The family chapel of the Delmés was a beautiful and picturesque place of worship. With the exception of one massive door-way, whose circular arch and peculiar zig-zag ornament bespoke it co-eval with, or of an earlier date than, the reign of Stephen--and said to have belonged to a ruin apart from the chapel, whose foundations an antiquary could hardly trace--Delmé chapel might be considered a well preserved specimen of the florid Gothic, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The progress of the edifice, had been greatly retarded during the wars of the Roses; but it was fortunately completed, before, the doctrine of the Cinquecentists--who saw no beauty save in the revived dogmas of Vitruvius--had so far gained ground, as to make obsolete and unfashionable, the most captivating and harmonious style of Architecture, that has yet flourished in England. Its outer appearance was comparatively simple--it had neither spire, lantern, or transepts--and its ivy-hidden belfry was a detached tower. The walls of the aisles were supported by massive buttresses, and surmounted by carved pinnacles; and from them sprung flying buttresses, ornamented with traced machicolations, to bear the weight of the embattled roof of the nave. The interior was more striking. As the stranger entered by the western door, and proceeded up the nave, each step was re-echoed from the crypt below:--as he trod on strange images, and inscriptions in brass; commemorative of the dead, whose bones were mouldering in the subterranean chapel. On them, many coloured tints fantastically played, through gorgeously stained panes--the workmanship of the Middle Ages. The richly carved oaken confessional--now a reading desk--first attracted the attention. In the very centre of the chapel, stood a white marble font, whose chaplet of the flower of the Tudors, encircled by a fillet, sufficiently bespoke its date. Between the altar and this font was a tomb, which merits special attention. It was the chantry of Sir Reginald Delmé, the chief of his house in the reign of Harry Monmouth. It was a mimic chapel, raised on three massive steps of grey stone. The clustered columns, that bore the light and fretted roof, were divided by mullions, rosettes, and trefoils in open work; except where the interstices were filled up below, to bear the sculptured, and once emblazoned shields of the Delmés, and their cognate families. The entrance to the chantry, was through a little turret at its north-eastern corner, the oaken door of which, studded with quarrel-headed nails, was at one time never opened, but when the priests ascended the six steep and spiral steps, and stood around the tomb to chant masses for the dead. The diminutive font, and the sarcophagus itself, had once been painted. On this, lay the figure of Sir Reginald Delmé.