#Decorative Mural Painting.#--On removing the panelling at the back of the old choir stalls, Sir Gilbert Scott found that the whole length of the walls had once been painted. The old stalls were fortunately so high that they had saved not only the lower border, which, with its ribbon pattern and yellow six-petalled roses, is the same on each wall, but nearly a complete row of the main design as well. Scott retained this, and repeated it over the rest of the space, up to the top border, of which traces remained just under the first string-course. This upper border varies slightly on the different sides. The shields in it, formerly blank, are now occupied with the coats-of-arms of bishops of the see.
The pattern that covers the space between the borders is certainly heraldic. The lions in the red quatrefoils, and the fleurs-de-lis in the alternate blue spaces, correspond in every possible way--in form, colour, and ground--with those of the royal arms of England and of France. Dating, as they almost certainly do, from the fourteenth century, they remind us of the attempts of Edward III. and his brave son to unite both realms under his sway. The idea of the design may have come from Canterbury, where an earlier border, of similar materials, alluded perhaps to Edward II.'s marriage with Isabella of France. After making this suggestion, Canon Scott Robertson[14] records a mention of the use, at much the same time, of a similarly constituted pattern on some altar-cloths at Westminster Abbey.
[Illustration: CORBEL IN CHOIR (H. P. CLIFFORD DEL.).]
The painting is continued on oak panelling across the organ screen. A piece of the original panelling, with a fragment of an earlier rather tartan-like pattern also, is now hung, under glass, on a pier opposite the chapter-house door.
#The Bishop's Throne#, on the south side, just to the west of the crossing, is of carved oak, in the Gothic style, and has a rich canopy. It was designed by Scott, and was a present to the cathedral from Lord Dudley, a brother-in-law of Bishop Claughton. Of two of its predecessors some particulars can be given. In 1743 Bishop Wilcocks gave a throne, classical in style, with a flat pedimental canopy supported by massive columns. The place of this was taken in 1840 by a new work of Cottingham's, which was still more quickly supplanted by the present throne. Cottingham's did not, however, long remain unused; it was taken to St. Albans in 1877 for the enthronement of Dr. Claughton as the first bishop of that new see.