NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SALISBURY MEETING. Ixxi. 



the chancel and the pushing out of the transepts, and further on 

 the sweeping away of the chancel and the building out of an 

 entirely new chancel, starting from the apse of the old Saxon 

 church. An interesting feature is an ancient carved stone tomb 

 brought from the old college just by Harnham Bridge. Its side 

 is carved with statues of St. Catherine, St. Edmund of 

 Pontigny, St. Nicholas, and the Virgin and Child. A brass 

 affixed to the tomb said it is the tomb of the ill-fated Duke 

 of Buckingham, who was beheaded in the Market-place of 

 Salisbury. The inscription runs : " Henricus Stafford, Dux 

 Buckingham, Decapitatus apud Salisburi. I. Ric. III., A.D. 

 1483." But he was afraid that the tale rested only upon the 

 authority of a great antiquary who had not the facts before him 

 when he made the statement. A clue to the real history of the 

 tomb was a will of a warden of De Vaux College, in which 

 he expressed a desire to be buried in the College Chapel under 

 a tomb such as the one they saw before them. De Vaux College 

 at one time threatened the existence of Oxford University. In 

 the chancel are some old stall ends ; one of them carved with 

 the rebus of the Cervington family. 



The chief objects of antiquarian interest in the church were 

 then examined the Buckingham tomb, a miniature effigy of a 

 priest holding a chalice, which Mr. Doran Webb assigned to the 

 1 4th century, the details of the chalice being of that date, 

 and the Saxon arches on each side of the nave, where the 

 ancient apsidal chancel formerly joined it. These arches have 

 been curiously mutilated, apparently at some mediaeval restor- 

 ation of the building ; on the south side the head of the arch is 

 built of Roman bricks, on the opposite side of stone, or faced 

 with stone. On this side stone carvings, interlaced patterns, 

 and other designs of the Saxon age have been introduced, but 

 apparently at a much later date. To the writer it appeared 

 probable that the church originally contained ambones, as was 

 usual in churches of early date, and that, when the church was 

 restored in later mediaeval times, it was modernised to that date, 

 the ambones being removed and their pilasters and other carved 



