The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells, by Percy Dearmer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See Author: Percy Dearmer Release Date: May 7, 2010 [EBook #32280] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BELL'S CATHEDRALS *** Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David Cortesi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY THE REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899 First Published October 1898 Second Edition revised October 1899 W.H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:—(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE, E.F. STRANGE, Editors of the Series AUTHOR'S PREFACE The writer about cathedrals nowadays is one who, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed, is indebted for most that he says to the patient labours of other and wiser men. Nowhere does one feel this more than at Wells. The admirable Somerset Archæological Society has gone on accumulating information about the cathedral for more years than the present writer has lived. Professor Freeman produced twenty-eight years ago, in his "History of the Cathedral Church of Wells," a little book which has since been a model for all works of the kind, and of which one can still say that no one can understand all that is contained in the word "cathedral" unless he has read it. Yet since that book was written much fresh material has been discovered, and the theories then held as to the building of the cathedral have been in great measure disproved. To Canon C.M. Church, in his "Chapters in the Early History of Wells," and his papers read before the Somerset Society, we are indebted for most valuable statements of the new historical discoveries, and to his untiring kindness I am myself beholden to a greater extent than I can express. Wells so abounds in interesting detail, that the exigencies of space have made it necessary to curtail the last chapter, which contains the history of the diocese; a good deal of interesting matter has thus been cut from my original MS. of this chapter, and many bishops have been dismissed more summarily than they deserve. The need of dealing properly with the cathedral itself must be my apology for the baldness of this last chapter as it now stands. Those who desire a further acquaintance with the history of the diocese cannot do better than consult Mr Hunt's "Bath and Wells," in the excellent Diocesan Histories series of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. To many other writers on the Cathedral Church of Wells, acknowledgments and references will be found scattered throughout the present volume. I must also express my thanks to Mr Philips, and Messrs Dawkes & Partridge of Wells, for permission to reproduce their photographs, and to Mr W. Heywood and Mr H.P. Clifford for their drawings. P.D. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.—History of the Church 3 CHAPTER II.—Exterior 20 West Front 21 Statuary, Central Doorway, the Tiers 30 Western Towers 44 Central Tower 47 North Porch 47 North Transept 51 Walls, Parapet 52 Chain Gate 52 Chapter-House 54 From the South-East 55 Cloister 58 Library 63 Museum 64 Vicar's Close 66 Bishop's Palace, Great Hall, Barn 67 Deanery, Archdeaconry, etc., St. Cuthbert's 70 CHAPTER III.—Interior 73 Nave, etc. 77 Capitals 79 Glass 84 Bubwith's Chapel 85 Sugar's Chapel 86 Pulpit, Lectern 87 Transepts 89 Capitals 89 Font, Monuments 95 Transepts Chapels—St. Martin, St. Calixtus, St. David, Holy Cross 98 Clock 105 Inverted Arches 107 Tower, Screen, Organ 110 Choir 113 Misericords, Glass 120 Choir Aisles, Monuments 123 Eastern Transepts, Monuments 124 Procession Path 128 Glass in Choir Aisles and Chapels 130 Lady Chapel, Glass 133 Chapter-House Staircase 134 Chapter-House 137 Undercroft 141 CHAPTER IV.—History of the Diocese and Foundation 147 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Wells Cathedral from St. Andrew's Spring Frontispiece Arms of the See Title The Cathedral from the South-East 2 The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century 15 South Aisle of Nave 19 West Front—Bishop of Aethelhelm 22 The West Front 23 Ornaments in the West Front 28, 29 West Front—Christina 31 The Central Tower from the South-East 45 The North Porch 49 The Bishop's Eye 53 Doorway, South-East of Cloister 58 East Walk of Cloister 59 The Chain Gate, Entrance to Close, 1824 65 The Bishop's Palace 68 The Nave 75 A Capital—The Fruit-stealer's Punishment 79 A Capital—Toothache 81 Specimens of Capitals 82, 83, 84, 148, 149 View across Nave, showing Sugar's and Bubwith's Chapels 85 Sugar's Chapel—The Lectern and Pulpit 88 Section of North Transept, and Elevation of South Transept 90 Capitals in Transept 92 The South Transept, from North Side of Nave 93 The Font 95 The Annunciation—Husse's Tomb 101 Priest in Surplice—Husse's Tomb 102 The East End in 1823 103 The Inverted Arches 109 Choir, looking West 111 Choir, looking East 115 Procession Path and Lady Chapel 129 Steps Of Chapter-house Vestibule And Passage Over Chain Gate 135 Chapter-House—Doorway 138 Chapter-House—Interior 139 Chapter-House—Vault 141 Chapter-House—Undercroft 142, 143 Section of Chapter-House 145 PLAN 160 WELLS CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CHURCH "The Gothic Cathedral," wrote Froude, an author who held no brief for the Gothic period, "is perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificent creation which the mind of man has as yet thrown out." The Cathedral Church of Wells, wrote Froude's predecessor in the same historical chair, is "the best example to be found in the whole world of a secular church, with its subordinate buildings." "There is no other place," Professor Freeman went on to say, "where you can see so many of the