At the beginning of the religious revolution in England, inaugurated in the reign of Henry VIII., every church and chapel in the land had its rood-screen, surmounted by a rood-loft. Above them both was the great rood, or cross, with a figure of Our Lord outstretched upon it, flanked almost invariably by statues of St. Mary and St. John. Of these ornaments the rood-loft was the latest to be developed, not becoming general previously to the fifteenth century. It had, however, been preceded in cathedral and monastic churches by the pulpitum, a thick wall with a gallery on the top of it at the west end of the quire. In churches of this class, the rood-screen would be situated parallel to the pulpitum, but further westwards, in the nave. [Illustration: Fenny Bentley Church: Rood-Screen.] The pulpitum and the parish church rood-screen, although the former is usually a solid stone structure, while the latter consists of openwork, and is of wood rather than of stone, so far resemble one another that both have a central doorway, whereas the cathedral and monastic rood-screen appears to have had, as a rule, two doorways in it, one at the north and the other at the south end, with an altar (which ranked as the principal one among the altars of the nave) placed between them. It was in front of this altar, and at the foot of the great rood, that the procession, which perambulated the church before High Mass on Sundays and great feasts, having traversed the appointed route, finally drew up to make a solemn station. This done, those taking part in the procession would file off to right and left in two divisions, either of them passing through one of the doors in the rood-screen, and thence under the pulpitum into the quire for the celebration of the chief service of the day.