This last work was almost certainly done after Jocelin's time; still it was simply the restoration of a damaged portion of his design, and it does not at all bar his claim to be looked on as the real builder of the church. The church was hallowed in 1239. This shows that so much of the building as was absolutely needful for divine service was then finished. It does not prove whether the other parts were finished or not, neither does it show how long the essential parts had been finished at the time of the consecration. For in the history of those times we often come across complaints that various churches still remained unconsecrated, and indeed Mr. Dimock has told me that the present church of Lincoln has never been consecrated to this day. We find several cases in which a whole batch of cathedral and abbey churches were consecrated in the same year, and this year 1239 one of those cases. In that year, besides the cathedral church of Wells, seven great abbey churches were all consecrated.[118] This date therefore proves only that the choir was ready for service in 1239. It proves nothing either way as to the state of the works in the rest of the church, and it does not prove that the choir may not have been ready some years before. But we can thus see how much at least of the church was finished in that year. The choir was no doubt under the tower, stretching possibly a bay eastward or a bay westward. For you must remember that it is the only three western bays of the eastern limb which belong to Jocelin's work. It is quite impossible that the whole choir and presbytery could have been crammed into the narrow space of those three bays. It follows then that the eastern limb contained only the presbytery, that is, the void space left to give dignity to the high altar, while the choir proper, containing the stalls of the Canons, must still have kept its old place under the central tower. By this time then the presbytery, the tower-choir, and the transepts must all have been finished, together with at least one or two bays of the nave, to form at once a constructive abutment to the tower and a necessary approach to the choir. The work of Jocelin's date in the transepts and eastern limb differs in some small points of detail, especially in the triforium, from the work in the nave. There is no difference in style, no difference in general effect, but these are just those little differences which show that they were not all built at exactly the same time. In a work which may well have been spread over thirty-one years it is not wonderful if there were several stoppages and fresh beginnings. And of such a stoppage and fresh beginning we may see clear signs at this particular point of the building. Every one who looks carefully at the buttresses of the north aisle of the nave will see that, though the general effect of all is the same, yet at two different points there are minute differences, showing change or stoppage of work. One of these points is where I have just mentioned, at the second bay from the east. This no doubt marks the completion of the first part of the work, the part absolutely necessary for divine service. The other marks the extent of the repair caused by the fall of the vault. When the first or absolutely necessary part of the work was done, a stoppage of a few years might well take place, and it is well to try and call up before our eyes the appearance of the church during this interval. The old nave—probably, as we have seen, the Old-English nave recast by Robert—still remained in the greater part of its extent; it would be taken down piecemeal as the new nave gradually stretched itself westward. For a short time therefore the old nave, much lower no doubt as well as much ruder in style than the new work, must have stood against it in an incongruous fashion. The eastern limb, the transepts, and the small part of the nave that was built, must have soared like a tower over the older part. This is a state of things which we do not often see in England, but which is common enough in France, and which reaches its height in the famous cathedral of Beauvais. There the old nave of the tenth century—the Basse Œuvre as it is locally called—still survives—at least it survived while I was there,—cleaving as a kind of excrescence to the mighty pile which has risen up to the east of it. And with the reverse process we are familiar enough in England, and specially familiar in our own shire. It is a characteristic of the churches of Somersetshire that the nave has often been rebuilt on a lofty and magnificent scale, while the choir still remains small, low, and quite unworthy of its companion. We may see this disproportion to some extent in our own church of Saint Cuthbert, and it comes out much more strongly at Yatton and in some other of the great parish churches of the county. At the time of which I speak the transepts and eastern limb of Wells Cathedral must have soared over the nave, exactly as the nave of Yatton soars over its transepts and eastern limb. Then the rest of the nave would be gradually rebuilt. We have seen that there is some slight difference of detail, not affecting the general design, between the transepts and the eastern part of the nave. And going westward, we can see the place of the second stoppage, marked by a second slight change of detail, probably caused, as I have already said, by the fall of the vault in 1248. Still, notwithstanding all these smaller differences, the whole work, except the west front, is essentially in one style, and is evidently built from one general design. And though the repair which followed the fall of the vault must have happened after Jocelin was dead, yet I think we may fairly speak of the thirteenth century work at Wells as being, as a whole, the work of that great Prelate. This is a case in which I see no reason to depart from the received tradition and the received manner of speech.

Still, when I speak of the work as being the work of Jocelin, I ought perhaps to pause and explain, and in some sort to qualify, my meaning. As regards the design of the building, Jocelin may or may not have been his own architect. In some of our great churches there is no doubt that the Bishop, the Abbot, or some other member of the society, really was the architect. William of Wykeham, long after Jocelin's time, really designed his own nave at Winchester, but we read of some of the works in Saint Alban's Abbey that they were designed by one of the other officers of the monastery, but that it was held right to attribute them to the Abbot, on account of his higher dignity.[119] While Jocelin's nave was building, the vault over the nave of Gloucester Abbey was actually made by the hands of the monks themselves.[120] In other cases there can be no doubt that professional architects and masons were employed, just as they are now.[121] The vault which fell in at Wells was being made, not by the hands of the Canons or of their Vicars, but by those of skilled workmen. One thing is certain, that the designer of the local work at Wells must have been a local man; whether he was actually Jocelin of Wells in his own person I cannot say. Another thing is equally certain, that, before the work was done, the local style was forsaken and another style was adopted in its stead. And that this was the personal act of Jocelin is shown by the new style being used, not only in the west front of the church, but in his own domestic buildings both at Wells and at Wookey. And as to another point, when I call the work Jocelin's work, I do not necessarily mean that he paid out of his own pocket for everything that was done. We must remember that in Jocelin's day we are just at a moment of transition in the history of our own and of other churches. The earlier Bishops, who did what they pleased, no doubt paid for whatever they did. At any rate, we cannot suppose that the Canons of Wells in the eleventh century did, out of their poverty and beggarly estate, contribute much either towards the erection of Gisa's buildings or towards their pulling down by John of Tours. In our own day, as we all know, any works done to the cathedral are done by the Chapter, either out of their own funds, or out of funds collected by them. In the intermediate ages we sometimes find works of this sort attributed to the Bishop alone, sometimes to the Chapter alone, sometimes to the Bishop and Chapter working together. I suspect that this last would commonly be the truer account in all cases; at any rate, what either Bishop or Chapter did the other party must have consented to. Jocelin was doubtless the great mover in the work, the life and soul of the whole undertaking. The whole would be done under his care, and his personal contributions would doubtless be large. But all this in no way shuts out the co-operation of the Chapter, of the clergy and laity of the diocese, and of well-disposed persons wherever they might be found.[122]