ancient buildings still standing, and still put to their own use." And surely there is no place better fitted to be their home than this beautiful old city of Wells, set in the midst of the fair western country, the land of Avalon and Camelot, of Athelney and Wedmore. This unique group of buildings does not, however, take us back earlier than the close of the Norman period. Of what existed before, we have but scant evidence. Tradition says that King Ina had, about the year 705, founded at Wells a college of secular priests, and therefore a church of some sort. And when King Eadward the Elder, taking advantage of the peace which his father Alfred had secured, fixed, in 909, the new Somersetshire see by the fountain of St. Andrew at Wells, he seems to have chosen that little city because there already existed therein a church, large enough to serve as a cathedral in those times, and tended already by a body of secular canons. Now that the ancient church of St. Andrew was raised to this new dignity, it was probably in the tenth century rebuilt in stone, with plain round-headed windows, and perhaps a small unbuttressed tower to hold the bells; for, when Giso became bishop in the next century (1061- 1088), he erected a whole cluster of quasi-conventual buildings, but we are not told that he found it necessary to rebuild the church, although he complained that he found it mean and its revenues small. Indeed, the fact that Giso was buried under an arch in the wall on the north side of the high altar, as his predecessor Duduc had been buried on the south side, shows that he had not rebuilt the church. On Giso's death, John de Villula at once swept away his buildings, and set up a bishop's house on their site. John, however, made Bath his cathedral church, and suffered the church of Wells to fall into the decay from which it was rescued by the first "Maker of Wells," Bishop Robert of Lewes. The active episcopate of Robert of Lewes (1136-66) was as important an era in the history of the church as in that of the chapter. In spite of the anarchy of Stephen's reign, Robert set steadily to work; and, while the neighbouring barons were battering each other's castles, the bishop reared the first great cathedral church of Wells. How much of the old Saxon building he left we cannot tell; but it was in a ruinous condition, and he may have pulled it completely down, or he may have left one part for later builders to deal with. In 1148 his new Norman church was consecrated, a massive round-arched building, its nave perhaps as large as the present one, and its choir under the tower with a small presbytery beyond. This date may be taken as the beginning of the present cathedral; for all the succeeding reconstructions followed the lines of Bishop Robert's church. Yet the Norman work has disappeared almost as completely as the Saxon, and the font is the only object which can be claimed as undoubtedly Romanesque. Of distinctly Norman mouldings there are none in the church, and only a few fragments in other places. Seldom has one of those strong Norman buildings so utterly vanished from sight. But many stones dressed in the Norman fashion can still 3 4 be traced by the expert in the eastern part of the church (p. 74), having been no doubt used up again by the later workmen; and there may be masses of undisturbed masonry hidden in the walls. Bishop Robert, as we know from one of his charters, did something also for the order of his church. Mammon had gradually encroached upon the sacred precincts, and the markets had come to be held in the "vestibule," and in the church itself; the busy hum of the buyers and sellers marred the quiet of God's house, and disturbed the people at their devotions. Strong measures were necessary, and the bishop ordered the market to be held at some distance from the church, while at the same time, as an act of grace, he remitted the tolls that were due to him as lord of the manor. Thus did he lay the foundation of the liberties of Wells city while securing the sanctity of Wells Cathedral. According to Bishop Godwin (1616), and the anonymous fifteenth century MSS., called in Wharton's Anglia Sacra the "Canon of Wells," there was a blank in the history of the church between Bishop Robert, who consecrated the Norman building in 1148, and Bishop Jocelin, whose episcopate lasted from 1206 to 1242. Godwin, who exaggerated a passage from the "Canon of Wells" (which that writer had produced by exaggerating a single sentence of a preamble of Jocelin, p. 7), declared that Jocelin found the church "as ready to fall," and "pulled down the greatest part of it, to witte, the west ende, and built it anew from the very foundation." This became the accepted view. But the documents recently brought to light through the labours of those who unearthed and deciphered the MSS. in possession of the chapter, have proved that the energetic Bishop Reginald, so far from letting the church go into ruin during his episcopate (1174-1191), did in reality rebuild it himself. Much travelled, conversant with all kinds of churches and cities in an age of great building operations, he was not the sort of man to neglect his cathedral. And, as a matter of fact, he is proved to have begun the present church by a charter recently found, which is of a date prior to 1180, and therefore belongs to the early years of his episcopate. In this important document, recognising his duty to provide "that the honour due to God should not be tarnished by the squalor of His house," he arranges in full chapter for a munificent grant in support of the fabric, until the work be finished . Another charter of Reginald's time, which conveys a private gift to the church, alludes to "the admirable structure of the rising church," thus testifying to