When the sunlight falls athwart the great windows the tracery and the moulded stonework on either side are painted with “the soft chequerings” of rainbow hues, and the magnificent glass shows at its best all its marvellously fine detail, as well as the beauty of its colour.  The whole range of twenty-six windows having been executed under two contracts, dated 1516 and 1526, there was opportunity for carrying out a great subject scheme, and thus it was found possible to illustrate practically the whole Gospel story, culminating in the Crucifixion in the east window, and continuing into apostolic times until the death of the Virgin Mary.  At the west end is the one modern window.  It represents the Last Judgement.  It is safe to say that of their period this glorious set of windows has no real rival, and it is hardly possible to do them any justice if the visitor has become a little jaded with sight-seeing.  In one of the windows there is a splendidly drawn three-masted ship of the period (Henry VIII.’s reign), high in the bow and stern, with her long-boat in the water amidships, and every detail of the rigging so clearly shown that the artist must have drawn it from a vessel in the Low Countries or some English port.  It is one of the best representations of a ship of the period extant.  This is merely an indication of the vivid archaeological interest of the glass, apart from its beauty in the wonderful setting of fan vaulting and tall, gracefully moulded shafts.

The splendid oaken screen across the choir, dividing the chapel into almost equal portions, was put up in 1536, at the same time as nearly the whole of the stalls.  It is rather startling to see the monogram of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, entwined with true lovers’ knots, on this wonderful piece of Renaissance woodwork, for in 1536, the date of the screen, Anne, charged with unfaithfulness, went to the scaffold.  How was it, we wonder, that these initials were never removed?  The screen also reminds us of the changes in architecture and religion which had swept over England between the laying of the foundation stone and the completion of the internal fittings, for, not only had the Gothic order come to its greatest perfection in this building, and then its whole traditions been abandoned and a reversion to classic forms taken place, but the very religion for which the chapel had been built had been swept away by the Reformation.

The Tudor rose and portcullis frequently repeated within and without the chapel constantly remind us of the important part Henry VII. played in the creation of one of the chiefest flowers of the Gothic order and the architectural triumph of Cambridge.