Chapter IX: LATER PERPENDICULAR AND TUDOR WORK.—As we have seen, the great (1)

transformation of the nave was not completed till the episcopate of Waynflete (1447-1486), having occupied not less than a century. After a short breathing-space, Bishop Fox (1500-1528) set to work to transform the presbytery; and I have little doubt that every trace of early work would have been swept away from the transepts as well, had not building operations at Winchester been brought to a stop by the Reformation. As we saw above the piers, arches and clerestory of the presbytery had been rebuilt early in the fourteenth century. These Curvilinear windows having probably got out of repair, he replaced the tracery of the clerestory windows on each side of the presbytery, and also the great clerestory window to the east, by Perpendicular tracery. Five of these windows have original glass. A second task was to rebuild the aisles of the presbytery, which, till now, had remained Norman. A third was to ceil the presbytery with a lierne vault. This is a paltry makeshift in wood. The emblems of the Passion, however, carved on the bosses, are of much interest, and should be inspected from the gallery. Fourthly, Fox built his own chantry. Indeed, most of the chantries were built during the bishops’ lifetimes. Fifthly, he erected Tudor screens of stone between the presbytery and his new aisles. These Gothic screens were plainly wrought by English workmen. Just as plainly, the pretty Renaissance frieze which surmounts them was wrought by workmen imported from Italy. Sixthly, he constructed the Renaissance chests which stand on the screen. Bishop Henry de Blois (1129-1171) had collected from the crypt, perhaps now damp, the bones of saints and kings buried there, and had transferred them, cased in lead, to the presbytery. These sacred relics Fox placed in the present six chests. To this period also belongs the Renaissance woodwork now placed in the south transept.

One more structural change had taken place previously. Bishop Courtenay (1486-1492) had lengthened the Lady chapel and the crypt.

To the early years of the sixteenth century belongs the rich work in Bishop Langton’s chapel, and in the chapels of the south transept, and the pulpit in the choir.

The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester.

As is indicated by the form of dedication of 1218, “The cathedral church of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Peter and of the Holy Confessors Oswald and Wulfstan,” Worcester, is one of the pre-Conquest cathedrals. With Hereford, Leicester, and Lindsey, it was carved out of the immense see of Lichfield, which was coextensive with the kingdom of Mercia, by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury towards the end of the seventh century. Through the influence of Dunstan, who was Bishop of Worcester from 957 to 961, its secular canons were replaced by Benedictine monks by his successor, St. Oswald; and the cathedral was served by monks till the time of Henry VIII., when it was put upon the new foundation and reverted to secular canons. In 1062 St. Wulfstan became bishop. From his “great piety and dovelike simplicity” of character, he had great influence in the English Church, and was allowed by the Conqueror to retain his bishopric. He repaid William by beating off Robert Courthose, Duke of Normandy, when he attacked Worcester, and retained the see till his death, at a great age, in 1095. In the year 1201 miracles commenced at his tomb, “from fifteen to sixteen per diem being cured from every kind of sickness.” In 1203 he was canonised. The shrines of St. Wulfstan and St. Oswald stood on either side of the high altar, like those of St. Dunstan and St. Elfege at Canterbury,—in front of it, not at the back, as at Winchester, St. Albans, and elsewhere.

St. Oswald, late in the tenth century, had rebuilt the cathedral in the style of his day. Of this Anglo-Saxon cathedral nothing is left, unless it be the balusters in the arcade of the slype. This work of the holy Oswald Wulfstan now pulled down, with many searchings of heart. Almost he repented of his purpose. Long he stood silent in the churchyard, deeply groaning. At last he burst into a flood of tears. “We wretches,” said he, “pompously imagining that we do better work, destroy what the saints have wrought.” Many centuries have passed since Wulfstan’s day, and there have been many “restorations” of Worcester cathedral, but there is no record that any one but Wulfstan commenced his work with tears and groans. Our modern “restorers” enter on their work with light hearts. Rather one would venture to suggest that when a restoration is resolved on, dean and chapter and eminent architect should betake themselves in sad procession to the cathedral, intoning penitential psalms with humble and contrite hearts, observing the day as a day of humiliation.

Wulfstan commenced the new cathedral in the new Anglo-Norman style in 1084, and the monks entered four years later. This, of course, does not imply that the whole cathedral was finished; but only so much of the eastern limb as was sufficient for the daily services; and even this probably not carried higher than the triforium, and provided merely with a temporary roof Many fragments of the lower part of the walls and piers of Wulfstan’s church remain above ground, showing that it was coextensive with the present nave and transepts.

Wulfstan’s crypt is almost wholly intact, and enables us to restore the plan of the eastern limb. This consisted of an apse surrounded by an ambulatory, and extended as far as the centre of the present eastern transept. On either side of the choir-aisles apsidal chapels projected eastward from the Norman transept. It is possible that this may explain the curious Norman building on the north side of the choir of Ripon. To simplify the vaulting problem, by making the compartments as small as possible, the crypt was divided into more than a hundred compartments. Owing to the curve of the apse many of the compartments are not square; yet the difficulty of vaulting triangles and trapeziums was successfully overcome, even at this early date. When nearly all the other traditions of Roman methods of construction had been lost, the architects of mediæval Christendom still retained in their crypts the traditions of Roman vaulting. Even the Anglo-Saxon crypt of the village church of Wing has stone vaulting. In the ante-room of the library are preserved the north doors of the cathedral (fourteenth century), under one of the hinges of which are authentic fragments of the skin of some poor wretch flayed alive for sacrilege. The slype, the undercroft of the refectory, and the south-east entrance near it, also belong to Wulfstan’s work.

