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Updated: May 25, 2025
We do not know what is the state of Oxley Church now; it may have rood-loft, piscina, sedilia, all new; or it may be reformed backwards, the seats on principle turning from the Communion-table, and the pulpit planted in the middle of the aisle; but at the time when these two young men walked through the churchyard, there was nothing very good or very bad to attract them within the building; and they were passing on, when they observed, coming out of the church, what Sheffield called an elderly don, a fellow of a college, whom Charles knew.
Nor does any one appear to have been associated with any company or guild. If this enumeration is correct there were not less than twenty-two. There seems also to have been an altar in the hearse over Queen Katherine's tomb; and, though no mention of them occurs, we should suppose there must have been one on each side of the entrance beneath the rood-loft. Two altar-stones only have been found.
He justly argues, from these and other considerations, that the south transept was built first. Of him we are told that he built the whole nave in stone and wood-work, from the tower of the choir to the front, and also erected a rood-loft. What this last named great work was we do not know. It is at least possible that the reference is to the western transept.
So they went halfway down the nave, and stood together there; and the whole church was full of the music that the minstrels were making in the rood-loft, and most heavenly sweet it was; and as Ralph stood there his heart heaved with hope and love and the sweetness of his youth; and he looked at Ursula, and she hung her head, and he saw that her shoulders were shaken with sobs; but he knew that it was with her as with him, so he spake no word to her.
A schoolmaster with his boys fled into a church and hid trembling in the rood-loft. Before long they were discovered. Thirsting for blood, some of the monsters rushed up the steps and tossed the shrieking victims over on to the pikes of their comrades below. When all the butchery was finished, a few helpless and infirm survivors were dragged out of hiding-places.
This unique rood-loft measures over six yards in depth, is proportionately long, and is symmetrical in every part, yet it looks as if a breath were only needed to disperse its delicate galleries, hanging arcades, and miniature vaults, gorgeous painted windows forming the background jewels flashing through a veil of guipure.
The roof has embattled tie-beams, the space above them being filled with Perp. tracery. The E. window is lofty. The chancel has a screen and rood-loft, with fan tracery E. and W.; the staircase is in the S. pier of the arch. At the E. end is a piscina and a sedile, each under an elaborate triple ogee canopy.
The delicately carved rood-loft, or jube, the small sculptures of the choir and nave, and the flamboyant chapels of the fifteenth to seventeenth century, challenge minute attention from those who would study decorative detail in extenso.
"At Hereford," says Walcott, "he found all the lights; three burning day and night before the high altar; two burning there at matins daily, and at mass, and the chief hours on festivals; three burning perpetually, viz., in the chapter-house, the second before S. Mary’s altar, and the third before the cross in the rood-loft; four before the high altar, and altar on "Minus Duplicia," and five tapers in basons, on principles, and doubles, at mass, prime, and second vespers, four tapers before the high altar, five in the basons, thirteen on the beam, and seven in the candelabra; the paschal and portable tapers for processions.
Inside the round bonnet a ruddy, apple-checked face, just such a one as used to go to mass in Sir John the priest's time, before the images were knocked out of the rood-loft at the church there.
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