The work of carving and ornamenting the rood-lofts in the parish churches was constant up to the very eve of the Reformation, and bequests are very frequently met with in the wills of that period for this end, and to keep up the rood-lights. At St. Mary-at-Hill, for instance, in 1496-7 there are a set of accounts headed “costes paid for the pyntyng of the Roode, with karvyng and odir costes also”; and amongst the items is “to the karvare for makyng of 3 dyadems--and for mendyng the Roode, the cross, the Mary and John, the crowne of thorn, with all other fawtes, _Summa_ 10 shillings”; and yet another item was for the painting and gilding. Towards these and other expenses of “setlyng up of the Roode” the parishioners contributed in a special collection. The legacy for beautifying and completing the rood at Leverton has already been noticed. To the “Rood” in one parish church a lady in her will leaves “my heart of gold with a diamond in the midst.” In 1510, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, £10 was left “towards making a new rood-loft”; and the work was still apparently going on in 1516, when another donor left £38 for the same object. Lastly, in the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Edmund’s, Salisbury, there are entered expenses for the light kept burning before the rood; at which place, for example, in 1480 the candlemaker was specially employed in making “the rood-light.” A curious entry in the accounts of the parish church of St. Petrock’s, Exeter, shows how this light at the rood was kept up: “Ordinans made by the eight men for gathering to the wax silver for the light kept before the high cross, which says, that every man and his wife to the wax shall pay yerely one peny, and every hired servant that takes wages a half peny, and every other persons at Easter, taking no wages, a farthing.” In some places, as, for example, Cratfield, there was a “rowell,” or wheel or corona of candles, kept burning on feast-days before the rood. [Illustration: SCREEN. WITHYCOMBE. SOMERSET] The special destruction of the roods of the English churches in the early stages of the Reformation under Edward VI., and again under Elizabeth, causes many to think that the reverence shown to this representation of our Crucified Lord, probably the most prominent object visible in the churches, was not only excessive, but mistaken in its kind. If that were so, it must at least be allowed that the Church’s teaching on the matter was clear and definite. The author of _Dives and Pauper_, for example, says that the representations of the Crucified Christ-- “ben ordeyned to steryn men’s mynds to thinke on Crist’s Incarnation and on hys passyon and on his levyng ... for oft man is more sterryed be syght than be heryng or redyng--also thei ben ordeyned to ben a tokne and a boke to the lewyd people that thei mon redyn in ymagery and peyntour that clerkes redyn in boke.”