Not far from the green where the May-day revels were held, stood the ancient parish church of Whalley, its square tower surmounted with a flag-staff and banner, and shaking with the joyous peals of the ringers.  A picturesque and beautiful structure it was, though full of architectural incongruities; and its grey walls and hoary buttresses, with the lancet-shaped windows of the choir, and the ramified tracery of the fine eastern window, could not fail to please any taste not quite so critical as to require absolute harmony and perfection in a building.  Parts of the venerable fabric were older than the Abbey itself, dating back as far as the eleventh century, when a chapel occupied the site; and though many alterations had been made in the subsequent structure at various times, and many beauties destroyed, especially during the period of the Reformation, enough of its pristine character remained to render it a very good specimen of an old country church.  Internally, the cylindrical columns of the north aisle, the construction of the choir, and the three stone seats supported on rounded columns near the altar, proclaimed its high antiquity.  Within the choir were preserved the eighteen richly-carved stalls once occupying a similar position in the desecrated conventual church:  and though exquisite in themselves, they seemed here sadly out of place, not being proportionate to the structure.  Their elaborately-carved seats projected far into the body of the church, and their crocketed pinnacles shot up almost to the ceiling.  But it was well they had not shared the destruction in which almost all the other ornaments of the magnificent fane they once decorated were involved.  Carefully preserved, the black varnished oak well displayed the quaint and grotesque designs with which many of them—­the Prior’s stall in especial—­were embellished.  Chief among them was the abbot’s stall, festooned with sculptured vine wreaths and clustering grapes, and bearing the auspicious inscription: 

          Semper gaudentes sint ista sede sedentes: 

singularly inapplicable, however, to the last prelate who filled it.  Some fine old monuments, and warlike trophies of neighbouring wealthy families, adorned the walls, and within the nave was a magnificent pew, with a canopy and pillars of elaborately-carved oak, and lattice-work at the sides, allotted to the manor of Read, and recently erected by Roger Nowell; while in the north and south aisles were two small chapels, converted since the reformed faith had obtained, into pews—­the one called Saint Mary’s Cage, belonging to the Assheton family; and the other appertaining to the Catterals of Little Mitton, and designated Saint Nicholas’s Cage.  Under the last-named chapel were interred some of the Paslews of Wiswall, and here lay the last unfortunate Abbot of Whalley, between whoso grave, and the Assheton and Braddyll families, a fatal relation was supposed to subsist.  Another large pew, allotted to the