At All Saints', Hereford, is a range of stalls of remarkable beauty. They have the bowing ogees, the compound cusping, the intersecting wavy tracery of the first half of the fourteenth century; yet the cusping and tracery are not in the early manner. In the cathedral the bowing ogees meet at an angle of nearly 45°; at All Saints', they project but slightly, meeting with a very obtuse point. All Saints' has ogee canopies under a coved horizontal tester with supporting shafts, as in the cathedral. In the latter the cornice of the tester on the south side has a perforated battlemented parapet; that on the north ([43]) has brattishing; at All Saints' both sides have brattishing, but the pattern is not the same. Hereford suffered much from the Black Death of 1350, and it is not likely that a parish church would be able to afford such costly stalls before the last quarter of that century. We may suggest 1380 as a probable date. It must be remembered that nearly all changes in mediæval design originated with the stone mason; it was some time before they were caught up by the craftsmen in other materials ([44]).

To the exquisite stallwork of Abergavenny the remarks made on that at All Saints', Hereford, again apply; it is redolent of the inspiration of the first half of the fourteenth century; but its effects are gained in a totally different way: this also may be assigned to the last quarter of the fourteenth century;[[21]] say c. 1380 or later ([46]).

The stalls at Wingfield, Suffolk, might date from 1362, when the church was made collegiate; but much work was done in the time of Michael de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Catherine Stafford; he died in 1415; the badges of Wingfield and Stafford—a wing and the Stafford knot—are seen on the arches between the de la Pole chapel and the chancel. The design of the stalls and desks is such as might be expected early in the fifteenth century, especially in East Anglia, where fourteenth century design lingered long ([46]).

Norwich Cathedral

At first sight the Norwich stalls might seem to belong to the first half of the fourteenth century; as in the stalls of Chichester, the lower canopies have ogee arches; while there is a second story above, as at Ely. The exuberance of earlier design is present in the cusping and the crockets; notice how the crockets vary from bay to bay, one set being actually composed of hawks. Nevertheless supermullions rise from the apex of each minor arch of the window tracery of the spandrils, and are conclusive evidence that the date is considerably later. The stalls and misericords below are of two periods. In the earlier set of twenty-four the seats are polygonal; the armour depicted is that of the last half of the fourteenth century, and there are arms of donors who died respectively in 1380, 1400 and 1428; so that we may assign the approximate date of 1390 to this set of misericords. The remaining thirty-eight misericords have seats curved on plan, and, according to Mr Harrod, are not later than the middle of the fifteenth century. Now the canopies extend above both sets of misericords; the probability therefore is that they were put up together with the second set of misericords. But there is one curious bit of evidence in the canopy work itself, which is here illustrated ([48]); viz, that one set of crockets consists of hawks with jesses. Now on the arms of John Wakering, who was bishop from 1416 to 1425 are three hawks' lures;[[22]] that being so, the probability is that the whole of the canopies, and the second set of misericords as well, are

of the approximate date of 1420. Though so much later than the Ely stalls, the absence of the spirelet and the retention of the horizontal cornice marks this, in spite of much beauty of detail, as a retrogressive design.

The stalls of Sherborne abbey, Dorset, are somewhat of a puzzle ([49]). The arch design, with the compound cusping, is in accordance with that of the lower story of the Ely stalls of 1338, except that the arches are semicircular or nearly so; but fourteenth century exuberance and versatility have faded away; the design is regular, symmetrical, prim. There was a great fire in Sherborne Minster in 1436; the piers of the choir are still reddened with the flames; the former stalls would certainly be consumed, and these no doubt are their successors.