Near the Library door is a simple memorial stone[50] to Dean Peacock, the great promoter of the recent restorations, who died in 1858, and was buried in the Cemetery. Just below this is an elegant memorial brass to the Rev. Solomon Smith, M.A., for over forty years a Minor Canon of the Cathedral, and for many years Incumbent of St. Mary's.
Several other memorial remains may be observed in various parts of the church, but to enumerate them or to point them out would exceed our limits, one we may notice in passing, that of Dean Cæsar (1614-1636), which has been removed from a position it long occupied in the north aisle of the Choir, to the junction of that aisle with the closed end of the eastern aisle of the north Transept, near the new pulpit.
We may also notice a new oaken lectern or reading desk near the pulpit, containing a beautifully carved figure representative of the first beatitude, under a cinquefoil canopy, the gift of the Very Rev. the Dean.
"Of fifty-four bishops of Ely," says Mr. Millers, "thirty-five are known to have been buried in this Cathedral, and two in the Lady Chapel. Of these thirty-seven, there are memorials of twenty; some of them very scanty and much mutilated, and many removed from the spots where the bodies of those whom they commemorate repose. Of the other seventeen, there were no doubt, similar memorials, but they 'are perished as though they had never been.'"[51] Since the above was written two others have been buried in the Cathedral—Bishop Sparke in West's chapel, and Bishop Allen behind the altar screen, as we have noticed; Bishop Turton (1845-1864), was buried at Kensal Green.
[The Lady Chapel.]
We will now direct the attention of the visitor to this most interesting building, which stands on the north side of the Cathedral, parallel with the Choir, and is approached through a doorway at the north-east corner of the north Transept. This chapel was erected in the early part of the fourteenth century, the first stone being laid on Lady-day, 1321, by Alan de Walsingham, then sub-prior, and the whole was completed a.d. 1349. The works were carried on chiefly under the charge of John de Wisbech, one of the monks, who, it is stated, whilst assisting in digging the foundations, found a brazen pot of old coins buried in the earth, and which proved a great assistance in carrying on the work. This was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and elaborate specimens of the Decorated style in England; and as Mr. Stewart observes, "must have been a perfect storehouse of statuary and elaborate tabernacle work." Even in its present dilapidated state it will amply repay a careful examination. It was dedicated to St. Mary, and after the Reformation, was (in 1566) assigned by the Dean and Chapter for the use of the inhabitants of the parish of Holy Trinity in lieu of their own church then in ruins, and has since been frequently called "Trinity Church."
This is, perhaps, the widest single-span church in the kingdom, being 46 feet in width; the length is 100 feet, and the height 60 feet to the centre of the ceiling. Its length is divided into five severies, in each of which, on both sides, is a window of great size with four lights and rich tracery, in some of which are fragments of the original stained glass, sufficient to indicate that they were all, at one period, entirely so filled. The end windows are noble and spacious, the west window having eight lights, and the east window seven, both have transoms, and each with tracery differing from the other, and from the windows in the sides. Both are insertions of a somewhat later date than the building, the east window by Bishop Barnet about 1373, and the other a little later.
The walls everywhere display a rich profusion and variety of ornament, once beautified with colouring and gilding, but some years ago covered with whitewash; a few faint traces of its former splendour may yet be found in various parts of the chapel, enough perhaps to shew that it must have been gorgeous in the extreme.
A low bench table runs along the walls and carries a series of niches with canopies richly decorated, the piers of which rise from the floor, but each is divided into two by a slender pillar rising from the bench table; the arcade on the north side consists of nineteen tabernacles separated by square pilasters of Purbeck marble; there are five sets of three each under the windows, and the remaining four fill up the intermediate spaces between the five groups. The canopy of each of the fifteen tabernacles consists of a head of singular beauty, radiated and inclined forwards, on the apex is, or was, the figure of a saint; above these is a hood-mould crocketed, and terminating with a finial. The other four are wider, and instead of the figure of a saint on the apex each terminates in a group of three elaborately carved brackets or corbels, which support two other ranges of niches in pairs, surmounted by ornamented canopies, and between them runs a roof-shaft, from which spring the ribs of the vaulting, which is similar to that of the stalled Choir. The spandrils of the tabernacle work is filled with diaper work and alto relievos which are supposed to represent some legendary history, most probably that of the virgin.