To the early part of the twelfth century belongs the circular chapter-house. Most monastic chapter-houses were constructed in a rectangular form, which best fitted on to the side of a cloister. But the cathedrals of secular canons, when they had chapter-houses, followed the Worcester precedent, except that they were built polygonal instead of circular. Such was the beauty, however, of the new form, that the monastic houses also, in later times, themselves frequently adopted the polygonal form, as at Westminster, Evesham, Belvoir (Benedictine); Margam and Abbey Dore (Cistercian); Alnwick, Cockersand, Thornton, Carlisle, Bridlington, Bolton (Canons Regular). Usually the polygonal chapter-house had a central pier; but it was dispensed with at York and Southwell. The polygonal chapter-house never appears in France; it is one of the most beautiful features in English Gothic.

In the twelfth century, about 1160, some weakness seems to have shown itself in or near the west front, and the two western bays of the nave were rebuilt in the style of the day. In the importance given to the triforium, in the semicircular arches which occur in triforium and clerestory, and in the use of the chevron ornament, the work is still Romanesque. But pointed arches also occur both in triforium and clerestory; while the ground-story, with the exception of the square abacus, is purely Gothic. The clustered piers, the rich vaulting-shafts, and well-moulded arches, together with the square abacus, all remind one of the work at Wells (1171-1191); the foliage of the capitals, however, is less advanced.

At length the turning-point was reached in the fortunes of Worcester. The body of St. Wulfstan, after lying dormant for more than a century, began to work miracles. Pilgrims came in crowds. It was the age of pilgrimages. Even King John came with offerings; and his body was brought here for burial. With the pilgrims came the need for more accommodation in the eastern limb of the church, and from the pilgrims came the money to provide it. Winchester choir was not long enough to provide for the crowds who resorted to the shrine of St. Swithun, the Healer; Rochester had turned a Scotch baker into St. William of Perth, and had to provide eastward extensions; Ely had to rebuild its presbytery to give room to the votaries who came from all East Anglia to venerate St. Ethelreda; Durham erected the Chapel of the Nine Altars to accommodate those who flocked from all northern England to the shrine of St. Cuthbert; Canterbury crypt—spacious as it was—was too strait for the pilgrims who came from all over Christendom to worship the relics of its murdered archbishop; both Lincoln and St. Alban’s were crowded out, and later in the century were to build eastward in honour of St. Hugh and St. Alban. St. Wulfstan, being the newest saint, was for a time exceedingly popular.

Miracles had commenced at Worcester in 1201; about 1204 the reconstruction of the eastern limb had commenced; and within the next forty years the old Norman choir had disappeared, and the present eastern arm was finished. In plan it is a sort of combination of the earlier eastern extensions at Hereford and Winchester. As at Hereford, a small eastern transept was provided, and a shallow Lady chapel; but the space between the eastern transept and the Lady chapel was three bays each way, as in De Lucy’s work at Winchester. The apsidal chapels of the Norman transept were also pulled down, that of the south transept being replaced by an early Gothic chapel. The efficacy of the saint and the liberality of the pilgrims are shown not only in the scale of the new work, but in the wealth of detail. Especially beautiful was the arcading round the walls. Perhaps the only work to compare with the choir of Worcester is the presbytery of Ely; but in the proportions of its members the Ely elevation has the best of it. The Worcester architect followed the proportions of the two Transitional bays at the far end of the nave; and thus, as compared with Ely, the pier-arcade is too stumpy and the triforium too large. The crypt of Wulfstan’s church, as we have seen, only extended as far as the new eastern transept. To get the work east of the new transept on the same level as the rest, the builders would have had to extend the crypt eastward. Crypts, however, had gone out of fashion with the ritualistic need of them; therefore the builder very sensibly built the eastern part of the choir on the level, not of the western bays of the choir, but of the nave. But he has been credited with æsthetic reasons for the course he adopted. A fine effigy of William de Blois, who commenced this thirteenth-century choir, lies on his tomb in front of the Lady chapel.

