, as being
no longer required under the altered conditions. The proceedings which
strike us as most sacrilegious occurred in the Lady Chapel. Perhaps
they cannot be better described than in Stow's graphic words:

The chapel was leased and let out, and the House of God made a
bakehouse. Two very fair doors ... were lathed, daubed, and
dammed up, the fair pillars were ordinary posts, against which
they piled billets and bavens. In this place they had their
ovens, in that a bolting place, in that their kneading trough,
in another (I have heard) a hog's trough, for the words that
were given me were these: "This place have I known a hog-stie,
in another a storehouse to store up their hoarded meal, and in
all of it something of this sordid kind and condition."

That the description is not exaggerated is proved by the parish
registers, which also show that the state of things went on for some
years and did not improve with time. On 15th May, 1576, for instance,
a vestry order is recorded in which the lessee of the chapel is called
upon to repair certain broken windows and remove nuisances. In the
following December, a further entry states that fourteen members of
the vestry went in a body to the chapel to see whether their orders
had been attended to, having allowed the lessee more than six months
to act on the notice. They found the place turned into a stable "with
hogs, a dung-heap and other filth" about, and were thereupon empowered
to take legal proceedings to keep the tenant up to his contract.[6]

In the reign of Edward VI the Prayer-book and its vernacular services
were introduced. The people had hardly got used to them before the
accession of Queen Mary, and the consequent papal reaction, restored
the Latin mass, around which most of the religious controversies of
the time were furiously raging. During that brief reign the
retro-choir was turned to more respectable use as a Spiritual Court,
though the memories attaching to it in that character constitute a
gloomy chapter in its history which we would gladly eliminate.

On Monday, 28th January, 1555, and the two following days, a
commission, appointed by the Cardinal Legate, sat there for the trial
of certain preachers and heretics. It was presided over by Bishops
Gardiner, of Winchester, and Bonner, of London, and included eleven
other Bishops, besides several eminent laymen. On the first day the
proceedings were open to the publ