122 MORTUARY CHAPELS, LICHFIELD. 



attention, have been generally spoken of as chantry or mortuary 

 chapels, but there is no necessity whatever to connect them 

 with the pannelled coffins below their windows, and they cer- 

 tainly seem to me to be considerably too small for the necessary 

 altar ritual. They do not show any trace whatever of any altar, 

 or of a piscina drain, though surely the latter would certainly have 

 been constructed had this been the intention of their builders, 

 seeing that they are so close to the outer wall. I have heard 

 the recess in the west wall of the central chamber spoken of as 

 if it was part of the original work, but it has a very recent 

 origin, having been cut out in connection with the placing of 

 a warming apparatus in the vaults below, an operation which in 

 several ways disfigured the roof and other parts of these 

 chambers. It may also be mentioned that these vaults are 

 said to have been used as dungeons in Harwood's Lichfield, 

 but he does not give his authority. A legend that once reached 

 my ears spoke of some Parliamentary spies, who had been 

 detected within the close, being kept in durance in these 

 diminutive vaults whilst the Cathedral was besieged during 

 the Commonwealth. But such use, if it ever occurred, would 

 be only provisional, and was not originally intended. 



Another argument against the use of the chambers themselves, 

 or any one of them, as chantry chapels, is that the sites can all 

 be assigned elsewhere in the fabric for all the known chantries 

 Bishop Langton himself endowed two chantries in this cathedral, 

 which continued here clown to the days of the Reformation, 

 one in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and one for the soul of 

 King Edward, but the masses of both these chantries were 

 celebrated at the chief altar of the Lady Chapel. Although 

 neither of these chantries had any connection, so far as the 

 actual Celebrations were concerned, with these chambers, I 

 am inclined to think that they afford the clue for explaining 

 their use. Special chantries often had their special vestries 

 or sacristies assigned to them, or built for that special object. 

 Numerous instances in proof of this might be given, but as I 

 am addressing a Derbyshire Society, I will content myself with 

 saying that the founders of the Kniveton Chantry in Ashborne 



