VOL. XIX. (2) 
LEONARD STANLEY 
105 
It is fitting to remember, with this, that the beautiful 
flowing tracery of the Eastern window of the Norman Chapel 
must be dated but fifty years later than this document, and 
with this enrichment (if not earlier), took place the prolonga- 
tion of the Eastern section of the Chapel, or smaller Church, 
and the conversion of its primitive apsis into a square head. 
It was evidently now called the smaller Church and regarded 
with great veneration, and as such it undoubtedly continued 
to be regarded down almost to the Dissolution of the Monastery 
in 1538. 
The interesting question, therefore, arises : Did the 
Canons, or the Benedictines from S. Peter’s Abbey at Glouces- 
ter, who succeeded them here after but fifteen years’ possession, 
ever make over to the little Parish the nave of their Church ? 
And, if so, when, and why, did they make this important 
change, seeing that the inhabitants or parishioners were so few ? 
Hitherto, it has been the custom of writers on this sub]ect to 
take for granted that because the Monastic Church has been the 
Parish Church since the Dissolution, that it was (as, it is true, 
so often is the case, in the Austin-Canons’ Priories), this from 
the first ! The present writer ventures to take quite another 
view, which he will develop in this following section of this 
paper. 
Part I. 
There are possible two other hypotheses : (i) the early 
Parish Chapel, enlarged and beautified, remained the pro- 
perty of the parishioners throughout, and they had no rights 
whatsoever in the greater Church of the Canons ; or (2) the 
nave of the greater, or Canons, Church, may have been made 
over to them, not in early days, but at the date when an elabo- 
rate rood-screen, stair, and window were, it is evident, inserted 
there quite late in the fifteenth century (to the sacrifice of 
two costly canopied tombs) in the south wall, the then popula- 
tion of Leonard Stanley (as evidence will suggest) having far 
transcended the capacities of the ancient, though enlarged. 
Chapel. The latter hypothesis will be found to account for 
much else that otherwise is enigmatical. 
The first of these hypotheses, thougli perhaps very near 
the truth, may be dismissed with but little remark, seeing that 
