Part 8

Another distinctive feature in Exeter, as in Salisbury, is that the architect produces his effect mainly by architectural means—is not driven to rely on sculpture. All the principal capitals have mouldings, not foliage. Only in the great corbels of the vaulting-shafts and in the bosses of the vault, does he permit himself foliage and sculpture. Wonderful carving it is; the finest work of the best period, when the naturalistic treatment of foliage was fresh and young. Very remarkable these corbels are, with their lifelike treatment of vine and grape, oak and acorn, hazel leaf and nut. Unfortunately the corbels, and still more the bosses, are so high up that their lovely detail is thrown away; and they are out of scale.

And the patterns of the window tracery are wonderfully diverse. It is not, as in Lichfield nave or King’s College Chapel, where every window is like its neighbour; when you have seen one, you have seen all. Here, all down each side of the church, every window differs. In dimensions, in general character, they agree; in details they differ; each window is a fresh delight; we have what even in Gothic architecture we rarely get—diversity within similarity.

Another striking feature of the design is its perfect bilateral symmetry. Gothic churches are, as a rule, most irregular, most unsymmetrical in outline; as a consequence, very picturesque. It is a mistake, however, to believe that they are intentionally unsymmetrical and picturesque. A Gothic architect no more aimed at irregularity than did the architect of the Parthenon. Only he was not a purist on the subject. If practical requirements—_e.g._, the needs of ritual—made it necessary to break in on the lines of a symmetrical design, he broke in on them without the slightest hesitation; the building had to conform to its destination. But where a single design was carried through from end to end, it was as symmetrical as a Classical temple. So it is at Salisbury; so it is at Exeter. Every window has its exact counterpart on the other side of nave and choir. Transept answers to transept, screen to screen, St. John the Baptist’s chapel to St. Paul’s, St. Andrew’s chapel to St. James’, St. George’s chapel to St. Saviour’s, St. Mary Magdalene’s chapel to St. Gabriel’s. But the architect was not so infatuated with the idea of symmetry as to place a porch on the south side because there was one on the north, or a chapter-house on the north because there was one on the south; which is just what the academic professors of Classical architecture would have done.

We have seen how the design gained special distinction from the very limitations imposed by the lowness of the early cathedral, the upper parts of which it was desired to preserve. It was again to the early design that Exeter owes another distinction among English interiors. In the early design the towers were just those which we still see; there was no central tower. The very fact that Quivil’s architect did not rush off at once to build a central tower, and be like everybody else, shows what backbone and insight the man had. Cathedrals without central towers were as rare in mediæval England as cathedrals with central towers are rare in the Île de France. Yet he advised his employers—or was it they who instructed him?—not to build a central tower. Central towers, standing as they do on four thin legs, are dangerous: many have fallen; others are always threatening to fall—_e.g._, Salisbury. But they are objectionable on another ground. The great piers on which they stand are an enormous block in the lengthened vista, which is the one great charm of an English cathedral, as compared with the lofty but short cathedrals of France. The fact that there is no tower over the crossing, and no tower-piers in the way, produces the most open, uninterrupted, and impressive vista of any cathedral in England. The screen being low, one sees the whole noble design in one glance from far west to far east. We have nothing like it: though it finds its counterpart in the great French cathedral of Bourges.

Another point should be noticed. Although the nave is in nearly all important respects of late Geometrical design—the exception being some Curvilinear windows with flowing tracery in the westernmost bays of the nave—yet the architects were not such purists as to carry out their minor work in anything but the style of their own day. Even in the choir, the architecture of which is Geometrical both in character and in date, all the minor work is developed Curvilinear—_e.g._, the great screen with its depressed ogee arches, the throne of the bishop, the sedilia.

PERPENDICULAR WORK (1360-1485).—Much minor work remained to do. In the remaining years of the fourteenth century the west front, which seems to have been heeling over, was buttressed by the erection of the western screen. The west and south walks of the cloisters were added. The great east window was substituted for an earlier Geometrical one which seems to have fallen into decay. In the fifteenth century the towers were crowned with battlements and turrets, as we see them now. The upper part of the chapter-house was rebuilt. Bishop Stafford erected canopies over monuments in the Lady chapel.

TUDOR WORK (1485-1519).—The Tudor work is exceptional in importance. It includes the north entrance and other late portions of the western screen, two exquisite chapels, both built by Bishop Oldham—his own chantry (St. Saviour’s) on the south side of the retro-choir, the Speke chantry (St. George’s) on the north—and in addition, Prior Sylke’s chantry in the north transept. All this work is admirable in design and execution. In Oldham’s chantry is a charming series of owls, with the scroll DAM, a rebus on his name, proceeding from the beak of each little owl. To Bishop Oldham also (1504-1519) is due the grand set of stone screens—one of the glories of the cathedral—no less than ten, which veil all the nine chapels and Prior Sylke’s chantry, and add fresh beauty to the beautiful choir.

