uested. The twelve windows of the Trinity Chapel therefore illustrated two detailed accounts of Becket's life and the miracles that had taken place at his tomb between 1171 and 1173. Called the Miracle Windows, the stories chosen show the full gamut of medieval society receiving comfort and aid from St. Thomas' intercession. The richly coloured glass would for many pilgrims be the finest thing they would ever see, a fitting prelude to the shrine itself. Finally, in the clerestory, the so-called Genealogical Series depicts paired figures, beginning on the north side with the Creation and Adam and culminating on the south side with the Virgin Mary and Christ. With 86 figures taken from the gospel of Luke, this genealogy of ancestors of Christ is the largest of its kind in art. Only 48 figures, however, have survived, some now relocated in the south west transept and the west window and replaced with nineteenth century copies in their stead. Although the scheme has suffered over the centuries from many forms of destruction, the late 12th century glazing at Canterbury has today established its firm place as the most complete collection of its kind in England. The glazing of the western parts was less fortunate. The whole scheme of nave windows has been almost completely swept away, with only the two great windows in the west wall and in the north west transept surviving. Both these windows are associated with kings, Richard II and Edward IV, and although in particular the 'Royal Window' of 1485 in the north west transept had suffered from the notorious attack by Culmer in the 1640's, there is a substantial amount of glass left to tell of the superb quality of 14th and 15th century draftmanship and glazing skills. Canterbury's rich heritage of mediaeval stained glass cannot really be matched by later windows, but there are a number of important twentieth century ones that should be included in any stained glass itinerary of the Cathedral. To...
