"A LOST CHARLES."

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 803, 28 April 1910, Page 9

"A LOST CHARLES."

CANVAS MISSING' FROM A CITY . ■ CHIMCH.N The story of the discovery by the Rev. Stephen Barrass, Hector ot St. Lawrence Jowry, of a portrait of Charles I, which the iinder attributes to'. Velasiquez, has served ; to. briug' to light'the mysterious disappearance, of anotuer portrait of tho Stuart monarch. • -This canvas, , measuring quite. Bft,. by. 6ft., hung for/years .on tlie walls of the , parish cniirfch oi'St.' Botolph, Bishopsgate, the rector of which is the Bishop Of Kensington, but 'within l the past decade it has gone—nobody 'knows where. Twelve vor fifteen years ago Mr. Gosa, chief librarian at Bishopsgate Institute; .read at Crosby Hall a paper in .which occurred this passage: "On the wall of the stairs leading to the northern gallery of tho church—(St. Botolph)—is a lino old portrait of King Charles I emblematically describing his sufferings. - " . It' .will be noticed that Mr. Goss used th'cj ..word "is," and lie is still-positive that at that time, when he, made his first visit to the church, , he'. saw . tho portrait thero. The younger. generation of(residents 1 in the pnrisli has been sceptical as to whether tho pifcturo ever existed, but recently' definito inf.u'mation on- tho matter has . been discovered in a small volume written about tho year .1821 by Thomas Lifford Sinartt, ,wlio was then, vestry clerft .of tho parish.'-. In a chapter - devoted to, the Church of St. Botolph .the author'writes: "On the wall 'of tho stairs leading to tho north gallery hangs an old.picture nf Charles the First, emblematically describing his sufferin'gs/' 'etc. I '' 11