On the Sunday, moreover, after the blessing was finished, the priest and his assistants came to the foot of the altar, which was sprinkled with newly blessed water. Then turning, he, in the same way, sprinkled each of the assistants as they passed before him, and, last of all, if there were no procession, he passed down the church casting the water upon each altar he came to, and upon the people gathered in the nave. If there was a procession, as seems generally to have been the case, the assistants and clerks, with the servers, followed the celebrant singing the anthems proper for the day. The parish processional cross was carried first, with two servers bearing candles, and with the thurifer and the clerk “water-bearer.” In the smaller churches, when the weather permitted, no doubt the procession would wend its way outside, and pass along, followed by the people, amidst the graves of those former parishioners who had gone before, and who were taking their long rest in God’s acre. It was during this Sunday visit, in all probability, that the living offered their prayers for their dead, and cast the blessed water upon their graves. Some of the wills of the fifteenth century show how this practice was prized. In one will, for instance, a citizen of York leaves a bequest to three priests to say Masses for his soul, and asks that “each after his Mass should proceed to his grave, say a _De profundis_ over it, and sprinkle it with holy water.” Another citizen of the same city, and a merchant, provided for a priest to visit his grave daily and to cast the blessed water upon it. To return to the procession. On coming back to the church, or, if there had been no procession, when the sprinkling of the church had been finished, the clergy and assistants in cathedrals, gathered round the celebrant in front of the great rood at the entrance of the choir for the _bidding prayer_. This was, in smaller parochial churches, however, given out from the pulpit after the Gospel of the Mass, and will be spoken of in connection with the Sunday sermon, to which a special chapter must be devoted. It is unnecessary to follow the Sunday congregation of a pre-Reformation church through the singing of the parochial Mass. The church itself, as the bequests in the wills of the fifteenth century and other documents show, will have been gay with a profusion of candles burning on the rood beam, on the altars, and before each picture or shrine or image, whilst in many places the great “rowell,” or candle-wheel, would have been lit up, and with its crown of candles have added to the general appearance of festivity, which the people of mediæval England loved so much to see in their churches.