BISHOP GRANDISSON (1328-1369).

Grandisson was “the most magnificent prelate who ever filled the see

of Exeter.” He had been nuncio to the Pope at the courts of all the

noblest princes of Christendom. He was even strong enough to bar the way

to Archbishop Meopham, of Canterbury, when he attempted to enforce a

Visitation of the cathedral. Great as were his riches and magnificence,

he was a strict economist. He lived forty years Bishop of Exeter;

finished his cathedral, did many great works elsewhere, and yet died

wealthy. Quivil, we have seen, had built one bay of the nave. It remained

for Grandisson to complete the remaining seven bays. The piers of the

nave were erected by 1334; the whole work was complete in 1350. Stapledon

had commenced the Cloister; Grandisson built the north walk, running, in

curious fashion, under a second and outer range of flying-buttresses, as

does the cloister of Westminster. The west front (except the west screen)

was now built, but not the fan-vaulting of the north porch, which is

later. And the curious Chapel of St. Radegunde in the thickness of the

west wall he remodelled, to form his mortuary chapel, expecting there

ever to lie, looking towards the nave where his great work had been done.

But his tomb was destroyed by Elizabeth’s Visitors, and his ashes were

scattered to the winds.

As we stand near his empty grave, we see before us the whole of the

great mediæval design, that was due in inception to Quivil, and was

realised and consummated by Bitton, Stapledon, and Grandisson, in the

seventy years between 1280 and 1350. What strikes one, first, is that

with revenues so immense, the bishops should have been satisfied with

a cathedral so small—its area is less than half that of York. On the

other hand, at York, owing to the vast dimensions of the new cathedral,

commenced simultaneously with the new work at Exeter, the builders were

unable to roof it in stone.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

Secondly, one wonders that they allowed their hands to be fettered, their

design to be cramped, by the preservation not only of the aisle walls,

but of the clerestories of Warelwast and Marshall’s cathedral. But it is

just in the subjugation of these limitations, in converting them into the

special glory and distinction of the Exeter design, that the genius of

Quivil’s architect shines forth most vividly. He was limited by the area

of the old cathedral, east to west, north to south: not even the tiny

transepts might be enlarged. But what was more serious, he was limited

as to height. He was unable to raise the vaulting or the pier-arches

more than five feet. His internal elevation, then, for a Gothic church

of 1280, had to be exceptionally low. He determined, therefore—it was

an intuition of genius—to see what could be done in architecture with

lowness and breadth. Everything should be broad and low, outside as well

as inside. Look at the east end of the choir—its two arches broad and

low; above it, the great window—broad and low. Nowhere but at Exeter

do you find these squat windows with their truncated jambs; here they

are everywhere—in the aisles, in the clerestory, in choir, chapels,

transepts, and nave; even in the great window of the western front: broad

and low windows everywhere.

Still more original is the external realisation of the design;

central tower and spire, western towers and spires, alike are absent.

Long and low, massive and stable, stretches out uninterruptedly the

long horizontal line of nave and choir. Breadth gives in itself the

satisfactory feeling of massiveness, steadfastness and solidity; and

this is just what is wanting in the all-too aerial work of Salisbury

and Beauvais; vaulted roofs at a dizzy height resting on unsubstantial

supports and sheets of glass. But the Exeter architect has emphasised

this satisfactory feeling of stability still further. The window tracery

is heavy and strong; the vault is barred all over with massive ribs; in

the piers there are no pretty, fragile, detached shafts; the massive

clustered columns look as if they were designed, as they were, to carry

the weight of a Norman wall.

But an interior may easily be made too massive; if it is not to be

a Salisbury cathedral, it need not be a Newgate Gaol. How was the

prison-like appearance of an interior but 68 feet high, with a stone

vault of exceptionally heavy appearance weighing it down, to be avoided?

How was oppressive heaviness to be counteracted? Triumphantly, by

transparency. By stretching out the windows from buttress to buttress,

aisle and clerestory became practically one continuous sheet of glass;

the church was flooded with light and atmosphere; the heavy vault seemed

to float in the air, borne up but by the lilies and roses and wheels of

the window tracery, and rows of painted saints in tabernacles of silver

or of gold. There is no heaviness even now in the interior of Exeter;

though the silvery panes of the choir, the golden glass of the nave, have

perished long ago.

Another distinctive feature in Exeter, as in Salisbury, is that the

architect produces his effect mainly by architectural means—is not

driven to rely on sculpture. All the principal capitals have mouldings,

not foliage. Only in the great corbels of the vaulting-shafts and in

the bosses of the vault, does he permit himself foliage and sculpture.

Wonderful carving it is; the finest work of the best period, when the

naturalistic treatment of foliage was fresh and young. Very remarkable

these corbels are, with their lifelike treatment of vine and grape, oak

and acorn, hazel leaf and nut. Unfortunately the corbels, and still more

the bosses, are so high up that their lovely detail is thrown away; and

they are out of scale.

And the patterns of the window tracery are wonderfully diverse. It is

not, as in Lichfield nave or King’s College Chapel, where every window

is like its neighbour; when you have seen one, you have seen all. Here,

all down each side of the church, every window differs. In dimensions,

in general character, they agree; in details they differ; each window

is a fresh delight; we have what even in Gothic architecture we rarely

get—diversity within similarity.

Another striking feature of the design is its perfect bilateral symmetry.

Gothic churches are, as a rule, most irregular, most unsymmetrical in

outline; as a consequence, very picturesque. It is a mistake, however,

to believe that they are intentionally unsymmetrical and picturesque. A

Gothic architect no more aimed at irregularity than did the architect

of the Parthenon. Only he was not a purist on the subject. If practical

requirements—_e.g._, the needs of ritual—made it necessary to break in

on the lines of a symmetrical design, he broke in on them without the

slightest hesitation; the building had to conform to its destination.

But where a single design was carried through from end to end, it was

as symmetrical as a Classical temple. So it is at Salisbury; so it is

at Exeter. Every window has its exact counterpart on the other side of

nave and choir. Transept answers to transept, screen to screen, St. John

the Baptist’s chapel to St. Paul’s, St. Andrew’s chapel to St. James’,

St. George’s chapel to St. Saviour’s, St. Mary Magdalene’s chapel to

St. Gabriel’s. But the architect was not so infatuated with the idea of

symmetry as to place a porch on the south side because there was one

on the north, or a chapter-house on the north because there was one

on the south; which is just what the academic professors of Classical

architecture would have done.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]

We have seen how the design gained special distinction from the very

limitations imposed by the lowness of the early cathedral, the upper

parts of which it was desired to preserve. It was again to the early

design that Exeter owes another distinction among English interiors. In

the early design the towers were just those which we still see; there was

no central tower. The very fact that Quivil’s architect did not rush off

at once to build a central tower, and be like everybody else, shows what

backbone and insight the man had. Cathedrals without central towers were

as rare in mediæval England as cathedrals with central towers are rare

in the Île de France. Yet he advised his employers—or was it they who

instructed him?—not to build a central tower. Central towers, standing

as they do on four thin legs, are dangerous: many have fallen; others are

always threatening to fall—_e.g._, Salisbury. But they are objectionable

on another ground. The great piers on which they stand are an enormous

block in the lengthened vista, which is the one great charm of an English

cathedral, as compared with the lofty but short cathedrals of France.

The fact that there is no tower over the crossing, and no tower-piers in

the way, produces the most open, uninterrupted, and impressive vista of

any cathedral in England. The screen being low, one sees the whole noble

design in one glance from far west to far east. We have nothing like it:

though it finds its counterpart in the great French cathedral of Bourges.

Another point should be noticed. Although the nave is in nearly all

important respects of late Geometrical design—the exception being some

Curvilinear windows with flowing tracery in the westernmost bays of the

nave—yet the architects were not such purists as to carry out their minor

work in anything but the style of their own day. Even in the choir, the

architecture of which is Geometrical both in character and in date, all

the minor work is developed Curvilinear—_e.g._, the great screen with its

depressed ogee arches, the throne of the bishop, the sedilia.

PERPENDICULAR WORK (1360-1485).—Much minor work remained to do. In the

remaining years of the fourteenth century the west front, which seems to

have been heeling over, was buttressed by the erection of the western

screen. The west and south walks of the cloisters were added. The great

east window was substituted for an earlier Geometrical one which seems

to have fallen into decay. In the fifteenth century the towers were

crowned with battlements and turrets, as we see them now. The upper part

of the chapter-house was rebuilt. Bishop Stafford erected canopies over

monuments in the Lady chapel.

TUDOR WORK (1485-1519).—The Tudor work is exceptional in importance.

It includes the north entrance and other late portions of the western

screen, two exquisite chapels, both built by Bishop Oldham—his own

chantry (St. Saviour’s) on the south side of the retro-choir, the Speke

chantry (St. George’s) on the north—and in addition, Prior Sylke’s

chantry in the north transept. All this work is admirable in design and

execution. In Oldham’s chantry is a charming series of owls, with the

scroll DAM, a rebus on his name, proceeding from the beak of each little

owl. To Bishop Oldham also (1504-1519) is due the grand set of stone

screens—one of the glories of the cathedral—no less than ten, which veil

all the nine chapels and Prior Sylke’s chantry, and add fresh beauty to

the beautiful choir.

Whatever else, then, the student and lover of Gothic architecture omits,

he must not omit to visit Exeter. He will find it fresh and different

from anything he has seen before. Its unique plan, without central or

western towers, the absence of obstructive piers at the crossing, the

consequently uninterrupted vista, the singleness and unity of the whole

design, the remarkable system of proportions, based on breadth rather

than height, the satisfying massiveness and solidity of the building,

inside and outside, and at the same time the airiness and lightness of

the interior, the magnificence of its piers of marble, the delightful

colour-contrast of marble column and sandstone arch, the amazing

diversity of the window tracery, the exquisite carving of the corbels and

bosses, the abundant and admirable Tudor work, the wealth of chantries

and monuments, the superb sedilia, screen, and throne, the misereres,

the vaults, the extraordinary engineering feats from which its present

form results, the originality of the west front and of the whole interior

and exterior, place Exeter in the very forefront of the triumphs of the

mediæval architecture of our country.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Gloucester.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

The foundation of Gloucester, like that of Ely, has gone through many

changes. In 681 it was founded as a nunnery, and remained so till 767.

About 821 it was refounded for secular priests; who, in the time of

Canute, through the influence of Dunstan, were replaced by Benedictine

monks. It remained a Benedictine monastery till 1541, when it was placed

on the New Foundation, thus reverting to secular priests once more. The

abbey-church then became a cathedral, with a diocese carved out of that

of Worcester.

The present cathedral is recorded to have been commenced by Abbot Serlo

in 1088, and to have been completed and consecrated in 1100. This

statement seems to be generally accepted; but the chief evidence for

it, as for the architectural history of the cathedral generally, is the

chronicle of Abbot Froucester. Froucester, however, lived two hundred

years after the foundation of the Norman cathedral, and his authority on

this point can hardly be considered decisive. The plain architectural

facts tell a very different tale. In the first place, the design of the

nave and presbytery is totally different; the presbytery is archaic

and rude, the nave highly advanced in design and elaborate and rich in

ornament. The former may well belong to the last decade of the eleventh

century; the latter is a whole generation later. In the presbytery the

piers are low and of enormous bulk—such vast wasteful blocks of masonry

as are to be seen in the nave of St. Alban’s, the choirs of Hereford and

Chichester and Norwich: all of them commenced in the eleventh century.

In the nave of Gloucester the piers rise to the exceptional height of 30

feet; for a parallel one must go to Tewkesbury, which was not consecrated

till 1121; and even that consecration does not necessarily include the

nave, where alone these towering cylinders are found. Again, in the

presbytery of Gloucester the pier-arcade and triforium are about equal

in height. So they are also in the eleventh-century work of Winchester,

Norwich, and elsewhere. The diminutive triforiums of the naves of

Gloucester and Tewkesbury are without a parallel in English work, though

the Abbaye-aux-dames at Caen may be quoted on the other side. Again, the

pier-arches of the presbytery are in two square orders, and the vault

of the aisle is unribbed. In the nave the orders of the pier-arches are

enriched with pairs of rolls and zigzag; the vault of the north aisle

has diagonal ribs of late Norman character; and the string-course of the

clerestory is a twisted cable elaborately enriched. The aisles, too, are

very broad and very lofty.

