LECTURE III.

I HAVE in my former lectures carried the history both of the fabric and the foundation of the church of Wells to the time of Jocelin, and somewhat later. The thirteenth century, the great creative century of later English history, brought both fabric and foundation to a state, if not of ideal, at least of essential perfection. We now come to two centuries which found much to improve and to enlarge, but which had no need, like their predecessors, to begin afresh from the beginning. Jocelin, we may say, was the last of the line of great innovators for good and for evil, the line formed by Ine and Eadward and Gisa and John de Villulâ and Robert. We now come to what we may call quieter times. One thing to be noticed is that by this time the work of John de Villulâ, the degradation of Wells and exaltation of Bath, has been pretty well reversed. Roger, the successor of

last Bath Bishop.

Jocelin, may be called the In his election Bath made its last effort. On Jocelin's death the monks of Bath, contrary to the agreement which had been made, ventured to make an election without joining with the Canons of Wells. The story is very characteristic of the reign of Henry the Third. The Pope and the King joined together to do an illegal

act to the prejudice of Englishmen. The monks of Bath got their congé d'élire from the King; then they elected in this irregular way; the elect went to the Pope, Innocent the Fourth, who, glad no doubt of such an opportunity, took no heed to the appeal of the Wells Chapter, conferred the Bishoprick on Roger by his own authority, bargaining that the preferment which he vacated, the Precentorship of Salisbury, should be given to his own nephew. The new Bishop was consecrated at Rome, and the temporalities were restored to him by the King. (1) This is a sort of thing which could hardly have happened at any time earlier or later. Both in earlier and in later times we suffered a good deal at the hands of both Kings and Popes, but Henry the Third was the only King who habitually conspired with the Pope against his own people. It really adds to the shamelessness of the whole story that, when Innocent had gained his personal point, when he had established the precedent that the Pope might if he pleased appoint to an English Bishoprick, when he had further established his own kinsman in an English living, he then was ready enough to confirm the former agreement, and to decree that the rights of the Chapter of Wells in the election of the Bishop should be observed for the future.(2) Roger also made up what he could to the Wells Chapter by the grant of various advantages.(3) He did not, however, think good to choose his last resting-place among them. He was the last of our Bishops who was buried at Bath. This marks the time when Wells once more became the real home of the Bishoprick, though Bath still retained its pre

cedence in the episcopal title. And it was doubtless from this time that that comparative neglect of the church of Bath began which ended, as I have already said, in its falling into a state of decay verging on ruin.

During the time that followed I need not go through every Bishop in succession, as several Bishops seem to have had very little to do with the fabric. William Button the First, who was Bishop from 1247 to 1264, was chiefly remarkable for a practice which we certainly have not seen among us for some time past, but of which the traces still linger. In his day all the chief places of the church were filled with the Bishop's own kinsfolk. It was no doubt a most comfortable family party when the Bishop was surrounded by a Dean, Precentor, Treasurer, Archdeacon, and Provost, all of them his own brothers and nephews. (4) Yet mark that, though the fact of being the kinsman of a Bishop does not prove a man to be fit for high preferment, it does not prove him to be unfit. One of the Buttons, William the Second, first Archdeacon and afterwards Bishop from 1267 to 1274, was looked on as the holiest Prelate of his time, and after his death miracles were held to be worked at his tomb.(5) So they were said to be at the tomb of William of March, Bishop from 1293 to 1302.(6) Between these two saintly persons came Robert Burnell, whose place, whether in the history of England or in the history of Wells, is by no means small, but whose name is not specially connected with the fabric or foundation of the cathedral. In general history he appears as the minister of the

great Edward; we know him here as the builder of that noble, but alas ruined, hall in the episcopal palace, which may take its place alongside of the great works of Gower at Saint David's.(7) For the next Bishop who claims any minute notice in a sketch of this kind we have to hurry on to the reign of Edward the Third, when a worthy successor of Robert and Jocelin meets us in the fortifier of the palace, the founder of the Vicars' Close, the famous Ralph of Shrewsbury.

Great works had been going on in the cathedral from the beginning of the century, although we do not find the name of any Bishop distinctly connected with them. The fact is that, now that the Chapters had gained so great a degree of corporate independence, the Bishops naturally become less prominent in such works than they were at an earlier time. The church, as designed by Jocelin, had hardly been brought to perfection by the building of the Chapter-house, when a series of works were begun which had the effect of completely transforming the whole eastern part of the church. There is reason to believe that the arrangements of the church of Jocelin were, like its style of architecture, a little old-fashioned. In the thirteenth century the tendency was to enlarge the eastern limbs of churches on a larger scale. The famous rebuilding of the choir of Canterbury late in the twelfth century had most likely set the example. The choir was now commonly placed in the eastern limb, which sometimes swelled to a length as great or greater than that of the nave. Sometimes the choir itself became cruciform by the addition of an eastern transept. Jocelin's church, on

the other hand, still kept its choir under the tower, and east of the tower there was only a presbytery of three bays the present choir-with some small chapels beyond it on the site of the present presbytery. The new scheme involved a complete recasting of all this part of the church, which seems to have been done from one general design which was carried out bit by bit. They began, as usual, at the east end, and with that part of the work which involved the least disturbance of the existing building. A distinct addition was made at the east end, an addition covering new ground which had not hitherto been part of the church. This addition was no other than the present beautiful Lady chapel, with the small transept, immediately to the west of it. With the exquisite beauty of the Lady chapel every one is familiar; but every one may not have remarked how distinct it is from the rest of the church. Unlike any other of the component parts of the church, it could stand perfectly well by itself as a detached building. As it is, it gives an apsidal form to the extreme east end of the church; but it is much more than an apse; it is in fact an octagon no less than the Chapter-house, and to this form it owes much of its beauty. As an octagon standing detached at one end and joined to other buildings at the other end, it allowed the apsidal end to be combined with the exquisite slender shafts which open into the space to the west. But it must be remembered that the chapel must at first have stood almost as a detached building, and that, though it was doubtless not intended to remain so, yet the fact of its original