the vine spreading upwards, bearing its leaf and full fruit in Mary, to whose Son the Wise Men are offering their presents. Such is the screen, and had the execution been equal to the design, it would have been the finest in England. The carving seems, however, never to have been finished, and certainly in parts only to have been roughly cut by some inferior hand, and never to have received the last touches of the master-artist. Even now, in its present condition, it stands before those of Winchester and St. Alban's, inferior only to that of St. Mary's Overie.[1]
Passing on we come to the Lady Chapel, with its traceried roof. Under the east window are the remnants of another rich screen. The high altar, too, with its slab of Purbeck marble cut with five crosses, remains, whilst two recessed altar tombs to Sir Thomas West and his mother stand in the north and south walls.
But what we should especially see, both for its beauty and its interest, is the Chantry Chapel, built for her last resting-place by Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, mother of Cardinal Pole. It stands in the north choir aisle, its roof rich with arabesque tracery and carved bosses, telling a curious story in our English history. Attainted of treason the Countess was confined two years in the Tower before she suffered. When the day of execution came, she walked out on the fatal Tower Green; and still firm—still to the last resolute—refused to lay her head
- ↑ I know nothing equal to this last screen in the delicacy of its carving, seen in bracket, and canopy, and the flights of angels: in the deep feeling especially manifest in the central bracket, with the Saviour's head crowned with thorns, but surrounded with fruit and flowers, typical of His sufferings and the world's benefits; and in the grave humour, not out of place, as allegorical of the world's pursuits, which peeps forth in the figures over the two doorways.
