Y al o U n i » e rs 1 1 v Library I II Ml YALE UNIVERSITY ART LIBRARY A HISTORY OF GOTHIC ART IN ENGLAND A HISTORY OF GOTHIC ART IN ENGLAND By EDWARD S. PRIOR, M.A. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GERALD C. HORSLEY AND MANY PLANS AND DIAGRAMS LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1900 A 3 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. PREFACE IN the vast field of archaeology, which opens widely before the his torian of Gothic Art, the author admits his many disabilities, many ignorances, and much of his knowledge to be superficial or second-hand. Still, his aim has been less to tabulate the conclusions of archaeology than to exhibit the broad impulses of design as being the vital expres sions of English Gothic ; and for this purpose he has gone rather to the buildings themselves than to the experts of archaeological detail. In two points only has he attempted something more than generalization : First, in the distinction of the English style, as a true line of Gothic creation, native in its origin and in its progress, and separate by its qualities from the continental styles ; Secondly, as to the existence in the English art of local schools and centres of craft, which made distinct sub-styles in their districts. His survey of the cathedrals and most of the monastic remains and larger parish churches of England has given him opinions which, on the one hand, are at variance with the assertion of the great French architecture being the mother of all the Gothics, sending her children into all the countries of north-west Europe ; and, on the other, with the idea of a central Masonic Guild, whose organization monopolized the arts of design for all the centuries of mediaeval church-building. He has found rather national and local variation than European solidarity in Gothic, and would wish to point to the constant English tradition as proof, since the Conquest, of a native craftsmanship, free alike from continental importation and Masonic dictation. His survey of English examples has, however, brought him face to face with the obliterations of this national and local history in our art that have come from the methods of the Gothic Revival during the last sixty years. Very often it has been necessary to correct present-day appearances by the evidence of prints and drawings made before "restoration." Among such he must express his especial indebtedness to the collections of measured and other drawings of architectural students, published in the sketch-books of the Architectural Association, and in those which bear the name of Spring Gardens and John of Gaunt. In the foot-notes of the text are set out his borrowings vi PREFACE from the numberless writers on Gothic Art. But the illustrations, in the great majority of cases, have been prepared specially for this work and made from the buildings themselves, while for the diagrams and plans many sources of information and authority have been consulted. i hanks are particularly due to Mr. W. A. Pite for his kind loan of Oxfordshire church plans measured by himself, and to Mr. W. R. Lethaby for use of his drawings of St. Mary's Chapel, Glastonbury, and of the Early English glass at Salisbury. The reader is asked kindly to make correction of certain obvious misprints in the text, as well as of the following : Page 32, n. 8 Canons has been printed " Candous." „ 51 Ramsey „ " Romsey." 142 illuminated 1 8 1, n. 1 splayed 272 Glastonbury in 1185 355 Harmondsworth 370 New Romney "illumined."" inserted." "in 1285." " Harpenden." " New Romsey." Also to note that in the plan, fig. 117, page 157, Deerhurst has been omitted between Bredon and Gloucester; that to fig. 125, page 172, the title should give the date as 1230 instead of 1 130 ; and, finally, that the reference on line 8, page 203, should be to fig. 271, page 345. 10, Melina Place, London, N.W. September, 1899. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I Gothic Art in England and France ..... i CHAPTER II The First Gothic- Building and the English Church- Plan 30 CHAPTER III The Style of the Transition in England .... 83 CHAPTER IV The Greater Building of the Thirteenth Century . . 161 CHAPTER V The Lesser Building of the Thirteenth Century . -223 CHAPTER VI The Detail and Sculpture of the Thirteenth Century . 254 CHAPTER VII The Summit of Gothic Art . . . . . . -299 CHAPTER VIII The Building of the Fourteenth Century . . . -329 CHAPTER IX The Decoration and Sculpture of the Fourteenth Century 381 CHAPTER X Gothic Architecture after 1350 ...... 426 Index . 449 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The illustrations marked with an asterisk are from drawings in the Architectural Association Sketch Book Series; any from other sources are acknowledged in the list. F'C MCE i The Area of Gothic Building (Transitional Stage) ... 17 2 The Area of Gothic Building (Developed Stage) .... 29 3 Oratory of Gallerus, Dingle [Ground Plati] 47 4 Cormac's Chapel, Cashel . „ 47 S Egilsey, with West Tower . „ 47 6 Escomb ,,48 7 Bradford ,,48 8 St. Regulus. St. Andrews. „ 48 9 Heath Chapel ,,48 10 Wing ,,49 11 Brixworth ,,49 12 Dover „ 51 13 Studland „ 51 14 Worth ,,52 15 Dalmeny ,,52 16 Broadwater „ 53 17 Potterne „ 54 18 Witney „ 55 19 Burford „ 55 20 Elm ,,56 21 Acton Burnell „ 56 22 Harrow „ 57 23 Darlington „ 57 24 Rye ,,57 25 The Romanesque Development of Great Church-Plan . . 59 26 Norman Plans in England . . 61 27 Norman Plans in England . . 62 28 Norman Plans in England . . 63 29 Cistercian Reformed Plan, Bindon 66 30 Canon's (Secular) Reformed Plan, Southwell 66 31 Canon's (Regular) Reformed Plan 66 32 Bishop's Reformed Plan ... 67 33 Nun's Reformed Plan .... 68 34 The English Cathedral Quire Enlargement 73 35 The English Cathedral Quire Enlargement 74 36 Cistercian Quire Enlarge ment 76 37 Canon's and Northern Quire Enlargement 77 38 The English Cathedral Plan 78 39 The French Cathedral Plan . 79 40 The English and French Church 80 41 The English Cathedral, Lich field 81 42 The French Cathedral, Amiens 81 43 The French Cathedral, Char- tres 82 44 Bredon Chancel Arch, c. 1160 84 45 Lanercost Quire, c. 1169 . . 85 46 Buildwas Nave, c. 1140 ... 86 47 Dore Transept Chapel, c. 1170 86 48 Llanthony Nave, c. 1170 . . 87 49 Gloucester, West Gate, c. 1180 89 50 Worcester Cathedral, West Bay of South Aisle of Nave, c. 1 160 90 51 Canterbury, Quire Vault, 1178 92 52 Durham, Nave Vault, c. 1140. 93 53 Chichester, Presbytery Vault, c 119S 94 54 Plans of English Twelfth Century Vaultings .... 94 55 Diagram of Lincoln Quire Vault 95 56 Vault Template 97 57 Romanesque Pier Sections . . 98 58 Romanesque Pier Sections . . 98 59 Bays of the Mid Twelfth Century. Worcester Nave, from a drawing by H. Brakespear . . 99 60 Bay of Lincoln Quire, 1190 . 100 61 The French Bay-Design in England 101 62 The English Bay-Design . . 102 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 63 " Augustinian " Bay-Design . . 103 64* Parochial Bay-Design in Large Churches 104 65 St. Hugh's Chapel, Witham, c. 1170 105 66 Whitchurch, c. 1190 . . . .106 67 Dore, North Transept, c. 1170 106 68 Dore, North Transept, c. 1170 107 69 Fountains, Corbel of Re fectory Pulpit, c. 1180 . . 107 70 Early Gothic Pier Sections in the North 108 71 Early Gothic Pier Sections of the West 108 72 Early Gothic Pier Sections of the South-East . . . .109 73 Column of Jervaulx Chapter, c. 1 1 90 110 74 Wells, North Porch of Nave, c 1175 in 75 Lincoln, St. Hugh's Transept, c. 1 190 112 76 Ripon, Nave Clerestory, c. 1 1 70 113 77 The Gothic Development of Basemoulds 114 78 The Advance of Gothic Mould ing 115 79 The Progress of Early Gothic Archmoulds 116 80 Early Gothic Archmoulds . .117 81 The Enriched Gothic Mould ing 118 82 The Enriched Gothic Mould ing 119 83 Glastonbury, Nave Window, 1186 122 84 Tynemouth, East Front . . .123 85 Romsey, West Front, 1200 . .124 86 St. Mary's Chapel, Glaston bury, North Side, c. 1186 . 125 87 Byland, West Front, 1190 . .126 88 Southrop, Font 132 89 Glastonbury, North Doorway of St. Mary's Chapel, 1186 . 133 90 Glastonbury, Figures of North Doorway 134 91 Chichester, Eastern Tri forium, 1 190 135 92 Carved Slab in Library of Durham Cathedral . . . .136 93 Hedon, South Transept, 1180. 137 94 St. Frideswide's, Oxford, Quire Aisle, c. 1180 ^8 95 Rivaulx, Doorway to Re fectory, c. 1 180 X4X 96 Rivaulx, Refectory, c. 1180 . 141 97 Byland, Quire Aisle .... 142 98 Dore, Eastern Chapels, 1190 143 99 Stoke sub Hambden, Crossing, c. 1280 143 100 Byland, Quire Aisle, c. 1180 144 101 Dore, Quire Aisle, c. 1180 . 144 102 Wells, Nave, 1190 .... 145 103 Llandaff, Nave, 1190 . . . 145 104 Deerhurst 146 105 Whitchurch, North Transept, c. 1 190 146 106 Byland, West Door, c. 1180 . 147 107 Cym-hir, Nave Capital, now at Llanidloes, c. 1190 . . . 148 108 Oxford, St. Frideswide's Tran sept, c. 1 160 148 109 Oxford, St. Frideswide's Nave, c. 1 1 70 149 no Oxford, St. Frideswide's Nave, c. 1 1 70 149 in Oxford, St. Frideswide's Tran sept, c. 1160 150 112 Llandaff, Nave, 1190. . . . 151 113 Diagram of South-Eastern Vault Ribs in Their Early Gothic Use 155 114 The South-Eastern Evolution of the Abacus 155 115 The Mediaeval Dioceses (South eastern) 156 116 Diagram of Western Vault Ribs. Diagonal and Trans verse 157 117 The Mediaeval Dioceses (West ern) 157 118 The Mediaeval Dioceses (Northern) 158 119 The Northern Evolution of the Abacus 159 120 Diagram of Northern Vault Ribs, Diagonal and Trans verse 159 121 The Mid England Evolution of Parish Church Pier in Large Church Design . .160 122 Block Plan of English Thir teenth Century Cathe dral 165 123 Southern English Chancels . 170 124 Cherry Hinton Chancel . .171 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XI 125 Brecon, South Side of Chan cel, c. 1 1 30 172 126 Darlington, from the North east, c. 1 195 172 127 Rochester, North-East Tran sept, c. 1 2 10-1230. From the view in the Builder's Series of " Cathedrals of England and Wales" 173 128 Lynn. St. Margaret's Arcade of Quire, c. 1220 . . . .176 129 Rye. Southern Typeof Aisled Chancel 177 130 Boxgrove, Monastic Quire, c. 1230 179 131 Boxgrove, Monastic Quire, c. 1230 180 132* Boxgrove, Bay 181 133 Hythe Chancel, from South End, c. 1230 181 134 South wark, Bay Quire . . .182 135 Dore, East End of Quire, c. 1190 183 136 Christ Church, Dublin, Bay of Nave, c. 1220. From a drawing by the late George Edmund Street, R.A., "Christ Church Cathedral " . . . .184 137* Pershore, Quire, c. 1220-1290 185 138 Southwell, North-East View of East End, c. 1260 . . . 186 139 Hexham, North Transept, c. 1203 187 140 Whitby, Bay of Quire . . . 188 141 Whitby, North Transept, c. 1210 188 142 Rivaulx, Quire Bay, c. 1230 . 189 143 Netley, Bay of Quire, c. 1230 189 144 'Glasgow, Quire, from the South-East, c. 1220-1280. . 191 145 Dunblane, West End, c. 1250 192 146 Glasgow. Plan I., of Quire; II., of Crypt below . . . 193 147 Fountains, Bay of Chapel, c. 1240. From a drawing by J. Arthur Reeve 194 148 Durham, Nine Altars, Look ing North, c. 1240 . . .195 149 York, Bay of South Transept, c. -1230 197 150 York, Front of South Tran sept (Before Restoration), c. 1240 198 .151 Beverley, Bay of Quire, c. 1220 199 152 Beverley, Quire, from the South-East, c. 1225 . . .200 153 Eastward Extensions of Nor man Plans 201 154 Ely, Bay of Presbytery, c. 1235 202 155 Westminster, Plan of East End 203 156 Westminster, Bay of Quire . 205 157 Salisbury, Plan of East End 205 158 Lincoln, Showing St. Hugh's Apse in Outline .... 205 159 Lincoln, Bay of Nave, c. 1240 206 160 Salisbury, Bay of Nave, 1240 207 161 Lincoln, North Transept . . 209 162 Lincoln, from the South-East 210 163 Salisbury, from the North- East, BEFORE WYATT'S DE structions 211 164 Peterborough, Front . . .212 165 Wells, West Front . Facing 214 166 Llandaff, West Front, c. 1200 217 167 Bolton, West Doorway. . .219 168 Lanercost, West Front . .220 169 Dunstable, West Front . .221 170 Westminster, South Transept 222 171 Dore, Eastern Chapels, c. 1190 227 228230 172 Winchester, Chapels, c. 1200 226 173 St. Saviour's, Southwark, Chapels, c. 1230. From a drawing by Charles A. Irwin in " The Building News "... 174 Chichester Cathedral, Lady Chapel, c. 1290 175 Westminster Abbey, the Vestry, c. 1245 176 Lacock, Vestry and Chapter, c. 1240 231 177 Beleigh, Chapter-House . .231 178 Lincoln, Galilee Porch . .233 179 Chester, Chapter-House . . 234 180 Furness, Chapter-House . . 235 181 Margam, Chapter-House . . 236 182 Lincoln, Chapter-House . . 237 183 Chester, Refectory Pulpit . 229 184 Waverley, Undercroft . . . 240 185 Winchester, Undercroft . . 241 186 Canterbury Infirmary . . . 242 187 Furness Infirmary .... 243 188 Lincoln, Bishop's Palace . . 244 xii LIST OF FIG. 189 Ovingdean, South - Eastern Parish Church. From a draw ing by Maurice B. Adams in " The Buildings News "... 190 Elton, Northamptonshire . . 191 Urchfont, Wiltshire, c. 1280 192 Worcester Quire 193 Westminster Abbey Choir . . 194 Stone Church Interior. From a drawing by T. Locke Worth- ington 195 Polebrook Porch 196 Hereford Cathedral, North Porch 197 West Walton, South Aisle of Nave 198 Westminster Abbey, Capital in Quire 199 French Capital 200 Caen Capital 201 The Trefoil of Ely Quire . 202 Capitals from Stamford . . 203 Capital, West Walton. Nave 204 Lincoln Cathedral, Capital in Transept 205 Skelton Church, Capitals in Porch. From a drawing by H. A. Paley, " John O'Gaunt's Sketch Book " 206 Rivaulx, Corbel in Transept 207 York,CorbelinSouthTransept 208 Lichfield, Ironwork on West Door 209 York, Chapter Door . . . 210 Wellow near Romsey, Wall- Painting 211 Westminster, Diapers in "Chapter" 212 Carved Panel 213 Salisbury, Thirteenth-Cen tury Class 2 14 Romsey, Painting at East End 215 Christchurch Priory, Hamp shire, North Doorway . . 216 Salisbury Cathedral, West Porches 217 Lichfield, Doorway of North Transept 218 Crowland. West Doorway . 219 Lincoln, South Doorway of Presbytery 220 Worcester, Quire Spandrel Carvings 285 286 288 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE FIG. 221 Worcester, Quire Spandrel Carvings 222 Salisbury, Quire Inclosure . 249 223 Hereford, Tomb of Bishop 251 Aqua Blanca 253 224 Salisbury, Bishop Bridport's 260 Tomb 289 261 225 Oxford, Angle of St. Frides wide's Shrine 290 226 Oxford, Spandrel of St. 261 Frideswide's Shrine . . .291 262 227 Rochester, Painting of Wheel of Fortune in Quire . . 292 262 228 Easby Church, near Rich mond, Painting in Chancel 293 263 229 Early Painting on Window Jamb 294 264 230 Yarmouth, Borders to Wall- 265 Paintings 294 266 231 Higham Ferrers, Spandrel 267 Carving on Tower . . . .296 268 232 Chichester, Side of Coffin 268 Chest. North Aisle of Nave 297 269 233 Beverley, Font 297 234 Hexham, Transept Window . 298 235 Hereford, North Transept, c. 1270 302 270 236 Hereford, North Transept, 271 c. 1270 303 272 237 Comparative Paths of English and French Gothic . . . 305 274 238 Section of Caen Pier . . . 307 274 239 Amiens, Crossing Vault, 1270 307 240 Lincoln, Bay of Presbytery, 275 1260 308 241 Croxden, West Front, c. 12 10 309 275 242 Binham, West Front, c. 1260. 309 277 243 Salisbury, Cloister, c. 1240 .311 244* Grantham, Nave Window, c. 276 1280 312 277 245 Egglestone, East Window, c. 1260 313 279 246 Easby Church, East Window, c. 1260 313 280 247 Egglestone Nave, c. 1300 . . 313 248 Standlake, Northants . . .314 281 249 St. Agatha's, Refectory . .315 282 250* Chichester, St. Mary's Hos pital, c. 1280 316 283 251 Plans of Vault Conoids . . 316 252 Chichester, Lady Chapel, 284 1300 317 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xm 253 Salisbury, Chapter - House, 1260 320 254 York, Chapter-House Ex terior, 1290 ... . . 322 255 Wells, Chapter-House Door way, 1290 323 256 York, Chapter-House Plan . 324 257 Wells, Chapter-House Plan . 325 258 Kirkham, Gateway, c. 1280 . 334 259 Ripon, East Front, c. 1300 . 335 260 Guisborough, East Front (Sharpe's Restoration), c. 1300 337 261 Selby, East Front, 1300 and 134° 338 262 Dorchester, Jesse Window, c. 1310 339 263* Patrington Chancel, c. 1345 340 264 Gedney (near Wisbech), c. 1340 34i 265* Tilty (near Dunmow), c. i33° 34i 266 Hereford Eastern Chapels, c. 13°° 342 267 South Darley, Derbyshire . 342 268 St. Frideswide's, Oxford, c. 1320 ^ ... 343 269 Waltham Abbey, Window in Lady-Chapel, c. 1330 . . . 344 270 Middleton Cheney, Northants 344 271 St. Paul's, London (from Hollar's Print), c. 1280 . 345 272* Ely, East Window of Lady- Chapel, c. 1345 346 273* WlNCHELSEA, C. 1300 . . . 347 274 Bristol, Abbot Knowles' Pres bytery, c 1330 349 275 Bristol, Half Section of Quire 350 276 St. Albans, Quire Bay, 1290 . 351 277 York, Nave Bay, 1300 . . . 351 278 Guisborough, Quire Bay . .352 279 Exeter, Quire Bay .... 353 280 Exeter, Half Section of Nave 353 281 St. Albans, Wood Groining of Quire, c. 1280 .... 357 282 Selby Quire, c. 1300 and 1340 358 283 Tewkesbury, Vault of Quire 359 284 Tewkesbury Quire .... 360 285 Tewkesbury, Chapels of Chevet, c. 1325 360 286 Wells, Bay of Quire . . 361 287 Gloucester, Quire Casing from the Triforium . . .362 288 Ottery St. Mary, Bay of Quire 363 289 Ely, Bay of Quire .... 364 290* Yaxley, Example of Mid- England XIV. Century Church 367 291 Diagram of Steeples. . . . 368 292 Diagram of Spires . . . .372 293 Diagram of Spires .... 373 294 Peterborough, West Tower . 374 295 Exton, Rutland 375 296 Pershore, Lantern of Tower, c 1330 377 297 Bristol, Vaulting of Quire, c. 1320 380 298 Chertsey, Tiles of ... . 382 299 Crowland, Memorial Slab of Mason 383 300 Salisbury, Brass of Bishop, 1365. From a rubbing by E. Doran Webb 384 301 Upper Hardres, Kent, Glass in East Window .... 385 302 York Chapter-House, Sedilia Arcades, c. 1300 .... 386 303 Diagram of Eastern Canopies 389 304 Canterbury, D'Estria's Quire Screen 390 305 Bredon, Sedilia 392 306 Chichester, St. Mary's Hos pital, Oak Screen to Chapel 392 307 Lynn, St. Margaret's, Chan cel-Screen of Oak .... 393 308* Lancaster, Stalls .... 396 309 Diagram of Western Canopies 397 310 St. David's, Bishop's Palace . 398 311 Bristol, Sedilia of Bishop Knowle's Quire. From a drawing by J. Atwood Slater . 400 312 Christchurch, Hants, Altar- Screen 403 313 Boston, Pinnacle 404 314 Rushden, Strainer Arch . . 406 315 York, Chapter-House String, c. 1290 410 316 Selby, Quire Capitals . . .411 317 Selby, Quire Carving . . .411 318 Gloucester, Capital . . . .412 319 Wells, Capital of Chapter- House Shaft, c. 1290. . . 413 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 320 Winchester, Spandrel Carv ing of Stalls, c. 1300 . . 415 321 Winchester, Spandrel Carv ing of Stalls, c. 1300 . .416 322 Wells, Chapter Stair . . .417 323 Worcester, Figures in Nave. 418 324 Tewkesbury, Bosses in Nave . 418 325 Tewkesbury, Corbel in Nave 419 326 Exeter, Nave, Minstrel Gallery 419 327 Norwich, Lectern 420 328 Christchurch, Altar Screen 424 329 Wells, Glass in Lady- Chapel 425 330 Gloucester Quire, c. 1350 . 431 331 Gloucester, Plan of Fan- Vault of Cloister. . . . 432 332* Gloucester, Cloister, with Entrance to Lavatory . -433 333 Tewkesbury, Transept- Vault 434 334 Gloucester, East End, c. 1360 43S 335 York, North Side of Quire . 436 336 Edington, West Front. From a drawing by the late F. Deschons 437 337 Christchurch, Twynham, East End 438 338 Christchurch, Twynham, Lady- Chapel 439 339 Houghton - le - Dale, West Front 441 340 Walsingham, East Front . . 442 THE HISTORY OF GOTHIC ART IN ENGLAND CHAPTER I Gothic Art in England and France There has been in the known history of mankind no even upward progress of Art. If she started betimes with the advancing procession of civilization, she has constantly fallen out of step, and shown no taste for its latter-day triumphs. An apology seems required for such caprice, and by some she is pictured as mounting a spiral whose axis is so inclined that at times her path may dip ; yet on the return it will bring her upwards on to a loftier standpoint hand in hand with Progress. One remembers, however, how the epicyclical theory of the planets was exploded, when it was perceived that the centre of their movement lay, not in the earth, but outside. Till the Copernicus arrives, who will put art and civilization into their proper orbits, it will be best simply to note what an independence the first seems to have of the 'other's orderly advance. Art shows herself on a summit by fits and starts, and the moments of her exaltation are brief : the peaks she gains would seem of such. narrow foothold, that the next step hurries her down to be again lost in the waste of commonplace. Such was the appearance of Gothic Art, for a space the mistress of mediaeval life : yet now our art stands no higher for the distinction behind it. - - - - ; It would seem that any story of art must of necessity miss the note of triumphant progress, which comes naturally to the tales of science or social evolution. The interest is rather that of a drama — of a human tragedy consummated by an irresistible destiny. The dynasty goes on its way, as if to supreme dominion — but there comes always a day, when the king dies, and there is no king to live after him. Again and again has the faculty of beautiful creation strongly asserted itself — yet, heirs as we are of all these ages of fertility, our art heritage is a meagre one. A barren knowledge that the wealth once existed, B 2 GOTHIC ART is the most of it. We have the shreds and tatters of treasures hoarded in our museums, or locked away in cabinets, but of the power that could make them— we have nothing. Thus, more than nine thousand years ago, we are told, there flourished in the valley of the Nile a school of free sculpture, with a genius surpassing ours— the proof of it preserved by a single figure or so. And then there came in Egypt, two thousand jears after, another art, that of Karnak and the Ramisseum, with a scale and style that to us are equally unattainable. On the horizon of Babylonian civilization are said to loom two widely separated periods of Art — the earliest represented by a few fragments, the later by a room or two in National museums. In comparison with such ancient arts, the Hellenic is near to us, and we speak of Greek art as the most perfect that the world has known. Professors fill books with the philosophy of its aspirations, scholars tabulate its progressions, and the tradition of its style,, so our sculptors tell us, is to be the beacon for all time. But is there now any warmth thereby for the masses of London or New York ? — can they be truly said to catch even a glimpse of its shining ? Gothic art is still closer ; it is native to our race, our country can show its works at our doors. May we not then raise our superstruc ture of Art to greater heights upon its eminence ? Can we not at least share in its glory, copy what is left us, and appropriate its crown ? This has often been taken for granted — fifty years ago the hope was an eager one in the enthusiasm of our Gothic revival. Yet what has actually come of our endeavour this last half century ? We have now, as then, perishing masses of Gothic fabric, but where is the colour of Gothic painting, the life of Gothic sculpture, and the manifold mysteries of Gothic texture ? The story has run sadly. To find out its secrets, we have laid our ancient art on the dissecting table, have stripped it to the bone, and made a vain effort to put new flesh to the old skeleton. So Gothic art has been finally put away, but none the more has the life of the Gothic creation passed into our nineteenth century, than has the perfection of the Greek. Western Europe, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, might be called a treasure house, filled with gems of Gothic genius. The desecrations and revolutions of two centuries wrecked one half — swept Gothic churches clear of their ornaments, and then levelled to the ground many of the fabrics which they furnished. Of much that was not actually destroyed, carelessness and neglect, and the necessities of rebuilding have since made equal havoc. Yet at the beginning of this century enough remained to arouse immense admiration of the art that had given to the world such masterpieces. But this admiration has given us no art of our own — it seems, indeed, only to have blinded IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 3 our reason. A strange perversity has attended the efforts of the " revival," so that it has finally been more deadly to what it admired, than the fires of revolution, or the neglects of classicism. Gothic utterance had been limited — but fifty years ago it still spoke clear and true. Destruction had prevented, but now the nineteenth century, under the name of " restoration," suborned the evidence. A process of substitution has turned churches and cathedrals in England and abroad into the caricatures, instead of the examples, of Gothic inspiration. The flavour of a great art is generally an essence too subtle for conveyance by the vehicle of a strange language, and the essential merit of mediaeval art lay in the freshness of its instinctive creativeness, in its uncalculating grasp of beauty. What could be stranger to such a genius than our modern methods ? We have recipes and rules — paper delineation of art, exact measurements, machine contouring, model drawing, and all the labour-saving technique of commercial schools of painting, sculpture, and architecture. But under the regime of the science of art, our revival Gothic necessarily misrepresented all that it was intended to reproduce. By no possibility could a nation of mechanics show the same products as a nation of artists. Yet, despite the evident falsehood of its methods, "restoration" has gone deliberately forward without check to this day. Where not completely rebuilt, Gothic monuments have been re-surfaced ; their paintings have been re-painted ; their sculptures re-chiselled. At its worst, this re-building, re-painting/ re-carving has been causeless and ignorant substitution.1 But, at its best, where it has been in intention laboriously imitative, have not the very pains and effort — by the very knowledge which has controlled them — only made themselves the more unsuggestive of a beauty whose spontaneity was its charm ? Weatherworn and blackened may be the images of the Wells front, or St. Mary's spire 3 — they may be crumbling to dust — but with the last surface that winds and frosts have left them, they still show the impress of the highest art that our Western races have achieved. It would be ridiculous to suggest any distinction of the sort for what our most conscientious nineteenth century tradesmen, or the most talented of our exhibition sculptors readily chisel for the old niches. We have multiplied examples of "restoration" building, with 1 See practically every writer who has field Bridge Chapel. "De te ipso fabula written on Gothic art. A trenchant expres- narratur." sion of his scorn at such proceedings is 2 This was written in 1894 : in 1895 the found in Sir G. G. Scott's Lectures, vol. statues were removed. One has been re- ii., p. 320, from which the reader should placed, and by its side are substitutions. turn to the same architect's confessions in See Mr. T. G. Jackson, " The Church of his autobiography with regard to Wake- St. Mary, Oxford," 4 "GOTHIC ART " restoration " sculpture, with " restoration " painted glass, and^' Gothic furniture of screens and stalls. Yet the art-value of such productions can only lie in their having sometimes a borrowed mechanical excellence of structure, plastered over with a meaningless, and mostly tawdry decoration. And the just view of Gothic must dissociate itself from such suggestions : the tinsel of nineteenth century ecclesiology must be thrust aside, before we can get the real quality of mediaeval art. Yet by most people these Neo-Gothic forgeries are taken as repre sentative, and it is small wonder that, as they have multiplied, the credit of the real inspiration has declined. In the hubbub of false asser tion the genuine voice has, in fact, been drowned. Such has been the confidence with which Victorian " Gothic " has been achieved, such science and skill have worked in its mimicries, that as mere mechanisms they have been abundantly successful — as Frankenstein's monster was made with the form and movement, but none of the graces of its prototype. Like that, too, " Restoration" has developed an aggression towards what gave it birth. To pamper its proclivities, genuine work has been continually effaced, and the real art smoothed away and doctored to match the false. It has been as if the Alexandrines, having framed their epics on the Homeric model, had then rewritten the original text so as not to belie their lucubrations. With an Argonautica to represent him instead of the Iliad, would Homer be recognized as great ? The re-editing of Gothic has taken place so widely, that its genuine expression is now hard to find. Its highest qualities have passed from us as completely as have those of the ancient arts. In this last decade of the nineteenth century, a tour of the English cathedrals1 shows that the tide of " restoration " has slackened mostly for want of material to work upon. Unrestored Gothic is, as a whole, a thing of the past, and only here and there, to hint at what has passed away, may still be seen a window of the fifteenth by that of the nine teenth century, as at Gloucester, or a fragment of thirteenth century statuary by that of yesterday, as at Lichfield— such careful copies, these last, so the cathedral authorities are always telling us ! For the next generation to ours any direct acquaintance with the great comprehensive Gothic genius, except by means of parodies, will be difficult. As it is, students must travel to out-of-the-way corners of England, to neglected parish churches,'2 which for want of money have been allowed to be left alone, if they would recover any idea of the body of art of which a Gothic building was once compounded. 1 For a paper by Dr. Cox, showing at 2 Such as Sail, Trunch, Ranworth, Nor- whose hands our cathedrals have received folk, and some few churches in Devonshire their present forms, see "Archaeological —every year diminishing in number. Journal," 1897. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 5 But our cathedrals and larger churches have ceased to suggest what the design of the mediaeval artist meant, when it was fresh from their hands. As in the case of the Egyptian or Greek periods, it has become necessary to appeal to museums, to scholarship and to culture, rather than to actual eyesight, to prove the position that here was the art of a great period, which some five or six hundred years ago our ancestors achieved in one of those rare creative moments, when the instinct of the beautiful reaches a culminating manifestation ; that Gothic was a comprehensive art, with a perfect range of expression covering the whole field of life ; with a distinction sui generis, that can never be matched or equalled. As our instances have often of necessity to be drawn from what is known to have been, rather than from what is ; often from what has existed up to a recent date, but which " restoration" has now for ever destroyed ; so now no less must a just account of Gothic art disentangle itself from the glosses with which the conflict of " revival " theories has overlaid the subject. Our failures have been from no lack of inquiry into the origin of Art ; the " how " and the " wherefore " have been continually discussed, and in the discussions opinions of every kind have found a battlefield. If it has vexed our scientific perfectionists to suppose our arts incapable of keeping step with our moral and social evolution — so that by one school mediaeval art is minimised, because it ought to be impossible for our own enlightened times not to achieve as much as the " dark ages :" — on the other hand, the pessimists of progress have taken the excellences of Gothic art as a text with which to arraign modern religion or modern social system. Everything is considered by some to be explained by such phrases as " the true Christian principles of construction," which belonged to " the ages of Faith." 1 Others have inculcated Gothic honesty of architecture as a moral precept for our regeneration,2 and some again have seen in the Gothic " equality of art " the true basis of social polity.3 But the high motives which have prompted these special interpre tations of Gothic genius, and the beauty of the literature in which we read the several propaganda of Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris, are more to be commended than the success of the positions they have created. To give them substance the evidences of history as to morality and social progress have had generally to be doctored, or, on the other hand, art has had to be squared to different canons than universal appreciation accepts. The wider the investigation, the more hopeless seems the correlation of art to social law. Neither the morality nor the immorality 1 See Pugin, and the ecclesiologist litera- " The Seven Lamps," and the body of ture of 1830-1860. Ruskinite literature. >- 2 See Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," and ' SeeW. Morris's Lectures and Romances. 6 GOTHIC ART of any particular epoch — neither its freedoms nor its tyrannies neither so-called civilization, nor an evident savagery can be shown to have had a monopoly of the highest art, any more than of its most thorough degradation. Conditions which have manifestly governed the manner of Art, and the direction in which its impulse has turned, seem to have had no controlling hand in the final value of its achievement. That has come upon a different basis than what morality, or sociology, can determine. Indeed, if moral and social conditions may be assumed to be generally at an average, fluctuating from age to age between a mean of distinct extremes and one of respectable moderate turpitudes and excellences, then it may perhaps be submitted that art has had the best chance when the extremes have been the greatest. But even so, the wind has blown where it listed — we cannot tell whence it has come or whither it has gone. For a long time the literature of Gothic art has concerned itself with the minutiae of moulding and ritual in the service of revivalism, and so thorough has been ecclesiologist investigation, that it has been possible to build Victorian Gothic with all the constructional imitations of any given ten years of mediaeval history. And if a nobler practical purpose has been achieved, through the spirit which the great Teachers read into the productions of the Gothic ages, so that from their impetus has come a lift for us from the slough of commercialism ; yet now surely Gothic art may be reviewed solely for the sake of its history, and with no ulterior purpose, whether of religious, moral, or artistic elevation. The phenomena of the Gothic expansion can be seen to be as distinct as any in the known history of art, and its interest may, apart from other considerations, rest on the clearness with which it exhibits the characteristic marks which ally it to other acknowledged periods of great art. In this connection comes proof that it developed one of those moments in which man becomes an inspired creator such as all time will acknowledge, and peculiarly was this so with the Gothic of the He de France. Great art, that has power to stamp an epoch, and influence a cycle of centuries, would seem to concentrate to a definite nucleus of space as distinctly as it does to a point of time, and the one is as limited as the other. As Athens was for Greek art, as Constantinople for Byzantine, as Florence for Renaissance, so for Gothic stood Paris and its neighbourhood. But though centring to a head, it must draw its nourishment from a wide area and a long period of fallow. The beginnings of a great art seem to lie among the dry bones of a long dead ideal, one so exhausted that aspiration has departed and achievement therein become impossible. But it is by no intellectual discovery that it begins to live ; by no series of inventions ; but out of a sort of accidental shuffling of old IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 7 materials new combinations are produced, and there comes an experi menting of a natural spontaneous kind in certain directions. Thus from the debris of Roman construction came the beginnings of Gothic. Almost in a blind fortuitous way effort was concentrated on the arch and the vault. But once entered on, the path was definite and determined. Though, as in the sculpture of the Greek, and as in the painting of the Italian, the first steps of the new architecture were curiously haphazard, and its first technique puerile, yet there was a vigour in its effort ; the aim had an earnestness, however crude the achievement ; and there was a palpable progress to more perfect achievement. But the efforts in this direction showed themselves due not to calculation, but as it were to an instinctive irresistible force. There may have been individual skill, but its excellences were more of a traditional than a personal stamp ; the aesthetic qualities had their power from collectiveness, dominating the moral and intellectual, and extinguishing individuality. It is in such a hotbed that the seed of a great art germinates. The plant may be pictured bursting from the ground, slowly at first, but always with an upward expanding growth. Then comes a rapid and intense development ; the flower blossoms ; an advance is made in a few years greater than in the centuries that preceded, but again this is not brought about by anything of the nature of an individual invention or genius such as the history of science makes us familiar with. The quick steps made are still of the same kind as those that preceded them ; it is just as before the collective growth of craftsmanship ; but events are now crowded into the space of a few years. What has happened is that the circle of the experimenters has become immensely widened ; instead of art being the province of a sect, the whole people combines in the pursuit of beauty, and becomes endowed with the faculties of artists. Instead of slow traditional skill handed on from father craftsman to son, or from master to pupil, every member of the community instructs his neighbour in artistic effort, and gains a step from him himself. The whole being of the age, its religions and its philosophies, its aspirations and conceptions, are con centrated on art as the one means of expression. The passion for the beautiful controls every sphere of life and feeling. In such a course I believe that all the great epochs of art have run, and so in Western Europe Gothic art grew from small, widespread beginnings, with a slow but irresistible impulse, the master of its con ditions, until in the He de France came that expansion which in a few years brought about the most consummate art of building which the world has achieved. Such as these are the great days of man's creative force, and, few though they have been, to them belong the masterpieces, whether in painting, sculpture, or architecture, which have a perpetual 8 GOTHIC ART prestige. For their brief periods the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic qualities which make up man's nature seem to advance together. But this is very quickly over : often the balance is maintained for but a single generation. Moral and intellectual impulses which man must put into his art as much as into any other of his activities — which, indeed, have been called into life and stimulated by aesthetic creation — claim very soon to control it, and immediately the decadence has begun. The first symptom of the decline is the birth of artistic individuality ; the segregation of the artist from the community at large ; the making of art a personal rather than a collective ambition. In the Gothic art of France, as elsewhere, the appearance in the thirteenth century of distinct names of architects and sculptors seems to herald the loss of the finest feeling, and the coming of a less natural and instinctive production in its place. Herein there is a direct step downwards, as the artist separates himself in accordance with distinct qualifications, making himself speci fically painter, architect, goldsmith, imager, plaster worker, or what not, instead of " artifex " endowed for all artistic creation. For with this marshalling of artists into ranks comes the systematizing of art. Canons of design are formulated which take the place of experiment. Sacer dotalism may forge the fetters of ritual observance, as would seem to have happened in Egyptian and then, 2,000 years later, in Byzantine art. On the other hand, intellectual formalism may invade the spontaneity of art, and so-called " culture " may insist on what it calls " correctness " or "erudition " or " naturalism." . So came the decline in Greek and in Renaissance art; or, as happened in Japanese decoration, as in the constructive art of the He de France, mere hand dexterity or scientific mechanism may come to constitute the whole aim of the artist. When once the reign of the schoolman, professor, or "naturalist" is established, mechanical invention, exhibitions of cleverness, or appeals to the vulgar emotions, become the artist's stock in trade ; but the nature of these efforts has compromised art in the eyes of the community, which grows tired of mere amusement and juggling, and so turning elsewhere for the expression of its energy, ceases to regard what was once its supreme interest. There is, then, an organic change of quality in this art of the earliest decadence as compared with that of the progressive growing period, yet in technical .excellence it may be clearly superior. And the artist worker himself is inclined to overrate this superiority, because his attention is by the nature of his occupation directed rather to the manner than the matter of art expression. So the decline is at first scarcely realized ; but even when realized, and efforts made to retrace the steps, it still continues, and is always growing more pronounced, IN ENGLAND AND; FRANCE zg long though it may last ; the decadence of Greek art can be said to .have run right through the times of the Roman empire. The downward course is not always one of continuous descent. There come times of casting away of extravagance, and of attempts to remodel art anew upon the old patterns of excellence whose prestige continually survives. But these recrudescences have a forced note : there can be no return of the spirit which was breathed into the original creation : the mechanical nature of the revival is always evident : the course is eventually still farther downward. The periods of purism are succeeded by greater extravagances, until the credit of art is again compromised and the community generally banishes it from their lives. Art may be said to be moribund ; to be called back to life at some uncertain interval by causes, the clue to which we have not. The Gothic art of Paris and central France ran in this course. The distinctness, with which these phenomena may be there marked, may be regarded as a measure of the distinction of that art itself; just as the energy of a conflagration is evidenced not only by the broad illumination, but as surely also by the sudden collapse and the quick deadness of the ashes. In England we had a less brilliant display, and a less distinct quenching. Gothic art with us never leapt up with such a burst of glory, but its smoulderings retained their glow and broke again and again into radiance. Its progress marched with that of the French; and in the last half of the thirteenth century was reached a magnificent summit, from which it passed gradually downwards. The simplicity and directness of its first aims were impaired by the affectations of a wider culture ; the genuine feeling of its style gave place to a mere manner of decoration, at first fantastic and then dogmatic; its sculpture passed from reserve to freedom, and to escape from license adopted an overstrained convention. But still in England Gothic art never grew to be a mere mechanism of construction: it always retained a soul, a humour that was hearty in its devotion, though it finally became bourgeois in its expression. It was the logic of the Parisian that brought to his Gothic both its extreme excellence and its decay : the science of vault construction fell in with his bent. The idea once having attracted him,, his logical faculty compelled him to follow it to the end. His vaults rose higher and higher ; his poise and counterpoise, his linkage of thrust and strain grew more complicated and daring, until material mass disappeared from his design, and his cathedrals .were chain- works of articulated stone pegged to the ground by pinnacles. . But in the thirteenth century he had a spirit of art that was a power in him as great. as his logic ; that his art could assimilate such science showed how great the endowment was. Combined they advanced from Notre Dame to Amiens, from Reims c io GOTHIC ART to Beauvais. Beauvais was magnificent, but it leapt too high ! The aspiration of design had soared beyond the conditions of matter. Reason had to assert itself, but thus it was that the logical motive quenched the artistic. Experiment had given place to knowledge, and architecture for a time became a repetition of stereotyped ex cellences, the stock in trade of guilds of constructionists. But the English story is different, for then as now the Englishman jwas cast in a different mould. The completeness of a logical conclusion /had no charm for him ; his genius was for compromise. The idea of 'articulated and balanced construction which took the Frenchman's fancy and became to him a domineering mistress, was still to the English artist only a help-mate. As an indispensable vehicle for the expression of his art he was enamoured of it, but he would not let it stifle every other affection. The vigour of his Norman building had given him a grand art ; and in treatment of mass and wall surface, he retained to the end the ideals of this first Romanesque design. These were yielded to the power of the Gothic idea, but he never considered them as superseded. His was an incessant compromise that shifted its ground perpetually. If the completeness, the abandon of the great French period was never reached, yet, on the other hand, his art retained to the end the freshness of experiment. Occupied now on this detail, now on that, he worked on each in its turn the alchemy of Gothic, found it could be carried no further, and passed with fresh enthusiasm to a new hobby. So English art never lost its heart, but could keep the fancy and the tenderness of a genuine humour. In its course from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, window, vault, and wall-surface successively occupied its attention. In each a fresh stimulus was found for artistic activity and for experiment, that never deadened into routine. There appears a spontaneity as well as a steadfastness in our art. The story in England is that of a series of romances threaded to a theme which gave a common mode of action. In France the intensity is that of the Greek trilogy, where the movement is dominated by the Gothic spirit as by Ate. But, all the same, the Gothic spirit itself was one in both countries ; each was as much as the other a workshop for its forging. To Viollet le Due 1 must be allowed an extraordinary insight and thoroughness in illustrating the mechanical completeness with which the He de France masons worked out the problem of vault construction, i and shaped every detail of their art to the accurate expression of its con structive necessities. A similar treatise might be written for the English Gothic, though the aim could not be so evidently shown to have the i «- ; Dictionnaire raisonne" de l'architecture and "Entretiens sur l'architecture," 1863- francaiseduXPauXVP siecle," 1854-1868, 72. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE n singleness of purpose, which the course of French art easily suggests. Viollet le Due's treatment was so ingenious and exhaustive, and it presented the Gothic system under so reasonable an aspect for a scientific age, that it has deservedly put into the background the ideas which, on this side of the Channel, bolstered up religious, moral, and social theories with definitions of Gothic to suit. The relief to the subject from the suppression of Ecclesiologist and Ruskinite criticism has been evident, and it is not to be wondered that subsequent writers should be tempted to base the whole on this constructive ingenuity. Accordingly an exclusive definition has been created for Gothic, and it has been called the perfection of vault construction in stone, " a system of mechanism maintained by thrust and counterthrust," such as only the plan of a French cathedral could fully exhibit. It has been argued from this that the real Gothic style could only exist in the group of churches, which the art of the He de France produced. But, apart from the narrowness of its provincial definition,1 there is a weakness in setting up a rule, which would measure the Gothic spirit solely by its mechanical exhibitions, however " adorned by sculpture with motives drawn from organic nature, conventionalized in obedience to architectural conditions." One must object, that the science, by the power of which the French cathedrals were raised so magnificently, was after all but the accident of French genius ; that if the generative principle of Gothic may perhaps be rightly, if roughly, generalized as Economy of Material, yet the scientific was but the crude manifestation of such a principle, and even so it was bound to show itself artistically, not mechanically, perfect. Indeed, strictly scientific perfection was not the actual outcome of French art. A French writer 2 has lately taken pains to point out that the expression of the sexpartite vault was never quite scientifically complete ; the intermediate buttress at Sens and Paris has the same prominence as the main. Nor was the system of support by external flying buttresses a really understanding use of material, for it exposed to certain decay the most essential element of stability. But still, vault and flying buttress were artistically complete as expressions of idea. The impulse of Gothic lay in its action, not in its knowledge ; in the forms with which it shaped experiment, not in the resulting science which experiment induced. So Economy of Material was not, as a scientific abstraction, the end of its effort, 1 The French Gothic faith is patriotic, except Amiens can really be called Gothic. and usually as exclusive as the " salvation " See " The Development and Character of of certain religious sectaries, who would Gothic Architecture," C. H. Moore, 1890, keep "heaven" for themselves. But more from which the above definitions are quoted. jealous for France even than the French- 2 Corroyer, " L' Architecture Gothique" men is Professor Moore of Cambridge Bibliotheque de I'enseignement des Beaux (Mass.), who seems to doubt if anything Arts, 1891. I2 GOTHIC ART but only as far as it was the means, whereby were gained directness of expression and the rejection of superfluities— in fact, that selection of interest which is the prime artistic gift. As, soon as it went beyond this and tried to be really scientific, then the life of its art was over. No mere mechanical contrivance could unlock the emotions by which art exists. The key to such comes only in the hands of beauty. In Economy of Material, but as the means for the perfection of grace, lay the goal to which the desire of the Middle Ages continually pressed. Especially to slenderness was mediaeval devotion paid, and this attribute of womanhood was an extraordinary object of passion, so that its effect upon the youthful lover is described in exaggerated language in many a romance. Thus we find it the ruling motive of most of their sculpture, appearing at first in an almost Greek perception of the long lines of folded drapery : later in the lively pose, and, finally, fantastic attenuations of fourteenth century art. In contrast to Gothic imagery was the very marked squatness of the figures of Nicola Pisano, who, saturating his genius in the relics of the antique, led the Italians back to the Roman ideals. In architectural design the current of advance was perpetually in the direction of increasing loftiness ; here the grace of slenderness and the majesty of height * could work together to a material achievement of extraordinary audacity. In France the outcome of this devotion was rapidly developed, and worked a swift and amazing change in the substance of art. The Roman genius had been for solidity and repose, and Romanesque art, as it looked backwards for its inspiration, expressed itself in mass of material, in anything rather than in its economy. But it did this with resources inadequate to its aspirations ; unable to achieve, yet ever emulating, restless desire forced into life the seed of the new ideal. Inertia had been the principle of the ancient art, and the stability of the overarching firmament was mimicked in the domes and vaults of Roman construction. But the Gothic spirit was that of aspiring growth, the leaping upwards of a flame, the piercing of the air with spire and pinnacle, the uplifting of the ribbed vault. As such it associated itself naturally with the mechanical contrivance which could most effectively adapt itself to the concentration of a living purpose. French art achieved this purpose most resolutely ; in vertical expression nothing has ever been built that can compare with the vaults and buttresses of Amiens or Beauvais, or with the spires of Senlis or Coutances. The actuality of accomplishment is astonishing, but in the audacity of the expression must be seen the essence of the art; in the whole shapeliness of the achievement; its marvellous accom- \Note in Gervase's description of the bury, how he dwells on the slenderness and beauties of the new-built quire of Canter- increased height of the pillars. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 13 paniment of sculptures and decoration ; in their freshness and vitality, as well as subordination to the architectural conditions. The unity of ah organic perfection lay in the creations of French art, the least part being the mechanical skill by which the processes of building have been used to perfect the portrayal of the idea. The vogue which came of this pre-eminence was fully justified. French architecture overran the Continent : it practically swamped the other growths which the Gothic ideal had called into life side by side with its own. The Provencal, Aquitanian, Angevin, and finally the Burgundian Gothic all went down before it ; if the Norman Gothic lived on in Normandy, it owed its preservation there to the neighbourhood of that greater Norman style, which had developed its own Gothic in England and never relinquished it ; but elsewhere, before the end of the thirteenth century, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Sweden had imported French masons to build French cathedrals, and their native architectures were for the time superseded. Neither the pre-eminent quality of the French Gothic, nor the commanding position which the French " architects " secured abroad for their immense development of building is here questioned. But the error is to go backwards from this, and to claim that the mother of all Gothic architectures must be French ; that in the He de France alone was the centre of illumination, and that elsewhere other Gothic buildings could be only reflection, more or less discounted by native darkness. Our English art has lately particularly suffered from this misapprehen sion. The idea is now continually advanced that our English styles were at their starting always mere borrowings, and that constant reinforce ments from France were needed to enable us to produce Gothic at all. Canterbury and Westminster have been considered as conclusive for this view, even by some English writers, whose acquaintance with our English art might have been supposed to have given them a wider outlook. Small wonder that French and American writers, falling back on such English authorities as Professor Freeman and Canon Venables, have taken no pains to seek further for their information. The case is most often presented in this fashion : — " At the Conquest the Norman ecclesiastics who followed the Conqueror brought with them from France the style they had been there accustomed to use. This was the fount of the first real architecture in England and, drawing from it, art in England was Norman-French up to the third quarter of the twelfth century.1 Meanwhile Gothic art had been born in France, 1 Louis Gonse, "L'Art Gothique," p. un role analogue pour le style Gothique." 