years ago, at an audit of the Chapter Accounts, a yearly item of forty shillings was identified as this very fee, which has been regularly paid for centuries, after the "Wine of St. Thomas" had been consumed, discontinued, and forgotten. Whether this odd survival will more interest the historic, or shock the financial, sense of our American visitors is a question of psychology.

CHRIST CHURCH GATE—ENTRANCE TO CATHEDRAL PRECINCTS (Page 24)

The nave was not built till the end of the fourteenth century, and is therefore one of the latest parts of the church. Of the two western towers the northern stood, as built by Lanfranc shortly after the Conquest, till 1834. During the excavations preparatory to the present structure it is said that the skeletons of a man and two bullocks were found in an upright position, as they had sunk into the marsh in Norman times. All this side was very marshy, and the crypt of the choir was frequently flooded. The ground-level has risen during the last few centuries, but is still only some 20 or 30 feet above the sea.

Above the outer entrance of the south-west porch is a bas-relief, blackened with age, of the altar which, after Becket's murder in the Martyrdom, was erected at the spot where he fell. It was called the Altar of the Sword's Point; and the fragment of Richard the Breton's sword, which dealt the last fierce blow, and was shivered on the pavement, is seen here at the foot of the altar. Above it is a crucifix with the figures of St. John and the Virgin. The pilgrims used to offer their gifts and prayers at three holy places in succession, at the "Sword's Point", in the Martyrdom; then at the earlier tomb of Becket in the crypt; and lastly at the shrine in the Trinity Chapel.

Inside the porch, when Erasmus was here (1513), there were three stone figures of the murderers in full armour, "enjoying", he says, "the same sort of fame as Judas, Pilate, and Caiaphas". In Saxon times the porch served not only as entrance to the church, but also as courthouse and muniment room, where the Kings of Kent did justice and judgment. Of course the present structure is much later, but both porch and nave cover the ground-plan of the ancient church of Lanfranc, which had a short choir, and an apse like that of a Roman basilica.

Let us enter, and, having looked at the great west window, filled with thirteenth-century glass from other parts of the Cathedral, let us face eastward, with the vast piers and lofty arches on either hand. We see the long flight of steps up to the choir, and perhaps get a glimpse, through the door in the screen, of the farther and higher flight up to the Holy Table. This long vista, with its double ascent, is said to have greatly impressed the mediæval pilgrims, as indeed it still impresses us. There is nothing, I think, elsewhere quite like it; and it was doubtless intended to symbolize and accentuate the idea of "going up to" the shrine, which was in the exalted Trinity Chapel as in a throne-room. Incidentally this unusual elevation of the eastern floor of the church made possible one of the finest crypts in existence, which for space and dignity is a church in itself.

As we go forward to the choir steps, and stand below the screen and under the central tower, there is much to observe. Overhead are the carved stone "struts" or crosspieces with which Prior Goldston buttressed his piers, and distributed the strain of the tower's enormous weight. Their date is marked by the rebus of the builder's name T and P (for Thomas, Prior), and between the letters a gilded stone. A similar rebus is in the crypt on Cardinal Morton's monument—a mort or hawk perched on a tun or barrel.

The great window in the south transept, on our right, belongs to the fifteenth century, but is filled with magnificent glass brought from the choir clerestory, and 200 years older than the mullions which frame it. The corresponding north transept window was filled with splendid glass by Edward IV; the ecclesiastical figures in the topmost tracery, some borders, and the panels representing the King with his two sons who perished in the Tower, and his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, with her daughters, still remain. The eldest girl is Elizabeth of York, who married Henry VII, and so ended the feud of York and Lancaster. The rest of the glass, which illustrated the life of the Virgin, and the miracles of St. Thomas of Canterbury, was smashed by the pike of the Puritan miscreant Culmer, who gloried in having "rattled down Becket's glassy bones". It is strange that he spared three of the unique thirteenth-century Becket windows in the Trinity Chapel. It is said that, as he was at work on his ladder, a townsman below enquired what he was doing. "The work of the Lord," was the reply. "Then if it please the Lord I will help you," and an adroit boulder was flung at his head. This may have cooled his zeal; but, alas! there is room for misgiving that he ducked his head in time. So the happiest hopes of history have sometimes miscarried.