Part 10

“The Early English portion, however, terminates with the first story, about eight feet above the roof; the two additional stories and the spire above them date from the reign of Edward III. The walls of the upper stories of the tower are covered with a blind arcade, richly canopied, and pierced for light with double windows on all four sides. Above each story is a parapet with lozenge-shaped traceries, which are repeated in the three bands encircling the spire. At each angle of the tower is an octagonal stair-turret, crowned with a small crocketed spire. The great spire, itself octagonal, rises from between four small richly-decorated pinnacles. Its walls are two feet in thickness from the bottom to a height of twenty feet; from thence to the summit their thickness is only nine inches. The spire is filled with a remarkable frame of timber-work, which served as a scaffold during its erection. While making some repairs in 1762, the workmen found a cavity on the south side of the capstone in which was a leaden box, enclosing a second of wood which contained a piece of much decayed silk or fine linen, no doubt a relic (possibly of the Virgin, to whom the cathedral is dedicated) placed there in order to avert lightning and tempest.”--(R. J. K.)

Entering by the west door we look down the =Nave=.

“The interior is indeed very fine. It could hardly help being fine; a nave so spacious and so proportioned could under no circumstances be a failure. It is immensely high and as long in proportion. The proportion of height to span (2½ to 1) is better than in most English churches. The harmony of the design--practically the same from east to west and from north to south--is unique in England, and is most impressive. The charming way, too, in which the architect has contrived that we should have a vista of another miniature church in the Lady-Chapel--a cathedral within a cathedral--is worthy of all commendation. But, as in Lincoln nave, to the eye every support is alarmingly insufficient for the work it has to do; the piers are too tall and slender, the walls too thin and pierced with too many openings. The triforium is a most unfortunate design: in harmony neither with the arcade below, nor with the clerestory above; its outer arches ugly in themselves and discordant with every other arch in the church; nor could it be expected that its dark marble shafts would tell against a dark background--black on black. Add to this the dreadfully new look of everything--partly due to the very perfection of the masonry, partly because Scott has been here--and the overpowering glare: one almost feels as if one were in the Crystal Palace.”--(F. B.)

The most interesting tomb in the nave is that of =William Longespée=, the first Earl of Salisbury, son of Henry II. and Fair Rosamond, who died at his castle of Old Sarum in 1226.

“The effigy is entirely in chain-mail, covering the mouth as well as the chin in an unusual manner. Over the mail is the short cyclas, or surcoat. On the earl’s shield are the six golden lioncels also borne by his grandfather Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. Longespée acquired the earldom of Salisbury through marriage with its heiress, the Countess Ela. He took an active part in public affairs throughout the reign of John; joined the Earl of Chester in an expedition to the Holy Land, and was present at the battle of Damietta in 1221, where the Christians were defeated. He fought much in Flanders and in France; was present on the King’s side at Runnymede; and was one of the witnesses to the Great Charter.”--(R. J. K.)

The curious monument of the =Boy Bishop= was removed to its present position about 1680, when it was found buried under the seating of the choir. It is Early English and represents an effigy of the boy in bishop’s robes and mitre, holding a crozier in his left hand. The boy-bishop was elected by the choir-boys in many of the English cathedrals on St. Nicholas’s Day (Dec. 6) and he held office until Holy Innocents’ Day (Dec. 28), during which time he was practically bishop. Law provided that if a boy-bishop died during his term of power, he was to be buried in his vestments and with all the pomp of an episcopal funeral; and, therefore, we must conclude that this boy died during his short rule.

From the nave we enter the =North Transept=,

“passing under the wide Perpendicular arch, which (as at Canterbury and Wells) was inserted early in the Fifteenth Century by way of counter-thrust against the weight of the central tower, under which the central piers had already given away to some extent, as will be at once perceived. It is owing to this settlement of the piers that the spire is out of the perpendicular. The triforium and clerestory of the nave are carried round the transept; the triforium on the north side, being replaced by two-light window of very elegant character. The clerestory window above, with its slender pilasters, and graceful flow of lines, deserves especial notice. Each transept has an eastern aisle divided by clustered piers into three bays. The screens which formerly enclosed the chapel in each of these bays were swept away by Wyatt. A staircase in the angle of the transept leads upward to the tower, which may be ascended by staircases in each of its flanking turrets. The top of the tower is called the Eight Doors, from the double doors on each side, through which the visitor will obtain magnificent views over the town and surrounding country. The first story of the tower is of Early English date, and originally formed a lantern, open to the nave. It is surrounded by an arcade of slender pilasters. The ascent of the spire--which is a formidable undertaking--is made internally by a series of slender ladders as far as a little door about forty feet below the vane, and from that point the adventurous climber has to scale the outside by means of hooks attached to the walls. The interior is filled with a timber frame consisting of a central piece with arms and braces.”--(R. J. K.)

