of singers, who were originally accommodated in the space between the people in the nave and the clergy in the presbyterium, or were grouped round the altar, or perhaps more frequently in an apse behind it. In process of time this body of clergy migrated to more convenient positions in the choir. As already pointed out, the care of the chancel by law belonged to the rector or vicar, and a portion of the tithe received by him was supposed to be devoted to this purpose. The chancel was reserved entirely for the use of the clergy and for those who ministered at the altar or took part in the ecclesiastical chant. The prohibition against lay people sitting in that part of the church was not unfrequently a cause of difficulty. Simon Langham, of Ely, in his synodical decrees of 1364, prohibits the practice.

"Lay people," he says, are not to stand or sit amongst the clerks in the chancel during the celebration of divine service, unless it is done to show reverence (to some person), or for some other reasonable and obvious reason; but this is allowed for the patrons of the churches only."

A letter on the subject, addressed to one of his clergy by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, somewhere in the fourteenth century, shows that it was difficult sometimes to enforce this law.

"Not only the decrees of the holy fathers," he says, "but the approved existing customs of the Church order that the place in which the clerks sing and serve God according to their offices be divided by screens from that in which the laity devoutly pray. In this way the nave of the church, which is called the Sancta Sanctorum, is alone to be open to lay people, in order that, in the time of divine

service, clerics be not mixed up with lay people, and more especially with women, nor have communication with them, for in this way devotion may easily be diminished.

"Nevertheless," the bishop continues in this letter, written to a rector, "in your church report says that some laymen have taken the seats of the clergy in your chancel and still obstinately refuse to give them up. If this be so, the names are to be published from the pulpit, and if after that they still persist, the delinquents are to be punished according to the statutes."

The Altar.-The most prominent feature of the chancel, and indeed of the whole church, as being the very purpose for which the entire building was erected, and the centre round which all the services were performed, was the high altar (summum, or magus altare). "It is that," says the gloss upon a constitution of Archbishop Winchelsea, "to honour which the church is dedicated," and it is placed in the choir as in the most solemn part of the building. Originally, if we may judge from existing illuminations, the altar in English churches stood a little away from the eastern wall of the church, and had over it a canopy supported on pillars, between which curtains were suspended on rods, and drawn during the celebration of the sacred mysteries. Sometimes, as at West Grinstead, for example, behind the altar in the wall of the church was an ambry, or cupboard, to contain the consecrated vessels and the missal, etc., for Mass. Over the altar was generally suspended some covering or canopy as a manifestation of the reverence due to the place of Sacrifice, and the churchwardens' accounts contain frequent mention of expenses to repair and renew this calatura; for by custom, if not by