By Chr. Wordsworth, M,A. 571 



of the Kings and Queens of England, 1 as an act of reparation to the 

 memory of " Le Boy Bichard de Burdmx" 



Note on the.Rood-Beam — Mr. Francis Price, the Clerk of the Fabrick, 

 and author of The British Carpenter, —who died in 1753, had assured the 

 Dean and Chapter that a beam which in earlier days had been "placed across 

 the choir, above the lower tier of arches, for the purpose, as was always 

 supposed, of resisting the pressure of the side walls," might be taken away 

 with the most perfect safety. It was looked upon as a special eyesore — " an 

 unpleasing object" which "greatly intercepted the view at the entrance of 

 the choir," when in the eighteenth century people were beginning to hanker 

 after a vista. When James Biddlescombe made his sketch of the nave of 

 Salisbury Cathedral, engraved by J. S. Muller in 1754 (of which there is a 

 reduced representation etched by J". Fisher in P. Hall's Picturesque Salisbury,, 

 1834, Plate vi.), he showed the old organ (by Renatus Harris, 1710) mounted 

 upon the old stone pulpitum, but he used an artist's privilege to omit the 

 beam from his drawing. It was not however then removed ; but in 1786 

 (as Mr. W. A. Wheeler records in the first part of his handy little Sarum 

 Chronology, 1889, p. 36) this large beam was declared useless and was 

 ordered to be taken away. In 1789, Mr. James Wyatt, who " coincided 

 with the former opinion expressed by Mr. Price," carried out the fatal order 

 for its destruction, and the beam was " sawn asunder under his inspection." 

 W. Dodsworth, the verger, relates this in his 8vo Guide to the Cathedral 

 Church, which ran through 3 editions in 1792 (pp. 34, 35). He applauded 

 this among other " late great improvements made therein under the direction 

 of James Wyatt, Esq." By the time, however, that Dodsworth's larger 

 book, Historical Account of the Episcopal See," &c, appeared in 1814, the 

 outcry raised by Richard Cough, Bp. Milner, and others, had aroused some 

 misgivings, and the verger acknowledged (p. 180) — when pulpitum as well 

 as beam had both been swept away — that the former was " as antient as 

 the church," and that "perhaps this beam may have served originally to 

 support the Rood Loft." It was, I doubt not, the trabs crucifixi, " forming 

 a prominent architectural line of demarcation east of the stalls." (C. A. 

 Nicholson, Art. Screen, in Harford and Stevenson's Prayer Book Diet., 

 p. 742. Of. Cox and Harvey's Engl. Church Furniture, pp. 86, 87.) The 

 rood had been removed here probably (as at St. Edmund's Church) in 1562, 

 but the " eminencia" was mentioned by Bp. Poore in his Custom Book 

 (Frere's Use of Sarum, i., p. 4) as the place for relics, crucifix, and images, 

 with six lights provided by the Treasurer. It is evident that a course of 

 stones below the triforium has been re-set just above the stalls of Grimston 

 prebend and the Archdeacon of Sarum, although the opposite wall, above 

 JKotesfen and the un-named stall in the Treasurer's "quarter" do not show 

 their wound. 



1 In the foregoing paper I have (virtually) assumed that Nomina Begum 

 implies the existence of figures or other representations of the illustrious 

 persons named in the three lists. It will of course be noticed that the 

 writer of the list began at his left hand looking east, i.e. on the " Chanter's 

 Side" (Cantoris), instead of (Decani) to his right, and thus he dislocated 

 the historical or chronological succession of the figures. By a curious 

 coincidence the arrangement of the effigies of Bishops in Mr. C. E. Ponting's 

 stall canopies has followed (advisedly) the scribe's arrangement so far as to 

 begin in sinistra parte chori, though it has not followed his mistake as to 

 chronology. 