The =South Transept= is a counterpart of the north transept. The windows at the south end are filled with stained-glass. The glass in the upper lights is Early English.

The lierne vault above the central tower arches is Perpendicular. From here we enter the =Choir=, passing under a screen of wrought metal (modern). In the second arcade on each side of the =choir= is placed the new and divided organ built by Willis.

“The Choir and Presbytery are very similar to the nave in the main features of their design. The piers show a different plan, which provides for eight shafts of Purbeck marble to each. The inner mouldings of the arches exhibit the dog-tooth ornamentation of their period. The triforium and clerestory differ slightly from the corresponding parts of the nave. In each of the last two bays of the presbytery the triforium has five small cinquefoil arches. At the east wall of the choir above the reredos is an arcade of five simply-pointed arches, below a triplet window in the gable, which is filled with stained glass, given by the Earl of Radnor in 1781, and representing _The Brazen Serpent_, after a design by Mortimer.

“The choir still bears traces of Wyatt’s destruction. He removed the original reredos behind the high altar and the screen before the Lady-Chapel, so that both, with the low eastern aisle, were thrown into the choir. He shifted the high altar from the choir to the extreme east end of the Lady-Chapel, sacrificing several chantries and tombs to do so. Views of the cathedral after his reign of terror fail to show any gain to compensate for so much loss; the extreme length is not apparently an advantage, while the bare look of the interior seems decidedly intensified by the increased vista that he was so delighted to obtain, and for which, with a light heart, he effaced the silent records of dead centuries. The decorations of the roof of the choir and presbytery are reproductions of the original series of paintings, dating, it is thought, from the Thirteenth Century. The subjects are the prophets and saints, Christ and the four Evangelists and the twelve months.”--(G. W.)

On the north side of the choir is =Bishop Audley’s Chantry=, built by the bishop in 1520, four years before his death. It is late Perpendicular and resembles the chantry of Bishop Fox at Winchester. The fan-tracery of the roof was originally coloured. In the corresponding bay on the south side is the chantry founded by =Walter, Lord Hungerford=, in 1429. It was removed from the nave in 1778.

The =Choir-Stalls= are composed of pieces of various dates with some additions by Sir Christopher Wren and canopies by Wyatt. The =Reredos= is modern, the gift of Earl Beauchamp in memory of his ancestor, whose chantry Wyatt destroyed. It was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott.

Many of the Earls of Pembroke and their wives are buried near the choir.

In the =South-choir-aisle= an interesting monument to =Bishop Davenport=, probably one of the translators of the Bible, is of white marble with black Corinthian pillars. Near it is the tomb of =Sir Richard Mompesson= and his wife. He is in armour and Katherine in a black robe with gold flowers. The black Corinthian columns with vine leaves and grapes in green and gold twisted around them are striking. Near the south transept, still in the choir-aisle, is the altar-tomb of =Bishop Mitford= (1407), with carved shields. On the cornice with the lilies, birds are holding in their beaks scrolls with the words _Honor Deo et gloria_.

In the floor of the north-east-choir-aisle is the =brass= to =Bishop Wyvill=, generally regarded as one of the most wonderful existing examples. Bishop Wyvill (1329-1375) recovered for this See the castle of Sherborne and the chase of Bere. The brass, therefore, represents the contested castle with keep and portcullis. At the door of the first ward the bishop appears, bestowing his benediction on his champion, who stands at the gate of the outer ward with battle-axe and shield. The rabbits and hares before the castle refer to the chase of Bere, within Windsor Forest.

=Bishop Giles de Bridport= (died 1262) lies opposite William of York’s tomb, between the choir-aisle and the eastern-aisle of the transept. His monument is one of the most important and interesting in the Cathedral.

“All the details of this remarkable monument deserve the most careful examination. The effigy, at the head of which are small figures of censing angels, lies beneath a canopy, supported north and south by two open arches with quatrefoils in the heads. Each arch is subdivided by a central pilaster, and springs from clustered shafts, detached. A triangular hood-moulding, with crockets and finials of leafage, projects above each arch; and between and beyond the arches pilasters rise to the top of the canopy, supporting finials of very excellent design. The whole character of the tomb is most graceful, but an especial interest is given to it by the reliefs with which the spandrels of the arches are filled, and by the small sculptured figures on various parts of the monument. The subjects, beginning on the south side, have been thus interpreted. The first, a female figure with an infant and attendants, represents the birth of the future bishop: in the three next spandrels are his confirmation; either his own education or his instruction of others; and, possibly, his first preferment. The shield hung from a tree in this compartment, bears Az., a cross, or, between 4 bezants, no doubt his own arms. On the north side of the monument are the bishop doing homage for his see--a procession with a cross-bearer, perhaps referring to the dedication of Salisbury Cathedral--the bishop’s death and the presentation of his soul for judgment. Little or nothing is known of the life of Bishop Bridport.”--(R. J. K.)