Another part of the buildings of the church belongs to the age of Jocelin, where his hand might not have been looked for at first. This is the cloister as it stood in its first estate. You will remember that the cloister which was built by Gisa, together with his dormitory and refectory, was pulled down by John of Tours. You will also remember that a cloister, which in a monastery is an essential part of the building, and is always built after a particular model, is in a secular church a mere convenience, which may perfectly well be left out, and which may be built in any place and after any fashion which may be thought good. Jocelin then, or his Canons, now built them a cloister, but it was a cloister which was no longer accompanied, as in Gisa's time, by any refectory or dormitory. It is more like a monastic cloister than those of Chichester and Hereford; it is less like one than that of Salisbury. It occupies, like a monastic cloister, one side of the nave; still it is not a perfect square, but an irregular parallelogram; it has no walk on the north side, and the eastern walk comes up against the south end of the transept, while in a monastery it would have been built against its western wall. To the east, where the chapter-house would have stood in a monastery, there was a detached Lady chapel, of which the traces may easily be seen, but which was rebuilt late in the fifteenth century and wholly destroyed in the sixteenth. Now that the cloister was first built at this time is plain, as all the outer walls, including that very pretty doorway leading to the Palace, are all of Jocelin's date. The doorway leading from the transept into the cloister is also mentioned in an Act of Chapter in 1297, printed in Dugdale's Monasticon.[123] But this very doorway, and the doorway which is in some sort the fellow to it in the south-western tower, give us the surest signs that the cloister is not now in the same state in which it was originally designed. Even in its first estate, it seems to have been, as we should expect, an addition, though an addition made not very long after the building of the part of the church which it joins. The wall comes up uncomfortably close against this fine doorway, though it does not mutilate it in the way which is done by the vault which was added long after. This vault, and the window-tracery of the cloister of the same date, are therefore not only later additions, but additions which could not have been so much as contemplated when the cloister was first built. What then was the cloister in its original state? That its outer wall was of stone is plain; but I believe that whatever was inside, the roof and whatever there may have been in the way of tracery or arcading, was of wood. Wooden cloisters were not uncommon. Even in so great a monastery as Glastonbury, it is plain that the cloister was not of stone.

Jocelin, the great builder of the fabric, is hardly less memorable with regard to the constitution of the church. He put the last touches to the system which had been devised by Robert. To him, as we have seen, was perhaps owing the foundation of the other dignities besides the two chief ones, the Deanery and the Precentorship. He certainly increased the number of prebends, and enlarged or settled again the endowments of some of them.[124] And to him is owing the beginning of another class among the officers of our church, who still remain among us; I mean the Vicars. The institution of this order is closely connected with certain changes which were going on about this time in our own and in other capitular bodies, and which produced the distinction which I have already mentioned, and with which we are all familiar, between Residentiary and Non-residentiary Canons. All the old capitular bodies were framed upon one general model, the essential features of which they retain to this day. But, amid this general likeness, each church has its own personal peculiarities; it would be impossible to find two Old Foundation cathedrals in England which are exactly alike in the names, numbers, and duties of their officers. And so with the change of which I am now about to speak; it happened in all the secular cathedrals with the single exception of Llandaff; but it was not brought about in all by exactly the same stages nor at exactly the same time. The general result was the same in all; but the process was not everywhere the same, and this or that change might be made a few years earlier in one place and a few years later in another. The exact dates and stages in the church of Wells I am not prepared to tell you, till all the information which now lurks in manuscript has been unlocked by means of the printing-press. There is one among us who has no doubt mastered every single record in its existing form, and who, I feel sure, can tell us the year, day, and hour of every change of detail. But all I can do is to point out the stages of change in a general way, and to mark that in the time of Jocelin the changes of which I speak were at least beginning.

I have already spoken of that inveterate tendency to pluralities, and consequently to non-residence, which was the bane of the mediæval Church, and which brought to nothing so many fair schemes of discipline and reform. This had already begun to extend itself to cathedral foundations. We may be sure that in early times the whole body of Canons were constantly resident. Gisa at all events, we may be sure, would allow of no absentees from the common refectory and the common dormitory. But the changes made by Robert would certainly tend to make non-residence possible. A Canon was no longer a mere member of a body which, even as a body, had hardly any corporate rights. His prebend had now been made a distinct benefice, as independent, as far as its temporal possessions went, as a Bishoprick or a rectory. The feudal ideas which, as I before said, came to be applied to ecclesiastical benefices, would come to be applied to a prebend no less than to a Bishoprick or a rectory. It would come to be looked on as a benefice, which a man might, as in the case of any other benefice, hold along with any other preferment, and, as in the case of any other benefice, its holder would deem his conscience discharged if its duties were discharged by deputy. The non-residence of Canons became a matter of complaint in the twelfth century. It was a favourite subject for monkish writers, who naturally found in it a fruitful field for declamation against their secular rivals. Thus Richard of Devizes, one of the most amusing writers of that or of any age, holds forth on the superiority of the monks who praised God with their own mouths, while the Canons praised Him only through the mouths of their Vicars. He goes on to draw a grotesque picture of a stranger coming to ask alms at the door of a rich Canon. The door is opened by a poor Vicar, who bids the wayfaring man go away, as the master of the house is not at home.[125] Then, at a somewhat earlier time, in the Life of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, we find how the man whom he sent over with a bull of excommunication against the Bishop of London went to high mass in Saint Paul's Cathedral on so great a festival as the Ascension, and found the officiating priest to be neither Bishop, Dean, nor Canon, but only a Vicar.[126] An incidental notice of this sort speaks volumes.