the successful progress of the bishop's plan during his own lifetime. The part which he built, there can be little doubt, included the three western bays of the choir (which then formed the presbytery), the transepts, north porch, and the eastern bays of the nave. That is to say, on entering the church one is looking upon Reginald's work, and not Jocelin's; for, although the rest of the nave was completed by Jocelin, it was done in accordance with Reginald's original plan. It is of great importance to remember this fact, since until recently the nave, with the other parts just mentioned, was attributed by Professor Willis, Professor Freeman, and most authorities to Jocelin. Willis, indeed, bowed to what was then thought to be documentary evidence against his own judgment; for he declared the work to be of a style much earlier than that of Jocelin's time (p. 73). Now we know almost to a certainty that the bulk of the cathedral belongs neither to the late Norman period of Robert, nor to the Early English of Jocelin, but to the period just between the two, that of Reginald de Bohun. During the episcopate of Reginald's immediate successor Savaric (1192-1205), something further may have been done to the nave. But there was small opportunity for church building during this bishop's wandering and litigious life; and all we know for certain is that, owing no doubt to the civil war, the intolerable exactions of papal legates, and the quarrel with Glastonbury, the cathedral church of Wells had fallen into a state of dilapidation when Jocelin became bishop in 1206; and that it remained in this condition till King John was dead: for Jocelin was an exile abroad, the property of the see was confiscated, and its income paid yearly into the king's purse. From the year 1218, when the land was again at peace, and a profitable arrangement had been come to with the monks of Glastonbury, Jocelin devoted himself to the fabric and chapter of Wells, up to the year of his death in 1242. Grants of money and of timber, which are extant, show that by 1220 the work was recommenced, and that it was in progress in 1225. By 1239 the church was sufficiently advanced to be dedicated. Jocelin and his brother Hugh (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) were natives of the city they loved so well. They had both lived through Reginald's episcopate—Jocelin as canon and Hugh as archdeacon of Wells. After, when they rose to high positions as judges, and became honourably rich, Hugh, who built much in Lincoln Cathedral, gave largely of his great wealth to Jocelin for Wells, and Jocelin himself spent all that he had upon the place where he had been brought up from infancy. Thus Jocelin was in a real sense a "maker of Wells." But he was not the only maker, for he must share the honour with two other master builders—Robert, whose work is entirely gone, and Reginald, whose work remains. He did not, as Godwin led us to suppose, pull down and rebuild the whole church. But he loyally carried on the work of his predecessor, and he executed the great work which has been always rightly attributed to him, the present west front; this he joined to Reginald's unfinished nave by building the three western bays in strict accordance with the earlier style. The front belongs to the fully-developed Early English style in which Salisbury is built, agreeing exactly with the date of the consecration of the church by Jocelin in 1239,—as was pointed out by Professor Willis, who was puzzled by the great difference in its style from that of the nave, which was then thought to belong to the same period. We know that Jocelin was a frequent visitor to Salisbury while Bishop Poore was building it; and thus all the lines of evidence combine to support the unshaken tradition that Jocelin was the author of the west front. A month before his death in 1242, Jocelin de Wells put forth a charter for the increased endowment of the cathedral 5 1 6 7 staff; and it was because of a few chance words in the preamble that he came to be credited with the construction of the whole. Having found the church in danger of ruin, runs the passage, by reason of its age aedificare coepimus et ampliare—in qua adeo profecimus—quod ipsam consecravimus. This, which need mean nothing more than extensive building operations, is the sole foundation for the tradition that Jocelin pulled down the old church and built a new one. The condition of the church at the end of the thirteenth century is thus described by Professor Freeman : "By the end of the thirteenth century we may look upon 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 to 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 dreamt of. Still, the church, alike in its fabric and its constitution, may be looked on as having by this time been brought to perfection ... The nave, recast in forms of art such as Ina 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." "The eastern ending of the presbytery was," Mr Freeman proceeds, "rich with the best detail of the thirteenth century, as can be learnt from the fragments built up in the chapel of the Vicars' Close, and lying about in the undercroft of the chapter-house, which are in the full Early English style of the west front. The existing choir aisle walls prove that a procession-path ran behind the high altar, with most likely a chapel beyond it." "The thirteenth century," he concludes, "had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develop 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." The choir, however, was not so cramped as Mr Freeman thought, for it included one bay of the nave, as we now know from a notice of the making of Haselshaw's tomb, which was dug at the entrance to the choir; and, indeed, the marks where the screen was