Chapter Administration and Archives at Windsor

Abstract

St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle has, from its foundation, been closely associated with the Sovereigns of England, and, through the Order of the Garter, with many of their most distinguished servants. Yet the history of the Chapel has seldom received treatment in any detail by church historians; as an exempt peculiar it has doubtless seemed too far removed from the main currents of ecclesiastical life. St. George's Chapel, however, has led, in whatever isolation from its province, a life of its own that has been of particularly marked vigour in the realms of music and theology. The members of the college serving St. George's, moreover, have had a direct influence on the life of the nation, whether as ministers of the crown or prominent civil servants, as royal tutors, or as personal advisers to the Sovereign. St. George's Chapel, in fact, may have played a far greater part in the life of both Church and State than has as yet been generally realised, and within the last twenty years a group of local historians has undertaken studies in the records of the Chapel, the interim conclusions of which already go some distance towards substantiating such a claim.