Here we encounter a kind of side-theory which has long been a favourite with liturgical writers. It will be remembered that Durandus laid down the ideal rule of building so as to face the equinoctial East. But we have also seen that this counsel of perfection has been little heeded. The obvious explanation of the exceptions is that the sun’s varying daily position has resulted in diversity of alinement. The obvious, however, not always being the true, other reasons have been sought, and other theories formulated. Hence arose the attractive “Saint’s Day theory,” to the effect that the axis of the building depended on the point of sunrise which corresponded to the day of the patron saint to whom the church was dedicated. So far as I am aware, the idea is not traceable, in writing, earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century, but this origin may perchance be pushed backward as the question is further studied. The following account may supply a clue. Silas Taylor, otherwise Silas Domville, was a captain in the Parliamentary army, who later devoted himself to antiquarian pursuits. Careless in money matters, he died in debt, and his manuscripts were sold by his creditors at his death, in A.D. 1678. One manuscript contains this passage: “In the days of yore, when a church was to be built, they watched and prayed on the vigil of the dedication, and took that point of the horizon where the sun arose from the East, which makes that variation, so that few [churches] stand true, except those built between the two equinoxes. I have experimented (_sic_) some churches, and have found the line to point to that part of the horizon where the sun arises on the day of that Saint to whom the church is dedicated[554].” Noting, incidentally, that the expression, “between the two equinoxes,” is evidently a slip, and that the writer means “at the two equinoxes,” we are struck by the likeness between this account and that which is credited to the old Masonic lodges. The Saint’s Day theory is merely an amplification of the earlier Masonic idea, a specific practical mode of orientation being introduced.