The celebrated Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh, in 1346, when Dean of Lichfield, preached to the people at St. Nicholas’ Chapel on the meaning and obligation of these days of intercession, or rogation, and explained why men prayed to the Saints, and why they sang their _Miserere_ to God. He also told the people why the cross went at the head of the procession, and why the image of a dragon with its tail out was carried the two first days before the procession and the third day without its tail after the procession. It is to those standards that the Sarum processional refers in regard to these litanies, and to the same are to be referred the items to be found in church accounts, such as those of Salisbury, where in 1462 boys are paid “to carry the poles and standards on Rogation days.” The rest of the Christian year, with its round of feasts, does not here require to be specially noted. The celebration of one differed from that of another merely in the degree of splendour with which the people decked their churches and brought forth their precious vestments. At Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi day; on Assumption and on All Hallows, as well as on its own dedication day, each church endeavoured to outdo its neighbour by the splendour of its services. In the processions of Corpus Christi day, not unfrequently several churches united their forces together, and made a brave show in honour of the most Blessed Sacrament with their various processional crosses and banners, torches and thuribles, not to speak of the amalgamated choirs and the throng of devout worshippers who accompanied the Sacred Host in a triumphant progress through the streets of our English cities, or along the roads and lanes of rural England. CHAPTER IX THE SACRAMENTS