Indeed, everything in the presbytery has an early look, except its plan

and the shape of its apses. The plan is exceedingly complicated; with

apse, ambulatory, and radiating chapels. But all three features appear in

the ancient church of Vignory, which cannot well be later than the middle

of the eleventh century. The radiating chapels, indeed, go back to the

very earliest days of Christian architecture; for they formed part of the

Basilican church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, as built, A.D. 326,

by the Emperor Constantine; and have survived all the transformations

which that church has undergone. That the apses, indeed, should not

be semicircular—as they are even in St. Hugh’s choir of Lincoln—but

polygonal, is certainly startling; though here also there are precedents

as far back as the sixth century, in such Byzantine churches as that of

S. Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna. In the nave, on the other hand,

everything points to a date well advanced—certainly not earlier than

1122. Not only the loftiness of the columns, but the fact that they are

columns, is a mark of twelfth-century work. The column does not occur in

Normandy, the mother of our Romanesque; but everywhere the compound pier.

Capital and abacus, too, are circular on plan; this is usually a sign of

late Norman work. The nave of Southwell, which also has circular capitals

and abaci, was not built before 1120. But the ornamentation of the nave

is decisive: the zigzag and the cables could not have been executed in

the days of Prior Conrad of Canterbury, before the chisel had come into

use.

[Illustration: TRIFORIUM OF APSE.]

Something, however, was consecrated at Gloucester in 1100; and that was

probably the eastern arm of the church—not necessarily the chapels—and as

much of the rest of the church as was necessary to complete the enclosure

of the monastery: viz., part of the north transept and the wall of the

north aisle of the nave as high as the sills of the windows. Then the

monks probably turned their attention to the domestic buildings of the

monastery, which till now may have been temporary buildings of wood, and

only some twenty years later resumed work in the church, which they then

completely finished.

Perhaps the first thing to do would be to add the top storey to the

presbytery; for a church seems not unfrequently to have been consecrated

before its clerestory was built, a temporary roof being erected at the

level of the triforium. The presbytery being at last really completed,

the monks would then proceed to complete the transepts and the crossing,

to build the lower stage of the tower, and the nave and west front.

When they did reach the nave, they altered the design altogether; as

did the Tewkesbury monks also. They put up naves of the worst possible

proportions; with piers so lofty that triforium and clerestory were

almost squeezed out of existence.

Both have, of course, been credited with some artistic motive. To me

it seems that they had found the choir, with its squat pier-arches,

intolerably dark; and when they reached the nave, they saw that if they

adhered to the early design, the nave would be even darker than the

choir. For on the north side the cloister abutted on the aisle-wall,

whose windows therefore had to be placed very high up in the wall: giving

hardly any light to aisle and nave. To remedy this, therefore, regardless

of appearances—for mediæval architects were practical builders first,

artists only afterwards—they put up these colossal columns 30 feet high,

raising the arches nearly 40 feet above the pavement. In that way the

light from the high windows of the north aisle was enabled to penetrate

into the church.

Another very remarkable feature in the design of the eastern limb is

the utilisation of the triforium. In many churches—_e.g._, in Beverley

and Lincoln minsters—the triforium seems not to have been intended to

be used. At Beverley it is walled off from the nave; at Lincoln it has

no floor. But in the earlier churches some ritualistic use must have

been made of it. At Winchester, Ely, and the Abbaye-aux-hommes at Caen,

return-aisles were constructed at the ends of the transepts to provide a

broad path by which processions might pass along the triforium from the

choir, round the transept, to the nave.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

At Gloucester one step further is taken. All the five apses are built two

stories high, the upper story of each opening into the triforium: so that

five additional chapels are gained for the church. Moreover, since the

crypt passes beneath all five apses, another set of five apsidal chapels

is obtained underground; so that, without taking into account chapels

otherwise arranged for, Gloucester possesses in the minor apses alone no

less than fifteen chapels. In fact, leaving out of account the central

aisle, Gloucester presbytery is really three churches—an upper, middle,

and lower church. The amount of accommodation gained by this ingenious

planning is immense.

One wonders that the plan of radiating chapels and practicable triforium

was not adopted more frequently. It occurred at Tewkesbury and at

Leominster; but in the end it was superseded by the eastern transept

thrown across the choir centrally, as at Lincoln, or at its eastern

termination, as at Fountains. In Lincoln choir, St. Hugh’s architect,

hesitating between two opinions, built eastern transepts as well as

return-aisles and apsidal chapels.

For nearly a century the architectural history is a blank. Early in

the thirteenth century the wooden ceiling of the nave was replaced by

the present quadripartite vault. This involved the demolition of the

Norman clerestory, except the jambs of its outer arches, which may still

be seen, enriched with zigzag. The north chapel of the crypt also was

vaulted, and two windows were inserted in the eastern chapel of the

crypt. About the middle of the century were built the north doorways of

the cloister, and the vaulted passage in its north-east corner; also

part of the west front of the nave was reconstructed. A little later

was built, now moved to the north transept, the reliquary (or perhaps

it is a gateway), one of the most lovely designs of the thirteenth

century, worthy to be put in comparison with the Beverley staircase and

the western porches of Ely and St. Albans. Of the time of Henry III. is

the oak effigy of Robert Courthose, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the

Conqueror (_d._ 1135), which lies on a wheeled chest of the fifteenth

century, and was formerly placed in the centre of the choir. On the

whole, there was not much to show at Gloucester, with the exception of

the nave-vault, for the long period 1150 to 1318.

But about the latter year the Norman south aisle of the nave had got

into a very dangerous condition. The north aisle was safe, its wall

being propped up by the cloister roof. But the vault of the south aisle

had thrust the wall eleven inches out of the perpendicular. To save

the vault, Abbot Thokey built on to the Norman pilasters the present

beautiful buttresses. But the new buttresses also swung over four

inches, and the Norman vaulting had to be taken out; the aisle received

a new vault, and its eastern bays were enriched with ball-flower. The

beautiful windows are of late Geometrical character, and are smothered

in ball-flower. The profuse employment of ball-flower is quite a

characteristic of the fourteenth-century Gothic of the West country;

it is equally remarkable in the grand windows of Leominster, and at

Ledbury and Hereford. “A horizontal line drawn just below the spring of

the arch of each window at Gloucester cuts through thirty-two bands of

ball-flower.” There are no less than 1400 ball-flowers in each window.

[Illustration: RELIQUARY.]

In 1327 Abbot Thokey made the fortune of Gloucester abbey. On September

21st Edward II. had been murdered at Berkeley castle. Bristol, Kingswood,

and Malmesbury monasteries were appealed to, but none dared receive his

body for interment, fearing the anger of the Queen and her party. Abbot

Thokey brought the body to Gloucester in his own carriage, and caused it

to be solemnly buried in the presbytery. Soon miracles were wrought at

the tomb, pilgrimages set in, immense sums were contributed in offerings;

Gloucester, like Hereford, had got a saint, and, like Hereford, used the

vast income that accrued—enough, it is said, to have erected a brand-new

cathedral—in improvements in their abbey-church. The tomb of the murdered

king, erected by his son, Edward III., still exists, and the leaden

coffin below, in which, when opened in 1855, the body was found “in a

wonderful state of preservation.” (We wonder what would be said if our

antiquaries exhumed the bodies of George III. and Archbishop Benson,

and stole their rings and vestments to put them in a show-case in the

vestry.) On one side of the monument, facing the aisle, is the bracket

on which offerings were laid; above is one of the loveliest Curvilinear

canopies in existence, but much restored. To the same period belong

various windows inserted in the aisles and chapels and triforium of the

presbytery.

The monks, no doubt, with the rich revenues now at their disposal, would

have liked to rebuild the presbytery _de novo_. But it was crowded every

day and all day with the pilgrims from whom the money came. They had

therefore to confine themselves to such improvements as could be effected

without interfering with the flow of pilgrims and of cash. The first

thing needful was to provide more light: above all, in the presbytery,

where the centre of attraction was; and in the crossing, where their

daily services were held. Secondly, the church had suffered severely

from fire in 1088, 1102, 1122, 1179, and 1190. The nave had already been

safeguarded against fire by vaulting; it was desirable to extend the

same protection to the transepts and presbytery by covering these also

with stone vaults. Thirdly, if the money held out, it might be spent in

prettinesses.

[Illustration: TRANSEPT.]

First, there was the lighting problem. Abbot Thokey had done a good deal

in improving the lighting of the south aisle of the nave, and the aisles

and chapels and triforium of the presbytery. Abbot Wygmore commenced

operations in the south transept. The north transept was in daily use,

as the cloister was on the north side of the nave, and the monks passed

through the north transept to their daily services in the crossing. The

improvements in the presbytery were postponed for a time, so as not to

interfere with the pilgrims. In six years, before 1337, Wygmore is

recorded by Froucester (who was himself Abbot from 1381 to 1412) to have

cased, lighted and vaulted the south transept.

If Froucester is correct—and his evidence is almost that of a

contemporary—we have in the south transept of Gloucester one of the

greatest puzzles in the history of mediæval architecture. The whole of

this work in the south transept is in the Perpendicular style—early

Perpendicular, but still Perpendicular in principle. Yet we have to

believe that it is contemporaneous with the utterly different Curvilinear

work that was being done everywhere else in England; that it was

contemporaneous with the Curvilinear monument of Edward II. in Gloucester

itself; with the Percy shrine at Beverley, with the Lady chapel, octagon,

and choir of Ely. It seems incredible. But Gloucester presbytery was

not taken in hand till after the south transept, and it was finished

not later than 1350, if that be the true date of the glass of the great

east window. No other Perpendicular work occurs in the kingdom till that

of Edingdon church (1352-1361), and the work done by Bishop Edingdon in

the western part of Winchester nave. So that, if we accept Froucester’s

statement, we have to believe that while the rest of the world was

executing Curvilinear designs, the Gloucester masons, not later than

1330, had worked out the Perpendicular style.

We have to believe, also, that though this style ultimately became

universally popular in England, overspread the whole country, and

maintained its hold on English architecture for three centuries, at the

outset it smouldered at Gloucester, unnoticed, unappreciated by anybody,

till Edingdon took it up twenty years later in rebuilding the church

of his native village. All the other improvements in mediæval building

were caught up instantaneously—passing from one end of the kingdom to

the other with the rapidity of the fashion of a Paris bonnet or mantle.

England hesitated long before it could consent to exchange the richness

of Curvilinear for the baldness of Perpendicular design. However, the

new design of Gloucester, blazoned abroad everywhere as it was by

admiring pilgrims, showed the capacities of the new style. It was seen to

be sound and strong from a building point of view—and cheap. That turned

the scale. Perpendicular came in with a rush. So,

“Si parva licet componere magnis,”

the Royal and Ancient game of golf smouldered on for centuries at

Blackheath, till the psychological moment came, and it passed on to

Westward Ho, and then swept like wildfire over all England.

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

The first question the monks had to decide was that of lighting. Their

answer was a momentous one. They decided to get additional light by

raising the walls of transept and presbytery, and inserting immense

clerestory windows. The nave was internally 67½ feet high. To get a

big clerestory, they raised the south transept and presbytery to the

height of 86 feet. Similar tall clerestory windows were being built,

but in the Curvilinear style, in the choirs of Lichfield and Wells. But

as yet clerestory windows were, as a rule, rather small; and some big

churches of the Curvilinear period, such as Grantham and Patrington,

had no clerestory at all. For what was to be the glory of the closing

days of English Gothic architecture—the Lantern type of church—we must

give the credit to the masons of Gloucester. And also for the new type

of window. The new big window, occupying the whole breadth and nearly

the whole height of the end wall of the south transept, had to be

strengthened by cross-bars or transoms; and the tracery of the head

had to be strengthened by the substitution of vertical straight lines,

as far as possible, for curves. Here, then, we have the genesis of the

Perpendicular or Rectilinear window.

