red;
but this painting, with others in the same chapel, was afterwards again
obliterated[199-*]. A curious fresco painting of the last judgment,
discovered a few years ago on the west face of the wall over the chancel
arch, Trinity Church, Coventry, has, however, been very carefully
preserved, and the coat of whitewash which tended to conceal it probably
ever since the Reformation has been judiciously removed. The legend of St.
Christopher, represented by a colossal figure with a beam-like
walking-staff, carrying the infant Christ on his shoulders through the
water, was generally painted on the north wall of the nave or body of the
church. A fresco painting of this subject, half obliterated, is still
apparent on the north wall of the nave of Burford Church, Oxfordshire; and
other instances might be adduced. The murder of Archbishop Becket was also
a very favourite subject: an early pictorial representation of the
thirteenth century, of this event, is still visible on one of the walls of
Preston Church, Sussex; it formed, likewise, one of the subjects
represented on the walls of Trinity Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon; and a
painting of the same subject on panel, executed in the middle of the
fifteenth century, was formerly suspended over or near the tomb of Henry
the Fourth in Canterbury Cathedral[200-*]. Several vestiges of ancient
fresco wall-paintings, more or less obliterated, are still preserved in
Winchester Cathedral. The walls of our churches were even in the
Anglo-Saxon era embellished with paintings; and such are described as
decorating the walls of the church of Hexham in the seventh century. By
the synod of Calcuith, held A. D. 816, a representation of the saint to
whom a church was dedicated was required to be painted either on the wall
of the church or on a tablet suspended in the church.

[Illustration: Ancient Stone Reliquary or Shrine, Brixworth Church,
Northamptonshire.]

In most of the large conventual churches, and also in some of the smaller
parochial churches, shrines containing relics of the patron or other
saints were exhibited; these were either fixed and immovable, of
tabernacle-work, of stone or wood, or partly of both, or were small
movable feretories, which could be carried on festivals in procession. Of
the fixed shrines, that in Hereford Cathedral of Bishop Cantelupe, of the
date A. D. 1287, is a fine and early specimen, in very fair preservation.
In the north aisle of the abbey church, Shrew