he had acknowledged Gray’s help in his preface. Stevenson, in support of Bentham’s authorship, printed Bentham’s reply to Gentleman’s Magazine and Gray’s letter of 1765 in History of Ely, 2nd edn, pp. 12-17. The reader is free to compare Gray’s letter with corresponding pages in Bentham’s Introduction. Frew, ‘James Bentham’, pp. 290-92, did not question the source of Bentham’s vocabulary of ornament.

57 Corresp., pp. 862-66, no. 399*, undated, according to the editors perhaps March 1765. The portion of Bentham’s Introduction that Gray read was written after 1762, the publication date of Thomas Warton’s (Bentham spelled the name Wharton) Observations, which Bentham citied in a footnote on p. 15 of his Introduction.

58 Gray’s suggestion that pointed arches may have arisen from intersecting arcades was also copied word for word into Bentham’s Introduction. Bentham provided a list of buildings repaired or beautified in the previous thirty or forty years. This too may have been inspired by Gray, who had suggested that Bentham include ‘a little reflection on the rage of repairing, beautifying, white-washing, painting, and gilding, and (above all) the mixture of Greek (or Roman) ornaments in Gothic edifices. This well-meant fury has been and will be little less fatal to our ancient magnificent edifices, than the Reformation, and the civil wars.’ See Corresp., pp. 865-66, and Bentham, History of Ely, 2nd edn, p. 16.

59 Bentham’s Introduction received considerable attention when it was published. See Frew, ‘James Bentham’, pp. 290-92, and McCarthy, Michael, The Origins of the Gothic Revival (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. 11–26 Google Scholar.

60 According to Stevenson, History of Ely, 2nd edn, p. 19, Bentham continued to collect materials for his own history of architecture. Bentham’s piece on the west front, written after the appearance of the first edition, and printed by Stevenson in 1817, was a better discussion of the buildings than anything he had written for the first edition.

61 Jones, Thomas Gray, p. 113.

62 Ibid., and CPB, p. 897.

63 Corresp., pp. 576-77, no. 273*. The date, August 1758, is conjectural. For information on Palgrave, see ibid., p. 576, note 1. Palgrave was admitted to Pembroke at the age of eighteen in July 1753, and became a Fellow-commoner in 1757.

64 Corresp., p. 781, no. 351.

65 The chapel in question is that of the Holy Sepulchre dedicated to St Mary and the Holy Angels built by Archbishop Roger (n54-81) at the gate to the archepiscopal palace and altered and enlarged by Archbishop Sewal in 1258. See Willis, Robert, ‘The Architectural History of York Cathedral’, in The Architectural History of Some English Cathedrals, Part I (Chicheley, 1972), p. 6 Google Scholar and note 1, and The Victoria History of the Counties of England, Yorkshire, III (London, 1913), p. 383.

66 Corresp., pp. 791-93, no. 365, January 1763. See also Mason’s note to this letter in Poems, p. 294, where he mentions the drawing by Paul Sandby. Mason had consulted Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, Drake’s Eboracum, and manuscripts by James Torre in the Chapter Library at York.

67 Corresp., pp. 795-96, no. 366, 8 February 1763.

68 Gray’s confidence in his visual judgement allowed him to observe quite rightly in this letter to Mason that Archbishop Roger’s tomb at York did not date from the time of the archbishop’s death in 1181, but from the fourteenth century by virtue of its ‘wide surbased arch with scallop’d ornaments’. Drake, Eboracum, p. 421-22, had called Roger’s tomb the oldest tomb in the cathedral and had provided an illustration of it.

69 Colvin, H. M., ‘Aubrey’s Chronologia Architectonica ’, in Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner, ed. Summerson, John (Baltimore and London, 1968), pp. 1–12 Google Scholar. According to Colvin, comparison and classification were components of the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society that lay behind Aubrey’s work.

70 Ibid., p. 5.

71 Essex helped considerably with the preparation of James Bentham’s History of Ely. He oversaw the work of Bentham’s draughtsman J. Heins and contributed drawings of his own for two plates, a plan and section of the so-called Saxon church at Ely (Fig. 2), and a plan of the Norman cathedral suggesting the arrangement of the apse before its expansion to the east in the thirteenth century. Remains of the Norman apse had been discovered in 1769, when the pavement in the presbytery was raised.

