Lastly, in recalling the chief features of a pre-Reformation chancel, what is called in the Constitution of Archbishop Winchelsea "the principal image" must not be forgotten. This image was that of the saint or saints, to whom the church was dedicated, and it was one of the ornaments which the parish was specially called upon to provide. From the wording of the law it might have a place anywhere in the chancel, but probably it would have stood in a niche on one side of the altar; or, in the case of there being two patrons, the statues would have been placed on either side.

Frequent mention is made in wills of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the desire of testators to beautify the chancels of the churches in which during life they had worshipped. Thus William Graystoke, of Wakefield, left to the church there in 1508 "a cloth of Arras work, sometime hanging in his hall": £10 "to the stalling of the said church: two pairs of censers, and £20 for new choir books." Another testator, Thomas Wood, of Hull, who had been a draper and sheriff and mayor of his city, on his death bequeathed to Trinity Church

one of my best beds of Arreys work, upon condition that after my decease I will that the said bed shall yearly cover my grave at my Dirge and Masse, done in the said Trinity Church with note for evermore; and also I will that the same bed be hung yearly in the said church at the feast of St. George the Martyr, among the other worshipfulle beds; and when the said beds be taken down and delivered, then I will that the same bed be re-delivered into the vestry and there to remain with my cope of gold."

Another testator, in 1504, this time a priest, and the rector of Lowthorpe in Yorkshire, leaves to the church of

Catton a bed-cover with big figures on it, to lie before the high altar on the chief feasts; and another bed-cover with the figure of a lion, to lie before the high altar of Lowthorpe, on all the great festivals.

In some instances legacies are left to beautify the existing altar, to have paintings made for it, or images carved upon it. In one case a man leaves a notable sum for those days to have two paintings executed abroad to adorn the chancel. A very curious bequest was made to the church of Holy Trinity, Hull, in 1502, by Thomas Golsman, an alderman of the city. "I leave," he says, "£10 in honour of the Sacrament, to make at the high altar angels to descend and ascend to the roof of the church at the Elevation of the Body and Blood of Christ, as they have at Lynne;" that is, the angels descend until the end of the singing of the Ne nos inducas in tentationem of the Pater noster, when they ascend. The chancel was very frequently, if not generally in England, divided from the nave by the rood with its screen. The rood, meaning a gallows, or cross or crucifix, probably consisted originally of the crucifix, which stood over the entrance into the choir, while the screen was the developed low walls which shut in the chancel, in or on which on either side were the pulpits or ambos, from which the Epistle and Gospel were chanted in solemn masses. The "rood-beam," or "rood-screen," or "roodloft," was probably the introduction of the twelfth century. In its simplest form of a "beam," the rood supported a great crucifix, which was often in the wills of the fifteenth century and other documents called the Summus Crucifix; and generally the two figures of the Blessed Virgin and St. John were represented as standing at the foot of the cross, in

reference to John xix. 26. Besides this, lights were frequently placed upon the beam, and Ducange, under the word Trabes, gives an example of a medieval writer who mentions fifty candles as placed on the "rood-beam." In the form of its highest development the rood took the shape of "the Screen" as seen in many of our English cathedrals, or in French churches under the name of Jubé. In parish churches in England it was usually called a "rood-loft," and took the shape of a light screen, generally of wood, supporting a wooden gallery, on which was the great crucifix, etc., and to which access was obtained by a flight of steps, often in one of the piers of the chancel arch and entered by a door generally from within the church, but certainly sometimes from without.

The work of carving and ornamenting the rood-lofts in the parish churches was constant up to the very eve of the Reformation, and bequests are very frequently met with in the wills of that period for this end, and to keep up the roodlights. At St. Mary-at-Hill, for instance, in 1496-7 there are a set of accounts headed "costes paid for the pyntyng of the Roode, with karvyng and odir costes also"; and amongst the items is "to the karvare for makyng of 3 dyadems-and for mendyng the Roode, the cross, the Mary and John, the crowne of thorn, with all other fawtes, Summa 10 shillings"; and yet another item was for the painting and gilding. Towards these and other expenses of "setlyng up of the Roode" the parishioners.contributed in a special collection. The legacy for beautifying and completing the rood at Leverton has already been noticed. To the "Rood" in one parish church a lady in her will leaves "my heart of gold