No other alteration was made in the church before the Reformation, and in 1638 the church suffered from the fire caused by lightning, mentioned by Hasted and in the Petitions to Parliament. The roofs throughout must have been burned, and, covered as they were with shingle,[67] it is not surprising that when once set on fire no part of them was saved. Traces of the fire are very evident, particularly on the stones of the tower arches, which are reddened by its action. We found also in the upper part of the aisle walls portions of molten lead, which had run into the interstices of the stone work at the time of the fire. The Petitions of the Parishioners of Stone give most exact information as to what happened before and after the fire; from them we learn (1) that before the fire the stone groined roof existed on the chancel, but was much dilapidated, and that the glass in the chancel-windows was in a sad state of decay: (2) “that the chauncell received little damage by the late fire,” yet that a very large part of the brief-money, raised for the repair of the church, was “uncessantly wasted and bestowed on the same, soe that the church is like to remayne unfynished.” This was in A.D. 1640, and I think we may gather from it the exact date of the alterations in the chancel. Its groined roof was taken down, its walls lowered some five feet, the tracery of the window in the north wall of the chancel partly destroyed in order to lower the walls, and the window then built up; the east window and probably one in the south wall destroyed, and imitations of perpendicular windows--poor in character, but nevertheless very good for their date--inserted in the place of the original windows in the north, east, and south walls of the chancel. The wall was rebuilt on either side of these windows with numerous fragments of the old groining ribs, thus affording the final proof that the windows were inserted and the groining taken down at the same time. This discovery was most grateful to me, inasmuch as it had been objected to the restoration of the original windows in the chancel, that those which we had to remove were fair examples of perpendicular work, and valuable in their way: in truth, they were examples of Gothic work in the years 1638–40, of no value at all in relation to the architecture of the rest of the church, though undoubtedly affording very interesting evidence of the undying love of Gothic architecture in this country, and of a not unsuccessful attempt at its revival.[68]