Then there was the question of the vault. If we can believe Abbot

Froucester, so early as 1337 the monks put over the south transept

not only one of the earliest lierne vaults in the kingdom, but one so

accurately worked that the junctions of the ribs did not require to be

masked by bosses: they mortised the ribs together with as much precision

as if they were dealing with joints in cabinet work. And over the choir

and under the tower they put up the most amazingly complicated lierne

vault that was ever constructed: this, too, not later than 1351.

Thirdly, they appear to have intended to separate the presbytery from

its aisles by the usual stone screens—designed to correspond with the

tracery of the clerestory windows. This would have left an ugly cavernous

arch—that of the eleventh-century triforium—in each bay, between the

screen below and the clerestory above. The pattern of the tracery of the

clerestory window had been repeated once in the screen below: what more

natural than to repeat it a second time in the shape of a screen set in

front of the open arch of the triforium? It remained merely to join up

the mullions of all three—lower screen, triforium screen, and clerestory

window—and the three members were welded together into one composition;

harmony and unity reigned from pavement to vault. Here again we have at

Gloucester not only the commencement, but the full development of what

became the leading principle in later English Gothic—the desire to impose

unity on the elevations of their churches by repeats of window tracery.

It is but a short step from Gloucester choir to St. George’s, Windsor.

The only improvement that was made on the design of the Gloucester choir

was that in the next century, when fan-vaulting came into vogue, this

also was covered all over with the patterns of the window tracery.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]

One question still remained unsolved: how to treat the east end of the

church. At Norwich, where the Gloucester precedent was largely followed

a century later, the apse and ambulatory and chevet of chapels were all

retained—with most beautiful effect. At Gloucester—unfortunately, as

it seems to me—they pulled down the apse; and on the wall of the three

eastern bays of the ambulatory they erected three gigantic windows, so

welded together as to compose one window. And, to bring the whole into

view, they made the new easternmost bays of the presbytery, which had now

to be built, wider to the east than the west. Thus they got one of the

biggest windows in the world, and one of the ugliest. However, no one

looks at the tracery of the window, but at the painted glass which it

still retains. This glass is decidedly Perpendicular in character, but

the armorial bearings in it show that it was completed before 1350. All

the characteristics of late Gothic glass are there. Thus the canopies and

the figures alike are silvery white, and yellow stain is introduced here

and there. The drawing, however, is shockingly bad; and the colour is got

in a very artless way by inserting backgrounds of vertical stripes of red

and blue.

At the same time—between 1337 and 1377—the monks were provided with new

choir-stalls. But while stone-work and glass alike are Perpendicular

in character, the stalls have bowing ogee canopies, and are quite

Curvilinear.

Next the north transept was remodelled (1368-1373). It is very much like

its brother, but is eight feet higher, and the vault has bosses.

The next work was the rebuilding of the cloister. This was built between

1351 and 1412. It is covered with a fan-vault, supposed to be the

earliest example of the kind. But the supports look as if designed for a

lierne vault. It is possible, therefore, that the earliest fan-vaults are

those of two monuments in the neighbouring Abbey-Church of Tewkesbury.

In the south walk are twenty “carols” or “studies” for the monks; in the

north walk a lavatory and a recess for towels.

Between 1421 and 1437 Abbot Morment was guilty of the west front and the

two western bays of the nave. He intended to rebuild the whole nave,

but could not make up his mind how to do it. The two bays he did build

are quite different in height and span and general design. With his big

west window, and with the insertion of Perpendicular windows in the

north aisle and in the clerestories of the nave, the improvement of the

lighting of the church may be said to have been effectually completed.

[Illustration: CLOISTER.]

Instead of going on with Abbot Morment’s rebuilding of the nave, the

monks now turned their attention to the central tower. The tower was of

no use as a lantern, for the lierne vault of the choir had been carried

beneath it. So it long remained unaltered. But in the days of Abbot

Seabrooke (1460-1482) it was rebuilt under the superintendence of a

monk named Sully, to be in character with the new exterior of choir and

transepts. A very imposing tower it is; fully able, from its massiveness

as well as from its height, to gather together the masses of the

building—all the more so because the transepts are so short. It succeeds

where the central towers of Worcester and Hereford fail; in fact, it is

as effective in its way as Salisbury spire. The pinnacles, again, bear

witness to the love of these later artists for harmony and unity: each

pinnacle, with its two ranges of windows, is a repeat of the two stages

of the tower below.

Then—after the tower had been erected—it was decided to rebuild the Lady

chapel. So an immense detached building was constructed to the east of

the great window of the presbytery; without aisles, but with little

transepts; almost one continuous sheet of glass, and with a superb

vault. This Lady chapel had to be joined up to the presbytery, but the

great east window was in the way. However, the difficulty was got over

by a series of ingenious shifts and dodges, which must be seen to be

appreciated (1457-1499).

And so ended this great building-period at Gloucester (1330-1499), which

turned the course of English architecture; so that the Curvilinear style

of 1315 to 1360 did not find its natural development in Flamboyant, as on

the Continent, but was switched off to Perpendicular and Tudor design.

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary and St. Ethelbert, Hereford.

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-EAST.]

Hereford boasts a cathedral which, though one of the smallest, is, both

externally and internally, one of the most picturesque in the country.

To the archæologist and the architectural student, its _mélange_ of

styles makes it a perfect treasure-house of mediæval design: early and

late Norman, Transitional, Lancet, early, middle, and late Geometrical,

Curvilinear, Perpendicular and Tudor work are all well represented in the

structure, to say nothing of the Gothic of Wyatt, Cottingham and Scott.

Hereford is one of the oldest of all the sees, going back, at any rate,

to the year 601, when St. Augustine had a conference with the Welsh

bishops. It owed its riches and reputation mainly to two saints, King

Ethelbert and Bishop Thomas Cantilupe. In the year 792 the great King

of Mercia, Offa, inveigled Ethelbert, King of East Anglia, to the west

of England, where he was treacherously murdered. “On the night of his

burial, a column of light, brighter than the sun, rose to heaven;” three

days later his ghost appeared and gave directions for the removal of his

body. He was interred at Hereford; and in 825 “a noble church of stone”

was erected over his remains. Of this or any subsequent Anglo-Saxon

cathedral nothing survives.

I. EARLY NORMAN.—In 1079 the present cathedral was commenced by Robert

de Losinga. Like the founder of Norwich cathedral, he was probably from

Lorraine. He held the see till 1091. It is asserted by Sir Gilbert Scott

that none of his work remains. It seems certain that the east wall of the

south transept, the pier-arcade of the choir, and perhaps the triforium

also, are eleventh-century work. The design of the transept is curiously

artless and archaic. The tall arches of its wall arcade are reminiscences

of many a church in Lombardy; the squat little balustraded triforium is

just what one finds in the eleventh-century transepts of St. Albans and

Chester and Pershore. Proceeding into the choir aisles, probability rises

into certainty. The masonry is of the roughest, and coursed in the most

casual way; the strings and the bases have the rudest caricatures of

mouldings. The piers, too, are just the heavy masses of wall which one

finds at St. Albans and Chichester: it is impossible that these piers and

the light cylinders of the nave can both have been erected in the twelfth

century. What has deceived archæologists is that, though the skeleton of

the choir is of the eleventh century, it was smartened up immensely in

the following century. In fact, it has gone through a similar process to

that which took place in Romsey choir, where the early Norman caps have

been recarved by a late Norman sculptor; only at Hereford the renovation

has been much more drastic. Looking at the east wall of the south

transept, it is impossible to believe that the noble bay of the triforium

above the arch of the aisle is of the same date as the balustraded

triforium to the right. The Norman choir and its aisles originally ended

in three parallel eastern apses, after the fashion of the ninth-century

choir of St. Ambrogio, Milan, with probably a rectangular chapel east

of the central apse, such as is found at Aix-la-Chapelle. From the south

transept projected eastward a rectangular sacristy, with crude, unribbed

vault, which still remains, but was enlarged to the east in the fifteenth

century.

[Illustration: SOUTH TRANSEPT.]

II. LATE NORMAN, 1100-1145.—To this period belong the nave and the

renovation of the choir. The capitals of the nave, near which the stalls

of the canons stood, are richly carved, and, like all pre-Gothic carving,

are full of classical survivals, acanthus, honeysuckle, etc. The Norman

work is far richer than that of Ely, Peterborough, Durham, Gloucester or

Tewkesbury; these capitals and those of Southwell nave and Romsey lead

up to the rich transitional capitals of Oxford Cathedral. The design

of the nave, and still more the choir, was probably the most solid and

satisfactory in the country, not even excepting Durham. The triforium

is especially magnificent; a copy of it was executed in the transept

of Romsey. The bays of the choir are separated by broad pilasters,

apparently to carry broad transverse arches. But whether these arches

were intended to carry some form of wooden roof (their spandrils being

built up), or a vault, cannot be determined.

III. TRANSITIONAL.—Then, _c._ 1186, following the precedent of Romsey,

the three Norman apses were pulled down in order to provide (1) a

processional aisle, of four bays, connecting together the side-aisles

of the Norman choir; (2) a double chapel, a prolongation of the Norman

eastern chapel. The new processional aisle had probably two eastern

chapels, two to the north, two to the south. The processional aisle with

the double chapel was altogether six bays in length, and therefore formed

an eastern transept—one of the earliest eastern transepts in England. The

side walls of the old Norman eastern chapel were pierced with windows,

unglazed, to improve the lighting of the new aisle-chapel on either

side. In the jambs of these windows are shafts with conventional stalky

foliage; while the arch of the window-head is enriched with the Norman

diamond ornament. The vaulting-ribs are enriched with zigzag. The central

piers have, one conventional foliage, the other a scalloped capital. In

the south-east transept there are remains of the doorway, and a plinth

which seems to have supported a pier between the two eastern chapels.

Some five or six years later a similar processional aisle with five

eastern chapels was built at Abbey Dore, where, however, it does not form

an eastern transept. The piers of the processional aisle are so arranged

that two of them are in a line with the centre of the semicircular

arch which led from the choir into the former Norman central apse. The

intention of the builder evidently was to reconstruct the east end of

the choir, or perhaps to rebuild the whole choir, substituting for the

single semicircular arch a pair of pointed arches, as at Exeter. This was

never done, however; and so, quite fortuitously, Hereford gets the most

charming vistas from the choir across to the eastern transept and the

Lady chapel.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

IV. LANCET.—About 1220 the upper and eastern parts of the Lady chapel

were completed. It is a work of great beauty, especially in the rich

clustering of shafts in the window-jambs and in the fine composition

of the east end, with its quintet of lancets. The chapel is curiously

low internally. The builder was an exceptionally cautious person. He

not only provided for the thrusts of the vault by heavy buttresses and

pinnacles, but, to get the thrusts as low down as possible, he made the

vault spring below the window-heads. Moreover, down below he constructed

a lofty crypt, thus raising considerably the floor of the Lady chapel.

Thus encroached on from below and from above, the interior of the Lady

chapel contrasts remarkably with its lofty and imposing exterior.

Externally, moreover, as the window-heads could not rise high, owing to

the low spring of the vault, a large amount of wall-surface was left,

and had to be decorated. This was done in a remarkable way; the arcade

which runs round it being the old-fashioned Norman arcade of intersecting

semicircular arches—probably the last appearance of this design on the

stage. Another puzzle is that the external doorway leading to this crypt

contains Transitional details. Probably the whole of the lower part of

the Lady chapel was built in the Transitional period. The crypt-worship

of the eleventh century had gone out of fashion; and the Hereford crypt,

like that at Norwich, was probably built as a golgotha or charnel-house.

[Illustration: LADY CHAPEL.]

V. EARLY GEOMETRICAL.—The history of the cathedral now resolved itself

for the next hundred years into a series of attempts to get rid of the

“dim, religious light,” so dear to the modern, so abhorrent to the

mediæval ecclesiastic. Hereford choir was even worse lighted than Norman

churches generally, being blocked to east and west by transepts, and

having enormously bulky piers. So the Norman clerestory was taken down,

and a Gothic clerestory with an inner arcade—an early and interesting

example of plate-tracery—was substituted. Moreover, the choir was made

fireproof by being vaulted in stone, _c._ 1250.