What happened to the nave between 1245 and 1317 is not known. There is no work in the cathedral of that date. But between 1317 and 1327 Bishop Cobham commenced the reconstruction of the north side of the nave. It is therefore Curvilinear work. It is not, however, typical work of the period. With that tenderness for older design which one sees at Ely, St. Alban’s, Beverley and Westminster, the architect has suppressed his individual preferences, and designed his work so as to be a nice transition from the twelfth-century bays near the west front to the thirteenth-century bays of the choir; so his piers and his clerestory are a Curvilinear version of the work immediately to the west of him, while his triforium is a repeat of that of the choir. But before the new work on the north side was joined up to the Transitional bays of the nave money seems to have become scarce at Worcester. Pilgrims had begun to desert St. Wulfstan for newer if not holier saints. Hitherto St. Wulfstan had had a monopoly in the West-country. There was not another saint of equal efficacy till you reached Winchester. But in 1287 Bishop Cantilupe began to bring the dead to life at Hereford; and in 1327 Edward II. was buried at Gloucester, and miracles soon followed there also. So Worcester now had rival miracle-workers on either side. The result was that it was found impossible to finish the Curvilinear work, although the pier-arcade was complete all along the north side of the nave, and there only remained to build two bays of the triforium and clerestory.

Building operations seem to have halted for some thirty years; and when they were resumed, _c._ 1360, the completion of the north side and the rebuilding of the south side of the nave were carried out in a balder and more economical way. All this Perpendicular work, including the completion of the new tower, seems to have been completed before the end of the fourteenth century. About the same time the great transept was vaulted and panelled, somewhat after the fashion of the Gloucester work. The transept is a tangle of early Norman, late Norman, Transitional, Curvilinear, and Perpendicular work. Evidently there are breaks and lacunæ in the architectural record of Worcester which we have no materials for filling up. In the fifteenth century the monks seem to have rebuilt their cloister.

A late and interesting bit of design is to be seen in the chantry of Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII., who died in Ludlow castle in 1486. The flat roof, with its fan-vault, skeleton ribs and pendant, is an anticipation of the vaulting of his father’s chapel in Westminster Abbey.

Externally the cathedral is wholly nineteenth-century work: decay of the stone had rendered recasing unavoidable. Within, much of what pretends to be thirteenth-century detail is really work of the nineteenth century, commonplace in design, coarse in execution; some of it by Perkins, some by Scott; everything is shiny and new; nothing has ever been done so bad as the “restoration” of Worcester choir and presbytery.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, York.

I. York Minster has had many predecessors—Romano-British, Saxon, Norman and Transitional cathedrals. From the two first periods nothing survives, unless it be two walls in herring-bone masonry in the crypt. Little remains of Norman work except in the western portion of the crypt. In the centre of the crypt are fine fragments of the Transitional choir of Archbishop Roger, whose work is seen at Ripon. The present cathedral is mainly of three periods. The great transept was designed in the Lancet period; the nave, chapter-house and vestibule were built in the latter part of the Geometrical period; the retro-choir, choir and towers are Perpendicular. But though the work is of three periods, it is practically of only two designs, the choir and retro-choir being only a Perpendicular version of the design of the nave.

II. As at Lichfield and Wells, the canons of York in the end left not a fragment of the earlier work visible above ground. They must have had vast resources at their disposal, in addition to what they received in offerings at the shrine of the local saint, St. William of York. He died in 1154; he was canonised in 1227. It was about this latter date that the rebuilding of the cathedral commenced; and it is not unreasonable to believe that the offerings from his shrine had something to do with the vastness of scale on which the new work was planned; the new transept being not only exceptional both in height and breadth, but also in having aisles on the western as well as on the eastern side—an extravagance unknown in our Gothic cathedrals, except at Wells. It is amusing to find the double-aisled transept in the sub-cathedral of Beverley Minster. There seems to have been an internecine rivalry between the canons of Beverley and York. Both churches have double aisles to the central transepts; both continue in full height to the east end; both have western towers; and though Beverley has no central tower, it has by compensation an aisled eastern transept, where York has but transeptal bays. Moreover, the high vaults of Beverley are of stone. In beauty of proportions and of detail—in everything but scale—Beverley has much the best of it.

The south transept was built 1230-1241, the north transept 1241-1260. The façade of the south transept is confused and commonplace, overloaded with ornament, and cut up too much with windows; that of the north transept—with the Five Sisters—is of noble simplicity. In the south transept is the beautiful monument of Archbishop Gray (1215-1255), the builder also of Ripon west front and Southwell choir. “The view which is presented to the visitor on entering this transept is without doubt the finest in the cathedral. The magnificent spaciousness of the transept, the majesty of the lofty lancets which nearly fill the north gable, the solemn light struggling through their ancient diapered glass, the great central tower with its unrivalled lantern, combine to produce an impression fully sustaining the great reputation of the minster.” In proportions the design of the transept is not a success; the elevation dwindles away upward, the triforium being made far too large at the expense of the clerestory. In itself the triforium is a very fine composition, only there is not room for it, nor is it in harmony either with the pier-arcade below or the clerestory above. It is the largest and most complex triforium in the country; consisting of two pairs of acute lancets below, set under two acute lancet arches, which again are set under an outer arch almost semicircular. This was the last big triforium built in England (save the exceptional one in Ely choir). There had always been a feeling in favour of the diminution of the triforium. Even in the twelfth-century naves of Tewkesbury and Gloucester the triforium had been cut down to very small proportions; in Beverley choir the triforium is greatly attenuated; and very soon afterwards the triforium was to be seen nearing extinction in Exeter choir and in the nave of York itself.

