Church of St Michael, Heydour, Lincolnshire

The westernmost window depicts England’s patron St George flanked by the English king saints Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia. All three are portrayed as warriors in contemporary armour although elsewhere SS Edward and Edmund were always depicted wearing royal attire and venerated for their passive piety. The unique iconography can be attributed to the donor Henry Lord Scrope of Masham’s career as a distinguished soldier, whose window celebrates the successes achieved by English armies early in the Hundred Years War.

The multi-storied canopies embellished with turrets, portholes, soaring staircases and shutters propped open with poles are typical of the imaginative and individual canopy designs found in late 14th-century glazing.

The window has survived largely intact but was restored in 1863 by William Wailes who inserted the shield of Queen Victoria beneath St George. It was last restored in 2006 by Canterbury Cathedral workshop. The manganese browning that randomly disfigures some pieces while sparing others is a characteristic flaw of English glazing of the second half of the fourteenth century.

The same workshop produced the adjacent window depicting the Annunciation above three deacon saints (although the central figure of St Lawrence originated in an earlier fourteenth century window), which is more conventional in both style and iconography and probably slightly earlier in date. It was donated by Henry Lord Scrope’s brother Geoffrey, patron of the living of Heydour who was ordained a deacon in 1346, and their sister Beatrice Luttrell, who is pictured in the Luttrell Psalter.