rs used to beg their way to Oxford
and Cambridge, and receive the assistance of the charitable. Hence we
read in the Leverton accounts:--

"1562. Gave to a pore scholar at Oxford. 2s. 0d."

With this record of "a pore scholar" we must leave our study of the
contents of the parish chest, which afford such valuable and accurate
information about village and town life of ancient times.

[6] 812 registers begin in 1538, 40 of which contain entries prior to
that date. 1,822 registers date from 1538 to 1558, and 2,448 from
1558 to 1603.

[7] In the Whitchurch books we find: "1671. Paide for a coate and
wastcoate for good wife Clarke 13s., also for linen and shoes; to the
Chiurgeons for looking at Ezechiell Huller's legg L3." And such-like
entries.

CHAPTER XVIII

STAINED GLASS, TILES, AND MURAL PAINTINGS

Destruction of old windows--Wilfrid's glass-window makers--Glass,
stained and painted--Changes in style--Work of foreign artists--Inlaid
tiles--Ironwork on doors and screens--Norman hinges--Mediaeval
plumbing work--Mural decoration, frescoes, and wall-painting--Cause
of their destruction--St. Christopher--Consecration crosses--Norman
art--Favourite subjects--Yew trees in churchyards--Lich-gates--The
churchyard--Curious epitaphs.

No branch of archaeology is more interesting than the study of our
stained-glass windows, which illustrate so clearly the faith, history,
and customs of our ancestors. We have again to thank the fanatics of
the Reformation and Cromwellian periods for the shameful destruction
of so many beautiful windows. How great has been the loss to art and
history caused by their reckless demolition! And in addition to this
miserable violence our windows have suffered greatly from the ignorant
indifference of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which allowed
priceless examples of old glass to be removed and replaced by the
hideous specimens of the modern glass-painters.

In Saxon times this art found a home in England, the _artifices
lapidearum et vitrearum fenestrarum_ having been invited to this country
by Wilfrid, Bishop of York, in 709. The earliest specimen of ancient
glass now in existence is in the choir-aisles of Canterbury Cathedral,
where it was probably fixed when the cathedral was rebuilt after the
fire in 1174.

Coloured glass is of two kinds: (1) _Stained glass_, made by mixing
metallic oxides with the glass when in a state of fusion, the colours
thus going th