III. At this period (_c._ 1260) we must think of York Minster as possessing the present spacious transept, a Transitional choir of the character of that of Ripon, and a Norman nave. When the work of rebuilding was resumed, the Transitional choir—which must have been spacious and convenient—was spared once more, and the canons proceeded to take down and rebuild the Norman nave, laying the foundation stone in 1291, and beginning at the south-east. The new nave is so exceedingly broad and lofty that it is probable that it was built round and over the top of the old Norman nave. The money came from “indulgences, penances, briefs, bequests, and offerings at the shrine of St. William.” The nave, like the whole minster, is exceedingly impressive in the vastness of its spaces: no building of such dimensions could fail to be impressive. Its proportions, however, are not good. The broadest cathedral nave in England (its span is 45 feet), and the loftiest (it is nearly 100 feet high), it ought to be one of the longest, which it is not: it is even shorter than the transept. Matters are made worse, as in Lincoln nave, by the wide spacing of the piers, the result of which is greatly to reduce the apparent length of the nave. It contains only eight bays. Had it been divided into ten or more bays, it would have looked far longer. It was designed not so much on architectural lines as a glass-house. The canons wanted the greatest possible breadths of stained glass in aisles and clerestory. The error was seen and corrected in the choir, which, though no longer than the nave, has nine bays instead of eight. It is possible that nothing but want of funds prevented the canons from continuing the nave farther westward. The exceptional height and breadth of the nave made it very costly; and the funds plainly ran short, for, though begun in 1291, it was not roofed till 1360. To make matters worse, the canons were building a new chapter-house and vestibule at the same time as the nave: so that funds may well have failed. Nevertheless, at Ely, equally large works were completed before 1360, though they were not commenced till 1321, and were executed with much greater richness of detail than in York.

Another feature which shows that the York canons had started their work without considering whether they would be able to finish it is the omission of a stone vault, which was plainly contemplated at the outset; the pinnacles built for the purpose of weighting the buttresses against the thrusts of a stone vault still existing on the south side. When the north side was built, the canons had abandoned hope of vaulting the nave in stone, and so did not put up big pinnacles. It is well to remember, however, that the exterior of the nave was designed originally to have flying-buttresses and big pinnacles on both sides. In the end, as in Selby choir, a sham vault of wood was put up. One cannot help regretting these shams. It would have been Gothic to recognise honestly that the ceiling was wood, and to design it in wood and not in lithic fashion. Then we might have seen an English Gothic cathedral with such a hammer-beam roof as that of Westminster Hall: very magnificent it would have been.

Side by side with the nave went up the chapter-house. It belongs to the middle of the Geometrical period, _c._ 1300; later in character than its sister at Southwell, and but little earlier than the chapter-house of Wells. Externally, it is provided with buttresses and pinnacles and flying-buttresses and flying bridges to resist the thrusts of a stone vault. Yet no stone vault is there, but another sham vault of wood. The detail of the chapter-house, inside and outside, is of exquisite beauty.

At first the chapter-house was a detached building, but a vestibule was soon added. Parapet-mouldings of the chapter-house may now be seen inside the vestibule.

A very curious and bold specimen of mediæval engineering may now be mentioned. If the western bays of the great transept next to the central tower be examined, it will be seen that in the clerestory and in the triforium these bays are exceedingly narrow, but that in the ground-story the narrow arch corresponding to the narrow bays of the triforium and clerestory has been moved, and a wider arch substituted. The fact is, when the transept was completed, the Norman nave, which was still standing, had a very narrow aisle. Consequently the builders of the transept built a pair of narrow arches, on either side of the central tower, leading from the transept into the Norman aisle. Later on, as we have seen, the Norman nave and aisles were pulled down, and the present nave was built. Its aisles are exceptionally broad. The result was that the piers of the two narrow arches found themselves in the very middle of the new broad aisles of the nave—a most awkward obstruction to processions passing from aisle to transept, or _vice-versa_. So the triforium and clerestory was underpinned, the Lancet piers next to the tower were taken down and then put up again clear of the aisles, and the two arches also on either side of the tower were taken down and rebuilt with the same stones, each in the place of the other. The result is that, counting from the end-walls of the transepts, in the triforium and clerestory there are three of the bays wide and one narrow, while in the ground-story there are two wide, one narrow, and one wide bay. Similar changes took place on the eastern side of the transept when the choir was built.

Later on, when the central tower was built, its great weight sank the piers on which it rests eight inches into the ground, and the adjoining masonry was dislocated. The result was that it was found necessary to rebuild the third piers on both sides of both transepts (counting from the end-walls) as well as the first pier on the western side of the north transept, and at the same time to block up all the four narrow arches with solid masonry (cf. CARLISLE, and EXETER).

IV. The west front of the nave was not finished till the very end of the Curvilinear period, to which period belong also the treasury and sacristy, and also Archbishop Zouch’s chapel, unless the latter was rebuilt _c._ 1396.

