Note 76 — Chapter XVIII · LITURGICAL PLAYS

J. Britton, Redcliffe Church, 47, prints a contemporary description of a sepulchre given in 1470 by ‘Maister Canynge’ to St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, with, amongst other adornments, ‘Heaven made of timber and stain’d clothes’ and ‘Hell, made of timber and iron-work thereto, with Divels to the number of 13.’ This is apparently not a Chatterton forgery. Feasey, 166, gives a somewhat similar London specification, and also (p. 145) describes a fourteenth-century wooden sepulchre from Kilsby, Northants, believed to be the only one in existence. I have a suspicion that the wooden so-called ‘watcher’s chamber’ to the shrine of St. Frideswide in Christ Church, Oxford, is really a sepulchre. It is in the right place, off the north choir aisle, and why should a watcher of the shrine want to be perched up in a wooden cage on the top of a tomb?