At the end of the north aisle of the Lady-Chapel and at the end of the south aisle, directly opposite, are two monuments that will interest the visitor. The first is a medley of obelisks, globes, spheres and the Four Cardinal Virtues and effigies of =Sir Thomas Gorges= and his widow, maid-of-honour to Queen Elizabeth. The second is a gorgeous tribute to =Edward, Earl of Hertford=, son of the Protector Somerset and of his wife, Catherine, Lady Jane Grey’s sister. The effigies are praying; the Earl is in armour. The whole piece is gilded and coloured.

Very little ancient glass remains in Salisbury.

“The fragments that survived were collected some fifty years since, and placed in the nave windows, and in parts of some of the others. The most important are in the great west triple lancet, wherein the glass ranges in date from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century. Mr. Winston, in his Paper read in 1849 before the Archæological Institute and printed in the Salisbury volume for that year, considered that the earliest fragments are from a Stem of Jesse about 1240 and some medallions about 1270. He describes two of the ovals that are on each side of the throned bishop, a prominent figure in the lower half of the central light, one of the Christ enthroned, the other of the Virgin. The two medallions below them he believes represent Zacharias in the Temple and the Adoration of the Magi. The later glass now in the same window may be either Flemish work brought hither from Dijon, or possibly partly from Rouen, and partly from a church near Exeter. It has been conjectured that in the south lancet the figures represent SS. Peter and Francis, in the central one the Crucifixion, the Coronation of the Virgin and the Invention of the Cross, and in the north light the Betrayal of Christ and St. Catherine. In two of the side windows of the nave are the arms of John Aprice (1555-1558) and Bishop Jewell (1562).”--(G. W.)

In the south-choir-aisle is =Jacob’s Dream= in memory of the Duke of Albany and there are also two of the proposed six angel-windows--=Angeli Ministrantes= and the =Angeli Laudantes=--designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris. These are considered among the best examples of glass-painting since the Middle Ages.

The =Chapter-House= is a very fine type of an English chapter-house of the Thirteenth Century, when geometrical tracery was in vogue. It probably dates from the reign of Edward the First.

“The architecture is somewhat later in style than that of the cloisters, and if it be not, as its admirers claim, the most beautiful in England, it has few rivals. Like Westminster, Wells and other English examples, except York and Southwell, it has a central pillar, from which the groining of the roof springs gracefully in harmonious lines. A raised bench of stone runs round the interior. At its back forty-nine niches of a canopied arcade borne on slight Purbeck marble shafts marked out as many seats. They are apportioned as follows: those at each side of the entrance to the Chancellor and Treasurer respectively, the rest to the Bishop, Dean, Archdeacons and other members of the chapter.

“The plan of the building is octagonal, about fifty-eight feet in diameter and fifty-two feet in height. Each side has a large fan-light window with traceried head. Below these windows and above the canopies of the seats is a very remarkable series of bas-reliefs. The bosses of the roof are somewhat elaborately carved: one north of the west doorway has groups of figures on it, apparently intended to represent armourers, musicians, and apothecaries, possibly commemorating guilds who were benefactors to the building; the others have foliage chiefly with grotesque monsters. On the base of the central

pillar is a series of carvings taken probably from one of the many books of fables so popular in the Middle Ages. These were reproduced from the originals, which are preserved in the cloisters.”--(G. W.)

The vaulted roof is re-painted in accordance with the original.

The =Cloisters= are on the south-west side of the Cathedral, their western wall being on a line with the west front. These fine covered walks, the largest in England (181 feet long), surround a great sward (140 feet square), where a group of dark cedars contrasts beautifully with the grey walls. The style is late Thirteenth Century. The windows formed of double arches with quatrefoils united at the main head with a large six-foiled circle are much admired.

EXETER

DEDICATION: ST. PETER. A CHURCH SERVED BY SECULAR CANONS.

SPECIAL FEATURES: SCREEN ON WEST FRONT; MISERERES; BISHOP’S THRONE; MINSTRELS’ GALLERY; LADY-CHAPEL; EAST WINDOW.

“As the last cathedral church we visited, namely Salisbury, may be taken as the most complete example of Early English work, so Exeter in its present state is the best specimen of the Decorated style that is to be met with in England. For though, unlike Salisbury, it was not built afresh from the ground, yet under Bishops Quivil, Bitton, Stapledon and Grandisson, between the years 1280 and 1369, the fabric was so entirely remodelled that it may be regarded as practically a new building; and since the work of remodelling began about the time that the Early English style was passing into the Decorated, and was completed before the time when the Perpendicular had superseded the Decorated, it naturally is characterised by the features of that style which flourished during the first half of the Fourteenth Century. Much indeed of the work found at Exeter is the very finest that the Fourteenth Century produced.”--(T. P.)

