string-course, enriched with scroll floral ornament. In the interior
... the chancel arch (which has elaborate carving) is carried on a
central attached shaft and two plain nook shafts, built in courses,
with simple cushion caps and plain bases. The chancel is vaulted
with heavy moulded groins, springing from the cushion caps of short
single shafts resting on grotesque heads. A small window is
introduced in each of the divisions formed by the shafts, and each
window has a pair of nook shafts in the interior and enriched arch
above. The lower part of the apse is plain, and is separated from
the upper part by a string-course, enriched with faceted
ornaments."[284]

PARISH CHURCHES ILLUSTRATING MIDDLE POINTED OR DECORATED PERIOD

_St. Michael's Parish Church, Linlithgow_, was the scene of the
apparition that is said to have warned King James IV. against the battle
of Flodden, and is one of the largest parish churches in Scotland. A
church dedicated to St. Michael existed here as early as the time of
David I. A new church is said to have been erected in 1242, and probably
some parts of this are incorporated in the present edifice. In 1384
Robert II. contributed to the erection or repair of the church tower,
and in 1424 the church was injured and considerably destroyed by the
fire that reduced the town to ashes. The reconstruction of the edifice
probably progressed, under the Jameses, simultaneously with that of the
palace adjoining.

St. Michael's consists of a choir, including two aisles and a
three-sided apse at the east end; a nave, including two aisles; two
chapels inserted, north and south, in the place usually occupied by the
transept; a square tower at the west end, and a south porch giving
access to the nave. The nave is the oldest part of the building, and
appears to have been erected before the middle of the fifteenth century.
The choir is of somewhat later date.[285] A broad stone bench or seat is
carried round the nave, and the bases of the triple wall shafts of the
vaulting rest upon it. Those of the choir, different in design, rest on
the floor. In the nave there are triforium openings in each bay, and
clerestory windows above them. The windows throughout the church are of
large size, and filled with varied geometric tracery. The windows of the
apse are large, and the tracery of two of the windows is perpendicular
in character. The transepts (or north and south chape