th or seventeenth century; notices of them
occur, however, much earlier. In the Louterell Psalter, written circa A. D.
1300, an eagle desk supported on a cylindrical shaft, banded midway down
by an annulated moulding in the style of the thirteenth century, is
represented; and in an account of ornaments belonging to Salisbury
Cathedral, A. D. 1214, we find mentioned _Tuellia una ad Lectricum Aquilae_.
Besides the brass eagle desks which still remain in use in several of our
cathedrals, and in the chapels of some of the colleges at Oxford and
Cambridge, fine specimens are preserved in Redcliffe Church, Bristol, of
the date 1638; in Croydon Church, Surrey; and in the church of the Holy
Trinity at Coventry; other instances might also be enumerated. Sometimes
we meet with ancient brass reading-desks which have not the eagle in
front, but both the sides are sloped so as to form a double desk: of
these, examples of the fifteenth century may be found in Yeovil Church,
Somersetshire, and in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford. Ancient wooden
reading-desks, either single or double, are also occasionally found; some
of these are richly carved, others are comparatively plain, but all
partake more or less of the architectonic style of the age in which they
were severally constructed, and from which their probable dates may be
ascertained. In Bury Church, Huntingdonshire, is a wooden desk with a
single slope, and the vertical face presented in front is covered with
arches and other carved ornaments: this perhaps may be referable to the
latter part of the fourteenth century. A rich double desk, of somewhat
later date, with the shaft supported by buttresses of open-work tracery,
is preserved in Ramsey Church, Huntingdonshire. In Aldbury Church,
Hertfordshire, is an ancient double lecturn or reading desk, of wood, of
the fifteenth century, much plainer in design than those at Bury and
Ramsey; the shaft is angular, with small buttresses at the angles, and
with a plain angular-shaped moulded capital and base, which latter is set
on a cross-tree. In Hawstead Church, Suffolk, is a wooden desk with little
ornament, supported on an angular shaft with an embattled capital, and
moulded base with leaves carved in relief: this is apparently of the
latter part of the fourteenth century. The ancient wooden desks found in
some of our churches must not, however, be confounded with a more numerous
class constructed and used subsequent to the Reformation