Passing through the rich rood-screen, which, however, sadly blocks up the way, we reach the choir, with its four traceried windows on either side, and clustered columns, from which springs its groined roof with bosses of foliage and pendants bright with gold, whilst the capitals of the shafts and the quatrefoils of the archivolts are rich with colour. The stalls are carved with grotesque heads and figures, like those in the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, at Stratford-upon-Avon. Before us now stands the lovely reredos, illustrating the words of Isaiah,—“There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” Jesse sleeps at the bottom, his hand supporting his head, whilst David, with his fingers on his harp-strings, and Solomon, sit on each side, the vine spreading upwards, bearing its leaf and full fruit in Mary, to whose Son the Wise Men are offering their presents. Such is the screen, and had the execution been equal to the design, it would have been the finest in England. The carving seems, however, never to have been finished, and certainly in parts only to have been roughly cut by some inferior hand, and never to have received the last touches of the master-artist. Even now, in its present condition, it stands before those of Winchester and St. Alban’s, inferior only to that of St. Mary’s Overie.[173] Passing on we come to the Lady Chapel, with its traceried roof. Under the east window are the remnants of another rich screen. The high altar, too, with its slab of Purbeck marble cut with five crosses, remains, whilst two recessed altar tombs to Sir Thomas West and his mother stand in the north and south walls. But what we should especially see, both for its beauty and its interest, is the Chantry Chapel, built for her last resting-place by Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, mother of Cardinal Pole. It stands in the north choir aisle, its roof rich with arabesque tracery and carved bosses, telling a curious story in our English history. Attainted of treason the Countess was confined two years in the Tower before she suffered. When the day of execution came, she walked out on the fatal Tower Green; and still firm—still to the last resolute—refused to lay her head on the block. “So should traitors do,” she cried, “but I am none;” and the headsman was obliged to butcher her as best he could.[174] In the same letter before quoted from the Commissioners for the Suppression of Monasteries, dated from Christchurch, occurs this passage:—“In thys churche we founde a chaple and monumēt curiosly made of cane [Caen] stone ̄paryd by the late mother of Raynolde pole for herre buriall, wiche we have causyd to be defacyd, and all the armys and badgis clerly to be delete.”[175] To this day the vengeance of Henry’s commissioners is visible, her arms being broken, and the bosses defaced, though her motto, “_Spes mea in Deo est_,” can still be read.