340 : " L'infiuenee de Lanfranc devenu This writer takes this from the work of archevSque de Canterbury est a ce moment Professor Moore, already mentioned, where considerable. II convientde le tenir pour we may read: "The choir of Canterbury le veritable initiateur de belles mdthodes is the real beginning of what Gothic archi- Normandes Guillaume de Sens joua tecture there is in England." 14 GOTHIC ART and in 1 173, when Canterbury quire was burnt down, the monks had recourse to William of Sens JoJuMJt up again in the new French manner at the time when Peterborough and Ely were J^ngJmishjcHn pure Norman Romanesque. In 1 190, St. Hugh, in building his quire at Lincoln,1 copied Canterbury, or being a native of Burgundy, built what he had seenjn his native France, employing a French architect.2 Then the Cistercians,3 "too, in the last half of the twelfth century brought over their French" style with its characteris±ic_square_east— end, and English architects copied the patterns ^c^^uLJaefbrje-JJiern^jruDdjf^ng -them with some features of the native_ Norman Romanesque. Thus came about the first Gothic Art in England. Then, fifty years later, Henry III. sent for the newest fashion direct from France for his Westminster Abbey, and this stimulus created our second phase of Gothic. Only when its impulse was exhausted did we English pro duce an architecture of our own, that of the fifteenth century, which is the only style in England which did not grow out of the French art." The case so presented is considered to rest on certain acknowledged 1 Corroyer, in the "Bibliotheque de I'enseignement des beaux-arts," thus deals with our English art : " Les constructeurs anglais s'assimilerent les principes de con struction des architectes de PAnjou et de l'lle-de-France et, dans les nombreuses cathe'drales qu'ils eleverent du douzieme siecle a. la fin du cinquieme, on retrouve aise"ment, au milieu des transformations ou des adaptations suivant les usages et les idees propres des artistes britanniques, les caracteres originaux qui distinguent l'art francais. Cette influence est visible dans les cathedrales d'York, d'Ely, de Wille, de Salisbury, de Canterbury, construite sur les plans d'un architecte ou maitre macon, Guillaume de Sens, et principalement dans la cathedrale de Lincoln. Elle est une des plus belles de 1' Angleterre, et l'une de celles qui montre le mieux la filiation certaine et continue entre les Edifices Aleves en France et en Angleterre pendant la pdriode dite gothique, peut-etre par les memes architectes, mais surement par les eleves ou les disciples des me"mes maitres constructeurs." This treatment receives praise at the hands of the French reviewer, who otherwise deals exhaustively with Corroyer's imperfections. See " Revue Critique d'Histoire et de Lit- tdrature." 2 "Gaufridus de Noier nobilis fabricas constructor." Gonze quotes Moore that "des Noyers" was a native of Blpis, and sees in the church of S. Laumer there the model of the Lincoln style. It is really, however, Anthyme St. Paul who is respon sible for the statement of his being "un blesois." Professor Moore, who, remarking that the theory of Lincoln quire's being English work "is not worth serious con sideration," calls St. Hugh's birth and train ing "French," speaks of De Noyer as of "French or Norman extraction." Parker, however, maintains that a Lincolnshire family of De Noyer had been settled there since the Conquest, and points out that the birthplace of St. Hugh was the Castle of Avalon, close to the Grand Chartreuse, and so his bringing up would have been in the Kingdom of Burgundy, a part of the Ger man Empire. 3 The latest American writer, Professor Hamlin of New York, in an excellent text-book of Architecture (but only repeating our own Professor Middleton : see " Illu minated Manuscripts," p. 107), says : "The pointed and ribbed vault were impor tations from France," at Cistercian hands, and were as "French Gothic features" first applied by William of Sens. And the English manuals of the Royal Insti tute of British Architects and King's College are not a whit less summary and superficial, IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 15 facts : first, that England's earliest great builders were the Norman bishops and abbots that came with the conqueror : x secondly, that Canterbury quire is a work of the first Gothic in England, and is definitely recorded as having been built under the superintendence of a French master, while the round arched naves of '-Ely- and Peter- b^rough_are known jto-havje_iieen contemporary. Then, too, that Citeaux, the mother-house of the Cistercians, had that square chevet, which, unusual abroad, is found in England taking the place of the Norman apses at the end of the twelfth century. And, finally, that Westminster Abbey, with a more developed form of window-tracery than is contemporary at Salisbury or Lincoln, had its eastern limb undoubtedly set out on the plan of an lie de France church. These half dozen facts, however, are not the whole story, and their skilful weaving together to prove the French origin of our Gothic is after all only a bit of special pleading. It requires a very per functory reading of our Gothic record not to see how partial is their representation, and how little significance they really possess for the purpose for which they are cited. The full knowledge of Sir G. G^Scojtt-'and MrCParker of Oxford 1 continually contended for the English origin of our English styles, yet their general testimony in this matter has been largely obscured. There ran in their ideas the fallacy that would suppose Gothic style a matter of "architects;" and by a strange mishap, in contradiction to their main views, both these writers make a mis-reading of that important document in the history of our art — the account of Gervase of the rebuilding of Canterbury quire. Both quote Professor Willis, and both put into his mouth what that careful writer has taken pains not to assert.2 William the Englishman succeeded William of Sens — that he learned his art from him is stated by Sir G. G. Scott,3 — that he was one and the same with the monk of Canterbury, who had been put over the masons by the French master, is averred by Mr. Parker.4 Yet these statements are pure guesswork, and turning to the text of Gervase, we find no such suggestion. On the contrary, his words, as they are actually written, express that the said second master was not the monk5 aforesaid, but "alius quidam." That he was pupil under William of Sens is a conjecture which his work disproves ; for, 1 As, e.g., Mont St. Michel supplied three p. 108, where he is also identified with of its members, who became abbots and William de Hoo,. Sacristan and Prior of bishops in England. Rochester, who built the choir of Rochester. 2 At least in his "Architectural history of Others, on equal guesswork, have adjudged Canterbury Cathedral," 1845. him identical with Walter (or William) of 3 See his "Lectures on Gothic Archi- Coventry. tecture." 5 No "architect," but a paymaster, by 4 " Introduction to Gothic Architecture," Gervase's account. 16 GOTHIC ART when he had got rid of the cut stonework, and the prepared design of his predecessor, he immediately left his style, and worked something not less, but more Gothic,1 and with characteristics which were entirely English, such as he could never have learnt from the other. Edmund Sharpe2 long ago pointed out the early features of our Transitional Gothic as distinct from those abroad— but an undeserved neglect has fallen on this writer's suggestions, many of which showed a greater understanding of the Gothic story than what has been lately accepted. Now, however, research inclines to lead us more in his steps than in the wake of the many theories which the great authority of Professor Freeman and his school made current. How and where our English manner acquired its independence of any French origin, will be shown in the account of our first Gothic style ; but here it may be to the purpose to point out the confusions of argument which appear in the use of the term " French " by the writers who have given this name to our Gothic beginnings. The vivid distinctiojL^f_Jiie_ai±_of_t.he He. de France, must always be acknowledged, but it jvas a distinction coincident with the political growth of the kingdom of France-uriderLthe. great reign of Philip i ^Augustus. It should be remembered that the date of this outburst was fifty years after the beginnings of Gothic Art in England. At the time of those beginnings the France royale, which was the mother of the Great Gothic Architecture, did not include within its boundaries those sources, which the writers, whom we have summarized above, have called promiscuously French, whether they be Burgundian or Norman or Angevin. The lie de France Gothic grew up one among others, and was closely in touch with their arts, but, as it happened, neither Burgundy nor Normandy, neither Caen nor Citeaux, was as yet part of the royal domain of France, when the English Gothic style had taken a way of its own — when St. Hugh was building Lincoln, and De Lucy the Winchester Chapels — when Wells and Glastonbury were rising in the west, when Archbishop Roger had finished at Ripon and York, and Bishop Pudsey at Darlington and Auckland ; and works like these must be allowed to be as conspicuously English in their Gothic as Notre Dame or Chartres are French. In its vault structure, domed and— sexpartite, -4ay_ lhe__dominant motive of Great Fj;en<:h_-a-Fehitecture : it developed_jMs-Jja_ks_-QWJL way, taking jdeas from Burgundy, on the one hand, and frorn^ Normandy and Anjou,_on the other — neither, at_th.e-time of this derivation, in political union with the He de France.3 The two latter, indeed, were r" ' 1 Indeed, the Canterbury style of William 2 " The ornamentation of the Transitional of Sens is behind contemporary work in the Period of British Architecture," 1145-90, He de France. 4to, London, 1871. I. THE AREA OF GOTHIC BUILDING (TRANSITIONAL STAGE). 3 The map on this page must at once dispel by Philip Augustus in 1 204, and then it was the idea that England could take a lesson in that the spread of the central power carried He de France Gothic from Anjou, Normandy, its architecture westward into districts which, or Burgundy. Chateau- Gaillard was taken for the first time, became really " French." D 18 GOTHIC ART possessions of the English crown, and if our art, in the ambition of its oblong-bayed vaultings, drew from the same heads, this heritage cannot be logically termed French as if it were from " French Gothic." The two countries were as sisters, succeeding as co-heiresses of the same estate, but taking no wealth one from the other. The Burgundian influence no doubt was strong in the earliest stages of our art, for Cluny in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the centre of the Benedictine movement in architecture, and its influence, branching in all directions, bore special fruit in England. But the distinction of the great " French Gothic," when it came, was its rejection of this Bur gundian influence. Cluniac tradition can no more be called French architecturally than geographically, for at the time of Gothic emergence it was conservatively opposed to the tendencies of the He de France art, as much as it was to the English development of Gothic. No less confusion of idea is shown in supposing that the Cistercian development of our architecture implies a derivation from France. The Cistercian1 reformation expressed protest against Benedictine style as it did against Benedictine luxury. It readily adopted the pointed arch-forms, but its methods in England are of English sample, and very different from what Clairvaux and Pontigny,2 on the borders of the French kingdom, did finally get from the advance of the He de France Gothic. Long before this, English Cistercian building had developed " English Gothic," and it is just as mistaken to call the style of the Burgundian abbeys English, as it is to dub Fountains and Byland French. The square east end which Citeaux had, no doubt, appeared generally after 1 1 30 in the English Cistercian churches, as distinguished from so many of the great Benedictine abbeys — but this square ending had been built in the eleventh century in the Benedictine design of Bishop Gundulph at Rochester, and it would seem, too, in Rogers's secular Cathedral of Old Sarum,3 and in the St. Martin's Church4 at Dover, founded by Corbeuil the Augustinian Archbishop of Canter bury. It did not therefore come to us through the Cistercians, rather it would seem to have gone abroad from England. It was adopted at Laon 1183-1192,5 when its bishop had come there from having been Treasurer of York and Chancellor of England. So if the chevet of Westminster Abbey is traced on He de France lines, the plan of the 1 Of course, the Cistercian was as much abbeys, Croxden and Beaulieu, borrowed a Benedictine reformation as the Cluniac, similar plans. See note 6, p. 65. but it showed in the twelfth century an 3 See their plans, pp. 67, 74. evident antagonism to the earlier disci- ' Founded 11 30, for Augustinian canons, plines, as W. de Map's Dialogue indicates. but afterwards handed over to Benedictine " Clairvaux and Pontigny both had chevets monks. See " Archaeologia," vol. iv. given to them at the end of the twelfth 5 Viollet le Due, " Dictionnaire de l'Archi- century, just as in England the Cistercian tecture Francaise," etc, IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 19 Laon east end is justly English. But this borrowing does not make the French Gothic derive from English, any more than the plan of Westminster Abbey makes its style a fresh starting-point of " French Gothic" in England. Indeed, from a consideration of the monastic conditions in England and France at this time, it seems strange that the intimate connections x between our island and the Continent did not create a greater uniformity in their methods of fashioning architecture. Instead the determination is seen on either side to go its own way. English masonry had, as it were, a pride in rejecting the prominent ambitions of the French Gothic. So one observes that the direct French introduction at Canterbury bore no fruit at all in changing the path of the English advance. The William who was "master" after William of Sens built on in the English forms, which by their nature were evidently not personal inventions, but part of an English manner which only some considerable series of Gothic practice could have evolved. And of this series we can show successive examples at Malmesbury, Worcester, Ripon, Wells, and generally in the buildings of the Cistercians and Augustinians, which, if the dates cannot be as exactly determined as at Canterbury, yet must certainly many of them have been building years before that quire. But were such examples wanting, there is proof for the necessary existence of the series in the perfected English manner which followed immediately at Glastonbury, Chichester, Winchester, and Lincoln. Lincoln,2 at any rate, shows little sign of borrowing from Canterbury. Its style speaks for itself,3 as having no kinship with anything abroad. And no more did the succeeding examples of English Gothic show the least trace of French dependence. It was not till fifty years later that we find anything of importance that can be referred directly to France. The builder of Westminster Abbey, Henry III., was socially a Frenchman ; in his early days he was continually at the court of St. Louis, and his royal monastery was 1 There was a constant interchange of Canterbury and then Bishop of Ely (i 174- ecclesiastics. Some prominent instances 1189). See also note 5, p. 31. have been noted in Parker's " Introduction 2 St. Hugh's work of the twelfth century to Gothic Architecture," p. 255. Stephen is now generally recognized as being, at any Langton was Chancellor of the University rate in the eastern transept, as we now see of Paris at the time when he was made it ; elsewhere it seems probable that it may Archbishop of Canterbury in 1207. The have been considerably transformed in the following distinguished English ecclesiastics following century. had been educated at Paris : Gilbert Ffolliot, 3 Parker has stated that on a visit with Bishop of London, and then Archbishop him to Lincoln Viollet le Due exclaimed of Canterbury (1161-1189), Robert de that there was nothing French in its style ; Corham, Abbot of St. Albans (1151-1166), and the same opinion is to be read in the Simon, Prior and then Abbot of St. Albans latter's letter to '" The Gentleman's Maga- (1173-1188), Walter Rydall, Archdeacon of zine," May, 1861. 20 GOTHIC ART fashioned on the French system. Its monks spoke French,1 and the eastern limb of the Abbey was designed on what might truly be called a " French " model, as indicating what was then being built through out the length and breadth of our modern France. Yet, even so, it became itself no model for subsequent English usage. The influence of its plan seems indeed to have been singularly transitory, considering the prestige of its royal creation and the magnificence of the French counterparts which it not unsuccessfully emulated. English art made but little effort to march to the foreign tunes. Lichfield, Tewkesbury, and Exeter showed no desire for French loftiness and a scaffolding of flying buttresses. Their humour is all for low, broad effects ; the con trast is great between the smiling radiance of their English tastes and the lean, logical art of what is contemporary at Rouen. If West minster introduced examples of window tracery such as the English, absorbed in their hobby for lancet windows, had hitherto but little encouraged — if, for the moment, French art ran in parallel lines, — still the English soon left French company. Our tracery early in the fourteenth century made speedy advance at once in the direction whither theirs turned quite laggardly in the fifteenth. By the beginning of the fourteenth century English Gothic was as characteristically English as when at the end it grew " Perpendicular," in form and ideal disclaiming all Continental connections. But particularly the citation of Cluniac and Cistercian influences, as responsible for the carriage of " French" architecture into England, misses its mark, — for the strength of such influences to determine our Gothic progress was the accident, not of racial, but of ecclesiastical filia tion. With the church of this date there was little account of nationality, as we regard it. Western Europe, indeed, had not then produced those great distinctions which dominate our ideas. England, Germany, France, were far from the entities which now some five hundred years have individualized. In their places were huddled some score of half- absorbed nationalities, incorporated, for the time, now with one or the other, but, when Gothic was developing, mostly uncertain how they would finally gravitate. The church, on the other hand, presented the appearance of a distinct polity, with a distinct language— a nationality of itself, organized and governed throughout the west of Europe independently of racial or linguistic distinctions. From the phases of its dominance our arts took their complexion, and were Benedictine, under the rule of the great 1 That is, Parisian or Court French, of cording to G. Scott's " History of English which there was a fashionable revival in the ChurchArchitecture,"Anglo-NormanFrench thirteenth century in England. See Free- had by. this time become a dialect scarcely man's " Norman Conquest," note w. w. Ac- to be understood in France proper. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 21 Benedictine establishments, while these ruled supreme in our Church ; when this supremacy was invaded, then, under opposition influence, the Romanesque features were discarded, and " English Gothic" established itself. Yet it was still monastic, and its activities were moulded, whether in episcopal or lay hands, to the furtherance of ecclesiastical ideas, as clerical and exclusive as those of the Benedictines themselves. Thus it was a neo-monastic architecture that, in the third quarter of the twelfth century in England, grew conspicuously Gothic among the Cistercian builders of Yorkshire 1 and of the Welsh marches,2 and in the canons' houses, Augustinian and secular,3 that the great dioceses of Durham, York, and Lincoln favoured. And soon, under episcopal prompting, in the west and the north, the Benedictine abbeys and cathedrals began to be affected by the new style.4 In the south a Cistercian bishop of Winchester,- Henry of Blois, began to leave Romanesque at St. Cross in 11 50; and the Carthusian St. Hugh was building Somersetshire Gothic at Witham in 1 1 70. But all this while in the east of England the great Norman Benedictine abbeys stood aloof, and up to 1 185, and even later, Peterborough and Ely were still striving to be Romanesque, in disregard of the newer learning of their rivals. And so, too, the Christ Church monks of Canterbury, remem bering the Romanesque glories of their famous quire, took a French man for their architect, not because they were eager for the newest architecture, but seeking a mason who, unlike his English fellows, would agree to build on the lines of the old. So much can be clearly ' read between the lines of Gervase's narrative. The straightforward Englishman would have swept away the Romanesque pillars ; the Frenchman professed to be able to retain them. It is the continuance of monastic direction in our English style which really gives the explanation of its want of sympathy with the French. In the He de France art had grown up under a peculiar social stimulus. Philip Augustus had united with the communes against the abbots, and the great cathedrals were built in symbol of the confedera tion. A school of secular artists arose ; masons and sculptors, in whose enormous works the whole people had a share. Cathedral building! became the passion of the community rising in revolt against the pres-f sure of monastic domination. Thus the great " French Gothic " was! "laic," but the English remained continuously "cleric," and the one bor rowed but little from the other. On the Continent the " laic " school, 1 Fountains, Byland, etc. 4 As at Worcester, where a Cistercian be- " Buildwas, Margam, Dore, etc. came bishop in 11 75. At St. Mary's, York, 3 Darlington, Ripon, St. Frideswides, is work like Ripon, and it was from this etc., etc., as also Llanthony in Wales, and house that, under the patronage of Arch- Lanercost, Jedburgh, etc., on the borders of bishop Thurston, the monks went out to Scotland. found the Cistercian Fountains. 22 GOTHIC ART superseding the "monastic," produced those acknowledged masters of the craft who built all over Europe on the French model. But in England, save in the design of Westminster Abbey, there is hardly anything that suggests a consciousness of the great works on the other side of the Channel. The monastic was still the force in our architec ture. Just as at its beginning this had been. Benedictine, so afterwards the vigour of reformed monasticism carried it onward, but always with an increasing leaven of the native Saxon heritage that had come to it through the Celtic memories of the first British Church. Gothic art in England cannot then be justly treated as a mere episode of the French, but must be taken as a separate chapter : its origin and its developments are alike distinct. The story of French Gothic, as has been said above, is to be read like a drama, with the unities of a tragedy in three acts— the rise, the summit, and the fall are clear to the eye. The English tale develops itself \rather in a series of romances, threaded to a common idea, but each having its own subsidiary drama, its mounting effort, its apex of achievement, and its turning to a new enthusiasm. Thus came about roughly some seven divisions of our Gothic corresponding to the seven half centuries of its existence. From c. 1 1 50 to c. 1 200 the first style of pointed architecture, which has got the name of Early English, grew into rapid life. From c. 1200 to c. 1250 this style was established, and showed comparatively little change. From the middle to the end of the century there came another development to the forms which are called "Decorated." Again, from c. 1300 to c. 1350 the movement slackened and the Decorated style continued itself with repetitions and mannerisms. But by the middle of the fourteenth 'century signs of a fresh departure become apparent, and before 1400 an entirely new complexion has been given to the forms of art. The endurance of the " Perpendicular" was longer than that of the preceding styles. Its ideas lasted throughout the century, the end coming about, not by a new growth of style, but rather by a withdrawal of the means of continuance. Church building had made the sap of Gothic art : the dissolution of the monasteries and the sequestration of chantries and guilds finally cut off this nourishment, and with this withdrawal Gothic art died away. During the last fifty years its forms had been to a cer tain extent echoing earlier achievements, but the Tudor style which was primarily an art of house building, had been growing in its midst and transforming many of its features. From c. 1450 to c. 1525 Perpen dicular art may be said to have become Tudor. f The names used above — Early English, Decorated, and Perpen- I dicular — have gained currency, and are too convenient to be discarded. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 23 The art of each century may be taken as having to some extent crystallized for a longer or shorter period about the first quarter of each century, and to these crystallizations the above nicknames may be given, or they may be labelled simply as Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth century styles, with the reservation understood as to their continuance. For it must be insisted that the transitions were gradual, melting as softly one into the other as do the colours of the spectrum. The intermediate phases give, indeed, four other styles with forms that show sufficient distinctness, though perhaps they were less universal, and were certainly more transitory. The whole story, then, is really one of continuous change — the movement taking place at one time in the larger features of design and arrangement, at another showing its life in this or that matter of detail or decoration. And the Gothic idea rules from first to last, though its manifestation showed certain colourings in the circumstances of each century. The most immediate distinctions which can be assigned, came from the several social forces which in succession were in evidence as the springs of architectural activity. All Gothic architecture was church- building, but the religious application had its mundane side. It was successively the Priest, the Noble, and the Burgess, whose faiths were expressed. In the thirteenth century, the motive power came from the priest. Church-building ministered to his religion, and at the same time to his pride, to his exclusiveness, as the ordained of God, to the ambition of his monastery, or the grandeur of his see. The Church was the great power in the land, and the churches were the symbols of this sovereignty made manifest in the eyes of all men. With the motives of the priests was thirteenth-century architecture built. In the fourteenth century came a change, for the religious influence of the Church had been shaken. It was still an outward power, but its ideals no longer held their place. In the fourteenth century monks and ecclesiastics were dressing themselves as knights and nobles, and sharing with them the pride and pomp of chivalry, the luxury of a growing refinement, and the stirring of a new-born knowledge that swayed the hearts of men. The caste of the nobles, and not of the priests, is expressed by the churches of the fourteenth century. But by its end neither knight nor priest represented the dominant social activity. New classes had come to the front, the nobles had been decimated and their resources wasted in the French wars. The traders of England had grown fat at their expense. Big towns had sprung up, and fortunes had been made in the woollen trade. The rich clothmaker had purchased manor and living, and the manor-houses and parish churches that he built, were superseding the castles and monasteries of an earlier time, and architecture took a bourgeois colouring from this 24 GOTHIC ART connection. Finally the Wars of the Roses practically exterminated feudal aristocracy : there were left a people and a king. The latest Gothic church-building was in royal chapels, and by its side had grown up a domestic architecture in the houses of merchants and squires.1 In close correspondence with these circumstances came for the several centuries distinctions of style, not as consequences, but still with some derivative affinity. A certain noble restraint was in con sonance with the life that had submitted to the discipline of religious rule. To the monk and the priest, that discipline had not meant an anchorite's rejection of beauty, but it might be a consecration of it, a submission of it to limitations, and the gain thereby of simple and wholesome expression. Thus it was that the art of the thirteenth century showed itself essentially sculpturesque. Its aspiration was for grace of form : it had followed on one epoch of exuberant decoration, and there succeeded to it another, but itself was in contrast to both. The latest Norman carving had been of Indian richness, every inch of surface fretted with diamond and zigzag, every moulding encrusted with chevron and beakhead, studded with a profusion of medallions and an infinity of bead mould. The Romanesque painting had been with the fullest tones of the palette. The earliest glass had borrowed its idea from the kaleidoscope of an Egyptian lattice. The thirteenth century art developed at once a bolder and a finer touch, that relied on clean-cut moulding, on the effect of a light ground ruled with plain stoning, diapered with a simple floweret or sprayed with delicate tendrils — on a carving which is the quintessence of ordered curvature — on glass that was either silver white, or a pure harmony of simple blues and reds. Its decoration shows a sculptor's reticence, its tracing of the figure is as that of an Attic vase. Not only did figure sculpture grow in the thirteenth century to the strength of the Greek ideal, and its carved leafage express nature and stone with the perfection of compromise, but still more, thirteenth century building was, in itself,. a piece of refined sculpture. Its contrasts of surface and delicate enrichment, the finish ings of its jewelled ornament are statuesque ; the folds of its mould ings sway the emotions like the vesture of a nymph; the tender elegance of its shaftings, the curve of its leafage, have for the imagina tion the magic of human beauty. But it was to a different ideal that fourteenth century art appealed. Its strength lay in luxuriance, and not in reserve— in exaggerating and multiplying the decorative features, rather than in sculptured outline. Nobility and breadth of expression were gained less by simplicity than 1 Towards the end of the fourteenth een- in the great hall, and preferred a chamber turyold feudal habits were clearly undergoing with a fireplace for his repast. See "Piers a change. The lord was giving up dining Plowman's Vision," Passus x. line 96. IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 25 by the richness of recurrent piquancies. Bossiness rather than round ness made the fulness of its contours. The colour of its painting was rich and hot ; its sculpture, a heightening of colour effect ; the glass of its windows a wonder of vividness. Glass, painting, and sculpture united in one luxuriant effect that would be crudely barbaric if it were not for the romantic lustihood of the expression. This fertility of expression gave the soul that saved it from being an art of mere magnificent decoration. There can be read in it all the unspoilt romance of chivalry ; of knight and dame, of joust and tournament, of the Arthurian table, and Sir Galahad's love; all the splendour and pageantry of a display that still kept the fresh naivete of youth ; the radiant joyfulness of life that glows in Chaucer's Tales; "the passion and the play" of a great people awaking to a consciousness of a historic destiny. The Black Death of 1 348 brought sobriety to the fourteenth cen tury. Thereafter, socially and artistically, England entered on a new life ; the Middle Ages had sown their wild oats ; the exuberant audacities of romantic youth were left behind. As became the burgess and the tradesman, fifteenth century art in England was reasonable and calculating. It was essentially architectural, in that the building motive had taken the place of the decorative. Its effects lay in the ranging of its compositions ; in the proportions of its masses rather than the shapeliness of sculptured grace, or the richness of bossy decora tion and vivid colour. But it had these too, though its love for them was the affection of domesticity, rather than the ecstasy of passion. In some matters, the fifteenth century curiously returned to the ideals of the first Gothic strivings, but it carried them forward with a fuller knowledge. Thus it seems to sum up the tendencies of the former styles, and to combine them. It developed an unsurpassed lightness and elegance, and had, too, its full measure of decorative display. But the first was without the youthful freshness of the thirteenth century, nor did the latter reach the romantic abandon of the fourteenth. The defect of fifteenth century art was to be merely cold and stately. But it was reasonable and satisfying, for it had the power of perfect achieve ment. And withall its soberness, it had a fancy too, but this was an archi tectural humour of a homely practical kind, more a pleasantness than a grace, the proper accompaniment of a sober, cheerful life. In the ordered disposition of ornament, in the decorative design of rich subdued colour, its art is unsurpassed : its glass developed subtle and delicate tints, enforced by deep contrast. The arts of sculpture, painting, and architecture are completely combined : there is perfect subordination, neither claiming to run before the other. And particularly, there is no separation of their elements — all three have become merged in an e 26 GOTHIC ART even texture. Such an art was congenial to the house as much as to the church, and its course drifted insensibly towards the forms which could readily admit the scholarship of the Renaissance. Each century turned, too, to certain separate hobbies and aspirations to develop its genius. Height and slenderness of shaft and pinnacle, the clean-cut aspiration of the lancet light, these were the larger em bodiments of that vigorous up-springing of delicate leafage, and that slender shapeliness of womanly form which the thirteenth century saw and loved in nature. In the development of vault and of windows were quickly shown the native vein of our art. The vaulting of great naves which the twelfth century had barely attempted, was largely undertaken by the thirteenth ; but, with English ideal, rejecting the hollow open ness of the domed French vault, and by the quick perspective and the elegance of deeply moulded ribs, achieving an up-springing grace and sense of loftiness much in excess of what might have been expected from the small dimensions with which it was content. No less native was the English treatment of the window. From habit we have grown accustomed to the shape which it assumed ; but in the history of architecture there is surely nothing more striking than the evolution of such elongated proportions for window openings as we see in the transept of York or the west end of Romsey. In all arts the height of the opening had scarcely ever been more than double the width, but here the thirteenth century artists had evolved a panel which rose to a height of fifteen or twenty times. This elongated panel became indeed, afterwards, the established form for Gothic window partitions ; but in the first vigour of their experimenting with the idea the English show an astonishing playfulness of invention in varying the shapes and dispositions of lofty windows and the arched arcades with which they combine them. The lancet was a peculiar hobby of English art of the first half of the thirteenth century, and its arrow point of spiky growth well typifies the keenness of its aspirations. But by the latter part of the century expression turned in quite a new direction. The equilateral triangle, not the upward point, grew to be the form agreeable to new ideas. It was in the graciousness of breadth, and in lightness and expansion, rather than in loftiness, that the artist now acknowledged the Gothic impulse.. The mass which con struction required, and to which indeed the expansion of the cavity could only add an actual increase of bulk, was given lightness by the treatment. The sections changed from the full round to the lozenge ; the shafts became ribs, and the pier structures drawing them into itself became a bundle of arrises. The arch moulds grew similarly liny and shallow ; the wall-arcadings which had lightened but still emphasized the storeys of construction, threw off the full solidities of their arch IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 27 origins, and developed a canopy, which, as it were, licked up the arch into itself, and so made a mere capping of hollow traceries enriched with exuberant crockets. These crocketed canopies, striding from shaft to shaft and accentuating by the fulness of their traceries the delicacy of their supports, are characteristic productions of the four teenth century. But it was in the window that the same processes of development wrought the most striking transformation : in the details and surfacing of its divisions, the fancy of the decorative artist showed a thousand forms. The competition of experiment wrought step by step great areas of window tracery, in which geometrical form grew looser and looser, till the solid facts of construction melted into the likeness of a twist of flame. The hobby could be carried no further ; advance in the direction of greater tenuity of expression was impossible ; and, indeed, what had been achieved was hardly in harmony with the solid facts of building, which may not be put out of sight. Fifteenth century art came back to firmer ground. Its appreciation of Gothic grace turned upon the openness of vertical as well as of horizontal expansion, but it was an openness decisively bounded by the solid emphasis of demarcation. Fourteenth century art had sought to annihilate the wall, admitting it only to accent the expression of the opening. But the fifteenth century artist took it into partnership, and by its means compassed his ideal. What enabled him to do this was the discovery of the principle of panelling, by which was .got a scheme of surface distribution that employed partition horizontally and vertically as a reasonable exposition of space. In place of the triangle he took the rectangle as a model of form, and expressed with it solidity as well as extension and the greatest economy of inclosure with the maximum of capacity. It is wrong to say that he drooped the arch; rather he raised its haunches, to obtain a more considerable vacuity. It was especially in the stone and wood ceiling that his triumphs were achieved. The fan was the logical extension of his system to the stone vault, and the hammer-beam roof was the counterpart in wood. The pier by his method got a logical expression of fitness, and, at the same time, a lightness beyond anything that had hitherto been achieved. The simple straightforward character of his design gave it a quality valuable for domestic work, and in that the coldness of its elements was never felt. So ran the course of Gothic art in England. No daughter of the French, but its twin sister, and but a moment younger; a separate embodiment of the Gothic spirit — not growing with southern fervour, as the elder did, to a miracle of sudden loveliness, and then all too quickly turning cold and hard featured. In English art, when the grace of first youth was passed, there still remained the freshness of 28 GOTHIC ART tender sentiment and the charm of a constant devotion. An art it was that in no wise leant on foreign assertion for its code of merit, but was fashioned among ourselves to be agreeable to our native instincts, and in accord with the sober dress of our skies and the simple pleasantness of our scenery. William Morris, in one of his published lectures, has so well summed up this aspect of our art that his words may be quoted : " The land is a little land, sirs, too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness ; there are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, ho terrible untrodden mountain walls ; all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another ; little rivers, little plains, swelling speedily-changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees ; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep-walks ; all of it little, yet not foolish or blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it ; it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home. " All which I neither praise nor blame, but say that so it is. Some people praise this homeliness overmuch, as if the land were the very axle-tree of the world ; so do not I, nor any unblinded by pride in them selves and all that belongs to them. Others there are who scorn it, and the tameness of it ; not I any the more ; though it would indeed be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no wonders, no terrors, no unspeakable beauties. Yet when we think what a small part of the world's history, past, present and to come, is this land we live in, and how much smaller still in the history of the arts, and yet how our fore fathers clung to it, and with what care and pains they adorned it, this unromantic, uneventful-looking land of England, surely by this too, our hearts may be touched and our hope quickened. " For as was the land, such was the art of it, while folk yet troubled themselves about such things : it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity ; not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty. Yet was it never oppressive, never a slave's night mare or an insolent boast ; and at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality that grander styles have never overpassed. Its best, too, and that was in its very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman's house and the humble village church, as to the lord's palace or the mighty cathedral ; never coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, natural, and unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of merchant- princes or courtiers, it must be a hard heart I think that does not love it, whether a man has been born among it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the grandeur over seas" 2. THE AREA OF GOTHIC BUILDING (DEVELOPED STAGE). CHAPTER II The First Gothic-Building and the English Church- Plan "Art," says Viollet le Due, "had its '89' in 11 70." First in the series of revolutions, by which modern society has been emancipated, came that which freed Art from Romanesque tradition. In 1170 the great quire of Notre Dame was begun in Paris, and in its building escaped the current of modern life ; Gothic architecture had risen clear above the barriers of mediaevalism. So reads Viollet le Due the story of " French Gothic." Suger's essay at S. Denis in 1 140 during the next twenty years handed on its ideas to the apsidal quires of Senlis1 and Noyon. Shortly after, in the great churches of Sens and Laon, the French art advanced the scale of its achievement ; and then, in the last quarter of the century, were simultaneously designed the immense cathedrals of Chartres and Paris, which were quickly followed by the still larger erections of Bourges and Reims and Amiens, and the great quires of Le Mans and Beauvais. In these mighty creations the style culminated in the quality as in the mass of its production. In ground area they are among the largest churches of Europe, and in cubical contents,2 as covered halls, 1 The areas given in this chapter are thirteenth century, were each about 28,000 taken from published plans on a uniform sq. ft., but Le Mans quire is over 30,000. system, so as to give a scale for comparison. Viollet le Due, in his " Dictionnaire," They do not claim exactness, but only assigns 8,900 metres of area to Cologne the sense of proportion. Senlis and Noyon Cathedral, 8,000 metres to Amiens, 6,650 when complete at the end of the twelfth metres to Reims, 6,200 metres to Bourges, century had their ground areas about 30,000 and 5,500 metres to Paris — but this is ex- sq. ft. Sens and Laon were each about aggerating the Amiens building at the 44,000 sq. ft. : the latter is generally as- expense of the others. All these great signed to c. 1180, though its style seems churches (except Bourges, Le Mans, and earlier. Notre Dame, Paris, begun after Cologne) were built in a strip of territory 1 163, was about 53,000 sq. ft; after 1245 about 120 miles by 80 miles, an area of it was increased by chapels to the area of about the size of Yorkshire and Durham. 63,000 sq. ft. Chartres and Reims Cathe- 2 The internal contents of Amiens may drals are about 65,000 sq. ft; Bourges be set as about 6,000,000 cubic ft. The is rather under 60,000 sq. ft., and Amiens Italian fourteenth century cathedrals, Milan is over 70,000 sq. ft. in area. Beauvais was and Florence (the latter with its fifteenth designed in 1225 to be still larger; and century dome), hold about 11,000,000 and Cologne, in 1248, to be about 90,000 sq. ft. 13,500,000 cubic ft.; and the Spanish Seville The quires of these two, as built in the Cathedral of the fifteenth century would THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 31 must rank among the great buildings of the world. And all around them, and only second-rate by comparison, were built great churches, which might be counted by the hundred, in the dominions of Philip Augustus. We can reckon with the strength of the French architectural impulse when we are face to face with such a volume of achievement. Was there less vigour in our English art ? It must be allowed that there have come down to our day no such series of great Gothic works in England as these six or seven great French cathedrals. Yet our church - building was energetic enough in the hundred years from 1 1 40 to 1240.1 For the Cistercian order alone there were founded in England during the last three quarters of the twelfth century over 100 houses, and for each a considerable church was rapidly built, abreast of anything in Europe in the freedom of its Gothic creativeness. But, these being only abbey churches, the dissolution worked their complete destruction ; and though their ruins show some fine dimensions, yet the largest of them2 — Fountains, say, or Byland — had small areas in com parison with cathedrals like Laon or Chartres. We have but two secular cathedrals of the first class to show that our architects of the thirteenth century could lay out their areas on the scale of the French, and they both are mostly late in the style of our first Gothic. Though Lincoln3 was re-designed under St. Hugh in 1 1 90, it was carried forward in the course of the following century. Salisbury4 was set out on a fresh site in 1220, and went on to comple tion in about forty years. But to the English work may be fairly added the setting out of Rouen,5 which had its lines given to it by Anglo- seem to have about 8,000,000 cubic ft. ; about 30,000 sq. ft. ; and Pontigny, the but the mighty St. Peter's, of the sixteenth largest of its order in Europe, about 37,000 and seventeenth centuries, grew to contain sq. ft. These two, however were rebuilt in in its halls as much as 24,000,000 cubic ft. the beginning of the thirteenth century. of air space. 3 Lincoln, 64,000 sq. ft. in area, was in- 1 From the Conquest to John's reign the creased shortly after 1250 to 70,000 sq. ft. number of religious foundations in England S. Hughs' twelfth century quire had been is said to have been 570. about 20,000 sq. ft. in area. 2 A fair-sized Cistercian church would " Salisbury has an area of about 57,000 seem to have been at its first setting out sq. ft. from 15,000 sq. ft. to 25,000 sq. ft. in area. 5 Rouen, as then designed, with its char- Dundrennan in Galloway, Strata Florida in acteristically English wide front, had an area Wales, and Bindon in Dorset were about the of 53,000 sq. ft. ; it was largely rebuilt or first; Kirkstall was about 20,000 sq. ft, finished in the He de France style after 1203. Furness and Fountains about 25,000 sq. ft; Its archbishop, 1164-1183, was brother of the eastern enlargement of the latter bringing the Earl of Warwick ; his successor, Walter it up to 35,000 sq. ft.; and Byland was Constance, 1184-1208, had held the ap- built at 30,000 sq. ft. Abbey Cwmhir in pointments of Archdeacon of Oxford and Wales (never completed and now quite de- Treasurer of Lincoln. Rudolphus, Arch- stroyed) was set out at about the same area deacon and Treasurer of Rouen, became with a nave 250 ft. in length. The great Chancellor of England and then Bishop of Cistercian churches in France were Clairvaux, Laon. See p. 18. 32 GOTHIC ART Norman plannings some ten years before it passed (1203) out of English hands. Three of our Benedictine Cathedrals added imposing quires, Canterbury1 after the fire of 11 70, Worcester2 and Rochester after 1 200, and one first-class Benedictine Abbey, that of Glastonbury,3 began its great church in 1 184 and had largely finished its walls by 1 190. The great Cluniac church at Wenlock would seem to have been begun simultaneously, and was carried forward to completion by the middle of the thirteenth century. But the wreck of the dissolution has left us but scanty fragments of these last. Such churches might in ground area, perhaps, be put side by side with the French designs of the end of the twelfth century, but in structural mass they fell far behind, for the bodies of our English edifices were generally but two-thirds of the height of the French.4 What is best left to us to show the nature of our earliest Gothic achieve ments, is, even in area, on a still smaller scale. The secular cathedrals of Wells,5 St. David's,6 and Chichester,7 rebuilt in the second half of the twelfth century, like those of Christ Church and St. Patrick's, in Dublin,8 were only half the size of the above. The larger churches of the Black9 and White10 Canons grew to equal, if not to surpass, these smaller cathedrals, but their ruin, if not so thorough as that of the Cistercian churches, has deprived us of even a larger bulk of evidence for the vigour of our first Gothic styles. At Jedburgh11 there remains in fair preservation a great Augustinian nave, and at Hexham — of cathedral scale — are the great transepts and quire, but no whole church is left. Of the smaller churches built for them St. Frideswide's, Oxford, 1 The Canterbury quire of the two Gothic. Its area was 23,000 sq. ft., and Williams has an area of 32,000 sq. ft. St. Patrick's, as finished in the thirteenth Worcester's quire enlargement is about century, was somewhat larger. 20,000 sq. ft.; Rochester's about 12,000 s Guisborough, Bridlington, Kirkham, for sq. ft. in area. example, in Yorkshire were finally from 3 Glastonbury Church was 48,000 sq. ft ; 300 to 380 ft. in length, and, though given Wenlock was over 40,000 sq. ft. late thirteenth century quires, probably had 1 See the comparative sectional areas of earlier work of considerable scale. The Paris and Lincoln quires, p. 80. same may be said of Thornton in Lin- 5 As rebuilt by Bishop Reginald (n 74- colnshire, Dunmowin Essex, Christ Church 1 191), about 30,000 sq. ft. in London, and others. The Augustinian 0 As rebuilt by Bishop Peter de Leia foundations of the twelfth century in (1176-1198), about 23,000 sq. ft. England were about 150. 7 As rebuilt by Bishop Siegfried (1180- l0 Thirty Premonstratensian houses were 1204), about 30,000 sq. ft. founded in the last half of twelfth century. 8 The first begun in 1163 for Arroasian Their churches never in England equalled Candous, the second in 1190. Both were the Augustinian; St. Agatha's, Richmond, almost in ruins in this century. The first is was possibly the largest. now the most careful of G. E. Street's u About 10,000 sq. ft. Hexham quire and "restorations," and can be taken as one of transepts are about 20,000; a projecting lady- the best examples of nineteenth century chapel has been pulled down this century. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 33 has become a cathedral for us, but the greater Oseney there has gone. Fragments such as those of Llanthony and Lanercost are all that remain of some fifty similar edifices, while as many again have completely disappeared. The secular foundations have had often a better fate. St. Cross, Ripon, and New Shoreham show still their fine collegiate quires, the work of our earliest Gothic artists, just as that of Beverley is a notable example of their first thirteenth century achievement. Such is the rough enumeration of the principal monuments left to us for the judgment of our development of Gothic. Its fragmentary character is evident, as well as the generally smaller scale of work which it exhibits in comparison with the great Gothic outburst in the He de France. Apart from Lincoln and Salisbury the proof of the Early English style is, as it were, episodical in our greater cathedrals, a mere chapter in their histories, instead of declaring itself the raison d'itre of their existence. In this episodical way Winchester, York, Ely, Peterborough, and Durham have fine examples of the English manner, but they do not show the consummation and purpose of a great art as the whole designs of Reims and Amiens show them. A comparison such as we have instituted with the lie de France achievement is in evitable ; our record of Gothic work, great as it makes our art, is without the same scale of work initiated and designed under the impulse of the Gothic outburst. But to lay this at the door of our "architects" as due to insular inferiority is hardly fair. The rough lists we have given plainly suggest some other reasons. If our work of this particular date has very largely perished in England, and what was built never had the grand dimensions of the French work, one cause lies at the root of both these circum stances. It will be seen that the French monuments of their first great Gothic style make their list of great national cathedrals ; but our list is very largely that of a greater building some fifty years earlier. So extraordinary had been the scale of our Norman building, that by 1150 we had numbers of the largest churches in Europe — surpassed, indeed, solely by the basilicas of Rome.1 When in the He de France politics linked king, bishop, and commune together for the building of great churches, their architects had little behind them, and under the impulse of the new conditions that came at the end of the twelfth century, could at once triumphantly surpass all that Romanesque art had built on the continent. But in England the situation was different. With us Benedictine domination, and still more the mass of our Benedictine architecture, held the field — so that indeed our great church-plans to this day have Benedictine orthodoxy stamped on them. Half our 1 The basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul San Sophia, at Constantinople, was about in Rome were each about 100,000 ft. in area. 60,000 ft. F 34 GOTHIC ART cathedrals1 were churches of the Black Monks, and many of their greater abbeys vied with the cathedrals in magnitude. It had, indeed, been the policy of the Conqueror in the last quarter of the eleventh century to establish and make use of the Benedictine rule as a garrison for holding his conquered territory. Under his patronage 2 the Norman prelates and abbots who had followed him to England, found themselves with the means and opportunity of indulging the passion of the age. How royally the Norman conqueror rode his hobby is shown by a scale of building 3 such as had not been since the second century of the Roman Empire. The biggest single hall in England is still that of the palace of the Norman kings at Westminster, built for William Rufus, who exclaimed on entering it, " Too small." At London, Winchester, Bury St. Edmund's, and St. Alban's, were set out, and building in the year i ioo, churches larger than anything on the continent.4 The famous Burgundian Abbey of Cluny, at the head of the architectural movement, had its great church, with double transept and double-aisled nave, dedicated in 1 131, with an area of 54,'ooo sq. ft.5 But the Norman St. Swithin's,6 the Norman St. Paul's, and the Norman St. Edmund's, had been designed thirty years earlier for areas of over 60,000 sq. ft. From the first, the building in England had surpassed that of Normandy. It is sometimes erroneously asserted that Edward the Confessor's Church at Westminster, before the Conquest, as well as Lanfranc's Canterbury Cathedral which followed it, were on about the scale of the Conqueror's abbey churches at Caen.7 But the Abbaye aux 1 Of the old cathedrals, Canterbury, built in the eleventh and vaulted early in the Winchester, Durham, Worcester, Rochester, twelfth century. Poitiers, 55,000 ft, was not Norwich and Ely were Benedictine, Carlisle begun till 1161. was the sole Augustinian. York, Lincoln, 5 The narthex added in 1220 made it London, Salisbury, Wells, Chichester, Exeter, 66,000 ft. See " History of Architecture," Lichfield and Hereford were secular. J. Fergusson, 1868. But his plan does not 2 The influence of Lanfranc prevailed exactly agree with that given by Viollet le over that of the bishop kinsmen of the Con- Due ; both profess to come from Lorain, but queror, who were for establishing secular the dimensions given by Lorain show that canons instead of monks at Winchester, etc. the widths on Fergusson's plan must be out 3 See pp. 98, 109, where the quire piers of scale. The latter, taking his dimensions of Durham and Canterbury respectively are from his own plan, calls the area 70,000 given to one scale. One pier of the first sq. ft. Vezelay in 11 50 was c. 42,000 ft. will be seen to be in mass equal to the whole ° 65,000 sq. ft. ; now with west end re- seventeen of the side of Canterbury quire. moved and an eastern prolongation, 66,000 4 After Cluny, the largest churches in 1 1 50 ft. The London Cathedral was of about the would seem to have been St. Sernan, Tou- same size. St. Edmund's Church at Bury louse, dedicated 1096 (area 46,000 ft); St was over 68,000 ft. Martin, Tours; Tournai Cathedral (44,000 7 St. Etienne and the Abbey of Jumieges ft, whose thirteenth century quire made it were apparently the largest of the Norman 60,000 ft.); and on the Rhine, Mayence; abbey churches. St. Trinite" and St. Nicholas Spires (53,000 ft.); and Worms (40,000 ft.) ; at Caen were considerably smaller. