38 The Society’s MSS.—Chiseldon and Draycot. 
nave, has been erected on the new site, and the old chancel remains 
as a mortuary chapel for the old churchyard, the chancel arch 
having been provided with doors, and a pent form of porch erected 
to shelter it, whilst the long-disused thirteenth century opening in 
the gable over the chancel arch has been re-fitted with a bell, and 
so brought again into use. 
Che Society's BUSS. 
Qhiseldon and Drapcot. 
Pppary writers have had occasion to record and lament the 
DAG h} immense destruction of MSS. consequent on the sup- 
pression of the religious houses. They were so much 
useless parchment in the eyes of our practical fellow-countrymen, 
or positively pernicious, for the religious sentiment which required 
the destruction of Church windows exquisitely glazed with sainted 
figures condemned equally the painfully illuminated pages of the 
missal. Very little that was ancient, accordingly, escaped, except 
the deeds, or the cartularies in which deeds were registered, whereon 
titles to fat acres depended. 
We continue to be a practical people still. The missals and the 
glass would, as the tide of re-action is now setting, be doubtless 
spared; but nothing of them, to speak of, is left to spare. 
Nothing genuinely ancient is left us, untampered with, but bits } 
of parchment, with writing, that had, or that the men of the © 
Reformation thought had, a pecuniary value. The men of ~ 
to-day, moreover, know, that thanks to modern conveyancing, 
