I would remind your correspondent BURIENSIS of the splendid monument in
Winchester cathedral, beneath which are deposited the remains of Richard
Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and founder of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, who died here on the 14th of September, 1528. In an oblong
niche, under the third arch, lies the figure of Bishop Fox, represented
as an emaciated corpse in a winding-sheet, with his feet resting on a
skull. It is a tradition of the vergers that he died whilst endeavouring
to imitate the example of Our Lord by a fast of forty days.
The figure of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, is also
represented, like that of Fox, as a skeleton; and the same tale of a
forty days' fast traditionally delivered by the same authorities.