De Lucy's Work.

with those of the choir aisles.

41

Each aisle is of three

bays; and eastward, each terminates in a square-ended chapel, that in the centre being the Lady - chapel, which, as De Lucy finished it, was parallel with the other two, but was extended eastward in the Perpendicular period.

The whole of this work is an early and very beautiful example of Early English; and is of the same period as the choir of Lincoln Cathedral, assigned to St. Hugh of Lincoln (1186-1200). The design and details are of great interest, and deserve the most careful attention. The piers of the main arcades (shown in Plate XX.) are of Purbeck, with attached shafts (marking their early character) and foliaged capitals. They are stone-ringed half-way up. The capitals. vary in detail, but are all fine. There are two main piers on either side, and responds toward the wall of the Lady-chapel and that of the presbytery. Round the aisle walls, and under the windows, runs an arcade [Plate XVI.] of extreme beauty, with elongated quatrefoils in the spandrels between each arch-these probably contained figures. Above, immediately under the windows, is a band with quatrefoils at intervals. The wall on the south side, from whatever reason, has been much thrust outward.

The wall at the back of the presbytery, which was made the eastern wall of the feretory, is Decorated, and belongs to the first portion of the Decorated work by which De Lucy's retrochoir was connected with the presbytery. It is decorated with a series of nine

tabernacles, which "are beautiful specimens of Edwardian work, and well deserve study."-Willis. Each tabernacle contains two pedestals, under which are inscribed the names of the persons whose images once stood on them. Besides the Saviour and the Virgin, the list includes all the kings before the Conquest who were either buried in, or benefactors to, Winchester Cathedral. The exquisite finial crowning one of these tabernacles is figured in Plate XXI., together with a fragment of the same date, preserved in the feretory. A low arch under the tabernacles formerly opened to what was known as the "Holy Hole,"-as well from its vicinity to the great shrine of St. Swithun as from its having been the place in which lesser relics were deposited. It occupied the space under the platform of the feretory. The inscription over the door ran as follows:

"Corpora sanctorum sunt hic in pace sepulta,

Ex meritis quorum fulgent miracula multa."

XXII. From more than one point in this retrochoir five chantries and chapels, nearly each one the last resting-place of a prelate whose name was once a "tower of strength," are visible at once. "How much power and ambition under half-a-dozen stones!" wrote Walpole. "I own I grow to look on tombs as lasting mansions, instead of observing them for curious pieces of architecture."

The two most important of these chantries occupy the spaces between the central piers, Bishop Waynflete's chantry [Plate XX.] on the north, Cardinal