This watercolour is a copy of the third window of the south side of the Chancel Clerestory, St Edith's, Tamworth, Staffordshire. On the left is William the Conqueror who presents a charter to Lord Marmion. The lights on the right show Marmion asleep and St Editha poking him with her crozier. According to the legend Marmion evicted Editha's nuns from their abbey and in anger she haunted him in his dreams.

The work is one of three watercolour copies in the Birmingham collection commissioned by J. R. Holliday, an avid collector of Morris and Co. stained glass cartoons, from Thomas Matthews Rooke (1842-1942). According to a letter written in 1935 by G. S. Holliday

'Mr Holliday took photographs of [the windows] & enlarged them & prepared them for Mr. Rooke ... to colour from the originals. Mr Rooke spent some weeks [at Tamworth] on the work (by special arrangement with Mr Holliday who was satisfied that it was a good reproduction of the colour in the windows themselves).' (Unpublished letter from G. S. Holliday to Dr Bonseer, 29 March 1935, BMAG)

Rooke worked as Burne-Jones's studio assistant from 1869 until the latter's death in 1898. From 1878 until 1893 Rooke also spent half of his time producing watercolours for Ruskin's project to record old buildings threatened with demolition or restoration. Rooke was a talented painter in his own right and produced watercolours and oils of religious, imaginative and architectural subjects.
LM