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 35 Hommes, the largest of them, was built at first with an area of not 30,000 sq. ft., whereas the Westminster Abbey of the Confessor was laid out to cover nearly 40,000 sq. ft., and Lanfranc's building at Can terbury was over 28,000 sq. ft, increased by Conrad's glorious quire in 1 1 25 to 46,000 sq. ft. of area. But by the time of this addition there had been set out in England, and far advanced (besides the three surpassing edifices, St. Paul's, St. Swithin's, and St. Edmund's,) some other twenty great churches of the Benedictine supremacy on a scale that later ambitions have added but little to their area. In the east, Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely were given Norman plans, from 42,000 sq. ft. to 45,000 sq. ft. In the north,1 the great Durham was 49,000 sq. ft. The Benedictine camps in the west at Chester, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Tewkesbury, and Gloucester had churches of from 30,000 sq. ft. to 40,000 sq. ft. in area. And though at Glastonbury Baldwin's church was doubtless an advance on its predecessor ; yet at Bath what the fifteenth century built hardly covered the nave-space of the first Norman planning. In mid-England were Malmesbury and Coventry, and the great St. Alban's; and after 1131, Henry I.'s foundation at Reading. South wards were Canterbury and Rochester, and, besides Winchester, Sher borne, and the great nuns' churches of Romsey and Shaftesbury ; and scattered over the length and breadth of England some hundreds of lesser note — the churches of abbeys, or priories, dependencies of the greater English monasteries or of foreign houses, like the Cluniacs of Lewes,3 Thetford, and Castle Acre. Here was a mass of Benedictine building, and in its likeness were numbers of canon's churches ; many of them large, as Waltham Abbey ; Christchurch, Hants ; St.. Julian and St. Botolph, Colchester ; St. Martin's, Dover; and Henry II. 's foundation at Cirencester ; and in the north Southwell, St. John's, Chester, and Carlisle. And to these must be added the numberless parish churches3 in monastic possession, to whose addition and rebuilding Benedictine zeal contributed. Certainly in much of England the vigour and bulk of early twelfth century building were never afterwards surpassed, but remained a determining factor in our art to the end of the story. Necessarily long-lived was the prestige of fabrics such as that of St. Edmund's, or Carileph's cathedral at Durham, built between 1090 and 1150, with ground areas 1 It is said that the foundations of York parish church-building took place roundPeter- Cathedral show a Norman nave of 5 oft. wide, borough, without feeling compelled to give 2 The Lewes foundations show an area of the monks of that abbey their due. The con- 36,000 sq.ft. See plan, p. 61. Thetford nection, too, of the Kenilworth Augustinians and Castle Acre are under 20,000. with the rebuilding of the churches which 3 This has been denied, but no one can were given them for their endowment (Iffley observe what an amount of twelfth century among them) seems more than coincidence. 36 GOTHIC ART that compared with any mediaeval church of Northern Europe, and with masses of walling so huge that, comparatively low, their material must have exceeded what was built, say, into the Cathedral of Amiens. So it is to be read in Gervase's narrative how at Canterbury, after the fire, not only the substance of Conrad's quire could not be cleared away, but still more, the aspirations of the rebuilding had to bow to the cherished remembrance of the beauties of the old ; and there for another 200 years Lanfranc's nave remained in remembrance of Norman design.1 No Gothic Canterbury could rise a new creation from the ground, the expression of a new idea, as Laon or Notre Dame were built. Even eighty years after this Westminster Abbey, under royal command to be French, still contracted its design to acknowledge the first planning which it had by the Norman architects of the Confessor. So the secular cathedrals, as at Lincoln under St. Hugh, were shaped to the Benedictine model, and even when built on a clear site, as at Salisbury, must needs show the lofty central towers and spires, the accentuated transepts, and all the " monastic " complexion of design as' clearly as their Benedictine brethren. Our great church-plans were never "laic" in the sense that the French cathedrals were. Long afterwards,, when the contentions which these phrases embodied had shifted their ground, the bulk of this Benedictine material stood in the way of its removal. Its outer skin has often been modified, while the core of the wall is still Norman; its mass a necessity, though its forms were no longer admired. At Gloucester,2 where after 1340 there came the ambition of a lighter arching, this was applied as a veneer upon the Norman body. At Winchester,3 in 1400, William of Wykeham transformed the mighty nave by carving his stately perpendicular out of its substance. Throughout will be perceived how in style, as in plan, English sympathies could not shift from the ideas of their first great architecture, refusing to the last the mechanical attenuations of French design. Upward through this body of achievement and repute had English Gothic to fight its way. As established institutions, the Benedictine houses would be sticklers for tradition, and their power in England was founded too firmly to be set aside. There were here no towns as in France to develop powerful communes, with whom king and bishop might join hands against the monk and build cathedrals as proofs of their victory. No doubt the sympathies of the French struggles found an echo in England. Archbishop Roger of York, Bishop Savaric of Wells, or Hugh of Coventry, and even Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, seemed to head a movement against monkish sway. But the day went against them — victory lay for the time with the ideas of the murdered Becket, rather than with those of Henry II. 1 See plan, p. 73. 2 See plan, p. 63. 3 See plan, p. 73. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 37 And the architecture of our cathedrals tells this tale ; the Canterbury monks clung to their Romanesque columns, and would not hear of their removal. Right to the end of the twelfth century the monks of Ely and Peterborough were finishing their naves in Romanesque of the fullest body : Abbeys such as Selby show quite a comical struggle against new forms ; St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury, had to be studiously round arched. And even the great truculent Bishop Pudsey of Durham was by no means allowed to transform his cathedral to his liking with the same Gothic that he was free to use in his Hall at Auckland, or his canon's church at Darlington. His ambitions in 1 175 may have been for a princely Gothic quire ; — but the monks, with the aid of St. Cuthbert, were too strong for him ; his eastern foundations gave way, and his enterprise ended in a Romanesque Galilee on the strict lines of Cluniac x orthodoxy. So in default of that democratic backing, which the communes of the He de France gave to anti-monkish architecture, Gothic art in England found a counterpart for its purpose in the zeal of the new monastic reformations, which by the middle of the twelfth century were making in England determined way in competition with the rule of St. Benedict. The bishops found in these their allies,2 and as clearly as in France, architecture became the symbol of a political alliance. The Gothic emergence came about in the Cistercian houses, which the bishops fostered, and in the churches which were built for Canons regular 3 and secular. There appeared here a combination of rejecting Benedictine architecture as much as of opposing Benedictine supremacy. In the first enterprise they succeeded — so well that by the end of the twelfth century the Benedictine monasteries could not refuse the re formed architecture ; but, nevertheless, in power and position the newer houses never rose quite to the level of the old. The Augustinian and Cistercian churches, fine as they were,4 by no means took the mass and dimensions which Norman wealth and power had given to the first religious creations — so it was that in smaller characters our Gothic story 1 See note on next page. already, by 1150, Dunstable, Oxford, and 2 Thus Archbishop Thurston of York was Bristol, show departures from the style of a friend of St. Bernard's, and instrumental Benedictine construction. in the founding of Fountains, and his sue- i Especially in Yorkshire. Fountains grew cessor, Roger Pont d'Eveque, built Ripon in the thirteenth century the largest Cister- for his canons, and was a prime partisan of cian church in England; see note, p. 31. Henry II. against Becket, who styled him Guisborough and Bridlington became prob- "malorum omnium incentor, et ille dia- ably the largest Augustinian (see note," p. bolus." 32), but the Cluniac priories of Lewes and 3 Archbishop Corbeuil founded his great Wenlock had been on a bigger scale, and priory at Dover for Augustinians. See p. 1 7. Evesham, only a dependent priory of the The first great churches of the Augustinians Westminster Benedictines, had a church were, no doubt, on Benedictine plans ; but that equalled Fountains. 38 GOTHIC ART had at first to be written, in middle-sized churches rather than in those of the first rank, which had been already provided for England by Norman enterprise. But had the whole record of our twelfth century building been pre served to us, it would have bulked to the full measure of north-western continental Europe ; and though cradled in Benedictine swathing bands, the energy of its movement, under such conditions, showed the vigour of a native constitution. The Norse genius for architecture, the inherit ance of a marriage, as some deem it, of Viking and Frank, developed on English soil a distinct breed, that never afterwards needed fresh crossing. Markedly Benedictine as was their origin, yet in Norman hands the orthodox elements of monastic planning acquired a boldness of treatment which passed immediately into a distinctly national manner. Before the end of the eleventh century the lengthenings of English naves and chancels are much beyond continental usage, and through the twelfth century that of the great transept becomes more and more conspicuous. The course of continental art was suppressing side pro jections,1 — but English art glorified and multiplied them for many uses. Conspicuously at the west end the English builders in their greatest churches rejected the narrow fronts of continental usage. If, as Viollet le Due has indicated, the addition in so many churches of narthex- halls, or great aisled porches, must be ascribed to a Cluniac revival of certain functions of discipline and ritual,2 yet in England there is no copying of the Cluniac method. Instead of aisled prolongations, we hav^injjie twelfth rpnf-nry a widening of the west front into a mighty architectural screen3 at St. Edmunds Bury 260 ft. wide,4 at Ely, c. 1 180, "with central tower and spreading wings to nearly 200 ft. So, too, was built at Peterborough a western hall, fronted afterwards with a great triple arched portico over 100 ft. high and 170 ft. in width. As wide 1 Thus the cathedrals of Sens, 1150; called St. Joseph's), originally separate at Paris, 1 1 60; and Poitiers, 11 80, had no the west end, was joined on to the church transepts at all. Viollet le Due, " Diction- by a portico in the thirteenth century. The naire de 1' Architecture," vol. ix., p. 222. churches of Fountains and Byland had 2 Which had to be performed outside covered western porches. It is to be the church proper, and for which housing noted that the great churches, Ely, Peter- would be required. There were ceremonies borough, Lincoln and Durham, which all attaching to Palm Sunday, which were per- had these western halls and conveniences, formed at the great doors. Lenoir (" Archi- did not develop the great south or north tecture Monastique,") mentions these as porches found in all the other large having to be brought inside on occasion of churches. bad weather. The very usual inclemency 3 The Rhenish churches of the same of the English spring must soon have sug- date had western apses, and great screens gested some cover at the west end. Thus on each side of them, stretching at Treves the Galilee of Durham was doubtless a con- to 1 70 feet in width. cession to the convenience of the monks. ' See plan of Bury, p. 62 ; of Ely, p. 201 ; The chapel of St. Mary at Glastonbury (now of St. Albans, p. 61. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 39 as this was the English design of Rouen of 11 80, with two western towers terminating the facade, and an equally ambitious plan was set out shortly afterwards by Abbot John de Cella for St. Albans. In the thirteenth century, Lincoln was given western chapels, and a screen 180 ft. in width, and Wells its buttressed gallery of sculptures of 150 ft. Later, the Salisbury front is meagre in comparison ; and in the four teenth century, Exeter and Winchester finish to the west with only gables, and Lichfield, York, Bridlington, and Beverley return to the narrow twin-towered continental type. But the English main transept retained its accentuation from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Its conspicuous projections, and the lofty towers of its crossings make the distinct feature of the English great church. In the pre-conquest Westminster, it stretched to 155 ft. of internal length ; in the abbeys of the twelfth century, at Ely to 180 ft., at St. Alban's, Peterborough, Reading, and Glastonbury to about 190 ft., at Winchester to 215 ft, at Bury to 240 ft. ; in the secular cathedrals of the thirteenth century it advanced at Lincoln and York to 225 ft., and in St. Paul's, London, to 250 ft;1 and quite late in the fourteenth century was built at Chester, in St. Werburgh's Abbey, a great south transept stretching 120 ft. from the crossing. But a still more striking transeptal use lay in the twelfth century development of the eastern limb of many of our large churches. The Normans brought apsidal sanctuaries — but in England they immediately lengthened them from the crossing, just as their naves and transepts had been treated. So the Westminster Abbey of the Confessor was with finished nave 376 ft. in internal length, and the twelfth century churches of Norwich and Peterborough 420 ft, and those of Winchester and Bury over 450 ft Conrad's quire at Canterbury set the example of a new expansion : contemporary with the great quire of Cluny, it showed an eastern transept as well as the main. Cluny2 is the only example of this abroad, but the idea fell in with the English taste. It was emphasized in the 1 175 rebuilding of Canterbury, and the length of the eastern limb carried another 180 ft. — so that the internal length of Canterbury3 grew to 520 ft., longer than that of any continental church. At the same time, the Cluniac Priory of Lewes was being given a similar second transept, with an aisle and chapelled apse. And then Archbishop Roger built to his secular cathedral in York a transepted quire square ended ; and so, too, St. Hugh, at Lincoln in 1 1 90, began to enlarge Lincoln ; 1 This, however, may have been of the 2 Willis, "Archaeological Journal," xx., Norman design. See p. 78 for plan. In p. 128, adds St. Benoit sur Loire, c. 1080. the French churches, the longest transepts 3 See plan, of Canterbury, p. 73 ; of are those of Chartres and Amiens, a little Lewes, p. 61. See also particulars on p. 64. under 200 ft. At Reims, Paris and Bourges, Durham and Ely are given on p. 201, and it is less than 150 ft. Lincoln on p. 205, 4o GOTHIC ART and early in the thirteenth century Worcester, Beverley, and Salisbury followed the example of York — while under a similar impetus the abbey churches of Fountains, and then of Durham, terminated their presbyteries with transeptal halls 135 ft. long by 100 ft high. By the end of the twelfth century the confinement of the Norman apse was felt oppressive ; rebuilding and enlargements lengthened the quires to broad square terminations, and, further eastwards still, carried long chapels — till the floor-length of our great English churches, sur passing everything on the continent, reached at Winchester 1 to 560 ft, at Canterbury and St. Albans to nearly 550 ft., at Lincoln, York, and Ely to from 5 1 2 ft. to 530 ft., while that of the great St. Paul's of London was over 600 ft2 Closely following on the 11 75 enlargement of Can terbury, came a rebuilding of the Lichfield quire, also Bishop Siegfried s remodelling of Chichester, and Bishop De Lucy's eastern chapels at Winchester — works thoroughly Gothic in their style, and thoroughly English in the spacious distinction of their square east endings. Here was a matter in which the burden of Romanesque tradition lay with more insistence on the French than on the English art. It took long, to refine away the narrowing oppression of the circling pillars of the French chevet, which are still heavy at Notre Dame and Chartres, but the English method passed at one step into the space and lightsomeness of their national Gothic ideal. Almost everywhere by 1 180 in cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches had our English quires broken from the confinements of the Romanesque plan. Though fires, or the failure of Norman work, are often recorded as the occasion for these rebuildings, their ambition, and the spirit in which they were carried out, must be taken to show an architectural motive3 — a desire to create, which the onward sweep of advancing art was rendering peremptory. It has been well observed that there are no cathedrals, and but few churches abroad which can compare with the English in the size and importance of their eastern limbs. The preservation of this feature is the continual witness to the vitality of the English style. Generally our great churches miss that completeness of form and definiteness of design which immediate conception and execution confer as a whole upon the French masterpieces. But none the less our many-dated cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches have a continuous linking of effect— with a sense of unity of feeling lasting through many centuries, 1 35 ft. were taken off at the west by 3 That there was this frenzy for rebuild- Bishop Edington in 1360, and about 80 ft. ing and a pulling down, to gratify it, of added by Bishop Waynflete to the east end much that was in perfect order, is acknow- in 1480. ledged in the " Vie de Saint Guillaume " by 2 The great French cathedrals are gener- Glaber Raoul, a French chronicler of the ally about 400 ft. in internal length, but eleventh century. See Cattaneo, "Architec- Chartres and Amiens are about 480 ft. ture in Italy," p. 228. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 41 to show that our art was national, and asserted itself throughout as such, despite the continental influences of its first origins. Though this energy, and the separateness of the twelfth century English development of architecture, can thus be plainly demonstrated in the English usage of the monastic plan, it was no less evident in every detail of our first Gothic. But the history of our early art has had the misfortune, that some three-quarters of the buildings in which were written the earliest proofs of its genius have entirely perished. Never theless, fragmentary as are the Cistercian and Augustinian churches, they are to be accounted the significant records of our English style — their evidence is not to be gainsaid, because their greater Benedictine contemporaries have mostly had the fortune to come down to us in better preservation. It is not fair to cheat English Gothic of recog nition because of the fag ends of the Romanesque designs of Peter borough, Ely, and Durham, any more than on the ground of the imported Frenchisms of Canterbury.1 Still less, although the Augustinian and Cistercian churches, and in most cases the secular cathedrals of the bishops also, were necessarily smaller than their well-endowed Bene dictine rivals, need the vigour of our first Gothic architects be discounted. The ruins of the twelfth century houses of the reformed orders are found in every county of England, and generally they speak of a con siderable building of the twelfth century, with marks of style that indicate the first achievements of Gothic experiment. Here, then, were the schools in which our English masons learned their craft, with no need of faring abroad for the atelier in which to be instructed in the mystery of Gothic. We have but the stray leaves of the record, which once was in some hundreds of churches, built for Canons secular and regular, and for Cistercian monks — many so sumptuously, that, as at Bristol, Oxford, Ripon, Southwell, and Southwark, we have been glad to take them as cathedrals. Yet we are immediately shown how native and local was the genius of our art, for each district forged its own Gothic from the ore of Norman Romanesque. The maps in Chapter III., and the illus trations which accompany them, will indicate this as well as convey the notion what a great business lay in church-building in Henry II.'s reign. For first the true proportion of all this activity in architecture to the social life of the time strikes us when we note that the population of all England and Wales was then under two millions — say what it now is in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Granted that the churches and their adjuncts represented in the twelfth century the whole buildings of the community/ and were, in effect, at once its public halls, its theatres, 1 See note 1, p. 69; also note 2, p. 91. our 100 years' settlement there can gauge the ' Or in New Zealand, say, the buildings of Norman and twelfth cent, genius in England. G 42 GOTHIC ART its assize courts, as well as its temples, yet the insignificance of our modern architectural output can be gauged by bringing into comparison, what has been built for public purposes, say in the West Riding, during the last hundred years of its prosperity, and putting this beside the total of four or five hundred large collegiate and monastic buildings which we have indicated, each bay of which might about contain the material of a Leeds warehouse. Moreover, besides these greater churches in nearly every parish of England, is there not evidence of a twelfth century re building of its church ? Yet great as is the bulk of this display, the spectacle of creative force exhibited by the architectural advance, and the perfection of the art achieved, is more astonishing. With English, as with the French art, we must exclaim with Viollet le Due, " Soixante ans, si Ton peut s'etonner d'une chose, c'est que, dans ce court espace de temps, on ait pu obtenir, sur tout un grand territoire, des resultats aussi surprenants ; car ce n'dtait pas seulement des manoeuvres qu'il fallait trouver, mais des milliers des artistes, qui, la plupart, 6taient des hommes d'ont le talent d'execution est pour nous un sujet d'admiration." For the production of our English Gothic style there was needed a population of artists, who gave to architecture and its accompanying arts their daily energy. The central fact of their lives must have been the building of cathedral, abbey, or parish church. There is an often-quoted passage in Gervase's account of the burning of Canterbury quire, describing the frantic despair of the people of the city : " The people were astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and maddened with excess of grief and perplexity, they tore their hair, and beat the walls and pavement of the church with their heads and hands, blaspheming the Lord, and his saints the patrons of the church. And many, both of the city and the monks, would rather have laid down their lives, than that the church should have so miserably perished." l The interest in such a disaster was a personal one! In the last half of the twelfth century, architecture had come to be the great social fact of European life : society was demanding some thing beyond the restless ambitions of war, and into building was thrown the zest of existence. The keenest spirits and the strongest characters showed their pre-eminence in its operations. A hundred years later, Richard de Bury could speak of the hobby of architecture as one among others, but for a time it had been something more— a personal capacity for architectural design had been the proof of eminence. Only in this way can we read the accounts of the incessant practice of it which attended the progress of eminent men : translated from post to post, they could not cease from building. Ernulf, as Prior of 1 Translation by Professor Willis in " The History of Canterbury Cathedral," p. 34. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 43 Canterbury, built the great quire there ; as Abbot of Peterborough he built the monastery ; as Bishop of Rochester he carried to completion Gundulph's1 beginning. The Abbe" Suger, left Regent when Louis went on his crusade, has his name chronicled as the first Gothic builder in France. His contemporary, Roger of Salisbury, can be similarly associated with the first impulse of the English style. The most powerful ecclesiastic of his day (yet more warrior than churchman), he was a statesman with whom the great King Henry I. had to reckon : and of him it is recorded by his contemporary, William of Malmesbury, that "he was a prelate of great mind, and spared no expense towards completing his designs, especially in building."2 Of similar fashion were Bishop Pudsey of Durham,3 Archbishop Roger of York,4 Arch bishop Laurence O'Toole of Dublin,5 and Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury 8 — each of them personally connected with the execution of the most advanced Gothic of his province. These were ecclesiastics who moved large in the world of affairs, and their buildings were politics in the twelfth century : in England as in France, the design of a great church was the symbol of political combination and political dominion. The position in this matter has not been sufficiently recognized by our historians, who cannot get beyond nineteenth century conceptions of the place of architecture in the life of a nation. The art of those in high places is with us a matter of taste ; its exercise is the commonplace purchase in the market — a commercial bargain between the craftsman and his paymaster, between artist and patron, between architect and client. Judged by this standard, the architectural sympathies of a Cceur de Lion or Henry III. are set in the same category with the laudable efforts of the late Prince Consort — a well-intentioned encouragement of one of the activities which should be fostered in a well-ordered state. A great national art is outside our experience, so it is repugnant to us to suppose a whole community becoming artists, and its keenest spirits being recog nized by their artistic creativeness ; or that a king, such as Richard, should exercise powers which modern life associates with its servants. The nineteenth-century humanitarian of Mr. Green's history is shocked at the " brutal violence and callous indifference to honour " that he reads 1 Gundulph, himself an eminently prac- 6 ii 84-1 190. Was a Cistercian, and had tical builder, "in opere csementario plurimum been Bishop of Worcester, the Cathedral of sciens et efficax." which shows indication of Cistercian in- 2 See Rickman and Parker's " Styles of fluence — an influence which seems to have Architecture in England," p. 156. continued into the politics of John's reign, 3 1155-1195. See p. 37. for Worcester retained that monarch's favour, 1 1154-1181. See note, p. 37. and finally buried him. See the Charter of 5 Died 1 1 80. See Giraldus Cambrensis, Glastonbury for Baldwin's personal interest quoted by G. E. Street, in his monograph in the rebuilding after the fire. At Canter- " Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin: restora- bury in 1 187 he proposed building a secular tion," 1882. cathedral apart from the monastic Church. 44 GOTHIC ART in the character of the great Plantagenet. But this painting of him as a mere ruffian misses the key to much of the life of the middle ages. With our indifference to beauty, with our acceptance of artistic brutali ties as a matter of course, we give this ready verdict on one of the greatest constructive artists of an age of the highest art. Great as was Richard's military and political ability, the artistic side of his genius must be judged as at least as extraordinary. Of the artist, as much as of the military expert, was his exultant cry, as he gazed on his finished Chateau Gaillard, " Is she not fair, my one year old ? " Many misleading appraisements of mediaeval life have resulted from these narrow views of ours. The belauded facts of the sanitary progress of the last half century, have got such a hold of most modern writers that they seem unable to conceive of a city of the thirteenth century except through the glasses of a sanitary inspector : they feel it their duty to point out that glazed pipe drains and vestry dirt-carts were unknown. After an enumeration of the noble buildings which, 600 years ago, a student would have beheld on his entry into Oxford — the great Churches of Osney and St. Frideswide, the royal palace of Beau mont, the great castle, and the Church of the Canons of St. George and the many other churches and religious houses — Mr. Green1 takes pains to explain that the " pomp and stateliness of the modern University would have been conspicuously absent," and that in their place would be " the mean and filthy lanes of a mediaeval city." But this is modern cant : if the worn-out fragments of mediaeval building are cramped for the purposes to which they are now put, if the filth of later generations has made them unsanitary, they were not so in their original building of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is from the habits and negligence of times much nearer our own that we have taken these ideas. In the light of the needs to which it ministered, the twelfth century monastery had a spaciousness of appointment and a plenitude of sanitary con trivance, which puts to shame our nineteenth. century palaces.2 Manners were different : there was not the tenderness to outdoor exposure which gas and stoves have generated. But as to the buildings of a city, such as Oxford was in the thirteenth century, and such as it is to-day, to which are pomp and stateliness more to be applied, and to which the terms " mean and filthy ? " What of the rows of grimy jerry-built 1 " The History of the English People " ments for the periodical flushing of the has passed into the stock education; and drains, an idea which the sanitary " science " similar ideas of mediaeval life appear gener- of the last twenty years has pointed to as a ally in current historical reviews. great proof of progress ! In Lewes Priory 2 See Willis's "Architectural History of each of the 120 monks had his private and the Conventual Buildings of Christ Church separate convenience. At Westminster the Monastery." In the precincts of Kirkstall filtering cistern of the monastery has lately have been found the twelfth century arrange- been found. THE FIRST GOTHIC-BUILDING 45 hovels that now surround the students' entry into Oxford ! Where is the comparative " pomp and stateliness " of contract-built villas, and plate- glass shop fronts ? Are indeed these qualities conspicuous in our modern college buildings ? On this score the student of the thirteenth century is not to be commiserated that he " went up " before such achievements were possible. He had less of discipline, and less of confinement : he had " hostels" by the hundred, instead of a score of "colleges" for his accom modation. But for the gratification of the eye he had, in palace, abbey, church, and in street, too, a pomp of form and a splendour of colour such as the nineteenth century can see only in dreams. Oxford is an impressive city x in comparison with other modern towns, but it owes this distinction to its having retained a sunset glimmer from an ancient glory, from an art of architecture which, 700 years ago, was as conspicuous in lane and alley as in tower and hall. In 1200 the student was in the midst of an impulse that was growing to greater nobleness and freer expression, and making every building, small or great, fair and beautiful, radiant with colour, alive with the vitality of a sculpture such as the world has rarely seen ; when fabric and utensil alike had a fitness and grace that makes their fragments the treasures of a cabinet ; when, in a word, there was an absence of any ugly thing, for the whole being of the nation was expressing itself in beauty. From the hideousness of our own creations, we moderns turn to nature for consolation. But at such an epoch as that of which we treat, the uncultivated world seemed an irresponsive environment to the artist. His art was bent on making him one to his will in barn and homestead, in manor house and castle, but most of all in his church. In the flood of advancing art, architecture is carried forward in the first wave, and for mediaeval society this meant above all things church-building. It was the church which alone at that time had the monopoly of the enthusiasm which could bring men together, and weld them to the purposes of a great achievement. The other great communistic ideals, the brother hoods of commerce, intellect, and social enfranchisement, which have now each in their turn swayed the destinies of Europe, were but in their infancy. In the twelfth century the definition of nations even had made but little progress. Feudal lordships rose and fell, expanded and absorbed their neighbours, or died away and were themselves absorbed. But in contrast with the flux of nationalities, the Church exhibited the spectacle of an unchanging force, fixed and continuous, and co-extensive with Christendom. Through Western Europe its ideas could spread independently of the political kaleidoscope. As inheritor and con servator of all the knowledge that had escaped the wreck of Roman civilization it became the educator of Europe. Into its hands was ' How much it has lost this last thirty years may be read in W. Morris's "Signs of Change." 46 GOTHIC ART given from the Eastern Church the amalgam of Byzantine tradition, wherein lay the gold of Greek art still bright. But most of all, its monastic institutions made the Church the foster-mother of a great art, for in them a leisure could be made, amidst the contests of feudal aggression, for the training of craft. And as distinctly did the Church provide material for art : establishments, such as the great Benedictine monasteries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by the scale of their building, the richness of the adornment, and the luxury of their appoint ments, gave a field for design commensurate with the artistic impulse. The fabric of the twelfth century church itself spread a full canvas. The worship of the Saints, and notably of the Virgin, rose in this century to its height. Altars dedicated to these mediators between humanity and heaven, the offerings made thereat, which had become practically those of propitiation, the pomp and variety of their services, were con tinually multiplying occasions for the display of architectural and decor ative elaboration. There is this strange fact about the birth of art. It is born in servitude— under allegiance, as it were, to lords spiritual and temporal, the dependant of tradition on the one hand, of practical need on the other. Yet, accepting this position, bowing to the overlordships, and rendering the service due, all the time it is by its very function a revo lutionist, and the creator of new traditions and more imperative necessi ties. The Church of the twelfth century yielded to this law. The Cluniac schools of design, bred under tradition of Roman construction and Byzantine decoration, became disseminators of an architecture, that escaped from monastic bondage, and, turning on the principles of its origin, revolutionized them too. From an emancipated art the Church accepted what was practically a change of tenets. Cause and effect cannot be nicely determined ; whether it was the altered character of mediaeval Christianity which induced the great art of church building, or whether the sumptuousness' of architectural adornment was the cor- ruptor of its austerity ; in either case the architectural achievement is to be seen as the accompanying factor of every situation. In illustration of this power of art was the emancipation of the English church-plan from the general monastic traditions of Western Europe and the Gothic creation of a new type for us. As clearly here as in French art we have, by 1 1 70, the spectacle of a revolution which settled the ideals of the whole of our subsequent church building. Some of the striking developments which, after the Norman Conquest, began to separate our great planning from continental practice have already been described. It remains to trace the source of that distinctly national character which it acquired, as the twelfth century advanced : which springing from the people, gave sap to the graft of the Norman THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 47 Conqueror, so that it grew to the end continually away from continental developments. As on our English Christianity so on our church-plans there seems stamped a threefold impress. The early British Church of the Roman occupation had fled in great part to Ireland before the Saxon hordes that overran England. Christian faith was brought back to our shores by Irish1 missionaries, who, it is said, proselytized every county of England, save, perhaps, Kent. Then came Augustine and his followers, with an importation direct from Rome ; and, thirdly, in later Saxon times, there followed from Norman influence an immediate contact with the monastic developments of Western Europe. So we can trace three elements in the plans of our Saxon fabrics ; first, the tradition of ancient oblong chambers of the Irish type, descendants, we may conceive, of the room still shown in Rome where St. Peter ministered ;2 secondly came the Roman basilican type of imperial Christianity ; and then, mingled with both, the ambition of the cross church of later monastic development. It is the day of small things whose character has imprinted its pecu liarities on the larger structures of later importation. In Ireland can still be seen groups of little oblong structures (fig. 3),3 dating from the sixth to the eleventh century, steeply roofed in stone, seven together at Glendalough and Cashel.4 In the larger and later examples they are double-chambered, with small square ended sanctuaries;5 and in their neighbour- hood, and often attached to their structure, are jL the lofty Irish round towers. The grouping of AXJL these churches and their tiny dimensions carry 0F gallerus, /I | suggestions of Eastern monachism — the service fir'^L of hermits rather than of congregations. But it would seem 3l_I that from the British counterparts of these diminutive square-ended structures of the islands have grown up the most enduring traditions of our English design. For the type followed the Irish into Scotland, as at Egilsey (fig. 5), and then under the teaching of the Scottish missionaries revived in Saxon6 England, where soon many churches were built of the chambered Keltic plan ; the most ORATORY 4. CORMAC S CHAPEL, CASHEL. 5. EGILSEY, WITH WEST TOWER. 1 Scottish, they may be called, since they came by way of Iona or Whithorn. 2 See for the origin of the church-plan the " History of English Church Architecture," G. G. Scott, p. 36, also pp. 72 and 73. 3 The plans in this chapter are uniformly to the scale of 100 feet to the inch. Towers are indicated by interior dotted lines. 4 The ruined chapel of St. Patrick, Heys- ham,Lanc, is considered an English example. ' The largest and latest would seem Cormac's Chapel at Cashel (fig. 4), dedicated 1 1 13, with details more Norman than Irish. 6 For the best account of the Saxon plan see Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite in "The Archaeological Journal," 1896. 48 GOTHIC ART 6. ESCOMB. perfect that are left being those at Escomb,1 Durham (fig. 6), and Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire (fig. 7), with lofty bodies and small high, square-ended sanctuaries, opening by narrow arches hardly more than doors, into the high windowed naves, with en trances north and south and often attachments of porches,2 which compete with the sanctuaries in size, and were evi dently associated with distinct functions. From the west end, opening by another narrow archway, was often, too, a comparatively large and lofty tower,3 square and many- storied, that seems to have provided the same safety from foray that the Irish round tower was designed to do — like the Peletowers of the Border, and just as to this day in the Suanetian hamlets of Caucasia similar towers are built for similar protection. That in the forest lands of England such churches were often of wooden palisade (as still standing at Greenstead, Essex), and that to this building square forms would be congenial, whereas the apse might present difficulties of construction, may be allowed ; the forms first built in wood, would acquire sanctity,4 and be rebuilt in stone. But even so the persist ence of the type, and especially of its square end5 against the continual importation of the apsidal termination,6 is remarkable. Before the Conquest, in the Danish rebuilding of the churches destroyed by them, and still more in the sixty years after the Conquest, stone took the place of wood, and in the greater number of our ancient parish churches we find a nucleus of this simple Keltic form. After the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the addition of aisles and long chancels has in most churches blurred the original outlines, but continually, all through the centuries of our BRADFORD. ST. REGULUS. ST. ANDREWS. 9. HEATH CHAPEL. Here is a doorway with sloping jamb, like an Irish door. 2 The north remains at Bradford. At Monkwearmouth and Escomb the porch was western, as to which see Mr. Mickle- thwaite's paper. 3 As at Egilsey above and St Andrews (fig. 8), so at Kirk-Hammerton, Yorkshire, and Netheravon, Wilts. ' At Glastonbury the ancient wood church survived till the fire of 1184, and "St. Joseph's" chapel is considered as its re building. 5 G. G. Scott contends that the Irish or square sanctuary was that of the first Roman churches in Britain. So he points to four separate occasions of the triumph of its form over the apsidal ending : ist, in the Roman occupation; 2nd, in the Saxon, after Augustine; 3rd, in the Norman, after the Conquest ; and, 4th, after the introduction of the French chevet at Westminster Abbey. 6 The openness as well as the circular form is the continental distinction. The narrow entry of the English chancel kept its place in the parish church in many places till the fifteenth century ; it is still found at St. Edmund's, Hauxton, Cambridgeshire, Rottingdean, Sussex, and at Charminster, Dorset THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 49 Christian church-building, many a small parish church1 or chapel of ease2 was laid out in the simplest lines of this the earliest tradition of our islands. So we find it at Adel, Yorkshire, carried out, in 1150, in the richest of Norman detail, just in the same way as at that date our native English idiom was working its way into the speech of the conqueror; or, later still, in the forest recesses, as at Northolt, Middle sex, or Doddinghurst, Essex, where the substitution of stone for wood may have been delayed till the fourteenth century. Very distinct is the second type of church, coming, as if with Augus tine, direct from Rome. There may have been basilican3 churches in England before there were the English themselves ; for the foundations of what would seem such have been discovered at Silchester.4 But, at any rate, Augustine's Church was planned by him " in imitation of the great basilica of the blessed Peter." 5 An aisled basilica with confessional crypt is still to be seen at Wing (fig. 10), in the vale of Ayles bury, and on a considerable scale 6 at Brixworth, Northamptonshire (fig. 11). These were monastic churches, and their characteristics lie in the aisled naves, and the open arches of their windowless apses, beneath which were the crypts.7 But modifications of the strict basilican form are seen, the cropping up IO. WING. II. BRIXWORTH. 1 "There are scores of them," says Mr. Micklethwaite : such as Kirkdale, Yorks ; Whittering, Northants; Corhampton, Hants; Wareham, Dorset ; Ovingdean, Sussex ; Paddlesworth, Kent. Normandy has ex amples as at Vieux Pont en Auge. In the sixth and seventh centuries the Irish Church sent its missions on the continent. 2 The Heath Chapel, Ludlow (fig. 9), is a charming example of the early twelfth cen tury ; and of a little later date is St. Mary's Chapel, Barnwell, Cambridge. 3 Basilican, i.e., on the plan of the Roman Christian basilica of the third to the seventh centuries ; the derivation of which from that of the ancient basilica proper is not distinct. Rather we must look upon the term as in dicating less a ground plan than a con struction of nave and aisles with galleries over. 4 The basilican plan of Reculver is now considered as certainly Saxon, and neither St. Pancras nor St. Martin's, Canterbury, are allowed to have been of really Roman building. 5 So writes Eadmer of the eleventh cen tury. It had apses, both west and east, and no great transept, but towers midway, north and south, the latter of which was the great entrance — the " Suth-dure " of enduring tra dition at Canterbury, and in Saxon times the appeal court of the kingdom. See G. G. Scott (as above) who gives the plan. b 150 ft. long. Its date is confidently put at c. 700, when it was a dependency of Medhamstede, now Peterborough. The early church of that famous monastery, as well as that of York Cathedral, is claimed by Mr. Micklethwaite as having been on the Roman basilican plan with extended transept. 7 At Hexham and Ripon Mr. Mickle thwaite supposes crypt and apse to have been at the west. H 50 GOTHIC ART of underlying Keltic tradition, in the long chambers that precede the sanctuaries and in the western tower at Brixworth.1 Though thus originally of monastic introduction, the aisling of the nave came in the process of enlargement into the ordinary habit of our parish churches, and the mingling of the two above types has been responsible for their most ordinary aspects, as we have been building them for eight centuries. The high windows of the nave carry the traditions of the high Keltic window as well as of the basilican clerestory ; and if their flat fifteenth century roofs and spreading aisles are of the basilican likeness, the steep-roofed, square-ended chancels recall the Irish oratory, the big projecting porches are as of Bradford and Canter bury, and their tall western towers still tell the tale of the many-storied refuge (by Viking foray made necessary), as well as of the bells of the Italian campanile. At any rate tall western towers became as ordinary to the Saxon church in the ninth and tenth centuries as the round tower was to the site of the Irish oratory. Square though they usually are,2 and definitely attached 3 to the church, their unbuttressed outline has often an entasis, as of a Roman pillar ; most often they have no western entrance, nor any external opening within 20 ft. of the ground, but must be approached through the church, which would be defensible as a bailly or outer guard. Their many stories could be reached only by wooden ladders, just as the border " Pele " or the Caucasian stronghold of to-day. Lofty and sheer, they must have stood out as the conspicuous landmarks of our churches at the time of the Conquest, and such are still to be found, with little alteration, as the bell towers of hundreds of churches 4 along the 1 Cattaneo, "Architecture in Italy from turies Irish missionaries went abroad, and the Vlth to the Xlth Century," states as Irish monasteries were founded, among other one of the earliest instances of "monastic" places, at Bobbio in North Italy, and Gall planning in Italy, the chambers that precede in Switzerland. Also at the beginning of the apses in St. Hilary, near Venice, built the ninth century Pope Adrian I. asked for about 820. Also, according to this author, Frankish " masters " from Charlemagne, the Italian architecture of the ninth, as dis- whose arts had been refounded by Alcuin tinguished from that of the earlier centuries, of York. In their hands the " Scottish " or exhibits three peculiarities: ist, an orna- Anglo-Keltic peculiarities of church-plan as ment of angular (in place of circular) inter- well as the designs of Irish MS. might be lacements, as at St. Clement's, Rome, and carried to Rome itself. throughout Italy; 2nd, the triple apsed end- 2 In the eastern counties often round. ing of the basilica with deep presbytery, as 3 On the Welsh border the west towers at S. Alliate, Milan, and also at Rome and are frequently detached andplacedirregularly Venice ; and 3rd, the earliest detached cam- to the church, built evidently for defensive paniles, as at S. Satyrus, Milan. Since all purposes. There are traces of the same these three characteristics are met with in thing in Norfolk and in Scotland. the Anglo-Keltic architecture of the eighth 4 In different parts of England : Whitling- century, they may be explained by the con-j ham, Northumberland; St. Mary Bishophill, sideration that in the sixth and seventh cen-l 'York ; Barton, on the Humber ; Deerhurst, THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 51 estuaries most exposed to Danish invasions, with characteristics that definitely separate them from Norman work. At Lincoln the native population, turned out of their high hill by the Normans, built in the low town churches with such towers,1 which remain to this day. It has been asserted that this prevailing feature of our parish church-building, the western tower, has always been a later addition to the church proper, coming when the central tower fell into decay : so that convenience dictated the western position, to make the least inter ruption of the services. This perhaps presupposes a central tower to have been more characteristic of the English parish church than seems justified by evidence. However, no doubt the force of convenience must have been strong, when a central tower had to be rebuilt or replaced. Yet even so it went hand in hand with a native tradition rejecting the central tower as a foreign importation. For if the English parish church was seldom a design de novo ; if nearly always its features are the result of a series of enlargements and rebuildings, such as necessity and convenience dictated — none the less has the result been finally char acteristic of the national genius, developing for itself the national type. The central tower was in fact the badge of that third influence which worked on the formation of the English church-plan ; Christianized Saxondom could not dissociate itself from the monastic movements of Western Europe. Before the Normans there had come into England inspiration from the great church-building of the con tinental Benedictines — from that central-towered cross- plan, whose evolution will be presently sketched. Thus we hear of Romsey Abbey in 969 built with a central steeple, and so, we read in a contemporary metrical description, was Ethelwold's Cathedral of Winchester. Such a central-towered cross remains for us in Dover Castle (fig. 12), and similar plannings of the late tenth century are assigned to the Saxon churches at Repton, Deerhurst, and Breamore (near Salisbury), with transepts opening from the tower-space by narrow arches. As significant are the many examples in southern England of the tower rising between the sanctuary and the nave, as at Studland (fig. 1 3).2 On this pattern would appear to have been built a large number of our smaller churches at Gloucestershire ; Barnack, Northampton shire; St. Benet, Cambridge; St. Julian, Norwich; Holy Trinity, Colchester, and other numerous examples in Lincolnshire, and all the eastern counties ; also at Iver, Middlesex, and Sompting, Sussex. 12. DOVER. 13- STUDLAND. 1 St. Peter-at-Gowtz and St. Mary-le- Wigford. 2 In Dorset, see also Basing, South Hay- ling, and Sopeley, Hants ; Newhaven, Sus sex ; and later examples of the twelfth cen tury, Bredon and Iffley in mid-England. 52 GOTHIC ART or about the time of the Conquest, to which the addition of transeptal chapels (or Porches, as they were often called), has afterwards given the cross-form. It may be doubted, indeed, if what appears at Dover is really the importation from abroad of such a cross- plan as that of Querqueville near Cherbourg, or St. Saturnin above Caudebec. Rather we may view it as the grafting of the transept of the monastic Saxon Basilica upon the Keltic chamber-plan — its projections being the Prothesis and Diaconicum of the old tradition, and the mid-tower the sole proof of the later monastic influence of the Continent. For we find the same hybrid without the tower at Worth (fig. 14) : the idea of a vestibule to the sanctuary is indeed in many early plans, such as Moccas, Here ford, and Dalmeny, near Edinburgh (fig. 15), 14. worth. where the apse is preceded by a tower-space without a tower.1 For our purpose the interest lies in the distinction which at the time of the Conquest separated the small church- plan of the Saxons from the great cross types of the Norman conqueror. The apsed2 endings had by that date passed out of Saxon planning, overcome by the Keltic tradition. While, too, the monastic designing of the Normans in England, as we have seen, developed great transeptal projections, the genius of the Saxon plan was against the cross. Yet in the later Gothic story, it was the Saxon idea, despite its lesser beginnings, that continued by the side of the other, and grew almost to its dimensions ; and finally in the fifteenth century, outliving the four hundred years' ascendancy of the greater church, was built almost transeptless for the monks of Bath and the canons of St. George at Windsor. There is to this day a general scarcity of aisleless cross-plans among our parish churches, especially of any that can be dated to the times of our Norman kings, though in Normandy itself they are not uncommon. Their arrangement was evidently contrary to the use of our first parish churches. Only towards the middle of the twelfth century did chantry chapels bring them into existence by additions to such structures, as that of Studland, a process which we can see half 15- DALMENY. 