440 NOTES AND QUERIES. 



subject of which has not yet been made out, and which was 

 covered by the post Reformation lettering 1 alluded to. The 

 words ''King James" probably fixed the exact period of this 

 latter treatment. There can be little doubt that the frescoes 

 are of the same date as the aisle itself (circa 1 380), and that 

 they are on the original plastered surfaces of the masonry. The 

 usual plastering of that time was a mere skin. In this case it 

 is nowhere more than a quarter of an inch thick, including an 

 undercoat of sand and lime to make up any unevenness of 

 surface in the wall. Over this is a thin coat of almost pure 

 carbonite of lime, on which, whilst wet, the artist must have 

 worked. The colours he used were chiefly earths — red ochre, 

 siena, green, and cobalt. 



It is not a little striking that, besides the fabric itself, the 

 only remains of mediseval art left in this church are a head of 

 the Saviour in the glazing of a window which is in the line of 

 the Rood, and close by this remarkable and beautiful fresco, 

 with its lesson of mercy by His merits ; that same lesson which 

 Shakspere re-echoes in the "Merchant of Venice" — "In the 

 course of justice none of us should see salvation. "We do pray 

 for mercy ; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the 

 deeds of mercy." 



Although the fresco of the seven acts has been hidden for 

 nearly three centuries, it has been scarcely a forgotten dream in 

 the minds of the parishioners. A sort of tradition of it seems 

 to have been handed down from one generation to another, as 

 indicated by some unusual epitaphs in the church and church- 

 yard. On a slab in the south porch the virtues of Mrs. Elizabeth 

 Phillips, who died in 1769, are thus recorded: — 



" While here on earth 

 A pious life she led, 



She cloth'd the naked, 

 And the hungry fed, 



Each Christian precept 

 Early did profess, 



Was friend to widows 

 And the fatherless." 



It is almost needless to say that the remarkable "find" at 

 Linkinhorne will be most carefully protected from injury. Quite 

 a history is written on the south wall of that church. It tells of 