The non-residence of the Canons was in itself an evil, and it grew out of a relaxation of discipline; still it wrought some incidental good by calling into being a class of men whom I look upon as highly valuable, and indeed as essential to the proper working of the cathedral system. I mean the Non-residentiary Canons. The distinction between Residentiary and Non-residentiary Canons, which is found in all the strictly English cathedrals of the Old Foundation, grew up in different churches at nearly the same time and by nearly the same steps, but with some differences of detail in each case. The first stage seems to have been one of very general non-residence. The Canons lived at the cathedral or not just as they pleased; those who did not reside keeping (as we have incidentally heard) Vicars to discharge their share of the duties of the church. Here we have the origin of that body of Vicars, clerical and lay, whom we still see among us. The Vicar at first was simply the deputy of the Canon whose place he took, just as a curate takes the place of a non-resident rector. Each Vicar was thus dependent on a particular Canon, who was looked upon as his Master. Of this name, after the lapse of so many ages and after such great changes in the position of the Vicars, we still have traces among us. Among the legislative acts of Jocelin were some which concerned the institution of Vicars.[127] He certainly did not form them into a corporation, which was the work of a benefactor of the next age. But he probably insisted that the non-residence of the Canons should not involve any neglect of the services of the church, that every absent Canon should be represented by a competent Vicar, perhaps even that each Vicar should receive a decent stipend. It is plain that the principle of non-residence was already recognized. Savaric, in founding two new prebends in the church, had directed them to be held by the Abbots of Muchelney and Athelney for the time being.[128] It probably was good policy thus to connect the heads of two great monastic houses in the diocese with the diocesan church. But it is plain that the two Abbots were not meant to reside permanently at Wells. They would have their votes in Chapter, and they would come to give them on fitting occasions; but their share in the ordinary duties of the cathedral must have been discharged by deputy from the beginning.

Non-residence thus became rife everywhere. But strict men naturally looked upon it as a scandal. It was not fitting that all or most of the responsible officers of the church should be habitually absent from their post, leaving their duties to be discharged by deputy. And it is likely enough that the deputies might not in every case be the most creditable representatives of their principals that could be found. It was needful to take some steps to check the system by which, in cathedral churches as well as elsewhere, one man did the work while another took the pay. On the other hand, we can see a growing and very reasonable feeling that, as it was not possible, so neither was it desirable, to demand constant residence at the cathedral from the whole of so large a body as the Canons had now become. Now that the prebends had been increased to so great a number as fifty, there was really no object in requiring the holders of all of them to be always present either in the choir or in the chapter-house. The twofold objects of the cathedral foundation would be better carried out by dividing the Canons into two classes. One portion of the body was placed constantly on the spot, to maintain the regular services and to discharge the routine duties of the corporation. Another portion consisted of men scattered about the diocese, appearing at the cathedral only at stated seasons, who, as being at once cathedral clergy and diocesan clergy, might help, above all other men, to keep up the connexion between the mother church and the diocese at large. How far these objects were consciously present to the minds of those who established the distinction between Residentiary and Non-residentiary Canons, I do not pretend to say; but I do say that the distinction has really worked for good, and has given us, in the Non-residentiary Canons, a very valuable body of men, whose position I should like to see better appreciated than it commonly is. This is, however, a subject which will again come before us, and at present we have to deal only with the origin of the distinction. In the first stage no fixed number of Residentiaries was appointed. It was open to every Canon to reside if he chose; and if he chose to reside, he was in every sense a Residentiary. There could not be then, as there is now, the strange sight of Canons, even dignitaries, of the cathedral, who really do reside, but who are not reckoned as Residentiaries, while others bear the name of Residentiaries who come among us for three months in the year only. The first stage was commonly this. Every Canon could reside or not, as he pleased; but those who did reside enjoyed great worldly advantages over those who did not. The common revenues of the corporation were divided among those only who resided, while those who did not reside received only, what the corporation of course could not meddle with, the incomes of their own prebends. The non-resident thus had only his prebend; the resident had his prebend and a share in the common income as well. This is all explained in a statute of Jocelin himself, dated in 1242, the year of his death, in which a daily distribution is ordered to such Canons and Vicars as are present, while at the end of the year the remainder of the common revenues is to be divided among such Canons as have kept residence. Residence is defined to be six months in the year for a simple Canon, that is, for one not a dignitary, and eight for the Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, and Treasurer.[129]

With this stage, when residence was voluntary, is connected the curious institution of ribs, which, as far as I know, is peculiar to our own church. A rib, as many of you know, is a house, or a piece of ground fit for building a house, which the Bishop must give to some Canon, but which he might give to any Canon that he pleased. If therefore the Bishop wished to call into residence any Canon who had not a house of his own, he might give him the means of residing by giving him a rib. At this stage, then, residence was optional, just as it is at this moment among Fellows of Colleges in the Universities. But there was this important difference, that the resident Canon, unlike the resident Fellow, greatly bettered his income by residing. The natural result was that, whereas hitherto the tendency had been to shirk residence, there now was a general rush of the Canons to reside. And this new tendency to residence next led to all kinds of devices to hinder residence. If a small number were already residing, and therefore divided the common fund among them, they would be tempted to look with no friendly eye on those of their brethren who came trooping in to share their funds, and thereby to lessen their own dividends. It was often ordered that no one should be allowed to reside, or at least to draw any profits from his residence, unless he obtained the consent of those who were already Residentiaries. And it was no uncommon rule, a rule which existed in our own church, that no one should reside unless he purchased the right to residence by giving a series of costly entertainments to his brother Canons and to various other people.[130] This of course many of the Canons could not afford to do, and so were hindered from residing if they wished. All these devices were clear abuses, arising out of a selfish wish on the part of the existing Residentiaries to have as few sharers in their dividends as they could. Still it was clearly not to be wished that the whole body of Canons should reside, while it was desirable that the choice of those who should reside should not depend upon their power of giving great dinners. The remedy was to appoint a fixed number of Residentiaries to be chosen in some regular way out of the whole body of Canons. This was done sooner or later in all the strictly English Old Foundation churches, but the number of the Residentiaries, and the way of choosing them from among the Canons, differed widely in different places. Here in Wells the number finally settled was eight, including the Dean; now, by the Act of Parliament settling such matters, it is, as you all know, four besides the Dean. Here too, on a vacancy among the Residentiaries, the existing Residentiary body determines which of the other Canons shall be called into residence. You will see that the rule that no man could reside without the consent of the existing Residentiaries would, as soon as there was a fixed number, naturally grow into an election of this kind. But in some places, as at York, the Dean alone called into residence whom he would. In others, as at Lincoln, the duty of residence was laid on some or all of the dignitaries, who of course must reside if they are to do their duties effectually. This, you will see, was in effect to put the choice of Residentiaries into the hands of the Bishop. At Saint David's this mode was combined with that with which we are familiar here. There was a Residentiary body of six, consisting of three dignitaries, the Precentor, the Chancellor, and the Treasurer, and of three other Canons elected by the Residentiary body. As the Church of Saint David's had no Dean, the Precentor was the President of the Chapter.[131] These small differences meet us everywhere, but the general system is the same everywhere. Both the likeness and the unlikeness were exactly what was to be looked for, when the same causes were working in different places in a great number of institutions of the same class, but where the changes were made, not by any one general enactment, but by independent local legislators laying down rules for their own societies only. But the general result was everywhere the same. A smaller body arose within the general body of the Canons, a body on whom alone fell the duty of residence and the common daily care of the fabric and its services. The change was undoubtedly a good one. It brought in a regular order and discipline instead of a state of things which must have been verging on anarchy. It produced two classes of men, the Residentiary and the Non-residentiary Canons, each of whom, as it seems to me, has a very useful function to perform in the economy of the Church. But it had its weak side also. The tendency of a smaller body, more constantly present on the spot and more constantly in the habit of acting together, has naturally been gradually to draw all power into its own hands. The result has been that in many churches, including our own, the rights of the Non-residentiary Canons have been cut down, greatly to the disadvantage of the institution as a whole, to little beyond a bare name and a barren precedence.

