il of Rubens was probably the last buried in the choir
before the Civil War. The Lady Chapel contained a wooden tablet to Sir
Philip Sidney, with the inscription:

"England, Netherlands, the Heavens and the Arts,
The Souldiers and the World, have made six parts
Of noble Sidney; for none will suppose
That a small heap of stones can Sidney enclose.

His body hath England, for she it bred;
Netherlands his blood, in her defence shed;
The Heavens have his soule, the Arts his fame,
All Souldiers the grief, the World his good name."

Another wooden tablet in the north aisle was to the memory of his
father-in-law, the statesman Walsingham; and numerous other statesmen,
nobles, divines, and lawyers were buried, or at least remembered. We
can but regret that these are now things of the past, and gone, with
the exception of the effigy of Dean Donne--as remarkable as the man
himself--and a few mutilated remains. Even Colet's is gone.

Before descending to the Crypt we may remark that the Interior must
have fully emphasised the sense of majestic beauty produced by the
Exterior. The long perspective eastward from the West Door, flanked on
either side by the arcading and terminating with a glimpse of the rose
window over the choir screen, as depicted in Dugdale, leaves nothing
to be desired.

=The Crypt or Shrouds.=--The crypt was underneath the eight eastern
bays of the choir, and was about 170 feet in length.[48] The entrance
was from the churchyard on the north side, and the gloom was lit up by
basement windows both at the sides and east end. An additional row of
piers down the centre supported the choir pavement above; and the
whole undercroft may best be described as of eight arches in length
and four in breadth, the arches springing from engaged columns and the
vaulting quadripartite.

The mouldings of the clustered columns were plain rounds and hollows,
and everything throughout appears to have been uniform and of the same
date. The four western bays, rather more than half, formed the parish
church of St. Faith; the eastern part the Jesus Chapel, which, after
the suppression of the Guild, was added to St. Faith's. These two
parts were separated by a wooden screen, and over the door was an
image of Jesus, and underneath the inscription:

"Jesus our God and Saviour
To us and ours be Gouernour."

These remarks about the Jesus Chapel, be it noted, date only from the
reign of Henry