simple majesty of its four mighty arches, as the noblest of canopies over the choir below. And if the receding vista of the Lady chapel, with that matchless grouping of slender pillars, that no less matchless harmony of colour, was still a thing of the future, yet we have fragments enough to tell us that the older ending of the choir was one rich with the best detail of the thirteenth century,(53) and one which perhaps gave greater majesty to the high altar itself, the sole feature of the eastern limb, than any arrangement that can be devised with the present ground-plan. The group of buildings of which the Chapter-house now forms a part was as yet unthought of, but the great octagon itself was already rising; by the end of the century it was perhaps already finished. There it stood, with its central pillar and its surrounding stalls, the many ribs of its vault converging to one centre, typifying, as symbolical writers tell us, the government of each diocesan church, with its many members, clergy and laity, gathering around one common head and father. All this was there already; that is, everything had been done which was needful for the practical perfection of a cathedral church, though something might still be needed to give the fabric its ideal perfection as a work of art. And as with the fabric of the church, so with its constitution. The relations of the original centre of the diocese with its sister or rival churches, in one sense more ancient, in another newer than itself, (54) had been finally and peacefully settled. The relations between the Bishop and his Chapter, between the Chapter and its subordinate officers, had been definitely settled also. All

the great offices of the church which still exist had been already founded, and those duties had been attached to them which, however much they have been forgotten, still remain the duties of their holders as much now as they were then. In short, the church of Wells, alike in its fabric and in its constitution, was already perfect. The thirteenth century had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develope according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe and for the world. It is well to mark how exactly the most striking periods in our local history fall in with the great and decisive epochs in the general history of our country. The church of Wells first arose at the bidding of the first great WestSaxon lawgiver, the prince whose reign fixed for ever that the south-western peninsula of Britain should be, in speech and allegiance, if not wholly in blood, a Teutonic and not a Celtic land. The church received its Bishop at the hands of the great WestSaxon conqueror, at the moment when Wessex finally grew into England, and the first endowment of the Bishoprick of Somersetshire was a gift from the hand of the prince to whom the Northumbrian, the Scot, and the Briton bowed as their father and their lord. The old dynasty passed away and strangers sat on the throne of England; that was the time when a stranger prelate first brought into our church the foreign and novel discipline which he had learned in his own land beyond the sea. And yet, with strangers alike on the royal throne of England and in the epis

copal chair of Wells, the ancient fabric, the church of native Kings and saints and heroes, still lived on, Through the reigns of the Norman and the Angevin the ancient fabric still survived as a witness that England and her Church, conquered as they were, still preserved their national being, and would one day arise to wrest their ancient freedom from the hands of their conquerors. That ancient fabric still lived on into days when its witness was no longer needed, to days when England had won her conquerors to her heart, and had changed the sons of her oppressors into the foremost champions of her freedom. A Prelate who had suffered banishment at the hands of John, whose name stands subscribed to the Great Charter of our rights, might venture to sweep away the still abiding monument which told of the older freedom of the days of Ine and Eadward. And, even before his time, we may see how the darker and brighter days of the church of Wells coincided with the darker and brighter days of England. It was during the blackest night of oppression, in the days of the tyrant Rufus, that the name of our church was for a moment wiped out from the roll of Bishopricks, and that its ministers were reduced to beggary by the arbitrary violence of a foreign Bishop. The wrong was redressed in days which, if days of sorrow and conflict, were still days of hope. If the fabric of the church was renewed and strengthened during the civil wars of Stephen, its constitution was finally settled and confirmed when peace and order returned under the sway of the great Henry. And next came the great age of all, the age which, in its creative and in its destructive power,

was to leave its mark on every land from one end of heaven to the other. Time would fail to tell of all the mighty men and mighty deeds which are crowded more thickly into the age of Innocent and Frederick, the age of Saint Ferdinand and Saint Lewis, the age of Bacon and Dante, the age in distant lands of the first Mongol and the first Ottoman invaders, than into almost any other equal space in the world's history. Throughout the world destruction and creation were marching side by side; old systems were falling, new systems were rising. But it was in England alone that the new and the old could be worked together into harmony, that the age which elsewhere was an age of destruction and of creation could become simply an age of reform and restoration, an age which put new life into old names and old traditions, and made England England once again. We see the sons of the soil, of whatever blood, alike the children of the conquerors and the children of the conquered, rising in their strength to put a bridle on the tyranny of Popes and Kings, to break the yoke of the stranger, and to win the land back once more for its own children. Then it was that our tongue, our laws, our constitution, assumed those shapes which the six ages that have followed have had only to improve in detail. It was the age of Stephen Langton and Robert Fitzwalter, of Robert Grosseteste and Simon of Montfort, of Roger Bigod and Humfrey Bohun, and of the King from whom they won our freedom. And we in this place may add to the list the name of our local worthy, foremost in local honour and not without his share in the general history of our land, the rebuilder of the fabric of our church, the final law

giver of its constitution, the honoured name of Jocelin of Wells. As it was throughout all England, so it was in our little city at the foot of Mendip. The older state of things was passing into a newer by a process of gradual and peaceful change and developement. And as throughout all England Englishmen were rising against foreign influence in every shape, so here too it was no stranger from Tours or Lüttich, but a true son of the soil, a native of the kingdom, of the shire, of the city itself, bearing the name of the city as his distinctive surname, to whom fell the great work of calling the fabric of the church into a new being, and of putting the finishing stroke to its ecclesiastical constitution. The local chronicler says with truth that there was none such before him and none such after him.(55) Our local history contains earlier and later names which must ever claim our reverence, Beckington, Robert, Gisa himself. But no name of Canon or Dean or Bishop can dwell in the hearts of the men of Wells and Somersetshire like the man of their own shire and their own city who gave that city its greatest and most lasting ornament. He went to his rest and his works followed him; his name and his honour still abideth. Ruthless hands had, even three hundred years back, "monstrously defaced" his marble tomb within his own choir.(56) But he is one of those who need not a marble tomb to enshrine their memory. Benefactors of lesser fame may need their graven figures, their epitaphs of brass or alabaster; of Jocelin of Wells we may truly say

"Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.”