Online Lecture Series: 'And through it all': Angels in royal chapels before and after the English Reformation

We are delighted to announce that we are initiating an annual autumn lecture series this year. Each lecture is designed to offer a ‘deep dive’ into a topic, whether this be the fabric of a specific church, the work of a particular architect or an examination of a type of liturgical furnishing. The lectures will be held on Monday evenings between 6.30pm and 7.30pm via Zoom. The link will be sent out shortly before each lecture takes place. The lecture will last between 45-50 minutes and will be followed by 10-15 mins of questions and/or discussion.

Our third lecture will be delivered by Oscar Patton on the topic of ''And through it all': Angels in royal chapels before and after the English Reformation'.

The chapels of English royal palaces were the stages for most major liturgical performances of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, and largely escaped the iconographic assault faced by many parish and cathedral churches. This lecture explores the changes and continuities of religious reform through the eyes of the cherubim, victories, and other angelic figures that decorated the ceilings, walls, and windows of palace chapels between c.1500 and c.1642. This is not a story of decorative ‘survival’, but the re-negotiation of England’s post-Reformation Protestant identity in an elite ecclesiological context.

Oscar Patton is a historian of early modern British religion, society, and culture, with a particular interest in music-making, confessional identities, and liturgical performance within ecclesiastical institutions. His doctoral thesis on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Chapel Royal, completed in 2025, is currently being developed into a monograph which will also look at the reign of Charles I, and he is a co-editor of a forthcoming British Academy volume on extraordinary liturgical spaces in post-Reformation England. He currently teaches history at the University of Oxford, and holds degrees from the universities of York and Oxford.

Please note that due to the virtual nature of this event, refunds will not be given.