“In many parts of the country a large and splendidly ornamented tent was set up at the furthermost end of the close or burial-ground, and thither, early in service time, was carried by two priests, accompanied with lights, a sort of beautiful shrine of open work, within which hung the Blessed Sacrament, enclosed in a rich cup or pix. The long-drawn procession, gay and gladsome with its palms and flowers, went forth, and halted now and then, as it winded round the outside of the church to make a station. While they were going from the North side towards the East, and had just ended the Gospel read at the first of these stations, the shrine with the Sacrament,” borne by priests under a canopy, “surrounded with lights in lanterns and streaming banners, and preceded by a silver cross and by a thurifer with incense, was borne forward, so that they might meet it as it were; and our Lord was hailed by the singers chanting _En rex venit mansuetus_. Kneeling lowly down and kissing the ground, they saluted the Sacrament again and again, in many appropriate sentences out of Holy Writ; and the red cross withdrew from the presence of the silver crucifix.” The procession then moved forward in parish churches to the churchyard cross, where it halted, and there, falling down, all, priests and people, worshipped Him who had died on the cross for the sins of men. Then palms and flowers were strewn round about it, and after the Passion had been read, palms were brought and the churchyard cross was wreathed as for a victory, in memory of Christ’s triumph over death. From the cross the procession now went to the closed door of the church for the singing of the _Gloria laus_--the joyous imitation of the hymns the Jews sung on that day when bringing our Saviour to the gates of Jerusalem. When this part of the ceremony was ended, the church doors flew open, and the priests who bore the shrine with the Blessed Sacrament, held their sacred burden aloft in the doorway, “so that all who went in had to go under this shrine, and in this way the procession came back into the church, each one bowing his head in token of reverence and obedience” as he passed beneath the Sacrament. The fourth and last “station” of the Palm Sunday procession was held before the great Rood, from which the large curtain, which all Lent had hidden the figure of the crucified Saviour, was now drawn aside. At the sight of the crucifix the celebrant and his assistants, together with all the people, knelt and saluted it thrice with the words _Ave Rex noster, fili David, Redemptor_. A fifteenth-century preacher, giving only a brief instruction on this day, because, as he notes, of the length of the service, says--