VI. MIDDLE GEOMETRICAL.—About 1260 more drastic measures were taken with

the Norman north transept. It was pulled down bodily, and rebuilt on a

design which is perhaps the most original, as it certainly is one of

the most beautiful, in the history of English Gothic architecture. To

the north and west were built enormous windows, with tracery of cusped

circles, quite exceptional in their elongation, more like late German

than English work. On the east side was built an aisle of exquisite

beauty. Its arches, almost straight-sided—its triforium windows, a ring

of cusped circles set under a semicircular arch—its clerestory windows,

spherical triangles enclosing a cusped circular window—the composition of

the triforium—the north and west windows—are quite unique, except so far

as they were copied in later work in the city and neighbourhood. At the

south end of the aisle is the exquisite tomb of Bishop Peter Aquablanca

(_d._ 1268); no doubt built in his lifetime. The tomb is as unique as

the transept, and closely resembles it in design. The inference is that

Bishop Aquablanca built the transept. The credit of it, however, is

constantly given to his successors, apparently on account of his private

vices. But sinners as well as saints have liked to leave memorials behind

them in stone; and, moreover, Aquablanca had his good points. To this day

four thousand loaves are distributed every year out of funds which he

bequeathed. It is recorded, too, that, of a fine which was imposed on the

citizens for encroachments on his episcopal rights, he remitted one half,

and handed over the other for works on the cathedral. Moreover, he was a

foreigner, from Chambery; and has probably received no more favourable

judgment from the English chroniclers than they were wont to give to

foreign favourites of the king who swallowed up the best things in the

English Church.

[Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT]

VII. LATE GEOMETRICAL.—Then came a turning-point in the history of

Hereford. The reputation of King Ethelbert as a miracle-worker may well

by this time have worn a little thin. In 1287 Hereford found that it

had obtained a new saint. This was Bishop Thomas Cantilupe, a man of

saintly life, and one of the greatest churchmen of the day. “He was

a pluralist of the first dimension—Chancellor of England and of the

University of Oxford, Provincial Grand Master of the Knights Templars in

England, Canon of York, Archdeacon and Canon of Lichfield and Coventry,

Archdeacon of Stafford, Canon and Bishop of Hereford.” In 1282, with

his chaplain, Swinfield, he visited Rome, and died on the journey home.

Swinfield, following a not uncommon mediæval practice, had the flesh of

the body separated from the bones by boiling. The flesh was buried in

the church of St. Severus, near Orvieto; the heart and bones he conveyed

to England. The heart was interred at Ashridge, the bones in Hereford

cathedral. Five years afterwards miracles commenced: “There were raised

from death to life threescore several persons, one-and-twenty lepers

healed, and three-and-twenty blind and dumb men received their sight and

speech. Twice King Edward I. sent sick falcons to be cured at his tomb.”

In 1320, by the expenditure of vast sums of money, Swinfield procured

his canonisation. Ever since, the see of Hereford has borne the arms of

Cantilupe. He was the last English saint; and, being the newest, was for

a considerable time the most fashionable. The fame of St. Wulfstan of

Worcester and St. Swithin of Winchester paled before that of St. Thomas

of Hereford. Till Gloucester secured in 1327 still fresher relics in the

murdered body of King Edward II., Hereford held the greatest attraction

for pilgrims in all the West-country. For forty years—from 1287 to

1327—the pilgrims resorted to the new shrine in vast numbers. Swinfield’s

foresight was justified by the huge sums which poured into the cathedral

treasury.

Swinfield succeeded Cantilupe as bishop in 1283, and occupied the see

till 1316. With the vast resources now at his disposal he set about a

series of great works. His first pious act was to construct for his

benefactor and predecessor a noble shrine, the pedestal of which now

stands once more, after many vicissitudes, in the aisle of the north

transept. It is a work of the rarest beauty, executed just at the time

when, tired of conventional foliage, the mediæval carver, with ever fresh

delight, was making the most exquisite transcripts in stone of the leaves

of the trees and the flowers of the field.

Secondly, he constructed a north porch—the present inner porch—the design

of which is plainly taken from the shrine.

Thirdly, he rebuilt the central tower on the Norman piers and arches.

To lessen the weight as much as possible it was built in two skins, the

inner skin consisting of a framework of upright stone girders, as in the

towers of Wells and Lincoln. Externally it is smothered in ball-flower.

Originally it carried a tall timber spire; the loss of which greatly

injures the external elevation of the cathedral.

[Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT AISLE.]

Fourthly, he went on with the improvement of the lighting of the

cathedral. Beginning probably at the north-east transept, which was

rebuilt, together with its eastern aisle, and working along the choir

and nave to the west end, and then _vice versa_ on the south side of the

cathedral, he took down all but the lower part of the walls of the Norman

aisles, rebuilt the upper part higher, and inserted very large windows.

This lighted the nave, at any rate, very satisfactorily. The design of

these windows is unusual and effective, owing to the largeness of the

trefoils employed in the tracery.

VIII. CURVILINEAR (1315-1360).—By the time of Swinfield’s death it may

be conjectured that the pilgrim-revenue had begun to fall off; for the

rebuilding of the south-east transept, together with its eastern aisle,

in completion of the reconstructions commenced by Swinfield, was executed

in a cheap and inferior way, even the clumsy Transitional plinth being

retained for the new central column of the transept. The windows have

flowing tracery.

To the same period belong the stalls and the beautiful chapter-house, now

in ruins. The lead of its roof was cast into bullets in the Civil War;

sacrilegious bishops used its stones as a quarry for their palace.

There are monuments of Bishop Swinfield (_d._ 1316) and Bishop Charleton

(_d._ 1343).

It is probable that all this work was done before 1349, when the Black

Death made its appearance at Hereford, and again in 1360.

IX. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—The lighting improvements were now

completed by the insertion of two huge windows in the south transept, the

southern of which has recently been filled with magnificent glass by Mr.

Kempe. On the north side of the choir Bishop Stanbury (1455-1474) built

for himself a pretty little chantry-chapel, like those at Lincoln. It has

fan-vaulting.

X. TUDOR.—Bishop Audley (1492-1502) built himself a pentagonal

chantry-chapel, two stories high, projecting from the south side of the

Lady chapel. But, as he was translated to Salisbury, he had the trouble

of building another chantry-chapel there. To this period belong the

Bishop’s cloister—three-sided, as at Chichester—and probably the Vicars’

cloister, with picturesque timber roof, and a fan-vault over the entrance

to the Vicars’ college. Bishop Booth (1516-1535) built the outer north

porch—an admirable specimen of late Gothic design.

XI.—In 1786 the western tower collapsed, and Wyatt pulled down the

westernmost bay of the nave and the whole of the triforium and

clerestory, whether damaged or sound, and rebuilt both, together with

the west front, in the Gothic of his day. About 1843 Cottingham did much

work; rebuilding the east end of the Lady chapel and the upper part of

that of the choir, and also securing the central tower. He found that

the Norman piers which support it consisted of a thin ashlar casing,

the interior of which was filled with a rubble core, composed of broken

stones, loam and lime grouting. The ashlar facing and the engaged

columns on the face of the pier, not being well bonded and deeply headed

into the rubble cores, had split and bulged, and the cores, for want of

a proper proportion of lime, had diminished and crushed to pieces. The

gaudy choir-screen and coronal were designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and

executed by Skidmore of Coventry.

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-WEST]

The Cathedral Church of St. Chad and St. Mary, Lichfield.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]

This is how Lichfield presented itself to Mrs. Van Rensselaer.

“Approaching it from one street or another, we see it suddenly across the

silver stretches of its Pool, and it is hard to determine whether the

shining water at Lichfield or the green lake of turf at Salisbury makes

the lovelier foreground. Standing on the causeway which leads towards the

western entrance of the Close, it is not merely a fine view that we have

before us; it is a picture so perfect that no artist would ask a change

in one detail. Perhaps accident has had more to do than design with the

planting of the trees and shrubs which border the lake, and above which

spring the daring spires. But a landscape-gardener might study this

planting to his profit; and when we see or think of Lichfield from this

point of view, we wish that the tall poplar may be as long-lived as the

tree Yggdrasil—so pretty a measure does it give of the loftiness of the

spires, so exquisite is the completing accent which it brings into the

scene. If we come from the south-east, we cross another causeway, on

either side of which the lake spreads out widely; and we see not only

the spires, but the apse and the long stretch of the southern side.

Enormously long it looks—longer almost, owing to its peculiar lowness,

than those cathedrals which are actually greater. To the north of the

church the ground rises quickly into a broad, terrace-like walk flanked

by rows of large and ancient, yet graceful lindens; and beyond the

trees, behind low walls and verdurous gardens, lies a range of canons’

dwellings. And in any and every aspect, but more especially when foliage

comes near it, Lichfield’s colour assists its other beauties. Red stone

is warm and mellow in itself; and Lichfield is red with a beautiful soft

ruddiness that could hardly be matched by any sandstone of any land.”

The ancient kingdom of Mercia was converted to Christianity, like the

rest of England north of the Thames, by missionaries of the Irish Church

from Lindisfarne, _c._ 653; and the first two Mercian bishops were

Irishmen. Of the early bishops, by far the most famous was St. Chad

(669-672). St. Chad, or Ceadda, was a good and saintly man. He is first

heard of as Abbot of Lastingham, a sequestered abbey hidden away in a

fold of the Cleveland moors. Then Abbot Chad became Bishop of York;

and he set to work on a visitation of his vast, wild diocese—not in a

carriage and pair, but on foot. Plainly these early bishops were what

we should now call Missionary Bishops, such as that Missionary of the

South Seas who lies in Lichfield’s Lady chapel, his face irradiated

by the southern light. Archbishop Chad visited town and country,

village and hamlet, cottage and castle; and preached everywhere. It was

another Progress of St. Paul. But in 669 the famous Greek Archbishop of

Canterbury, Theodore, pronounced his consecration faulty, and deposed him

from York. Soon afterwards, however, finding him a saintly man and an

excellent preacher, he appointed him to the bishopric of Mercia, to the

see of Lichfield. What was York’s loss was Lichfield’s gain. At Lichfield

he lived, tradition says, in a cell with his missioners, at the upper end

of the Pool, where now stands St. Chad’s Church. It behoves all who come

to Lichfield to visit St. Chad’s Church and to drink the water of St.

Chad’s Well—water which still retains somewhat of efficacy and repute,

for a line of pipes has been laid from the Stowe Pool to Burton, and an

immense volume of Lichfield’s hallowed water is annually converted into

beer. Two years and a half only Bishop Chad had left of life; but that

was enough for him to win the reverence of his own and many successive

generations. Beautiful stories are told of him by Bede. One of the eight

monks who lived with him declared that he one day heard a joyful melody

of some persons sweetly singing, which descended from heaven into the

Bishop’s oratory, and filled the same for about half an hour, and then

rose again to heaven; and that on the seventh day thereafter, having

received the Body and Blood of our Lord, he departed unto Bliss, to which

he was invited by the happy soul of his brother, St. Cedd, and a company

of angels with heavenly music.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

Thus the diocese of Lichfield preserves the memory of the by-gone kingdom

of Mercia; and its cathedral is largely built of the offerings at St.

Chad’s shrine. How big the ancient diocese was is seen from the fact that

the present dioceses of Hereford and Worcester, as well as the suppressed

ones of Sidnacester, Lindsey, and Leicester, were all carved out of it

by Archbishop Theodore, the great organiser of the early English Church,

A.D. 673. For a time even greater honour came to Lichfield. From 755 to

794 a great and mighty king reigned in Mercia: this was Offa. In one

direction he defeated Kent; in the other he drove back the Welsh. It

was Offa who settled once for all the Welsh frontier: Shrewsbury became

an English town. Offa’s Dyke, which still exists, from the mouth of the

Wye to the mouth of the Dee, became the effectual bulwark of England to

the West. A king so mighty disdained to owe allegiance to an archbishop

of defeated Kentishmen, and got from the Pope of the day an archbishop

of his own, to be head-bishop of all Mercia and East Anglia. But Offa

died, and the pope died; and this was the first and only archbishop that

Lichfield ever had. Lichfield was never so important again. Indeed, she

had a narrow escape of losing her bishop altogether, just after the

Norman conquest. The new Norman prelates did not feel safe, and probably

were not safe, in open towns amidst an alien and disaffected population.

