rmounted the throne in the choir. The
stone base of the railings, with its many projecting angles and its band
of delicate quatrefoils, is thought to have formed part of the shrine of
St. Wilfrid, and, having been found in fragments, was placed here by
Sir Gilbert Scott. In this aisle the sides of the windows are partially
panelled. The glass is of little interest, save that in the third window
from the west, by Burlison & Grylls, and a few seventeenth century
fragments. The vaulting-shafts here are single, and are half-octagons
with their sides slightly hollowed, and they again break the
string-course, which rises to pass over the doorway. Of the shields on
their angel capitals the three easternmost are charged respectively with
the arms of Fountains Abbey[81] (three horse-shoes), with those of
Cardinal Archbishop Bainbridge (1508-1514) (supported by _two_ angels),
and with the stars of St. Wilfrid. The arch opening into the transept is
not so high as in the other aisle, and upon the space above it are
portions of a once external string-course and buttress.

=The Central Tower.=--It is from the interior of the church that the
extent of the repairs necessitated by the partial fall of the tower can
best be realized, and it is here that the documentary evidence for their
dates may best be summed up. The catastrophe itself is described in an
indulgence of 1450 by Archbishop Kemp, but the repairs had not advanced
much by 1459, for in that year a testator bequeaths money to this
object, "_cum fuerit in operando_." It would seem, however, from an
indulgence of Archbishop George Neville that the tower had been
partially repaired by 1465. After a bequest in 1466 (the last of a
series beginning in 1454), it seems to be next mentioned in the Fabric
Roll for 1541-2, and the Chapter Acts speak of the work that remained to
be done as late as 1545. The order, therefore, of the larger operations
in the Perpendicular period was probably as follows:--First the Canons
remodelled the two ruinous sides of the tower and the east side of the
south transept (where the work much resembles that in the tower), then
they rebuilt the nave,[82] then the western bays on the south side of
the choir (as the late character of the work itself would indicate),[83]
and lastly they were about to remodel the two remaining sides of the
tower when they were checked by the dissolution.

[Illustration: THE WESTERN ARCH OF THE CENTRAL TOWER.]

The planning o