72 On Essex’s career and importance to antiquarians, see Stewart, Donald, ‘James Essex, an Eighteenth Century Pioneer of Gothic Scholarship’, Architectural Review, 108 (1950), 317-21Google Scholar; Pevsner, Nikolaus, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1972), pp. 1–8 Google Scholar; Cocke, Thomas H., ‘James Essex, Cathedral Restorer’, Architectural History, 18 (1975), 12–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cocke, Thomas, The Ingenious Mr Essex, Architect 1722-1784, Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar.

73 Essex, with the encouragement and support of William Cole, tried unsuccessfully to entice Horace Walpole to help him write a history of architecture. See the correspondence between William Cole and Horace Walpole from 1769 to 1771, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with The Rev. William Cole, , ed. Lewis, W. S. and Wallace, A. Dayle, I (New Haven and London, 1937), pp. 184 Google Scholar, 190-92, 203-04, 206, 284-85, 286. Earlier Essex had tried to attract support for a study of King’s College, Cambridge, illustrated with his own measured drawings, but this project was also not realized. See McCarthy, Origins of the Gothic Revival, p. 23, and Frew, ‘James Bentham’, p. 290.

74 Félibien, Jean François, Dissertation touchant l’architecture antique et l’architecture gothique, in Les Plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne de Pline le Consul … an edition of which was published in London, 1707 Google Scholar. d’Aviler, Charles Augustin, Cours d’architecture … first published in Paris, 1691 Google Scholar, with many later editions.

75 For Essex’s use of terms see his ‘Remarks on the Antiquity and the Different Modes of Brick and Stone Buildings in England’, Archaeologia, 4 (1777), 73-109, read in 1774, and for his word lists see his notebooks in the British Library, MS Add. 6772, ff. 112-37v.

76 British Library Add. MS. 6770, pp. 111-14. See also Cocke, ‘Pre-nineteenth-century Attitudes’, p. 78, n. 3.

77 Walpole, Horace, Anecdotes of Painting in England, additions by Dallaway, James, I (London, 1828), pp. 193–204 Google Scholar.

78 Corresp., pp. 586-87, no. 278.

79 Ibid., p. 587.

80 Pitt and Palgrave were apparently together in Scotland in 1758. See Corresp., p. 588, no. 279.

81 Corresp., p. 772. no. 353, dated January 1762.

82 Frew, John and Wallace, Carey, ‘Thomas Pitt, Portugal, and the Gothic Cult of Batalha’, Burlington Magazine, 128 (1986), 582-84Google Scholar. Concerning Gray’s influence on Thomas Pitt, see McCarthy, Origins of the Gothic Revival, p. 17. Pitt never published his journal, and, although it was transcribed by William Cole, Michael Tyson, and Richard Gough, Pitt’s accomplished descriptions do not seem to have seriously influenced any of them. For more on Pitt’s later activities see Colvin, Dictionary, pp. 639-40.

83 Britton, John, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (London, 1838)Google Scholar, included all the terms that Gray suggested to Bentham: chevron, p. 149; nebule, p. 326; lozenge, p. 306; lattice, p. 300; billet moulding, p. 86; and nail-head moulding, p. 324.

84 Carter, John, Specimens of the Ancient Sculpture and Painting (London, 1780-94)Google Scholar.

85 Gough, Richard, Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (London, 1786, 1796)Google Scholar.

86 Corresp., p. 564, no. 267.

87 Nicholls, Norton, ‘Reminiscences of Gray’, printed in Mitford, Works, v, p. 38 Google Scholar.

88 Mason, Poems, p. 339.

89 Mason, commenting on Gray’s study of medieval architecture and in particular his command of heraldry, wrote, ‘he applied himself to the study of Heraldry as a preparatory science, and has left behind him a number of genealogical papers, more than sufficient to prove him a complete master of it’. Poems, p. 339.

90 Ibid., p. 342. Mason also credited Gray with the ability to identify painters’ hands.

91 Gray did make drawings, filling his interleaved copy of Linnaeus’s Systema naturae with ‘meticulous drawings from some of the books he studied, adding to them from time to time cruder sketches of his own specimens’: Jones, Thomas Gray, p. 133.

92 Ibid., p. 339. Mason recognized Gray’s contribution but understood little of his method, describing the evidence that Gray used to determine the antiquity of buildings as ‘arms, ornaments, and other undubitable marks’.

93 Colvin, ‘Aubrey’, p. 12.