Benefactors of St. Peter Mancroft
Photo © S. Alsford
These two adjacent lights appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the Great East Window of the church of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. There are 42 such main panels in the window, and 39 tracery lights. Most of these illustrations, made in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, depict scenes from the New Testament, but those in each of the bottom corners show contemporary portraits, presumably benefactors of St. Peter Mancroft, likely those who contributed to the cost of making the window. Thomas Elys and his wife have been identified as those portrayed in one panel.
Photo © S. Alsford
Those in the other three panels are not identified. One panel (top of page, on the right) shows a family group of husband (suspected to be Robert Toppes), wife and two daughters; one daughter's head has been replaced with that of an angel, the result of an attempted reconstruction of the window after an explosion blew it out in 1648. A second panel (above) shows a group mostly or entirely female; their dress and adornment does not seem to indicate this might have been a religious community, so perhaps it shows members of a socio-religious gild. The third (below), due to the effects of reconstruction, is ambiguous, but the large number of persons shown again is suggestive of a gild.
Photo © S. Alsford
It may be that the entire set of seven lights on the bottom row of the window originally were dedicated to portraying benefactors. Unfortunately, the centre three were replaced by Victorian panels in 1837.