fixed are still visible on the piers at this point. From the top of the screen the great rood looked down the nave, and on each side of the doorway stood an altar, that on the north dedicated to Our Lady, that on the south to St. Andrew. The aisles of the choir were also screened off from the nave, and outside their gates were two more altars—St. Saviour's on the north, and St. Edmund's on the south. Thus the nave, where men were ever coming and going, walking and talking, and in laxer times buying and selling as well, was quite shut off from the more sacred places. Yet here, too, were altars and shrines, and here came the processions on Sundays and holidays. Within the choir the chapter said their offices, the dean and precentor facing east in their returned stalls, and the other dignitaries in their allotted places, with the junior canons, vicars, and those in minor orders below them, and the boys on the lowest forms of all. Just beyond these stalls was the bishop's throne; and east of the tower the presbytery stood open, with the tombs of the early bishops, on either side, under the arches. The rest of the space enclosed within the screen belonged more especially to the clergy; the north transept was probably used as a chapter-house, when the undercroft was yet unfinished, and its western aisle was used as the chapter library. The chamber leading to the undercroft was the vestry, and the stout walls of the octagon, when it was finished, protected the vestments and treasures of the cathedral. It is worth while to call to mind the kind of service for which the church was built, with its aisles and chapels and screen. The usual Sunday procession started from the north door of the presbytery, preceded by two thurifers with censers, went round behind the presbytery, the priest in his cope asperging the altars on his way, then down the south choir aisle, and through the south transept into the cloister. In the cloister-cemetery, the priest, with his ministers, said the prayers for the dead, and then rejoined the procession in the cloister Lady Chapel, where the first station was made. Thence the procession returned to the great rood in the nave, and there made the second station, the bidding-prayer being given out to the people from the rood-screen, after which it re-entered the choir. But on special occasions the ritual was increased; as, for instance, at the procession of palms on Palm Sunday, or the Corpus Christi Day procession, which is thus described by Mr J.D. Chambers: "The procession, some time before the mass, should assemble in order at the step of the Choir (i.e. in the Presbytery), a priest in Albe and silk Cope carrying the Corpus Christi in a tabernacle or feretory under a canopy of silk raised over him and it on four staves, borne by four clerks in Albes and Tunicles, with lighted tapers. It should go out of the Choir down the Nave, and out at the West Door of the Church, round the Church and Cloisters as on Ascension Day"—i.e. round the outside of the whole church, beginning with the north side and returning round the east end, and through the cloister to the west door again, and thus back into 2 8 9 10 3 the nave. The colours of the vestments at Wells followed in the main the custom of the neighbouring diocese of Sarum, but with some local variations, such as are set down in the Consuetudinary which Archbishop Laud had copied from the late thirteenth-century MS. Indigo and white were used on St. John's Day and on the Dedication Festival; in Advent, indigo; at Passiontide, red, and on Palm Sunday, "except one cope of black for the part of Caiaphas" at the singing of the Passion; red, too, on Maunday Thursday, but with a banner of white. Red was also used for Easter, Pentecost, and throughout the Sundays after Trinity; while for Virgin Martyrs, red was mixed with white. This mixture of colours was probably effected by the cantors wearing different coloured copes; thus for confessors saffron (croceus) was mixed with green, sicut honestius et magis proprie possunt adaptari festo; but St. Julian and some others had all saffron, while a few, like St. Benedict, had all indigo. White is comparatively little in evidence, but it was used at Christmas, and for commemorations of the Blessed Virgin. Black was used for the commemoration of the dead. To this vision of stately pomp, and changing colour, we must add in our mind's eye the many chapels with their woven tapestries of flowers and beasts and birds, their rich ornaments and sacred associations; the majestic rood upon the screen, and the rich altars that stood before it; the almost constant succession of services that went on behind it, where the canons (each with his own book and candle) and their vicars sat, and the pyx hung over the high altar; the sound of a little bell from one of the chapels where mass was being said, the glimmer of a hanging lamp, the gleam of a silver image, the shrines here and there, with their frequent visitors; and, as years went on, the subdued light from the gorgeous painted windows (that over the high altar glowed then from east to west without obstructing organ), the frescoes on some of the walls, the green and red and gold of the later monuments; and over all the trail of incense and the sound of prayer. After Jocelin's death the works came to a standstill, for the sufficient reason that the chapter was "overburdened with an intolerable debt," owing to the enormous expense of the litigation with Bath Abbey over Bishop Roger's election (p. 153). This, however, was the last attempt of the rival cathedral of St. Peter; and the debt, which was at its worst in 1248 (the year after Roger's death), was bravely met by a contribution of a fifth of the income of each prebend, as well as by gifts and