I need hardly say that when the duty of residence was laid exclusively on a certain number of the Canons on behalf of the whole, it was meant that those on whom the duty of residence was laid should really discharge that duty. But the same tendencies which had before worked in the general body of Canons began after a while to work again in the smaller body of Residentiaries. It was clearly intended, it was implied in the very distinction between Residentiaries and Non-residentiaries, that those who were to reside should really reside; that the cathedral should be their home, their dwelling-place, at least as constantly as the parish of a clergyman who resides on his living is his dwelling-place. But a passion which seems almost inherent in human nature, the passion for shirking one's own immediate duties, soon stepped in. Residence was shirked even by the Residentiaries; it was cut short to the smallest possible amount, till the strange doctrine was finally established that residence was effectually kept by the presence of a single Canon, the Residentiary body coming in turn for periods which in some places fell below, and which I believe never rose above, the mystical period of three months. This period is now fixed by law for all churches alike. At Wells, however, it does seem to have been, even in the worst times, at least the theory that there should always be two Canons resident at once.[132] But even two is a very small show out of fifty, and with what propriety of language a man who is away nine months or longer in the year can be called a Residentiary is altogether beyond my understanding. The three months' system is a mockery, and worse. Three months is too long a time for a bad man, and not long enough for a good man. The man who comes for three months only has not time enough to do much good, but he has time enough to do a great deal of mischief. We ourselves know by experience that more mischief may be done to the fabric of the cathedral in one term of three months than can, with the best will in the world, be undone in the next term. We do not want to get rid of our Residentiary Canons, but we do want to have more of their company. If our cathedrals are ever to be made what they ought to be and what they might be, the first reform of all must be that Residentiaries shall really reside. I assume of course that they hold no other preferment involving residence. I do not want them to be resident at the cathedral and non-resident somewhere else. No Dean or Canon Residentiary ought to have any other benefice, or any cure of souls, except such as may be attached to the cathedral itself. And if the right kind of men—men very far from scarce in the Church—were always made Deans and Canons Residentiary, they would find their cathedral offices enough for them, and would not go hungering after other functions which are incompatible with their proper discharge.

We must now turn once more from the constitution of the Church to its fabric. The church as built by Jocelin, though capable, as we know, of much further enlargement and improvement, was still essentially perfect. But one important building was still lacking. In a secular foundation, where each man lives in his own house, only one common building besides the church is actually necessary. The refectory and dormitory are useless; the cloister is a luxury which may be dispensed with; but there must be a place where the whole body may meet for elections, and for whatever other business they have to discharge. The Chapter-house is therefore quite as much needed in a secular as it is in a monastic foundation. And it should be noticed that in secular foundations the Chapter-house is much more strictly part of the church than it is in a monastery. In a monastery the Chapter-house is one of the main parts of the whole building. It communicates directly with the cloister, and thereby with the church and the other principal buildings. But it has no direct communication with the church; it has no more connexion with the church than the refectory has, and not nearly so much as the dormitory has. But in secular foundations the Chapter-house is much more commonly a part of the church, its principal or only entrance being from the church itself. This is a general but not an universal rule, Salisbury being a notable instance to the contrary. This, as you all know, was at first the case with the Chapter-house at Wells. When it was first built, and up to the time when the way which leads to the Vicars' Close was made, long afterwards, the only approach to the Chapter-house was from the church itself. And now that the door which leads to the Vicars' Close is always kept fastened, we may be thought to have come back again to the old state of things. Our Chapter-house is one of the best examples of a type which chiefly belongs to the thirteenth century, though one or two examples are earlier and one or two examples are later.[133] This is the type in which the building is of an octagonal or other polygonal shape, most commonly with a single pillar in the middle, from which all the ribs of the vaulting branch out in different directions. This is the case with our own and with most other chapter-houses of this kind, both in monastic and in secular churches. But in the great example at York, and in the smaller one imitated from it at Southwell, the central pillar is wanting. With the beauty of our own Chapter-house we are all familiar; its windows are amongst the finest examples of tracery of their own date; still the details of the Chapter-house itself do not please my personal taste so much as the details, one stage earlier in the history of art, of the staircase which leads to it. The Chapter-house stands on what is commonly called a crypt, but which, as not being underground, hardly deserves that name. It is rather of a piece with those vaulted undercrofts or substructures which are so common under the principal buildings of monasteries and other houses, and which are constantly mistaken for cloisters, dormitories, and what not.[134] There cannot be a better example than the lower stage of our own Bishop's palace. I need hardly say that, when this substructure and the staircase were made, the Chapter-house was already designed; for both staircase and substructure are simply buildings subordinate to the Chapter-house. Yet there must be a certain difference of date between the two. The staircase must be a little later than the church itself, for it is manifestly built up against the buttresses of the north transept, and, while the church has only lancet windows, the staircase has some of the best examples of the earliest form of Geometrical tracery. The Chapter-house itself again has Geometrical tracery of a later type, and the details throughout are more advanced. It appears from Professor Willis's account that in 1286 the Chapter determined to finish a certain new structure which had been long before begun, and which urgently needed to be finished. This, as the Professor says, can be no other than the Chapter-house. In 1286, then, the staircase and substructure were already finished, but the works were at a standstill, and the Chapter-house itself had not yet been begun. The result of these debates of the Chapter was the carrying out of the Chapter-house. The general design had no doubt been planned long before, and it was now carried out according to that original design, but, as might be expected, with all the changes in detail, whether we look on them as improvements or not, which had come into fashion since the work began.[135]

Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century, we may look on the church of Wells as at last finished. It still lacked much of that perfection of outline which now belongs to it, and which the next age was finally to give it. Many among that matchless group of surrounding buildings which give Wells its chief charm had not yet arisen. The church itself, with its unfinished towers, must have had a dwarfed and stunted look from every point. The Lady chapel had not yet been reared, with its apse alike to contrast with the great window of the square presbytery above it, and to group in harmony with the more lofty Chapter-house of its own form. The cloister was still of wood. The palace was still undefended by wall or moat. The Vicars' Close and its chain-bridge had not yet been dreamed of. Still the church, alike in its fabric and its constitution, may be looked on as having by this time been brought to perfection. There was still much to add, to improve, and to develope, but all that was essential was there. The church itself, though still lacking somewhat of ideal grace and finish, had been made perfect in all that was absolutely needful. The nave, recast in forms of art such as Ine and Eadward, such as Gisa and Robert, had never dreamed of, with the long range of its arcades and the soaring sweep of its newly-vaulted roof, stood, perfect from western door to rood-loft, ever ready, ever open, to welcome worshippers from city and village, from hill and combe and moor, in every corner of the land which looked to Saint Andrew's as its mother church. The choir, the stalls of the Canons, the throne of the Bishop, were still confined within the narrow space of the crossing; but that narrow space itself gave them a dignity which they lost in later arrangements. For the central lantern, not yet driven to lean on ungainly props, with the rich arcades of its upper stages still open to view, still rose, in all the simple majesty of its four mighty arches, as the noblest of canopies over the choir below. And if the receding vista of the Lady chapel, with that matchless grouping of slender pillars, that no less matchless harmony of colour, was still a thing of the future, yet we have fragments enough to tell us that the older ending of the choir was one rich with the best detail of the thirteenth century,[136] and one which perhaps gave greater majesty to the high altar itself, the sole feature of the eastern limb, than any arrangement that can be devised with the present ground-plan. The group of buildings of which the Chapter-house now forms a part was as yet unthought of, but the great octagon itself was already rising; by the end of the century it was perhaps already finished. There it stood, with its central pillar and its surrounding stalls, the many ribs of its vault converging to one centre, typifying, as symbolical writers tell us, the government of each diocesan church, with its many members, clergy and laity, gathering around one common head and father. All this was there already; that is, everything had been done which was needful for the practical perfection of a cathedral church, though something might still be needed to give the fabric its ideal perfection as a work of art. And as with the fabric of the church, so with its constitution. The relations of the original centre of the diocese with its sister or rival churches, in one sense more ancient, in another newer than itself,[137] had been finally and peacefully settled. The relations between the Bishop and his Chapter, between the Chapter and its subordinate officers, had been definitely settled also. All the great offices of the church which still exist had been already founded, and those duties had been attached to them which, however much they have been forgotten, still remain the duties of their holders as much now as they were then. In short, the church of Wells, alike in its fabric and in its constitution, was already perfect. The thirteenth century had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develope according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe and for the world. It is well to mark how exactly the most striking periods in our local history fall in with the great and decisive epochs in the general history of our country. The church of Wells first arose at the bidding of the first great West-Saxon lawgiver, the prince whose reign fixed for ever that the south-western peninsula of Britain should be, in speech and allegiance, if not wholly in blood, a Teutonic and not a Celtic land. The church received its Bishop at the hands of the great West-Saxon conqueror, at the moment when Wessex finally grew into England, and the first endowment of the Bishoprick of Somersetshire was a gift from the hand of the prince to whom the Northumbrian, the Scot, and the Briton bowed as their father and their lord. The old dynasty passed away and strangers sat on the throne of England; that was the time when a stranger prelate first brought into our church the foreign and novel discipline which he had learned in his own land beyond the sea. And yet, with strangers alike on the royal throne of England and in the episcopal chair of Wells, the ancient fabric, the church of native Kings and saints and heroes, still lived on. Through the reigns of the Norman and the Angevin the ancient fabric still survived as a witness that England and her Church, conquered as they were, still preserved their national being, and would one day arise to wrest their ancient freedom from the hands of their conquerors. That ancient fabric still lived on into days when its witness was no longer needed, to days when England had won her conquerors to her heart, and had changed the sons of her oppressors into the foremost champions of her freedom. A Prelate who had suffered banishment at the hands of John, whose name stands subscribed to the Great Charter of our rights, might venture to sweep away the still abiding monument which told of the older freedom of the days of Ine and Eadward. And, even before his time, we may see how the darker and brighter days of the church of Wells coincided with the darker and brighter days of England. It was during the blackest night of oppression, in the days of the tyrant Rufus, that the name of our church was for a moment wiped out from the roll of Bishopricks, and that its ministers were reduced to beggary by the arbitrary violence of a foreign Bishop. The wrong was redressed in days which, if days of sorrow and conflict, were still days of hope. If the fabric of the church was renewed and strengthened during the civil wars of Stephen, its constitution was finally settled and confirmed when peace and order returned under the sway of the great Henry. And next came the great age of all, the age which, in its creative and in its destructive power, was to leave its mark on every land from one end of heaven to the other. Time would fail to tell of all the mighty men and mighty deeds which are crowded more thickly into the age of Innocent and Frederick, the age of Saint Ferdinand and Saint Lewis, the age of Bacon and Dante, the age in distant lands of the first Mongol and the first Ottoman invaders, than into almost any other equal space in the world's history. Throughout the world destruction and creation were marching side by side; old systems were falling, new systems were rising. But it was in England alone that the new and the old could be worked together into harmony, that the age which elsewhere was an age of destruction and of creation could become simply an age of reform and restoration, an age which put new life into old names and old traditions, and made England England once again. We see the sons of the soil, of whatever blood, alike the children of the conquerors and the children of the conquered, rising in their strength to put a bridle on the tyranny of Popes and Kings, to break the yoke of the stranger, and to win the land back once more for its own children. Then it was that our tongue, our laws, our constitution, assumed those shapes which the six ages that have followed have had only to improve in detail. It was the age of Stephen Langton and Robert Fitzwalter, of Robert Grosseteste and Simon of Montfort, of Roger Bigod and Humfrey Bohun, and of the King from whom they won our freedom. And we in this place may add to the list the name of our local worthy, foremost in local honour and not without his share in the general history of our land, the rebuilder of the fabric of our church, the final lawgiver of its constitution, the honoured name of Jocelin of Wells. As it was throughout all England, so it was in our little city at the foot of Mendip. The older state of things was passing into a newer by a process of gradual and peaceful change and developement. And as throughout all England Englishmen were rising against foreign influence in every shape, so here too it was no stranger from Tours or Lüttich, but a true son of the soil, a native of the kingdom, of the shire, of the city itself, bearing the name of the city as his distinctive surname, to whom fell the great work of calling the fabric of the church into a new being, and of putting the finishing stroke to its ecclesiastical constitution. The local chronicler says with truth that there was none such before him and none such after him.[138] Our local history contains earlier and later names which must ever claim our reverence, Beckington, Robert, Gisa himself. But no name of Canon or Dean or Bishop can dwell in the hearts of the men of Wells and Somersetshire like the man of their own shire and their own city who gave that city its greatest and most lasting ornament. He went to his rest and his works followed him; his name and his honour still abideth. Ruthless hands had, even three hundred years back, "monstrously defaced" his marble tomb within his own choir.[139] But he is one of those who need not a marble tomb to enshrine their memory. Benefactors of lesser fame may need their graven figures, their epitaphs of brass or alabaster; of Jocelin of Wells we may truly say—

"Si monumentum requiris, circumspice."