1 Other examples are Kilpeck, near Moccas; East Ham, Essex; Steetly, Derby shire ; and Checkendon, Oxfordshire. 2 Two groups of these have been indicated; first, the Kentish set of single apsed plan nings, to be taken as the first-fruits of the Italian importation of Augustine — as St. Pancras, and St. Martin, Canterbury; Lyminge ; and at South Elmham, Norfolk. Secondly, the triple apsed plan conjectured for the St. Frideswide's church of 727 by Mr. Harrison Park. Mr. Micklethwaite, however, considers the foundations found to be those of Ethelred's church of 1004, and the plan to have been of the type of St. Alban's, for which see p. 61. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 53 done with one chapel only at Maiden Newton in the same county. Or again they may have arisen by the Norman ambition of a mid-tower upon a basilican structure, such as Worth. So that what seem genuine central-towered crosses, as St. Mary's, Guildford, or the Norman church of Old Shoreham, may after all be no introductions of the set type of the invaders, but merely the complete hybrid that mixed the influences of all three sources of Saxon designing. We may fairly claim our English parish church in all its variations as having sprung from the interaction of these three pre-Conquest elements. If in their origin necessarily of foreign introduction, in their development these elements show themselves as immediately native. It may be that along with the idea of the central tower, there came, too, in Canute's rebuilding of the churches he had burnt, just as in the energy of the Norman church-building that followed the Conquest, a fresh introduction of the continental apse into parish church-building. But though in south-eastern England there are some number of apses still remaining, the Keltic tradition immediately reasserted itself. The majority of the Norman sanctuaries which have been preserved, are square with high bluff gables, like that of Darenth in Kent, vaulted, with a chamber above,1 recalling in this, as in its steep outline, the high- roofed Irish oratory. And if in the larger churches to which collegiate foundation might be attached, as at Norton, Durham, and Stow, Lincolnshire,2 the type of the central-towered Norman cross-church found its full expression, so that we have twelfth century plans of the scale of St. John's, Devizes, and Hemel- Hempstead, with stately cross and deep square-vaulted chancel, yet in connection with such popular enterprises, the spirit of the English Gothic had begun to move in lines of its own — its genius had already separated its type from continental usage. The rejection of the apse was a step finally taken for all time within sixty years of the Conquest, and its shallow inclosure gives immediate place to a deeply recessed hall ; to a chancel like that of Broadwater, Sussex (fig. 16), l6- broadwater. stretching 60 ft. deep from the tower of the crossing. Still such cross- planned churches must be accounted rare, and apart from the collegiate foundations, only in particular. districts is there any body of central- ¦ ¦1 — C V." >* $ '*¦ s ii I 1 1 Compare a similar, if later, example at St. Giles, Oxford, where the chamber was over both nave and chancel, and Easton, Hants, as well as Cormac's Chapel, Cassel. (See Micklethwaite, as above, for the habi tation of early churches.) Other early Norman rectangular chancels are Berkswell and Beaudesert, Warwickshire ; Kempley, Gloucestershire ; and Avington, Berkshire. - Both claimed as late Saxon cross-plans. 54 GOTHIC ART towered parish churches to show that the aisleless cross-plan may have been the groundwork of their design. North Wiltshire and the adjoining parts of Oxfordshire and Berkshire would seem such a district,1 and there in the thirteenth century we have the design seemingly built from the ground, as at Uffington and Potterne. The scope of its effect is well seen in the latter (fig. 1 7), where there is a spacious simplicity in the unbroken width of the intersecting halls, across which, eastward, are seen the great triple lancet of the sanctuary, and on either hand the smaller triple lights that backed the eastern altars of the transepts. Outside, the gabled cross leads upwards to the lantern tower, now battle- mented and altered, but finished originally with a lead spire. 17. potterne. An(j ^g Potterne porches give proof of the en durance of the traditional ideas of our earliest church-planning, which, in monastic and cathedral, as much as in parochial designs, gave great importance to side entrances. The strong west winds of Eng land, which would on so many days of the year make a west entrance inconvenient, was doubtless a determining factor in the adoption of doors on the shelter side. The "suth dure" of Canterbury, as it is called by Eadmer, had been in Augustine's church, in the projecting tower with its altar to St. Gregory. The feature was acknowledged in Lanfranc's rebuilding, and to this day the entrance to the Cathedral is by its portals and statue-niched porch, as these were rebuilt in the fifteenth century. St. Pancras, Canterbury, and the Bradford church show the proportions which the porch assumed in the earliest churches. In the twelfth century it received, with the chancel, the dignity of having a stone vault,2 which the English parish church generally eschewed, and in many parts this distinction was retained in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the chancel had lost it. Thus Bredon in Worcestershire, as most twelfth century parish designs, has its nave with entrances north and south in the middle of its sides, as well as a western, but it is the first that is most ornamented, and has a roomy porch groined,3 with a chamber above. The west entrance was being superseded — used perhaps only at consecration or on a visitation — and after this date it is common to find no western doorway at all : the facade of the church was on its sides, not that of the west end. 1 Branching into Bucks : also into South wall there are many such of the fourteenth Somerset, where are many central-towered century, and other groups may be mentioned churches, and in the adjoining west Dorset in west Sussex and mid-Essex. we have Bridport, Symondsbury, Burton, 2 In both these you may find the floor of thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth century an upper chamber used as a priest's room. examples of aisleless cross-plans. In Corn- 3 Perhaps somewhat later. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 55 In the West of England this tradition immediately appears in the parochial naves of the great Benedictine churches — with north porches at Tewkesbury and Worcester. Sherborne and Malmesbury show the dignity and ornament that was lavished on such south-side entrances in the middle of the twelfth century. In the north, at Durham, the sanctuary door had been placed at the side, and Selby has its north porch in 1180 as spacious and important. In the late twelfth century com pletion of the nuns' church at Romsey 1 there was no west door at all, but a north porch stretched out, 45 ft. by 25 ft., beyond the projection of the transept. In our secular cathedrals and Canons' Churches this influ ence was at work, diminishing the dignity of the west entrance at Wells and Salisbury, and giving them, as at Christchurch, Hants, lofty, long vaulted approaches from the north. And in parish and cathedral alike the custom has endured ; 2 our churches to this day are most commonly entered from the sides, not at the west, while great north and south porches have been conspicuous in their exterior effects. As aisles were added the porch was thrown farther out, renewed perhaps again and again in the style of the times : but to the ornament of the earliest doorways there often seems to have attached a sanctity,3 and their stones were taken down and rebuilt again to form, as they had ever done, the time-honoured entry to the church. So by porch, chantry, and lengthened chancel, and then by aisle addi tion, the Saxon mid- towered type might gather complicated ac cretions such as plans of many Oxfordshire churches, Witney (fig. 18) or Burford (fig. 19), present. For before the twelfth century the aisle 18. WITNEY. recog- 19. BURFORD, had become the nized addition for the enlargement of the parish church — the tradition of the elder Saxon basilica appearing here, as much as the example of the Norman abbey. And by its addition the Keltic two-chambered 1 See plan p. 68. At Le Mans the Norman nave has an English "south porch " of the twelfth century. 2 Of the thirty ancient churches, now in use as our cathedrals, in eighteen the prin cipal entrance is at the side of the nave ; but in three of these, Exeter, Chichester, and Llandaff, the western door competes. In eleven the chief entrance is decidedly that of the western facade; in two, York and Lichfield, the main entries are by the tran septs, as it is also at Carlisle (where the nave is destroyed), and at Westminster Abbey. 3 A similar reverence was shown to the material of the early chancel arches, the doorways to the sanctuaries, 56 GOTHIC ART type had a no less considerable development, and one in greater harmony with its origin. Having no mid-steeple to humour, it could grow on its own lines, and lift at the west the sheer-walled tower of Saxon lineage. With added aisles and lengthened chancel it increased in its stature, and from Kent to Northumber^ land, from Norfolk to Cornwall, has continued the common wide-spread design of the English church. Its features may have come to it century by century, a north aisle in one, a south in another, a chancel in the thirteenth, a porch in the fourteenth, and the tower, perhaps, in the fifteenth ; its walls may have been raised at one time, its roof renewed at another ; now length given, and now width : yet not seldom was 20. elm. it built from the ground,1 from the twelfth century onward, with all its native features; sometimes hardly larger than its Keltic prototype, as at Leigh,2 Somerset, and now vying with cathedral and abbey, as at Boston3 or Coventry. And thirdly, the basilican admixture, of the type of the Saxon Worth,4 continued its tradition in the enlarged churches 5 built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Transepts are found breaking the oblong plan so as to give a modified cross form — but as additions to the aisles rather than to the central nave. In some cases this may have followed from the re building of the Norman cross- church after the fall or taking down of the central tower, the new tower being transferred to the west. But even so the change 21. acton burnell. was significant, for not a few churches of the earliest Gothic Transition would seem to have been set out with such low tran septs added to the typical Saxon type, just at the time when the ambitions of architecture rejected the Norman orthodoxy of Benedictine style. At St. Mary's Church,6 Harrow (fig. 22), a scheme was begun about 1 So Elm in Cambridgeshire was set out and built mostly in the early thirteenth century (fig. 20). 2 C. 1450. Nave and chancel together only 56 ft. long. 3 Boston, begun 1309, was 350 ft. long, with an area of 30,000 sq. ft, incorporating a small portion of an older fabric. 4 See plan, p. 52, which is continued in the unaisled Acton Burnell (fig. 21), near Shrewsbury, built at the end of the thir teenth century. 6 St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, is a notable example of the twelfth century ; but its earliest work is in its western tower and the porches of nave. Eastwards are low transepts and a central lantern, and later came a long chancel. Kelmscott, Glouces tershire, has the plan with one aisle only. The addition of transeptal chantries or short aisles, as at Bredon, Worcestershire, and old Beckenham, Kent, often gave the shape to the Keltic plan. 6 It belonged to the Archbishop of Can terbury, who had a manor house near, and would seem to have built the chancel as his THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 57 2 2. HARROW. 23. DARLINGTON. 1 190 which substituted for the earlier sanctuary a long square-ended chancel with wide lofty arch into nave, and on either side transepts to the aisles. At Whitchurch, Dorset, is a similar contemporary1 plan, though the tower there is now entirely of the fifteenth century. In both cases there would certainly have been provision for other service besides that of the parish priest; and where parish churches, from the introduction of chantry or college foundations, had to make this provision, the low tran sept comes as the frequent accompaniment of chancel extensions. Even in the central- towered cross-plan,2 this tradition had its way, markedly in smaller monastic erections,3 where the tran septs are often lower than the main church-body. So far the Saxon elements may be recognized ; but, no doubt, quite Norman in their planning at the end of the twelfth century were many considerable secular churches, which, built with aisled naves, the marked crossing, the transeptal chapels and eastern limb of a conventual church, central-towered and spired,4 differ only in dimensions from the church of a monastery. St. Cuthbert's, Darlington (fig. 23),6 founded by Bishop Pudsey (1 185), is a notable example of the north. And in Rye (fig. 24) and New Shoreham, Sussex, we may see the fully aisled chancels and more developed structures of the great seaports in all these cases the settings out of the plans were probably earlier. 3 Malvern, Worcestershire, even in its fifteenth century reconstruction. 4 The Norman tower was probably always spired in a blunt quadrangular fashion. Bloxam ("Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture") quotes the conventual seal of Kenilworth, and Parker, in his "Introduc tion," etc., shows an engraving of Penmon Priory Church near Beaumaris, Anglesea. 5 See fig. 126, p. 172. At Filey is the church of St. Oswald of about the same date, central-towered, and with a western one intended also. At Hedon in Holder- ness is another of the same type, with eastern aisles to the transepts. 1 1 * H W* ¦*•'¦ ^ 1 24. RYE. chapel. The style of this (as lately dis covered, but now much obliterated by a misleading "restoration"), would point to the date and influence of Archbishop Bald win (see p. 43). The west tower here dates certainly to the days of the Conqueror, and -may have been the first masonry construc tion — the body of the church continuing wooden until the archbishop's rebuilding. 1 Hythe, of the same form, but with aisled chancel, is mostly of the thirteenth century. A fine later example is that of East Adder- bury, Oxfordshire. 2 As at Stratford-on-Avon and at Leighton Buzzard, of the fourteenth century. Coly- ton, Devon, and Crewkerne, Somerset, have the same low transepts of the fifteenth, but 58 GOTHIC ART of the south. These larger examples were doubtless always collegiate : and we pass in them out of the parochial church proper into the great abbey and cathedral, as this type was created by the power of the English transition. By the end of the thirteenth century, different as were their origins, the plans of small and large churches grew together — the multi plication of chantries, and then, perhaps, the influence of the Friars' churches, was leading to a blending of ideas in both. But up to mid twelfth century there was a distinct difference, and we can see built side by side the Saxon and the Norman, the parochial and the monastic, the oblong-chambered with its west tower and square sanctuary, and the cross-planned with its central lantern and eastern apse ; the one diminu tive and rude, the other vast and adorned. And then can be noted their mingling : the influence of the great constructions filtering downwards into the ambitions of the parish church, and ever stronger and stronger the idea of the simple edifice of the Saxon working its way upwards, compelling recognition of its distinctions, and enforcing them step by step upon the lordly foundations of the Conqueror. As East and West had met in the Saxon plan, drawing from the cell of Egyptian anchorite as well as from the basilica of the Roman priest, so in the great Benedictine church, which the Normans brought to England, were expressed the traditions of an emperor's San Sophia and a pope's St. Peter. The ideals of two empire cities met in its creation — Rome brought her basilican traditions of long many-pillared nave — Byzantium the ambition of the vastness of the meeting of a quadrupled vault. The dome of San Sophia has had power over all succeeding great churches. The absorption of its Eastern cross-plan into the ideal of the Western ship1 is one of the most interesting of archi tectural histories. In the process the dome was to be assimilated, and under the exigence of Western experiment it passed into the central lantern of the cross-planned church. As links in the chain of this transformation have been cited the great St. Mark's of Venice, St. Front of Perigueux,2 and St. Sernin of Toulouse,3 as following one another in the eleventh and twelfth centuries " Let the building be long with its head The original church at St. Front was con- to the east, with its vestries on both sides secrated in 1047— but, as Mr. Spiers has at the east end; and so it will be like a shown, the domed cross-plan was after 11 20 ship." Canons of the third and fourth een- ("Journal of the R.I.B.A." 1896). turies, quoted by Bloxam in his "Princi- 3 The nave of St. Sernin, Toulouse, pies," etc., vol. ii., p. 7. belongs probably to the dedication of 1096, 2 Each having a great domed cross set in but the great transept and quire is dated front of an earlier basilican building that at 1125. A very similar plan to this last had been on the plan of Alliate (fig. 25, i.). was that of Santiago di Compostella, begun The earlier building at Venice is dated c. in 1078, and nearly finished by 11 28. The 950— the cross-plan coming in 1063-1071. great Abbey of Cluny was begun on this THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 59 with increasing ambition of constructive art. But a century earlier, and rather in the prototypes of these churches (such as S. Satyrus, Milan), the ambitions of the Romanesque builders had started, leading on from S. Michele, Pavia (fig. 25, ii.), and Conques (fig. 25, iii.), to the 1 * illi ilii H I ' ' •; i\ r! * 25. THE ROMANESQUE DEVELOPMENT OF GREAT CHURCH PLAN. I. Neo-basilican plan of ninth century. S. Alliate, Milan (Cattaneo). II. Lombard cross-plan of eleventh century. S. Michele, Pavia. III. Southern French plan. Conques, Guienne, completed 1060 (Street), and said to to have been the model of St. Sernin, Toulouse. IV. Norman cross-plan of eleventh century. St. Etienne, Caen. Jumieges was similar. V. Edward the Confessor's Abbey. Consecrated 1065, but the nave twelfth century. vaster enterprises of St. Sernin, Toulouse, and Santiago di Compostella in the South, of Bernay, Jumieges and Tournai in the North : so that as early as 1065 they had gone with the Norman builders of Edward the Confessor to his great abbey of Westminster (fig. 25, v.). In the northern plans the dome has disappeared, and its place is taken by a plan, but with double side aisles, in 1089 and consecrated in 1 1 3 1 . The area of these churches would be about 50,000 square feet, Cluny rather larger. See p. 34, notes 4, 5. 60 GOTHIC ART square lantern rising on the lofty arches of the crossing, designed, like the dome had been, to be the apex of effect internally a as externally. Outside its lofty spire was to be the crown of the pyramid of masonry, inside it was to be a perspective of hanging vacuity, pouring in floods of light in front of the altar ; while from it opened in full height, east and west and north and south, the caverned halls; eastwards the sanctuary ; north and south the great transept — the ostia presbyterii ; and westwards the great nave stretching in endless perspective many bays beyond the choir-inclosure in memory of the pillared hall of the basilica. With such lordly ambitions, and under a king's patronage came the great church of the Benedictine into England. Its first conspicuous example was the Abbey of Westminster ; 2 but immediately after the Conquest, Lanfranc began to build at Canterbury; Abbot Baldwin of St. Denis at St. Edmund's, Bury; Abbot Paul of Caen before 1080 at St. Alban's ; and Bishop Gundulph at Rochester. Shortly afterwards the Conqueror's kinsmen, Bishop Walkelyn of Winchester and Bishop Simon of Ely, began their great churches, followed about 1090 by Abbot Serlo at Gloucester, Bishop Remigius at Lincoln, Bishop Lusinge at Norwich, and Bishop Carileph at Durham. The main transepts and eastern limbs of these churches were quickly finished, with as much of the naves as was needed for the choir- inclosure. After dedication the completion of the western half of the long nave was often delayed, and the great development of the western front came as a work of the twelfth century. Though we have pre served the original crossings 3 of many of these great Norman structures, their eastern endings have been universally transformed, and in most cases completely over-built. Still, excavations or their crypts have given us materials to decide on the form of most of them, so that we can perceive the character of the original continental importation, and trace thereon the progress of English ideas. Two types appear in these east endings, — both are continental. That which prevailed generally in northern France,4 and in its after 1 Westminster of course can only be ing this on the plan of Peterborough, with conjectured to have had the lantern, which a subsequent enlargement on the lines of its near contemporary at Caen (fig. 25, iv.), Norwich, but no authority can be found for still shows internally. Norwich is our best this suggestion. example of the Romanesque design, since s The transepts and the first bays of the elsewhere the twelfth century lanterns have nave, which accommodated the choir. been mostly ceiled down. See, however, 4 Lanfranc, as a native of Pavia, is often St. Frideswide's, Oxford. given credit for importing " Romanesque " 2 Waltham Abbey is said to have been into North Europe : but all central France set out before the Conquest. The arrange- had years before Lanfranc been alive with ment of its east end (now destroyed) is it. See G. E. Street, " Transactions of the doubtful; a plan has been published show- R.I.B.A.," i860, pp. 91-119. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 61 French development has been called the "chevet," appears at first as an apse rounding the whole width of the Eastern limb, aisled so as to give a semicircular processional path, from which the chapels radiate. The germ is found in the ninth century plan made for St. Gall.1 And 26. NORMAN PLANS IN ENGLAND. I. Aisled apse or chevet. Lewes, c. 1100. The earlier ending, c. 1077, is shown by dotted lines. II. Parallel apses. St Albans, c. 1080. Western bays and towers were designed in 11 95. at St. Remi, Rheims, and St. Martin, Tours, it appears close at the beginning of the eleventh century; at Conques (fig. 24, iii.) on the Loire, in Notre Dame du Port, Clermont, and in St. Etienne, Nevers, are examples dated of the time of the Conquest, or shortly after.2 But the other type can be credited with a longer ancestry and 1 See Viollet le Due, "Dictionnaire, etc.," book iii., chap, ii., sees the origin of the vol. i., p. 242. chevet in the taking of a circular sepulchral 2 Fergusson, " History of Architecture," church on to the body of an aisled nave. 62 GOTHIC ART perhaps an earlier introduction into England, for the foundations of the Saxon church of St. Frideswide at Oxford show triple apses 1 side by side. This form of ending was, indeed, a common Oriental one of the • R ft :q H b ti « ti ti p a • I fcte:-/#.-id 27. NORMAN PLANS IN ENGLAND. Eastern Benedictine type, with extended transepts and naves, and aisled apses. I. St. Edmund's, Bury. II. Norwich. fourth and fifth centuries.2 It became frequent in Lombardy in the ninth,3 and along the Rhine in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and in Normandy Bernay, St. Nicholas Caen, and St. George de Boscher- 1 As excavated by Mr. Harrison Park; 3 As, for example, Brescia; San Ambrogio, see p. 52, note 2. Milan; Alliate (fig. 25, i.) ; Torcello;— 2 Texier, "Asie Mineure," gives a plan all dated by Cattaneo as of the ninth of Soueidah which might be mistaken for century. that of a western ninth century church. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 63 ville had this ending. But after the Conquest, in combination with the extended transept of the Anglo-Norman builders, there came a dis tinctive development (figs. 26 and 27). On the continent the Norman use had squared the aisle endings of the quire two bays beyond the cross, the apse projecting its half circle beyond this, as in St. Etienne, Caen (fig. 25, iv.) ; and in this form Lanfranc's Canterbury had been built. But in England the presbytery is made many-bayed, running as a deep lofty hall from the crossing to its apsidal termina tion, and on either side the place of aisles is taken by similar apsed halls, walled off from the central, and flanked again by shortened apsed chapels, projecting from the transepts. At St. Albans (fig. 26) there were seven of these parallel apses, as shown in Buckler's plan. At West minster (fig. 25), thirty years before St. Albans, both types were mixed ; there are the long chapels from the transept, but the deep presbytery ends in an aisled apse. The lengthening of the presbytery had appeared (as has been noted) in the Saxon Brixworth, and now at Westminster three bays intervene between the crossing and theJturn of the apse. Similar prolonga tions, much beyond continental example, were built at St. Albans and Ely, where the central naves of the quires stretch 10O' ft.1' from the crossings ; at Durham (see plan, p. 201) in 1093, tne eastern limb has extended itself with a presbytery 1 50 ft.2 to the eastern wall, and with aisles of five bays quite free beyond the tran- c- s- transept f. Lady chapel. sept, whose chapels (three on each side) are square ended, and arranged as an eastern aisle. Peculiarities of the same kind in transept and eastern limb occur also in the Norman types of the aisled apse, as at Bury (fig. 27), Winchester (fig. 34, 1 1.), and the early cathedral of Lichfield. The ideal of English Benedictine design clearly lay not in the chevet 28. NORMAN PLANS IN ENGLAND. Western Benedictine type. Gloucester. a. Nave. d. N. transept. b. S. aisle. E. Quire. 1 At Canterbury, as at Caen, the length had been 65 ft. In all these churches the original arrangements have now disappeared. 2 Peterborough, twenty years later, was on this plan, but with presbytery only 115 ft. from the crossing. 64 GOTHIC ART and its circling confinement, but in the extended perspectives of pillared halls, which the presbytery, the transepts, and the nave make from the crossing. At St. Albans there were eighteen bays, from end to end of the church,1 and so it is, too, at Bury, Winchester, Ely, and Norwich. Flat-ceiled in wood, as we may still see them at Ely and Peterborough, their emphasized continuity,2 that seems to aim at losing itself in in finity, is in evident contrast with the distinct divisioning of wide square halls, which were their contemporaries in Central France and along the Rhine — ceiled by six or seven mysterious domings,3 and terminated in the short circumscribing apse. The nearest cognates of our Norman chevets, extended transepts and many pillared naves, in similar deriva tion, from the monastic arrangements of the tenth century, can be found in St. Sernin, Toulouse, and its sister church of Santiago de Compostella, and particularly in the great Cluny church, that was begun late in the eleventh century. But though these stretch to seventeen or 1 Counting the crossing arch. This extra ordinary length of nave is peculiar to the east and south. In the West (see plan of Glou cester on preceding page) there is a different type of Benedictine plan. The following particulars of Norman building in England may be studied. The dates given with * are those of the later completion of the naves. Eastern and Southern. Church. Nave. Number of Bays. Length. Width. Nave. Presbytery. Apse. 1081 — 1093 1070 — 1095 1077— 1193* 1081— 1189* 1096 — I I 19 1064 — 1 1 25* II 17 — I 194* 1070 IIOO Winchester Bury St. Albans Ely Norwich Westminster Peterborough Canterbury 3^300 275260255240235 185 8S80 7777 70 75 82 73 14IS131314 12II 9 3 4 4 5 4 3 4 10 5 3? square 5 7?S 1 S I088 1122 IO93—H50*1089 IIOO I084 I I I3 I 103 I 121 III5— 1139 IO79— III5 I 108 I I 15 II76 II98 Northern and Western. Bath Durham GloucesterWorcester Tewkesbury Malmesbury Hereford Southwell St. David's 200 72 9 no data 200 80 9 4 l87 84 9 3 180 80 9 3 160 70 9 2 145 69 9 no data 142 75 8 3 136 63 9 4 127 68 6 4 no data 53 7 3 no data square square square 2 The floor spaces were, of course, broken 3 Like those of Angers and Fontevrault, by the screens, such as are still to be seen or of Angouleme and Clermont. The five in their original position at St. Albans, big bays of the Norman Le Mans may be Westminster, and Norwich. contrasted with the Durham design. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 65 eighteen bays, the oppression of their barrel- vaultings must of necessity have given them internally a very different kind of effect. As the Cluny church was building, the cathedral of Canterbury (see plan, p. 73) was being given, in place of Lanfranc's contracted presbytery, an aisled eastern limb raised on a crypt, carried eleven bays eastward from the crossing, and more than doubling the length of Lanfranc's church. As at Cluny, there was an eastern transept, with two eastern apsed chapels, and between them the big aisled apse. But, instead of the continuous ring, only three chapels opened from the circuit, and two of these are set tangentially.1 The high quire2 was ceiled in wood "decorated with excellent painting,"3 and in design as in ritual arrange ment " this glorious quire of Conrad " displayed the extreme limit of the most continental type of English Benedictine art. The other type of Norman east ends — that of the parallel apses — besides its English lengthening, soon took another distinctive English feature. Within ten years of the Conquest, Gundulph built the quire at Rochester4 with square-ended halls, and at Ely not only the aisles were squared,5 but the central hall, at first set out with circular ending, was square-built. However, for some sixty years the apsed types of West minster and Canterbury prevailed in Benedictine building. Reading was founded by Henry I., in 11 21, on a plan that is exactly that of the Royal Westminster of St. Edward's building. But in another sixty years was swept away once and for all from English usage the apse 6 of con tinental tradition. The next great abbey built under royal patronage — Henry the Second's at Glastonbury (fig. 32, iv.) — showed Benedictine conservatism whelmed in the stream of the English Gothic movement ; the church plan, and the expression of its detail, had alike discarded Romanesque dictation. The power of this revolution came in the hands of the reformed societies, which by the middle of the twelfth century made head against Benedictine, and especially Cluniac7 authority. The Cistercian reform ation founded in England over one hundred houses after 1127 or 1128, that were especially prominent in Yorkshire, and the wilds of Wales. 1 This peculiarity of the English "chevet" 6 Sporadic re-appearances were in the appeared also at Norwich and Gloucester, as unusual Cistercian plans of Croxden, Staf- at Lewes (fig. 26); also, perhaps, at Tewkes- fordshire, founded n 88, and of Beaulieu- bury and St. Werburgh's, Chester. Hampshire, founded 1221, whose French 2 A full description is given in G. G. Scott's chevet would seem to have come direct "History of English Church Architecture," from Pontigny; on all fours with these is pp. 134-137. the appearance at Obazin Abbey, in central 3 Gervase. See Willis, " History of Can- France, of a plan which is of the English terbury Cathedral," p. 60. Cistercian type of Bindon, Furness, etc. 1 See plan on p. 74, which gives in out- 7 Which had itself been a reformation of an line the foundations as seen in the crypt. earlier date (note 3, p. 129) : after 1150 only 6 As at Winchester ; see plan, p. 73. one Cluniac house was founded in England, K 66 GOTHIC ART 29. CISTERCIAN REFORMED PLAN. Their intention of rejecting the conservative methods of Romanesque church-building was evident from the first. Their churches, which began to be built on a large scale after 1140, show a rejection of central and western towers, and the adoption of a set pattern of east ending, founded on the " parallel apses." Taking the triple ending of St. Stephen's, Caen, or the seven apses of St. Albans, they flushed off square the flanking chapels, leaving the presbytery to project boldly with a square-planned gable (fig. 29). In similar protest against Benedictine rigime were the foundations of regular and secular canons, which, once largely Bindon. developed in Saxon England, grew again popular at the begin ning of the twelfth century. But these first churches 1 built for canons were, to judge from the remains left, modelled on the English Benedictine plan,2 as in 1 123, when Henry the First's jongleur Rahere built the east end of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, with a deep, many-bayed presbytery, and an aisled apse, which is still partly left. About the same time, however, Worksop in Staffordshire was built with the presbytery aisles square-ended, and the central hall projecting beyond in a deep apse, much like the first building of St. Stephen's, Caen. The prebends of Southwell (fig. 30) had their projecting chapel square-ended, and at Wimborne, Dorset, where canons were established in the place of Saxon nuns, the church was with a similar projecting presbytery beyond the two-bayed square-ended 1 The largest would seem to have had central lanterns, and twin-towered western facades, like the Conqueror's abbeys of Caen — such were the Augustinian churches at Colchester, Oxford, Cirencester, Llanthony, differences. See p. 103. 30. canons (secular) reformed plan. Southwell. 31. CANONS (REGULAR) REFORMED PLAN. Bradsole. etc. So, too, the Gilbertine Malton, and the secular Southwell, and so, later, Ripon and Beverley were given western towers. 2 Their constructive detail, however, shows THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 67 aisles. The bishops were eager to found churches for both regular and secular canons, and after 1139, when by the bull of Pope Innocent II. , 32. BISHOP'S REFORMED PLAN. III. Wells. IV. Glastonbury. I. Old Sarum foundations. a. Twelfth century building. A. St. Joseph's Chapel. II. St. Cross Hospital. b. Thirteenth ,, „ b. Galilee, c. 1230. a. Early twelfth century. c. Fourteenth „ „ b. Late „ „ c. Fourteenth „ the rule of Augustine was definitely1 enjoined on the regular societies, the houses built for the black canons, and for the stricter offshoot, the white canons of Premontre\ became numerous in England. Thereupon 1 Henry the First's queen is, however, said bury, 11 23, is called an Augustinian. His to have introduced the Augustinians before great church of St. Martin, at Dover, was 1 1 20, and Corbeuil, Archbishop of Canter- built for their canons. 68 GOTHIC ART their churches show a quite distinct character in their east ends — the central hall running on to its full height of square-ended gable a bay beyond the aisles, which similarly again outflank the square chapels of the transept (see fig. 3 1 ). Earlier, however, than this use of either monk or regular canon, would seem to have come the English squared version of the aisled apse in the secular cathedrals of the bishops. The foundations which can be traced in the grass at Old Sarum (fig. 32, i.) show the cathedral therewith a square "front," and, it would appear, an eastern aisle, and square chapels opening therefrom. This is attributed to Bishop Roger,1 and to a date about 1 1 30, and it is to be noted that in the courts of this prelate's great castle at Devizes, two parish churches were built with square- ended, vaulted chancels, which may be as signed to his times, and can still be seen. Near at hand, not fifteen miles from Salisbury, was the nun's church of Romsey, (fig. 33), whose constructive design as well as plan show departures from the current Benedictine Romanesque.2 Here, the idea of a square-ended presbytery, with aisle behind, is reached in work to be dated before 11 25. Queen Maud, the introducer of the Augustinians, had been educated at Romsey, and King Stephen's daughter, Mary, was made abbess there. At Win chester, too, Bishop Henry de Blois, Stephen's brother, gave a deep aisled presbytery to his hospital of St. Cross (fig. 32, ii.),3 with high square front. Though a Cistercian, he had been 33. NUN'S REFORMED PLAN. A. Early twelfth century. b. Early thirteenth century. c. Porch destroyed. d. Parish aisle destroyed. 1 Seequotation from "William of Malmes- bury," p. 43 ; it continues : " which may be seen at other places, but more particularly at Salisbury and Malmesbury, for there he erected extensive edifices at vast cost, and with surpassing beauty — the courses of stones being so correctly laid, that the joint deceives the eye, and leads it to imagine that the whole wall is composed of a single block." — Parker, "Introduction to Gothic Architecture." 2 The group of great Saxon nunneries — Shaftesbury, Wilton, Amesbury and Romsey, — that cluster round Salisbury, survived the Conquest, and retained a certain independ ence of the Benedictine intrusion, which else where so largely supplanted Saxon founda tions. The church of Romsey is alone left. It has a bay construction similar to that of the canons' churches at Jedburgh, St. Frides wide's, and Dunstable. See fig. 61, p. 103. 3 No document quite determines the date of building. De Blois was bishop, 11 29 — 1 1 7 1 : the hospital was put into the hands of the Knights Hospitallers in 1151, the quire having probably then been partly built : Bishop Toclyve, who succeeded De Blois, added to the foundation. The style of the THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 69 Abbot of Glastonbury, and had been building there, close at hand to the cathedral which Bishop Robert of Wells (1 135 — 1 165) was setting out (fig. 32, iii.), the quire of which had a consecration in 1148. At Wells Bishop Reginald (1 165 — 1191) carried on the work we now see, and though it was afterwards transformed, the shape of this early east limb can be recovered from the existing fabric.1 It extended four bays from the crossing, the last being an eastern aisle, from which probably stretched eastwards an oblong chapel. Such an eastward projection, but apsed, had appeared in Bishop Walkelyn's Winchester (fig. 34, ii., p. 73), a similar Lady chapel had been thrown out after its Norman building from the apse of the secular cathedral at Lichfield; and so too about 1170 at Chichester.2 But away in the west of England this type of east ending had an earlier beginning : there the secular cathedrals of Hereford and Llandaff in their first plannings after the Norman Conquest reject the Benedictine apsidal types. Bishop Robert de Losing (1079 — 1095) at Hereford, is said by William of Malmesbury to have taken as his model Charlemagne's church at Aix-la-Chapelle.3 That church was circular, with a square niche,4 or relic chamber, which jutted from its eastern side. The Hereford church, however, was given a square end — the particular which was copied would therefore seem to have lain in this projecting chamber, of which there still remains the richly arched entrance. In 11 20, Bishop Urban at Llandaff adopted the same plan ning, which in time was handed on to St. David's,5 and before that had crossed the sea with Henry II.'s expedition to Dublin, being carried out in his Christ Church Cathedral which he built for Arroasian canons, where the aisles are carried behind as a processional path from which run back three square-ended chapels. One sees, indeed, in east front and lower part of transepts would 3 " Aquensem basilicam pro modo imi- seemc. 1130; the arcades and upper part of tatus suo." — W. Malm, de Gest. Pont. ap. quire, c. 1150; the nave and west end is Saville, p. 286. See plan, p. 74. later. See plan on last page. 4 Gundulph's Rochester had a square 1 The history of Wells Cathedral has chamber behind the altar. Issoire, in been confused by theories based on the six- Auvergne, had such a niche, c. 1100, and an teenth century tradition, which gave the re- octagonal chapel is at Treves. Of the last building of the whole church, as well as the half of the twelfth century are the circular erection of the west front, to Bishop Jocelyn, projections of Langres, Sens, and Canterbury. 1225 — 1239. Freeman and others have ' Built by Bishop de Leia (11 76 — 1198), ventured strange readings of the nave and who had been the Cluniac prior of Wen- transept architecture, in order to make it lock. The quire was rebuilt after fall of out of this late date. But, by research in tower in 1220, but probably on the same the chapter registers, Canon Church shows foundations. The presbyteries of Chichester, that the present fabric can well have been and St. Patrick's, Dublin, also took this form, building 11 50 — 1191, which is just what c. 1200, and in very similar fashion came its style would seem to indicate. about the enlargement of St. Werburgh's, 2 See plan, p. 74. Chester. 70 GOTHIC ART its design1 a mixture of the types of Old Sarum and Wells, with that of Hereford and Llandaff — just as Henry II. gathered his soldiers, so came his masons from Bristol,2 with the craft of the Welsh border on the one hand, and of Somerset and Wiltshire on the other. It is clear that in both the western and southern dioceses of England, there was in the first half of the twelfth century a bishop-influence that joined hands with the old Saxon traditions of the square-ended sanctuary. In alliance with Cistercian and Augustinian reformation, it rejected Bene dictine conformity, and, as will be seen, adopted new ideas of building design, as well as of plan, that rapidly after 1 1 50 pressed forward into the expression of Gothic art, while in the east Benedictine Romanesque held its ground. When in 1190 the quire of Glastonbury (fig. 31, iv.), was planned under the Cistercian Archbishop Baldwin for the chief western Benedictine house, it was as it were the standard of victory ; for in it the Benedictine apse and the Benedictine Romanesque had alike surrendered to the impulse of Gothic Art. It has been seen how the theory of the foreign importation of Gothic style into England relies on the assertion that the English square ending is due entirely to Cistercian influence — that the reforma tion of St. Bernard introduced it into English custom, which afterwards became enamoured of it. The simplicity of such a sanctuary, as com pared with the pillared intricacy of the Romanesque apse, no doubt recommended it to the Cistercian's denial of the gorgeous ritual of the later Cluniacs. It would be hard, too, to show that the obvious method of oblong building, so universal in domestic habitations, had not many instances in churches on the Continent,3 from which the monks of Citeaux may have drawn the idea. But in connection with the prominent position that Stephen Harding held in the first councils of the order,4 it is significant that he is recorded to have come from the very west country5 where we have traced the thread of national tradition surviving the Norman intrusion, and where the seeds of another art, that was to supplant Benedictine Romanesque, were already sown. The plans in the text give the best summary of evidence which must clearly allow a national character and method to the develop ment of the English quire. Though, as has been said, the fabrics of most of the eleventh and twelfth century presbyteries have perished, 1 See plan of crypt, c. n 60, in G. E. ' It was he that presented to the assem- Street's sumptuous monograph. bled abbots in 11 19 the "carta caritatis" 2 Bristol has a charter of 11 72, in which from the strict adhesion to which the order Dublin is granted to its citizens by Henry II. derived the extraordinary uniformity of its 3 It would appear that the Cluniacs .of ritual arrangements in all countries. the tenth century had built some of their ° He had been a monk of Sherborne in smaller priory churches square-ended. Dorset. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 71 yet sufficient facts1 have by now accumulated to justify classification. The Norman great church plan displayed in England one or other of two types of apsidal ending. Of the first, that of " parallel apses," all the original examples have perished ; its effect may still be noted at Peterborough, though by the latest rebuildings and decorations there much compromised. But the crypt of Rochester gives us the valuable evidence of its being built squared-ended within a few years of the Conquest. Afterwards how the Cistercian squared it, we have the ruins of Buildwas to show. Of the later characteristic "Augustinian ending " Lanercost gives a well-preserved example, such as is to be found in the ruins of most of the churches of the Black and White Canons of the latter half of the twelfth century ; while St. Frideswide, Oxford, and St. Cross, Winchester, show the. variant with the aisles, full extension of which is also associated with the development of collegiate foundations in the largest parish churches, as at New Shoreham. The squaring of the other type (that which at Norwich is still left us), is seen in its germ at Romsey. It would seem clear that it appeared in all the secular cathedrals of the twelfth century (not ex cepting Exeter) of the south and west of England, so may be termed distinctively the "bishops'" ending.2 Its simplest form, however, has been superseded in all of them, and the best example left is now at Dore in Herefordshire, where it was borrowed by the Cistercians.3 Chichester now best shows the development with long eastern chapel, which is found in the plans of all the western cathedrals. Both Dore and Chichester are, however, quite of the end of the twelfth century, and exhibit the later steps in that revolution of ritual which accompanied the expansion of Gothic art in England, and which must now be traced. In the great majority of our larger churches these later steps have swept the earlier away, yet, notwithstanding, in all these continual replacements the distinction of the original two Norman types can be recognized as surviving, and to the end their difference was ac centuated by the strength of English feeling. In the north of England the developed English type of the parallel apse as started in the Cistercian and Augustinian presbyteries was persistent. The great churches there all came to show it in their thirteenth and fourteenth century enlarge ments. Carlisle, York, and practically all the great collegiate and abbey and priory churches of Yorkshire were built with eastern fronts of full 1 New light will, of course, be thrown from 2 Bishop Marshall (1194 — 1206) added time to time. At Lincoln, St. Hugh's east chapels at the east end of Warelwast's building. end is still somewhat doubtful, and nothing 3 The 11 80 plan of Byland is another seems known of that of Remigius. That Cistercian example, and it appears so la- Durham had parallel apses (instead of the belled by Wilars de Honecort, the Picardy ambulatory aisle before supposed) was only Master, whose sketchbook has come down discovered, January, 1893. tous. 72 GOTHIC ART height. Lincoln and Ely turned to the same scheme of design, and Lichfield and Durham show variants of it ; Tynemouth and Hexham but slight modification; and, save at Glasgow, it is universal in the cathedrals and abbeys of Scotland. In the south and west of England, however, it is different ; though the high " east front " appeared in the collegiate foundations of the mid- twelfth century at St. Cross, St. Frideswide and New Shoreham, and had later conspicuous developments not only at Rochester and St Paul's, but in the west at Worcester and Bristol, yet in the largest churches the other type is characterized. Generally in the south the bishops' version of the square chevet distinctly prevailed. The cathedrals of Winchester, Chichester, Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, Hereford, St. David's ; the great conventual churches of St. Albans, Gloucester, and Tewkesbury ; the canons' churches of St. John's, Chester, Wimborne in Dorset, Ottery in Devon ; the Augustinian St. Saviour's, Southwark, and Christchurch, Twyneham, show versions of the east end which came so early in the Nuns' Church, Romsey, in which the full height of the presbytery gable is contoured to the ground by groupings of chapels ranged along eastern aisles, and baying mysteriously back behind the bounds of the sanctuary. The later Gothic centuries were responsible for these several realiza tions of the English ideal : but the spring of the movement, which was to transform nine out of ten of the original Norman quires, may be traced back into the eleventh century. The complete separation of the priesthood from the laity in Church-service had been made an object of ecclesiastical polity by Lanfranc and Anselm. Under the latter at Canterbury the monks of Christchurch had brought their services into Conrad's quire completely away from the traditional position beneath the crossing. The place of the high altar had once been, as it is to-day at St. Peter's, under the eastern arch of the transept : in Saxon England it had been drawn into the apse as a sanctuary, and in Norman times the same underlying influence was at work — in that constant interaction which in advancing art makes of one purpose artistic design and ritual observance — continuously extending the presbytery, and bringing the apse further away from the crossing. Now, too, the choir of the monks came beyond the crossing, and in Conrad's extension (fig. 34, i.) the long chancel of English use was distinctly realized. A new transept had been provided to give the ostia of its presbytery ; and this and every feature of length and inclosure were considerably emphasized in the rebuilding that followed the fire of n 75. So was built, in fact, a church be yond a church : a new basilica was set down in front of the old cross church, and now the stalls of the monks had taken the place of the old sanctuary of the altar ; the old transept had become the porch of the THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 73 34. THE ENGLISH CATHEDRAL QUIRE ENLARGEMENT. II. Winchester Cathedral. I. Canterbury Cathedral. A. Lanfranc's church, 1065 (in outline) b. Conrad's quire, 1093. b and c. The new quire, n 75. c. Trinity chapel, 1 180. a. Walkelyn's church, 1079 (the crypt and original west-ending in outline). b. De Lucy's chapel, 1195. c. Quire, c. 1300. d. William of Wykeham's nave, 1390. e. Lady chapel, c. 1480. narthex ; while to the nave was transferred the function of the atrium or court of the people, walled off by structural screens. Such a distinct separation of the lay from the cleric church marked 74 GOTHIC ART its impression very strongly in shaping our church-plans away from those of the French, in whose cathedrals laic influence tended to open ness of service rather than to its inclosure. And with us, instead of the secular scheme overshadowing the monastic, the monks' quire straight- 35. THE ENGLISH CATHEDRAL QUIRE ENLARGEMENT. I. Rochester. a. Gundulph's Church, 1077, in outline. b. Ernulf s nave, 1 1 1 3. c. Quire, c. 1200-27. D. Lady chapel, c. 1450. II. Chichester. a. Ralph's Church, c. 1100. b. Lady chapel, c. 1 1 60. c. Transept chapel, c. 1160. d. Sigfreid's"retro-choir,"n87 E. Transept chapel, c. 1200. f. Nave chapels, c. 1220. g. Nave chapels, c. 1250. H. Lady chapel, c. 1300. III. Hereford. a. Lozinga's church, 1079. b. North transept and porch, c. 1260. c. Lady chapel, c. 1230. D. Chapels, 1186. e. East transept, c. 1280. f. Fifteenth century porch. way passed to the canons. Archbishop Roger of York seems to have been the first1 to adopt this arrangement for his secular cathedral. His rebuilding, c. 11 60, was a long aisled eastern arm, square-ended, and with a distinct eastern transept. In 1 190 St. Hugh at Lincoln followed with an eastern transept having double chapels, and his sanctuary 1 Bishop Pudsey of Durham may have intended it. See p. 37. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 75 shaped as a polygonal aisled apse, to which was added, much as at Canterbury, an eastward polygonal chamber.1 Early in the thirteenth century, there were built for the monks at Worcester and Rochester (fig. 35, i.), and so too for the canons at Beverley, eastern quires with high eastern transepts a and lofty square gable ends. These were in the type of northern and eastern enlargement, whose simplicity was in contrast with the picturesqueness of the southern fashion, in which the multiplication of saint worship found especial expression, and particularly that cult of Our Lady, which had become the badge of the English churchman in the twelfth century ; so that the projection of long Lady chapels followed the original Norman building at Winchester, Lichfield, and Chichester. Such an addition had, in a sense, a motive in opposition to monasticism, for Our Lady's was the people's altar,3 and it is to be seen how in England it took the long square-ended form of the parish church chancel. To give admission to chapels behind the main altar an ambulatory was needed : the French had met the need by double-aisling their apses with a radiating ring of chapels : the English, in sympathy with their square Lady chapels, or induced in the same direction by the fashion of their Norman squared apse, set out aisles square on to the east end, with square chapels beyond, just, indeed, as the Normans had already done in the transepts. In this way in the last years of the twelfth century both at Chichester (fig. 35, ii.) and Winchester (fig. 34, ii.), the east ends were transformed. But some years before this in the west of England Wells had been so built ; and on the same lines Lichfield and Hereford squared away their Norman apses. In close connection with cathedral4 influence, the new reformed societies departed from their simple dispositions. Close upon 1177 was built for the Cistercians the now ruined Byland Abbey (fig. 36, 1 Apparently something like that at aisle of nave ; at Rochester in the south tran- Treves. See plan, p. 205. sept; at Peterborough, Ely, and Tewkesbury, 2 After Salisbury the eastern transept goes out of the north transept ; at Durham and out of the plans of our cathedrals, but the Glastonbury, at the west end of nave. But movement of bringing the choir into the in the twelfth century the bishops' secular eastern limb continued. Winchester, St, churches — Lichfield, Chichester, Wells, Albans, Westminster, Norwich, and Glou- Hereford, York, all had been given eastern cester now alone remain with the arrange- projecting Lady chapels. The monastic ment of the choir under the crossing. cathedrals followed in the thirteenth cen- 3 So in churches dedicated to the Virgin, tury, at Worcester, Norwich, and then the as the collegiate Southwell, as well as in the abbeys, as Sherborne and St. Albans, but monastic Tewkesbury, an additional or pop- Gloucester and Tewkesbury not till the ular altar of Our Lady was provided away fifteenth. from the high altar. Clearly its placing at 4 Archbishop Rogers' York and Ripon the east end at the back of the sanctuary may have had the low eastern aisle ; but was resisted by the great monasteries, which in both, if this were so, the high gable, had shrines such as Durham. Thus the characteristic of the North, came finally to Lady chapel at Canterbury was in the north replace it. 76 GOTHIC ART ii.) in Yorkshire, on a plan distinctly cathedral, with aisled transepts and aisled quire ; and Dore Abbey (fig. ^6, iii.), near Hereford, begun c. 1 1 70, seems immediately to have departed from the original Cistercian rule, and built its presbytery with aisles, and behind them the beautiful " procession path " and " chapels" which remain. From the beginning of the thirteenth century aisled eastern limbs were developed in Cistercian 36. CISTERCIAN QUIRE ENLARGEMENT. III. Dore. a. Church, c. 11 60. b. Quire, c. 1180. c. Chapels, c. 11 90. IV. Croxden, c. 1190. I. Fountains. II. Byland. a. Church, 1147, the east After 1177. end in outline. b. Quire, 1205. c. Chapels, 1240. d. Tower, 1540. churches, though rejecting the square chevet they adopted the abrupt gabled " front," in south and west as well as in the north.1 By the end of the century the Benedictine abbeys, too, had gone the same way. Glas tonbury we may suspect to have had traditions of Saxon monasticism dating from Dunstan, and, as we have seen, Abbot de Blois may have already built there without apses ; but at any rate when, after the fire 1 Fountains (fig. 36, i.), Rivaulx, Netley, Tintern ; but, as already mentioned, Crox den (fig. 36, iv.) and Beaulieu were given French chevets. