To realise the full beauty of this great choir we must in thought sweep away the present seats and pulpit, and reconstruct the two side altars dedicated to St. John and St. Nicolas, which flanked the high altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Traces of this original arrangement are still to be seen in the restored aumbreys and piscina on the north and south walls. The height of these niches seems to show that the side altars were some four or five steps above the level of the present floor. The three aumbreys over the high altar are unfortunately hidden by the incongruous reredos which was put up in 1841. In these locked cupboards some of the church plate was kept. The inventory of 1307 contains various priced items of silver-gilt plate, together with numerous relics, unpriced--among them "the sword with which the Blessed Thomas of Canterbury was killed, and two crosses of the wood on which Christ was crucified." The safe custody of these treasures must have been a source of anxiety. Opening out of the staircase which leads to the triforium a small chamber has been constructed in the thickness of the wall, lighted by two loop-holes, one of which looks towards the altar, the other across the church. This has been supposed to be a penitential cell for disobedient Templars, but it was more probably a watcher's chamber, used as a safeguard against possible theft. The three altars seem to have been at first entirely open to the body of the church, the idea being that the whole building was a chancel or choir. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the space round the high altar seems to have been enclosed by a screen with gates, thus forming a separate chancel. The side altars were presumably removed soon after the Reformation, and in Puritan days the communion table was for a time brought down from the east end and placed longitudinally on the floor in the body of the church. Probably about this time the old stained glass was wrecked, and the marble columns were white-washed. The only pre-Reformation monument which has survived in the choir is the recumbent figure of a bishop, supposed to be Silvester de Everdon, Bishop of Carlisle, who was killed by a fall from his horse in 1254. A good many brasses seem to have disappeared. "Divers plates of brass of late times have been torn out," says Dugdale (1671), who gives one or two epitaphs in French. Of post-Reformation monuments but two now remain in the body of the church--those of Richard Hooker (died 1600) and John Selden (died 1654). The rest have been placed in the triforium.