V. Immediately that the nave was roofed in, the canons commenced to rebuild the eastern limb. Meanwhile architectural fashions had changed. While the York people were lingering over their Geometrical nave, a whole architectural period had passed away, leaving behind few traces at York except in the west front. When the new choir was commenced in 1361, the Curvilinear style had disappeared before the new Perpendicular style, invented at Gloucester and taken up by Bishop Edingdon at Winchester. The style, however, was still new, and though the Winchester work is purely Perpendicular, the York design still retains in the window tracery reminiscences of the flow of curve that Edingdon and Wykeham had replaced by grilles of horizontal and vertical bars.

Only the eastern part of Archbishop Roger’s Transitional work was at first pulled down, the services going on without interruption in the western bays. The four new eastern bays—designed as a retro-choir, the altar standing originally one bay more to the west than at present—may be distinguished at once externally by the unusual feature of having an external instead of an internal arcade to the clerestory; this gives a fine play of light and shadow.

Then the five western bays were built, two bays as sanctuary, three as choir. Owing to the continuation of the high roofs to the extreme east end of the cathedral, there is little of the picturesqueness of the eastern terminations of Wells and Salisbury, but there is spaciousness, dignity and majesty. Here also the canons had not the money—perhaps not the courage—to put up a high vault of stone. Nave, eastern limb, and transept (the vault of which is of the fifteenth century) were all vaulted in wood. The punishment was long in coming, but it came at last. The wooden vault of the choir, the stalls and the organ, were burnt down by a lunatic in 1829; and that of the nave by a plumber in 1840. The finest feature in the choir is the tall transeptal bays, suggested by and built on the foundations of Archbishop Roger’s flanking towers. The whole eastern limb was finished _c._ 1420. Then came the central tower, 1410-1433; the south-west tower, 1433-1447; the north-west tower, 1465-1474; the organ screen, 1475-1505.

In 1472 the completion of the great works commenced _c._ 1230 was near at hand, and a solemn consecration of the rebuilt cathedral was held. The Norman and Transitional cathedral had disappeared; its successor occupied a century and a half in building.

Externally, York Minster, from its vast dimensions and the fine composition of the towers, is exceedingly impressive. One realises its immensity best from the city walls, where it is seen “reflecting every change in the sky, and rising like a mountain above the parochial churches and houses of the city.” The treatment of the north side of the nave and transept is particularly grave and impressive—largely because of the absence of pinnacles. The west front, in spite of overloaded and confused ornament, is of its type the finest in the country; and to my mind the great west window, in the free and fanciful flow of its intersecting ogee arches, surpasses its only rival, the east window of Carlisle. The central tower relies for effect on mass more than height, and thus contrasts strongly with the central towers of Canterbury and Lincoln. Gloucester tower alone seems to be impressive equally from height and bulk. Shorn of its pinnacles, however, York central tower has not fair play. Very beautiful, too, is the play of light and shade in the double plane of tracery in the eastern clerestory. And very characteristic is the east façade; it may be all wrong, with its strong emphasis of horizontal lines and concealment of the gable, but it has distinction; one never confuses the east end of York with that of any other cathedral—one never forgets it. The weakest point in York is what ought to be the source of the greatest beauty, the window-tracery. Much of it, especially in the choir, is ugly in itself; even that of the great east window and of the windows in the transeptal bays is meagre and thin. But what is worse, this poor tracery is repeated with most wearisome iteration all over the flanks of the cathedral. Window after window of the nave, window after window of the choir, are monotonously alike. The imagination of the York people was singularly limited. What a contrast to the glorious series of windows of Exeter, contemporary with those of York nave!

But it is not from its architecture that York holds its paramount place as an exponent of mediæval art, but because its ancient glass is almost all intact. For a detailed account of it the reader should refer to Mr. Benson’s handbook and to that of Dean Purey-Cust. I will conclude by describing it in Mrs. Van Rensselaer’s words, which are as true as they are eloquent. “Most English cathedrals have been entirely reduced to architectural bone and sinew; they lack decorative warmth and glow, life and colour, and the charm that lies in those myriad accessory things which the lingering faith of Rome has preserved in other lands. All the varied tools and trappings, altars, shrines, and symbolic trophies of the rich Catholic ritual have been banished; much of the furniture is gone, the walls are bare of paint, scores of monuments and chantries have been shattered to bits, thousands of sculptured ornaments and figures have been swept away in dust; a painful cleanliness has replaced the time-stains which give tone to many Continental churches even when no actual colouring exists, and a glare of white light or hideous discord of modern hues fills the enormous windows. Columns and walls and floors are as barren at York as elsewhere; and although many tombs remain, without its glass it would seem even colder and emptier than most of its sisters, for it was built at a time when walls of glass had nearly replaced walls of stone. But it has its glass, and this means much more than that it has a richness of decorative effect which no other English church displays. It means that here alone we can really apprehend the effect of a late Gothic church, even from the architectural point of view. At York we can follow the development of the art of glass-painting through a period of fully four centuries. More delicate, clear and exquisite fields of simple colour can never have been wrought than those which fill the Five Sisters with their sea-green purity. The west window, glazed a century later (1338), is a gorgeous mosaic of ruddy and purple hues, shining in the intricate stone pattern which shows black against the light, like a million amethysts and rubies set in ebony lace. The multicoloured eastern window, and its two mates in the minor transept, seem vast and fair enough for the walls of the New Jerusalem. And wherever we look in the lightly constructed eastern limb, it seems, not as though walls had been pierced for windows, but as though radiant translucent screens—fragile, yet vital and well equal to their task—had been used to build a church, and merely bound together with a network of solid stone. For the moment we feel that nothing is so beautiful as glass. After we have seen the glass of York, we never think again that stained glass was merely an adornment of Gothic architecture. The early Gothic architect demanded for his enlarged windows some filling which, as decoration, would take the place of the wide frescoes of former times, and which, from the constructional point of view, would justify to the eye that partial suppression of walls which he knew to be scientifically right. This filling the early glass-painter gave him; and it was so satisfying from the architectural standpoint, and so beautiful from the decorative, that he was ready and eager to carry on his architectural evolution to the farthest possible extreme. He felt that he could attenuate his constructional framework as far as the laws of gravity would permit, since the glazier stood ready to replace really solid wall-spaces by those which looked solid enough, and were more beautiful than any expanses of stone had ever been. No architect could have built as late Gothic architects did, if only white glass had been at his command. None would have made walls which are literally windows, unless strength of colour had come forward to simulate strength of substance. A Perpendicular church was actually meant to look as the choir of York does look—like a great translucent tabernacle merely ribbed and braced with stone.” The very best glass, however, is of later date than that of the cathedral, and the visitor should round off his education in mediæval glass by inspecting the late Perpendicular glass in which the parish churches of York abound. There is a fine collection of fifteenth-century glass in St. Martin’s church, in Coney Street, near the interesting old Guildhall. Indeed, nowhere in England can stained glass be studied to such advantage as at York.

