230 Edington Church. 
of the Garter, an honour which has descended to the successive 
Bishops of Winchester. He also became Treasurer to the King, 
and in 1357 was promoted to be Lord Chancellor of England. In 
1366 he was elected to the highest dignity to which an English 
Churchman could aspire, viz,, to the Metropolitan See of Canter- 
bury; this, however, he declined to accept. Authors are divided as 
to his reasons for the refusal, one ascribing it to his humility, another 
to his advanced age (he died at the latter end of the year, 7th 
October, 1366), whilst a third attributed it to motives of avarice, 
stating that he used the following expression, which has become 
known as a Winchester proverb:—“ Though Canterbury is the 
highest rack, yet Winchester is the deepest manger.” His works of 
charity and other benefactions during his lifetime prove, however, 
that he was not an avaricious man. 
The chantry contains the tomb and figure of the bishop in full 
pontifieals, but without a pastoral staff. The mitre is half broken 
off, and the precious stones have been torn from it. On the vest- 
ment is a very curious and rare emblem called a Fylfot, or Suastika ; 
this is of a peculiar cruciform shape, which has been found on 
military and ecclesiastical decorations in England and on Eastern 
coins. On a bishop’s vestment it is stated by one of the best 
authorities to signify perfect submission to the will of God, and as 
a religious symbol it seems to represent, under all circumstances, 
one yielding on the knee, and there is no reason why it should not 
have been a symbol of submission in the religious faiths of the 
ancient world as well as in Christianity. Much has been written 
on it in Emile Burnon’s Sanscrit Lexicon, and also by Dr. Schliemann, 
Professor Max Miiller, and others. A paper was read at the Society 
of Antiquaries showing that it was a religious symbol among the 
earlier Aryan races, and was intended by them, in the first instances 
to represent, in a cruciform, an ideograph or symbol suggested by 
forked lightning. It is well shown by our letter z, two of which, 
crossing one another in the middle, admirably represent the ordinary 
device known by the names of the gammadion, croix-patieé, fylfot 
and swastika. 
The bishop was born at Edington, in Wiltshire. The Church of 
