En lan mil quatre cens et douze Tiers iour d’Auril que pluye arrouse Les biens de la terre, la journee Que la Pasques fut celebree Noble homme et Reverend Pere Jehan de Boissey, de’la Mere Eglise de Bayeux Pasteur Rendi l’ame a son Createur Et lors enfoissant la place Devant la grand Autel de grace Trova l’on la basse Chapelle Dont il n’avoit ete nouvelle Ou il est mis en sepulture Dieu ueuille avoir son ame en cure.  Amen.

It was my good fortune to visit this crypt at a very particular juncture.  The day after my arrival at Bayeux, there was a grand Ordination.  Before I had quitted my bed, I heard the mellow and measured notes of human voices; and starting up, I saw an almost interminable procession of priests, deacons, &c., walking singly behind each other, in two lines, leaving a considerable space between them.  They walked bareheaded, chanting, with a book in their hands; and bent their course towards the cathedral.  I dressed quickly; and, dispatching my breakfast with equal promptitude, pursued the same route.  On entering the western doors, thrown wide open, I shall never forget the effect produced by the crimson and blue draperies of the Norman women:—­a great number of whom were clustered, in groups, upon the top of the screen, about the huge wooden crucifix;—­witnessing the office of ordination going on below, in the choir.  They seemed to be suspended in the air; and considering the piece of sculpture around which they appeared to gather themselves—­with the elevation of the screen itself—­it was a combination of objects upon which the pencil might have been exercised with the happiest possible result.  An ordination in a foreign country, and especially one upon such an apparently extensive scale, was, to a professional man, not to be slighted; and accordingly I determined upon making the most of the spectacle before me.  Looking accidentally down my favourite crypt, I observed that some religious ceremony was going on there.  The northern grate, or entrance, being open, I descended a flight of steps, and quickly became an inmate of this subterraneous abode.  The first object that struck me was, the warm glow of day light which darted upon the broad pink cross of the surplice of an officiating priest:  a candle was burning upon the altar, on each side of him:  another priest, in a black vesture, officiated as an assistant; and each, in turn, knelt, and bowed, and prayed ... to the admiration of some few half dozen casual yet attentive visitors—­while the full sonorous chant, from the voices of upwards of one hundred and fifty priests and deacons, from the choir above, gave a peculiar sort of solemnity to the mysterious gloom below.