Victorian Cathedrals.

The following new dioceses have been formed during the present reign: Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Ripon, St. Alban’s, Southwell, Truro, Wakefield. Of these Ripon Minster, St. Alban’s Abbey, and Southwell Minster have been described already. In only one diocese, Truro, has a new cathedral been commenced. The bishops of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Wakefield, are housed in parish churches.

Liverpool Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1880. A fine design for a domical cathedral was prepared by Mr. Emerson in 1885, but the church of St. Peter remains the “provisional cathedral.”

Manchester Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1847. Externally and internally the cathedral is but a magnified parish church. The single western tower, the absence of a central tower, the extraordinary breadth of the interior, the absence of a triforium, the wooden roofs, all stamp it with parochialism. Indeed, the nave and aisles are still the parish church of Manchester, the cathedral proper being confined to the choir and its aisles. Looked at as a parish church and a collegiate church—for from 1426 it was both—it is a magnificent specimen of late English Gothic, dating from 1426 to 1520, when the ambition of architects was to make of their churches “stone-lanterns.” In the same accidental way as Chichester cathedral it has become possessed of picturesque double aisles, by the incorporation on either side of sets of chantries. The south aisle of Dorchester priory church had a similar origin. It has been so thoroughly “renovated” that it is practically a modern church. But it is very impressive. There is no jarring of styles. And the colour effects, externally and internally, are superb. Its woodwork, too—rood-screen, choir-screens, tabernacled stalls, misereres, and roofs—is of great richness and fine design. The whole church in its fortuitous picturesqueness appeals to one much more than the icy regularity of such churches as St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, or Bath Abbey.

Newcastle Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1882. The church is Curvilinear work of the fourteenth century, to which a Perpendicular tower and spire, east window and font were added about 1450. The spire, with its pinnacle supported on converging flying buttresses, is a bold and effective composition. Spires of similar construction occur in the Cross Steeple, Glasgow, and King’s College, Aberdeen, and formerly existed at Linlithgow and Haddington. London has a fine example by Sir Christopher Wren in St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East. There is a fine Jacobean monument, pulpit-shaped, to Henry Maddison, and another to William Hall.

Truro Cathedral.

Truro cathedral, consecrated in 1887, is the first entirely new cathedral designed in England since St. Paul’s. The nave, towers, spires, chapter-house, and cloister are still to build. In dimensions it ranks with Norwich and Wells; in plan it is as complex as any of the greater of our cathedrals. It is intended to have three towers and spires, a south porch, western porches, an aisled nave of nine bays, a central transept with eastern and western aisles and baptistery, a choir, sanctuary, and eastern processional aisle, a square east end, and an unaisled eastern transept, projecting slightly beyond the aisles. Below the choir is a crypt, appropriated to vestries. The crypt is supposed to be in the massive style of the latter years of the twelfth century. The choir is supposed to have been commenced in the early years of the thirteenth century; but since, as in the transepts of Salisbury, the aisle windows are lancets, while those of the clerestory have early plate-tracery, the upper part of the choir is supposed not to have been finished before the middle of the century. So again, in the half-century or so which is supposed to elapse between the commencement and the completion of the cathedral, the design is supposed to have been altered here and there as it passed through different hands; hence the rose-windows, which are unusually plentiful, are all different; the transept ends are differently treated; the arches of the choir are narrow, those of the nave are wide; the latter has coupled bays, the choir has not; the quadripartite vault of the choir becomes more complex in the nave, just as it does at Lincoln. And just as the Lincoln architect dropped down fortuitous chapels at the west end of the nave, so Mr. Pearson purposely forgot to leave room for a baptistery, and tacked it on, in a carefully casual manner, to the south transept. The cloister, too, is to be three-sided and lop-sided, as at Chichester. Internally, the cathedral is picturesquely beautiful, and admirably adapted for the ritual of the Church of England as it was in the thirteenth century. The south side of the choir has the remarkable peculiarity of having three aisles; so has that of Oxford cathedral. But it got its three aisles in a different way from Oxford. Mr. Pearson was instructed to leave standing a piece of genuine mediæval work, late and good—viz., the south aisle of the old church of St. Mary’s. The cathedral was placed to the north of it, just so far off as to barely admit the buttresses supporting the flying-buttresses of the choir vault. These buttresses Mr. Pearson pierced with arches, and, roofing over the space from buttress to buttress, got a narrow intermediate aisle between the choir-aisle to the north and St. Mary’s aisle to the south. Thus on the south side of the choir there are three ranges of piers and three ranges of arches, and the changing vistas and perspectives and mysterious distances are delightful. In this instance the architect was mediæval in spirit as well as in the letter.

