4 The Jacobite Period

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3.9 ST WINEFRIDE’S CHALICE VEIL

550 x 570mm

Circa 1610-1640

This elaborately embroidered chalice veil dates from the mid-seventeenth century and was made as a thanksgiving following a miraculous cure at St Winefride’s Well at Holywell in north Wales. The Well has been a place of pilgrimage since the early Middle Ages, when the water that flows from an underground spring was credited with healingproperties. St Winefride (circa 600660) was a Welsh princess who fled her home to avoid a forced marriage to a pagan nobleman, Caradoc. He followed her and murdered her, cutting off her head. Aspring of water appeared on the spot where her head hit the ground. Her uncle, St Beuno(d. 660), a holy priest who lived nearby, restored Winefride to life. In her picture on the veil, thered line around her throat indicates where her head was joined back onto her body.

Pilgrims visited the Well in great numbers. Henry V, in 1416, and, later, Katherine of Aragon, the wife of Henry VIII, went on pilgrimage to Holywell. Even during the Reformation and the persecution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, pilgrims continued to visit Holywell clandestinely. James II and Mary of Modena went on pilgrimage there in 1686.

The veil bears the name of Maria Bodenham, a member of the famous Catholic recusant family. She made it to record her family’s gratitude after her father-in-law, Sir Roger Bodenham (1545-1623), of Rotherwas, near Hereford, was cured of a leg ailment at the Well in 1606.

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The Jacobite Period 4