The Bishop of Dorchester set up his pastoral staff under the shadow of

the new Norman castle at Lincoln; Exeter castle attracted the Bishop of

Crediton; in similar fashion the Norman Bishop of Lichfield transferred

himself to Chester, where also was a castle of strength. The next

bishop migrated again—this time to Coventry, which possessed a famous

monastery, founded by famous people, Earl Leofric and Lady Godiva, the

church whereof was so wealthy that “its walls were all too strait for

the treasures that were therein.” Finally the bishops returned once more

to Lichfield, retaining, however, their hold on Coventry; and till the

Reformation they styled themselves “Bishops of Lichfield and Coventry.”

Lichfield, however, was and is a cathedral of the old foundation; it had

no monks, but secular canons. It may well be imagined, therefore, that

there was not much peace and good will between the canons of Lichfield

and the monks of Coventry. They quarrelled scandalously; above all

when they had to meet for joint election of a bishop. There was even a

desperate free fight in Coventry cathedral in 1190, when Bishop Hugh

ejected the monks. The holy bishop himself was wounded at the altar.

In the thirteenth century there must have been a series of great building

bishops; but little is known of them. Bishop Langton, however, was a very

great personage, Keeper of the Great Seal, Treasurer of England, and

executor to Edward I. He built a new episcopal palace at Lichfield, and

other castles and manor-houses elsewhere, also a magnificent new shrine

for the relics of St. Chad; and he surrounded the cathedral with a wall

and foss, thus making of it a moated fortress, such as one sees to this

day at Wells. Robert Stretton (1360-1385) had the distinction of not

being able to read. Then we pass on to the great Civil War, when Bishop

Langton’s fortifications proved a heritage of woe. Being fortified, and

being Loyalist, Lichfield Cathedral was besieged by the Parliamentary

forces under Lord Brooke, who prayed aloud that God would by some special

token manifest unto them His approbation. The special token came on St.

Chad’s Day, March 2nd, and is commemorated by a tablet on a house in

Dam Street, which the visitor should look for: “March 2nd, 1643.—Lord

Brooke, a general of the Parliament forces, preparing to besiege the

Close of Lichfield, then garrisoned for King Charles the First, received

his death-wound on the spot beneath this inscription, by a shot in the

forehead, from Mr. Dyott,” a deaf and dumb man, “who had placed himself

on the battlements of the great steeple to _annoy_ the besiegers.” It

may interest some to know that the distance of the shot was 185 yards 1

foot 3 inches. In the end the garrison was starved out. Six weeks later

Lichfield Close was recaptured by Prince Rupert. In 1646 it was retaken

by the Parliamentarians. In the first siege the Parliamentary cannon

brought down the central tower and most of the vault of the choir. This

was not all. The Puritans smashed the stained windows, battered down

the statues, stripped the lead from the roof and the brasses from the

tombs, burned the registers, and broke up the bells and organs. They

are said to have each day hunted a cat down the aisles, and to have

draped a calf and given it a mock baptism at the font. “I confess,”

says an apologist for her Puritan ancestors, “there were moments in my

English journey when I hated the Puritan with a godly hatred, and wished

that he had never shown his surly face to the world: a rude destroyer

of things ancient, and therefore to be respected; a vandal devastator

of things rare and beautiful, and too precious ever to be replaced; a

brutal scoffer, drinking at the altar, firing his musket at the figure of

Christ, parading in priest’s vestments through the market-place, stabling

his horses in the house of God.” Then came the Restoration, and with the

Restoration Bishop Hacket, best of good bishops. The very next morning

after his arrival he set his coach horses to work at clearing away the

ruins of the fallen spire and roof. For nine years he gave himself

and his substance to the work; his contributions in money amounted to

£10,000; the King gave “one hundred fair timber trees”; the prebendaries

and canons subscribed half their income; every town, every village in

the diocese aided the good work; the central tower was re-erected; most

of the clerestory of the choir was rebuilt; his last task was to put in

a peal of bells. “He went out of his bedchamber to hear it, and blessed

God who had favoured him with life to hear it, but that it was his own

passing-bell; whereupon he retired to his chamber and never left it

till he was carried to his grave.” Next to St. Chad, one likes to think

of good Bishop Hacket in connexion with Lichfield. In 1788 James Wyatt

arrived, but did less mischief than at Salisbury, Hereford and Durham.

Even more terrible vandals followed Wyatt, with a mania for Roman cement,

in which beautiful material they reconstructed the statuary of the west

front. All this is now swept away, and this fairest of façades is seen in

its pristine beauty.

At Lichfield there was as usual a Norman cathedral; and as usual the

authorities set to work to improve it. Elsewhere the improvements were

of a very conservative character. At Lichfield and at Wells they were

drastic: the Norman cathedral was improved by being swept off the face

of the earth, not a scrap of it being left above ground. Beginning at

the east end, it was pulled down and rebuilt, the work occupying a

century. The most astounding thing about Lichfield is that when the

new thirteenth-century cathedral was finished, they set to work once

more at rebuilding, and in the first half of the fourteenth century

reconstructed the whole of the eastern limb of the cathedral. But though

for convenience we divide the work into two great periods, that of the

thirteenth and that of the fourteenth century, and each of these into

shorter building-periods, it is not to be understood that there were any

breaks or cessations in the works: the cathedral was never out of the

builders’ hands from 1190 to 1350.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

I. First, the Norman choir, of three bays with apse and ambulatory, was

pulled down, a broader and longer rectangular choir taking its place. The

outer wall of the new choir was built outside that of the old one, so

that the latter probably was retained in use for some time, as in Selby

choir, while the new works were going on around it. This is borne out by

the fact that, contrary to custom, the new work was not commenced at

the east, but at the west, for the detail is earlier to the west than

to the east. The date 1200 is usually assigned to it. But the entrance

arch of the north choir aisle has the Norman diamond pattern; the square

alternates with the rounded abacus; the piers are heavy, the arches low,

the mouldings large and vigorous, and the foliated capitals at the east

end of both aisles are so archaic in character that it seems decidedly

to have been commenced in the latter years of the Transitional period,

_c._ 1080: it compares with the work at Wells, Chichester Lady chapel,

Boxgrove Priory, St. Thomas’, Portsmouth, and Abbey Dore. Of this work

only the piers and arches of the three western bays, and the sacristy and

treasury, survive.

II. Some twenty or thirty years later the south transept was commenced,

and a little later the north transept. The builders of the choir had

planned it for an aisleless transept. When, therefore, the transepts were

built with eastern aisles, the easternmost windows of the choir aisles

looked into the transept aisles, and no longer into the open air. As the

transepts have no triforium above their aisles, we may conjecture that

neither had the choir.

III. About the same date as the north transept, a chapter-house and

vestibule were built on the north side of the choir, as at Beverley,

Lincoln, and York. This had not been contemplated by the builders of the

choir; consequently the doorway of the vestibule had to be placed where

before was a Lancet window. The vestibule is a bold and vigorous piece

of design, with a good vault and a remarkable range of thirteen arcaded

seats on its western side. The chapter-house is unique in plan, being an

octagon with two long and six short sides: this plan was transplanted to

the Lady chapel of Wells. The doorway has bold tooth-ornament; the wall

is surrounded by a trefoiled arcade. There is much beautiful glass by

Kempe.

IV. About 1250, soon after Westminster choir, the nave was commenced.

Its remarkable clerestory windows—spherical triangles enclosing cusped

circles—occur in the Westminster triforium, and, rather later, in the

clerestory of Hereford north transept. The spherical triangles fit

perfectly into the wall-arches of the vaulting, and, as Mr. Fergusson

says, “give a stability and propriety to the whole arrangement which has

never been surpassed.” The result, however, is to diminish the height of

the clerestory, with the inevitable result that the aspiringness that

one expects in an Early Gothic elevation is lost; the nave, instead of

looking taller, looks lower than it really is. As at Westminster and

Beverley, the ground-story occupies one-half of the total height; but

in these the triforium occupies about one-sixth only, the clerestory

one-third. At Lichfield the triforium and clerestory occupy each

one-fourth. Mr. Fergusson makes the striking suggestion that the defect

might have been remedied to some extent by glazing the triforium, as

in Amiens choir, thus practically bringing the clerestory down to the

pier-arches. The vault, too, is most satisfactory—not simple to bareness,

like that of Amiens and so many French cathedrals, nor over-elaborated,

like those of Winchester and Norwich. The whole design, indeed, of

the nave is one of the loveliest in Christendom. It derives great

impressiveness, too, from the fact that the vault ranges the whole length

of the cathedral in almost undiminished height; and from the fact that

the church is not cut up, as at Canterbury, into two distinct buildings.

Indeed, small as the cathedral is, the vista from west to east is one

of the longest of all the English cathedrals. And its termination in

the beautiful polygon of the Lady chapel, so unusual to English eyes,

and so beautiful, glimmering in the distance “like some great casket of

jewels at the end of the long dusk perspective,” makes an impression

never forgotten. By this one remembers the interior of Lichfield, as its

exterior by that glorious triple coronal of spires. Nave, transept, and

choir are all of the same length. The same scheme of proportions was

adopted a little later at York. The axis of the choir is not in a line

with that of the nave, but swings to the north five feet.

V. Next the west front was built, _c._ 1275, except the central gable

and the spires. It is a sort of open-air reredos; but marks a great

improvement in design on those of Lincoln, Wells, and Salisbury.

[Illustration: LADY CHAPEL.]

VI. Then at the very end of the Geometrical period the Lady chapel was

built; at first detached from the east end of the choir, so as not

to interfere with the services. Being exceedingly lofty and without

aisles, it was possible to have exceptionally lofty windows of the type

of those of the north transept of Hereford. These elongated windows,

the absence of aisles, and the polygonal plan, give the exterior a

curiously German appearance. The window tracery is Geometrical, being

composed of groups of trefoils. But the ogee-dripstones of the windows

show that the work overlaps into the Curvilinear period; indeed, it was

not finished at Bishop Langton’s death in 1321. Under the three eastern

windows are chapels, the central of which contains the monument of Bishop

Selwyn, of New Zealand and Lichfield. But the glory of the Lady chapel

and the cathedral is the magnificent painted glass of the sixteenth

century—similar in character to the beautiful glass of Margaret of

Austria’s church at Brou-en-Bresse, Burgundy. The first window on each

side was inserted recently. The remaining seven windows are also Flemish

glass, of the date 1530 to 1540, bought by Sir Brooke Boothby, in 1803,

from the Cistercian nunnery of Herckenrode, near Liége, for £200. The

second window on the north is particularly interesting, as it contains

portraits of patrons and benefactors of Herckenrode, kneeling at altars,

with their patron saints behind them. The third window also has portraits

of great nobles of the Netherlands. The remaining five windows contain

Scriptural subjects.

VII. The next step, _c._ 1325, was to build another bay to the choir,

thus joining it up to the Lady chapel. In this bay was placed a new

shrine of St. Chad. But even this was not enough for the canons. They

were seized with the mania for floods of light and acres of stained glass

which raged like an epidemic through the fourteenth and fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries. They pulled down all the choir except the piers

and arches of the three westernmost bays—they would have removed these

also but for fear of bringing down the central tower—built new piers and

arches in the eastern bays, and a new clerestory along the whole length

of the choir with huge windows of flowing tracery, two only of which are

left. At the same time they replaced all the lancets of the aisles by big

Curvilinear windows. The jambs of the clerestory windows they enriched

with bands of quatrefoils; one of the windows of the south aisle of the

choir, opposite to which the tomb of Bishop Langton formerly stood, and

beneath which good Bishop Hacket’s tomb is now placed, has big crumpled

leaves running up the jambs. The junction of the early Lancet piers

and capitals with those of the fourteenth century is well seen in the

vaulting and in the third pier from the central tower. Between the bays

were placed statued niches, as in the contemporary church of St. Mary’s,

Beverley, from which rose the vaulting-shaft. The whole design should be

compared with the presbyteries of Wells and Chester, which were in course

of “restoration” at the same time and in the same ruthless fashion. In

the choir aisles is a delightful arcade of bowing ogee arches.