Wakefield Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1888. Like Manchester cathedral, the church is thoroughly parochial in appearance, inside and outside. But, archæologically, it is of exceptional interest. It is one of those numerous churches, every stone of the exterior of which is of late Gothic date, but which internally in their arcades reveal the existence of much earlier building epochs. Like many others, though now a vast parallelogram, it was once a cruciform church in plan; and though now it has a western tower, its tower once stood above the crossing. Once its nave was aisleless; then it had narrow aisles; later on, these narrow aisles were replaced by broad ones. The piers and arches of the first aisles were low; afterwards they were heightened or rebuilt. Originally it had no clerestory; this was not added till the fifteenth century. When the central tower fell, the new tower was built ten feet west of the nave, so as not to interfere with the services. When it was finished, it was joined up to the nave by the addition of a new westernmost bay. The Norman chancel and its successor were short, and had neither aisles nor clerestory; the present chancel, the third, is long, having absorbed the space originally covered by the central tower; and it has a clerestory and aisles, and these have absorbed the transepts. Finally, the font, choir-screen, and sounding-board are Jacobean. Wakefield cathedral is a typical embodiment of the history of the Church of England, with a personal identity undestroyed by its many transformations, like the boy’s knife which had a new blade and a new handle, but was still the same old knife.

The Welsh Cathedrals.

Bangor.

The work at Bangor falls into four periods.

I. Originally the cathedral was a small Norman church, probably without aisles, with nave, transept, choir of one bay, and apse. Of this building nothing is visible except a buttress and window on the south side of the choir. It seems to have received great damage in 1247.

II. Between 1267 and 1305 the cathedral was practically rebuilt by Bishop Anian. The Norman apse was demolished, and the choir was extended two bays farther to the east, and ended square. The transepts also were lengthened half a bay each. A chapel was added to the north of the choir; and aisles, either now or not much later, to the nave.

III. In 1402 the cathedral was burnt by Owen Glendower. Between 1500 and 1532 Bishops Dene and Skevynton rebuilt the eastern part of the presbytery, the nave arcade and the clerestory above it, the two windows on the south side of the choir—set high because the lower part of the wall was blocked with the stall-work—the western tower, and the stump of a central tower.

IV. In the restoration of 1866 many fragments of Anian’s cathedral were found in the walls, and were used up by Sir G. G. Scott in rebuilding the transept after what he imagined to be Anian’s design. The choir-chapel was also rebuilt as organ-chamber, library and chapter-house. The aisles also, and the central tower, were almost wholly rebuilt.

Llandaff.

Llandaff, though practically but a suburb of the busy town of Cardiff, still remains picturesquely environed by woods and meadows and hills and the Taff. Externally it adds one more to the endless varieties of English cathedral architecture. No central tower is here, and the position of transepts is inadequately occupied by the chapter-house on the southern side. One unbroken roof, as at Dorchester abbey church, extends for the whole length of the cathedral, the Lady chapel excepted. Its west front, indeed, is cathedral-like, now that a south-west tower and spire, in French Gothic, has been added. Internally, the absence of a triforium gives it a parochial appearance. Indeed, both externally and internally, it has the appearance rather of a magnified parish church than the seat of one of the most ancient bishoprics in the country. Nevertheless, as at Wakefield, and Dorchester, it is quite possible that, though now it is a vast oblong, 200 feet by 70 feet, it was originally a Norman cruciform church. But whether it had originally a central tower, or towers flanking the choir, somewhat after the fashion of those of the old cathedral of Como or those of Exeter, it is impossible to ascertain. The architectural record of Llandaff is incomplete, and the evolution of the ground-plan is a puzzle not to be disentangled. Of Norman work there are two sets. One is to be found in the presbytery: it consists of the east wall and its arch, and of fragments of an arch and window in the south wall. This seems to be the work of Bishop Urban, _c._ 1120. The nave was probably not completed till late in the twelfth century; the only visible remains are the north and south doorways (Transitional).

