Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Lincoln: A History and Description of its Fabric and a List of the BishopsKendrick, A. F. (Albert Frank)
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Lincoln: A History and Description of its Fabric and a List of the Bishops
Kendrick, A. F. (Albert Frank)
Lincoln Cathedral
"perpeyn" walls of stone, originally continued to the piers by wooden
screens. The arcading of these walls is deserving of attention. It now
remains to notice the screens placed between the piers, to separate the
chapels from the transept. The most interesting is that of the chapel
nearest the choir on the south side, sometimes called the "Works Chantry."
The endowment of this chapel was to provide for prayers on behalf of the
benefactors of the church, both living and dead. The screen is of carved
stone; round the arch is the inscription "Oremus _pro benefactoribus_
istius Ecclesie" in Gothic characters. On each side are two small kneeling
figures, representing the chaplains who served the chantry. Above is a
canopy with a seated figure of a bishop and the Royal Arms of England. The
shield of arms is a help in assigning a date to the screen. It contains
the _fleurs-de-lys_ as assumed by Edward III. in the year 1338, when he
laid claim to the French crown. The screen was probably erected soon after
this date. It could not have been much later, since Henry IV., towards
the end of his reign, reduced the number of _fleurs-de-lys_ to three,
in imitation of the French king, Charles V. The corresponding chapel
on the other side has a feeble imitation of this screen in pine-wood,
a work of the end of the last century. The other screens are of oak,
carved with Perpendicular tracery, partly in openwork; they apparently
date from the latter half of the fifteenth century. The altars are no
longer standing, but in the middle chapel to the north the sockets for
the pillars which supported the altar-slab may still be seen. In one of
the pavement-slabs in the next chapel to the south, nine holes are pointed
out, which served a very different purpose. They are said to have been
used for games by some of the officials (choir-boys, one would suppose)
connected with the minster.
[Illustration: THE WEST TRANSEPT, LOOKING SOUTH.
_Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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