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 77 in 1 183, Henry II. at the Cistercian Archbishop Baldwin's instigation1 provided for rebuilding its big abbey church, this was designed dis tinctly on the plan of a secular cathedral like its neighbour Wells, rather than on that of such Benedictine churches as at Peterborough and Read ing had then scarcely been finished. Yet in the next century we find both these latter, as well as Norwich and Westminster, constrained to I. Southwell. a. Early twelfth century church, the east end in outline. b. Quire, c. 1230. 37. CANONS AND NORTHERN QUIRE ENLARGEMENT. II. St. Andrew's. III. Tynemouth. b. Twelfth century church, a. Twelfth century church. a. Later nave. b. Late twelfth century quire. build long, square-ended Lady chapels, just as Rochester, too, was given its existing extended quire. In the north at the end of the twelfth century the Augustinian Hexham built itself transepts and eastern limbs of cathedral planning, but narrow and long, with projecting eastern Lady chapel.2 This was the enlarged type of canons' church which, going northwards to the Scotch 1 See charter quoted by. Willis, " History of Glastonbury Abbey." 2 Destroyed in 1 840. 78 GOTHIC ART 38. THE ENGLISH CATHEDRAL PLAN. Old St. Paul's. From Longman's " History of the Three Cathedrals of St. Paul's in London." Augustinians at St. Andrews (fig. 37, ii.) in 11 70, was adopted, too, by the thirteenth century seculars at Elgin. And despite their St. Albans THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 79 % I V ' 5 connection, the Benedictines at Tynemouth (fig. t,7, iii-) used this type, that had a motif 'of design, as distinct in its square open planning as in the lightness of its Gothic grace, from the great Romanesque of Carileph's quire, which was still satisfying the Bene dictines of Durham. Whitby, also Bene dictine, quite early in the thirteenth century built an aisled quire and transepts square- ended with gabled facades. No less in the west was it a Gothic triumph, when the Cluniac Wenlock and the Benedictine Cathedral of Worcester raised their high gabled projecting eastern " fronts," just as were building for the canons of South well (fig. 37, i.) and Beverley.1 So in the creation of Gothic the Nor man apses" were sweptT away. In this mafcter:thirT)ahterbufy yoi Sens was a survival rather than a pattern for English use. By the end of the^twelfth century -the- genius Lof the small Keltic sanctuary had imposed itself on the quires of our great Norman churches still more decisively than it had on the basilican introduction of St. Au gustine. The effect was that of a national architecture fixing for four centuries our type of English church, as distinctly as did the French Gothic that of their church. Putting the two side by side, their difference is very striking ; one can point to no stronger proof of the potency of advancing art than these simultaneous expressions of national character, so various, so indicative, so rapid. Here were two peoples brought intimately together, starting from the same materials of Christian tradition, and building for the same purposes — yet in the short space of one hundred years the Norman in England and the Frank in his He had each forged a creation of his own, expressive of his genius, and in lasting rejection of the ideas ¦¦'-] X j X | X .¦¦"'./. i,X';Xl- uXi ¦"¦ i /'*• i -•' '-- 1 a ; X i.* J "XI X/..: "•-. .- :x !AjXj .« . If ' r ' . • ' w I > I * *.-*:;*.; — -#:$-* A* ,\ } A % ' j X ! X, i. |>0 >' I .". --. .- ¦ V. I XT ¦• * 4MF 39- THE FRENCH CATHEDRAL PLAN, Notre Dame, Paris. 1 The long chancels of this Augustinian type are very characteristic of the Scotch cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth cen turies : see Iona, Dunblane, and Dunkeld, as well as Elgin and St. Andrews. At St. Andrews the quire is 130 ft. long from the crossing, with aisles for six bays. At Elgin the quire was no ft. quite inclosed for its whole length. Tynemouth must have been very fine, its central hall 120 ft. long and over 32 ft. wide, with a vault 80 ft. high. 2 The plans, figs. 38, 39, are to the same scale as are all the plans in this chapter — 100 feet to the inch. 8o GOTHIC ART of the other. London and Paris are hardly 200 miles apart, yet what a distance separates the Notre Dame from the St. Paul's of the thirteenth century. In the first plan is centralization, in the other 1 40. THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH CHURCH. Contrast of section, scale 50 feet to the inch. I. Le Mans quire. II. Lincoln nave. elongation : the Frenchjna^s^passion for unity and logical precision lies in the even axial development of the encircling chapels : the deliberate sanity of the Englishman is to be read in the square-ended simplicity of his gables. THE ENGLISH CHURCH-PLAN 81 41. THE ENGLISH CATHEDRAL, LICHFIELD Inside and out the ideals of design can be contrasted. Inside Notre Dame is a com peted —hall, -where —height, .breadth, and length, all seen together, are the elements- of one effect,., to the - distinct ness of which everything, is sacrificed. In the English cathedral there is the mystery of a series of chambers never completely seen to gether, broken by screens and lengthening themselves to further recesses. Neces sary to the French conception was the over-vaulted vast- ness of its unity, the single purpose of its effort: but to the English the expression of its many- dated buildings came with no loss of style — for the English ideal lived on in the humour and contrast of competing emotions. 42- M THE FRENCH CATHEDRAL, AMIENS. 82 GOTHIC ART To outside view the French cathedral has the air of a revolution — the erupted mass of a gigantic effort: but the English takes the look more of a constitutional development, a chain of precedents — not a volcano, but a water-worn down shaped through long years by air and water. So great is the French mass of buttressed and contoured outline, that its western towers scarcely break its profiles ; but in the English church the suggestion is that of a long ship, so sheer and clear above the hull .stancT the mast-like steeples. 'And the designing of their positions implies an equal contrast : the French church does not belie its origin as the centre of the city, of which it was the symbol and citadel, and whose houses nestled to its walls ; the English cathedral or great abbey stands as a town of itself, with wide-stretching appurtenances of lodgings and hostels, of mill and grange, of farmery and outbuildings, and its own ring of green meadow that drove the town beyond its precincts.1 1 See also for characteristic examples of the English Cathedral, Chichester, p. 228, and Salisbury, p. 211. jra, m imim 43. THE FRENCH CATHEDRAL. CHARTRES. CHAPTER III The Style of the Transition in England To each nation along with its separate ideal of church-planning came, too, its building-language : and as distinctly apart as were their several conceptions of the fabric, so diverged equally the Gothic speech of the French and the English artist. Like two tongues born of a common mother, with heritage of similar expressions and often identical words, which yet year by year develop different intonations and new usages ; whose borrowings advance at once to fresh shades of signification ; — so the material of Gothic design, derived from one Romanesque tradition, went forward in each country with a purpose of its own. An extraordinary rapidity was characteristic of this fabrication in both countries : from St. Stephen's, Nevers, to Notre Dame, Paris, is but sixty years ; and in England similar juxtapositions of examples might exhibit the development as still speedier. From the last bays of Ely nave to Ely "galilee " was perhaps scarcely twenty years. At Peter borough the quire had been consecrated in 1 143, and the nave was still building in pure Romanesque, when St. Hugh began his Lincoln in 1 190. At Durham the "galilee" was hardly finished in 11 75 — yet the "nine altars" were set out in 1220. But this, it must be admitted, is false reckoning in view of the conservatism of Benedictine building. And moreover the chances of preservation have been kind to the great eastern abbeys of the Black monks ; while the Augustinian and Cister cian buildings of the twelfth century have been mainly wiped out, and the early quires of the bishops have been largely superseded. It is pertinent, however, to ask those who, on the evidence of Ely, Peterborough, and Durham, assert that William of Sens brought Gothic art into England in 11 75, how it came that but five years after him William the Englishman began building in the transepts in an English style so assured that the masons of Salisbury had hardly advanced it forty years later. From an examination of Canterbury alone, it must be clear that this English Gothic had been in the stocks some time before 1 1 80. But the works of this apprenticeship, as already insisted, stand not in Benedictine building, but in the ruined abbeys and priory churches of the new foundations, in the fragments of the twelfth century quires of the secular cathedrals, and here and there in our 84 GOTHIC ART parish churches : indeed, in the parochial naves of the smaller Bene dictine foundations, rather than in the great Benedictine cathedrals themselves. From such documents, half effaced as they are, the pedigrees of English Gothic can still be recovered. The first entries of its style can be brought before the reader, under three headings : first, as to the form of the open ings ; secondly, as to the sec tions of structure ; thirdly, as to the motives of de coration. In the first the pointed arch was the char acteristic product of Gothic expression ; in the second constructive lightness and elegance ; in the third it came by what may be called a naturalistic awakening. Some growth in all three directions had taken place before 1 1 50, but no example has been left that shows the whole together. We have in the Malmes- bury nave, attributed to c. 1 1 30, the pointed arch in the main arcades and con siderable constructive ad vances in aisle vaulting, but scarcely any modification of 44. bredon chancel arch, c. n6o. Romanesque robustness of pier and moulding. At Dorchester, Oxfordshire, and at Lincoln there are capitals of c. 1140 which are striving after natural expression, but their setting is pure Romanesque. Again, in the Worcester chapter house are to be seen astonishing lightness and constructive grace, but the capitals there are simple cushions and the archings round. Since the pointed arch has been taken as the clear sign-manual of Gothic art, its origin has been thoroughly discussed. A ninth century use in the east1 and an eleventh century introduction into the south of France seem established, indicating a course of importation along the line by which came other seeds of Gothic art. In England as plainly 1 The mosque of Omar at Jerusalem is so dated. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 85 as abroad is its adoption at first solely for structural expedients — proof that it was so a natural development, not an importation of style — as in the transept arches of a crossing at St. John's, Devizes, Kelso Abbey, or St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield ; in the last archway of a nave as at Rye ; or for a chancel arch as at Walsoken, near Wisbech, or at Bredon, Worcestershire (fig. 44). Mixed causes turned this constructional accid ent into a necessary feature of aesthetic expression. The convenience for vaulting purposes; the occurrence of the form in the intersecting circles of arcades ; the eye of the crusader, who had grown accustomed to the shape in the east, may each in its turn have sug gested, but it was the sweep of advancing art that, seizing on the pointed arch as its plaything, compelled its use for the efficient expression of the Gothic ideal. Generally it appears in main arcades about 1 1 50 — somewhat tentatively at Wimborne, where the labels, as at Malmesbury, have carved heads at their meetings, as if the point seemed still disagreeable. At Canterbury that in 1 1 75 the main arches of William of Sens'1 design should be round is an in dication how he, instead of leading the way, fell back on Romanesque remini scence, just as at Ely, Peterborough, and Durham they were doing. Up to 1 160,2 indeed, in the midlands, the Oxford and 45- lanercost quire, c. .169. Dunstable Augustinians were rejecting the pointed arch. But south wards the Hospitallers of St. Cross were using it ; while in the north and the west, the Cistercians before 1 1 50 at Fountains, in Yorkshire, at Buildwas, in Salop, had developed its expression, so that afterwards its position was secured. The early vigour of the northern use, with bold mouldings and squat plain capitals, as at Kirkstall, Roche, Furness, and then at Byland, passed to the Augustinian churches of Lanercost (fig. 45) and Hexham, 1 Bloxam has pointed out that, though Gervase is very minute in his observation of the alterations made by William of Sens, he makes no mention of the pointed arch. The retention of the round arch at St. David's in 1182 may indicate Cluniac influ ences, for Bishop de Leia had been Prior of Wenlock. In London the pointed arch appears in the Augustinian crossing of St. Bartho lomew's, perhaps about 1150, and is com pletely used in the Templars' Church of 1 1 80. The details of both these churches are back ward in their Gothic, London in this cen tury having foreign sympathies outside the current of national feeling. 86 GOTHIC ART and at Ripon (at hand to the Cistercian workshops of Gothic) became a distinct northern evolution of style in the third quarter of the twelfth century. In the next decade Pudsey's Hall, at Auckland, and the Tynemouth Lady chapel were to be but a step from the finished Early English of the north, whose elegant art appears in the first years of the thirteenth century at Fountains, Whitby, and the famous quire of Rivaulx, and, over the border, for a cen tury became the property of Scotch architecture. In the west country the 46. BUILD WAS NAVE, C 1 1 40. delicacy and grace attached to the massive simplicity of the archings of Buildwas (fig. 46) are an earnest of the Cistercian style as it showed itself at Strata Florida, Dore (fig. 47), and Cwm-her. But the flavour of the same art was in the conspicuous ex ample of the western bays of Worcester of c. 1 160,1 and in the plain arcading of the Augustinian Llanthony2 (fig. 48), which was but little after. Its style passed on to Llandaff and Hereford, and, following Henry II.'s conquest of I reland, became the heritage of the I rish Gothic. The sculpturesque verve of its treatment of roll and splay, carried 47- dore transept chapel, c. 1170. unbroken from floor round archway and window head, the simplicity of its detail, and, especially in the Welsh and Irish examples, a peculiar fire 1 See note, p. 91 as to date, and figs. pp. 90-99 for illustration. 2 Deserted 1175. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 87 and exquisiteness of ornament, mark a distinct school of early Gothic design, which has not had the attention it deserves. Closely allied to, and mixed with, this development, but showing a coarser fibre and a great employment of the chevron ornament, is the south-western use of the pointed arch at Wells and Glastonbury. The first was perhaps some time before 1 1 70 : 1 the latter came after the fire of 1 185, and has acquired, as if from the Augustinian style,2 an aspiring sim plicity of wall mechanism which, in comparison, makes the Wells arcade seem stunted and thick. If the bay-scheme (p. 103) of the Glastonbury transept be put by the side of that of Castle Acre (p. 99) or St. Frides wide's (p. 103), not to speak of Ely and Peterborough, one sees the stride that Gothic expression took in the thirty years from 1 1 50 to 11 80. We may set Glastonbury, too, beside Canterbury (p. 101) to show how the west of England, grasping for itself the Gothic ideal, had given a living structure to the wall differ ently from the French scheme, yet with no less vitality of expression. And this, too, in an abbey building for Benedictines, and with the con servative traditions of Romanesque style which, as at Canterbury, were at first imposed on their rebuildings. But though St. Joseph's (or St. Mary's, as the narthex chapel of Glastonbury should be called) was studiously round arched, it still had to be vaulted with the point. In 48. llanthony nave, c. 1170. vaulting, the impetus of the Gothic ideal towards lightness could not be denied even by Benedictine prescription. The pointed form here was an embodiment of Gothic spirit as much as of the necessities of construction. Once that the masoned ceiling had discarded the Roman manner, and lost the form of a tilt or canopy " decorated with sumptuous painting" — once that the constructive idea rather than the decorative had been conceived, and the rib had replaced the arris — then straightway the oppression of the rounded form was distasteful. Solemn and monumental as may appear to us the aisles of Durham or Peterborough, to the eye of the twelfth century artist their vaulting seemed clumsily blunt, and it was by pointing the "severies" that the burden of their oppression was lifted. The geometrical and mechanical development of the Gothic vault 1 See note 1, p. 69, and fig. 64, p. 104. 2 See' figs. p. 103. 3 See note, p. 94. 88 GOTHIC ART has been exhaustively treated by acknowledged authorities.1 Far too much, however, would seem to have been made of the geometrical conveniences of the pointed form, in providing a covering for oblong spaces. On this head, in England at least, there had been no difficulty in using the round arch. Far from squaring their bays 2 in order that the circle of their ribs might be geometrically correct, English twelfth century builders seem to have striven for the oblong. I n dispensing with centring as far as he possibly could, lay the science of the mediaeval mason ; geometrical regularity of curvature he would gladly sacrifice. He liked, too, in England, to get the crown of his vault level, for so it would not get in the way of the beams of his wooden roof above. The fashion of our English vault shaped itself on such practical propensities : here as elsewhere the artistic expression of Gothic lay in the tissue of a very commonplace experiment. The great Norman church-naves had, with the exception of Durham, been designed, to be ceiled with wood, so we must turn to the chapter houses of the great abbeys to show the widest vaulted spans of the first half of the twelfth century. At Durham and Reading were groined vaults over 35 ft. wide : 3 that at Gloucester, of about the same width, remains, and is a pointed barrel vault on ' ' transverse " ribs. At the Cistercian Abbey Ford in Dorsetshire is a fine chapter house of c. 1 145 in two compartments — rib- vaulted with " diagonals," butwith level crown, and the " transverse " and end-wall ribs bluntly pointed,4 and springing from piers which are recessed flush with wall, so that the bays are slightly oblong : 22 by 20 ft. In the Bristol chapter of the canons regular, which is similarly groined, the arches and vaults are definitely pointed, and the oblongs 27 by 21 ft. Then at Witham the Carthusian chapel of St. Hugh, designed like a chapter house — to be dated before 11 75 — has a finely-pointed groined vault in bays slightly oblong, and this is carried into the apse, which is ceiled as if square-ended ; the plan,5 doubtless, 1 Willis, Viollet le Due, and see also the vault a space of more than the fifteen feet clear rhume in Sir G. G. Scott's lectures. or so of aisle width. 2 In Normandy, too, the quadrangular 4 See also St. Peter's, Oxford. The chan- bays of the quire of Boscherville are 28 ft. by eels at Devizes already mentioned are very 13 ft. The aisles of the great Norman similar, but the oblong is more pronounced churches very rarely show square com- at St. John's, 22 ft. 6 in. by 18 ft., and at partments; at Durham and St. Albans St. James's, 20 ft. by 13 ft The blunt point they are conspicuously long for their width, and chevron of the Ford Cistercians may be At Ely and Peterborough, however, the compared with the arches of Henry of Blois' vault bays are nearly square, and the treasury in the Winchester transept. clumsiness of the round arched vault is ° See a Cluniac " obedience " of the same conspicuous. date, in Viollet le Due, "Dictionnaire, etc.," 3 Dated before 1 1 50. These chapter house vol. i., p. 2 76. The advance of English style vaults having been but little regarded, it is on the Burgundian may be measured by commonly asserted (as Bloxam i., p. 116) comparison of its features with those of the that our English twelfth century could not Witham Chapel. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 89 being St. Hugh's, but the mason-craft that of West England. On the other side of Somerset in the ruins of the Cistercian Cleeve are the entrance bays of the "chapter" with a chamfered ribbed vaulting of similar style and somewhat later date, in narrow oblong bays. The immediate tendency of the English Gothic vault to develop these narrow oblongs and a consequent perspective of level ribbings is best exhibited in the mid twelfth century vaults of the Augustinians at Bristol ; where in the vestibule of their chapter house, as also in the adjoining gateway, the side " severies " are sharply pointed, and the arrangement clearly one of aesthetic expression. The ribs are richly 49. GLOUCESTER, WEST GATE, C I180. moulded and ornamented, and their style is that which passes on to the West Gate groining at Gloucester (fig. 49) : and then, discarding the chevron, and rising in full Gothic loftiness, come the vaultings of the Wells north porch, and those of St. Joseph's Chapel at Glastonbury. So here in the south-west of England we have a pedigree of the English methods of vaulting, arising independently of the exigences of nave and aisle, and the bay spacings which they engendered. They borrowed no ancestry from the He de France, however much they may have cried cousin with similar experiments in the fiefs of Anjou and Normandy, that equally with England formed the dominion of Henry II. The suppression of the great arcs-doubleaux?- and the rejection of 1 The arching ribs are those called ing ribs being called " diagonals " or arcs " transverse " or arcs-doubleaux, the groin- ogives. See fig. 54, on p. 94. N 90 GOTHIC ART the domed divisioning of the bays, mark the point of departure of the 50. WORCESTER CATHEDRAL. WEST BAY OF SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE. C. Il6o. English idea of level continuity from the continental types of Normandy and Anjou. In the earliest pointed aisle-vaulting of the West of THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 91 England, both dome and heavy transverse arch are markedly found, as in the Malmesbury aisles, which may be dated before 11 30, and would so seem one of the earliest pointed rib-vaults in Europe. Some fifteen years later came probably those of the quire of St. Cross, where the same characteristics are apparent in the aisles as in the high vault. But the adoption close upon 11 60 of a completely English Gothic scheme of vaulting for nave and aisles is exhibited at Worcester (fig. 50). In this cathedral, monastic though it was, something different from ordinary Benedictine1 rigime of building was early at work, for the chapter house is designed circular, 60 ft. across, and vaulted from a slender central pillar. After the middle of the twelfth century 2 the west bays of the nave were built, and the art, which had learned itself in the achievement of the chapter house, passed quickly to the accomplishment of a pointed vault with transverse and diagonal ribs of similar sections, and with wall-ribs firmly brought to the ground. A greater lightness and ease were in the next hundred years, no doubt, imported into this con ception ; but in the clear expression of pointed vault architecture, the perfecting of which has seemed to some the whole end and meaning of Gothic, no subsequent design went further. The bay of south aisle is here figured : the high vault was either not achieved or taken down to build one of some hundred years later. Its wall-rib is still visible (see %• 59)> and shows that there were intended, if not built, side " severies " as acutely pointed as what we see at present. At the Cistercian Dore Abbey, to the building of whose chapter house and quire the skill and method of the Worcester mason seems to have passed,3 the high vault4 is also gone, but the aisles, and 1 The Cistercian Baldwin was Bishop transept and nave work as built after this of Worcester before his translation to fall, on the ground that Ely and Canterbury Canterbury. The circular form of the show the earliest style in England, while " chapter " with twelve bays is that of the this Gothic of Worcester is not behind two Cistercian abbeys, Margam and Dore, theirs of 1175. But now, since Wells, founded c. 1 147 in the neighbouring borders Llanthony, and Christchurch, Dublin (see of Wales. figs. 48 and 74), have been also brought to 2 The building is assigned to John de this date, and to their Gothic style Wor- Pageham, 1151-1158, but on no particular cester's is the prelude, we may accept the evidence. The certain dates are 11 13 for natural sense of " nova,'' and since the west a great conflagration, and 11 75 for the fall bays were evidently earlier than this new of the new tower ("nova turris corruit "). work, take their date as c. 1160. Now in the transepts, overlying the Roman- 3 There are vaults at Hereford of the esque of St. Wulstan's Church, is to be seen same style in the eastern chapels ; also at work that might be part of a central tower Chester and Llandaff. lately built in 1175. But Willis, in his i Dore after the Dissolution remained a " Worcester Cathedral," neglecting the epi- ruin for eighty years, when the quire was thet " nova," calls the above fall that of the again roofed in in wood. The remains Norman central tower. Then he takes the show the original completion of a high vault 92 GOTHIC ART especially the double-aisled eastern chapel, show the high quality of this early western Gothic, which, bequeathing its methods to Wells and Glastonbury, had afterwards a continuing influence on our Early English style. It is in this western manner that the 1179 vaults of William the Englishman's crypt are built, when he had got beyond the set design of his predecessor. His vault ribs have identical sections with those of Strata Florida and Dore, and the lightening of his transverse arches is conspicuous beside the heavily ornamented arcs-doubleaux of his predecessor that seem to make the quire of Canterbury (see the plan of vault, p. 94) a reminiscence of St. Cross, rather than the pioneer of a new style. In the north of England, too, side by side with the many vaulted chapter houses of the Cistercians, grew up a system of vaulting with ribs of uniform section and level ridges. If the north aisle of the Augustinian quire at Lanercost may be dated before the consecra tion of 1169, it is a beautiful example of the early development of the English vaulting system ; but, at any rate, the aisles of Archbishop Rogers' collegiate quire at Ripon, of probably earlier date, display an advanced English method.1 A high vault would seem also at first (see fig. 61, p. 101) intended by the design of the triforium, but, as at York afterwards, the clerestory was finally arcaded for a wooden ceiling. It is particularly to be noted that these English proposals for high vaults did not design them sexpartite, as at Canterbury (fig. 51) where they came in the fashion of the earlier vaults of Sens, as borrowing from the Caen Abbeys, or as Paris, Laon, and Noyon had them till the end of the twelfth century and longer. Nor, on the other hand, were they devised to be of the quadripartite square type, the high-domed descendant of the Byzantine cupola, which was prevalent in Henry II.'s continental dominions of Anjou and Poitou. These English vaults 51. CANTERBURY, QUIRE VAULT, 1 1 78. (width 28 ft.) in the style of that of the aisles. The first vaultings here were prob ably those of the transept chapels, and of the chapter house. 1 In the north transept chapel there are even found "Hemes" or ridge ribs, an English feature that became conspicuous later, as at Lincoln. Viollet le Due, " Dic tionnaire de l'architecture," vol. iv., p. 114, shows an example of the same early date at Mouliherne in Anjou, and see p. 3 of same volume : " A la fin du xiie siecle l'Aquitaine 6tait anglo-normande ainsi que le Maine et l'Anjou." THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 93 proposed to follow the methods of their own chapter house vaulting, in bays widely oblong and level-crowned, such as, indeed, fifty years later were adopted in the great naves of the French. But fifty years before the sexpartite vault of Canterbury, Durham (fig. 52) had achieved one of the earliest high vaults of northern Europe, with the oblong bay conspicuously adopted. The exact dates and designings of the Durham vaults have been variously estimated, but it seems clear that Carileph in 1090 definitely intended1 for his quire a groining in long double-bayed compartments, separated by massive transverse arches, just as in the north transept, where what we now see was put possibly in the be ginning of the twelfth century. There the end compartment is square,2 with a quadripartite rib- vault, but nearest the crossing is a different design, a double bay vaulted in two widely oblong 3 compartments with no transverse rib. The chapter house is considered to have been vaulted about 11 35; its bays were 35 ft. wide by 28 ft — and it would seem that imme diately thereon the great nave of the church, which had origin ally been designed to have great transverse arches, and ceiled between with wood, was given double quadripartite groinings similar to those of the north transept. The ribs here are very massive : their ornament is the chevron and the effect strongly Romanesque ; but the method of this oblong development is remark able as early proof of the native tradition of continuous level sur- facings in our English vault, coming immediately on the adoption of pointed forms, and thereafter the parent of the many beauties which belong to the English style. By the reduction of the transverse arches to the same substance as the diagonals, and the narrowing of the vault bays, were produced those coherent successions of 52. DURHAM, NAVE VAULT, C 1 140. 1 Canon Greenwell — from the evidence of the " Gesta Pontificum " of William of Malmesbury, which mentions centring re maining at the shrining of St. Cuthbert — contends that this vault was actually com pleted. However, the centring may have been for the transverse arches only. 2 So the crossing at Lindisfarne, where one of the great diagonal ribs remains. At Newcastle is a similar small square vault almost pointed. 3 33 ft. by 15 ft. The diagrams of the vaults of Canterbury and Durham are given on next page. 94 GOTHIC ART 53. CHICHESTER, PRESBYTERY VAULT, C 1 1 95. sharply pointed " severies," x such as formed the ideal of the great vault of the Tyne mouth presbytery,2 and passed on to the quires of Fountains and Rivaulx. In the south of England at Chichester (fig. 53) the high vaults of c. 1 195 have the same characteristics of level succes sion, but are planned on squarer bays (fig. 54) and exhibit in comparison a greater hollow- ness and emptiness of effect. William of Sens' sexpartite vaults at Canterbury had been more level-crowned than the French vaults, but Chichester has not made its neighbour its model. Its affinity is with the architecture of the continental dominions of Henry II., with 54. PLANS OF ENGLISH TWELFTH CENTURY VAULTINGS. I. Durham nave (oblong). a. Transverse rib. II. Canterbury quire (sexpartite). b. Diagonal rib. III. Chichester presby tery (square). c. Intermediate. ' The " severies " are the vault spacings an excellent restoration of the effect is given formed by the ribs. in Sir G. G. Scott's " Lectures on Gothic 2 Thirty-five ft. wide ; now destroyed, but Architecture." THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 95 Le Mans and Poitiers, where the influence of He de France art was not yet come, and the Anglo-Norman style was grafting itself on the domings of the south. More English were the vaults1 of the collegiate quire of New Shoreham, where the high vault is in markedly oblong bays, 24 ft. wide by 15 ft. But there is the same feeling of empty hollowness in the 11 80 vaults of the round Temple Church, and this expression of the southern vaulting, so evident at Chichester,2 passed on to the Winchester chapels of 1 200, and in the next century to the Salis bury design. Very differently in mid- England had St. Hugh's architect learnt the methods of his art. In the vault of the Lincoln quire English feeling is at once strongly, if strangely, manifested. Much criticism has been wasted on the arrangement of the ribs (fig. 55), as a caprice. But clearly the purpose of the architect is here shown straining after the English idea of continued co herence for vault surfaces. And though the high vault of the transepts which followed took the sexpartite form of Canter bury, yet the germ of De Noyer's art blossomed imme- c. 1195. c. 1260. diately afterwards in the nave 55- diagram of Lincoln quire vault. vault and the whole progeny of our later vaultings sprang from the seeds of his ideal. Thus, in spite of the long junction of Anjou with England under the same dominion, the Angevin domings never came into our system of Gothic, nor did their influence lift up our groinings, so as to make our diagonal ribs 3 rise above the transverse, as is the common practice 1 The exact dates are conjectural. The plan of this quire would seem to have been set out before 11 70, and the walls and the north arcade built with no intention of a high vault. But immediately the design 'must have been changed ; the south arcade was built with the preparation for vaulting, and the aisles vaulted possibly before the 1 1 90 rebuilding of Chichester. The high vault was, however, not put, it would seem, till close upon the end of the century, about the time of the western aisles of the neighbouring Romsey. 2 So, too, the quire of Boxgrove Priory, close to Chichester, of the thirteenth cen tury, where the bays are exactly square. See fig. 131, p. 180. 3 There is some doming in our first aisle vaultings, as at Malmesbury and Shoreham, but not in any of our high vaults. To get a level crown, the curves are doctored, and to aid this the transverse ribs kept back at their springings. In the thirteenth century the caprices of vaulting were various, as in the north chapel of St. Mary's, Oxford, where there is doming over the transverse ribs, which are lifted considerably higher than the meeting of the diagonals. 96 GOTHIC ART in the French style. The sexpartite vault was in fact a hybrid fathered on the dome rather than a natural offspring of groin intersection. The English Gothic taste, more sensitive in this matter than the French, passed at once to the suppression of all memory of the great arcs- doubleaux of Romanesque construction, and the pointed arch came im mediately to their hands for the purpose. And, while the Benedictines of Peterborough were still clumsily making horse-shoes of their transverse ribs, the Worcester architect had found and profited by the " sweetness" of the pointed form. The geometrical ease of bringing, by use of the point, arch-spans of different widths to an even height was more taken advantage of than thought out in the designs of the mediaeval artist. In paper architecture, as we build nowadays, ease of construction may depend on exactness of setting out. But in the experimental hot-bed of an advancing art geometrical precision is no ingredient. If we go into the clerestory passage and look along an unrestored twelfth or thirteenth century vault, the contortions of its curvatures are such as would seem quite indecorous to a modern mason ; for the rib radius is varied in every stone, and just as haphazard seem the angles of the rib-springings. To the observer at the ground these irregularities are, of course, visible, but they have to him no distressing effect of contortion ; on the contrary they give that play of surface which has the emotional value of artistic texture. They are the handling of the Gothic artist, and as much part of his art as the brushwork of the painter is of his. Was he conscious of these irregularities as defects ? Very likely ; but he had other matters of greater moment in his ambition, and mere geometrical accuracy was a small thing in comparison. We have, in the pride of our science of architecture, rebuilt numbers of those old vaults, smoothed out their creases, and brought their curves to the tracing of the compasses. And with what result ? The charm of their architecture is gone, planed away by the machine of modern building ; for architecture is a handicraft, and must show handling ; life must speak to life to get the response of emotion which shall recognize art. But indifferent as the mediaeval builder showed himself to the geometrical properties of the pointed arch, he found a direct appeal in it to his practical sense,1 for by pointing his vault ribs he got a great reduction of the centrings. The rib system had dispensed in great measure with the expensive carpentries required for the solid Roman groins ; the pointed arch again reduced the extent of support required for the ribs ; and then, still further, the narrowing of oblong vault bays 1 He had not, of course, the supplies of making use of modern engineering facilities, prepared wood, which make centrings easy obliterates the qualities which the practical and cheap to us. Our imitated Gothic, in expedients of simple craftsmanship produce. * THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 97 made the fillings easy ; the ribs came nearer together, and there was a greater stilting for the side severies. Now at Lincoln the architect had set out his quire plan with bays broad for their width, so the mason1 bethought himself of the device of an extra rib, and cleverly for its abutment took the meeting of the opposite half-diagonals. In this way he got narrower spans2 between his ribs, such as the shifting template of mediaeval use could easily compass. In the next century it was per- 1 ,1 . • 1 • 1 -, ., S6. vault template. ceived that with a mid nb these extra ° " branches," as they are called, could be made to abut anywhere. But the Lincoln example is an instance how need and artistic design are the simultaneous shapers of an architecture, which is building craft. Another of the kind is to be found in the peculiar coursing of the English fillings of a vault (see figs. 53, 62). In the French vault these coursings are parallel with its axis, and always shaped, for their position in the domical surface ; in the English they are unshaped, and bridging from rib to rib meet anglewise on the axis. In rejecting the dome the English builder lost the advantage of its roundness, which allowed each course of filling to be keyed on that of the last, without other assistance than the shifting template. But he regained this advantage by the angular method, with its resulting curvature and support for the setting. But not only in building methods did use and design grow together ; on the side of material their intimate connections generated every pro gress. Economy of material, practical and artistic, lay before Gothic art as its goal. To be able to build bigger with more economy of stone, to be able to build lighter with more expansion of space — the two made one ideal in the desire of the mediaeval builder. Whether, with all his constructional ingenuity, he ever made or desired to make a practical saving of cost is doubtful. Is a Roman-vaulted hall more costly than a Gothic ? Is it more wasteful of material ? It would be difficult to prove it so. Both were creations growing out of use ; both were cut severely according to their cloth, though neither were ground in the mill of commercial profit as modern life grinds building. Yet it was not their choice of several ideals that made the genius of these great architectures. Plenitude of mass, lightness of support, they are ready to any architect's hands ; no 1 Architect and mason would have been 2 About 4 ft. In the wider intersecting one; or, perhaps, St. Hugh may have more "severies"the stilting would allow the greater filled the office of the former, as supplying part of the filling to be built without centres. " the plans " — in modern nomenclature — For the method of this see Viollet le Due, and De Noyer that of the latter, as supply- vol. iv., p. 106, from which we copy this ing the "art " which our masons do not. engraving (fig. 56). 98 GOTHIC ART merit lies in the selection of this or that for his purpose. For the power of art lies in its means, not in its ends ; in the hunger of the heart after the unattainable, that seeks, but never finds, and never stays in its seeking. In the reduction of Roman heaviness, in the creation of Gothic lightness, the rib and the point for the vault were steps taken in the I Cioao H C1093 57- ROMANESQUE PIER SECTIONS. I. St. Albans, with wood ceiling to nave. II. Durham quire, designed for high vault. This and the other pier sections of this chapter are to the scale of one-hundredth full size. direction of economy of material. And with corresponding effect were wall and pier organized into a cognate expression. Some considerable progress towards the Gothic pier had been made by the Burgundian schools of design under Cluniac direction, and makes its appearance in the Benedictine churches of all the great monastic centres of Europe. Thus 58. ROMANESQUE PIER SECTIONS. III. Ely Infirmary, Parish IV. Bath. Double V. Peterborough. Wood Church type. column. ceiling to nave. at Vezelay, c. 1070, the transverse arches of the high vault come to the ground in half-columns ; at their back the arches of the aisle vaults have similar struts ; while on either side are piers that take the main arcade arches. This is the organic structure in the vaulted Durham (fig. 57), and is expressed, too, in the wood-ceiled naves of St. Albans (fig. 57), Bath, and Peterborough (fig. 58), where the projections on the nave side do THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 99 service as the struts for the tie beams of the framed roofing. Rib vault ing and the recessing of the orders in the arcade arch were expressed in these single columns by their becoming triple,1 and the pier then Note. — The bay diagrams in this chapter and throughout are all on the same scale of twelve feet to the inch, so that they can be compared. & ^^^^qffljf^^^^^^^^S! ;3| | aH&SH s IL- Aft -.Id 59. BAYS OF THE MID TWELFTH CENTURY. Castle Acre nave. Late Worcester nave (west bays). Early Gothic. Romanesque. See pier section, fig. 71, p. 108. became what is called " scientific," as indicating in its plan every function of the vault. When we come to mid twelfth century and thereafter, this scheme gets enormously lightened, first in appearance, as at Worcester (fig. 59), or Dore, and then in actual fact, as in the Lincoln quire (fig. 60), but still expressing in its plan this separate functioning for the purpose of arcade and vault. 1 The expression of the wall ribs would usual English method is accounted by some make them five, as at Castle Acre and Worces- people as a defect in the Gothic logic of our ter(fig. 59). The suppression of this rib in the art. See Prof. Moore's "Gothic Architecture." IOO GOTHIC ART However, at the outset of Gothic there is shown a dislike of this logical exactness by both English and French artist. Notre Dame, Paris, gives the He de France fancy, which Canterbury plainly 60. bay of Lincoln quire, 1 1 90. See pier section, fig. 121, p. 160. borrowed; for the cluster of functional shafts there is substituted a single circular column (or pair of columns) with a rather over-headed capital, on which come the bases of the high vault shafts.1 In England 1 In Canterbury quire the columns are see an English mixture of the Burgundian single. At Ripon in 1 1 60 (fig. 61), asat Laon and French methods. See p. 18, for the in 1 180, and Lincoln transept of 1200, we English connection of Laon Cathedral. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND IOI Chichester1 (fig. 62) makes a variant of this — the vaulting shafts are there more satisfactorily corbelled out just above the capitals of the arcade, and this graceful use became the rule in English composition2 till the end of the fourteenth century. After 1220 the He de France archi- 1 In the east bay of the presbytery. A still earlier example is in the Gilbertine nave of Old Malton, founded 1150. The beautiful examples at Tynemouth, too, may be in date before Chichester. 2 See the bay designs of Ely quire, and of Exeter, in Chapter VIII. 6l. THE FRENCH BAY-DESIGN IN ENGLAND. Ripon quire, c. 1 1 70. Up to clerestory designed for vault. Canterbury presbytery, 11 80. See section, fig. 72, p. 109. pier 102 GOTHIC ART tects had returned to a fine adaptation of the Burgundian use, as at Amiens, but the English not usually1 till after 1350 brought their vault shafts to the ground. The ideal of an undivided hall, with continuity of wall as of ceiling, had been bred in English blood from the basilican planning of the Saxon mon astic church. Most open on the west of England to such Saxon tradition 62. THE ENGLISH BAY DESIGN. Chichester presbytery (south-eastern type), c. 1 190. Pier section, fig. 72, p. 109. Wenlock transept (western type), c. 1 180. were the Benedictines along the valley of the Severn ; and so, in variance with the eastern designing, Gloucester and Tewkesbury2 had conceived their great naves very nobly with ranges of lofty circular columns, instead of the divided bays and two-storied galleries of Win chester and Ely. And on this pattern the founders of the early Augus- 1 Southwark quire, c. 1220, and Lichfield 2 Rejecting the upper floor of the Bur- nave, 1250, are exceptions. gundian scheme. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 103 tinian1 houses, as at Jedburgh and St. Frideswide's, Oxford, based their lofty pillared style of arcade with the galleries hung beneath (fig. 63). In the Dunstable nave the scheme is combined with vaulting shafts, and then in 11 80, with the pointed arch, the elegant organiza tion of the Glastonbury wall (fig. 63) is reached, which recognizes both wall and vault structure. But more decisively still did English parish church ideas pre- 6t,. "AUGUSTINIAN" BAY DESIGN. St. Frideswide's nave, c. 1160. Glastonbury transept, c. 1185. vail over both the monastic and Burgundian uses in the dawn of our Gothic art, proving that the wall, not the vault, was the determining factor of the expression in our architecture. Just as the great monastic cathedrals left their naves to the people, so many of the smaller 2 English monasteries included parish churches; and so, too, the parish church nave 1 The nuns' church at Romsey of c. 1 1 20 their precincts in order to supply the has a similar design. parishes : Sherborne did so in the fifteenth 2 Some of the largest Benedictine mon- century to get rid of the parochial use of asteries, as Bury, built parish churches in their nave. 104 GOTHIC ART formed a feature in many foundations of the regular as of the secular canons. And the structure of their fabrics acknowledged this connection,1 for while their quires and transepts kept the Burgundian dispositions, their nave wall developed itself as a range of three stories ; first an arcade of circular pillars, then the arcade gallery or triforium passage, and thirdly the range of clerestory windows,2 with no thought of a vault, but designed for a wood ceiling. Gothic art lightened 64. PAROCHIAL BAY DESIGN IN LARGE CHURCHES. Wells Cathedral nave, c. 1 1 70. St. John's, Chester, 1 100 and 1 180. and refined this conception, but for long did not displace it. The great 1 The Cistercians never admitted the parish church ; their lay brothers occupied their naves. But still they did not hold to the Burgundian scheme of design, but often made their nave walls in two stories, an arcade of massive piers, and above a range of windows without passage, as at Buildwas (see fig. 46, p. 86), Fountains, etc. 2 So Lindisfarne ; Trinity Priory, York ; the Augustinian Worksop, and Jedburgh; and the secular churches, Southwell, and St. John's, Chester (fig. 64). THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 105 secular cathedrals of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries,1 thoroughly monastic as is their plan, acknowledged the native system in wall- structure, and, though ambitious of the vault, make it spring, as we see at Wells (fig. 64), and then at Salisbury (see p. 207) upon short corbels, the triforium gallery being an unbroken range as much as the arcade below. But still the pointed vault could not fail to affect the clerestory ; the orders of its window arcades grouped themselves into triplets, the centre light rising higher than the side ; and in the west this shaping of the vault-bays came down into the triforium, as at St. David's, making two stories of the wall : a method of design that passed to Christ Church, Dublin, in 1200, and on the Welsh border, mingled, as at Dore, with Cis tercian rejection of the triforium, and then went on to Pershore and Southwell quires, the earnest of the later developments of the English art2 In the same way the aisle walls were brought by the vault into two stories — the lower a range of ar- cading, and the upper one of windows that shaped themselves to the rib curves. The vault shaft se parating the bays,3 with triple expression of the vault ribs, is a persistent feature in southern art Often, however, in western and northern art the wall or its arcade runs unbroken beneath, while above the shaft is corbelled — boldly but coarsely managed at Ripon, but afterwards, as at Tynemouth and in the early thirteenth century quire at Fountains, becoming an elegant feature of design. Such corbelled shafts(or the corbel only in place of a shaft), are a frequent and distinctive use in the first Gothic of England. Of the western style are the full-headed vaulting shafts of Wells (fig. 64) and the plain semi-octagons of Witham (fig. 65). Llanthony4 supplies interesting examples of its employment to take the inner orders of the great arches of the crossing and the arcades, where the shaft continued to the ground would have narrowed the going. As a tapering pro jection with abacus the corbel is common in early Cistercian art ; in the 65. ST. HUGH'S CHAPEL, WITHAM, C 1 1 70. 1 Ely quire (see fig. in Chapter VIII.) is an example of the continuance of this triple storying to the middle of the fourteenth century. 2 See pp. 184, 185. The French did not reach this two-storied scheme until after 1 260. 3 At St. Frideswide's, Oxford, two cor belled heads at the side of the capital take the diagonal ribs (see fig. 94, p. 138). 1 So at Whitchurch, Dorset (fig. 66). The small corbel stoppings of arch mould ings are characteristic in the style at Llandaff, and Christ Church, Dublin ; and then later at Netley. io6 GOTHIC ART Worcester slypes;1 in the transepts of Dore (figs. 67, 68), and there, too, attached to the capitals of the circular nave piers, it receives the vault ribs of the aisles. Just similar to this was its use at Lanercost, in the north quire aisle, to carry the vaults already mentioned. Generally in the north country the Cistercian building - craft played with corbel design, in venting fresh shapes of it for "slype" and "chapter" vaulting,2 and for the great projections of the refectory pulpits, as at Fountains (fig. 69) .3 The genius 66. WHITCHURCH, C II90. 67. DORE, NORTH TRAN SEPT, C 1 1 70. of carven delight, chidden away by the first austerity of the Cis tercians, crept back to their buildings in the corbel. Alike in the strength and the delicacy of this artistic motive we have proof of English character. For nobility of expression the corbel needs, in fact as in evidence, a solid wall- mass to back it: and the Englishman, loving his wall, shrunk from banishing it out of doors in buttress and pinnacle, and leaving nothing for his inclosure but a 1 So the Gloucester west gateway. 2 See, too, Furness, Jervaulx and Rivaulx. Kirstall aisle has examples dating from c. 1 165. 3 Also see the lavatory corbels at the frater entrances at Fountains, Furness, Rivaulx, of c. 11 70. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 107 shivering array of piers and arches. The Frenchman, started on vault construction, gave his whole heart to it, and, as if he had given the word " four deep," sent back from the front three-quarters of his inclosing wall. But the Englishman with the tradition of the wood ceil ings of his great Norman Romanesque, never took vault mechanism quite seriously, but still held out his hand to the other construction which he loved. He was a Gothic artist in wood building as well as in stone, and had his humour in both. So in our Gothic art the breadth and solidity of the plain wall was never quite put out of sight, even to the end, for the reason that emphasis of the expression of Gothic lightness by contrasts of mass was necessary to its ideal. This is just as clearly shown in the design ing of our Gothic piers. The elegance of the French method was severely structural ; x the 68. DORE, NORTH TRAN SEPT, C 1 1 70. 69. FOUNTAINS, CORBEL OF REFECTORY PULPIT, C Il8o. English expression lay, perhaps, less in the actual lightening of the 1 In fact, mechanical in some examples as, say, St. Leu d'Esserent, or Dijon nave. io8 GOTHIC ART structure1 than in the refinement of its grace. In the north of England the ponderous masses of the Romanesque columns become after 1150 a sheaf of shaftings coursed together, and making the full body of the pier four or eight, as at Kirkstall (see p. 160) and Ripon (see p. 101), but more often with all or alternate shafts given a pointed edge as at I c 1190 e 1190 'm C1190 1*1170 n c 1170 Coursed piers. Marble shafts. 70. EARLY GOTHIC PIER SECTIONS IN THE NORTH. I. Jervaulx. II. Dundrennan. I. Durham galilee. II. York crypt. III. Hartlepool. III. Auckland hall. Dundrennan or Hartlepool (fig. 70). The nave of Jervaulx2 (fig. 70) once showed, as the quire of Hexham does now, this mixture of solidity with graceful expression of slenderness. When translated into marble in the last quarter of the century, as in some of the Hartlepool pillars, where eight shafts stand round the central pier ; 3 in the fourfold compositions n cino m (1130) icneo IIC120O Secular. Cistercian. 