PREFACE. 
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The City of York, in its Minster and parish churches, possesses 
the largest collection of mediaeval painted glass in England ; it 
is chiefly of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Much of the 
painted glass is of great beauty. The subjects are depicted on 
exquisite patterned backgrounds, alternating in colour, principally 
red and blue, and are under pinnacled canopies in amber or white 
on rich grounds of red, blue or green, varying in colour with the 
subject panels, thus producing an effect of great brilliancy. 
Owing to age and various causes, such as the fragile nature of 
glass, the action of the sun, rain, and wind, on its external sur¬ 
face, and on the leading, and, moreover the besieging of the city 
in 1644, when it suffered from bullets and cannon balls, and the 
fires at the Minster in 1829 and 1840, we cannot see the glass in 
its pristine beauty. In spite of all these drawbacks much of the 
York glass is well preserved, mainly owing to restoration, in which 
process, however, some of it has suffered. In some cases frag¬ 
ments have been leaded together in an indiscriminate manner, 
producing a confused mass of coloured glass, and making it diffi¬ 
cult to trace the significance of the original design. For all that, 
it is satisfactory that the fragments have been preserved, for with 
some ingenuity the subjects can sometimes be made out. 
In these days, books, illustrations, and pictures, are very 
common, but in mediaeval days manuscripts were scarce and 
pictures scarcer still. The Church, by its use of painted glass, 
did a great educational work. Our Lord and His Saints were 
brought vividly before the people by being represented with the 
chief events of their lives in picture. The varied cruel, deaths 
of the martyrs recalled the struggles of the early Christians. 
The, carrying out of works of mercy was also pourtrayed, and 
reminded all who gazed on them of their duty to their less- 
favoured brethren. 
I he emblazoned shields of the ruling and noble families of the 
nation, painted on the glass, are of great value to the student of 
heraldry and to the genealogist. To the historian these windows 
are invaluable, for they give contemporary portraits of kings, 