LECTURE III.

I have in my former lectures carried the history both of the fabric and the foundation of the church of Wells to the time of Jocelin, and somewhat later. The thirteenth century, the great creative century of later English history, brought both fabric and foundation to a state, if not of ideal, at least of essential perfection. We now come to two centuries which found much to improve and to enlarge, but which had no need, like their predecessors, to begin afresh from the beginning. Jocelin, we may say, was the last of the line of great innovators for good and for evil, the line formed by Ine and Eadward and Gisa and John de Villulâ and Robert. We now come to what we may call quieter times. One thing to be noticed is that by this time the work of John de Villulâ, the degradation of Wells and exaltation of Bath, has been pretty well reversed. Roger, the successor of Jocelin, may be called the last Bath Bishop. In his election Bath made its last effort. On Jocelin's death the monks of Bath, contrary to the agreement which had been made, ventured to make an election without joining with the Canons of Wells. The story is very characteristic of the reign of Henry the Third. The Pope and the King joined together to do an illegal act to the prejudice of Englishmen. The monks of Bath got their congé d'élire from the King; then they elected in this irregular way; the elect went to the Pope, Innocent the Fourth, who, glad no doubt of such an opportunity, took no heed to the appeal of the Wells Chapter, conferred the Bishoprick on Roger by his own authority, bargaining that the preferment which he vacated, the Precentorship of Salisbury, should be given to his own nephew. The new Bishop was consecrated at Rome, and the temporalities were restored to him by the King.[140] This is a sort of thing which could hardly have happened at any time earlier or later. Both in earlier and in later times we suffered a good deal at the hands of both Kings and Popes, but Henry the Third was the only King who habitually conspired with the Pope against his own people. It really adds to the shamelessness of the whole story that, when Innocent had gained his personal point, when he had established the precedent that the Pope might if he pleased appoint to an English Bishoprick, when he had further established his own kinsman in an English living, he then was ready enough to confirm the former agreement, and to decree that the rights of the Chapter of Wells in the election of the Bishop should be observed for the future.[141] Roger also made up what he could to the Wells Chapter by the grant of various advantages.[142] He did not, however, think good to choose his last resting-place among them. He was the last of our Bishops who was buried at Bath. This marks the time when Wells once more became the real home of the Bishoprick, though Bath still retained its precedence in the episcopal title. And it was doubtless from this time that that comparative neglect of the church of Bath began which ended, as I have already said, in its falling into a state of decay verging on ruin.

During the time that followed I need not go through every Bishop in succession, as several Bishops seem to have had very little to do with the fabric. William Button the First, who was Bishop from 1247 to 1264, was chiefly remarkable for a practice which we certainly have not seen among us for some time past, but of which the traces still linger. In his day all the chief places of the church were filled with the Bishop's own kinsfolk. It was no doubt a most comfortable family party when the Bishop was surrounded by a Dean, Precentor, Treasurer, Archdeacon, and Provost, all of them his own brothers and nephews.[143] Yet mark that, though the fact of being the kinsman of a Bishop does not prove a man to be fit for high preferment, it does not prove him to be unfit. One of the Buttons, William the Second, first Archdeacon and afterwards Bishop from 1267 to 1274, was looked on as the holiest Prelate of his time, and after his death miracles were held to be worked at his tomb.[144] So they were said to be at the tomb of William of March, Bishop from 1293 to 1302.[145] Between these two saintly persons came Robert Burnell, whose place, whether in the history of England or in the history of Wells, is by no means small, but whose name is not specially connected with the fabric or foundation of the cathedral. In general history he appears as the minister of the great Edward; we know him here as the builder of that noble, but alas ruined, hall in the episcopal palace, which may take its place alongside of the great works of Gower at Saint David's.[146] For the next Bishop who claims any minute notice in a sketch of this kind we have to hurry on to the reign of Edward the Third, when a worthy successor of Robert and Jocelin meets us in the fortifier of the palace, the founder of the Vicars' Close, the famous Ralph of Shrewsbury.

