Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/124

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Eleanor; and another figure possibly represents his second queen, Margaret. Coming round to the east we look with delighted eyes on what has been called "the finest example of Geometrical Decorated Architecture to be found in the kingdom." The window is not so fine as that at Carlisle, and no east end competes with that at York, but York is Perpendicular, and Lincoln is Geometrical. Here we have not only a grand window, fifty-seven feet high, but another great five-light window above it, and over that a beautiful figure of the Virgin and Child, and all finished by a much enriched gable surmounted by a cross. The two windows, one above the other, seem not to be quite harmonious, in fact, one does not want the upper window, nor perhaps the windows in the aisle gables, but the buttresses and their finials are so extraordinarily good that they make the east end an extremely beautiful whole. Close to the north-east angle is a little stone well cover, and the chapter-*house, with its off-standing buttress-piers and conical roof, comes into view at the north. The north side is like the south, but has near it the cloisters, which are reached by a short passage from the north-east transept. From the north-east corner of these cloisters you get an extremely good view of the cathedral and all its three towers. Steps from this corner lead up to the cathedral library. The north side of the cloisters of Bishop Oliver Sutton, unable to bear the thrust of the timber-vaulted ceiling, fell, and was replaced in 1674 by the present inharmonious pillars and ugly arches designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

We must now look inside the cathedral, and if we enter the north-east transept from the cloisters we shall pass over a large stone inscribed "Elizabeth Penrose, 1837." This is the resting*-place of "Mrs. Markham," once the authority on English history in every schoolroom, and deservedly so. She took her nom de plume from the little village of East Markham, Notts., in which she lived for many years.

Passing through the north-east transept, with its stained glass windows by Canon Sutton, and its curious "Dean's Chapel," once the minster dispensary, and turning eastwards, we enter the north aisle of the Angel Choir and find the chapel of Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford. In this the effigy of the bishop is on the south side, and there is a window to the memory of Sir Charles Anderson, of Lea,