And now all are ready, and we advance along the aisle behind the choir, and come in sight of the “presbytery screen,” some arches surmounted by coffers, which look like small locomotives on a railway viaduct. All this was the work of Fox, who was bishop in the reigns of the Henrys (VII. and VIII.). He built the clerestory and vaulting of this part. We look up at the roof and remark the bosses exhibiting the Tudor arms and other heraldic emblems dear to Fox; while beyond, in the vaulting of Bishop Lucy, the devices are more scriptural, including not only the instruments of the Passion, but the faces of Pilate and his better half, and Peter’s sword with Malchus’ ear upon it.
The bones of the Saxon kings and bishops buried in the Cathedral, had been well dried and preserved, having been placed in stone coffins pierced with holes. Fox piously collected them into these chests, on which he inscribed the venerated names of their owners.[78] He hoisted them up, having great confidence in the safety gained by elevation, and his trust was justified, with regard to his window in the gable and his statue above it, but in respect of these chests, he did not rightly measure the height to which mob violence might attain. After the storm had passed away, the bones were collected and replaced, but no one knew what remains were stored in any particular chest. A small set of bones has been thought to have belonged to Queen Emma. There are twelve names, and as late as 1845, the confused contents were all safe; but by 1873, one of the twelve skulls was gone.
“Purloined, perchance, by some over-zealous phrenologist, whose principles were not more sound than his theories,” said Mr. Hertford.
Fox’s Chantry.
We now come to Fox’s Chantry, and admire the diversified stone carving of the exterior. It is most refined and in the best taste, while the figure of Death stretched beneath it is in the worst, and reminds us of the skull and cross-bones, with which headstones were formerly adorned. We enter, and think we can see the dark ascetic bishop kneeling in his little stone study, for hither when blind, in his old age, he was led daily for prayer. His memory will ever be cherished lovingly here, and in Oxford, where he founded Corpus Christi College. Through this chantry, we reach the Feretory (from feretra, biers). Here, in ancient times, the gold and silver shrines of Birinus, Swithun, and other saints, the head of St. Just, and one of the feet of St. Philip, stood upon a platform higher than the present one, and reflected a holy light upon the worshippers in the choir. The contents of the feretory are now not so brilliant, though interesting. Here lies a prostrate giant—a figure of Bishop Edington—which was once perched up over the west front, but becoming dilapidated, was replaced by that of Wykeham. Here is the lid, or side of a reliquary chest (1309) with sacred subjects painted on its panels. The other remains are melancholy to behold, heads and portions of the bodies of statues found about the Cathedral.
“It looks like an old curiosity shop, or a sculptor’s studio,” observed Miss Hertford.
“And it reminds me,” chimed in her father, “of a story I heard about some country labourers, who had been visiting the British Museum. When asked how they liked it, they said, ‘Very much, but some had no arms, some had no legs, and some had no heads. The butler, however, was very kind, and told us it was intended to represent a railway accident.’”
On the other side of this feretory is Gardiner’s Chantry. He is generally associated in our minds with fire and faggot, but when we first read of him, he was a young man at Paris, chiefly remarkable for his skill in mixing salads. How unfortunate that he did not confine himself to this cooler occupation!—he would at least have received the blessings of epicures. Why should we recall the ghastly past? Gardiner’s violent Catholicism was partly from jealousy of Cranmer. Had he been made archbishop, he might have been a reformer; for there was a time when he was in Rome brow-beating the Pope, on behalf of Anne Boleyn.
Death’s Effigy.
The only good act the rebels did in the Cathedral was done here; they knocked the head off the wretched figure of Death, which had been placed, I suppose, as a companion in misery for that in Fox’s Chantry opposite. Perhaps the poet Young, had these scarecrows, which he knew well, in his mind, when he wrote—