Great works had been going on in the cathedral from the beginning of the century, although we do not find the name of any Bishop distinctly connected with them. The fact is that, now that the Chapters had gained so great a degree of corporate independence, the Bishops naturally become less prominent in such works than they were at an earlier time. The church, as designed by Jocelin, had hardly been brought to perfection by the building of the Chapter-house, when a series of works were begun which had the effect of completely transforming the whole eastern part of the church. There is reason to believe that the arrangements of the church of Jocelin were, like its style of architecture, a little old-fashioned. In the thirteenth century the tendency was to enlarge the eastern limbs of churches on a larger scale. The famous rebuilding of the choir of Canterbury late in the twelfth century had most likely set the example. The choir was now commonly placed in the eastern limb, which sometimes swelled to a length as great or greater than that of the nave. Sometimes the choir itself became cruciform by the addition of an eastern transept. Jocelin's church, on the other hand, still kept its choir under the tower, and east of the tower there was only a presbytery of three bays—the present choir—with some small chapels beyond it on the site of the present presbytery. The new scheme involved a complete recasting of all this part of the church, which seems to have been done from one general design which was carried out bit by bit. They began, as usual, at the east end, and with that part of the work which involved the least disturbance of the existing building. A distinct addition was made at the east end, an addition covering new ground which had not hitherto been part of the church. This addition was no other than the present beautiful Lady chapel, with the small transept immediately to the west of it. With the exquisite beauty of the Lady chapel every one is familiar; but every one may not have remarked how distinct it is from the rest of the church. Unlike any other of the component parts of the church, it could stand perfectly well by itself as a detached building. As it is, it gives an apsidal form to the extreme east end of the church; but it is much more than an apse; it is in fact an octagon no less than the Chapter-house, and to this form it owes much of its beauty. As an octagon standing detached at one end and joined to other buildings at the other end, it allowed the apsidal end to be combined with the exquisite slender shafts which open into the space to the west. But it must be remembered that the chapel must at first have stood almost as a detached building, and that, though it was doubtless not intended to remain so, yet the fact of its original isolation clearly had an effect on its form. There is a second transept at Wells, but, instead of dividing the choir from the presbytery, it is a mere appendage to the Lady chapel, and it is therefore far from being the important feature which the eastern transept is at Canterbury and Salisbury. The Lady chapel, with this dependent transept, clearly formed the first instalment of this general reconstruction of the eastern part of the church; and it appears, by an incidental notice in a document quoted by Professor Willis, that it was finished before the year 1326.[147] Then came the reconstruction of the eastern limb itself. This, as I said, involved an utter change in all the arrangements of the church. The eastern limb was to be lengthened by the addition of three bays, or, to speak more accurately, by substituting three bays of the full height of the church for whatever chapels had formerly stood on the site. These three bays were to form the presbytery, while the former presbytery was to be fitted up as the choir; that is to say, the stalls of the Canons were to be placed where they are now, instead of being under the tower. You must all have marked for yourselves the great difference in style between the three bays of Jocelin's work which now form the choir and the three added bays which now form the presbytery. They furnish a good study of the difference between the architecture of the thirteenth and the architecture of the fourteenth century. The two are put side by side, and their several details may be easily compared. And yet the contrast is perhaps not a perfectly fair one. The two pieces of work are rather extreme cases in opposite ways. The earlier work retains something of the character of the style earlier still; as I have said all along, it is not typical English architecture of the thirteenth century, but has something of Romanesque leaven hanging to it. On the other hand, the new work, though exceedingly graceful, is perhaps rather too graceful; it has a refinement and minuteness of detail which is thoroughly in place in a small building like the Lady chapel, but which gives a sort of feeling of weakness when it is transferred to a principal part of the church of the full height of the building. The three elder arches are all masculine vigour; the three newer arches are all feminine elegance; but it strikes me that feminine elegance, thoroughly in its place in the small chapels, is hardly in its place in the presbytery. That the same style can be worked with great vigour and boldness is shown by the nave of York Minster. The next stage, after the addition of the new presbytery, would be the attempt to adapt what had now become the choir to the new work. You all know that Jocelin's triforium and clerestory have vanished, or nearly so, from the three bays of the choir, and that a clerestory and a triforium, if I may call it so, in the same style as the three new bays, have taken its place. I conceive that this work was not absolutely contemporary with the addition of the presbytery. If it had been done exactly at the same time, care would surely have been taken to keep the arcade, triforium, and clerestory exactly on the same level. There could be no motive for doing otherwise. I take the case to be this. The three bays were added, as such additions often were, without any regard to the style or proportion of the original building, beyond keeping the walls themselves at the same height. In an addition, like the presbytery, built in an utterly different style and without any adaptation to the earlier work, it was of no great moment whether the three divisions of the elevation exactly agreed or not with the levels of the older work. But a little later, probably when the roof came to be added, the idea suggested itself of bringing the three older bays into harmony, as far as might be, with the newer ones. The roofing of the presbytery would naturally suggest this change; it would perhaps make it absolutely necessary. For the form of roof chosen for the new work was of a kind very different from the older vaults of the church, and of a kind very singular and unusual. It is in fact a coved roof, such as we are used to in woodwork in this part of England, only with cells cut in it for the clerestory windows.[148] Such a roof could hardly have been added to the three eastern bays without disturbing the original roof of the three western bays; and it could hardly have been, as it was, carried over the three western bays also without disturbing the original triforium and clerestory. When therefore the design of the roof of the presbytery was determined on, the attempt was made to adapt the triforium and clerestory of the choir to those of the new work. But it was now impossible to keep the exact levels, and the result is what we see. You will remark that the upper stages of the choir were not, strictly speaking, rebuilt, but were simply cased and new windows inserted. The latter process, as is to be seen on the outside, was somewhat awkwardly done. The aisles of the choir were also recast at the same time by the addition of a vault and the insertion of windows in the new style.

The choir and presbytery, as we see them now, were thus finished in the course of the first half of the fourteenth century, but there may be some question as to the exact date. Professor Willis quotes an order of Chapter in 1325, by which each Canon was ordered to make his own stall at his own cost. The Professor infers that at that time the new choir was ready for the stalls to be placed in it.[149] But perhaps the words need not absolutely bear that meaning; and one or two things seem to me to look the other way. First of all, the style of the presbytery seems to point to a time somewhat later in the century. The windows have fully advanced, and not very good, Flowing tracery, and in the east window there is a distinct approach to the Perpendicular lines of the next style. The other details too seem to belong to quite the later stage of what is called the Decorated style; they show decided signs of the near approach of the latest form of Gothic, our own local Perpendicular. Then again, our famous Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury, who sat from 1329 to 1363, and of whom I shall have presently to speak more fully, was buried between the steps of the choir and the high altar, having seemingly a detached tomb in the middle of the presbytery.[150] His tomb, which was fenced in by a grating, was afterwards moved to the north side of the presbytery, but, as Bishop Godwin says in his quaint fashion, it "lost his grates by the way."[151] But the original place of Ralph's tomb was a place of special honour; it was the place of a founder; Ralph held the same place in the new choir which Jocelin had held in the old one. The inference seems irresistible, that Ralph stood to the new work in somewhat of the same relation in which Jocelin stood to the old; that he was in some sort its founder; that, at the very least, it was done during his episcopate. I confess that these two considerations seem to me to outweigh the presumption drawn from the order of Chapter about making the stalls, which, after all, might have been made as a precaution before the works in the choir were begun just as well as after they were ended. I believe therefore that the recasting of the eastern limb, the addition of the new presbytery, the change of the old presbytery into a choir, and the architectural changes following on the change of arrangement, belong mainly to the days of Ralph of Shrewsbury.

