“Si monumentum quæras, circumspice.”
It is the rare privilege of Winchester to have here, face to face in the Palace and Cathedral, two of the most important works of these great master builders.
Higher up the nave is the Chantry of Bishop Edington, earlier and less ornamental than that of Wykeham. He is the prelate who was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury and made the shrewd and sportive reply, “If Canterbury is the higher rank, Winchester is the better manger.” The date is placed in a fanciful way at the end of the inscription “M thrice C with LXV and I.”
On the bishop’s vestment there is a curious emblem of a cruciform shape, called a Fylfot or Suastika. It is stated to signify submission to the will of God, and to have been a symbol prior to Christianity.
Tomb of Rufus.
From this point we wander into the Choir, and admire the tall carved spires of oak, blackened by the airs of six centuries. A verger turns up the seats to show us the quaint carvings of an age when humour did not seem distasteful in churches—here is a pig playing the fiddle, another chanting, and a third blowing the trumpet. In the centre of the pavement lies the sphinx of the Cathedral—rude, archaic, enigmatical. It has been surmised to be the tomb of some royal Saxon, or of Bishop de Blois. Winchester men continue to swear it is that of Rufus, who was “buried in the choir,” but that king’s bones seem, from an inscription on one of the neighbouring coffers, to have been chested and perched up by Fox. Everything about it is a puzzle. The rebels in the Civil War broke it open and found a silver chalice, a gold ring, and pieces of cloth of gold, within it. This has led to the supposition that De Blois rested here. In 1868 it was again opened, and one of the vergers told me he had handled the bones, had seen beside them the arrow-head with which the king was killed, and had remarked what an excellent set of teeth he possessed. Remains of cloth of gold and other tissues were discovered, and seven gold Norman braids finely worked, as we can see in the library, where they are preserved.[76]
The Choir from the Nave.
The altar screen must have been most effective when the figures remained. Dean Kitchin has given a tantalizing account of it, and during the Civil War a wall was built before it. But throughout the last century, the niches were filled with modern vases, the gift of an excellent prebendary, Master Harris, whose zeal was greater than his taste.