north, and St. Edmund's on the south. Thus the nave, where men
were ever coming and going, walking and talking, and in laxer times
buying and selling as well, was quite shut off from the more sacred
places. Yet here, too, were altars and shrines, and here came the
processions on Sundays and holidays.

Within the choir the chapter said their offices, the dean and
precentor facing east in their returned stalls, and the other
dignitaries in their allotted places, with the junior canons, vicars,
and those in minor orders below them, and the boys on the lowest forms
of all. Just beyond these stalls was the bishop's throne; and east of
the tower the presbytery stood open, with the tombs of the early
bishops, on either side, under the arches. The rest of the space
enclosed within the screen belonged more especially to the clergy; the
north transept was probably used as a chapter-house, when the
undercroft was yet unfinished, and its western aisle was used as the
chapter library. The chamber leading to the undercroft was the vestry,
and the stout walls of the octagon, when it was finished, protected
the vestments and treasures of the cathedral.

It is worth while to call to mind the kind of service for which the
church was built, with its aisles and chapels and screen. The usual
Sunday procession started from the north door of the presbytery,
preceded by two thurifers with censers, went round behind the
presbytery, the priest in his cope asperging the altars on his way,
then down the south choir aisle, and through the south transept into
the cloister. In the cloister-cemetery, the priest, with his
ministers, said the prayers for the dead, and then rejoined the
procession in the cloister Lady Chapel, where the first station was
made. Thence the procession returned to the great rood in the nave,
and there made the second station, the bidding-prayer being given out
to the people from the rood-screen, after which it re-entered the
choir. But on special occasions the ritual was increased; as, for
instance, at the procession of palms on Palm Sunday, or the Corpus
Christi Day procession, which is thus described by Mr J.D.
Chambers[3]: "The procession, some time before the mass, should
assemble in order at the step of the Choir (_i.e._ in the Presbytery),
a priest in Albe and silk Cope carrying the Corpus Christi in a
tabernacle or feretory under a canopy of silk raised over him and it
on four staves, borne by four clerks in Albes a