One of the small glass panels formerly in the clergy vestry, now reset behind the de la Pole tomb in the South Choir Aisle, is a circular painted panel, within a border of flowers and fruit, dated ‘ANNO 1609’, with the monogram ‘SW’ or ‘SVV’. It is Dutch or Flemish in origin.
Two men (one wearing armour) are bringing a woman to trial before a seated judge. Two other pairs of men are in the background, apparently in conversation. Their costumes are a mixture of contemporary styles and fanciful ‘Eastern’ dress typical of Biblical scenes in this period. What is going on?
The story of Susanna is an early detective story, set in the Jewish community in Babylon. It appears in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 13, which Protestant Bibles place in the Apocrypha (a small group of additional stories).
Susanna is a respectable married woman. Two judges, who are friends of her family, hang around the garden and spy on her while she takes a bath. They then try to blackmail her into sleeping with them. When she refuses, they falsely claim that they caught her having an affair with a young man in the garden. She is arrested and brought to the authorities. Because her accusers are judges, their story is believed. Susanna is condemned to be stoned to death.
Luckily, the prophet Daniel rushes in to the rescue. He insists on investigating properly, and questions both her accusers separately. They tell him inconsistent stories – disagreeing about the kind of tree under which they claim to have seen her with her alleged lover in the garden. In this way, Daniel proves they are lying. Susanna is cleared, and the judges themselves are then executed.
There are more surviving drawings and roundels from the Story of Susanna than from any other series… The story appears to have been conveyed in four scenes – Susanna approached by the elders, Susanna accused before a judge, the elders cross-examined by Daniel, and the stoning of the elders – making it a relatively small series and therefore, presumably, cheaper to obtain and thus available to a wider market.
(Timothy B Husband, The Luminous Image: Painted Glass Roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 1995, pp. 139-40)
This panel is the second of the four episodes, showing Susanna being accused. Its original location is unclear. According to John Symons, in Hullinia (1872), p. 65, the old pieces of glass had “been re-set in a window in one of the chantry chapels” during a recent restoration, which must be the one which started in 1868. He does not describe them in detail or say where they were taken from.
Small panels of this kind were more common in domestic settings in 16-17C, rather than in a church. It is possible it may have come from the old vicarage or the Grammar School, or from one of the nearby almshouses, which were demolished in 19C. Alternatively – because the story's moral theme was seen as a warning against judicial corruption – it may have been in the part of the old chantries used as the Council Chamber, to remind the council to be honest. The question is: where are the other three roundels that complete the set?
