How to Visit the English CathedralsSingleton, Esther
History
How to Visit the English Cathedrals
Singleton, Esther
Cathedrals -- England
Just behind the reredos there is a row of four table-tombs. The north
one was placed there by Bishop Fuller, to mark the resting place of =St.
Hugh=; next comes =Bishop Fuller= himself (died 1675); next, =Bishop
Gardiner= (died 1705); and next, =Subdean Gardiner= and his daughter,
Susanna (died 1731 and 1732). Near the latter stands the alabaster and
red marble monument to =Dean Butler= (died 1894). In corresponding
position and next to St. Hugh’s tomb we see =Bishop Wordsworth’s= effigy
under a tall ornate Gothic canopy. This Bishop of Lincoln (died 1885),
was a nephew of William Wordsworth. Nearer the East Window we find a
group of Fourteenth Century monuments to the =Burghersh= family, one of
whom was Bishop of Lincoln (1320-1340), and another, a hero of Crécy,
and Constable of Dover, and Warden of the Cinque Ports. Opposite is the
monument to =Nicholas de Cantelupe= (died 1355), a mutilated effigy under
a Gothic canopy. Near it lies =Prior Wimbische=. His effigy, also
headless, lies under a canopy.
Leland, writing in the time of Henry VIII., mentions two mutilated
tombs: =Catherine Swynford=, the third wife of John of Gaunt, made Earl of
Lincoln in 1362, and that of her daughter, Joan Beaufort, who married
the Earl of Westmoreland.
On the north side of the choir is the =Easter Sepulchre=, a fine piece of
Thirteenth Century carving, in the Decorated style. It consists of four
canopies with trefoiled arches. Three sleeping soldiers ornament three
of the panels.
On a spandrel on the north side, under a corbel above the most easterly
pier, sits the =Lincoln Imp=--one of those grotesques that the Mediæval
carvers delighted in creating; and here he has been sitting with crossed
leg and grinning grimly for centuries. He is of the same family as =The
Devil Looking over Lincoln= (see page 309).
In the =South Aisle= of the choir we pause again before another spot,
sacred in Mediæval days. Here stood until the Seventeenth Century the
=Shrine of= =Little St. Hugh=, a child said to have been crucified by the
Jews in 1255. According to the ballads the ball of the eight-year-old
boy fell into a Jew’s garden; and when he ran in to get it, the Jews
murdered him.
The canons of Lincoln obtained the body and buried it in the Cathedral.
Hugh became a local saint; and the Jews of Lincoln were promptly
persecuted. When the stone coffin was opened in 1791, the skeleton of a
child three feet long, encased in lead, was found.
=Henry of Huntingdon= (died about 1155), the chronicler of Lincoln, was
also buried in this aisle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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