Whatever else, then, the student and lover of Gothic architecture omits, he must not omit to visit Exeter. He will find it fresh and different from anything he has seen before. Its unique plan, without central or western towers, the absence of obstructive piers at the crossing, the consequently uninterrupted vista, the singleness and unity of the whole design, the remarkable system of proportions, based on breadth rather than height, the satisfying massiveness and solidity of the building, inside and outside, and at the same time the airiness and lightness of the interior, the magnificence of its piers of marble, the delightful colour-contrast of marble column and sandstone arch, the amazing diversity of the window tracery, the exquisite carving of the corbels and bosses, the abundant and admirable Tudor work, the wealth of chantries and monuments, the superb sedilia, screen, and throne, the misereres, the vaults, the extraordinary engineering feats from which its present form results, the originality of the west front and of the whole interior and exterior, place Exeter in the very forefront of the triumphs of the mediæval architecture of our country.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Gloucester.

The foundation of Gloucester, like that of Ely, has gone through many changes. In 681 it was founded as a nunnery, and remained so till 767. About 821 it was refounded for secular priests; who, in the time of Canute, through the influence of Dunstan, were replaced by Benedictine monks. It remained a Benedictine monastery till 1541, when it was placed on the New Foundation, thus reverting to secular priests once more. The abbey-church then became a cathedral, with a diocese carved out of that of Worcester.

The present cathedral is recorded to have been commenced by Abbot Serlo in 1088, and to have been completed and consecrated in 1100. This statement seems to be generally accepted; but the chief evidence for it, as for the architectural history of the cathedral generally, is the chronicle of Abbot Froucester. Froucester, however, lived two hundred years after the foundation of the Norman cathedral, and his authority on this point can hardly be considered decisive. The plain architectural facts tell a very different tale. In the first place, the design of the nave and presbytery is totally different; the presbytery is archaic and rude, the nave highly advanced in design and elaborate and rich in ornament. The former may well belong to the last decade of the eleventh century; the latter is a whole generation later. In the presbytery the piers are low and of enormous bulk—such vast wasteful blocks of masonry as are to be seen in the nave of St. Alban’s, the choirs of Hereford and Chichester and Norwich: all of them commenced in the eleventh century. In the nave of Gloucester the piers rise to the exceptional height of 30 feet; for a parallel one must go to Tewkesbury, which was not consecrated till 1121; and even that consecration does not necessarily include the nave, where alone these towering cylinders are found. Again, in the presbytery of Gloucester the pier-arcade and triforium are about equal in height. So they are also in the eleventh-century work of Winchester, Norwich, and elsewhere. The diminutive triforiums of the naves of Gloucester and Tewkesbury are without a parallel in English work, though the Abbaye-aux-dames at Caen may be quoted on the other side. Again, the pier-arches of the presbytery are in two square orders, and the vault of the aisle is unribbed. In the nave the orders of the pier-arches are enriched with pairs of rolls and zigzag; the vault of the north aisle has diagonal ribs of late Norman character; and the string-course of the clerestory is a twisted cable elaborately enriched. The aisles, too, are very broad and very lofty.

Indeed, everything in the presbytery has an early look, except its plan and the shape of its apses. The plan is exceedingly complicated; with apse, ambulatory, and radiating chapels. But all three features appear in the ancient church of Vignory, which cannot well be later than the middle of the eleventh century. The radiating chapels, indeed, go back to the very earliest days of Christian architecture; for they formed part of the Basilican church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, as built, A.D. 326, by the Emperor Constantine; and have survived all the transformations which that church has undergone. That the apses, indeed, should not be semicircular—as they are even in St. Hugh’s choir of Lincoln—but polygonal, is certainly startling; though here also there are precedents as far back as the sixth century, in such Byzantine churches as that of S. Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna. In the nave, on the other hand, everything points to a date well advanced—certainly not earlier than 1122. Not only the loftiness of the columns, but the fact that they are columns, is a mark of twelfth-century work. The column does not occur in Normandy, the mother of our Romanesque; but everywhere the compound pier. Capital and abacus, too, are circular on plan; this is usually a sign of late Norman work. The nave of Southwell, which also has circular capitals and abaci, was not built before 1120. But the ornamentation of the nave is decisive: the zigzag and the cables could not have been executed in the days of Prior Conrad of Canterbury, before the chisel had come into use.

