THE TWO FONTS, TWELFTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.
The South Aisle contains the font, which was probably among the latest additions to the church before the dissolution, and formerly stood at the west end of the nave. This font is raised upon two circular steps, and is octagonal and of blue marble, with the various surfaces of base, stem, and bowl slightly hollowed. The sides of the bowl and also of the base bear shields and lozenges alternately, and upon the base the lozenges are richly carved. In a corner hard by stands another and much older font—probably that of Archbishop Roger’s church. It is a circular basin, adorned with an arcade of trefoil arches.[76]
BAS-RELIEF IN THE SOUTH AISLE OF THE NAVE.
(Reduced from a rubbing.)
Against the wall a little further eastwards is an altar-tomb of great interest. The marble slab at the top has at one end a bas-relief representing a grove, and in it a lion walking away from a man, who kneels in an attitude of supplication with his back to the lion, while between the two figures is a bird flying toward the man. Tradition says that this is the tomb of an Irish prince who brought back from Palestine a lion that had there become attached to him, but a story of this kind was popular in mediæval romances,[77] and the tradition, though of some age, is not, perhaps, very probable. It has been well suggested that the sculpture represents deliverance from a lion in answer to prayer; but as it is possibly only part of a larger composition, its full meaning must still be doubtful.[78] The work is rather Flemish in character, and may be assigned to the fourteenth century, with which date the costume of the man agrees. Thus the slab is considerably older than the wall to which it is now affixed, and it is doubtless older than the lower part of the tomb itself, which may be of the same date as the aisle. There is a black-letter inscription upon the front of the structure, but it is unfortunately quite illegible. An entry in the Chapter Acts[79] indicates that this tomb was used as a money-table in business transactions between the mediæval townsmen.
The windows have their sides moulded, but somewhat clumsily. That above the font contains the only mediæval glass in the Cathedral, a collection of fragments chiefly of the fourteenth century. Most of these were originally in the great window of the choir, where, being in the upper tracery, they had escaped the violence of Sir Thomas Mauleverer’s troopers. Among the figures in the medallions are St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and there is a fine shield of the arms of England, with a border or mantling of France, and surmounted by a label of three points azure.[80] The quality of the glass is exceedingly good, and the window, when the sun shines through it, resembles a screen of gems, and puts its neighbours to shame. The fourth window from the west, however, by Clayton & Bell, is of considerable merit. The vaulting-shafts are in clusters of three, and have overhanging bell-shaped bases with polygonal plinths, while upon the capitals are angels bearing shields, one angel to each cluster. The last two shields eastwards are charged respectively with the arms of Archbishop Savage (1501-1507), and with the three stars of St. Wilfrid. Where these shafts break the string-course under the windows they are encircled by a thin band. Upon the eastern fragment of the old nave there remains in this aisle another portion of Archbishop Roger’s external string-course, and also (near the last capital of the arcade) some trace of a band of ornament.
The western end of the North Aisle is the Consistory Court, and has been used as an ecclesiastical court since 1722, when Ripon was still in the diocese of York. Over the Chancellor’s seat is a modern canopy of stained deal, which formerly surmounted the throne in the choir. The stone base of the railings, with its many projecting angles and its band of delicate quatrefoils, is thought to have formed part of the shrine of St. Wilfrid, and, having been found in fragments, was placed here by Sir Gilbert Scott. In this aisle the sides of the windows are partially panelled. The glass is of little interest, save that in the third window from the west, by Burlison & Grylls, and a few seventeenth century fragments. The vaulting-shafts here are single, and are half-octagons with their sides slightly hollowed, and they again break the string-course, which rises to pass over the doorway. Of the shields on their angel capitals the three easternmost are charged respectively with the arms of Fountains Abbey[81] (three horse-shoes), with those of Cardinal Archbishop Bainbridge (1508-1514) (supported by two angels), and with the stars of St. Wilfrid. The arch opening into the transept is not so high as in the other aisle, and upon the space above it are portions of a once external string-course and buttress.
The Central Tower.—It is from the interior of the church that the extent of the repairs necessitated by the partial fall of the tower can best be realized, and it is here that the documentary evidence for their dates may best be summed up. The catastrophe itself is described in an indulgence of 1450 by Archbishop Kemp, but the repairs had not advanced much by 1459, for in that year a testator bequeaths money to this object, “cum fuerit in operando.” It would seem, however, from an indulgence of Archbishop George Neville that the tower had been partially repaired by 1465. After a bequest in 1466 (the last of a series beginning in 1454), it seems to be next mentioned in the Fabric Roll for 1541-2, and the Chapter Acts speak of the work that remained to be done as late as 1545. The order, therefore, of the larger operations in the Perpendicular period was probably as follows:—First the Canons remodelled the two ruinous sides of the tower and the east side of the south transept (where the work much resembles that in the tower), then they rebuilt the nave,[82] then the western bays on the south side of the choir (as the late character of the work itself would indicate),[83] and lastly they were about to remodel the two remaining sides of the tower when they were checked by the dissolution.