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

About the same time, or a little later, were built the central gable of

the west front and the south-western spire.

VIII. PERPENDICULAR AND TUDOR.—The equipment of the presbytery was

completed, _c._ 1390, by the erection of a magnificent altar-screen after

the fashion of those at Winchester and St. Albans. Six of its canopies

are used up in the present sedilia. The northern spire also was copied

from the southern one. More big windows were inserted in the transepts

and the west end of the nave. The latter has been replaced by a modern

geometrical window; that of the north transept by a fine quintet of

lancets, largely composed of fragments of the original thirteenth-century

window. Finally, the whole cathedral was rendered fireproof by the

erection of vaults under both transepts and the central tower. The south

transept, however, would seem to have had a vault before—but it may have

been of wood—for a little lower than the Perpendicular abacus of the

vaulting-shaft is one of the thirteenth century. To this period belongs

the gallery of St. Chad’s chapel.

IX. In the two sieges the clerestory and aisle windows and the vault

of the choir suffered greatly, and the central spire was destroyed.

The latter was rebuilt under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren;

and Perpendicular windows replaced those which had been injured here

and in the Lady chapel. So that the choir now is a curious hybrid: the

most eastern bay is Curvilinear from top to bottom; the next bays

are Curvilinear with Perpendicular tracery in the clerestory windows;

the three westernmost bays are Transitional or early Lancet below,

Curvilinear above, but with Perpendicular tracery in the windows. The

present vault of the choir is chiefly of lath and plaster, by Wyatt.

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary, Lincoln.

“Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.”

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-EAST.]

The cathedrals of Lincoln, York, and Southwell were ever served by

secular canons and not by monks; but each cathedral has been styled a

minster from time immemorial, as if it were or had been a monastic church

(_monasterium_).

I. The history of the cathedral only commences in 1074, when the first

Norman bishop, Remi or Remigius, made Lincoln the seat of the see instead

of Dorchester on the Thames. As Canon Venables puts it: “He refused the

tabernacle of Birinus, and chose not the tribe of the South Angles; but

chose the tribe of Lindsey, even the hill of Lindum which he loved; and

there he built his temple on high, and laid the foundation of it like the

ground which hath been established for ever.” The blank wall which forms

the centre of the west front is Remi’s work. So are the Ionic capitals,

square-edged arches, and wide-jointed masonry in the ground story of the

south-west tower, _c._ 1075. The curious apsidal recesses in the west

front may be paralleled in the façades of many of the early Romanesque

churches of Lombardy.

[Illustration: WESTERN DOORWAY.]

II. LATE NORMAN.—This archaic façade was improved _c._ 1140 by the

insertion of a more ornamental central doorway, and by the arcade, high

up, of intersecting semicircular arches. Also curious plaques, in rather

high relief, were stuck along the wall, as at St. Michael, Pavia. They

are not in chronological sequence, and so may have been transferred from

some other church. Moreover, two low western towers were carried up, with

rich and beautiful gables; of which those to the north and south survive.

The south-western tower should be ascended to see Remi’s eleventh-century

work, the twelfth-century gables, the “elastic beam,” and especially the

superb view of the interior of nave, choir, and presbytery. The font,

too, like that of Winchester, probably belongs to this period.

III. TRANSITIONAL.—The north and south doorways of the west front,

clumsily restored, were probably inserted _c._ 1150. Their capitals are

reminiscences of Byzantine design. They may be compared with the large

capitals of St. Hugh’s choir and Canterbury choir.

[Illustration: ST. HUGH’S CHOIR.]

IV. In 1190 a Carthusian monk, Hugh of Avalon, near Grenoble, became

bishop. Like Fitz-Jocelyn of Wells, and like the Lichfield builders, he

determined not to try to improve the Norman cathedral, but to sweep

it away and build an entirely new one. The Wells and Lichfield people

succeeded in getting rid altogether of the older building; but Remi’s

successors had to leave a considerable amount of Norman work in the

western façade and towers. Bishop Hugh commenced work in 1192: first

building probably his central apse and eastern transept, and then the

walls of his choir, before taking down the short Norman aisleless choir

of two bays, outside which in all probability, as at Lichfield, the new

walls were erected. It will be noticed that the foliated capitals of

the aisle-walls of the choir are earlier in character than those of the

pier-arcade. Then he pulled down the old choir, erected the pier-arcade,

triforium, and clerestory of the new one, and built the south-east corner

of the north transept and the north-east corner of the south transept,

where it will be seen that his double arcade along the aisle-wall

abruptly ceases. The whole of this work (1192-1200) is very advanced

for its date, and is full of originality and eccentricity; the work of

an architect (Geoffrey de Noyers) who was more of an artist than an

engineer. Externally the design is one characterised by great elegance of

proportions. It is remarkable, too, to find the windows grouped at this

early date, even in the clerestory. The intermediate buttresses of the

aisles are later additions, to resist the thrusts of the quinquepartite

vault of the aisles. Internally, it is disappointing. Its proportions

are bad, owing to the exceptional lowness of the vault; the vault itself

is contorted and ugly; the trefoils and quatrefoils are of all shapes

and sizes; the obtuse pier-arches are out of harmony with the acute

Lancet windows. Unfortunately, also, the effect of all the piers, except

the third piers from the west, has been injured by cutting away the

vaulting-shafts, which formerly descended to the floor, but which were

stopped by corbels when the stalls were erected.

The north-east transept is quite exceptional. Its northern bay forms

an internal tower, formerly divided into stories by wooden floors. The

lowest story may have been designed as a return-aisle for processions,

as at Winchester, if the triforiums also had floors—there are none now.

The upper stories were described in 1641 as “watching chambers”; used,

no doubt, by those who remained all night in the cathedral to watch the

shrines and treasures, and to guard against fire. It is quite possible

that these towers—there was originally a similar tower in the south

transept—were intended to be carried up externally; in which case Lincoln

would have had a glorious coronal of five towers.

The westward march of the twin towers of the mediæval cathedrals is

curious. In the tenth-century churches, such as S. Ambrogio, Milan, and

the later cathedral of S. Abbondio, Como, they flanked the choir; so they

did at Canterbury, and in the twelfth-century choir of York; so they may

have been meant to do at Lincoln. At Exeter they have marched on, and

there occupy the ends of the transepts. Finally, they become the twin

western towers which form such a characteristic feature of the façades of

the mediæval churches of Northern Europe, but not of Lombardy.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-WEST.]

On the west side of the north-east transept is a unique example of

a cathedral dispensary, with triangular recesses in the walls for

the drugs. Afterwards a floor was inserted dimway; and to light the

darkened lower chambers, windows were cut through the west wall. The

shutters of these windows are original, as also the ironwork of the

dispensary doorway. The choir ended to the east in a remarkable fashion

in a three-sided aisled apse with radiating chapels. This may be due

to Hugh’s foreign extraction, or it may be regarded as the legitimate

development of such east ends as Gloucester and Tewkesbury. The apsidal

termination is shown by incised lines in the pavement of the retro-choir

and the south choir aisle. Across the openings of the eastern transepts

beams were left from pier to pier, because the fosse of the Roman wall

here crossed the choir. The whole choir is full of freaks; the apsidal

termination of the choir, the double apses of the eastern transepts, the

transeptal towers, the ribbing of the vault, the extraordinary crocketed

piers at the entrance of the eastern transepts, the fluted hexagonal

shafts, and in the clerestory the miniature arcades and pigeon-holes.

The whole design has been claimed as French by M. Corroyer, but M.

Viollet-le-Duc’s opinion is decisive on that point: “it is English in

its method of construction, in its mouldings, in its ornament, and in

execution.” But though English, it is going too far to call it “pure

and undefiled Gothic.” The semicircular apses of the eastern transepts

are not Gothic; and in Romanesque fashion, the triforium is spanned by

transverse stone arches, regardless of the fact that the work they were

supposed to do was done in reality by flying-buttresses outside.

[Illustration: ST. HUGH’S ARCADE.]

V. The works were probably suspended but for a short time by the death

of St. Hugh. He had planned, if not commenced, the apses of the eastern

transepts, and left directions that he was to be buried in the north apse

of the north-east transept—the chapel of St. John the Baptist. Probably

work would be resumed at this point first. This chapel has a curious

history. Soon afterwards pilgrims came in crowds to St. Hugh’s tomb, and

a larger oblong chapel was built in place of the apse, to accommodate

them. In later days this fell into ruin, and in 1769 Essex rebuilt the

chapel in its original apsidal form. The work is contemporary with that

of the great transept, which also has a string continuing the abaci.

After the apsidal chapels were completed there followed the completion

of the great transept, the erection of a central tower, and of so much

of the western part of the nave as was necessary to give abutment to the

tower on the west. It will be noticed that the arcading at the east end

of the north aisle of the nave belongs to this period. All this may well

have been designed by Geoffrey de Noyers, for the tower was badly built

and collapsed in 1239; the west wall of the transept is full of blunders,

and the vault of the north transept cuts off the head of the circular

window, the Dean’s Eye. But externally the design of this north end is

superb. The vaulting, as in the eastern transepts, is sexpartite, with

the addition of a new longitudinal rib, which wobbles up and down in a

distressing manner. The vault is copied—wobbling included—in Southwell

choir. Magnificent contemporary glass remains in the Dean’s Eye and the

lancets below it.

VI. The next work was the completion of the first five eastern bays of

the nave. Whoever the architect was, or the architects—for there may have

been two of them, the arcading of the aisles and the height of the bases

differing widely on the north and south sides of the nave—it was not

Geoffrey de Noyers, but some one who was both a good artist and a good

engineer—so good an engineer that in the interior he sacrificed art to

engineering. The piers he set as far apart as possible, and made them as

thin as possible; but they are beautifully built, and rest on foundations

which are continuous underground from pier to pier. These obtuse arches,

however, and attenuated piers are most unsatisfactory to the eye. The

nave is practically an improved version of the choir—improved in the

vaulting, the buttresses and pinnacles, and in height. To the vault he

added intermediate ribs—an early example of their use. The northern

exterior of the nave, with its knife-edge buttresses and tall gablets

and strong base-courses, is one of the best designs in all Gothic; it is

of almost Greek severity. The height of the nave he raised from 74 to 82

feet. A Frenchman would have given a nave so broad (42 feet) a height of

120 feet. However, he was thinking—as all the Lincoln architects were

always thinking—of how it would look outside, how it would affect the

sky-line of the cathedral to have a nave far higher than the choir. Never

was an English cathedral built so much for external effect as Lincoln; in

every part of it the exterior is finer than the interior.

[Illustration: SOUTH TRANSEPT.]

VII. From 1235 to 1253 the see was occupied by a man of the highest

vigour and ability—Bishop Grosstête—who signalised his rule by many great

works. Luckily St. Hugh had been canonised in 1220, and money, no doubt,

flowed in abundantly from the pilgrims. But in 1239 the central tower

fell. It seems to have fallen to the south-east, and to have damaged

seriously the adjacent parts of the transept and choir, and in particular

the south side of the choir and the south-east transept. Everything else

had to be laid aside to get the mischief repaired. The repairs seem to

have been executed with the greatest haste and carelessness. The new

mouldings on the western side of the westernmost arches of the choir

did not fit the old, and a ring of stone was worked to hide the awkward

junction. Every arch in the south triforium is out of centre, and the

trefoils and quatrefoils are cut most clumsily. In the end bays of the

triforium of the choir and transept the central stalks “were replaced by

ugly moulded blocks resembling nothing so much as a pound of candles.”

The reconstructed arches may be recognised by having hood-moulds. The

canons wanted to get back into their choir as soon as possible, and may

well have regarded the whole affair as merely a makeshift till the nave

should be finished, and they could transfer their services to it, and

then pull down and rebuild St. Hugh’s choir more stably and in greater

height. In the south-east transept the inner wall of the tower was taken

down, and the upper part of the end wall was rebuilt. This work was done

more carefully, there being no need to hurry over it, as it did not

interfere with the use of the choir.