obits; so that towards the end of William Bytton's episcopate the debt was nearly cleared, and in 1263 Bytton made over the sequestrations of vacant benefices to the fabric fund. In 1248 an earthquake had done much damage, shaking down the tholus (either the vault, or the stone capping) of the central tower, as we learn from Matthew Paris (Hist. Angl. iii. 42). Accordingly, in 1263, preparations were made for further building; and in 1286 we hear of a chapter meeting, summoned by Dean Thomas Bytton, whereat the canons bind themselves to give one-tenth of their prebends for five years, "to the finishing of the works now a long time begun (jam diu incepta), and to repair what needed reparation in the old works." The reparation here mentioned refers in all probability to the roof and piers of the transepts and eastern part of nave, damaged by the fall of the tholus. The famous western capitals of the transepts, with their frequent representations of the miseries of toothache, must refer to the second William Bytton, who had died in 1274, and whose tomb became famous for its dental cures (p. 125). No doubt, the offerings at the shrine of this local saint helped considerably to swell the funds for the building operations. The works "now a long time begun" can hardly be anything else than the chapter-house undercroft, the outer walls of which may have been built some forty years before. Professor Willis, who had access to the document, decided, on architectural evidence, that the undercroft must have been already completed at this time, and his view may be safely accepted (Arch. Inst., "Bristol" vol., p. 28). The passage to the undercroft would seem to be the first result of the chapter's undertaking; its ornament is of a more advanced type than that of the undercroft itself, and one of its carved heads is swollen as by the toothache, and tied in a handkerchief. There can be little or no doubt that the "finishing" of the old works included also the building of the chapter-house staircase, and, when that was finished, the raising of the chapter-house itself (the nova structura of the old documents) upon the undercroft. The full Decorated style of the chapter-house is separated by a considerable interval from the late Early English of the undercroft, while that of the staircase, which is geometrical Decorated of a character not very far removed from Early English, must have been built before the chapter-house itself was begun. The self-sacrificing spirit of the chapter was supplemented by the offerings which flowed in from the growing practice of endowing altars for requiem services, as well as from the shrine of St. William Bytton; and the building activity continued for the next fifty years till the church had been brought, in all save its western towers, to its final state of perfection. After the staircase to the chapter-house had been completed, about the year 1292, the walls of the chapter- house itself were built, probably by Bishop William de Marchia (1293-1302) who seems to have covered it in with a temporary roof. Dean John de Godelee (1306-1333) was the last great builder of the church of Wells. The power of the bishop in his own church is already declining, as that of the chapter rises, and it is the dean now who organises the works. In 1315 the central tower was raised, and by 1321 it was being roofed in. By 1319 the chapter-house was finished; Godelee, with William Joy, the master-mason, had probably worked out the old drawings and built the windows and vaulted roof. Next the Lady Chapel must have been begun, for by 1326 it was finished. Somewhere about this time the parapet, which adds so much to the external beauty of the church, was also made. But the raising of the central tower had, ere this, brought disaster. In 1321 there was a grant from the clergy of the 11 12 13 Deanery of Taunton in aid of the roofing of the "new campanile"; in 1338 a convocation was summoned because the church of Wells was so totaliter confracte et enormiter deformate that the instant and united action of its members was required to save it (cf. Willis in Som. Proc. 1863). The adding of the Decorated portion to the tower increased the weight so much that the four great piers sank into the ground, dragging the masonry with them and causing rents to appear at the apex of the arches. The situation was most dangerous: it was met by the careful repairing of the torn masonry and the construction of those inverted arches which are so familiar a feature of the church. Yet the work proceeded very rapidly under a great bishop, who for the time eclipsed the rising power of the deans. Ralph of Shrewsbury (1329-63) carried on the work of Dean Godelee, and in the early years of his episcopate entirely reconstructed the choir. The scheme seems to have been contemplated as early as 1325; for in that year each dignitary arranged to pay for his own stall in the refitting of the choir, because the old stalls had become "ruinous and misshapen." In any case, it was Ralph who added the three new bays of the presbytery which are so curiously joined to the old presbytery of Reginald, and with it form the present eastern limb of the church. He then constructed the beautiful retro- choir which connects the presbytery with the Lady Chapel. The vaulting of the choir and the construction of the great east window would appear to have been undertaken at a later period of his episcopate; for the ceiling is of a more advanced style than the lower work, and the tracery of the window is half Perpendicular. When Bishop Ralph died, in 1363, he was buried in the place of honour in front of the high altar, as the founder of the choir which he had finished. The finishing touches were given to the cathedral when Bishop Harewell (ob. 1386) gave