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 



