The former capital of the kingdom of Wessex, Winchester keeps in its cathedral — one of the longest in Europe — the memory of the great Tudor upheavals: the rebuilding of the choir by a great building bishop, the Catholic marriage of Mary I with Spain, and the destructions of the Reformation.
The building bishop Richard Fox
At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Bishop Richard Fox (died 1528) — a leading statesman, councillor of Henry VII and Henry VIII — had the choir and the retrochoir of the cathedral rebuilt in the Perpendicular style. His chantry chapel, a delicate cage of carved stone, survives as a witness of the refinement of late Gothic art, at the dawn of the Renaissance. Fox embodies that type of prelate-minister who, before the Reformation, combined the service of God and that of the king.
The marriage of Mary and Philip
The great Tudor moment of Winchester was the marriage of Mary I and Philip of Spain, celebrated in the nave on 25 July 1554. This union, which bound Mary's Catholic England to the power of the Habsburgs, was a major diplomatic event — and deeply unpopular, so much did the English dread Spanish domination. The cathedral also saw the other side of the century: the Dissolution of St Swithun's priory in 1539 destroyed the saint's shrine, and the reforming bishop Robert Horne had the monastic buildings demolished (1560-1580). To see: the chantry chapel of Bishop Fox, the Perpendicular choir with its wooden vault, the mortuary chests of the Saxon kings, the Tournai font.
Did you know?
Winchester keeps, in mortuary chests set on the choir walls, the mingled bones of Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings — including, it is said, King Cnut (Canute). These chests were overturned during the Civil War, so that the royal bones are today mixed within them: kings from before the Norman conquest thus rest, indistinct, above vaults remodelled in the Renaissance.
Notes
Winchester Cathedral lies at Winchester, Hampshire; a working cathedral, open to visits. Hours to check.
Quiz
- Which royal marriage was celebrated at Winchester in 1554?
- That of Mary I and Philip of Spain
- That of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
- That of Elizabeth I
- Which building bishop rebuilt the choir here?
- Richard Fox
- Thomas Becket
- John Knox
- What did the Dissolution of 1539 destroy at Winchester?
- The shrine of St Swithun
- The spire
- The crypt