71. EARLY GOTHIC PIER SECTIONS OF THE WEST. I. Worcester nave. II. Wells nave. I. Strata Florida. II. Cwm-hir. III. Shrewsbury, St. Mary's. of Pudsey's Hall at his Auckland manor house (fig. 70) ; in the twin pillars of his Romanesque galilee at Durham ;4 or in such a single octagon 1 The actual reduction in mass may, however, be judged by looking back to the fig. on p. 98, where the Romanesque sec tions are given to the same scale of r^-th as those on this page. 2 Now level with the ground. Dundrennan and Roche transepts still have piers standing. 3 Sixteen were so placed in the lobby of St. Mary's chapter house, York, c. 1 180. See restored sketch in Sir G. G. Scott's " Lec tures on Mediaeval Architecture." 4 See fig. 70. The stone additions, which make the pillaring fourfold, are of the fif teenth century. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 109 as that of the Jervaulx chapter house (see p. 1 10), the pier of the northern transition exhibits often a surpassing grace, as well as the structural solidity, which, as in the York crypt (fig. 70 II.) distinguishes it generally from the southern marble uses. In the west of England at Worcester (fig. 71) begins a characteristic lightening of the Romanesque pier — the mass being still considerable, but surfaced with a number of shaftings, an effect very different from the sturdy manner of the north. The typical form is immediately to be seen at Wells (fig. 71), where the coursed pier presents at all angles light triple shaft-groupings. The parish church at Shrewsbury (fig. 71), the Cistercian Abbey of Cwm-hir (fig. 71), and similar contemporary work* at Lichfield and Chester, as well as afterwards at Pershore, show the wide range of this type.1 The elegance of its use, with the contrast of splayed intervals between, is conspicuous at Llandaff (see pp. 146, 147) and at Christ Church, Dublin.2 But with a more structural elegance southward and eastward in England there came with the dawn of Gothic an employment of shafting in the pier, with slender round monoliths of dark marble detaching them- I (II70> n 1175 m ueo IV C1I90 V U95 72. EARLY GOTHIC PIER SECTIONS OF THE SOUTH-EAST. I. New Shoreham. II. Canterbury quire. III. Canterbury presbytery. V. Chichester. IV. Laon. selves from the coursed body of the fabric and standing in relief against its white or painted background.3 The origin of this art, which in the last decade of the twelfth century made so much of the effect of our English architecture, is not very clear. The piers of William of Sens at the angle of Canterbury transept seem the first example of the extended use of it that can be accurately dated. But if it came with him from his native Sens we should expect to find it in the habit of He de France architecture of 1 1 70. Laon Cathedral (fig. 72),* indeed, makes good show of the 1 The central pillar of Margam chapter house and nave piers of Strata Florida (fig. 71) show the evolution of the method from the massive circular pier of Romanesque. 2 In the quire of c. 1 180. The figure on p. 184 shows the later nave design. 3 At Rochester the Purbeck itself has traces of having been painted red. 1 St. Martin's, Laon, which was probably contemporary with Canterbury, has mono liths in the angles of its Romanesque piers. IIO GOTHIC ART marble monolith, as to some extent does Notre Dame at Paris, but in both cases probably some years after the Canterbury work. On the other hand, twenty years previously Wor cester1 had used, with true Gothic expres sion, white monolith pillars in the main arcade of the west bays as a relief against the blue-gray body of the structure. From Italy, from Spain, and Provence, by way of Aquitaine and Anjou, so may have come to England the knowledge of the mystery of precious stone set as a jewel in the texture of the structure. In those countries the legacy of Roman luxury, such marble monoliths, stripped from the ruins of villa and temple, give a strange glamour to the aisles of Cordova, or the porch of St. Trophine's at Aries. But if England had no quarries of Roman 2 colonnades to draw from, after 1 1 50 she found a substitute in her own rocks. Purbeck columns from the coast of Dorset 3 seem to have been shipped to wherever water carriage could take them. Quickly Kent discovered Bethesden, and Somerset Langport lias ; Foun tains4 and Jervaulx (fig. 73) found a similar stone for their purpose in their neighbourhood; while Northumberland and Durham 5 drew on the Frosterley marble. But throughout the south 1 See the figures on pp. 90, 99, 108. Possibly, too, at St. Cross, Purbeck shafts may have been used, but the complete "restoration " of this church makes its evidence uncertain. 2 The Romans seem to have found no marble in England but imported it for their mosaics. ' In 1 1 60 to Durham to be used for Pudsey's Lady chapel, and then employed in the galilee. See "Hist. Dunelm Scriptor Tres" (Surtees Society), p. n. 1 See the capitals of chapter house, c. 11 70, now in museum ; also the marble strings on west side of cloister. ' As at Pudsey's Hall. See section of the pier, fig. 70 III. 73. COLUMN OF JERVAULX CHAPTER, C. 1 190. 74- WELLS, NORTH PORCH OF NAVE, C. 1 1 75. 112 GOTHIC ART and east the shaftings from the Purbeck and kindred sources took a peculiar expression of slenderness;1 in the north porch of Wells2 (fig. 74) of 1 1 75; at Chichester in 1191, standing clear and free from the main pier (fig. 72 V., also p. 102), and with still more lightness and grace in the galilees of St. Albans and Ely of the end of the century, and particularly in the wonderful groupings of pier, vault, and arcade shafts, which mark the art of St. Hugh's quire at Lincoln (fig- 75)- The effect of this Purbeck use on the English style can hardly be over-esti mated. To the influence of its turner- craft must be traced that rounding of the English base and abacus, which in turn brought arch and mould and vault- rib to the same contour. The wall, as well as the pier, became immediately lighter, by its action in refining the Norman arcades, heightening their proportions, and detaching their archings from the structure8 — as in the triforium of Chi chester or the chapel-aisles of Win chester — till the rows of its delicate screenworks stand two or three deep in the'galilees of St. Albans and Ely, and along the transepts of Lincoln. And so, too, with the Norman win dows ; the shaft, attaching itself to their outlines, brought them into the ranges ' The round section, where the height of the column is not more than double or three times the diameter, has a greater appearance of massive strength than the square ; but conversely when the height increases to six or seven times the diameter, the circular section gives an increasingly slender expression in comparison with square or octagon. In the northern art the mingling of the round with the pointed section brings lightness and strength combined. 2 At Wells the shafting came from Langport, and at Chichester probably from Petworth. 8 See the slenderness of the Glastonbury wall- arcade, p. 125. 75> LINCOLN, ST. HUGH'S TRANSEPT, C. 1 190. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND IJ3 of its arcadings, and in alliance with the ease and grace of the pointed arch so wrought on the window-scheme that its expansions grew to fill — as in William the Englishman's aisles at Canterbury and the eastern clerestories of Chichester and Lincoln1 — the whole areas of the wall-spandrils. On the outside, the same process may be watched at Ripon (fig. 76), in the chapels of Winchester, and the aisles of Lincoln ; the power of the Purbeck shaft lifting into wonderful lightness window and arcade together. Very rapidly everywhere in England towards 1 195 2 came this' refine ment of wall expression, as the slenderness of shaft and the pointing of arch together combined to give it accentuation ; yet it was always backed in English work by the relief of plain masses of wall to give the fact and the effect of strength together. The Gothic transformation of moulding was just as swiftly achieved, and is no less remarkable. As significant as the detach ment of the graceful Purbeck shaft from the ground of the wall mass — as distinct as its black upon white — are the crisp modellings of moulding that Gothic expression at once demanded. It can be seen (fig. Jj) how the Winchester basemould of 1080, and those of Reading or Smithfield of 1 130, or even of Fountains nave of 11 45, are almost identical in their coarse interpretation of Roman reminiscence. But when we go to St. Frideswide's of 1 160 or Wells of 1 170 there is found immediately the delicate shapeliness of contrasting hollow and arris.3 And this expression is not changed a 76. ripon, nave clerestory, hundred years after in the presbytery of c. 1170.- Lincoln and the chapter house of Westminster. Thirty years saw a revolution, which fixed the type for another eighty. of Durham and Ely by those of Old Malton and Llandaff west end indicate how quick and complete was the triumph of the 1 Thus compare, say, the Oxford clerestory of c. 1 160, p. 1 03, with those of Lincoln thirty years after in the same diocese, p. 100. 2 E.g., the clerestory of New Shoreham, shortly followed by that of the Romsey west end; or the arcadings of the western towers Purbeck art. 3 In Worksop nave the bases of c. n 40 and 1 180 can be seen side by side. ii4 GOTHIC ART L L k. L. /i Cn 1 r ffl I r iv j f v f CI070 r C 1030 fcmo) CU25 r CU15 \ ROMANESQUE BASEMOULDS. I. II. III. IV. Winchester Worcester Malvern Reading crypt. crypt. nave. quire. V. Fountains nave. Worcester nave. FIRST GOTHIC BASEMOULDS. II. III. IV. V. St. Cross Canterbury Wells Canterbury nave. quire. nave, east transept. EARLY ENGLISH BASEMOULDS. I. II. III. IV. V. Strata Florida Lincoln Auckland Winchester Fountains nave. quire. hall. chapels. quire. 77. THE GOTHIC DEVELOPMENT OF BASEMOULDS. In the matter of the Gothic develop ment of moulding, it has been too much the habit to lay stress on the continuous ero sion of its contours, as if this went on at an even pace, and every ten years would show a step in the process, which finally took the basemould of Walkelyn, say, at Winchester to that of Wykeham. In the long run, from cen tury to century, this aspect of Gothic de nudation is striking, but evenness was not its characteristic. It had its pauses and quick accelerations, — none quicker than that which came on the flood of the incoming of English Gothic art. The speed can be gauged by turning at Fountains from the profiles of the great west door of 1147 (fig. 78) to those of the refectory of 1 1 77, or those of the same date in the west door of Byland (fig. 78). And in the west by putting the moulds of the north door of St. John's, Chester, by those of twenty years THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND n5 after in the Lilleshall west door, or the Wells porchway. Yet such sections as these latter were in service, with but little variation, a hundred years later at Tintern and Hereford. The figure on the next page can show how the profiles of the pier arches tell the same story. The square edges of 1090 at Winchester and St. Albans are used at Buildwas in 1 140, and the arch-orders were still being only rounded into great rolls, as at Durham and Romsey, and even at Kirkstall in 1155 ; or, as at Smithfield and Peterborough, had been given shallow hollows ; or were zigzagged and fretted with bosses, stars, and surface arabesque, as at Hereford, Rochester, and Castle Acre, right up to the middle of the twelfth century. But at the os . | Byland . w doom L ,w — " IV Welij NoRJH rPoH£H CII75 "WESTERN DEVELOPMENT. with anp£l3V a-tac*ts Iff SflV. NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT With S^UZLTte. 2Lb*CWS I.G-II 78. THE ADVANCE OF GOTHIC MOULDING. Note. — The doorway of St. John's, Chester, is now a " restoration." breath of Gothic inspiration such adventitious ornament grew quickly obsolete ; x at Worcester effect is obtained by a deep cut cavetto and delicately contoured roll-work, with an accent of sharp arris and modelled surfacing, — what was quickly elaborated in the mason's craft of the Cistercian Dore and Strata Florida, and had a still greater re duplication of bead and hollow in the cathedral naves of Wells and Dublin ; as, too, in the parish church of St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, and the Cistercian nave of Cwm-hir.2 The square arches of Buildwas are not ten miles from these of Shrewsbury — there has been hardly fifty years between their dates — yet two generations of mason's craft have worked the change. But, thereafter, what was in use in Wells and 1 The zigzag is found in the triforium. It is to be observed that the soffite order in the main arches is square, and at Llandaff too the roll-moulds are charmingly mingled with a small plain splay. At St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, also, the elaborate outer moulds are contrasted with a splayed soffite order, a method we find in the south in the 1170 nave at Rye, later at Hythe, in the western bays of Romsey, and in some of the arches of Whitchurch, Dorset, where the work has great resemblance to that of Shrewsbury. Two plain splayed orders with a delicately moulded label became the ordinary verna cular of the parish church art after the middle of the twelfth century, and continued in use possibly till the late fourteenth. 2 The stone for it came from Shrewsbury. n6 GOTHIC ART WESTERN STYLE. I. Worcester nave. II.-III. Strata Florida crossing. IV. Dore quire. V. Cwm-hir nave. MID-ENGLAND STYLE. I. Malmesbury nave. II. Wells nave. III. Lincoln quire. NORTHERN CISTERCIAN STYLE. I. Kirkstall nave. II. Dundrennan transept. III. Furness nave. IV. Fountains quire. NORTHERN STYLE. I. Worksop nave. II. Jedburgh nave. III. Darlington crossing. IV. Auckland hall. 79. THE PROGRESS OF EARLY GOTHIC ARCHMOULDS. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 117 Shrewsbury stayed as the Gothic profile throughout the long buildings of Lincoln and Salisbury, and a hundred years on was still to be seen in the archmoulds of Westminster, Lichfield, and Hereford. A similar speed in the creation of style is to be read in the arch sections of the Northern Gothic from the narrow splays1 of Fountains, by way of the shallow incisions and blunt edge rolls of Kirkstall and Worksop (fig. 79). By pointing the rolls of this latter section, and spreading the accompanying quirks, was produced the characteristic square ogee profile of the northern style, used equally at the Cistercian Dundrennan, Jervaulx, and Byland, as at Jedburgh, Hartlepool and Darlington (fig. 79). A small roll comes to soften the sharp edges of SOUTHERN STYLE. I. Rochester nave. II. St. Cross nave. III. New Shoreham quire. IV. Canterbury quire. V. Chichester presbytery. 80; EARLY GOTHIC ARCHMOULDS. the hollows, as at Furness and Malton, and soon we have then the sections of Auckland and Hexham, which needed but a deepening of all the recesses to give the rich modellings of the Fountains and Whitby quires of 1200, and were scarcely altered for Rivaulx and York some thirty years after. There is less distinct character in the southern profiles ; at New Shoreham they suggest the western manner ; at Rye, and in William the Englishman's transept, there are northern moulds ;2 but there is in the double roll with intervening hollows engendered from the splay a local usage, which can be seen running from St. Cross to Chichester (fig. 8b). An alliance, however, with continental usage is expressed by the distinct expression of the orders. And the southern art, too, leaned away from the finer sense of the English Cistercian Gothic, inclining towards the picturesque arabesque enrichments of the Gothic style 1 As later in Lanercost arches, and at back ofAuckland Hall arcade three times repeated, four times in Hedon N. transept (see fig. 93). But with greater delicacy ; they do not occur in the Trinity Chapel or the crypt. n8 GOTHIC ART of Normandy, of which in the twelfth century it was but a branch. In the west we find constant use of the undercut chevron,1 as at Wells, Gloucester, Glastonbury (figs. 81 and 82), and Whitchurch; at New Shoreham is the arabesque shown in fig. 81 ; at Chichester the beautiful ornament shown in fig. 92 ; and at Canterbury are zigzags, NEW SHOREHAM, I165. GLASTONBURY, 1185. 8l. THE ENRICHED GOTHIC MOULDING. billets, and " dogtooth." This last enrichment grew to be a badge of English Gothic, in distinction from the Continental styles, though its rudimentary forms of notch and nail-head were as widespread in the latest Romanesque of Normandy as in England; the first forms2 in advance of these being as in the south transept of Worcester, and then 1 The chapter-house passage of St. Mary, York, gives an exceptional example in the north, as St. Mary's, Ely, does in the east, but the fashion distinctly centres from the Severn estuary, spreading as widely as St. David's, Lichfield (fig. 82) and Castmel. " At St. Margaret-at-Cliffe, Kent, said to be c. 1 131, almost as a flower. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 119 at Dore (see fig. 47, p. 86) and Worksop, square flowers in relief upon splays.1 In the deep undercutting of such ornaments which followed im mediately — just as in the hollowing of the moulds and the elegant contouring, which marked their Gothic use — were, of course, to be seen the powers of the chisel. The instrument came to the hand of the GLASTONBURY, 1185. LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, II95. 82. THE ENRICHED GOTHIC MOULDING. Gothic artist, as did the Gothic ideal to his fancy. Mixed here as elsewhere in the advances of a living art were the causes and effects of its genius ; for in the region of experiment the suggestions of design are one growth with the means of achievement. But the essential suggestion that thus found immediate expression was not of decoration, but of sculpture ; not so much imitative as formative sculpture, that, with modelled surface and shadowed contour, could speak the appeal that belongs especially to this, the most purely emotional of the arts. 1 In the Hall at Oakham it is developed in a hollow as, too, at Byland (fig. 98, p. 143). 120 GOTHIC ART In all the art of the late twelfth century such an appeal can be read, and nowhere more distinctly than in the evolution at this moment of the English moulded capital, a creation of pure sculpturesque design, as alive with artistic nobility, as is the Greek vase. In the north the origin of the plain cap came in the severe out lines and curt shapening which sufficed to contour the Cistercian column to its square load ; but the immediate influence, that worked out of this the peculiar grace of the Gothic ideal, lay undoubtedly in the use of the slender monolith. The circular capital followed the use of the Purbeck shafting, and of the marbles which imitated it. The process can be watched at Fountains, the marble shaft first acquiring a circular bell, and then a circular abacus to crown it. In the south and west, where, with the square and octagortal abacus, there had developed a beautiful school of carved capitals, yet with the marble shaft there came, too, the plain-moulded round in the quire of Dore (see p. 183), as in the crypt of Canterbury. In mid England, however, it is possible to perceive another path for the round abacus. If the northern art passed bluntly from square to round,1 while the western found a stepping stone in the octagon, which had taken this form by shaping itself to the vault ribs ; in the diocese of Lincoln the circular shaft cap, as we see it in St. Hugh's quire, may have been reached simply as a diminution of the big round capping of the robust parish-church pier.2 In mediaeval days the great bishopric of mid- England stretched from the borders of Yorkshire to those of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire ; its art could be in touch at once with the austere gravity of the northern style of the Gothic Transition and the fiery grace of the western, while on its other side it was close to the robust Romanesque of the great Eastern abbeys. With some kinship with each of these, came along the upper valley of the Thames, down the long course of the Nene, and in the fen boundaries of Lincolnshire, by the estuaries of H umber and Wash, an early art of Gothic, that is represented to us now chiefly in parish church examples. Distinct dates are here out of the question, but from the arcades of the parish churches of Oxfordshire, Northamp tonshire and Lincolnshire can be gathered a hundred examples of twelfth century piers, which give the stages of advance from the round cushionings of Northampton to the sculptured elegance of Lincoln. In these, the massive column of the Norman passes into slenderer pro- 1 See the curious example in which one in central vaulting pillars at Newcastle and angle of the square only has been rounded Jervaulx. in the door of the Durham galilee ; also the 2 In the arch of St. Benet's Tower at great wheel capitals of Hartlepool, and the Cambridge, c. 1000, the engaged pilaster has " crossing " piers of Hexham, which are a circular abacus, but generally the char- found also at Selby. The octagon occurs in acteristic Saxon baluster has an oblong block the north rarely, as in corbels at Ripon, and impost. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 121 portions, and the in-curving of the caps has often a slender sculpture,1 with a delight that would seem born of contact with the western schools of carving. But if the springs of this mid-England emergence of Gothic are obscure,2 its crown is manifest, for this is the craft that shows itself in the quire of St. Hugh at Lincoln, in the full energy of early achieve ment, but what must have had many a success behind. If at Tynemouth and Hexham were worked out to the full the Gothic expression of the North, if at Wells and Llandaff may be seen the strength of the south western ideals, if Chichester shows the southern manner of early Gothic in alliance with the Anglo-Norman of the continent, by the side of them all the distinction of the art of Lincoln is evident ; and, moreover, the influence of its style was the lasting one which superseded that of the other schools. From the beginning of the thirteenth century the methods of Early English are substantially those of Lincoln, whether at Ely ; at Beverley and York ; at Worcester, or at Rochester and Salisbury. In the west front of Wells, as in the quire of Westminster, and in the Nine Altars of Durham, the craft was still for sixty years substantially that of St. Hugh's "constructor," De Noyer. And from Worcester west bays to Lincoln quire was a space of thirty-five years. In the former (p. 99) Gothic art is to be seen blocked out ; in the latter (p. 100) finished and polished. Worcester had : First, complete subordination of wall-structure to the vault, with a use therein of the pointed arch ; Secondly, the emphasis of this subordination by a lightening and refinement of the structural detail. Its monoliths and the distinctions of coloured material 3 foreshadow the uses of Pur beck ; its triforium is a study for the doubled arcadings, which played so large a part in the thirteenth century style ; and finally it has carvings and mould-sections, rough indeed, but still showing the path of Gothic sculpture. At Lincoln all are carried to extreme refinement, and the scheme is consistent throughout. The round abacus crowns every pillar, and every arch is now pointed, in window door-head, and wall arcade, as in the constructional service of vault and arching. Gothic style has been here traced, rather as lying in the construc tion and expression of idea than in the creation of a merely predominant 1 The St. Frideswide's carvings (pp. 148- ance. Just enough remains of the Cistercian 149) are specimens ; and in parish churches Kirkstead to show what a record of our we get indications of a similar art, for ex- early Gothic has been there obliterated. ample at Rothwell, Northants : but in the 3 In the earlier work of Worcester the shafts district of the Dunstable mason and eastward are banded horizontally, and the arches in al- the carving-touch is less refined. ternately coloured voussoirs, i.e., in Roman- 2 Ruin has overwhelmed all the twelfth esque fashion; in the western bays the verti- century abbeys and priories of Lincolnshire ; cal colour-contrast is both decorative and many of which were of considerable import- expressive of the functions of construction. 122 GOTHIC ART form — as developing in wall, arcade, and ceiling lightness and grace, rather than as merely fabricating a pointed instead of a round arched building method. Support for this position is to be got from the com parative lateness and hesitation with which those prominent features, windows and door-heads, actually took the pointed shape. Gothic lightness had entered into the structure of both long before it corrected their tra ditional shape : the nave windows of Glastonbury, of 1 185 (fig. 83), show the hesi tation of this change of head. It was bound, however, to come : the vault-severy was compelling the window to conform to its outline, and there was the effect of the wall-arcade, in which round arches by over-lapping, as at St. Cross, produced a point at their intersections, Still the genius of the Gothic ideal must be accepted as the real determinant. Before 1 150 in the presby tery of Buildwas is to be found that extraordinary lengthen ing of aperture, which was for a hundred years peculiarly developed in English Gothic, and then becoming on the continent, too, as here, the acknowledged proportion for the window-light for four cen turies of mediaeval building. Such a proportion (often fif- 83. GLASTONBURY, NAVE WINDOW, Iii Pointed outside, circular within. teen or twenty feet of height to a foot wide) for the interspace of masses had hardly prevailed in architecture since the Egyptian Hall of Karnac.1 How much the pointing of the window-head gave of grace and ex pression of height to this lengthening may be seen in the transepts of Dore, which were in date not long after Buildwas. Mere unornamented wall-piercings as are these compositions of lofty lancets and vesica 1 It curiously appears, too, just at this time in the dome-drums of the later Byzantine art. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 123 piscis, yet there is in them a wonderful display of Gothic power in the expression of lightness, and with the addition of shafts and arcading the same graceful force of design is found emphasized in the beautiful west front of Llandaff (see fig. 166, p. 217). In the north came a similar development of window form from the 1 160 west front of Kirkstall to that of Byland (see fig. 87, p. 126) some twenty-five years later, and then to the noble front which looks over the sea at Tynemouth (fig. 84), or the still more astonishing transept of Hexham (see p. 187). Comparatively there is less vigour accompanying the southern change of form. The St. Cross east front is probably before 1 1 50, that of St. Frideswide's just after, but in both the window open ings are broad and round-headed. Even at New Shoreham with the pointed head there is little advance upon the storied Roman esque arrangement of broad win dows : Canterbury, Chichester, and Rochester (p. 173) held the same tradition,1 which is found equally in the Anglo-Norman style of the continent at Bayeaux, Caen, and Lisieux. If, however, the west front of Romsey (fig. 85) is to be assigned to the last years of the twelfth century, it shows at once a sudden and complete trans formation of design. Here the 84- tynemouth, east front. triple lancets two feet wide rise nearly thirty feet from sill to crown, but the details of this composition point to connection with midland and western art rather than with the south-eastern. The southern window began early to show the peculiarity of having its glass very shallowly set back from the outside of the wall, its outline emphasized only by a small chamfer, leaving inside a great breadth of splayed jamb, which was often lightened by arcade work standing free from the wall, as at Canterbury and Chichester. When there is the external arcade, as at Winchester, still the glass is forward to the outside of the wall. This feature is much less marked in the west, where 1 Tall narrow lancets appear, however, in of the south at the close of the twelfth cen- many instances in the parish church chancels tury. 124 GOTHIC ART the external arcading is bolder with more orders, and where often a projected architrave frames the opening, as at Whitchurch and Llanthony. In the north, however, the external arcade, which is slight at Ripon, is found at Byland and Whitby as pronounced outside as inside, and in the next century thrust the glass into the middle of the wall. Externally the wall arcade had the function less of lighten ing the wall-structure than of decorating it. The Saxon had shown this fancy, and in the Benedictine hands of the latter half of the twelfth century the tier upon tier of arcade galleries on the lower and west fronts of Crowland, Durham, or Ely,1 would seem to link their design with Pisan Romanesque. In these the pointed arch appears as a decorative alternative, born originally of the intersection of round arches,2 and occurring in monotonous arrays with round and trefoiled arcadings. Very different was the Gothic use of the wall arcade in the Cistercian mason-craft, which sought effect from the pointed form by the piquancy of con trast. A delight in the varied curvatures of differently spanned round arches is shown in the en trance of the Kirkstall Chapter House; but at Fountains and 85. ROMSEY, WEST FRONT, 1200. t? *.\. J rurness the entrances, round- headed themselves, have sharply pointed arcade arches interspaced between them.3 The Ripon clerestories have the same effects, rounded windows with sharply pointed arcades on either side. In the Byland west So in the Cluniac west front of Castle Acre, and their chapter house at Wenlock. 2 As at St. Cross and Romsey, and the late refined example, St. Joseph's, Glaston bury (fig. 86). 3 The duller efforts of the Benedictine art are shown in the Selby porch, where generally in the finishing of the west end the struggles of conservative reaction are conspicuous. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 125 front (fig. 87) we pass to the pointed window, set in tall arcades of varied pointings, and with these the contrasted curvatures of the great round ra~B"g m u tsr -g-H H faf S ta MM -BTgWE1 e^-.V 86. st. mary's chapel, glastonbury, north side, c. 1186. Drawn by W. R. Lethaby. eye above and the exquisite trefoiled door below.1 In such composi tions the late twelfth century art delighted itself, as we can see at both Lincoln and Llandaff. The penthouse porch would have somewhat hidden this, however. 126 GOTHIC ART Besides the plain round, the doorways of the twelfth century often, as at Byland, have this other form, the trefoil, and in this, indeed, the door-head took the point earlier than it did in plain arching.1 The interest of the variation lies not only in its intrinsic grace but in its subsequent development ; for from it grew the " cusp," which became for some four centuries the accepted signature of Gothic art. As an adjunct to the arch the cusp has been conceived and criticised, as if it were an expression of added strength at the point of expected rupture.2 But the history of " foliation " 3 shows that " foiling " was really its parent ; in other words, the cusped arch came by the attenuation of an inner arch ing, that gradually merged with the outer. So the cusp is not to be considered as having been designed as an accretion to the soffite, however much it latterly got that appearance. Its history in window tracery belongs to a later chapter, but the first uses of the cusp connect it distinctly with door-heads, and show a pedigree as follows. Cir cular openings, grouped in the form of a cross, were an easy and natural decoration of a slab-filling 87. byland, west front, 1 190. to a constructive opening.4 By widening such circles until they met, a useful opening was obtained, which was easy of building with even small stones, and the method of this construction was equally serviceable for the spanning of oblong apertures. In Romanesque doorways, under the constructive circular 1 In porch entrances, however, the use of the pointed arch is constructional (to assist the slight abutments), and is continually to be found, when the inner door-head is circular, as at the Temple Church, London ; Wood ford, Northants, and St. Mary's, Devizes. Ruskin, " Stones of Venice," vol. i., p. 129 ; ii., p. 218. 3 The nomenclature of ecclesiology made this distinction : the " trefoiled " arch is one whose voussoirs are shaped to trefoil out line ; the " trifoliated " has its inner edge (intrados) so shaped, its outer (extrados) being an unbroken curve. 4 The spandrels of early triforium arcades give a complete succession from a single plain circle to the elaborate pointed and enriched quatrefoils and trefoils of Cistercian art. Tracery appears first in these forms of unglazed openings, as in the beautiful examples in the Lichfield quire, in the openings on each side of the chapter house doorways, as at Dundrennan and Cleeve, and those in the triforium of Dryburgh. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 127 arch, the filling was carried as a lintel on two hollowed corbels : a semi circular piercing of this tympanum then gave the trefoil.1 A vesica niche with a figure is charmingly substituted for the piercing in the west front of Llandaff (see fig. 166, p. 217). This little Llandaff doorway should be set beside the Prior's door, say, of Ely, to exhibit the bent of the first Gothic genius in the matter of decorative ornament — we recognize in the contrast a transformation from profusion to reserve. The latest Romanesque effort had been at the service of elaboration. So in Ernulf's work at Rochester, on the chapter house front, and in the later west doorway of the cathedral ; so in the Cluniac facade of Castle Acre, in the Augustinian Dunstable, and the nave of secular Hereford, sculpture is applied to every surface in indiscriminate enrichment. To Cistercian austerity, however, this license of architectural sumptuousness was abhorrent. As they rejected the bell- tower from their churches as the symbol of earthly sway, so they refused sculpture as savouring of earthly luxury. But here again art found its life from its conditions ; its energy was turned inwards upon construction ; and the power of sculpture, denied to surface, grew into the bones and sinews of Cistercian building. No longer relying on gorgeous robing for its distinction, architecture learned to stand in its own nude beauty, or draped itself like a Grecian statue in the clinging vesture that expressed the sculpture of its form. Decoration came back to it as the accent of construction, the emphasis of structural intention : in the last quarter of the twelfth century the purest and best Gothic architecture stands in the simplicity of shaft and moulded arch: de corative carving is confined to capitals, to a corbel here or a vault boss there. But reserved as was its first exercise, the spirit of Gothic decoration found a style of its own with a distinctness and rapidity of development as marked as it had in its planning or its construction. And in this 1 See the Refectory door at Rivaulx, floor" lights of 1175. These shapes all c. 1 1 70, as specially illustrating the evolution suggest themselves as the halves of quatre- from the solid tympanum. A plain niche foils, rather than the upper part of trefoils, in trefoil on the side of Caistor Church the corbel derivation of the lower curve being is dated in raised letters 11 24. The much distinct. The pointed variation appears in ornamented Prior's door at Ely, and the font arcades, as on the side of the Lichfield of Southrop (fig. 88, p. 132), are somewhat doorway to chapter house, c. 1180; but the later. At Clymping, Sussex, is a beautiful most striking use of this form is in the example of c. 11 70, and so too the moulded rear arches of windows, constructionally to doorway which opens into the Dundrennan narrow the spans by corbels from the jambs, presbytery. On Durham, Ely, and Lincoln as c. 1180 at Lanercost and other places in west fronts are ranges of small trefoiled the north, and in the chancel of Harrow, arcades. The trefoiled window-heads may Middlesex, and then as mere decoration in be traced from the tower light of St. the thirteenth century palace at Wells, and Maurice, York, to the big Canterbury " top in many later uses. 128 GOTHIC ART again the native English feeling showed a power of separating itself from the schools of the continent. We cannot expect here the same distinct pedigrees for our peculiarities as could be traced for our church-planning. Saxon carving and Saxon illumination have come down to us, exhibiting direct Roman introductions, mixing with the motives of the great Irish school, but the two can hardly be said to have merged into a Saxon type. A sculptor or painter can be easily imported, but such impor tation does not ensure the creation of a school to carry on his art. His method and tradition may die with him, or be perpetuated in lifeless copies with no generative energy. Such, at any rate, would seem to have been the fate of the arts in Saxon hands. Some buildings, and those often the earliest, show a grace of carved design that is Roman, and can scarcely be excelled in the early Christian art of Rome itself, but its copies grew steadily coarser.1 On the other hand, the exquisite art of the seventh century in Ireland was a goldsmith's and illuminator's craft. It had no immediate outcome in building decoration, and its power of figure representation was elementary. Passing by Iona to Landisfarne, and carried into probably every English county by the Irish missionaries, Keltic design2 supplied motives for decoration, but by the ninth century its course had been distinctly retrograde ; and in the tenth century its latest phases connect themselves with different origins. Danish inroads, again and again repeated, led at length to Danish settlements, and with them came a stronger infusion of the Norse art of North-western Europe, than the first-coming Saxons could bring. Overland from the east Scandinavia had drawn an impetus to design, that expressed itself in the wood carvings of house and ship, in the embossing of golden shield and hunting horn. Then, christianized by Keltic contact, Norse decorative art spent itself on the Runic crosses of western and northern England. In the south and east the churches built by Sweyn, and rebuilt by Canute, bequeathed doubtless in their decoration this Norse tradition; but this was mingled with the designings of that famous school of Saxon illumination8 which, sprung from Carolean schools, had given new life to the languid expressions of Byzantine "art. Manuscript painting came from this time into direct alliance with architecture,4 for the broad surfaces of Romanesque masonry provided ' As in Rome itself in the dark ages of tenth century Winchester School of ilium- Italy, the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, inators appears, for a while at least, . the 2 Mingling, but not yet fused, with Italian- foremost in the world." Byzantine elements. See Middleton's " II- " So in Henry III.'s palace at Westminster luminated Manuscripts,'' p. 86. there were paintings from a borrowed illum- 3 See Middleton's " Illuminated Manu- inated manuscript of the Gestes of Antioch. scripts," p. ioi. "In artistic power this (Middleton, p. no.) THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 129 a field for painting that drew its motives from the petit skill of the illuminator. And what was simply painted in the tenth and eleventh centuries1 began to be carved stone in the eleventh and twelfth. So^, mingling with saint and holy figure, grew into the sculpture of Christian churches the interfacings, the twisting necks and biting beaks, the bird, tree, and snake, and many a symbol of heathen "devil-worship." 2 Into this groundwork of ornamental design, common to all the sea boards which the Northmen colonized, the older Keltic and Roman influences at length sank indistinguished. But after the Norman Con quest English decoration branched into the current of continental art, when in the first quarter of the twelfth century the spirit of a distinct culture can be recognized breaking up the traditions of barbarous patterning and lifeless imagery. The schools of Cluniac monasticism3 are credited with the impetus that initiated the Gothic arts of Europe. To them has been assigned the r61e of accepting the nerveless traditions of Byzantine elegance which Genoese commerce had brought to the doors of Western Europe, and giving them forth endowed with the lifeblood of northern energy. So the great Cluniac foundation of Lewes may have acquired sculptors from the schools of Vezelay and Autun ; painters, such as those that came to paint the vault of Hildesheim, or glass stainers like those of Stras- burg. At any rate, in south-eastern England was a school of decorative painting at whose hands Conrad's glorious quire4 was adorned. In the 1 Thus at Ely can still be seen a painted and particularly in the great nunneries, which capital in the north transept, and the same received so much royal patronage, a golden pattern carved in the south. age of eleventh century MSS. painting, as 2 Viollet le Due, vol. viii., p. 189, calls shown by the illuminations of the Abbess this Norse element " Saxon," and adopting of Niederminster, Ratisbon, and by the the now somewhat exploded theory of "Hortus Deliciarum" of Herrade. Coming Aryan migration, ascribes its " Hindooism " with this, too, was an art of bronze founding to the late migration of the Scandinavians in the fonts and doors of Augsburg and from the regions of India ! The Abbey St. Hildesheim, and Liege, and possibly the Aubyn, Angers, built by Fulk the Black, is earliest art of painted glass in the figures an example. See in England the door-head of Augsburg and Strasburg, of evidently of St. Peter's, Northampton; the lintel different tradition from the school of Le built into the north transept of Southwell ; Mans, from whence grew the He de France the capitals of the Canterbury crypt, and art of St. Denis and Chartres. the very Indian-looking work at Shobdon, * " Conradi gloriosus Chorus. Tectum Hereford. One may add the font of Kirk- erat et ccelum egregia pictura decoratum." burn Church in Yorkshire. (Gervase, i. 295.) At Barfreston, nearCan- 3 The Cluniac reformation of the Bene- terbury, when the church was restored in dictines was founded in c. 909 at Cluny, 1850, were uncovered a number of early near Macon, in Burgundy (Viollet le Due, subject paintings, drawings of which are in vol. i. 245, and viii. 106), bordering on the library of the Society of Antiquaries. the kingdom which was a fief of the empire. Brook church, in Kent, also has early figure There came under Emperor Henry II. in the subjects. But Copford, in Essex, and Benedictine monasteries of South Germany, Kempley, in Gloucestershire, are the most 130 GOTHIC ART crypt the paintings of St Gabriel's Chapel still remain in good preserva tion, and are remarkable for their full colour and lifelike modelling. In Pudsey's galilee at Durham can be seen similar figure paintings, and the nave of the great abbey of Peterborough shows figures in the lozenge medallions of the nave ceiling, which is now the sole remaining example of the painted ceilings l of the Normans. These paintings may generally be ascribed to the third quarter of the twelfth century, and indicate at this time in the great Benedictine abbeys an ambitious art of architectural painting on walls and ceilings. Of glass painting no remains of the twelfth century are said now to be in Canterbury ; 2 nor are the scenes 3 in the east window of the south presbytery aisle of Lincoln (once ascribed to Bishop Alexander) now considered earlier than 1210, the date given to the rose window of the north transept. At York, however, the beautiful fragment of a Jesse window is accepted by Mr. Westlake as certainly being before 1170, and originally belonging to the quire of Archbishop Roger. This glass is allied to the early Jesses of St. Denis and Chartres, as springing directly from the traditions of the Le Mans atelier, which is credited as the primal school of glass painting. Le Mans was the birthplace of Henry II., and the connection of our arts with those of the other parts of the same dominion would be immediate, without any direct borrowing by way of the He de France. That in our monastic establishments a school of painters existed is manifest from the numerous examples of MSS.4 painted in England in the twelfth century, which can compare in beauty with any foreign specimens. However, except in this form our earliest figure painting has now such few remains that, whether on wall or in glass, we can hardly hope to trace a distinct national taste separating itself from the body of continental technique. There has been a similar obliteration of the early history of English free-figure sculpture. The beam above the altar in Conrad's quire carried, so says Gervase, " Majestatem Domini," and on either side images of St. Dunstan and St. Alphege : similarly the rood beam had striking parish-church paintings which re- however, " Archaeological Journal," March, main of the twelfth century. The latter are 1876, for a different opinion. dated as before 1150, and those of St. 3 The characteristics of a very early date Mary's, Guildford, as late in the century. are to be seen in the mosaic treatment 1 The Ely ceiling has been repainted in of this glass, like that of an Arabian lattice. modern times. That of St. Albans transept 4 Besides the celebrated MS. (Cotton, was repainted in the fourteenth century. Nero civ.) coming from Shaftesbury and 2 Westlake considers the fragments in dated n 74, and the " Huntingfield Psalter," window of north aisle of quire the earliest, may be mentioned the Lincoln " Bestiary," but nothing before 1220, i.e., the date of the dated 1187 (lately in the library of William erection of Becket's shrine. (" History of Morris), as most beautiful, and certainly Design in Painted Glass," vol. i., p. 70.) See, English examples. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 131 its cherubim and images of St. Mary and St. John. All such wooden statues have perished from our churches : 1 but at Rochester on niches flanking the west doorway are beautiful stone statues of Henry II. and his queen. Their style immediately connects them with the art of Vezelay and Fontevrault : if not themselves imported, one must believe that their chiseller learned his skill at small remove from the Cluniac ateliers of central France. But Rochester is the sole twelfth-century example in England of what was common in the great doorways of the continent, the grouping of life-size figures above the entry jambs. Elsewhere in the scanty 2 examples of English figure sculpture of the twelfth century, in the crouching figures of the Durham chapter house, or in the "apostle" figures of Malmesbury porch, the art is rudimentary and block-like,3 from which it seems a long cry to the breathing beauty of Wells. Some collateral evidence may be gathered from the general absence of niches or other coigns for the placing of free statuary in our earliest English Transitional architecture. As a Cistercian art our first Gothic rejected figure sculpture, so there seems likely to have been no body of English " imagers " until the end of the century. Then immediately the arcade ledges of our fronts and porches at Ely, St. Albans, and Peterborough begin to show abundant provision for the placing of statuary. By that time the Benedictine houses had borrowed Cistercian architecture, but had no taste for Cistercian squeamishness in the matter of figures. Whether immediately filled or not, the presence of these niches disclose the ambition of free imagery, and though now mostly empty and desolate4 they are still proof of a school of English sculpture which, quickly leaving Romanesque traditions behind, was to advance to the power of peopling the many stories of the Wells facade. However, in the lower reliefs of decorative carving the progress of an English school can be observed in many examples. In the tympanum of the principal church doorway, and in the decoration of the voussoirs of its arch, the Norman chisel sought its first exercise of sculpture. As 1 Bloxam mentions a figure discovered at too, in low relief at Leigh, Worcestershire. York of the Virgin and Child, belonging to 3 It is the same with the few effigies at- the twelfth century, as figured in Poole's tributed to the twelfth century in England, Guide to York Cathedral. which, as far as they have been preserved 2 There is a figure, said to be that of Bishop (as at Salisbury), are flattened to the block- Losinga, on the outside of the north tran- ing of the stone. The best work in high sept door at Norwich, and a sitting figure is relief of any size is the Crucifixion on the in a niche over the north doorway of the transept wall at Romsey, and this is by neighbouring Haddiscoe ; also the same at some considered to be a Saxon " rood." Grimston and Great Driffield, in Yorkshire, i At Peterborough there are a few figures and at Sherston Magna, in Wiltshire, and left, but at the beginning of this century Rouslench, Worcestershire. There is a figure, there were many. 132 GOTHIC ART the twelfth century advanced the barbaric patterning and hunting re miniscences of Viking descent, the beak heads, the dragons and fighting beasts, mingle with scenes of Byzantine inspiration, and the style of 88. S0UTHR0P, font. Cluniac craftsmanship. This mixture of motive,1 as seen at Southrop (fig. 88), in the capitals of the Canterbury crypt, and the arches of the cloister doors at Ely, is found scattered over England in the carvings of twelfth century door-heads— from the riding knights of Ford- 1 See Bloxam's "Gothic Ecclesiastical various subjects of Norman tympana. Ford- Architecture," vol. i., pp. 87-92, for the ington is dated 1091. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 133 ington, Dorset, and Brinsop, Herefordshire ; the boar hunts of Tutbury, and Langford, Wiltshire ; the grotesque symbols of Stoneleigh, War wickshire, and St. Margaret-at-Cliffe, Kent ; to the majesties, which, as in continental usage, occupy the tympana of Barfreston, Kent. and Lullington,1 Somerset. The finest of these sculp tured majesties is certainly that on the west door-head of Rochester Cathedral. Deeply undercut, the angels' wings stand four inches out from the ground, but the modelling is not yet freely in the round. Still the spirit and movement of the figures have passed from Byzantine immobility : obser vation of life and beauty of ideal have come into the figure sculpture, just as they have into the interlacements of Norse tradition that occupy the voussoirs. We may pass from this to the great doorways of the west. Rochester is but a small re move from the arrangement and style common to the Angevin dominions of the English crown, but Malmes bury and Glastonbury show a decided English bent. In the first the great south doorway is a remarkable work ; its tympanum is but small, and its 89. GLASTONBURY, NORTH DOORWAY OF ST. mary's chapel, 1186. majesty is in low relief, but mixed with circling orders of Romanesque foliage are numerous arches,2 the voussoirs of which are carved with 1 Figured in Britton's "Architectural Antiquities of England," but the actual works show more feeling and delicacy than is there indicated. 2 The intermixture of late Romanesque enrichment has led to the conjecture that the figure carvings are later than the foliage orders, but the big round rolls can hardly have been intended to be left uncarved. The more accomplished sculptor may have come later on the scene, but he was con templated in the design of the door. The 134 GOTHIC ART scenes from sacred history, set in loops banded with foliage ; at the west door are arches with similar delicate figure pieces. The spirit and grace of this method are still more clearly exhibited in the north and south doorways of St. Mary's chapel at Glastonbury (figs. 89 and 90), the last left unfinished when the funds ran out in 1 190. A similar treatment, but blunter, is found in the figure capitals of Wells. Diminutive as are the scales of these twelfth century figure carvings of the west, their style makes them a fitting prelude to the great achieve ments 1 of forty years later. Their freedom and grace is clear beside 90. GLASTONBURY, FIGURES OF NORTH DOORWAY. the wooden presentments carved on the contemporary fonts of Win chester and East Meon, which have been traced to a Flemish source. Of native figure sculpture in the south-east of England of the end of the twelfth century there are but scanty remains. The majesty on the eastern wall of the quire of Chichester (fig. 91) of 1 190 is full and round ; there is perhaps in this, and in the dragon that accompanies it, a foreign inspiration. Northwards in Cistercian art we cannot look for figure treatment. At Durham, however, are kept in the library four panels, coming from a relic-chest or reredos, with figure subjects which, though they lack the individuality of the western style, still have grace and mixture would show the south door earlier than the west, where there is less Roman esque mixture. Iffley and then Dunstable (c. 1170} have these carved loops; but at Glastonbury the foliage is quite Gothic, and the whole art that of Wells. 1 In the rolls of Wells a family of the name of Bunton are described as sculptors holding lands in Glastonbury in 1 240. (See Canon C. M. Church, "Arctiaeologia," 1893.) THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND i35 freedom of expression (fig. 92). Elsewhere a frigid head or two on corbels, or as label-stops, as in the Lichfield transept, or at Hedon (fig. 93), seem the most that was attempted in human representation. At St Frideswide's, Oxford (fig. 94),1 is the clearest indication left to us of the escape of the English sculptor from Byzantine leading-strings. Here, at first, the shaft corbels of the quire show rude Romanesque masks, but in the vault corbels of the aisles are three or four heads, almost life-size and of English expression, with a force and delicacy of 91. CHICHESTER, EASTERN TRIFORIUM, II90. style that are not far behind the achievements of Salisbury and Wells. The character of this western art defies association with any foreign source: its distinction must have grown by English practice: but in our figure sculpture, as in so much else, it has been the misfortune of our art to have had the proofs of its earliest skill wiped out, so that our undoubted thirteenth century achievements can be superficially suspected of alien inspiration. But if Cistercian austerity and the iconoclastic fury of our Puritan 1 At Oakham Hall, which is also in capitals and the corbels have considerable the diocese of Lincoln, the heads on the freedom. 