[Illustration: ANGEL TRIFORIUM.]

The canons could now resume their work in the nave. But their resources

had been heavily taxed by the unexpected demands made on them by the fall

of the central tower. They took counsel, unfortunately, with economy. The

original design had been, probably, to make the nave very much longer

than it is now, and then to build a brand-new west front, as at Wells and

Lichfield. The nave needs much greater length, being of the exceptional

breadth of forty-two feet. Now it was decided not to sweep away, but to

utilise the Norman west front and western towers as far as possible, and

to curtail the nave accordingly. Unfortunately, the new cathedral had not

been built at right angles to the Norman façade. The axis, therefore, of

the remaining bays of the nave had to deviate so as to strike the façade

as centrally as possible. Moreover, the western vault of the nave was too

lofty for the façade, so it was suddenly dropped two feet at the end of

the five eastern bays; and the distance between the completed bays and

the façade being insufficient for two arches of the span of the eastern

ones, the two western bays had to be built narrower than the rest. A

different vault, too, was built in the aisles of these two bays.

All this is regrettable; but though Lincoln minster is shorter than it

should be, its vast spaces, dimly lighted with scanty beams filtering

through narrow lancets, are wonderfully impressive; the distances, yet

further enhanced by the interposition of organ and screen, seem really

infinite. It is not, like Ely, a study in contrasts, but in harmonies.

The design of the nave leads without a break to that of the transepts;

the design of the transepts to that of the choir; the design of the

choir, aided by the rich stalls and screens, to the splendour of the

presbytery, where the light breaks forth at length to irradiate the

loveliness of moulding and foliage and sculptured imagery.

Though the length of the nave was now curtailed in the altered design,

some compensation was found in throwing out a flanking chapel on either

side of the two westernmost bays. The position of these chapels may be

founded on those of Ely; it was repeated by Wren in St. Paul’s. In all

three cathedrals it gives a noble air of spaciousness on entering by the

western doors. The vault of the northern chapel is supported, as if it

were a chapter-house, by a beautiful central pier. This pier consists

of eight shafts of Purbeck marble, very acutely pointed, once so highly

polished, like the rest of the Purbeck shafts, says a mediæval versifier,

that they positively dazzled the eyes.

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-WEST.]

Then came the west front. We may not like it; but given the

conditions—the retention of an enormous oblong area of Norman wall with

two Norman towers behind—it is not easy to see how anything better could

have been done. Its vast height and breadth are astonishingly impressive

from the little narrow courtyard which coops it in.

To the same bishop, Grosstête, are to be attributed the beautiful Galilee

porch, attached to the south transept as a state-entrance for the bishop

from his palace over the way; the sacristy; and the chapter-house—the

first polygonal chapter-house after that of Abbey Dore. “The strong

flying-buttresses, like colossal arms stretched out to bear up the huge

fabric,” were added later.

VIII. The cathedral was now completed from east to west. But the canons

had at once to start again. St. John the Baptist’s chapel, though

enlarged, was all too small for the pilgrims who crowded to Lincoln,

attracted by the miracles wrought at St. Hugh’s shrine. The apse of his

choir was therefore pulled down, and in its stead was built an eastern

presbytery of five bays (1256-1280). This is the famous Angel choir,

really the memorial chapel and tomb-house of St. Hugh. His shrine was

solemnly translated to it in 1280. A little too crowded with ornament, it

is yet the most lovely work of the age—one of the masterpieces of English

Gothic. To the same period, probably, belong the superb arches inserted

at the west end of the choir aisles with the idea of buttressing the

eastern piers of the new tower; also the north, south and east screens of

the choir, parts of which are old, the rest built by Essex in 1769.

IX. About 1290 were built the Easter Sepulchre and so-called tomb of

Remigius, on the north side of the choir, with naturalistic foliage of

oak, fig, and vine. Here the consecrated Host was watched from Maundy

Thursday to Easter Sunday. Still finer Easter sepulchres may be seen at

Hawton and Heckington. The upper stage of the central tower was erected

in 1307. The tower is 271 feet high; and anxious, as usual, for external

effect, the canons actually added a timber spire, raising it to the vast

height of 525 feet, a height which exceeds even that of the new spires

of Cologne cathedral. The effective cut battlements are by Essex. The

tower is not built solid, but, to save weight, is “constructed of two

thin walls, tied at intervals, with a vacuum between them” (cf. Hereford

and Wells). It is gathered in 2½ inches near the top, so as not to look

top-heavy. The remains of the shrine of Little St. Hugh (in the south

choir aisle) seem to be _c._ 1310. In the cloisters, built _c._ 1296, is

a great curiosity—an incised slab with a portrait of a Gothic architect,

Richard of Gainsborough, the builder of the Angel choir. A replica has

been made of it.

X. CURVILINEAR.—In 1320 died good Bishop Dalderby. He was worshipped as

a saint, though Rome refused his canonisation. His remains were placed

in a silver shrine on the west side of the south transept: some of the

pedestals of it may be seen there still. Miracles were wrought at his

shrine; and from the offerings the gable of this transept was in all

probability reconstructed, including the “Bishop’s Eye,” which is as

strong constructionally as it is beautiful. The lovely pierced parapet of

this transept should be noticed, and the fine window in the gable. The

parapet was carried westward all along the south side of the nave and

across the west front; and handsome pinnacles were erected, with niches

once peopled with statues.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]

Now also was erected the choir-screen, of charming design, very similar

to that of the west side of Southwell screen.

A little later are the screen of the choir boys’ vestry in the south

choir aisle, diapered with lilies; and in the north-east of the Angel

choir, St. Catharine’s shrine, and the Burghersh monuments. The period

closes with the charming ogee doorways and arcading at the west end of

the nave.

XI. The PERPENDICULAR period commences with the choir-stalls, so much

eulogised by Pugin; and, but little later, the miserable statues of

English kings over the west door, and the west windows of the nave and

its aisles. The western towers were also raised to their present height,

and all three towers were vaulted. All this work belongs to the last

forty years of the fourteenth century.

The west front now consists of an oblong area of Early Norman work, which

is decorated above by a Late Norman arcade of semicircular intersecting

arches, and midway by a row of Late Norman sculptured plaques, and by the

Perpendicular niches with the kings: the windows are also Perpendicular;

but the central doorway is Late Norman and the side doorways

Transitional. The central arch of the Early Norman work has been replaced

by a pointed one; and the whole of the Early Norman work is surrounded

by Lancet work, which in turn is crested with a Curvilinear parapet.

The lower stages of the towers are Late Norman; the upper stages Early

Perpendicular. The west front has been constantly censured for hiding the

western towers, “like prisoners looking over the bars of their cage.”

But any one who has seen the western towers of St. Stephen’s, Caen, will

recognise that, but for the west front, the Lincoln towers would look

top-heavy.

[Illustration: FROM THE SOUTH.]

XII. To the fifteenth century belong the battlemented parapet of the

Galilee porch; Bishop Fleming’s chantry; the screens of the chapels in

the north and south transept; and Bishop Russell’s chantry.

XIII. In TUDOR days was built Bishop Longland’s chantry (1521-1547), the

niches of which have Renaissance detail. The three chantries are so low

that they do not interfere with the main lines of the cathedral; and,

being low, give scale to it.

XIV. The date of the brass Eagle is 1667. In 1674 Wren built the Library

in the Cloister. The brass chandelier is of 1698. The supporting arches

of the western towers were inserted in 1727.

The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London.

[Illustration: FROM THE SOUTH.]

From Lincoln and Lichfield to St. Paul’s, the transition is vast and

abrupt. It is a transition from the archaic, mediæval, feudal world to

modern England. Mediæval religion, mediæval art is dead—killed by the

printed book. Mediæval architecture also succumbs before the printed

book. The master-masons of the old cathedrals, whose very names for the

most part are unknown, give place to architects of European fame—men who

read books, write books, and work to book. The mediæval architect was a

builder and nothing else. The Renaissance architect was first of all a

scholar, and secondly an artist; and only incidentally an architect. He

learnt the art of architectural design, not in the builder’s yard, but

by preference at the goldsmith’s bench. From jewellery he turned with

equal facility to painting and sculpture, to civil engineering or to the

art of fortification, to water-colours, to stage mechanism, to landscape

gardening, to poetry, politics or diplomacy. Among the men of this

versatile genius Christopher Wren holds a worthy place. He proceeded to

Oxford at the early age of fourteen; and obtained a fellowship at All

Souls’. Physical science and astronomy were his first love. At the age

of twenty-five “he was known in scientific circles all over Europe,”

and was Professor of Astronomy. He wrote on comets, and gnomonicks, and

diplographic pens. In his twenty-ninth year he was honoured with the

degrees of D.C.L. and LL.D. at Oxford and Cambridge. He helped to found

the Royal Society, and was twice its President. He was even a Member of

the House of Commons in two Parliaments. In his thirty-first year he

turned his attention to architecture—attracted, no doubt, largely by

the physical and mathematical problems involved. Two years later he set

out to the Continent to see for himself the great works of the Revival

of Classical Architecture. Unfortunately he went no farther than Paris:

those masterpieces of the Renaissance, Brunelleschi’s dome at Florence,

Michael Angelo’s dome at Rome, he was fated never to see. For the rest

of a life unusually prolonged he was to be occupied in imitating models

which he had never seen. The result is perhaps not to be regretted. He

left behind him not the close copy of Italian Renaissance work which

we might have had, under more favourable circumstances, from Inigo

Jones, but an English Renaissance style of marked individuality and

originality, and therefore of great interest. He had to think out all his

problems—problems of construction and problems of planning—for himself.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]

Wren, like his employers, the citizens of the City of London was a sound

Protestant; and when he was commissioned to rebuild St. Paul’s after

the Great Fire, his intention was to give London a Protestant cathedral.

He was less concerned to provide processional aisles and altared chapels

than a vast unencumbered central area for preaching. The new cathedral

was to be a gigantic preaching-house. To provide the vast central area

demanded, the narrow crossing beneath the central tower of a Gothic

cathedral was abandoned. Instead of a central tower he resolved to employ

a dome—the only form of roof which would cover so vast a span. One

mediæval cathedral in England, and one only, had such a crossing. It was

the superb cathedral of Ely, where Wren’s uncle was Bishop. But it was

no doubt of St. Peter’s, Rome, that Wren was thinking, rather than of

Ely. Just as St. Peter’s, Rome, had been built to rival and surpass the

Florence Duomo, so Wren designed that his own new cathedral should be an

improvement on St. Peter’s, Rome. In the supports of his dome he chose to

follow the unhappy precedents of Florence and Ely rather than the nobler

type of St. Peter’s and Santa Sophia; he blocked up his central area with

eight piers, instead of poising his dome on four supports, as in the

metropolitan cathedrals of the East and West.

[Illustration: AS FIRST PROJECTED.]

In Wren’s favourite design, as shown in the model still preserved in

the cathedral, the dome was to be abutted to the west by an aisleless

vestibule or nave, itself crowned by a minor dome; while to the north,

east, and south, it was intended to give it the support of a surrounding

ring of domical chapels, opening into the central area by a series of

fairy-like vistas and ever-changing contrasts of light and shadow. But

the Anglican clergy rose in revolt at the position assigned to them

in the cathedral—a position contrary to any precedent of the Anglican

Church; and refused to sit in a ring all round the central area beneath

the dome. On the other hand, the Court party, almost openly expecting,

and with good reason, the restoration of the old religion, wanted an

aisled nave with room for the pageantry of processions and with provision

of chapels for the saint-worship soon to be restored. Romanisers and

Anglicans alike united to condemn a plan which failed to provide for the

ritualistic needs of either. Wren had to start again; and London had to

put up with a Renaissance cathedral which in plan is as mediæval as that

of Ely, with aisled nave, aisled choir, aisled transepts, and even with

a western transept, as again at Ely. St. Paul’s then, is primarily, an

aisled (_i.e._ a basilican) church, with, incidentally, a dome thrown

in. And therein lies the fault of the design. Internally, the church

predominates over the dome. Unless you stand beneath or almost beneath

the dome, you can hardly see that a dome is there at all. Narrow nave,

narrower aisles, the multiplied obstructive masses of the various piers,

hide the dome away from view. Rightly designed, a great central dome

ought to be all in all; everything should lead up to it; everything

should be suppressed that does not lend it strength or grace. Its thrusts

are great, and cannot be resisted by the piers of aisles, unless the

piers are positive mountains of masonry; aisles, then, should be omitted.

