At Salisbury Cathedral. 143 
two minor transepts, were all assigned to the laity, and were ona - 
level with the aisles. The spaces on the north and south, between 
the arches, were either left open, or only enclosed by low railings or 
sereens. The high altar, raised probably on three or more steps, 
stood at the east end of this original presbytery ; at the point marked 
in our plan g, and so immediately under the figure of Our Blessed 
Lord in glory. Both of the aisles as well as all the space at the 
back of the presbytery being thus appropriated to the use of the 
laity, the arrangement must have heen very majestic; the whole 
congregation, priests and people, being thus assembled “in circuitu 
mense Domini.” 
At all events this theory gives some significance 
to those minor transepts, which form such a characteristic feature of 
our Cathedral, and shews that they were constructed, not merely 
with regard to beauty, but also to real utility. 
As incidental though it may be slight corroborations of the 
correctness of this view, it may be observed, that though the con- 
suetudinary referred to was certainly compiled after the removal 
of the altar to some point eastward of the line ¢ d—where, as 
we know from the winch remaining, the Lenten veil hung—it still 
speaks of the space to the west of it as part of the presbytery. 
Moreover Leland’s words,—‘ the second transeptum standeth as a 
lighte and division betwixt the quier and the presbytery,”—seem to 
indicate that at all events what we believe to have been the original 
presbytery was not then, as now, counted as part of the choir. 
Leland of course saw the Cathedral before the choir stalls had been 
lengthened eastward some 20 feet, as in subsequent alterations, 
and when the Bishop’s throne stood without doubt at the point 
marked in our plan 7—at the east end of the stalls on the south side, 
< ‘Sir Gilbert Scott (p. 30) says on the authority of ‘some writer,” of whose 
names he seems to he ignorant, that ‘‘ the choir was lengthened 20 feet towards 
the Lady Chapel” in the time of Bishop Hume, about 1778-9. This arrange- 
ment is however shewn in the ‘“ Icnographical plan” of the Cathedral (ec. 1733) 
lithographed by Mr. Chambers, the Recorder of Salisbury. My own belief is, 
that it was far more probably the work of Bishop Seth Ward, about the year 
1670, as we know, from his biographer, Dr. Walter Pope, that ‘‘he made the 
Bishop’s, Dean’s, and all the Prebendaries’ stalls new and magnificent.””—See 
Cassan’s Lives of the Bishops of Salisbury, ii., 72. 
