The English school of illumination had its chief seat at Winchester. Its work is characterised by its figure drawing, and while the foliage ornament introduced, together with the gold which was largely used in the Winchester manuscripts, indicate continental influence, the interlaced and other patterns are derived from the Irish school. Of this class of manuscript the Benedictional of Æthelwold, in the Duke of Devonshire's library, may serve as a typical example. It was written for Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, by his chaplain Godemann, towards the end of the tenth century. Were it practicable to offer the reader a reproduction of one of its pages, it would be seen that it exactly illustrates what has just been said. Its figure drawing and foliated ornamentation are among its most striking features. The Norman Conquest opened up the English school of art more widely to continental influence, with the result that towards the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries the English manuscripts were unsurpassed by any in Europe. As a typical specimen of the illuminations of this period, we may with propriety select one which has been described by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson as "the very finest of its kind," and "probably unique in its combination of excellence of drawing, brilliance of illumination, and variety and extent of subjects." It is a Psalter dating from the fourteenth century, and known as Queen Mary's Psalter, because a customs officer of the port of London, who intercepted it as it was about to be taken out of the country, presented it to the Queen in 1553. This magnificent book is now in the British Museum. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a large number of Bibles and Psalters were written, and made up the greater part of the book-output of the larger monasteries, to which we are indebted for all our fine pieces of manuscript work. Indeed, most of the decorated manuscripts of this period are occupied with the Scriptures, services, liturgies, and other matters of the kind, and on such the best work was lavished. Later, however, the growing taste for romances and stories induced a corresponding tendency to decorate these secular manuscripts too, and some very fine work of this class was produced, especially in France. The books of the chronicles of England and of France, written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were also largely adorned with painted miniatures. Nearly all the writing of Europe was done in the religious houses. In most of the larger monasteries there was a scriptorium, or writing-room, where Bibles, Psalters, and service books, and patristic and classical writings were transcribed, chronicles and histories compiled, and beautiful specimens of the illuminator's art carefully, skilfully, and lovingly executed.