For instance, it is disgusting to read about the desecration thrust upon English bridge chapels after the reign of Henry the Eighth. As an example we can take the Chapel of St. Mary on Wakefield Bridge, Yorkshire, a beautiful piece of Decorated Gothic dating from the fourteenth century. After the Reformation it became many profane things, including an old clothes shop, a warehouse, a den of flax-dressers, a newsroom, a cheesecake house, a tailor’s shop, and I know not what else; so “we think upon her stones, and it pitieth us to see her in the dust.” At last--it was in 1847--an effort was made to rescue her from further degradation: quite a big effort, for it cost £3000, yet the cause had nothing to do with sport or with self-advertisement. To raise so much money in the service of history was a great achievement. But the chosen architect was less fortunate than he might have been; he was one of those Victorian “restorers” whose zeal at times was excessive. In a few months the Chapel of St. Mary was rebuilt, almost, so thorough was the renovation. Even the original front was torn off and carted to the grounds of Kettlethorpe Park, where it still remains, I believe; and not enough care was shown in the choice of building materials, for the new work was carried out in Bath stone and Caen stone, which were much too soft for the Wakefield atmosphere. Indeed, the new front perished so quickly that in less than forty-five years a part of its detail looked more friable than the ancient work at Kettlethorpe; and a second renovation became necessary. The subscriptions raised for these remodellings and repairs call to mind the fact that in much earlier times Wakefield Bridge and its chapel were objects of charity. For example, in 1391, the fourteenth year of Richard II, William de Bayley, of Mitton in Craven, left _C sol ad confirmacionem cantarie in Capella Sce Mariæ sup Pont de Wakefield_; and a deed dated the 27th of September, 1454, the thirty-second year of Henry VI, mentions a yearly dole of three shillings to be paid to the bridge chapel at Wakefield. At an earlier date, in 1398, two chantries were ordained in St. Mary’s Chapel, thanks to the generosity of William Terry and Robert Heth, who obtained licences from Richard II “to give and assign to two chaplains celebrating divine service in the chapel of St. Mary, on Wakefield Bridge, lately built, ten pounds rent in Wakefield, Stanley, Ossett, Pontefract, Horbury, Heckmondwike, Shafton, Darfield, Preston, Jackling, and Frystone by the water.” Norrison Scatcherd gives this quotation from a document in the archives of the Hatfield family, but I know not what to say of it; for a charter of an earlier date mentions a sum of £10 and two chaplains (p. 230).