two-thirds of the cost of the south-western or Harewell Tower, and when the executors of Bishop Bubwith (ob. 1424) finished the companion tower on the north-west. The other efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century builders were given to those subordinate buildings which are the peculiar glory of Wells. Even so magnificent a prelate as Beckington did nothing to the actual fabric of the Cathedral (unless his tomb be so considered), for the simple reason that there was really nothing for him to do. Ralph of Shrewsbury had, besides his work in the church, finished the palace (which Jocelin had begun and Burnell had enriched with the hall and chapel) by the moat, walls, and gate-house. He had also begun the Vicars' Close, of which the chapel was built by Bubwith, but the executors of Beckington recast it in its present form. After Beckington had employed his energies in erecting the beautiful gateways with which his name is always associated, Dean Gunthorpe (ob. 1498) built the deanery. The following interesting eulogy of Bishop Beckington and his church was written in the form of a Latin dialogue by Chaundler, who was Chancellor of Wells in 1454:— "You might more properly call it a city than a town, as you would yourself understand more clearly than day if you could behold all its intrinsic splendour and beauty. For that most lovely church which we see at a distance, dedicated to the most blessed Apostle of the Almighty God, St. Andrew, contains the episcopal chair of the worthy Bishop. Adjoining it is the vast palace, adorned with wonderful splendour, girt on all sides by flowing waters, crowned by a delectable succession of walls and turrets, in which the most worthy and learned Bishop Thomas, the first of that name, bears rule. He has indeed at his own proper pains and charges conferred such a splendour on this city, as well by strongly fortifying the church with gates and towers and walls, as by constructing on the grandest scale the palace in which he resides and the other surrounding buildings, that he deserves to be called, not the founder merely, but rather the splendour and ornament of the church." The Reformation period left the cathedral cold and barren within, but interfered little with its fabric; the only serious piece of destruction (p. 57) being that of the magnificent Lady Chapel by the Cloister, in 1552, by Sir John Gates, "a greate puritan, Episcopacie's common Enemy." In other respects it was what Freeman calls a period of systematic picking and stealing; as witness this passage from Nathaniel Chyles:—"The Great Duke of Somersett, Unkle to Edward the Sixt (whose title proved very fatall to this place and Bishopwrick) was not only contented to get most of the mannours Lands and possessions belonging to this Bishopwrick settled upon him and his posteritie, but at last even the palace itselfe also." But the palace and some of the property were recovered after Somerset's execution. The bishop's palace suffered the ruin of Burnell's magnificent hall through the prevalent lust for gain. Sir John Harrington writes in terms of pardonable indignation:—"I speak now only of the spoil made under this Bishop [Barlow]; scarce were five years past after Bath's ruins, but as fast went the axes and hammers to work at Wells. The goodly hall covered with lead ... was uncovered, and now this roof reaches to the sky. The Chapel of Our Lady, late repaired by Stillington, a place of reverence and antiquity, was likewise defaced, and such was their thirst after lead (I would they had drunk it scalding) that they took the dead bodies of bishops out of their leaden coffins, and cast abroad the carcases scarce thoroughly putrified." During the Commonwealth the choir was closed, and Dr Cornelius Burges, who was appointed "Preacher" at the cathedral, bought the bishop's palace and deanery for his private property. He, of course, despoiled the palace, "pulling off not only the Lead thereoff," says Chyles, "but taking away also the Timber, and making what money he could of them, and what remained unsold he removed to the Deanery improving that out of the Ruins of the palace, leaving only bare Walls." At the Restoration Burges was ejected, after a good deal of litigation, and Bishop Piers returned to the 14 15 4 ruins of his palace. Burges' sermons had never been popular with the people of Wells, who annoyed him by walking up and down the cloisters "all sermon time." When the trial for his ejectment came on he published his "Case," in which he justified his buying Church lands by alleging that he had lent the State £3490, and, having a wife and ten children to provide for, he took such land, etc. as the only means of repayment. Five of the canons' houses were also obtained from Cromwell's Commissioners by the Corporation of Wells, one or two of which were pulled down and sold for old stone. At the Restoration, the canons were at great expense to restore the church from the ruinous condition into which it had fallen in Puritan times, and they were liberally helped in their extremity by the clergy and laity of the diocese. Says Chyles (c. 1680): "Since his Majestie's and Churche's happy and blessed Restoration, what betweene the Bishopp, the Deane, and Deane and Chapter, our Church and Quire is once more in a beautifull and comely habitt (which God continue) such as neither the Church of Rome has reason to upbraid us with a slovenly or clownish Service, nor the Puritan and Nonconformist with a gaudy or Superstitious. The good old Bishopp [W. Piers], who weather'd out that Storme, and was restored to what was his Owne, gave those silk Hangings which beautifie the Altar within the Railes." Dean Creyghton gave the glass in the west window, the organ and the brass lectern, and Dr