64 ON MILTON ABBEY CHURCH. 



to break up his casts and make fresh ones before he could give 

 him satisfaction. 



THE EOOD SKEEEN. 



If we now turn in the opposite direction we shall there see 

 what I consider the only ugly feature in the whole building, the 

 stone skreen, which separates the choir from the transept. Its 

 full ugliness is best seen from the other side. Any one, I think, 

 who examines it with the least degree of care will perceive that 

 the greater part of it has no right whatever to be there, and is 

 nothing else than a modern intrusion. No doubt there was 

 always something to separate the choir from the rest of the 

 church, according to universal custom, and the lower part most 

 likely is original. But not so the upper portion, which is com- 

 posed of all sorts of materials, all of them, it may be, old, but 

 brought together in the most ignorant and unworkmanlike 

 manner, and without the least regard to their nature or original 

 destination, the upper masonry being made up of beautiful 

 panel work in stone, colored and gilded, the spoils of some rich 

 shrine, or tomb, some of the blocks being actually turned upside 

 down. There is, however, still stronger proof of the truth of 

 what I am now asserting. You will notice on the east front of 

 this skreen a series of shields in miniature heraldically embla- 

 zoned. There are twelve of them now, and there appears to 

 have been a thirteenth ; but it is evident from the first edition of 

 Hutchings that in his time, more than a century ago, those very 

 shields with the massive stone slab, on the front of which they 

 are carved, formed part of a chantry that stood against the east 

 wall of the south transept, and some remains of it, probably, 

 are still to be seen there. You may notice also that just below 

 the shields, as they are at present placed, are several pendants, 

 carved and gilded, just exactly of the description and style 

 commonly found in chantries of the Perpendicular order, and it 

 is a very probable conjecture that Wharton makes in his account 

 of the abbey — that this chantry was the tomb of William of 

 Middleton, and that the row of shields formed a cornice upon its 