As early as the reign of Athelstan a Benedictine monastery, dedicated to St. Peter, existed at Crediton and was much injured by the Northmen in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. When the Sees for Devon and Cornwall were removed from Crediton to Exeter in 1050, the old church of St. Peter was chosen for the new Cathedral. Of the Saxon church, however, nothing remains. William Warelwast (1107-1136), the third bishop after the Conquest, began the new church about 1112, in the “marvellous and sumptuous” architecture of the Normans. During its erection it suffered from fire when Stephen besieged Exeter in 1136. Of this building the two transept towers remain. Bishop Peter Quivil built the greater part of the present Cathedral before 1291; Bishop Stapledon, who was murdered by the Londoners at the “great cross in Chepe” in 1326, the eastern part of the Choir, the sedilia and the choir-screen; Bishop Grandisson finished the Nave about 1350 and the west front, in all probability, a little later; and Bishop Brantingham, the Cloisters. The Lady-Chapel was built during the episcopates of Bronescomb and Quivil, and the chapels of St. Mary Magdalene and of St. Gabriel the Archangel, north and south of the Lady-Chapel, are the work of Bishop Bronescomb.

Many of the ancient decorations and arrangements were either removed, or defaced, by Queen Elizabeth’s “visitors,” who, in 1559, were appointed to compel the general observance of the Protestant formularies. During the Commonwealth the Cathedral was divided into two portions by a brick wall so that an Independent preacher named Stuckeley, one of Cromwell’s chaplains, could preach in “West Peter’s,” and a Presbyterian, named Ford, in the Choir, or “East Peter’s,” as the Puritans now named these portions of the Cathedral.

The finest view is perhaps from Waddlesdown, about four miles from Exeter. Taking a view of the exterior,

“The visitor should especially remark the Norman towers, the cresting of the roof, the flying-buttresses and the north porch. The Norman towers, in connection with the long unbroken roof, should perhaps be regarded as constituting the specialty of Exeter. At all events, the peculiarity of their present position is so great and so striking as at once to attract attention; and the question of their place in the original Norman church is one of very considerable interest. Each tower consists of six stages, the two lowest of which are plain: the other four have blind arcades and circular window openings, the details and arrangements of which vary in the two towers. At the angles are square buttresses, which rise above the uppermost story. The south tower is Norman throughout; that on the north was altered by Bishop Courtenay for the reception of the great bell from Llandaff, and its final stage is Perpendicular. The _fleur-de-lis_ cresting of the roof is of lead (with which the whole of the roof is covered), and its form is very graceful and effective. The flying-buttresses derive a very grand effect from the fact that the aisle-roofs slope outwards, and not, as usual, inwards. Resulting also from this peculiarity are, the great height of the aisles on the exterior, and an unusual development of the clerestory, without any intervening space between it and the aisle-roofs; and within the nave, the absence of the triforium; the place of which is, however, indicated by the blind arcade above the piers. The north porch with its triple canopy is part of Grandisson’s work, and very beautiful.”--(R. J. K.)

Many people are at first disappointed with their first view of the =West Front= and more particularly of the =Screen= with its noble array of statues. The impression that it produces has been well described by W. D. Howells, who writes on his visit to Exeter:

“To the first glance it is all a soft gray blur of age-worn carving, in which no point or angle seems to have failed of the touch which has blent all archaic sanctities and royalties of the glorious screen in a dim sumptuous harmony of figures and faces.”

Now let us examine it more in detail.

“The west front, usually regarded as the latest work of Bishop Grandisson, who died in 1369, is of very high interest; and although it cannot compete with those of Wells or Lincoln (both of earlier date), may justly claim great beauty as an architectural composition. It recedes in three stories, the lowest of which is formed by the sculptured screen; the second contains the great west window, on each side of which is a graduated arcade; and in the third, or gable, is a triangular window surmounted by a niche, containing a figure of St. Peter, the patron saint of the cathedral. The SCREEN deserves the most careful examination. It is pierced by three doorways, and surrounded by a series of niches, in which are the statues of kings, warriors, saints and apostles, guardians, as it were, of the entrance to the sanctuary. These figures are arranged in three rows. From pedestals crowned with battlements spring angels, each of whom supports a triple pilaster, with capitals. The statues on these capitals, forming the second row, are for the most part those of kings and knights; above the canopies which surmount them appears the third row, chiefly saints and apostles. The positions of the angels are admirably varied.