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Sir Gilbert Scott removed all this seventeenth century work and set up reproductions of the fifteenth century design. Thus the eight easternmost canopies on either side are modern. The misereres and arms of the stalls are exquisitely carved. Pelican feeding her young. The subjects upon the former are as follows, beginning from the archway in the screen:
Baini's, Bai's, and Allegri's Misereres are sung on the three successive days, and generally in the order in which we have mentioned them: the two latter are sometimes blended together.
In one of the five letters which he wrote to Joseph on the 9th, he remarked: "Pray the Madonna of armies to be for us: Louis, who is a saint, may engage to give her a lighted candle." A curiously sarcastic touch, probably due to his annoyance at the Misereres and "prayers forty hours long" at Paris which he bade his Ministers curtail.
If I, Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at Rome, if this priest has the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let him make a eunuch of me for the singing of Misereres in his chapel. Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented to the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira.
Some of the misereres are quaint, among them being found several examples of the curiously secular subjects chosen for this purpose by the wood-carvers of the period.
For this thou shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and say of paternosters ten thousand and of misereres thou shall sing three hundred. And this shall chance to teach thee to be scanter with thy foul breath when thou speakest to the Abbot of the Foundation of Devorgill concerning better men than thyself."
But though the Misereres turned of themselves to Te Deums, the date was not to lose its awful significance in the calendar: at night it was claimed once more by a world-wide sorrow. The thanksgiving of the nation found its principal expression at Charleston Harbor, where the flag of the Union received that day a conspicuous reparation on the spot where it had first been outraged.
The arms of the stalls are quaintly carved with various grotesque figures, as are also the misereres; the upper parts of the panels behind the upper stalls are also carved in low relief; above these is a projecting cornice decorated with pinnacles.
As a building in which to study the growth of English Gothic architecture, I can scarcely think it possible to find anything better, all the periods being very clearly represented. The choir has much sumptuous carved woodwork, and the misereres are full of quaint detail.
Grotesque design, for the reason already stated, frequently appears in the details of church architecture and furniture during the Middle Ages, particularly from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. The capital of a column was the favourite place for the indulgence of the mason’s taste in caricature; the misereres, or folding scats of the choir, for that of the wood-carver.
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