Something, however, was consecrated at Gloucester in 1100; and that was probably the eastern arm of the church—not necessarily the chapels—and as much of the rest of the church as was necessary to complete the enclosure of the monastery: viz., part of the north transept and the wall of the north aisle of the nave as high as the sills of the windows. Then the monks probably turned their attention to the domestic buildings of the monastery, which till now may have been temporary buildings of wood, and only some twenty years later resumed work in the church, which they then completely finished.

Perhaps the first thing to do would be to add the top storey to the presbytery; for a church seems not unfrequently to have been consecrated before its clerestory was built, a temporary roof being erected at the level of the triforium. The presbytery being at last really completed, the monks would then proceed to complete the transepts and the crossing, to build the lower stage of the tower, and the nave and west front. When they did reach the nave, they altered the design altogether; as did the Tewkesbury monks also. They put up naves of the worst possible proportions; with piers so lofty that triforium and clerestory were almost squeezed out of existence.

Both have, of course, been credited with some artistic motive. To me it seems that they had found the choir, with its squat pier-arches, intolerably dark; and when they reached the nave, they saw that if they adhered to the early design, the nave would be even darker than the choir. For on the north side the cloister abutted on the aisle-wall, whose windows therefore had to be placed very high up in the wall: giving hardly any light to aisle and nave. To remedy this, therefore, regardless of appearances—for mediæval architects were practical builders first, artists only afterwards—they put up these colossal columns 30 feet high, raising the arches nearly 40 feet above the pavement. In that way the light from the high windows of the north aisle was enabled to penetrate into the church.

Another very remarkable feature in the design of the eastern limb is the utilisation of the triforium. In many churches—_e.g._, in Beverley and Lincoln minsters—the triforium seems not to have been intended to be used. At Beverley it is walled off from the nave; at Lincoln it has no floor. But in the earlier churches some ritualistic use must have been made of it. At Winchester, Ely, and the Abbaye-aux-hommes at Caen, return-aisles were constructed at the ends of the transepts to provide a broad path by which processions might pass along the triforium from the choir, round the transept, to the nave.

At Gloucester one step further is taken. All the five apses are built two stories high, the upper story of each opening into the triforium: so that five additional chapels are gained for the church. Moreover, since the crypt passes beneath all five apses, another set of five apsidal chapels is obtained underground; so that, without taking into account chapels otherwise arranged for, Gloucester possesses in the minor apses alone no less than fifteen chapels. In fact, leaving out of account the central aisle, Gloucester presbytery is really three churches—an upper, middle, and lower church. The amount of accommodation gained by this ingenious planning is immense.

One wonders that the plan of radiating chapels and practicable triforium was not adopted more frequently. It occurred at Tewkesbury and at Leominster; but in the end it was superseded by the eastern transept thrown across the choir centrally, as at Lincoln, or at its eastern termination, as at Fountains. In Lincoln choir, St. Hugh’s architect, hesitating between two opinions, built eastern transepts as well as return-aisles and apsidal chapels.

For nearly a century the architectural history is a blank. Early in the thirteenth century the wooden ceiling of the nave was replaced by the present quadripartite vault. This involved the demolition of the Norman clerestory, except the jambs of its outer arches, which may still be seen, enriched with zigzag. The north chapel of the crypt also was vaulted, and two windows were inserted in the eastern chapel of the crypt. About the middle of the century were built the north doorways of the cloister, and the vaulted passage in its north-east corner; also part of the west front of the nave was reconstructed. A little later was built, now moved to the north transept, the reliquary (or perhaps it is a gateway), one of the most lovely designs of the thirteenth century, worthy to be put in comparison with the Beverley staircase and the western porches of Ely and St. Albans. Of the time of Henry III. is the oak effigy of Robert Courthose, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the Conqueror (_d._ 1135), which lies on a wheeled chest of the fifteenth century, and was formerly placed in the centre of the choir. On the whole, there was not much to show at Gloucester, with the exception of the nave-vault, for the long period 1150 to 1318.

But about the latter year the Norman south aisle of the nave had got into a very dangerous condition. The north aisle was safe, its wall being propped up by the cloister roof. But the vault of the south aisle had thrust the wall eleven inches out of the perpendicular. To save the vault, Abbot Thokey built on to the Norman pilasters the present beautiful buttresses. But the new buttresses also swung over four inches, and the Norman vaulting had to be taken out; the aisle received a new vault, and its eastern bays were enriched with ball-flower. The beautiful windows are of late Geometrical character, and are smothered in ball-flower. The profuse employment of ball-flower is quite a characteristic of the fourteenth-century Gothic of the West country; it is equally remarkable in the grand windows of Leominster, and at Ledbury and Hereford. “A horizontal line drawn just below the spring of the arch of each window at Gloucester cuts through thirty-two bands of ball-flower.” There are no less than 1400 ball-flowers in each window.

