holy rood at Wirksworth, is known, from Cardinal Pole’s pension roll, to have been granted £5 per annum. The “rode chauntrye” at Wirksworth was founded, in his lifetime, by Sir Henry Vernon, the same whose will, as already recorded, contained a bequest for the rood-loft at Bakewell. In Ashbourne church, until the middle of the sixteenth century (as scheduled in the chantry roll drawn up for the purposes of confiscation shortly after the accession of Edward VI.), there stood near the nave, at the foot of the rood-screen, or as near unto as might be, in the south aisle, an altar dedicated to the Holy Cross; to which was attached a chantry, founded in 1392 by the feofees of Nicholas Kniveton, for the daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in perpetuity. The deed of confirmation of the same by the Bishop, Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, dated 1404, is extant; as well as an indenture, dated 15th January in the seventh year of Henry VIII. on the occasion of the appointment of a new chaplain. By this document the incoming “rood-priest” covenants to take due care of, and not to waste nor alienate, the chantry goods committed to his custody; the list of which, set forth at length, comprises all the requisite ornaments for the performance of divine service (including “two chests in ye Roodequere” for the safekeeping of the aforesaid ornaments), and the domestic furniture and utensils of the chaplain’s residence as well. At the Reformation, the property and endowments were forfeited to the Crown; but it is of interest to recall how long and in what wise the memory of the institution has been kept alive by the people, for in the ancient garden of the chaplain’s house is a well, which, down to within the eighteenth century, used, by time-honoured custom, to be “dressed” or garlanded with flowers every Ascension Day after a special service in the church, and which, as lately as the last decade of the nineteenth century, was known among the oldest inhabitants of the place by the traditional name of “the rood-well.” For similar reasons a certain parcel of meadow-land in Ashbourne, being another piece of chantry property secularised, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was named “Lampholme”; while certain tenements, as appears from the negotiations which preceded the endowing of the grammar school in 1585, were termed “candle-rents.” Again, a curious illustration of analogous tradition in another part of Derbyshire is furnished by a manuscript commonplace-book which belonged to one Roger Columbell, of Darley Hall. As he died in 1565, it cannot have been written later than in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The entry is to the effect that in former days the custom prevailed of paying, at Easter, on every house in a parish a duty of “1 fartheynge called a wax farthinge ... for lyght of the alter.”