Galyon Hone

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Galyon Hone (died 1552) was a glazier from Bruges who worked for Henry VIII, making and repairing stained glass at places like Hampton Court and other royal houses. He often updated windows to show the heraldry and ciphers of Henry’s wives as the king remarried.

He is thought to be the same person as “Gheleyn van Brugge,” who joined the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1492. Hone came to England and became the King’s glazier, following Barnard Flower. His early English work included glazing the pavilions at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Hone made glass for Eton College and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Some payments for Eton’s windows went to his wife. Drawings for King’s College windows, held at Bowdoin College, relate to contracts from around 1526 and show a Flemish style, similar to Dirck Vellert; such designs are known as vidimus.

In 1527 he repaired glazing at Sunninghill Park, a royal house in Windsor Great Park. He lived in the parish of St Mary Magdalene, then in Southwark, where Henry VIII allowed him to employ six foreign journeymen. He was part of a Dutch and Netherlandish crafts community in London, and his name appears in the will of the court goldsmith Cornelis Hayes in 1547.

Hone and the printer John Siberch oversaw the will of a German painter in Bermondsey, Henry Blankstone, who decorated the Long Gallery at Hampton Court. By 1533, Hone’s work at Hampton Court included extensive heraldic glass in the Great Hall and other rooms, and he also glazed the arbour in the palace gardens. He supplied heraldic glass for Henry VIII at Hunsdon House before 1534, repaired windows at Woking Palace and Westenhanger in 1534, and added Jane Seymour’s badges at Greenwich Palace in 1536. He also worked on the Jewel House at the Tower of London and windows in the presence and watching chambers at Hampton Court, as well as lodgings at Dartford in 1544. He repaired Leeds Castle’s glass for Catherine Parr’s visit.

Galyon Hone apparently died in 1552. His son Gerrard Hone was also a glazier in England, and Gerrard married Marion, a niece of the royal carpenter Thomas Stockton. Some glass from Hone’s era was recovered during 1840s restorations at Hampton Court and was later given to St Alban’s in Earsdon. Surviving windows at Withcote Chapel near Oakham are believed to be by Hone, featuring heraldry and the phoenix badge of Jane Seymour. A set of related drawings may be connected to Wolsey’s chapel windows at Hampton Court, and some Flemish-style designs are tied to a glassmaker in London named James Nicholson. Some of Hone’s chapel windows were altered to include Anne Boleyn’s and Jane Seymour’s badges, and many of his works were lost or destroyed by iconoclasts in 1645.