Church, Northants, and
Furness Abbey; or even five, as at Southwell Minster. Sometimes a long
single seat under one arch is found, and when three seats are used the
two western ones are often on the same level and the eastern one raised
above them. Numerous examples remain in our churches, some being as
early as the latter part of the 12th century, but they are mostly later
and extend to the end of the Perpendicular style. Some of them are
separated by shafts, and profusely ornamented with panelling, niches,
statues, pinnacles, tabernacle work, and crowned with canopies all more
or less elaborately enriched.

[Side note: Stalls.]

Stalls are fixed seats in the choir, either wholly or partially enclosed
and used by the clergy. Previous to the Reformation all large and many
small churches had a range of wooden stalls on each side and at the west
end of the choir. In cathedrals they were enclosed at the back with
panelling, and surmounted by overhanging canopies of tabernacle work,
generally of oak, of which those at Winchester, Henry VII.'s Chapel at
Westminster, and Manchester Cathedral are possibly our finest examples.
When the stalls occupied both sides of the choir, return seats were
placed at the ends for the prior, dean, precentor, and other of the
officiating clergy.

[Illustration: Sedilia and Chantry. Luton, Beds.
_Photograph Fredk. Thurston, F.R.P.S._]

Mr. Parker, in his "_Glossary of Architecture_," gives the following
definition of the miserere, patience or pretella. "The projecting bracket
on the underside of the seats of stalls in churches; these, when perfect,
are fixed with hinges so they may be turned up, and when this is done the
projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a
seat, to afford very considerable rest to anyone leaning upon it. They
were allowed as a relief to the infirm during the long services that
were required to be performed by ecclesiastics in a standing posture."
It is in the carving of these that one is frequently struck by the
curious mixture of the sacred and the profane, the refined and the
vulgar, for which it is difficult to find any adequate explanation. Of
so coarse a nature are some of these carvings that it has been necessary
to entirely remove them from the stalls. They are usually attributed to
the mendicant and wandering monks, and they undoubtedly reflect the
licentiousness which at one time pervaded the monastic and conventual
establishme