136 GOTHIC ART eras have by now made little of English twelfth century statuary, there is fortunately no dearth of examples to illustrate the awakening of our native genius in the peculiarly Gothic art of flower and leaf carving. In the loom of Gothic experiment, as its weavings from the conventions of oriental design ran on into the truth of western life-mimicry, the Eng lish piece shows threads that were common to continental art ; First, that of current Romanesque tradition, which in England, as on the con tinent, was, by the twelfth century, indistinguishably mingling two strands 92. CARVED SLAB IN LIBRARY OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL. of Byzantine motive — one that had come by way of the north from Viking irruption, and one from the south through Mediterranean commerce ; Second was that fresher thread, also of an eastern art of decoration, that seems so strangely to have trailed back in the wake of the returning Crusaders, bringing to western Europe the forms of Roman Syrian art of the fifth and sixth centuries. In the Cluniac hands of the Burgundian school out of these two were twisted the array that decks with a thousand leafy luxuriances the capitals of Laon and Notre Dame. But English leaf-carving is not of this piece with the lie de France. It shows a different weaving, and a colour from an ingredient which has no place in continental art, a native distinction that maintained itself THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND i37 to the end of the Gothic style. One essential quality of this lay in our habitual rejection of the leaf in favour of the spray as the basis of design. Further removed from classic tradition, we neglected at once the crisp arrising of the Greek acanthus, and the full roll of the Roman.1 Perhaps our English method of leaf contouring may so show a certain bluntness and inelegance, as of Saxon birth, but it has in this direct branch (or spray) treatment a simplicity of natural adaptation to art, at once homely and romantic, born of an ancestry in wood land and heath, like the strain that lies in our British song from the " Mabinogion," to Burns and Tennyson. Uur leaf-scroll must be allowed to show generally less of the grand style and full rhetoric of the French Gothic manner, but, at least to English eyes, it has often a more delicate suggestion of natural grace; an observation of beauty, which is in love with the flutter of the leafage, as well with the curve of the frond, and with the sparkle of the flower, as much as with the burgeoning of the bud. The uprising of this English sentiment after its 93. HEDON, SOUTH TRANSEPT, Il8o. hundred years' subjection under the Norman Conqueror came with the birth of Gothic art. The distinctively English character of our bell- capital was clear by the third quarter of the twelfth century. The art that came with the thirteenth conventionalised the twining trefoil (much abused by the name of "stiff leaf" foliage) with a statuesque refinement of form that showed an accomplished style. But in the passage to this finished form lay many delightful by-paths, where the flowers grew with their first fresh simplicity and a peculiarly native English grace. The abundance and wealth of motive shown in Transitional carving is astonishing ; but, varied as the capitals are, trace of direct importation 1 See Sir G. G. Scott's "Lectures" (vol. i., lecture 3) for an attempt to separate the Byzantine Greek motive and the Gallo- Roman derived from Roman remains. 138 GOTHIC ART from abroad is difficult to find. Definitely French sculpture from the He de France is shown in the beautiful capitals of William of Sens1 at Canterbury, but only a suggested influence appears in the Oakham Hall. And these exhaust the markedly French examples remaining, though here and there 2 a leaf, basal lobed as in the continental Norman fashion, is found mixed among the myriad varieties of English spray 94. ST. FRIDESWIDE'S, OXFORD, QUIRE AISLE, C 1180. curvature. It is clear that there can have been no great introduction of carvers to ornament our buildings in the style of continental art. Though in monastic guise or service many a foreign chiseller must needs have come among us, yet it must be perceived that our own I.e., those of the quire, carved under his superintendence and perhaps by his hand. After his accident the capitals at once show a duller style, in fact, that of some Caen mason, who came with his stone to Canter bury. The smaller capitals of William the Englishman's work are again different, and have the Anglo-Norman crocket forms of New Shoreham and Mont St. Michel. Chiefly perhaps in the Cistercian build ings of the last quarter of the twelfth century as at Dore and Byland. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 139 building craft usually bred our sculptors, just as that of the French did theirs. To account for the variety of style which marks the carvings of Transitional buildings it is sometimes asserted that much was left in block uncarved, and afterwards at different intervals, when a sculptor chanced to come that way, finished. It is, however, not in many instances that any suggestion of this is possible ; such blocked-out capitals are not as a matter of fact found,1 and where plain and sculptured capitals are mixed, as at St. David's, one could not carve the latter from the material of the former. The ready explanation is that many hands were at work together, of different capacities, and making trial of new motives as fancy prompted them : in fact, the professional sculptor, employed solely in ornamental carving, had not as yet come into existence. It is curious how in the early records the names of those connected with the great buildings of this era have no distinction of craft. They were all " artifices" 2 and here and there were " magistri." But other wise "constructor," "ingeniator" " architector " might have been all one with " ccementarius " and "sculptor" — equal at once to the business of church-building, its designing, and its handicrafts. In view of the impulsive nature of twelfth century building, its spasmodic vehemences, sudden cessations, and uncertain renewals, one must believe that the workers at it would be equipped for all its pro cesses, and as able to carve the capital as set the vault3 At this time there had scarcely arisen separated skills, each bred only in the continual exercise of one part of the methods of architecture, as, no doubt, became strictly organized a hundred years later. In the twelfth century building was still a part of common life ; and the joy of the builder in his work broke spontaneously from his chisel when he came to the capital that crowned the pillar he had raised. And equally that skill and refinement of art, which was not so much his as it was that of the community at large, made sculpture of the whole fabric as well as of the ornamental finishing. So in the widespread practice of stone-building, carvings of flower 1 The plain capitals of the Canterbury "rector" chosen for the purpose, or were crypt seem afterwards to have been carved, even formed into a guild or a confraternity, some remaining still plain, but this was in as at Winchester by Bishop de Lucy. Conrad's finishing of Ernulf's building. At 3 Lethaby and Swainson, in their mono- Malmesbury and Glastonbury are blocked graph upon "St Sophia," show how the arch mouldings, but not capitals. exactly opposite system of a highly organized 2 Such artifices flocked together when separation of crafts was current in Byzantine they scented a big work, as at Canterbury building, one body of mechanics being quire in 1175, or St. Albans in 1200, and engaged on the engineering of the building, fell into their places under a master, a and the other on its ornamental casing. 140 GOTHIC ART and leaf came undesigned, with no school-method to indicate an im portation of sculptors. And piqued as they were to resist Benedictine ornamentation, yet the Cistercians yielded refectory and chapter house to such spontaneous fancies, which soon grew bold to make their way into the churches also. But as yet unlicensed, and in disguise as it were, the Cistercian instinct of the sculptor would ostentatiously reject the motives associated with the gorgeous decoration that had so long founded itself on the illuminations of Benedictine MSS. Cistercian carvers were open-air workers,1 not cloister students. So, while the Benedictine convent 2 could supply painters to its works, but had to call in lay masons, the Cistercians, rejecting Benedictine gauds, used their members as craftsmen in building. So came an essentially mason craft, with a decoration shaping itself on construction, not on ornament. But if in this way Cistercian corbels and capitals show a fresh departure, yet there appear in them ideas which cannot be decisively declared to be the outcome of solely constructive efforts. If alike unthreaded with English Romanesque as with the continental inter pretations of Byzantine ornament, yet the capitals3 of our twelfth century buildings had, curiously, a direct connection with the East in another way. The key to this lies in the consideration that they were the same religious convictions, which were aglow both in the Crusades and in the zeal which produced the Cistercian and other religious re formations of monastic ideal. Religious fervour was, as it were, warm to take the impression of the Romano-Greek ornamentation,4 which it saw in the holy cities of Syria, so that, hardening to work in Augustinian and Cistercian building, it expressed crusading reminiscences of the Holy Land on the stone of Welsh valley or Yorkshire moor. At any rate it is strange that so much of the building method of the fifth- and sixth-century Syrians should appear suddenly in the awakening imagination of our twelfth-century builders. Syria seems to have given the hint for not a few of the variations of our English bell-caps. Indeed, the transformation of the Roman Corinthian capital, under the stress of constructive purpose, had been carried so far there, that its final step in Gothic hands was insignificant. At Refada is to be seen a hollowed bell, set with two tiers of leafage, much as we see 1 At Duns, in Flanders, it is recorded that 3 The west door of Fountains, and the the Cistercians not only designed but worked transepts and quire aisles of Dore, the at the building of their church. At Strata chapter house of Jervaulx, and what has Florida, however, they paid wages to masons been lately dug up at Strata Florida. who came with the stone. i In Oman's " History of Mediaeval War- 2 At Gloucester, however, in 1240, the fare" it is reckoned that in the early monks set to work and vaulted their own thirteenth century the numbers of Crusaders nave, " non auxilio fabrorum, ut primo, sed returned to Europe might be counted by animosa virtutemonachorum." (Chron. 29.) tens of thousands, THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 141 at St. Leonard's, Stamford, or in the north transept of St. Frideswide's : at Siah the shaping of the circular pillar to its oblong load is accom plished by the adjustment of a leafage band on which sits a thick 95. RIVAULX, DOORWAY TO REFECTORY, C. Il8o. moulded abacus, as in North-English art : at Kokanga the bell is spirally fluted, spreading upwards to a square : and at Betoursa the acanthus leafage bows sideways, a touch that appealed to English fancy, so that many a twelfth century capital shows foliage spirally twisted or swept sideways as by a wind (fig. 95). 96. RIVAULX, REFECTORY, C Il8o. 142 GOTHIC ART So a new set of fancies,1 unchecked by Benedictine tradition, found vent in the decoration of the Cistercian bell cap — with hollow leaf recurving backwards at Byland (figs. 97, 100) ; with it boldly nod ding forward at Jervaulx (see fig. 73, p. no) and Rivaulx (fig. 96); with it clinging in elegant attachment at Dore (fig. 98) and Strata Florida. But the south had less contact with this reformed art : there the cushion capital of the Normans was rather fretted away than superseded. The Benedictine use had painted its faces with Runic and Byzantine detail ; and the chisel, when it came, carved such elaborations, as in the Canterbury crypt2 On the es- calloped capitals of the later Romanesque the leafage of the illumined manuscript is freely chiselled (figs. 99, 101), and soon the sculptor's art, growing playful, and leaving the simple forms of Lichfield quire or Llanthony, is ready, as at St. David's or Christ Church, Dublin, to make a capital here and there to blos som into a flowery bell with almost Cistercian grace. Thus in true marriage of " cushion " and " bell " capital the twining interlacements of the Byzantine motive with the springing graces of the nodding crocket bred the numberless forms by which the English art of leaf-carving went on to its thirteenth century ideal. In their progeny the native strain, which both had acquired, comes out immediately. The basal lobe of the acanthus, which remained in the French foliage, and the distinct divisioning, which marks its leaf application, pass away. Both the convex round of the " escallop " and the arris edge of the " crocket" in English capitals are resolved into sheaves of up-springing stems, that mingle heads of trefoil shoots in a thousand diversities of leafy com plication. The strong sculptural realization reached by some of these 97. BYLAND, QUIRE AISLE. 1 These observations are made from De Vogud's illustrations. Early instances of twisted caps are at St. John's, Chester, and the Hospital of St. John, Wycombe. They are found, too, at New Shoreham, Chiches ter, Byland, and St. Mary's, Shrewsbury. 2 See the process in the Infirmary Chapel at Ely, and in the Dunstable nave, THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND H3 late twelfth century capitals of the Western School make them among the masterpieces of the Eng lish type. At Whitchurch, Dorset,1 growing from the es callop-form are some exquisitely varied combinations of twining tendril and plaited flower stems (fig. 105) ; at Chester2 the " es callops " droop forward as open lily flowers ; at Dore (fig. 98) the crocket heads are drawn upwards into slender leaflets, that demurely clasp the abacus ; at Llandaff3 (figs. 103, 1 1 2) they throw out snaky flames that toss abroad; at Wells4 (fig. 102, see too, fig. 74, p. 111) they run like tangles of curling hop bine. 1 Casts of some of these are in the Architectural Museum, Westminster. 2 East end of south quire aisle of St. Werburgh's. 3 Similar are at Christchurch, Dublin. 4 The capitals of Glastonbury and St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, are of the same school, and also at Cwm-hir (fig. 107). 98. DORE, EASTERN CHAPELS, 1 1 90. Sk ¦inwt'TiT/ ann hi*' 'iiim ui: 99. STOKE SUB HAMBDEN, CROSSING, C. 1 1 80. 144 GOTHIC ART 100. BYLAND, QUIRE AISLE, C. Il8o. 101. DORE, QUIRE AISLE, C. Il8o. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND i45 102. WELLS, NAVE, 1190. 103. LLANDAFF, NAVE, 1 1 90. u 146 GOTHIC ART In south-east England, as became its position close to the continent, the end of the twelfth century shows carved capitals in the form of the _, „_„_^ Vr?7T'-r?~~W~~r " / Norman development of the 7 ' ' ' " :' '¦ ;! dominions of the English kings. Their art is one with that of Mont St. Michel and Angers, before these were ab sorbed in the He de France expansion, that came with the conquests of Philip Augustus. Less imaginative than the western carving, but still with many fanciful devices, are the varied series of New Shore ham and Chichester capitals. The contrast of their simpler treatment is marked when put 104. deerhurst. beside the leaf upon leaf ar rangements of the Canterbury presbytery, directly taken from the art of 105. WHITCHURCH, NORTH TRANSEPT, C II90. the He de France. In the parish churches of the south may be found some fine examples of English taste, as in Corfe Church,1 where the 1 The only one of the old capitals left by a very destructive "restoration." THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 147 head of the angle crocket is starred with a deeply cut flower, or in St. Anne's, Lewes. In the north the crocket capitals of Malton and Hedon, as of Hexham and Auckland, are com paratively dull. But, as we have indicated, in the ruined halls of the Cistercian houses are still to be found specimens of a refined sculpture, and especially a beau tiful motive of a long-stemmed water-leaf in the capitals and corbels of Byland1 (fig. 106) and Fountains. But the charm of the English spray and flower treatment, in its contrast with the full leafage of the He de France, can be best judged in mid England. St. Frideswide's, Oxford, shows a series of capitals of the last half of the twelfth cen tury, a few of which are figured on the pages following, where their simple beauties can be seen to be peculiarly English. Allied, but with a bolder and fuller modelling, are the early carved capitals in the Dunstable country and along the valley of the Nene : also those round Stam ford and Ely and in the marshlands of Norfolk and Lincoln.2 Here are numerous essays which take up the Oxford ideas along with the luxuriance of the western art, and lead on to the finished com positions of Lincoln, developing full-headed sprays, that mingle their broad-leaved trefoils, and so wreathe a roll of foliage to support the circular abacus. 106. BYLAND, WEST DOOR, C Il8o. 1 The corbels in the north aisle of the Byland nave are very boldly undercut ; see, too, in the chapter house at Fountains, and the great water-leaf corbel of the refectory (fig. 69, p. 107). At Furness is the same style. 2 Such as Rothwell, Northamptonshire, for example, and St. Mary's, Ely; also at Emneth and Leverington near Wisbech; and afterwards the wonderful capitals of the quire of St. Margaret's, Lynn. 148 GOTHIC ART j-U — I ..... 107. CWM-HIR, NAVE CAPITAL, NOW AT LLANIDLOES, C. II90. 17"^ 108. OXFORD, ST. FRIDESWIDE'S TRANSEPT, C. Il6o. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 149 log. OXFORD, ST. FRIDESWIDE S NAVE, C. 1170. IIO. OXFORD, ST. FRIDESWIDE S NAVE, C. 1170. 15° GOTHIC ART The rapidity of this evolution in carving was as remarkable as it has been shown to have been in the structure of Gothic. This power of sculpture came to the English artist almost in a generation, from the III. OXFORD, ST. FRIDESWIDE'S TRANSEPT, C. Il6o. earlier capitals of Oxford (fig. 1 1 i)to those of Llandaff (fig. 1 1 2), Wells, and Lincoln. But it was not imported, for from first to last its mannerisms quite distinguish it from any of the continental provincialisms, as much as from the great Gothic school of the He de France. The education of its skill grew in the delight and practice of the chisel in the hands of THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 151 a body of English stonemasons, and the heat of its effort came from the strength of the blast with which Gothic inspiration fanned it. From the carvings of Iffley to those of Glastonbury were hardly thirty years ; from 112. LLANDAFF, NAVE, II90. Shobdon and Kilpeck to the chapels of Dore perhaps the same ; from the ornamentation of Castle Rising Priory or St. Peter's, Northampton, to that of Lincoln Cathedral even less ; yet, side by side, they show a revolution in decoration as marked as that in the mason-craft of the Ely 152 GOTHIC ART galilee by that of the nave ; or in the building of Tynemouth quire within the same thirty years as the Durham chapter house. But what so came was not, as in the case of the structure of Gothic, a process of refinement — a lessening of mass accompanied by a structural polish — rather it was a change in the idea of refinement. Delicacy of ornament had been the last word of the Romanesque art ; deft and practised must have been the chisel that nicked out the low- reliefs of the Rochester chapter house or the rich intricacies of the Wenlock and Bristol chapter houses. Yet from such patternings, from zigzags and interlacements, from the beak-head and grotesque mask, from barbarous puerilities and zoomorphic totemism, from biting beast and writhing bird, the step was in this short half century to the restraint, the clean cut accent, the perfect serenity of achievement of the floral sculpture of Lincoln and Wells ; the change was evidently not that of a mere manual dexterity, but a pecular eruption of creative energy in art, such as came once to the Greeks of Athens, and again to the painters of Florence. Thus English Gothic expressed an intention of its own in every material that was presented to it. In the process was developed a peculiar delicacy of sentiment, an aroma of tenderness, which is perhaps to be regarded as symptomatic of these periods, which witness the birth of an epoch, when under the excitement of rapid creation the deep unschooled emotions of the Art instinct appear on the surface. This afflatus would seem to have specially lighted upon the works of the western schools that were building along, or inside, the borders of Wales, and upon that Cistercian art which grew up in the Yorkshire abbeys. It is in these quarters that we would place the watersheds where the fountains of English Gothic art first sprang into light. Drawing from both, as well as from its own bed, came the springs of the Lincoln art, that flowed into the thirteenth century as the clear current of the English style. The south-eastern art, which by its position had most affinity with the continental schools of Gothic, yet on the whole contributed the least to this flood. It is in order to suggest this conclusion that the attempt has been made to try and separate the distinctive qualities of our early varieties of Gothic. There are doubtless many circumstances likely to render these distinctions obscure and difficult to read. The record is fragmen tary, and characteristics, taken as such, may after all owe their position less to local distinction than to the chances of preservation. Thus it may be said that the Yorkshire and Welsh art of the Cistercians now appears to have peculiarities, because their houses in other more popu lated parts of England have more completely perished. On a priori grounds, indeed, one can point to reasons which in Cistercian building THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 153 would have been likely to suppress the creation of local types. For conclaves of the order, meeting year by year, brought the abbots of all the houses together, and as in the statutes, so in the plans of Cistercian building, is found a uniformity which marks them all over Europe. For all religious bodies in England, too, the English method of land tenure would tend in the direction of a wide dissemination of general building methods. The custom of the Norman Conqueror was to split up large estates instead of allowing them to be concentrated. So landowners, and convents as such, would hold manors all over England, where buildings would be erected by them. And still more the habit of putting smaller religious houses under the dominion of the larger must have continually interchanged the heads and members of these establishments. Such " cells," as they were called, were often in parts of England 1 distant from the " mother " house, and indeed many an English priory was dependent on abbeys in France. Then, too, the assignment of parish-church2 advowsons to religious houses, often in distant places, might have been expected to bring about a con stant mingling of church -building ideas to the effacement of local usage. Yet despite these influences tending to amalgamation of county with county, the north with the south, and the east with the west, it can be shown that during the last half of the twelfth century the architec tural style of Gothic art developed itself as provincial in three or four distinct areas. In the laying out of plan and arrangement no doubt each religious order had, at first at any rate, a distinct usage which it would carry out all over England and pass on to its colonies ; but constructive detail seems to come undictated from headquarters. The early Cistercian buildings of Ford, Buildwas, and Fountains have no peculiar uniformity of mason-craft. Working communities as the Cis tercians were, whose first labour was their church-building, each convent seems to have gone to school with the local mason. Nor, on the other hand, did the Benedictine abbeys pass on their building notions to their dependents, or the Augustinian houses to their connections. The style of Tynemouth Abbey has no relation with anything at St. Albans, but is the early Gothic of the Augustinian Hexham and Lanercost ; that which appears at Coldingham and Jedburgh, though the first was a dependent of the Benedictine Durham, and the second had got its canons from Beauvais. Plan and ritual, it 1 Furness had dependencies in Ireland, in Surrey owned Cardigan in South Scotland, and the south of England. Leo- Wales. minster in Herefordshire was given to 2 The Cistercians at first set their faces Reading. St. Albans had " cells " at Tyne- against this method of aggrandisement, but mouth, Northumberland, and in Norfolk afterwards accepted it. The Canons Regular at Binham and Wymondham. Chertsey andSecularwerelargelyendowedinthisway. X 154 GOTHIC ART seems, could be carried, but architecture in the twelfth century was in each district an endemic growth, which, securely established, crushed out any interloper. In the birth of a native architecture geological facts provide the bases of distinctions which are at once the most local and the most enduring. A natural building-craft must take its sustenance from the materials of stone, brick or wood, which came most readily to its hand, and of necessity interprets and accentuates the peculiarities of its station. Gothic architecture in England developed itself in stone shaping ; its parent Romanesque had come as an imported art, and at first essayed to bring with it the Caen stone,1 as it did its Caen masons. But this was bringing " coals to Newcastle." England was a country of varied stones, free to work and easy to wall, and soon in the plenitude of Norman building each district varied its mason-craft by practice in its own free-stone. In the flush of experiment, which came with the Gothic expansion, such distinctions were intensified. The art of an imported mason would be barren outside the district, where was the stone upon which he had formed his craft. The easy carriage of designs would be futile to change style, when the material in which alone that style could be carried out was absent. So a gulf, which could not be bridged by mere casual importation, lay between the square block building of the Yorkshire millstone grit and the rubble waitings of Kent, with their niggard edgings of soft cut chalk or crabbed rag. The sandstone of South Wales, as the oolites of mid England, each bred their own masonic mysteries, despite the interminglings of convent life, and the dispersions of ownership. Neither the church nor the feudal system, it would seem, had power over this matter ; they could not divert the currents of advancing art from the channels where they chose to run. Thus it would be geological similarity as much as geographical proximity which allied the early Gothic of Kent and Sussex with that of the opposite coasts of Picardy and Normandy. Our Transitional masonry has here, apart from the direct importation of William of Sens, a distinct continental com plexion. The lifting of the base of the vault shafts to stand on ground pillars is found in the north 2 as well as in Kent, but the methods of Canterbury and Rochester quires smack most of Laon and Caen. The greater hollowing of the south-eastern vault ; the more complete resolu tion of the wall into a skeleton of arch construction, which came with the use of Purbeck column ; the broader proportions of the south-eastern windows, all speak of a nearer approach to the continental manner of 1 Caen stone, however, remained an first hear of free-masons, "sculptoreslapidum article of import into England for some liberorum." centuries, especially into London, where we 2 See fig. 61 for Canterbury and Ripon. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND i55 Gothic than is seen elsewhere. So do the crocket capitals of Canterbury and Chichester ; the clear separation of the orders in the arch-mould, and often its florid enrichments, as at New Shoreham and Canterbury. I. Ford, 1 150. II. Chichester, 1165. III. Canterbury, n 77. IV. Canterbury crypt, 1 1 80. V. Shoreham, 1190. VI.-VII. Chichester, 1190-1200. TRANSVERSE RIBS. I. Malmesbury, 1140. II. Romsey, 1150. III. Chichester, 1165. IV. Canterbury, n 77. V. Canterbury, 1180. VI.-VII. Chichester, 1 190-1200. VIII. Shoreham, 1200. DIAGONAL RIBS. 113. DIAGRAM OF SOUTH-EASTERN VAULT RIBS IN THEIR EARLY GOTHIC USE. Note the characteristic " filleted" bowtel: in VIII. used by itself. And of Henry II.'s continental dominion, too, is the heaviness of the " transverse " rib (fig. 1 1 3) in the vault retained in the south-east, when in the west and north of England it had been early reduced to the same section as the diagonals. A similar retention of Anglo-Norman feature Romsey, St. Cross, Canterbury, Canterbury, Canterbury, Shoreham, Romsey 1150. 1160. 1175. 1179- 1180. 1180. 1200. 114. THE SOUTH-EASTERN EVOLUTION OF THE ABACUS. is that of the square top arris of the abacus (fig. 1 14), which in the west and north, as at Dore and Lanercost, sooner reached the Gothic profile. The "filleted" bowtel was the usual characteristic of the southern profiles (fig. 113), while the "pointed" is that of the north (fig. 120), and the " plain" round and deep-cut hollow that of the west (fig. 117). 156 GOTHIC ART The map below (fig. 115) gives this south-eastern district where flinty rubble and rough rag were in plenty for walling, but where free stone of any scantling was precious and brought over sea, so that masonic habit is plain in the flat surfacing of the glazing, close to the outside, and the consequent deep internal splaying of the windows which invited com positions of internal arcading, where the characteristic Purbeck shaft was used free with turned capital and base (see pier sections, fig. 72, p. 109). 115. THE MEDLEVAL DIOCESES (SOUTH-EASTERN). The names with dates show the early Gothic building. Very distinct was the western expression of first Gothic architecture in the warm big sandstones of the Welsh border, or the free oolites of Somersetshire. Furthest removed from continental suggestion, and earliest in its forecast of what was to be the English evolution, the west had a style which could be prodigal in stone, easy to work, and to course in ashlar; with windows fully moulded on the outside; with piers that were clusters of shaftings masoned in courses; with arch and jamb mouldings full and round, as in the characteristic roll of the Severn valley, or profiled with bowtels deeply cut between, as at Strata Florida, Wells, and Shrewsbury (fig. 79, p. 116); with vaults, which show at once Gothic coherence, by the ribs being of similar section for transverse and diagonals (fig. 1 1 6), and also by their being oblong-planned and level-crowned, and rising, too, to Gothic loftiness ; with walls and piers THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND i57 I. Bristol (transverse and diagonal, as fig. 118, I.), c. 11 50. II. Worcester, Dore, Strata Florida, Gloucester, Llandaff, 1150-1190. III. -IV. Strata Florida transept chapels, 1150-1190. V. Ford, Dore, Canterbury, 1150-1190, VI. Gloucester, Westgate, Glastonbury, 11 90. VII. Strata Florida, Canterbury, Glastonbury, 1 170-1 190. VIII. Strata Florida, c. 1170. Il6. DIAGRAM OF WESTERN VAULT RIBS. DIAGONAL AND TRANSVERSE. Note the characteristic " plain " bowtel : in VIII. used by itself. expressing to the ground the vault construction, as at Worcester, Dore, Dublin, and Glastonbury ; or, as at Wells and St. David's, acknowledg ing their full strength for a corbelled vaulting. The map below (fig. 1 1 7) .DUBLIN 1160-1190 WESTERN PROVINCE OF EARLY GOTHIC STYLE. Venlockii8oi /\ Cwmnir,l2o6\ .<«. -Stra^orida / g j vVbrcMUrntf-U 1 A •¦, ' / W DH?anthon ¦'"'*BrgJon A / ^ Brecon '?•¦$. 1170.- Gloucester,"* / /> '•,m poV • ;ji3° y ^ .•' Romsey Ford im-5 '*--;'',Cl l. 1. • ?Whitchurch "wirpborn 117. THE MEDIAEVAL DIOCESES (WESTERN). The names with dates show the early Gothic building. 158 GOTHIC ART gives the range — from Dorset to Chester, and from Lichfield to Dublin — of a style, whose character developed in the triple pier shaft, that had caps with octagonal abacus, while their long elegant bells, often without necking, were set with a free foliage carving, whose art would seem touched by the same fire as awoke in the twelfth century in the outburst of Welsh song (see pier sections, fig. 71, p. 108). Northwards, severe with Cistercian austerity, and most often strong and rough with the grit of north country sandstone, is the Transitional Gothic of the North-Humber Land (fig. 1 18) — in the dioceses of York, Durham, and Carlisle — whose influence ranged far into Scotland. The solid clustered column was its characteristic, with each big roll angled NORTHERN PROVINCE OF EARLY GOTHIC STYLE. 'Darlington I190 •Whitby, 1200 Il8. THE MEDIAEVAL DIOCESES (NORTHERN). The names with dates show the early Gothic building. THE TRANSITION IN ENGLAND 159 to an arris (see pier sections, fig. 70, p. 108) ; whose capital at first is short (see that at Hedon, fig. 93, p. 137), plainly moulded, and squarely contoured upwards from the pier section ; and then directly, with no I. Fountains, 1150. II. Fountains, 1160. III. Dundrennan, 11 70. IV. Ripon, n 70. V. Malton, 1180. VI. Hedon, n 90. These are square in plan. I. Durham, 1180. II. Byland, 1180. III. Lanercost, 1180. IV.-V. Auckland, 1190. VI. Fountains, 1205. These are circular in plan. 119. THE NORTHERN EVOLUTION OF THE ABACUS. half-step of the octagon, grows circular in plan ; the thick abacus having a wide flat hollow (fig. 119); the arch-moulds, too, showing the same arris, and wide hollow ; and strings and vault ribs with the pointed bowtel as the recurrent feature (fig. 120). I. Newcastle, 1150. II. Fountains, Ripon, Byland, 1160-1180. III. Fountains, 1160-1180. IV. York sacristy, 1160-1180. V. Ripon, Dundrennan, 1160-1180. VI. Ripon, York, 1160-1180. VII. Hexham, Fountains quire, 1 190-1205. VIII. Selby, 11 80. 120. DIAGRAM OF NORTHERN VAULT RIBS, DIAGONAL AND TRANSVERSE. Note the characteristic " pointed " bowtel : in VIII. used by itself. But with this austere masonry came quickly, too, the Cistercian grace of building, that ranged the windows, deeply-set, in arrays of varied arcadings outside and in, and developed them to an extraordinary loftiness in the compositions of the high square- ended fronts. In mid England the school of advancing Gothic could not grow 160 GOTHIC ART with such clear and simple distinction of feature. The broad tract stretching from Wiltshire to the Humber, that was the diocese of Lincoln, touched the north, west, and south-east alike, and, lying midway, seems to have taken something from all three. As has been said, the ruin of the twelfth century monastic houses has been too complete here to give chapter and verse. But in default of an Augustinian and Cistercian development, we may turn to the evidence of a parish-church style, that quickly found its way to Gothic expression in hundreds of village churches in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, and especially along the valley of the Nene, and through the flat lands of the eastern marshes and the broad shire of Lincoln. The southern part of this tract found an individuality of its own in the use of the fine shell-stones of Totternhoe and Bath, fostering a school of carving allied to that of Somersetshire and the Severn ; while in the northern the famous Barnack stone carried its strong craft wherever there was water-carriage. Here was it that by the refinement of the bulky Romanesque column into shapely octagon or clustered pier (fig. 121), and by the necessary resolution of its round cushioned cap into bell plain-moulded, or wreathed with clustering trefoil, grew the habit of a style which from the end of the twelfth century passes directly into the fibre of English Gothic, giving it enduring characteristics. The speech of modern England, it is said, traces its descent not from the Saxon of the south or the west, not from the Northumbrian dialect, but from the mid Engle tongue that was spoken on the borders of the fen lands from Lincoln to Bedfordshire. It is said that in the words of the Mercian peasant the courtly poet of the fourteenth century first made English literature. Just so it would seem that from the Mercian mason-craft of parish churches came the vernacular of English Gothic — the tongue whose first great poem was the lordly quire of Lincoln. l(C 1130) n 1155 HK.H50 I. Southwell, Malmesbury. II. Kirkstall. III. Oxford. IV. Lincoln. 121. THE MID ENGLAND EVOLUTION OF PARISH CHURCH PIER IN LARGE CHURCH DESIGN. CHAPTER IV The Greater Building of the Thirteenth Century It had been the reign of that efficient monarch, Henry II., that gave England its Transitional style of Gothic. His personal interest here, as in Anjou,1 may have counted for much, and, by the political side of his controversies with Becket, this went with the bishops who opposed Benedictine supremacy, and with the reformed societies who were superseding it. But perhaps it was the peace which Henry gave England, and what that peace induced, the making of the English nation, the welding of Saxon and Norman, which found expression in those extraordinary activities of architectural creation which, under Cceur-de-Lion, had culminated in a national Gothic style — one that discarded provincialism, and exhibited itself throughout the length and breadth of the English island. But on the rush of this achievement there followed a slackness. Philip Augustus was doing in large measure for France what Henry had done for England ; but our art, that had risen clearly above the horizon, passed for a time under eclipse. What the style had been in 1 200, so was it in 1225 : Beverley, Salisbury, and York hardly advanced upon what at Lincoln, Winchester, and Peterborough was building thirty years before. In contrast with the speed of the develop ment of the last half of the twelfth century, our art at the beginning of the thirteenth seemed at a standstill. The ferment of John's unruly reign, the foreign invasion and civil strife, were less responsible here than the peculiar incidents of his quarrel with the papacy. Indeed, a vigorous advancing art has not unfrequently in the world's history shown itself independent of the conditions of turbulence and warfare — often would seem to feed on the energies which they bred. But John's oppression of the Church could not but affect what was primarily an art of church-building. The interdict which left England at one time with only one bishop within her shores ; the stoppage of church services, which, for a time, were maintained in England only by the Cistercians ; 1 Gonse says, with regard to his action on edifices, dont le principe architectonique the art movement of this time : " C'est lui donne naissance au style Angevin — plus qui fait batir en Anjou ces remarquables connu sur le nom ' le style Plantagenet.' " , Y 162 GOTHIC ART the uncertainties and delays in the consecration of churches ; such in cidents must have had a retarding influence on architectural enterprise. But the prime cause of inactivity in building art would be the stoppage of the money. John sucked up for the time all the revenues of the Church, and so must have taken the sinews of war from many an archi tectural campaign. Only to Cistercian monkery 1 was he tolerant, and it required, so the legend goes, a supernatural vision to compel him to this clemency. At any rate, it would seem that for the last ten years of his reign, Cistercian building alone was carried on in England. On the accession of Henry III., in 1216, the Church was delivered from this spoliation, and architectural art again began to show advance in the splendour of its appointed way. The reign of Henry III. is to be accounted the golden age of English Gothic art. The monarch himself is credited with an artistic sensibility2 which was the reflex of this time, and so French had been his training, one would have expected an immediate bending of our art directly into the path of that of the He de France, now in the full triumph of its career. Such an influence came when, in 1240, Henry was to rebuild his own abbey of Westminster,3 but by no means does French inclination appear generally in our archi tecture at this period. Another dominant force gave the immediate impulse of its development, and for the thirteenth century our English Gothic art expressed the position of our English Church, and not the proclivities of the English sovereign. Bishop Stubbs has indeed called the thirteenth the golden century of English churchmanship. Under Stephen Langton the Church stepped to the front potent and popular, a deliverer credited with victories, not only over monastic, but over feudal and papal aggressions. Had it not taken its place in the forefront of the nation's battle for freedom, by which Magna Charta had been wrested? Had it not prevented the feudal ambition which threatened the young King Henry's reign ? and moreover, it had achieved the repute of a national spirit such as would not brook John's surrender of its liberties to the Pope, but, able itself to rule its own house, dispensed with papal legates. So it was that in the thirteenth century the bishop of the English Church occupied a position of power, not merely as the great feudal lord— that his predecessor of the first Norman hierarchy had often been— but with a moral influence, that was rooted in the soil of the 1 His donations to Beaulieu and Hales- 2 The extracts from the Liberate Rolls, owen are recorded. Worcester may have quoted by Hudson Turner in his " History had similar patronage, since it consented to of Domestic Architecture of the Middle receive his body. Its quire had started Ages " give vivid illustration of his tastes. building c. 1 203, and was dedicated (though 3 "Convocati sunt artifices Franci et not then finished) in 12 18. Angli," says Matthew Paris. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 163 national life. Prelates • such as Archbishop Grey of York, Bishop Hugh II. of Lincoln, Bishop Jocelyn of Wells, were among the most distinguished Englishmen of their day. And, with direct evidence, their secular cathedrals and collegiate minsters are witnesses of the popularity of their taste, which threw itself into the stream of English building, and despite the French sympathies of the Court, built in the national manner. In London, as at York, we have at this time the initiation of enlarge ments, in pure English style, which left those cathedrals the largest in ground area of any churches north of the Alps and Pyrenees. York was begun under Archbishop Grey,1 a.d. 1225 : his tomb there (c. 1260) is one of the most beautiful of remaining mediaeval works of the kind. His minster at Ripon received its towered front, his college at Southwell was given a new quire and presbytery, for his canons at Beverley a great quire with double transepts was built : all works which show the dignity and grace that are the crown of the finished Early English style. At Wells, Bishop Jocelyn, from 12 20- 12 39, built his palace, and completing and vaulting his cathedral, raised that consummate and original composition of the west front, with its storied galleries of sculpture, a masterpiece in a century of great achievements. At the same time at Lincoln his brother Hugh the Second took up his pre decessor of Avallon's unfinished work, which had languished under the trouble of John's reign. He finished the magnificent hall of the palace; at his hands and those of his successor, Grostete, the great transept of the cathedral was completed, and on St. Hugh's tower falling in 1 230, the nave and west transepts were rebuilt, and the west end widened and finished with two towers flanking the old front,2 which Remigius had first built, and Alexander had remodelled. The pile of Lincoln is worthy of the great names associated with it. While in English history there are few names greater than that of Grostete, champion of the English against Rome, the protector of the friars, associated with every political and intellectual advance of English national life, his cathedral, finished under his direction, is a monument that can add lustre even to such a reputation. In the south Bishop Richard Poore of Salisbury moved his cathedral from the inconvenient heights of old Sarum and the too close neighbourhood of Sarum Castle to the level meads of the Avon, where in 1220 there was set out the one great English cathedral that rose from the ground complete in the perfect style of English Gothic : continued 1 He was connected with the building of 2 By some it is considered that it was in- the court. In 1 243 King Henry III. issued tended to carry the nave further west, pulling a commission to him to expedite the works down Remigius' front, but that funds run- at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, ning short, the scheme was abandoned, 1 64 GOTHIC ART by Bishop Bingham, it was completed (1258) under Bishop Giles of Bridport, whose beautiful tomb is a gem of English sculpture. Finally, in London, that was now, by Henry the Third's building close to its gates of the royal palace of Westminster, secured in its position as the royal as well as the mercantile capital of England, the great secular cathedral of St. Paul was given an immense eastern en largement. The work was begun, it would seem, shortly after 1220, with the quire and crossing. This, says Dugdale, was completed 1240, but immediately afterwards it was carried eastwards again, and was so made 30,000 ft. in area, the largest quire in Europe, twelve bays in length, with a suggestion in the fifth of the English eastern transept, and stretching eastward from this another six bays lifted on the lofty crypt, that was the church of St. Faith. The main transept, too, was raised and vaulted, and its fronts rebuilt. In their total these thirteenth century works had an area of 65,000 ft., equalling the whole ground- space of the contemporary French edifices of Bourges and Reims, and — since St. Paul's would seem to have been in height from floor to ridge nearly 1 70 ft. — with a total of cubical contents scarcely inferior. And westward also still stretched the old Norman nave, adding another 300 ft. in length, and an additional area of 35,000 ft. To this were given clerestory and vault,1 and thus with lofty tower and spire was completed the largest mediaeval church of Europe. The greatest works of the early English style are those of the Bishops. Yet, though under the direction of the secular, as opposed to monastic influences, these cathedrals by no means show the spirit of the French plan, which, from its origin in the struggles of the free cities, has been called " laic." Instead of the hall centring to the open sanctuary, English churchmanship insisted on the distinctness and dignity of ecclesiastical privilege by borrowing from monastic exclusive- ness the fashion of its " quires." 2 The primal division of the Christian church had once been but nave and sanctuary, the " quire " being an inclosure in the nave. But mediaeval ritual, bit by bit, subordinated the simple emphasis of this divisioning to accord with ideas which gave as 1 Apparently wooden, as may be judged habitual sense of all that is east of the by the absence of flying buttresses in the "crossing," irrespective of the position of nave. The authorities are Hollar's prints the choir. Later English arrangements have and Wren's drawings of his proposed dome left the choirs now only in Westminster, anterior to the fire. Norwich, and Peterborough, in their Nor- 2 To keep the text clear from confusions man position west of the crossing. In the ordinary use of common terms has been the same way, nave is used for the west- adopted, while strictly technical usage is ern limb with all its aisles and chapels, indicated by inverted commas. The "quire" but "nave" is to be taken strictly for the proper of a church is where the choir is central compartment. See plan on facing placed, but quire is to be taken in the wider page. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 165 much distinction to the clergy as to the altar. The Bishops in our thirteenth century cathedrals decisively carried "presbytery" and "quire" east of the " crossing," and setting up a distinct wall between them and the cross of the people, gave architectural emphasis to the line of this separation. 'K»s"L TVlMrVfc" NORJH Than; eit La w 13 1 88 GOTHIC ART the triforium stage has still too great emphasis, and the clerestory has suffered. The mouldings, however, show throughout the peculiar rich ness of sculpture which the northern style had acquired from the hands of its Cister cian craftsmen. Here, again, the fronts of quire and transepts have fine design (the quire end being the earlier), with three tiers of triple lancets, deeply recessed, and richly shafted inside and out ; flanked by bold splayed buttresses, which contour upwards into octagonal tourelles of con siderable substance, elegantly arcaded, and 140. WHITBY, BAY OF QUIRE. rising into little pointed spire- lets (fig. 141). One passes at once to the quire of the Cistercian Rivaulx (fig. 142), ruined as at Whitby, but still able to display the beauties of the Yorkshire man ner of Early English. It, too, has seven bays, but they are wider than at Whitby, and the nave and the quire is itself 10 ft. wider, and here there was a H1- whitby, north transept, c. 12 10. vault. Though this has fallen, the proportions and details of the wall can still be seen to be superb. The triforium 1 keeps to the dispositions 1 The proportion of the main arcade to the whole wall being about half; at Hexham and at Whitby it had been a little under this. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 189 -CTE 0 l I :53 of Hexham and Whitby, but in the clerestory we may see indications of an advance; the middle light of the triple arcade is spread so as to allow of a double lancet, which nearly fills the whole spandrel under the vaulted rib. Eastwards the two storeys of triple lancets correspond respectively to the main arcade below, and the triforium and clerestory above. This is as it was at Whitby, but the upper lancets are much widened again, heralding the advance to the single window. Yet how much Rivaulx has retained the distinctive provincial character of the early northern Gothic may be judged by turning for a moment to the almost con temporary quire of a southern Cistercian house. At Netley the clean-cut delicacy of the southern chamfer replaces the rich mould- work of the storied lan cets of the north. But more signifi cant are the proportions,still broader than at Riv aulx, with ef fects that are passing be yond the range of the earlier art ; and with windows that have distinctly left the old simple outline, and are fast developing the foliated circles of tracery. Netley (fig. 143) shows its art in the full stream of an advance in style, while the northern manner was an elaboration, not as yet a transformation of the first teachings of Gothic. The motives at Rivaulx are those of moulding ; carving is still eschewed with Cistercian austerity; the capitals are plain and no sculpture appears, 142, RIVAULX, QUIRE BAY, c. 1230. 143' NETLEY, BAY OF QUIRE, c. 1230. 190 GOTHIC ART save here and there in the soffite of a corbel, the stop of a label, or the point of a cusp.1 There was retained, too, from the same sources a certain thickness and squatness of pier, which is still in strong contrast with the marble shaftings of Lincoln and Chichester. But the art of the grand epi scopal style, as it had developed in the south, was now to come northward. It had appeared at Beverley and York, and during the second quarter of the thirteenth century was to establish its sway over the Cistercian distinctiveness of first Northern Gothic even in the house of its birth, the great abbey church of Fountains. Before, however, passing to these developments, one must note here a branch of this art of the reformed orders which at this point separated itself from the stem of English Gothic, and continued a growth of its own. The Scotch houses close to the border had joined in the task of forming the elements of the first northern manner. But after 1220 the Scotch art began to take a course of its own, and its first step aside would seem to have been in the refusal to adopt the clustered shaftings of slender monoliths, which became current in the north of England in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Up to this date, Scotch architecture had not made a province of its own : so that in the solidarity of monastic institutions the * houses endowed by David show an art of building no different from that of the Norman English. Even outside the dominion of the Scottish kings the Romanesque 2 of Kirkwall, as well as that of Dunfermline or Kelso, is of the character of Landisfarne and Durham. The early Gothic of Dundrennan is just as that of Roche — Coldingham quire follows Darlington — the canons of Jedburgh built like those of Lanercost, and in the second quarter of the thirteenth century the Premonstratensians of Dryburgh, in raising their beautiful quire transepts, still used just the style 3 that we have associated with the Yorkshire abbeys — with the eastern extensions of the Benedictine Whitby, or the Cistercian Rivaulx. In the most important building of southern Scotland, the great quire of the Glasgow cathedral, a continued work in this manner was carried forward for a century and longer.4 The sharply pointed lancets may 1 The refinement of these ornaments is southern England by the dragon-heads of to be noted. The cuspings occur in the Malmesbury, and the sculpture at Deer- enrichments of sunk quatrefoils and trefoils hurst. set in a circle, used with exquisite grace at 3 In the triforium, however, it discards Rivaulx, Dundrennan, and Furness. the arcades, and rather in the western Cis- 2 More distinctly Irish elements might tercian style shows a single opening of rich- be expected in Scotch Romanesque than foiled tracery. are evident. Iona shows in its transitional ' Indeed, in the fifteenth century there part some peculiarities, but they are father was built here an imitation of the thirteenth Norse, and could indeed be matched in century work. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 19T suggest the art of Lincoln, but otherwise there is no likeness ; and though the plan of its east end has been compared with that of Dore, and even fathered on Salisbury,1 it must be remembered that years before Bishop Poore, Archbishop Roger had built his quire at York, as well as, it would seem, his collegiate church at Ripon, with an eastern 144. GLASGOW QUIRE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST, C 1220-1280. (From the view in the " Builder " series of " Cathedrals of England and Wales.") processional path and chapels. The detail of the Glasgow art, at any rate, is distinctly that of the north, with the windows deeply moulded inside and out, as at Hexham, and with the stout pillar-work of York shire, ere this had been superseded by clustered shaftings of marble. Again, as at Hexham and Whitby, the central compartment is un- 1 In connection with the adoption by Glasgow in its ritual of the " Sarum Use." 192 GOTHIC ART vaulted, though in the crypt1 and aisles we may see the problems of vaulting treated with an ease and playfulness that showed thorough acquaintance — what indeed the practice of Cistercian pillared chapter houses had developed in the north. In these peculiarities may be placed the starting-point of a distinctly Scottish architecture. Already, in the aisles of Glasgow, the window2 is going away from English usage. In the transept and clerestory this process is carried further, and the style of the nave has become quite peculiar. Before the end of the thirteenth century Dunblane (fig. 145), New Abbey, and Elgin had developed still further the beauties of a Gothic art, which, though it left the line of English advance, did not for some time approach the path of the French. The planning of Glasgow is singular in the north of England, as having the low eastern aisle instead of the high gable front. It is also generally distinguished among thirteenth century quires by its full two-storeyed arrangement.3 By taking advantage of the fall of the ground to the east the lower floor could be a fine high crypt, completely above ground, 125 ft. long by 63 ft. wide, the aisles in ten narrow bays, and eastwards a " processional path " and chapels, vaulted to about 25 ft. in height. This crypt, aisled with massive clustered piers, and solidly and steeply vaulted in compartments of conspicuous elegance and complexity, could afford ample space for many chapels, such as in one-floored quires were provided in transeptal east ward projections. A dignified connection with the upper floor was here given by the two aisles of the crypt, rising westwards with broad flights of steps, which, turning respectively left and right, landed on the level of the crossing, from which, between the altars of the quire screen, further 145. DUNBLANE, WEST END, C. I250. This has now been re-roofed and "restored. 1 The complicated central vaulting of the crypt was, of course, later, following on the finish of the quire above. " The characteristic is in the continued use of the double lancet and simple tracery, combined with the lofty lights of the earlier style, instead of the broad windowings of the south. 