Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/126

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THE CHOIR 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.

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