Busby, who was treasurer of Wells as well as head-master of Westminster, gave the silver-gilt alms dish and restored the library, lengthening it by the addition of the southern part. Chyles tells us, too, that there was morning and evening prayer in the "Vicars' Chapell in Close Hall," at six, forenoon and afternoon, in winter, and seven in summer, in addition to the cathedral services at the "canonical howers." Before his time there had been only a morning sermon on Sundays, and, in the afternoon, "the whole Cathedrall" had been in the habit of going to St. Cuthbert's, returning with the mayor and his brethren for the cathedral prayers at four; "but since his Majesty's Restoracion one likewise in the Afternoones here is preached by the said prebends in theire turns. Soe that here the Sermonizing people may have their Bellyfull of preaching and forbeare crying out, They are starved for want of the Word and calling our clergy Dumb Doggs." This time of peace did not last long, for in 1685 the whole of Somerset was up in Monmouth's rebellion. The duke's followers came to Wells, turned the cathedral into a stable, tore the lead off the roof for bullets, pulled down several of the statues, broached a barrel of beer on the high altar, and would have destroyed the altar itself, had not Lord Grey, one of their leaders, defended it with his sword. Dr Conan Doyle's description of the scene in his novel, Micah Clarke (p. 292), is so vivid that it is well worth referring to. The long and heavy peace which followed was marked by the gradual pewing up of the choir and presbytery, and the intrusion of pretentious monuments. Then, in our own times, came the revival, bringing evil as well as good in its train. In 1842 the restoration of the nave, transepts, and Lady Chapel was commenced at the instance of Dean Goodenough, by Mr Benjamin Ferrey. He removed the thick layers of whitewash which had been ingeniously applied to conceal the sculpture; and the long rows of marble tablets which had disfigured the aisles were shifted to the cloisters, whence, it may be hoped, they will one day make a further journey towards oblivion. The restoration of the choir by Mr Salvin, which lasted from 1848 to 1854, was unfortunately of a less blameless character. It was the period of the Great Exhibition, when art reached the lowest depths to which it has sunk in the history of the world. We need not dwell upon the result; few restorations are more marked with the complacent ignorance of that strange time. The old pews and galleries in the choir, which had hidden the very capitals of the piers, were indeed removed, but with them the medieval stalls were destroyed and replaced by work of indescribable imbecility. No real improvement in the choir of Wells is now possible till every trace of Dean Jenkyns' restoration is swept away; but, alas! what he destroyed can never be recovered. In 1868 the report of Mr Ferrey upon the west front was presented, and shortly afterwards the work of repair was begun under his direction. The report showed how extensive was the decay, and how great the danger of complete ruin unless steps were taken to protect the old work; and the work of repair was carried out with care and reverence; though even here irreparable harm was done by the substitution of the modern "slate pencils" for the old blue lias shafts. Since then, many small matters have been attended to with varying success. The Lady Chapel has been decently furnished and the east end slightly improved. Much still remains to be done; but the best motto at the present day is festina lente, and the safest rule is to be progressive in all enrichment by removable furniture, and conservative, very conservative, in all structural alteration. If the hand of the restorer can now be stayed, the words will still be true of Wells, which M. Huysmans used of another church:—Ces siècles s'étaient reunis pour apporter aux pieds du Christ l'effort surhumain de leur art, et les dons de chacun étaient visibles encore. FOOTNOTES [1] Somerset Proceedings, 1888, ii. 5. 17 18 5 19 [2] History of the Cathedral, p. 98. [3] Divine Worship in England, p. 195. [4] Book ii. c. 2. [5] Inst. Arch. 1870. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR "In England," wrote Mr J.H. Parker, in his Glossary, "Wells affords the most perfect example of a cathedral with all its parts and appurtenances. It was," he continues, after an enumeration of the parts of the church, "a cathedral proper, and independent of any monastic foundation, but with a separate house for each of its officers, either in the Close or in the Liberty adjoining to it. The bishop's palace was enclosed by a separate moat and fortified, being on the south side of the cloister, from which it is separated by the moat; the houses for the dean and for the archdeacon are on the north side of the Close, with some of the canons' houses; the organist's house is at the west end, adjoining to the singing- school and the cloister; the precentor's house is at the east end, near the Lady Chapel. The vicars-choral have a close of their own adjoining to the north-east corner of the canons' close, with a bridge across through the gate-house into the north transept; they were a collegiate body, with their own chapel, library, and hall." One need only add that all these sentences can still, with one exception, be read in the present tense to show that Wells possesses a beauty and interest which gives it an unique place among cathedral foundations. There is no other cathedral city in which so many of the old ecclesiastical buildings remain, or on which the modern world has made so little impression. The church itself, in Fergusson's opinion perhaps the most beautiful, though one of the smallest in England, is but one part of a "group of buildings, which," wrote Professor Freeman, "as far as I know, has no rival, either in our own island or beyond the sea." The little city to which these buildings belong is itself worthy of them, almost a part of them, so quiet and venerable is it, so picturesque in its lovely setting of green hills. 