The dome should rest on four arches, and their thrusts should be resisted

by the solid walls of the unaisled nave and choir and the two transepts.

And these four great limbs of the church should be kept short, to give

the dome full value.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

Again, just as the central dome dictates the plan of the church, so it

should dictate the form of the vaulted roof. There were three types

of vault at Wren’s disposal. One was the intersecting vault, a second

the domical vault, a third the waggon or tunnel vault. The first is

altogether out of harmony with a central dome, though Wren has employed

it in some of his City churches. What he adopted was the second: he

vaulted the nave with a row of four domes, the choir with a row of three.

Thus, it might be thought, with seven domes leading up to a central dome,

Wren had secured harmony and success. It is not so. Nothing can be more

distressing to the eye than to follow the up and down line of the little

domes till it suddenly plunges into the central abyss. The only tolerable

form of vault in connection with a central dome is the tunnel vault, as

it is employed in St. Peter’s, Rome; or, still better, in S. Annunziata,

Genoa. Such a tunnel vault, however, should start direct from the

cornice, and not, as at St. Paul’s, from a meaningless attic interposed

between cornice and vault.

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

As it stands, in the internal elevation of the cathedral Wren has given

us a hybrid design. It reminds one of Gothic, for there is a travesty of

a clerestory; it is Classic, for beneath is a gigantic Order. Wren has

hesitated between two opinions. He might have given us a three-storied

interior—pier-arcade, triforium and clerestory—of course with Classical

detail, as is done with charming effect in the noble cathedral at Pavia;

or a one-storied interior, as at St. Peter’s. As his patrons insisted on

having aisles, he might well have adopted the former alternative, and

have presented us with what might have been very beautiful—a Classical

triforium. If he wanted the majesty of the single gigantic Order of St.

Peter’s, he should have omitted the attic, run up the Order twenty feet

higher, and lighted the nave by lunettes cut through a tunnel vault. As

it is, the miserable attic is of no value in itself, and at the same

time diminishes the importance of the pier arcade. However, as we have

seen, Wren is not responsible at all for the plan, and only partially

for the proportions of the interior of St. Paul’s. He has not given us

of his best, because the world of his day would not have it. Most of

the defects that one laments are absent from his earlier and favourite

design: _e.g._, the ugly subsidiary arches under the oblique arches of

the octagon of the dome, and the bad lighting of the dome itself.

[Illustration: LOOKING WEST.]

Externally everything is different. No ritual, Anglican or other,

interfered. Wren had free play: all his success and any faults are his

own. What it fails to do internally the great dome does externally

with colossal success: it dominates everything—not only the church,

but London. Every part of the vast building gathers up into the

all-compelling unity of the central dome. Inside, St. Paul’s is all

church; outside, it is all dome. Into this exterior has grown in concrete

embodiment all Wren’s aspirations: his aspirations for grandeur,

massiveness, and power; for monumental stability, for unity, for harmony,

for symmetry and proportion, for beauty of curve and line. St. Paul’s

has none of the airy lightness of Salisbury and Lincoln; it possesses in

compensation the rock-hewn solidity and majesty of Durham. In Lincoln and

Salisbury, and in Exeter and York, the windows are counted by hundreds;

along the flanks of St. Paul’s windows are few and far apart, and they

are confined to the aisles; the great screen-wall above rises sheer like

a precipice, almost unbroken by an opening. Simple and grand, too, is

the handling of the masses. At the re-entering angles of the transepts

square masses project to form a stable platform for the mighty dome;

towers project to the flanks of the western bays of the nave, giving

breadth and dignity to the main façade. Otherwise the design is symmetry

itself. Everything is in the “grand manner.” Perhaps the side-elevation

is a little monotonous, and the western chapels block off the towers at

their spring, but they were forced on Wren against his better judgment:

internally the nave gains greatly; externally they are a mistake. One

would perhaps have liked also that the screen-wall of the side aisles of

the choir and transepts, instead of ending square, should have circled

round in one vast majestic sweep, in harmony with the curving dome above,

after the fashion of the fine cathedral of Como. The flatness, moreover,

of the side-elevations gives but little room for play of light and shade.

There are none of the pits of darkness that lurk between the buttresses

and transepts of Beverley or Lincoln. Only in the recessed west front and

behind the colonnade of the dome the shadows brood. Nature, however, or

rather London smoke, has given St. Paul’s a chiaroscuro of its own—not to

be washed off, as has been foolishly proposed, by Vandal fire-engines.

Where the rain lashes the building, especially its angles and

projections, the good Portland stone is white and clean; where sheltered

by projecting cornices it is black as Erebus.

[Illustration: FLYING-BUTTRESSES AND SCREEN-WALL.]

Externally, it is a building of two stories. Wren designed it originally

for one story, but was unable to get big enough blocks of stone to carry

a single gigantic Order, as at St. Peter’s, up to the cornice; for which

we may be thankful. The façade also is composed of two Orders of columns,

and they are necessarily comparatively small columns. But all appearance

of weakness is admirably removed by arranging them in couples; indeed,

one would be sorry to have instead of this noble design Wren’s own

one-story façade as shown in his model,—still more to have that of Inigo

Jones.

The harmony, too, of the noble design is delightful. The two stories

of the columns of the façade become two stories of pilasters on the

flanks of the nave; at the ends of the transepts they sweep round into

lovely semicircular colonnades; colonnades form the central stages of

the western steeples; the drum of the dome is encircled by a superb

colonnade; the dome itself culminates in a colonnaded lantern. See,

too, how the lantern, domical above and colonnaded below, sums up the

composition of the dome beneath; and how the western steeples prepare

the eye for the transition from the rectilinear colonnades of the great

façade to the swelling curve of the dome,—itself reproduced in the north

and south circular porches and in the apsidal choir. St. Paul’s is “a

house at one with itself.”

It is true that the dead wall from aisle windows to cornice is perhaps

the “most unmitigated building sham upon the face of the earth.”

It has absolutely nothing to do at all except to hide away some

flying-buttresses—the very ugliest eye ever saw—which Sir Christopher

might well be reluctant to expose to the jeers of the man in the street.

It is true, too, that there is built up in this dead wall enough good

stone to construct half a dozen parish churches. It has been urged that

it was built to weight the foot of each flying-buttress after the manner

of a Gothic pinnacle. But not even a Gothic baby would have provided

continuous abutment for intermittent thrusts. The dead wall may perhaps

be defended on artistic, but certainly not on constructional grounds.

[Illustration: INNER DOME, CONE, AND OUTER DOME.]

In the dome, Wren had three conflicting ideals to realise: (1) to make

the dome so lofty that it should be visible externally from base to

summit; (2) to make it so low internally that it should range with the

vaulting of nave, choir, and transepts; (3) to finish it with a stone

lantern as lofty and heavy as an ordinary church spire. At St. Peter’s

the dome externally squats down so low that from most directions one must

walk a mile away to get a complete view of it; the internal dome is so

lofty as to be invisible from most parts of the church; the lantern is

much smaller and lighter than is required by so mighty a dome; and is in

a condition of very unstable equilibrium, badly supported, cracked, and

tied together in all directions. All these difficulties Wren triumphantly

disposed of; nevertheless, for his triumph he has received little but

censure and abuse. He made two domes; and brought the inner dome, which

is of brick (see diagram), far lower than the outer one—though not low

enough. Secondly, he mounted the outer dome, which is of wood covered

with lead, on a lofty colonnaded drum, visible of all men even from the

narrow street below. Thirdly, between the two domes (see diagram) he

built a cone of brick, and on this cone he poised the lantern—which is

as heavy as an ordinary church-spire—in perfect security. If the outer

dome were removed—_e.g._, if it were burnt, as it may some day, being of

wood—the lantern would still stand perfectly safe on its conical support.

In the dome of St. Paul’s Wren’s engineering capacities culminate. But

it is more than a piece of engineering. No tower, no spire, no group of

towers or spires, impresses itself on the imagination like the dome of

St. Paul’s. Lincoln and Salisbury, Lichfield and Durham, retire before

the claims of this overwhelming younger pile,

“whose sky-like dome

Hath typified by reach of daring art

Infinity’s embrace.”

The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Norwich.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]

The ancient kingdom of East Anglia was converted to Christianity by a

Burgundian monk, Felix, who became the first bishop of East Anglia—the

diocese, as usual, being coextensive with the kingdom—and fixed his see

at Dunwich in 630. The see was subdivided by the Archbishop Theodore, the

great organiser of the English Church, in 669. It was again reunited,

and the cathedral was at Elmham, till the bishop migrated in 1070 to

Thetford, and in 1094 to Norwich.

The present cathedral was commenced in 1096 by Herbert de Losinga, who

is usually described as a Lorrainer. He is recorded to have finished the

whole cathedral before his death in 1119 as far as the altar of the Holy

Cross, which would stand in front of the choir-screen. His successor

finished the nave and west front, and carried up the central tower

(1121-1145). The plan is that of Gloucester and Leominster; the rudiments

of it appear in the ancient church at Bethlehem and in St. Sepulchre at

Jerusalem. There was an enormously long aisled nave of fourteen bays,

aisleless transepts of three bays, an aisled presbytery of five bays,

a semicircular apse, a processional aisle or ambulatory encircling the

apse, and three segmental chapels radiating from the ambulatory; also

eastern apses to the transepts. All this remains, except the easternmost

apsidal chapel, which was replaced in the thirteenth century by an oblong

Lady chapel, itself pulled down in the sixteenth century; and the apse

of the south transept, which was replaced by an oblong chapel in the

thirteenth century.

The history of Norwich cathedral, therefore, differs _toto cœlo_ from

that of every other English cathedral, except that of Gloucester. With

the exception that both Gloucester and Norwich ultimately increased the

dimensions of their eastern Lady chapels, no eastward extensions of any

moment took place. This was not because the Norfolk people were more

conservative than other people, or, in a remote corner of England, were

behind the times; but because the plan of the Norwich cathedral was

convenient for mediæval ritual, and the plan of the other cathedrals was

not. Other cathedrals had to build a processional aisle at the back of

the High Altar; at Norwich it was there already. Other cathedrals had

to throw out eastern transepts to provide chapels for the great saints

of the Church, St. James, St. John, St. Peter and the rest; Norwich

cathedral from the first had five apsidal chapels. Other cathedrals had

a local saint of the first water, and had to build a special saint’s

chapel or feretory for his shrine: Canterbury for St. Thomas, Chester

for St. Werburgh, Durham for St. Cuthbert, Ely for St. Audrey, Hereford

for St. Ethelbert, Lichfield for St. Chad, Lincoln for St. Hugh, Oxford

for St. Frideswide, Rochester for St. William, St. Albans for St. Alban,

Winchester for St. Swithin, Worcester for St. Wolfstan. Norwich had no

local saint of any great repute, except a poor little boy who was alleged

to have been crucified by the Jews. Nor, again, did sacerdotalism much

affect the growth of Norwich cathedral. The nave was so vast that, even

when the monks had appropriated five bays of it for their ritual choir,

as they did at first, there still remained nine bays for processions, and

for the laity to worship at the nave-altar of the Holy Cross. There was

no need to crowd the stalls into the eastern limb of the church as the

Canterbury monks had to do because of the shortness of their Norman nave.

It is true that, later on, the Norwich monks moved eastward a little,

placing their sixty stalls under the tower and in the two easternmost

bays of the nave, where they are at present; but this was probably done

merely to get better light, partly from the lantern-tower above, partly

from the enlarged windows of the transepts. The original position of the

choir is marked by the cylindrical piers, the fifth from the tower; by

a hole in the vault, inside a boss, from which hung down a light or a

censer; and by the corbelling of the eastern vaulting-shafts to leave

room for the stalls.

[Illustration: NAVE.]