[96] It appears from the Fabric Rolls that a new high altar was begun in 1522. The work seems to have lasted four years, and apparently included a carved wooden reredos.
[97] Subtus altare suggests a crypt, but there seems to have been no crypt under the choir. Perhaps the altare meant may have stood over the Saxon or the Norman crypt.
[98] Mention may be here made of the Communion plate, some of which is as old as 1676 and has upon it representations of the church, very incorrect but showing the spires; also of the mace which is now borne before the Dean, and which has been assigned to the fifteenth century and may possibly have been once borne before the Wakeman. Upon the top has been engraved an Agnus Dei, the cognizance of the church.
[99] A piece of woodwork, however, which was in the north aisle at the time of the last restoration, is said to have borne the date 1397.
[100] The old miserere was probably removed when the Throne was made to comprise two stalls. (See [p. 111].)
[101] It has been supposed that these niches were for figures of St. Peter and St. Wilfrid, and that the same was the case with the two niches which form the ends of the lower tier in the Rood Screen, and also with those which flank the west doors. It may also have been the case with the two eastward projections (if there were two) from the western piers of the Central Tower.
[102] Below the string-course there is a certain amount of limestone in the wall, but this hardly accounts for the language of a Chapter minute which records a meeting in 1546 to consider the repair of certain defectus et ruinositates apertae tam campanilis quam muri lapidei insulae borealis.
[103] Above the shrine there hung, apparently, a gilded crescent like that above the site of St. Thomas’s shrine at Canterbury. The bones were enclosed in a splendid coffer with poles attached, and on solemn occasions this ‘feretory,’ besides being carried in procession, was sometimes placed under a tent in the fields. It was also very elaborately renewed in 1520 (Surtees Soc., vol. lxxxi. p. 204, n., etc.). Portions of the shrine exist, perhaps, in the alabaster bas-reliefs in the Chapter-house, as well as in the base of the railing in the north aisle of the nave.
[104] It may, however, be later than the main walls.
[105] The lower portion of this wall seems to be of an even earlier type of masonry than the upper. A somewhat similar difference between the upper and lower portions may be observed in the east and north walls also.