its
cover, of the metal called latten, was until recently preserved in the
church of Enstone, Oxfordshire: the body of this was of a semi-globular
form, supported on an angular stem, with a knob in the midst, and in
appearance not unlike a chalice. The monstrance, in which the host was
exhibited to the people, and which has been sometimes confounded with the
pix[182-*], does not appear to have been introduced into our churches
before the fifteenth century; on the suppression of the monasteries and
chantries we find it noticed in the inventories then taken of church
furniture, as in that of the Priory of Ely, where it is called "a stonding
monstral for the sacrament;" and in that of St. Augustine's Monastery,
Canterbury, where it is described as "one monstrance, silver gilt, with
four glasses."

[Illustration: Sedilia, Crick Church, Northamptonshire.]

Near the high altar we frequently find, in the south wall of the chancel,
a series of stone seats, sometimes without but generally beneath plain or
enriched arched canopies, often supported by slender piers which serve to
divide the seats. In most instances these seats are three in number, but
they vary from one to five, and are the _sedilia_ or seats formerly
appropriated during high mass to the use of the officiating priest and his
attendant ministers, the deacon and sub-deacon, who retired thither
during the chanting of the _Gloria in excelsis_, and some other parts of
the service[183-*]. The sedilia sometimes preserve the same level, but
generally they graduate or rise one above another, and that nearest the
altar, being the highest, was occupied by the priest; the other two by the
deacon and sub-deacon in succession[183-+]. We do not often meet with
sedilia of so early an era as the twelfth century; there are, however,
instances of such, as in the church of St. Mary, at Leicester, where is a
fine Norman triple sedile, divided into graduating seats by double
cylindrical piers with sculptured capitals, and the recessed arches they
support are enriched on the face with a profusion of the zigzag moulding.
In the south wall of the choir of Broadwater Church, Sussex, is a stone
bench beneath a large semicircular Norman arch, the face of which is
enriched with the chevron or zigzag moulding. In Avington Church,
Berkshire, is a stone beneath a plain segmental arch. Norman sedilia also
occur in the churches of Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, and of
Wellingore, Lincolnshire.