Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/208

150 SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS IN OXFOED CATHEDRAL. headed doorway holds its ground to the last, and in the north is often found in Early English work. The mouldings, as I have observed, do not present a very great variety, except what arises from the proportions between the torus and hollow ; but the management of these often gives them much boldness and character. I do not pretend to have offered anything like an adequate description of the specimens I have thus recommended to notice. Any one, by taking up his quarters at Creil or Clermont for a few nights (where the accommodations are w^ell spoken of), might effect far more, both as regards number of objects and accuracy of observation, than I could by means of repeated journeys from Paris;, I hope I have said enough to induce some readers to take the same tour, which, independently of antiquarian interest, will lead him through a ver}^ pleasing, and in some places almost romantic, tract of country. SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS IN OXFOED CATHEDEAL. A VERY brief notice of the ancient Sepulchral Monuments in the Cathedral of Oxford is given by ]Ir. Britton in his History of that structure ; and, in the account of it in " The ]Icmorials of Oxford," this deficiency is unfortunately not supplied. The older writers on the Cathedral, Anthony Wood, Browne Willis, and Gutch, have preserved the inscrip- tions extant in their times, and some heraldic notices ; but their attempts to describe the monuments are meagre and unsatisfactory, and these sepulchral memorials have never yet, I believe, been treated of in detail, with that particularity which they deserve. The sculptured monuments, though few in number, are of a class which w^e might reasonably exjDect to find preserved in an old Conventual Church. Many sepulchral slabs which formerly covered the pavement of the choir were removed and despoiled of their brasses, in the early part of the seventeenth century, in the 3^ear 1630, when the old stalls were taken down, and the present substituted in their stead. But the removal and destruction, partial or entire, of memo- rials of the dead was a practice, however much to be