These changes, you will see, finished the ground-plan of the church itself as it now stands. The church itself has not been extended northwards, southwards, eastwards, or westwards, since the days of Bishop Ralph. Nor, on the other hand, has any part of the church itself been destroyed. Other buildings have been attached to it, and parts of the subordinate buildings have perished, but the ground covered by the church itself is exactly the same now as it was when Ralph was buried before the high altar. As a church then, as a building set apart for divine worship, Saint Andrew's was now quite perfect and needed neither addition nor change. Nave, choir, presbytery, chapels, and the one necessary adjunct of the Chapter-house, were all finished. But besides the completion of the ground-plan, there was another great work to be done before the building could be said to be finished as a work of architecture. Jocelin had not carried his three towers above the height of the roofs; they were mere stumps, and the effect must have been unfinished and unsightly. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this defect was supplied. Indeed, as far as the central tower is concerned, the defect had been supplied already. I have carried on the history of the changes which affected the ground-plan as a continuous narrative, but the raising of the central tower and its consequences belong to the same period. The raising of the tower seems to have formed part of the general plan of recasting the whole part of the church east of the crossing, and it may actually have been the first instalment of the work. I may here perhaps say a few words on the general subject of central towers. As the principal feature of churches of the highest class, the central tower is all but confined to England and Normandy; in other parts of France it is common enough, but, reversing our English rule, it is common in churches of a smaller class, but nearly unknown in the great cathedrals and abbeys. I ought perhaps to say that I am now speaking mainly of Gothic buildings, not of Romanesque. The truest way of putting the case would perhaps be that the central tower, the direct representative of the cupola, is a Romanesque feature, prevalent everywhere in Romanesque times, but which England and Normandy alone retained in large churches of later date. The question of central tower or no central tower resolves itself into this; which is the greater merit in a cathedral or other great church—the highest amount of internal majesty, or the highest perfection of external outline? England and Normandy decided for the external outline; the rest of Western Christendom decided for the internal effect. A great French church, Amiens, Beauvais, Chartres, Rheims, Saint Quentin, is carried up to a height in the inside of which we in England have no notion. But this internal majesty is bought by the utter sacrifice of external outline. The crossing of the four limbs of the church cries in vain for its natural crown in the central lantern. Indeed I am not clear that, if the central tower is left out, it is not better to leave out the transepts also. Certainly no churches ever impressed me more than those of Bourges and Alby, which follow this arrangement. Some of the great churches of France, which are most glorious within, are absolutely shapeless without. The central tower is impossible, and it is hard to adapt even western towers to a body of so great a height, unless their size is something prodigious. On the other hand, several of our English churches, on whose external outline the eye rests with the greatest pleasure, are positively depressing when we go in. Such above all is Lincoln; nothing can surpass the grouping of its three towers, but the effect of the lowness of the choir roof is positively crushing. The only church in England which affects great internal height is that of Westminster, and there, though a central tower was certainly designed, it seems to have been found impossible to carry it up. The general look of Westminster Abbey is therefore much more that of a French than that of an English church. I know of one church only which thoroughly combines both kinds of merit, namely, the church of Saint Ouen at Rouen. There are French churches of greater height; there are English and Norman churches of more perfect outline. But no other church of equal internal height carries a central tower; no other church finished with a central tower can boast of the same internal height. Inferior to Amiens in one point, to Lincoln in another, I place Saint Ouen's, as a whole, above either.

Turn we now to our own church of Wells, a church, I need not say, built on a much smaller scale than any of those of which I have been speaking. It was of course designed, according to the usual English custom, for a central tower, though most likely Jocelin did not think of carrying it up so high as was afterwards done. This was constantly the case; a tower was carried up to a vast height, in what we cannot help calling a reckless way, on piers and arches which had been designed only for a much smaller weight. The natural consequence followed; the supports began to give way under the vast mass which was laid upon them, and, to keep the whole from falling, some means or other of propping, in a way necessarily more or less awkward, had to be resorted to. In many cases the tower actually fell down, as the spire of Chichester fell a few years ago. That it fell at that particular moment seems to have been pure matter of accident. It had always been dangerous; it might just as well have fallen three or four hundred years sooner, or it might just as well have lasted three or four hundred years longer. So at Salisbury, that lovely spire, so graceful to the sight, is constructively an excrescence which ought never to have been placed there, which the piers below it were never designed to support, and which has been kept up to this day only by using various props and devices from time to time. Our own case at Wells was bad enough, though not nearly so bad as at Chichester and Salisbury. The tower was carried up between the years 1318 and 1321,[152] but if any spire was ever added or designed, it was simply one of wood and lead, like those which have vanished from all the three towers of Lincoln. Hence, though the weight which was laid on the piers was much greater than they were able to bear, it was not so great as at Salisbury and Chichester, and the danger and destruction has not been so great as it has been in those two cases. The tower then was raised, and the usual results followed, results which have been graphically described by Professor Willis both at Wells and in other places. The increased height caused the four great piers to sink into the ground. This of course tore away the masonry of the four limbs of the church from their connexion with the piers; the new tower, perhaps as yet hardly brought to perfection, stood, so to speak, on four lame legs, on four supports which were giving way beneath it, and yawning gaps began to appear between the tower arches and the main walls of the church. Thus, within twenty years after its first building, in the years 1337 and 1338,[153] the tower needed to be strengthened by supports which the first builders had never thought of, and the damage which had already been actually done had to be made good. The tower at Wells had to be propped like the towers at Canterbury and Salisbury. The question at once follows as to the way in which the propping was done. Any support of the kind must be more or less unsightly; thrust in as an after-thought, to remedy a constructive defect, it cannot fail to interfere with the original design and the original proportions. No one would have put them there, if he could have helped it; if constructive reasons had not called for the props, they would have been better away. When we compare the way in which this needful, though unpleasant, work was done in the different cases, we shall see a kind of clumsy ingenuity about the Wells work which may call for a certain measure of praise. At Salisbury and Canterbury the prop takes the form of a horizontal screen running across the arches. Such a form is more elegant in itself, and it interferes less with the general appearance of the building. But it is more distinctly an excrescence; it forces itself more strongly on the eye as something stuck in than when the props are worked into the earlier work in the way that they are at Wells. You all know the low arches under the lantern with the inverted arches on the top of them, the great circles in the spandrils, the whole arch turned into a kind of pattern of gigantic Geometrical tracery. It is very heavy, very clumsy; till the eye gets thoroughly familiar with it, it seems very ugly; but it is in every way ingenious. The prop is worked and fitted into the old work in a way in which it is not in the other cases. I can even think it possible that people who do not know the history, and who do not at once see from its details that it is an insertion, may even mistake it for part of the original design. And, granting its position at all, granting the peculiar form which it takes, there is something in the detail or rather lack of detail, something in the great size of the few mouldings and the absence of capitals and shafts, which seems to suit the boldness of the general outline. And I am not sure whether there is not a further propriety in the form chosen. The lines of the inverted arches roughly suggest a Saint Andrew's cross, and it may be that we have here, now that the affairs of Wells were beginning to brighten, a new trophy of success offered to the now triumphant elder brother.[154]