In 1327 Abbot Thokey made the fortune of Gloucester abbey. On September 21st Edward II. had been murdered at Berkeley castle. Bristol, Kingswood, and Malmesbury monasteries were appealed to, but none dared receive his body for interment, fearing the anger of the Queen and her party. Abbot Thokey brought the body to Gloucester in his own carriage, and caused it to be solemnly buried in the presbytery. Soon miracles were wrought at the tomb, pilgrimages set in, immense sums were contributed in offerings; Gloucester, like Hereford, had got a saint, and, like Hereford, used the vast income that accrued—enough, it is said, to have erected a brand-new cathedral—in improvements in their abbey-church. The tomb of the murdered king, erected by his son, Edward III., still exists, and the leaden coffin below, in which, when opened in 1855, the body was found “in a wonderful state of preservation.” (We wonder what would be said if our antiquaries exhumed the bodies of George III. and Archbishop Benson, and stole their rings and vestments to put them in a show-case in the vestry.) On one side of the monument, facing the aisle, is the bracket on which offerings were laid; above is one of the loveliest Curvilinear canopies in existence, but much restored. To the same period belong various windows inserted in the aisles and chapels and triforium of the presbytery.

The monks, no doubt, with the rich revenues now at their disposal, would have liked to rebuild the presbytery _de novo_. But it was crowded every day and all day with the pilgrims from whom the money came. They had therefore to confine themselves to such improvements as could be effected without interfering with the flow of pilgrims and of cash. The first thing needful was to provide more light: above all, in the presbytery, where the centre of attraction was; and in the crossing, where their daily services were held. Secondly, the church had suffered severely from fire in 1088, 1102, 1122, 1179, and 1190. The nave had already been safeguarded against fire by vaulting; it was desirable to extend the same protection to the transepts and presbytery by covering these also with stone vaults. Thirdly, if the money held out, it might be spent in prettinesses.

First, there was the lighting problem. Abbot Thokey had done a good deal in improving the lighting of the south aisle of the nave, and the aisles and chapels and triforium of the presbytery. Abbot Wygmore commenced operations in the south transept. The north transept was in daily use, as the cloister was on the north side of the nave, and the monks passed through the north transept to their daily services in the crossing. The improvements in the presbytery were postponed for a time, so as not to interfere with the pilgrims. In six years, before 1337, Wygmore is recorded by Froucester (who was himself Abbot from 1381 to 1412) to have cased, lighted and vaulted the south transept.

If Froucester is correct—and his evidence is almost that of a contemporary—we have in the south transept of Gloucester one of the greatest puzzles in the history of mediæval architecture. The whole of this work in the south transept is in the Perpendicular style—early Perpendicular, but still Perpendicular in principle. Yet we have to believe that it is contemporaneous with the utterly different Curvilinear work that was being done everywhere else in England; that it was contemporaneous with the Curvilinear monument of Edward II. in Gloucester itself; with the Percy shrine at Beverley, with the Lady chapel, octagon, and choir of Ely. It seems incredible. But Gloucester presbytery was not taken in hand till after the south transept, and it was finished not later than 1350, if that be the true date of the glass of the great east window. No other Perpendicular work occurs in the kingdom till that of Edingdon church (1352-1361), and the work done by Bishop Edingdon in the western part of Winchester nave. So that, if we accept Froucester’s statement, we have to believe that while the rest of the world was executing Curvilinear designs, the Gloucester masons, not later than 1330, had worked out the Perpendicular style.

We have to believe, also, that though this style ultimately became universally popular in England, overspread the whole country, and maintained its hold on English architecture for three centuries, at the outset it smouldered at Gloucester, unnoticed, unappreciated by anybody, till Edingdon took it up twenty years later in rebuilding the church of his native village. All the other improvements in mediæval building were caught up instantaneously—passing from one end of the kingdom to the other with the rapidity of the fashion of a Paris bonnet or mantle. England hesitated long before it could consent to exchange the richness of Curvilinear for the baldness of Perpendicular design. However, the new design of Gloucester, blazoned abroad everywhere as it was by admiring pilgrims, showed the capacities of the new style. It was seen to be sound and strong from a building point of view—and cheap. That turned the scale. Perpendicular came in with a rush. So,

“Si parva licet componere magnis,”

the Royal and Ancient game of golf smouldered on for centuries at Blackheath, till the psychological moment came, and it passed on to Westward Ho, and then swept like wildfire over all England.