All the carved wooden roods appear to have been destroyed at the Reformation in compliance with the injunctions issued for that purpose. We occasionally meet, however, with bas relief sculptures of our Saviour extended on the cross, with a figure on each side representing the Virgin and St. John, but in a mutilated condition. On the outside of the west wall of the south transept of Romsey Church, Hants, and close to the entrance from the cloisters into the church, is a large stone rood or crucifix sculptured in relief, with a hand above emerging from a cloud[169-*]: this is apparently of the twelfth century. Small sculptured representations of the rood, with the figures of St. Mary and St. John, still exist on one of the buttresses near the west door of Sherborne Church, Dorsetshire; over a south doorway of Burford Church, Oxfordshire; and in the wall of the tower of the church of St. Lawrence, Evesham.
Outside the roof of some churches, on the apex of the eastern gable of the nave, is a small open arch or turret, in which formerly a single bell was suspended: this was the sanctus or sacringe bell, thus placed that, being near the altar, it might be the more readily rung, when, in concluding the ordinary of the mass, the priest pronounced the Ter-sanctus, to draw attention to that more solemn office, the canon of the mass, which he was now about to commence; it was also rung at a subsequent part of the service, on the elevation and adoration of the host and chalice, after consecration[171-*]; but though the arch remains on the gable of the nave of many churches, the bell thus suspended is retained in few; amongst which may be mentioned those of Long Compton, Whichford, and Brailes, in Warwickshire, where this bell is still preserved hung in an arch at the apex of the nave, with the rope hanging down between the chancel and nave[171-†]. Mention of this bell is thus made in the Survey of the Priory of Sandwell, in the county of Stafford, taken at the time of the Reformation: “Itm the belframe standyng betw: the chauncell and the church, wt. a litle sanctm bell in the same.” Generally, however, a small hand-bell was carried and rung at the proper times in the service, by the acolyte; and in inventories of ancient church furniture we find it often noticed as “a sacringe bell;” but in an inventory of goods belonging to the chapel of Thorp, Northamptonshire, it is described as “a litle sanctus bell.” A small sacringe bell, of bell-metal, with the exception of the clapper, which was of iron, was in 1819 discovered on the removal of some rubbish from the ruins of St. Margaret’s Priory, Barnstable; and within the last few years a small sanctus bell was found on the site of a religious house at Warwick[172-*].
Passing under the rood-loft, we enter the chancel: this was so called from the screen or lattice-work (cancelli) of stone or wood by which it was separated from the nave, and which succeeded the curtain or veil which anciently formed this division of the church[173-*].
We often perceive in the choirs of conventual churches, as in our cathedrals, on either side of the entrance, facing the east, and also on the north and south sides, a range of wooden stalls divided into single seats, peculiarly constructed, the formulæ or forms of which were movable, and carved on the subselliæ or under-sides with grotesque, satirical, and often irreverend devices: these were appropriated to the monks or canons of the monastery or college to which the church was attached. The form of each stall, when turned up so as to exhibit the carved work on the under-part, furnished a small kind of seat or ledge, constructed for the purpose of inclining against rather than sitting on; and this was called the misericorde or miserere. The formulæ or forms when down, and the misericordes when the forms were turned up, were used as the season required for penitential inclinations[174-*]. In front of these stalls was a desk, ornamented on the exterior with panelled tracery; and over the stalls, especially of those of cathedral churches, canopies of tabernacle work richly carved were sometimes disposed. In Winchester Cathedral we have perhaps the most early, chaste, and beautiful example of the canons’ stalls, with canopies over, that are to be met with, although a greater excess of minute carved ornament may be found in the canopies which overhang the stalls in other cathedrals. In old conventual churches, now no longer used as such, the stalls have been often removed from their original position to other parts of the church, and they appear to have varied in number according to that of the fraternity.
