Qualiter ipsa nocet: mors quando venit dominari."
Tradition ascribes it to Bishop Lacy's tomb, and the vergers even at the present day inform visitors that it was erected to commemorate his attempt to fast during Lent. It is an exquisite piece of work. An engraving of it may be found in Britton's Exeter Cathedral. I have heard that there is a similar monument in Salisbury Cathedral, and it appears probable, from there being more than one, that it was a favourite device to represent the instability of human grandeur.
EXONIENSIS.
There is a tradition similar to that related by BURIENSIS, and alike unfounded, concerning Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, who is buried on the north side of the choir of Lincoln cathedral in a chapel of his own foundation. On the floor is an image of a decayed skeleton-like body; on the tomb above, his effigy arrayed in his episcopal robes.
K. P. D. E.
I would remind your correspondent BURIENSIS of the splendid monument in Winchester cathedral, beneath which are deposited the remains of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who died here on the 14th of September, 1528. In an oblong niche, under the third arch, lies the figure of Bishop Fox, represented as an emaciated corpse in a winding-sheet, with his feet resting on a skull. It is a tradition of the vergers that he died whilst endeavouring to imitate the example of Our Lord by a fast of forty days.
The figure of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, is also represented, like that of Fox, as a skeleton; and the same tale of a forty days' fast traditionally delivered by the same authorities.
E. S. S. W.
Winton.