21Were size the main distinction of a church, Wells would sink comfortably into the second class; even in some of its best features it has many rivals, but the peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies (to quote again from Freeman's History) "in the union and harmonious grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, Lady Chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible whole. The series goes on uninterruptedly along that unique bridge, which, by a marvel of ingenuity, connects the church itself with the most perfect of buildings of its own class, the matchless vicars' close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its windows, or its turret, falling in with the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all." Thus, in the first place, the group of buildings must be looked at as a whole from the north, from the east, from the south-east; then the superb, unrivalled picture from the rising ground on the Shepton Mallet road, outside the city, must be seen, and, when this little journey has been made, the most hurried visitor must find time at least to peep into the vicars' close, and walk round the moat of the palace. After some such general impression has been gained, the study of the exterior of the church will naturally begin with that part which is a peculiar distinction of Wells Cathedral—the west front. The West Front of Wells has been universally admired. Long ago, old Fuller wrote—"The west front of Wells is a masterpiece of art indeed, made of imagery in just proportion, so that we may call them vera et spirantia signa. England affordeth not the like." This verdict is but repeated by modern writers; the front is "quite unrivalled," says Fergusson, and comparable only to Rheims and Chartres. Mr Hughes, in Traill's Social England, goes farther and says that "nothing fit to rank with it was then being done in Northern Europe—for the monumental porches of France, formerly supposed to be contemporary, are now recognised as of a later date." But there has been a discordant note in the general chorus of praise. Professor Freeman, whose admiration for nearly everything in Wells was so intense, could find little to praise in the west front of the cathedral. "It is doubtless," he wrote, "the finest display of sculpture in England; but it is thoroughly bad as a piece of architecture. I am always glad when I get round the corner, and can rest my eye on the massive and simple majesty of the nave and transepts. The west front is bad because it is a sham—because it is not the real ending of the nave and aisles, but a mere mask, devised, in order to gain greater room for the display of statues ... The front is not the natural finish of the nave and aisles; it is a blank wall built up in a shape which is not the shape which their endings would naturally assume. It is therefore a sham; it is a sin against the first law of architectural design, the law that enrichment should be sought in ornamenting the construction ... not in building up anything simply for the sake of effect." He then proceeds to criticise the way in which the windows and doorways "are stowed away as they best may 25be," as if they were felt to be mere interruptions to the lines of sculpture. 1 2 22 3 23 This latter objection to the doorways had often been made before, only that the "rabbit-holes on a mountain side" of earlier critics became "mouse-holes" with Mr Freeman. Mr E.W. Godwin, in a lecture in 1862, had also found fault with the crowding in of the niches over the central doorway, which he declared to be in the highest degree clumsy; with the bald appearance given by the shallowness of the reveals in the principal windows; and with the way in which "the solid work of the base suddenly crops up at the very summit of the two central buttresses, not altogether unlike the dog- kennel of modern Gothic." Of these criticisms the most serious is Mr Freeman's general charge of unreality. But why should not a stone screen be erected for the display of statuary before the west end of a church, just as lawfully as behind the high altar? And, if a screen may be allowed as an end in itself, standing simply as a thing of beauty to glorify a building of which it is not a structural part, then the front of Wells may stand, like the reredos of Winchester, as the noblest example of its kind. It has no need to simulate lofty aisles which do not exist, for it covers, not the aisles, but the faces of the great towers themselves; and, as a consequence, the portion of really blank wall which stretches from them to the central gable is so small as to be more than justified by the cohesion it gives to the whole. The whole effect is singularly broad, but so is the space it covers within; for this breadth is legitimately attained by the happy device of planting the western towers beyond the aisles. The massive front of Wells stands, therefore, on its own merits as a west front, and not merely a west end—a great stone screen that, so far from pretending to be a regular termination of the nave and aisles, is actually carried, in all its sculptured magnificence, round the sides of the two towers upon which it so frankly depends. It is a screen built at a period different from, and, we may now safely assume, later than, that of the nave, and built for the exhibition of a noble legend in stone, which has ever since been the glory of a county famed for its splendid churches. Taking...