142 PAPERS, ETC. 



year, aud both founded chantry chapels at St. George's, 

 Windsor, in which they were buried. 



If these facts prove nothing beyond, they identify 

 Henry VII with the church architecture of the county, 

 in connection with men holding important offices in Somer- 

 set, one of whom was remarkable for his skill as an archi- 

 tect. 



The ancestors of the Lord Daubeney, also, who Sir R. 

 Bray engaged to assist him in helping Henry to the throne, 

 held for centuries the rnanor of South Petherton, at which 

 place they no doubt had a mansion, as I find a Sir Giles 

 Daubeney, in the year 1444, " bequeathing his body to be 

 buried in the chapel of our Lady within the church of St. 

 Peter and St. Paul, South Petherton, where divers of his 

 family lay interred." Now we learn that two of the 

 staunchest adherents and greatest favourites of the King 

 were Daubeney and Bray ; and as we find in the small 

 town of South Petherton a building of this period, having 

 on one end a portion so rieh in architectural decoration as 



Bray had a prineipal concern in building Henry the Seventh's chapel, and in 

 finishing and bringing to perfection the chapel of St. George, his initials 

 being introduced on the ceiling of the latter in many places. Now this 

 ceiling is of rieh fan tracery, as is likevvise that more famous one of the 

 Royal chapel of the Abbey, and that most famous of King's College, 

 Cambridge. Where, then, is the improbability that tbe unknown architect 

 of the chapel at Cambridge may have been Sir Eeginald Bray ? It is very 

 certain that his royal master gave £5,000 towards the building of this 

 chapel, whieb, as we find " the stone roofs to the seven chapels in the body 

 of the church were to be built at the rate of £20 each," was a consid- 

 erable sum for such a purpose. In turning to a description of the 

 chapel in the History of Cambridge, published by Ackermann, I find it 

 stated that the foundation of this singular edifice was laid by Henry VI 

 upon St. James's day, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, 1446 ; but as 

 it is said "that only the east and part of the north and south walls of the 

 chapel, beginning from tbe east, were finished during the reign of the 

 founder," and that Mr. I. Smith, Fellow of the College in 1/42, says, aecord- 

 ing to Cole, " It is not certain how far the building was raised in the foun- 

 der's time, and that it was left in a State of Suspension and neglect until 

 14"9, during the reign of Edward IV, and that it proeeeded, with interrup- 



