Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

We must now look inside the cathedral, and if we enter the north-east transept from the cloisters we shall pass over a large stone inscribed “Elizabeth Penrose, 1837.” This is the resting-place of “Mrs. Markham,” once the authority on English history in every schoolroom, and deservedly so. She took her nom de plume from the little village of East Markham, Notts., in which she lived for many years.

THE INTERIOR

Passing through the north-east transept, with its stained glass windows by Canon Sutton, and its curious “Dean’s Chapel,” once the minster dispensary, and turning eastwards, we enter the north aisle of the Angel Choir and find the chapel of Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford. In this the effigy of the bishop is on the south side, and there is a window to the memory of Sir Charles Anderson, of Lea, and a reredos with a painting of the Annunciation, lately put up in memory of Arthur Roland Maddison, minor canon and librarian, who died April 24, 1912, and is buried in his parish churchyard at Burton, by Lincoln. He is a great loss, for he was a charming personality, and, having been for many years a painstaking student of heraldry, he was always an accurate writer on matters of genealogy, and on the relationships and wills of the leading Lincolnshire families, subjects of which he had a special and unique knowledge. Bishop Fleming was not the only Bishop of Lincoln who founded a college at Oxford, as William Smith, founder of Brasenose, Cardinal Wolsey, founder of Christchurch, and William of Wykeham, founder of New College, were all once bishops here. Opposite to the Fleming chapel is the Russell chapel, just east of the south porch and between these lies the Retro Choir, which contained once the rich shrine of St. Hugh, its site now marked, next to Bishop Fuller’s tomb, by a black marble memorial. Here is the beautiful monument to the reverend Bishop Christopher Wordsworth. This is a very perfect piece of work, with a rich, but not heavy, canopy, designed by Bodley and executed by M. Guillemin, who carved the figures in the reredos of St. Paul’s. This rises over a recumbent figure of the bishop in robes and mitre. The face is undoubtedly an excellent likeness.

THE CHOIR

The view from here of the perfect Geometrical Gothic east window, with its eight lights, is very striking; beneath it are the three chapels of St. Catherine, St. Mary, and St. Nicholas, and on either side of it are two monuments, those on the south side to Wymbish, prior of Nocton, and Sir Nicolas de Cantelupe; and on the north side to Bishop Henry Burghersh, Chancellor of Edward III., 1340, and his father, Robert. On each tomb are canopied niches, each holding two figures, among which are Edward III. and his four sons—the Black Prince, Lionel Duke of Clarence, John of Gaunt, and Edmund of Langley. Adjoining the chapel of St. Catherine, which was founded by the Burghersh family, is a fine effigy of Bartholomew Lord Burghersh, who fought at Crécy, in full armour with his head resting on a helmet. A fine monument of Queen Eleanor once stood beneath the great window where her heart was buried before the great procession to London began. The effigy was of copper gilt, but, having been destroyed, it has been recently replaced by a generous Lincoln citizen from drawings which were in existence and from a comparison with her monument in Westminster Abbey. A stone at the west of St. Catherine’s chapel shows a deep indentation worn by the scrape of the foot of each person who bowed at the shrine. A similar one is to be seen at St. Cuthbert’s shrine, Durham.

In the east windows of both the choir aisles is some good Early English glass.

THE PRESBYTERY

We will now turn westwards, past the south porch, and come to the south-east transept; here the line of the old Roman wall and ditch runs right through the cathedral, the apsidal chapels of the eastern transepts and the whole of the presbytery, as well as the chapter-house, lying all outside it. Two apsidal chapels in this transept are dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. It was in St. Peter’s that sub-dean Bramfield was murdered by a sub-deacon, September 25, 1205, who paid the penalty immediately at the hands of the sub-dean’s servants. The exquisite white marble tomb and recumbent figure of John Kaye, bishop 1827 to 1853, by Westmacott, is in this chapel. Opposite to these apsidal chapels are the canons’ and choristers’ vestries; under the former is a crypt; the latter has the monks’ lavatory, and a fireplace for the baking of the sacramental wafers by the sacristan. Passing along the south choir-aisle we reach the shrine of little St. Hugh, and here the work all around us, in choir, aisles, and transepts, is that of the great St. Hugh. The whole of the centre of the cathedral, with its double transept and the choir between them, being his; and we must notice in two of the transept chapels his peculiar work in the double capitals above slender pillars of alternate stone and marble, and projecting figures of saints and angels low down in each spandrel. We now enter the choir, and pause to admire the magnificent work and all its beauty. On either side are the sixty-two beautiful and richly carved canopied stalls. They are only excelled, perhaps, by those at Winchester. The carving of the Miserere seats is much like that at Boston, where humorous scenes are introduced. The fox in a monk’s cowl, the goose, and the monkey being the chief animals represented. Here, on a poppy-head in the precentor’s seat, a baboon is seen stealing the butter churned by two monkeys; he is caught and hanged, and on the Miserere he is being carried forth for burial. A finely carved oak pulpit, designed by Gilbert Scott, is at the north-east end of the stalls. The brass eagle is a seventeenth century copy of an earlier one. We notice overhead the stone vaulting, springing from Purbeck shafts; notice, too, the beauty of the mouldings and carved capitals, and the groups of arches forming the triforium with clerestory window above, which, however, only show between the ribs of the vaulting; and, then, the length of it! For now, by taking in two from the Angel Choir, the chancel has seven bays. It is a very striking view as you look eastwards, but it has the defect of a rather plain, low vaulting, and west of it the nave, which is a generation later, is more splendidly arranged, while east of it the Angel Choir, which is nearly half a century later than the nave, admittedly surpasses all the rest in delicacy and beauty. The choir vaulting being low, caused both nave and presbytery to be lower than they would otherwise have been, so that it has been said that when the tower fell it was a pity the chancel did not fall with it, all would then have been built with loftier roofs and with more perfect symmetry.

If we pass down the Ritual Choir eastwards, we enter the presbytery, and at once see the origin of the name “Angel Choir” in the thirty figures of angels in the spandrels. It was built to accommodate the enormous number of pilgrims who flocked to St. Hugh’s shrine, and is, according to G. A. Freeman, “one of the loveliest of human works; the proportion of the side elevation and the beauty of the details being simply perfect,” and it would seem to be uncontested that all throughout, whether in its piers, its triforium, its aisles, or its carved detail, it shows a delicacy and finish never surpassed in the whole history of Gothic architecture. One of its large clerestory windows was filled, in 1900, with excellent glass by H. Holiday, to mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of St. Hugh’s death.

The angels sculptured in stone, and mostly carrying scrolls, fill the triforium spandrels in groups of three, five groups on either side. They are probably not all by the master’s hand. The Virgin and Child in the south-west bay and the angel with drawn sword in the north-west seem finer than the rest. The stone inscribed in Lombardic letters “Cantate Hic,” marks the place for chanting the Litany; this is chanted by two lay clerks. There are nine of these, one being vestry clerk; also four choristers in black gowns with white facings (a reminiscence of the earliest dress for the Lincoln choir, and a unique costume in England), eight Burghersh choristers or “Chanters” (lineal descendants of the Burghersh chantry of St. Catherine with its separate band of choristers), and some supernumerary boys and men. There are four canons residentiary, viz., the sub-dean, chancellor, precentor, and Archdeacon of Lincoln, and fifty-three prebendaries.