It would seem that it was determined subsequently to rebuild not the whole eight bays of the nave and choir, but only the interior of them. The walls of the low Norman aisles, with their doorways and windows, were left untouched. But a new set of piers and arches carrying a clerestory were put up in place of the Norman work. It is possible that the nave was not given a triforium, because there still survived low unvaulted Norman aisles on either side of it. All this is excellent Lancet work, done between 1193 and 1229. To this period also belongs the fine west front and the vaulted vestibule to the chapter-house.

Between 1244 and 1265 a little southern transept was built to serve as a chapter-house. Below, it is square, but nevertheless has a central stalk like the octagonal chapter-houses at Salisbury and Westminster. The upper story is octagonal, and has a steep octagonal roof.

Then it was determined to have a large eastern Lady chapel. Not to interfere with the services, this was probably built completely detached from the cathedral, as at Lichfield and elsewhere. When it was finished the Norman apse would be pulled down, and the Lady chapel joined on to the presbytery. Two chapels also were built, one on each side of the westernmost bay of the new Lady chapel. This work was probably done _c._ 1280.

The next step was to continue the northern of these chapels eastward, so as to provide the presbytery with a northern aisle of two bays, and to pierce the north wall of the presbytery with a couple of arches. No doubt they would have liked a couple of arches in the southern wall; but unfortunately the bay of the aisle on the other side of it had been vaulted, and so only one arch was inserted, leaving as much wall as possible to support the vault. Under this arch the sedilia were placed.

Soon afterwards the outer wall of the south aisle of the presbytery was rebuilt. But the presbytery was very dark, having no windows to the east, and being much blocked on the south side by the sedilia and by the mass of Norman walling which it had been necessary to retain. So it received a clerestory and very large aisle-windows. Nor were the nave and choir well lighted. In the clerestory and west front they had only lancet windows; and, if the low Norman aisles still remained, they could contain but very diminutive windows. There was nothing for it but to rebuild the whole of the eight bays of each aisle. This rebuilding probably went on between 1315 and 1360, for the windows have ogee dripstones and ogee patterns in the tracery. When the aisles had been rebuilt the whole cathedral had been reconstructed, with the exception of two Norman doorways and two or three Norman arches in the presbytery. To us it may seem a topsy-turvy mode of procedure to first rebuild the inside—the pier-arcade and clerestory—of a church, and the outside walls afterwards; but it is the mode of procedure adopted in scores of parish churches, even the humblest. One constantly finds the aisles, as at Wakefield, of later date than the pier-arcade, and that pier-arcade a rebuilding of something older.

After this great reconstruction, first of the interior, then of the exterior, there remained only to complete the west front. The south-west tower seems to have become ruinous or to have collapsed, and the materials of it helped to build a new north-west tower erected at the cost of Jasper Tudor, uncle of Henry VII. Then came the Reformation; and the south-west tower was not rebuilt till the present century. Since 1843 nave, choir, and presbytery have been almost wholly rebuilt.

St. Asaph.

This is the smallest of the Welsh cathedrals, and consists of an aisled nave of five bays, an aisleless transept, a central tower, and a chancel. The chancel was built by Sir G. G. Scott in 1868; the rest between 1284 and 1352. The arcade and clerestory of the nave are exceptional in character. The piers have no capitals; so that the mouldings run uninterruptedly round the arch; they consist simply of chamfers with a wave moulding. These continuous mouldings are not uncommon in late work—_e.g._, in Antwerp cathedral; but are seldom found in early Gothic, though a thirteenth-century example occurs in the vestibule of Chester chapter house. The clerestory windows are square, but cusped. The central tower is massive and effective. The cathedral is finely situated, on elevated ground, above the beautiful valley of the Clwyd; and may be seen from the London and Holyhead railway. There are good stalls (1471-1495), and an interesting effigy of a bishop (_c._ 1300).

St. David’s.

Far away in the extreme west of Pembrokeshire, sixteen miles from the nearest railway station, Haverfordwest, is one of the most interesting cathedrals in the British Isles. Dedicated to the great patron saint of Wales, it is as complex in plan as Winchester or St. Alban’s, and abounds in lovely detail of the Transitional and Curvilinear periods.

The earliest work belongs to the episcopate of Peter de Leia (1176-1198), and comprises parts of the presbytery, the western walls of the transept, the western piers of the tower, and the whole of the nave except the outer portion of the west front (Sir G. G. Scott), and the south porch and the exterior of the south aisle (1328-1347). Though built quite late in the twelfth century, when Gothic architecture had got good hold in Ripon, Canterbury, and Wells, St. David’s—partly perhaps from its remote situation—is still sternly Romanesque. The pier-arcade is low, the piers massive and squat; their arches are semicircular, as also the windows of the clerestory; there is a profusion of Norman zigzag ornament. On the other hand, pointed arches appear in the triforium, the bases have the water-holding hollow, and there are all sorts of beautiful varieties of Transitional capitals—from the early cushion-capitals, much subdivided, in the pier-arcade of the choir, to the later foliated capitals, of great beauty and diversity of design, which abound in the nave. The triforium and clerestory, formed into a single member by a containing-arch of zigzag, are a charming anticipation of the design of Southwell choir.