3 St. Paul's, in London, was its nearest rival : Canterbury crypt is more buried THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 193 steps led eastwards to the quire (fig. 146). North and south also from the " crossing " were steps to transepts which, to the full height of the body, but not projecting beyond the line of its plan, acted as vestibules to the quire aisles. These, continued as a " processional path " round the east, end with four chapels, in repetition of the design of the crypt below ; and thus aisled all round, the " nave " of the quire had the style and arrangements of its five bays much as at Hexham. Above the two bays of the east end is a beautiful composition of shapely pointed lancets. The design stands deservedly high among the smaller thirteenth century compositions for its varied perspectives, and the stately con nections of its stairways, which add a sense of spaciousness beyond the actual dimensions. Outside, the fall of the ground gives considerable dignity to this two-storeyed quire ; and it deserves note, too, as being left to us the best remaining specimen of the simple square-ended aisled apse, which, at first planned in many of our great churches, has elsewhere been super seded by later additions. To return to the English art, it has .been observed that, while in the south of England they were the more , , , 146. GLASGOW. PLAN I., OF QUIRE; II., OF CRYPT BELOW. complex developments of the English type, A" Quire- a "CrossinS'" c- Fifteenth century chapter. that gave at Salisbury, and afterwards at Wells and Exeter, a peculiar picturesqueness both inside and out, yet after the twelfth century everywhere north of the Humber, and generally in the east of England, the square-ended version of the other type — the high-fronted east end — has prevailed. The magnificent expression of this idea was undoubtedly that of Fountains and Durham, achieved when first the Cistercian and then the great Benedictine Abbey entered on the ambitious rivalries of quire extension. The first is now a ruin, but the vigour and grace of its planning can still be seen. The quire proper was begun here early in the thirteenth century, but seems mostly to have been built in the second quarter. Its proportions and the plan of its piers show a lightness1 of construction beyond anything built on dale shafting, not circular but with pointed arris. Its bay design is comparable with ft. high and 3 ft. in diameter, with Nidder- that of the Lincoln nave, which remained c c 1 The aisles were some 35 ft. high, the nave" over 60 ft., the piers themselves 25 194 GOTHIC ART the scheme of big monastic design in the north up to this date ; but it was when the east end came to be completed that the full aspirations of the thirteenth century were recognized in the two x bays with double arches, which open north and south, to the full height of 60 ft. The walls, of the eastern transept (fig. 147) are built with similar aspiring grace with two storeys of lofty lancets, in whose arcades the profusion and variety of slender shafting were extraordinary. Externally the seven bays of the east wall stretch 1 50 ft., flanked by deep buttresses, and in its original state2 the facade must have risen very nobly, with a height of near 100 ft. aboye the lawn, facing full front to the valley midway between the cliffs of the river-bottom. Equally impressive from its adaptation to its position, and the grandeur of its seat on the high rock above the Wear, is the great east front3 of Durham, still pre serving much of its original aspect.' In ground area the inside planning of the " Nine Altars " 4 is almost as at Fountains, but the work is more massive, and vaulted 80 ft. from the pavement. The walls are 8 ft.- thick, and the abutments reinforced by buttresses of 10 ft. projection, which extend the facade to nearly 160 ft. The greater dimensions of the Romanesque planning of Durham enabled the central com partment here to match the wings bold method of double diagonal North and south the transept 147. FOUNTAINS, BAY OF CHAPEL, C. 1240 The shafting, which was multitudinous, has now disappeared. in width, and this is vaulted in ribbings, that meet on a circular ring some time the widest and lightest of Gothic arcades. 1 See plan, p. 76. The pillars are octagon, with marble shafts at each of the angles 50 ft. high. 'ui. The three central lancets were replaced by a fifteenth century window. 3 Started under Bishop Poore, the founder of Salisbury Cathedral, but probably built from 1240 to 1270. There is some like ness to the southern work in the ground arcade (fig. 148); but above, everything is on bolder lines than anything at Salis bury. 1 I35 ft- long by 35 ft. wide. See plan, P- 20 1. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 195 opens full width, with, on either side, first a sexpartite, and then an 148. DURHAM, NINE ALTARS, LOOKING NORTH, C. 1240. The north window is c. 1270. oblong quadripartite vault. In this way the "nave" and aisles of the old design have their divisions cleverly accommodated to the symmetrical 1 96 GOTHIC ART disposition of the nine bays. This vaulting, which was after the middle of the century, is wonderfully bold and fine ; its shafts, clustered five and seven together, rise with great dignity from the floor to the height of 60 ft., and between them the two storeys of lancets, with their deeply caverned reveals, fill the whole space. The lower storey ranges with the nave and triforium of the Norman disposition ; the upper has its sills brought considerably below the spring of the vaulting ; in the middle bay a big rose 1 occupied the whole width and nobly centred the com position, that in all its details grafted the style of the episcopal Gothic of the south on to the vigorous habit of the northern art. Durham has been taken as the successor of Fountains in its bold eastern frontage, but the manner of its vaulting and windows is rather in development of those of the Tynemouth quire-ending,2 while the vigour of its style can be traced from the great work of Archbishop Gray at York. Here his twelfth century predecessor, Roger, had built a new quire on to the Norman building, but Gray left the scale of this far behind when he laid out his transept c. 1227. Aisled on both sides, it was no ft. wide, and as completed by Romaine was 225 ft. in length. Four-bayed (with a width of 24 ft. to each bay3), the main arcades are 40 ft. in height, and above is a triforium another 18 ft., while from wall to wall the " nave " width is nearly 50 ft. So far would seem the first setting out under Gray, with a space at command which gave due development to Gothic proportions, and a lightness of Purbeck shafting which carried far the ideal of Gothic expression. Its dispositions are so much like those of Hexham and Whitby, that it is difficult to believe that this bold scheme was designed to be stone- vaulted ; the aisle buttresses, indeed, show little preparation for vault-thrusts. However, the triple vaulting shafts, which are corbelled well down between the labels of the main arcade, have capitals that come 4 ft. down into the triforium, as if proposing a vault from this level, and the remains of the wall ribs can still be traced (fig. 149). Such a ceiling in the steep northern manner of Beverley and Rivaulx would have given a height of some 30 ft. to the clerestory, and the design, if so completed, would have had a grandeur that might well have vied with Amiens or Reims. But John le Romaine, the treasurer, or his masons who carried on the transept building, were not ambitious of this completion, and compromised with 1 This is now " restoration " work of eastern bay was vaulted as a square apse in Wyatt's. Externally there has been so much three divisions; see the pictorial "restora- rebuilding, that we recognize no original tion " in Sir G. G. Scott's " Lectures," vol. i. details, but only the power of the deep pro- The lancet composition (fig. 84, p. 123) of jecting buttresses and the light loftiness of the east front is as striking as that of the the pinnacled buttresses. transept of Hexham. 2 C. 1200, see plan, p. 77 : aisleless and s A. B. Rogers' bays had been but 17 ft. in one height, it had a width of 35 ft. The wide, and the " nave " of his quire 35 ft. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 197 a wood ceiling, carrying the shafts of the first building higher, and finishing the wall with a stunted arcade of some 12 ft. So Gray's bold effort is now roofed in wood at about 90 ft.,1 instead of the 1 10 that would have* matched the proportions of its setting up : and the nave and quire of the fourteenth century fol lowing these levels, the de sign of York has been robbed of the distinctive height of its first intention. The south front of this transept, with lancets (fig. 1 50) occupying the whole height of the internal triforium and clerestory, shows an indepen dence of the Norman tra ditions held further south at Lincoln and Salisbury, as insistently as at Canterbury or Chichester, in all of which the divisions of the internal storeys are taken round the gable ends. Still more at York does the north tran sept front break away, lifting five lancets 50 ft. in height right from the ground wall arcade to the wall top, having above seven stepped lights to fill the gable. However, in the detail of its design, Archbishop Gray's was dis tinctly the introduction of the grand episcopal style of Lincoln and the south. Following it were two I49- Y0RK BAY 0F S0UTH TRANSEPT. c' I23°- great quires of the north, that were perhaps the finished efforts of this 1 The existing wooden vaulting is prob ably fifteenth-century work, but Gray's connection with wooden vaulting was im mediate. In 1243 tne king enjoined him to put to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, a wooden roof " like the roof of the new work at Lichfield to appear like stonework with good ceiling and painting." 198 GOTHIC ART mid-thirteenth century art, that of the Augustinians at Bridlington and Kirkham. The first was 150 ft. in length from the "crossing," and ISO. YORK, FRONT OF SOUTH TRANSEPT (BEFORE RESTORATION), C. 1240. 80 ft. in internal width ; while Kirkham quire was nearly as large : of the latter one beautiful window remains, but nothing of Bridlington THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 199 quire. Fortunately there still exists the canons' quire, at the neighbouring Beverley, to show the earlier genius of Yorkshire masonry in its first adop tion of the graces of the shafted style of the south. Coupled with it may be taken the Worcester1 extensions, where in the same way we find the first Western Gothic giving place to the grand episcopal manner. Both quires are of nearly similar planning,2 with distinct eastern tran septs, but the canons' quire is the smaller ; narrower in its width, it does not extend so far eastward ; its eastern transept is, however, more developed, and has an eastern aisle which is wanting at Worcester. In the planning of its bays Beverley (fig. 149) shows distinctly more vertical expression ; with narrower width, its arcades are as high as at Worcester, and above the proportions are finer. Beverley 3 has achieved a lofty clere story of nearly 20 ft. in height, — an exquisite example of graduated arcading, — but the triforium is repre sented by a blind arcade, a beautiful composition of four trefoiled bays with another arching in alternation. It is to be seen how here the gallery or " upfloor " of the old monastic church design is suppressed, and the threefold Norman divisioning almost superseded. At Worcester, however, the dispositions of Benedictine building are repeated, and the clerestory is 1 Beverley may have been set out shortly after 1 200, but was, probably, not begun till Henry III.'s reign, being then rapidly built. Worcester was begun in 1203 and conse crated in 1 2 18, but further work was done in 1224 to the east end after the fall of " turres," probably at the eastern " crossing," where failure threatened, too, at Beverley. See note 3. 2 Worcester has ten bays, and the eastern chapel extends another short bay beyond, in 151. BEVERLEY, BAY OF QUIRE, C. 12 20. all being 180 ft. in length; the midway bay opens north and south to the full height in an aisleless transept. Beverley is 120 ft. with seven bays, the last only projecting clear of the transept, being, in fact, an enlarged edition of the canons' plan (p. 66). 3 Characteristic of the Beverley art are the corbelled projections on the crossing piers of the eastern transept, which seem a structural poise against the- thrusts-of the aisle arches. 2oo GOTHIC ART but little loftier than the triforium. This latter, however, is not open to the gallery, but is walled behind with an arcade, which is seen through the triforium arcade. Externally Beverley (fig. 152) can offer the more complete expression of verticality and independence of Norman tradi tions, but Worcester1 has been so repaired and rebuilt, that outside it has ceased to be a Gothic cathedral; it is likely that its original appearance had less of the bald shapelessness with which " restoration " has now endowed it. The eastward addition 2 to the great Benedictine cathedral of Ely (fig. 153), though later than Worcester or Beverley, and in the full style of 152. BEVERLEY, QUIRE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST, C. 1225. Early English, still exhibits in its bay disposition more decidedly than either the survival of Romanesque ideal. The Norman design of its first building is here simply translated into lighter shaftings, and more sculpturesque ornaments. The triforium is orthodox, a single outer arch inclosing two trefoiled inner arcadings — while the triple arcaded lancet of the clerestory exactly repeats the method of the nave design ; but instead of the wood ceiling, whose flatness gave space to the nave, there is here a vault, the low lines of which cramp the proportions with such a small height as 70 ft. On the other hand, the bays being only 1 7 ft. in width, advantage has been taken of this narrowness, so that the clustered piers of the main arcade are comparatively slight, of solid Purbeck, while above 1 Its windows are all of this century. s Which made a presbytery and chapels, of four bays beyond the Norman apse. In the fourteenth century these were joined on to the new crossing, built by Walsingham after the fall of the Norman Tower. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 201 the delicate pillaring, the rich corbelling of the vault shaft and the many and beautiful ornaments combine to make an interior of exquisite grace, 153. EASTWARD EXTENSIONS OF NORMAN PLANS I. Ely. H- Durham. a. Norman building. b. Twelfth century western hall. c Galilee, c. 1200. d. Presbytery and chapels, 1235-1251. e. Lantern, 1 321-1349. f. Lady chapel, 1321-1349. G. Quire, 1321-1349. a. Carilephs quire. B. Nave (vaulted) c. 1140. c Galilee, c. n 70. d. Nine Altars, 1240-1270. in spite of the Romanesque dispositions (fig. 154). The east end, how ever, could pass outside the earlier dictation, and ranges its lancets to P P 202 GOTHIC ART the height of the two lower storeys, while above rise five lights graded to the vault. Externally the front has been one of the richest of the thirteenth century extensions, and still shows effects, comparatively un-" restored," though a good deal altered in later mediaeval times. These three quires are all ceiled with quadripartite vaults with the oblong severies of the first English method. The sexpartite of Canter bury appears at Rochester and in the Lincoln transept, but the plain oblong quadripartite was the distinctively Early English vault. Lincoln, Worcester, and Southwell added a mid rib ; but not till the end of the half century did Lincoln nave and Ely show the extra " branch " rib, which was thereafter to shape so distinctly the development of the English ideal. Their great quires were the char acteristic achievements of the thir teenth-century artists, and of such the city of London, with its royal sister Westminster, had two which could match with any in Europe. Of dis tinctly contrasted types of planning, that of the secular cathedral of the city is English in its square end and high front ; that of the royal abbey an evid ent copy of a French chevet (fig. 155). Both, however, belong to times when the style which we have called Early English was losing the characteristics of first Gothic, though each exhibited the ideals of loftiness, and the genius and proportions, which were of the first half of the thirteenth century, rather than the spreading openness which the second half was to inaugurate. St. Paul's quire is left to us only in the indistinct portraiture of Hollar's prints,1 and Wren's drawings of proposed rebuildings before the fire. Its bays can be calculated at 154. ELY, BAY OF. PRESBYTERY, c 12.35. 1 Hollar gives the plan as well as views (see fig. 38, p. 78). THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 203 26 ft. wide, with near a 100 ft. of height, of which the main arcade may be taken as about half, surmounted by a full triforium of double lights and a lofty clerestory with three-lighted windows. The " nave " of this. quire was full 40 ft. in width, and stone-vaulted.1 The lancets of the east end are judged2 to have ranged so close as practically to have merged their divisions into mullions (see fig, 250 in Chap. VIII,)/ while above them, and occupying the full width below the steep gable, was a circular rose, which must have been the largest in England (see p. 209). _ Westminster Ab bey has no need to be described. Its re markable position in the history of our art lies in the fact, that, while its plan nings horizontal and vertical (figs. 1 55, 156) are evidently bor rowed, straight from the French source, the details of its style are markedly English. The absidal scheme has been brought over, but no French archi tecture ; there is no JSS- Westminster, plan of east end. foreign detail as at A- Quire> I245-I26°- c- Chapter-house, 1250. Canterbury-only in B" Vestry' I24S- D' Henry the Seventh Cha?eL their narrowness and height is the French character of its bays.3 The style of Westminster quire is the most finished product of the Early English of the first half of the thirteenth century, just as that of Lincoln quire had been of the last half of the twelfth century — by comparing them (see figs. 60 and 1 56) we may trace the progress of fifty years. It is time, however, to pass from the quires and transepts to the great churches which in all their parts were the creations of the thirteenth century, and the evident exponents of its ideas. The great episcopal manner of Early English — episcopal in the promptings of its mason-craft, not, of course, inthe^art thereof — came into being in the building of Lin- 1 Wren's 1666 drawing, made before the " Three Cathedrals of St. Paul's " are not to fire, shows this, as well as the flying but- be always trusted as accurate presentations tresses, which appear in all the prints. of the evidence to hand. 2 Mr. Ferrey's drawings in Longman's 3 And perhaps in their window tracery. 204 GOTHIC ART coin, and was carried forward there and at Salisbury. These cathedrals present throughout their extent a practical uniformity of style, though in both the later parts indicate the working of newer ideals which came to supersede those of their first designers. Still there are considerable differences in their several methods, and not a little diversity in effects. To some extent these follow the indications given by their several plannings, for the Lincoln east ending, built on after 1260, is a specimen of the high square front of the north-east, while Salisbury shows the spreading chapels of the southern and western type ; so the arcadings and deep external jambs of the Lincoln windows are as those of Cis tercian Yorkshire, while the flat broad windowing of Salisbury is that of Canterbury and Chichester. Yet Lincoln has a manner, really quite distinct from that of Yorkshire, worked with a cleaner and neater, yet with as bold a hand, that in fact made a type of its own; with a luxuriance of carving and a wealth of design beyond anything in the north. De Noyer under St. Hugh was the first to formulate what grew to be the grand style of the first English art. As such it appeared immediately in the first years of the century in the Ely Galilee, and the west end of St. Albans. After the stress of John's reign, as Lincoln cathedral advanced under Bishop Hugh the second, its style linked itself closely with what was being done for the secular canons of Wells by his brother Bishop Jocelyn, who completed Bishop Regi nald's church, and added the sculptured magnificence of the west front. And with much of this craft, too, was the new cathedral, which, having no Romanesque forerunner, could rise with greater uniformity of design, and a more settled plan, among the meadows of the Wiltshire Avon. The main part of the Salisbury and Lincoln building must have been simultaneous,2 and, except in their eastward terminations, their planning is similar, and the dimensions do not differ largely ; Lincoln has, however, much the broader "naves," 39 ft. against the 32 ft. of Salisbury, and the arcade-bays are wider, being as much as 27 ft. in the nave. This difference materially affects the design, and is intensified by the treatment, yet, though Lincoln has the lower vault, its suggestion of size and lightness, as at present seen, is the greater. The bays in both have the traditional Romanesque storeys, but the shafting and carving of the Lincoln piers contrast with the stouter, if loftier, plain- The east ending of Lincoln, the west was done during John's reign, but after his front and chapter house of Salisbury, and death, under Hugh II. (1209 — 1225) the the towers in both are later. work went on apace, and after the fall of 2 Salisbury, begun in 1230, was quite St. Hugh's tower, in 1237, the nave was complete, as far as the body of the church completed. After his death, in 1253, the went, before 1260. At Lincoln, St. Hugh's lengthening eastward was carried forward quire and tower were first built, and the from 1256 (when the town wall was removed transept's followed. It would seem that little for the purpose) till its completion in 1286. 157- SALISBURY, PLAN OF EAST END. 156. WESTMINSTER, BAY OF QUIRE. 158. LINCOLN, SHOWING ST. HUGH'S APSE IN OUTLINE. 206 GOTHIC ART capped piers of Salisbury1 (figs. 159, 160). And the vaultings are very distinct. At Lincoln this springs (as was designed at York, and as was carried out at Durham), below the sills of the clerestory arcade ; so by taking advantage of the great width of the nave and bay, it rises with a magnificent concav ity, enriched by extra ribs, to an ornamented and arched ridge, the vaulting shafts being corbelled from just above the piers of the arcades. ^Vt Salis- bury the vaulting shafts are squat, at tached to the triforium' sfegc, a-ntfcthe vault springs from theHprp- stoxy sill. In this it follows Gloucester and Wells, where thir teenth century vaults completed twelfth cen tury designs ; but such a retention in a piece of great design, like Salisbury,2 is proof ¦how the habits of Romanesque origin clung to the path of English Gothic art. And even Lincoln, with all its lightness 159. LINCOLN, BAY OF NAVE, C. I240. and the energy of its aspiration, leans in large measure on the older art 1 The pier arcades being in height about bay allows of triple arcades in the triforium. 40 ft, the triforium 16 ft., and the clerestory 2 It is to be observed that one mason, about 24 ft. The greater width of the Lincoln Robert, " rexit per xxv annos." THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 207 Though Romanesque solidity has been refined away, the vault, sharp as it is, and buttressed by "flying" support, is still only a ceiling articulated to the wall, not to the ground. The Norman divisionings of ground storey, upfloor, and attic, range the wall into an expression of solid continuance ; the inclosure is no screen stretched between the pillars of the vaulting, but a structure of mass that stands under its burden. At Salisbury this effect is overpoweri ng. ¦ The triforium arcade with its clusters of thick columns, which take their stand definitely on the plntform of the ground storey, and look all the squatter for contrast with its proportions, and above, the cold round shallow vault, makes this perhaps the least successful of EnglislrtKirteenth century compositions, as it is now seen. But in treating of Salisbury it must be admitted that no de sign has suffered more from the effects of modern tinkering. What Wyatt left has been un mercifully submitted to the -most drastic methods of restora tion. Bedizened with all the properties of the ecclesiastical furnisher, the quire interior is now beyond recognition as Gothic_architecture, and any beautigs of its original art are hard to find in the atmosphere of luridniustiness created by the l6°- Salisbury, bay of nave, 1240. modern glass. As a background to the polish of the new Purbeck shafting, walls and ceilings are now covered with a painting weak in colour and puerile in design. And to match this effect throughout the church the 208 GOTHIC ART old shafts have been greasily blackened, breaking up the design with inconsequent partitionings, which belittle all its proportions. But very different ideals were conceived in the scheme of decora tion which once adorned Salisbury, and of which there were, before its last treatment at the hands of our decorators, considerable indications. It would seem that the walls were originally given a strong full colour- ing of dark tones, mostly red7Tntb the"~ground of which the black shaftings melted without disturbance, so that the whole acquired a solid depth of texture which would he. in harmony with the formality of the architectural designing. The broa4_wifidows, on the other hand, in place of the hot colourings now given them, were, as the few remaining bits testify, of a silvery radiance,1 such as the scheme of the later windows at Canterbury began to develop — what is now best preserved to us in the " Five Sisters " at York. Under so different a guise one can see the present coldness of the Salisbury architecture would be trans figured. What might have been gained from the magic of its thirteenth century painting may be learnt from the fragments left to us at St. Albans, Romsey, and Beleigh, which, if they show a complete uncon sciousness of what we call " design," yet effect an immediate presenta tion of beautiful colour and successful decoration. Still, this dependence of our great thirteenth century cathedral on the manner of its decoration must be admitted. Architecturally the Salisbury transept can never, even when unencumbered lay* Bishop Beauchamp's struts, have presented the internal dignity of that which at Lincoln is the noblest of our single-aisled transepts.2. The design there is of St. Hugh's date, and though the vaultinglias the sexpartite spacing of Canterbury, the native character is maintained, and all the details are strictly English. The striking effect is in the treatment of the transept ends, north and south, with their great traceried circles,3 24 ft. in diameter, filling the gables above the triforium passage, below which there are narrow lancets ranging with the arcade. This fine method of composing the vault spandrel of the gable front by the cir cumference of a great rose light was common in France from the twelfth century onwards, and is accounted peculiarly French. Indeed, except 1 It is from the even quality of its ma- seem, in its setting out, but raised and terial that most modern coloured glass vaulted in the thirteenth century), was 300 ft. misses this effect, which depends on the in length, 92 ft. wide, and 100 ft. in internal admission of a large quantity of grey light height. through prismatic inequalities of surface. 3 Now in the south transept fourteenth 2 It is a little wider than Salisbury, and century tracery has taken the place of the 224 ft. long. Hexham transept is next to it thirteenth, but the thirteenth century metri- in effect, though unvaulted. York has now cal life of St. Hugh spoke of the two eyes the largest of the two-aisled transepts, but of the transept, the dean's to the north, and St. Paul's, London (Romanesque, it would the bishop's to the south. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 209 at Lincoln (fig. 161), our English examples have mostly perished.1 The ruin of the west front at Byland (c. 1 200) shows the half shell of a rose that was some 25 ft. across, and at the end of the century St. Paul's, of London, must have equalled the largest of foreign achievements ; for l6l. LINCOLN, NORTH TRANSEPT. From a drawing by J. Begg in "The Builder." filling the whole upper half of the east end was a mighty traceried circle the whole width of that wide chancel, some 40 ft. in diameter (see fig. 250). 1 Viollet le Due, viii., p. 68. " L'e"cole nor- mande toutefois, comme Pe'cole anglaise, fut tres avare des roses." But a considerable list could be made, showing really that once they were far from uncommon in the first English Gothic style. Both Patrixbourne and Bar- freston, Kent, have beautiful roses in their gables of mid-twelfth century. What Sir G. G. Scott put in the east front of the St. Frides wide's is of little authority ; but at St. Mar garet's, Lynn, have been found the frag ments of a magnificent thirteenth century rose, like those that exist on the gables of the Peterborough west front. There was the later example, too, at Durham in the front of the " Nine Altars." In France, Mantes and Laon have the finest twelfth century ex amples. Then the great ' ' rose "of Paris west front is 29 ft. across; while those of late thir teenth century transepts are nearly 40 ft. E 2IO GOTHIC ART Externally, the mellow warmth of the Lincoln stone, though sadly tarnished by the increasing smoke, still glows radiantly against the blue and grey of English skies. The water-colourists of the early part of this century paid their devotions to its charms as a colour subject. No less distinguished as such was the grey of Salisbury, clouded with lichen, and flecked with moss— bathed in the clear blue atmosphere of its moist water-meadows, and contrasting with their green. The texture of each is now that of time, but in their first designings we can note an adaptation to material which was as unconsciously effective of beauty as nature's own touch has been. At Lincoln the warmth of stone-colour seems dwelt upon in the depth and multiplicity of shadowing projections, which are characteristic of the Lincoln design from the first. Advantage is taken of the wide setting out of the bays to introduce an 162. LINCOLN, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. intermediate buttress 1 besides the main struts of the vaulting. The rich shaftings, and the array of the spiky gablets of these many buttresses, the varied arcadings and acute window pointings, the many porches, and, above all, the deep projections of the triple transepts, give to the side views of Lincoln an effect of richness which no other mediaeval cathedral can approach. The long plain roof-line, the steep abruptness of the gables, the majesty of the triple towers subordinate this intricacy of detail to the cadence of a strong expression of unity which is character istic of every view of Lincoln, whether distant or near. Salisbury can lay claim to the same distinctions, though the crowning grace of its spire, as, indeed, the heights of the Lincoln towers (once also spired, but in lead), however imagined, were yet not the actual creations of the century. 1 In the transepts this is carried up for in the nave it abuts only the aisle vaults. the intermediate rib of the sexpartite vaults ; See plan, fig. 158, which shows the vaults. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 211 In comparison with Lincoln, the grey of Salisbury must be con fessed shadowless and inexpressive. But time has been largely respon sible : in the first glistening whiteness of new Chilmark stone each one of the contours of its refined mouldings would have had its due effect. For the details of the stonework, when closely examined, are wonderfully clean and incisive, and the evenness of the masonry is such that the same beds are carried round the most of the building. But now the vertical lines are largely lost in the general mottling of time, while the deep folding bases, repeated in the weatherings of the buttresses, and above again in the deep undercut strings, emphasize a horizontality which the inefficiency of the vertical cleavages fails to modify. But it is chiefly the monotony of its window spacings — the broad double lancet 163. SALISBURY, FROM THE NORTH-EAST, BEFORE WYATT'S DESTRUCTIONS. of southern work — which is responsible for the baldness of the side views, nor do the designs of the transept fagades help the effect, for they are mere repetitions of the internal storeying. Above the ground floor the grouping of the gables is more effective, but the eastern limb seems short and the transepts too close together to give the feeling of the long stretch of Lincoln, or indeed to compare with the elegant incisiveness of the much smaller eastern limb of Beverley. Still, taken as a whole, the pyramidal perfection of Salisbury, -rising; from level ground, can claim its place of honour beside the high-set majesty of Liric"oln. It is to be noted how in each the traditional Norman effect of a cross-planned church is preserved as the national type. The western towers of Lincoln are in no competition with the great lantern of the crossing, and at Salisbury they are mere western pinnacles. The idea of the French western screen with its enormous height has been studiously 164. PETERBOROUGH FRONT. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 213 avoided. Indeed, among English west fronts neither that of Lincoln nor Salisbury is distinguished ; each has been sufficiently abused — the first called a mere "towel-horse to hang arcades on," and the latter censured for its " parcellings " and " raggedness " — and both alike severely criti cised as sham expressions of the constructions behind.1 Such strictures, however, lose sight of the very practical character of thirteenth century building, which had a purpose of its own and went straight thereto. The arcadings of Lincoln are no mere strings of elegancies — not as features of a composition are its angle spirelets designed, but that tier upon tier on their eight faces might be set the effigies of the saints ; that on either hand of the great Norman arch might range a hundred bishops and kings ; while in the gable above were to be carved the seven Spirits of God and the four Great Beasts round about the Lamb. It was the same at Salisbury, the wide niches were peopled with a history in stone : a meaning much beyond the mere expression of construction was the practical purpose of such a front. We may not, however, hope by any modern sculpture to replace this expression, for the heart as well as the faith of the thirteenth century is needed to forge a key to the significance of its art. This peculiarly English manner of ranging statues, not along the jambs of their great west doorways, as the French did, but in sculptured rows of imagery,2 so that the whole front of the cathedral fagade might detail the history of the church, was developed in the secular art of Lincoln, Salisbury, and especially of Wells. It has been indicated, how the great Benedictine Abbeys of East England, Bury, and then Ely and Peterborough, had established in the twelfth century the architectural significance of the English west front, as an extended screen stretching to a width often greater than that of the main transepts. With their spreading wings and lofty midway towers the fronts of Bury and Ely had been unapproachable in the majesty of a massive Romanesque solemnity. As at Durham and Castle Acre, they were graced with an infinity of storeyed arcadings that recall the galleries of Pisa and the Rhine. Early in the thirteenth century had been added to Ely a projecting Galilee or porch, a marvel of Gothic shafting with clustered pinnacles, which seem to mimic those of Poitiers, but still with no story of sculpture. But to the twin-towered front of the neighbouring Peterborough (fig. 164) at the same date was set a much more magnificent portico. Here 1 Peterborough and Wells, too, have of such fronts as those of Wells, Salisbury, come under the lash of the professors of and Lincoln." "true principles." Thus Professor Freeman 2 The single rows of colossal statues to speaks of the latter as " a thoroughly bad be seen at Paris and Amiens are of a later piece of architecture. I deny the honesty appearance. 214 GOTHIC ART the three great bays — the centre elegantly narrower than the other two — arched 80 ft. in height, stretch with the towers that flank them to a width of nearly 1 70 ft. Above are three gables 1 dexterously managed to have at once central emphasis and balanced symmetry, and in each a rose window set above a range of lancets. In the arcade which these lancets penetrate we can trace the beginning of the English use, which would make of its entrance fagade a great external iconostasis set up in front of the sanctuary of the church : 2 for nine apostles are ranged across the gables, and under them six kings, and other figures beneath. But in the secular cathedrals this idea is carried much further, as at Lincoln, where the range of statues (now all gone) must have con stituted the idea of the design. And passing to Wells, also of about 1 230, we find the scheme in the full measure of its development, and with fortunately a good deal of the imagery still left for us. The great western architectural screen is here 1 50 ft. in width and 70 ft. high. From its face project six deep buttresses, and at the sides and back are six other similar buttresses, the whole giving, with their projec tions, a gross length of over 400 ft. Round -most of this are ranged three tiers of images, and two bands of sculptured incident. With per fect art the doors are subordinated to the scale of the statuary, and give it a prominence. The doorways, even the central one, hardly rise above the solid, plainly-moulded base, emphasizing and not interrupting its solidity. The suggestion of a great entrance front is, indeed, carefully eschewed. It was not for the hurrying throng to press in here to the church ; for such there was the great North Porch, and on the south the door from the cloister that gave access to the western vestibule. Rather to the dead this front was dedicated, for at its feet lay the cemetery of Wells, from which would be read this history of God's Church on earth, expressing its faith and pointing to the hope of the resurrection. So in many ranges were the niches set with long-robed saint, and king, and martyr, and all the founders of the English church. Above the 15 ft. of base — which, plain and solid, makes the firm foot of the great screen— are arcades, with double pedestals for full-length figures,3 while angels with scrolls look from the quatrefoils of their canopies. Above, between their gables, and at the buttress angles, another row of quatrefoils is carved with the history of the Redemption as it is related in the Old and New Testaments. This makes the first 1 It is asserted that we have not here the later front of imagery, on each side of the original design, but that a loftier front was west door. This was added to and altered intended until the foundations began to in the fifteenth century. See fig. 216, give way. Chap. VI. 2 At Crowland, not far off Peterbor- 3 Most of these are gone, but there are a ough, are to be found the remains of a few still in place on the north side. THE WEST FRONT OF WELLS CATHEDRAL. To face p. 214. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 215 division, some 30 ft. in height above the base. The upper storey— some 40 ft. again— completes the screen. This is composed of a tall arcade, with slender shafting 35 ft in height, continued round the buttresses, and inclosing the windows, which, with the propriety of a natural art, are plain and flat, their simplicity working in the same sense as the unobtrusive doors below to give effect to the fullness and lightness of the arcaded imagery, which— the real purpose of the front— ranges between them in a double row. In the spandrels above the tall arcade is sculptured the resurrection of the dead in a series of ninety-two com positions. Then in the centre, between two lofty pinnacles, that complete the thirteenth century fagade, rises a wide-stepped gable, its lower storey in nine arcaded niches, presenting the nine orders of the heavenly host, and above colossal figures of the twelve apostles, whilst crowning all, in a square three- fold niche, is the figure of Him who sitteth above the cherubim, and judgeth them that are risen. There were on the whole in this immense composition 24 seated colossal figures, over 200 life-size standing images, and nearly as many smaller compositions of sculpture. In the latter years of the fourteenth century were raised the western towers, now seeming somewhat to modify the original design, which the position of the buttresses indicate as perhaps differently intended. Speculations of what might have been are, however, mostly idle, and the later addition is cleverly enough managed, and has, at any rate, destroyed all trace of what (if anything) was before it. Just as it is, weatherworn and stern of aspect, seamed, too, and belittled by the pipy 1 " restorations " of the last twenty years, yet its grace of proportion and the directness of its purpose give it an unfailing charm. Coming up the side of it, from the gate of the Penniless Porch, when the sun, in its westward course, has thinned out the shadows of its deep bays, and given a light to each darkened face, one feels still the suave majesty of its composition, the benignant graciousness of its arrayed figures, as the images rise tier above tier, lining the deep perspective of the buttresses. But gray and grimy now, at its doing this front was genial and radiant, when the creamy tones of the Doulting stone, edged by the soft gray of the shafting, were fresh and lively, and everywhere the niches had their background of colour, blue and red, while the statues, too, were set off with gilding and light tintings. It was no faded, gloomy presentation of a dim hope that Bishop Jocelyn set up to face the setting 1 The shafts have been renewed in was in perfect keeping with the cream an Irish limestone of a peculiarly harsh of the Doulting stone. As it is, the hue, prophesied to be extraordinarily dur- boasted permanence of our " restoration " able. But if the old marble shafting of eyesores is like added insult to the injury Somersetshire lias was decayed, its gray of them. 216 GOTHIC ART sun. The mourners at the grave might read here of the dead, that were alive for evermore, even as at the touch of the sunset glory the stone faces kindled into life. In radiant faces and brilliant hues did he bid them conceive of the communion of the saints, and the life of the world to come. In such fashion was the west front of the thirteenth century achieved. If Peterborough presents its most architectural expression, Wells subordinates everything to the grace and story of the image presentation. At Salisbury, Lichfield, and then at Exeter, effects were sought in the same direction ; but in the first two the singleness of purpose yields to influence from the other ideal, that of the twin- spired western front. This had been a product of the ambition of the Norman Romanesque : adopted into the central French Gothic, the idea had developed those great cliff-like faces, corniced with tall galleries, eyed with mighty "roses" of tracery, and caverned beneath with three deep doorways, from whose shadowy archivolts the story of the Christian faith bent down to be read by the ingoers. The Wells fagade, wider though it is than Amiens or Reims, cannot match the scale of their architectural achievement any more than it can claim to suggest the massive solemnity which frowned from the Romanesque bulks of Bury or Ely. The English Gothic method is distinctly thinner, and its effort less robust than the French. Yet comparison of the two ideals need not raise a question of precedence, or demand a decision that the French shows the completest emancipation from Romanesque tradition. They were two different expressions of Gothic, each in its own direction perfectly developed. There was practically no attempt in England to borrow the French fagade, as very distinctly Germany and Spain did. Salisbury (see fig. 2 1 2, Chap. VI.) made more of its western doorways than any English church, but there are no flanking towers to complete the composition. Lichfield has a twin-spired front, but is in every other feature distinctly English, in the flatness of its arcading and the shallowness of its doorways. The descent of such fronts was clearly from the Norman without any suspicion of French borrowings. What had been built in Lanfranc's Canterbury, in the Cluniac Lewes, in the Augustinian St. Botolph's, at Colchester, and for the secular canons of Southwell, such had been in view in many a great Romanesque church, whose nave remained for the thirteenth century to complete. Many Benedictine and Augustinian houses provided parish services in their naves, but often after a magnifi cent erection of the quire and eastward limb, were tardy in the fulfilment of their promise of similarly sumptuous provision to the west.1 Thus 1 The Cistercians never mixed themselves according to their means, and, eschewing with parish church accommodation, but built towers, finished a plain gable westward, as the whole of their churches at one effort, at Fountains, Bylands, and Tintern. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 217 Selby and St. Albans only gradually crept westwards, and not till the end of the twelfth century began their twin-towered western fagades. The latter showed a magnificent intention on the part of Abbot John de Cella, whose three deep porches are left to us in some small fragments to-day, but whose wide-stretching western towers got no further than their founda tions. If completed,1 the front would have been 160 ft. in width, on the model of what was being set out by Anglo-Norman design at Rouen, but remained there for completion under the styles of Central France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These two fagades, if they had been carried out on the scale and in the style of their designing, might have achieved a breadth and height that would have brought them into competition with the great French elevations.2 Not a few of the larger Au gustinian churches had double western towers, but none of first Gothic style have come down to us save the small early example of the ruined Llanthony, built in a secluded Welsh valley, it would l6<5- llandaff, west front, c. 1200. seem, before 1 170. Its triple western doors are flanked by solid towers which still stand to the height of 100 ft. ; the gable between has now gone, though its tall lancets remained till 1830. The whole shows the strong characteristics of the early western art, seen, too, at Llandaff (fig. 1 66) ?^$£j&^^**^^53Z& 1 It was too ambitious for the resources of the Abbey, and public collections failed. No doubt Richard's levies and John's con fiscations were what really put a stop to the enterprise. 2 The superficial face-area of the Notre Dame front is about 28,000 sq. ft., its width being 160, and the height of the towers 2 00 ft. At Reims and Amiens the dimensions are 140 ft. in width and 250 ft. in height. The Salisbury front is a face 1 20 ft. in width, with an area of scarcely 16,000 sq. ft., and the Wells fagade, with about the same width as Paris, has its towers only 180 ft. high, and its area about 1 7,000 sq. ft. Lincoln squares out nearly the same, though with a width of 170 ft., while Peterborough 165 ft. wide, has its face-area 22,500 sq. ft. FF 218 GOTHIC ART but there with a richer detail in the twin-towered front of the secular cathedral. On each side the original towers1 have been replaced, but the gable2 remains, with its richly moulded triple lancet above the beautiful doorway which has been already mentioned (see p. 127). In Scotland there are still to be found the ruins of two or three fine twin- towered fronts of the period, with central doorways that are deeply recessed and richly ornamented. The Tironensian Arbroath is built in the northern Augustinian style of the late twelfth century, its door way round-arched, and a big rose window filling the gable between the towers. This gable has gone, but beneath it, above the doorway, are the openings of a lofty triple arcaded gallery, which has a wide floor space in the thickness of the wall, and opens by an arcade into the church.3 The towers, too, at Arbroath have little left, but at Elgin4 they are better preserved, and still stand to the height of 120 ft., the most striking of the Scotch towers of the date,5 with a plain clean-cut massiveness of masonry that smacks of Normandy rather than of English art. The doorway between them has been rich, the triple gable that surmounts it and the gallery inside seeming to indicate a descent from the Arbroath com position, but here the niches are blind and there is no external tribune.6 In England the best preserved of thirteenth-century twin-towered fronts is that of the Ripon canons, built by Archbishop Gray to com plete the nave of his predecessor Roger. This nave was aisleless, and the towers projected beyond it to the width of 105 ft. Elegant and complete as it is, this work (at any rate, in its present " restored" state) 7 lacks the vigour8 most characteristic of the northern style, found particularly in Archbishop Gray's own transept in York and his quire at Southwell. Just as unsatisfactory is the Chichester9 composition, but the towers there at present hardly rise to the gable. 1 The north-west tower was rebuilt in the fine Scotch front, with the peculiarity that fifteenth century ; of the original south-west the towers projected beyond the face of the a bit remains, but its completion and the west wall. The north tower remains ; it and spire above are modern Gothic. the doorway are most richly and beautifully 2 The actual gable is later, and in con- ornamented. ventional Early English, but the moulding 5 Built from 1224-1250. The width of of the lancets of the main storey are pe- the front is 85 ft., which was also about culiarly of the Welsh Transitional style. that of Holyrood, but Arbroath was 100 ft. 3 See here, as at Dunstable and Laner- wide. cost (figs. 166, 167), and in St. Canice Ca- * Also at Jedburgh, and then in the south thedral, Kilkenny, the survival of the pul- transept front of York. pitum, or tribune of the narthex— its use in 7 Sir G. G. Scott did mischief by removing England being specially preserved for the oc- the later traceries from the windows. casion of Palm Sunday, when, the choristers 8 Earlier and more beautiful was the front singing in it above, thepriest knocked thrice of the Gilbertine Canons at Malton. One at the door, chanting "Attollite Portas" tower is gone, and a late window replaces (see note 2, p. 38). the lancets. 4 A Holyrood (Augustinian) was another ° These are, however, Norman towers. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 219 Transeptal fagades never in England adopted the flanking towers,1 such as can still be seen at Tournai, Laon, and Bordeaux, and were, if not completely achieved, certainly in the designs of Chartres and Reims. In England the central lantern of the Norman tradition remained to the end too paramount to allow of such near pretenders. York and West minster had transeptal entrance fronts,2 which, as in the great French cathedrals, vied with those of the west, but these, in the main aspect of their designs, were simple sections of gable and aisle. And on this pattern, too, were many of our English elevations even in our largest cathedral and abbey3 churches, such as Worcester or Romsey, as well as in the smaller monastic * and canons' churches. At Worcester the original west ending of c. 1 160 is quite gone, wiped out by " restoration." Romsey has a peculiarily effec tive composition of three lofty lancets 30 ft. in height (see fig. 85, p. 1 24), with no western doorway, the main entrance to the church having been by the remarkably long porch on the north side, which is now de stroyed (see plan, p. 68). As became the Saxon traditions of the great English nunneries of the south, we find here the com- pletest survival of the ideas of native origin, in opposition to 167. bolton, west doorway. the foreign monastic use. The sixteenth century tower was set in front but In the north, however, the never completed. reformed monasticism made current a type of west front, gabled with 1 Towers in the angle between the sanc tuary and the transept seem, however, to have been occasionally adopted instead of the central tower over the crossing, notably in Gundulph's Rochester, which was abnor mal in all the features of its plan. Ernulph's Canterbury shows a similar method on a smaller scale in respect to its eastern crossing. There are traces of the same in tention in the settings out of Dore and Llandaff fifty years later. Of course, at Exeter the Norman towers flanked the quire and were afterwards opened as transepts. 2 South in the former, north in the latter. Westminster had lost its genuine work, and has now been rebuilt in Victorian Gothic : but see the south transept gable (fig. 170). See fig. 150, p. 198, for the York front. 3 In their first Norman construction Nor wich, Rochester, Hereford, among others, had gable-facades, with turreted angles. Tewkesbury and Thorney were especially fine, as their remains testify. ' As Valle Crucis, Netley. See Croxden in Chap. VII. 220 GOTHIC ART strongly accentuated corner turrets, and with the central doorway well emphasized, deeply recessed and fully ornamented. The Cistercians, sC5s^.^3L!i' -r j^' 1 65. LANERCOST, WEST FRONT. rejecting bell-towers, had, as at Kirkstall, shown the pattern of this effect. In Scotland, too, in the church of their fellow reformers, the Tironen- sians, at Kelso, can be found the development from the Romanesque THIRTEENTH CENTURY GREATER BUILDING 221 transept-end to the round-arched but Gothic treatment of the west front ; from the many windowed storeys to the unity of a central lancet, surmounted by vesica in the gable. Similar to the last was the Au gustinian front of Jedburgh; and then, after 1220, the cathedrals of St. Andrews and Dumblane (see fig. 145, p. 192) took the motive further with traceried lancets and strongly accentuated buttress turrets — Scotch echoes of effects which in North England went on from the 169. DUNSTABLE, WEST FRONT. sheer east-fronts of Tynemouth and Whitby to the fourteenth-century quire-endings of Ripon, Selby and Howden (see figs, in Chap. VIII.). But the English method had at first followed the flatter Cistercian treatments of Kirkstall and Byland. The Augustinian fronts of Bolton (fig. 167) and Lanercost (fig. 168) are peculiarily beautiful, very crisp and clear alike in the vigour of their design as in the rich mouldings of their detail, most perfectly preserved to us in the Yorkshire gritstone of Bolton. The deep-set lofty lancets set in arcades of varying curvature carry to perfection the early arts of Fountains and Rivaulx. Of the richer style of southern England a beautiful front (fig. 169) 222 GOTHIC ART has come down to us in the finishing (c. 1230) of the west end of the Augustinian Dunstable. There was afterwards built here a north tower, but the front of the thirteenth century was set up as practically an arcaded screen, flanked by projecting buttresses, like Wells. On the south side, as in many canons' churches, the conventual buildings come beyond the western fagade, and encroach on its southern front, so that there are only two doorways, the central and the northern, which are here given greater prominence than is usual in southern English work, where the custom of north and south porch was the rule. The richness and ornament1 is, however, entirely of English pattern, with no figure sculpture on jamb or archivolt. The arcades for sculpture running across the front and round the buttresses at the window-level become a beautiful open gallery, with a communicating passage through the window jambs, to connect with a lofty pointed arcading of seven bays open to the nave. Between the two windows is a richly orna mented niche or pulpitum. The breadth of this treatment and the wide proportion of its spacings carry this design far forward into the region of the later ideals of the thirteenth century, which will be noticed in Chapter VII. 1 The Cistercian fronts, like Croxden (fig. in Chap. VII.) or Valle Crucis, in North Wales, contrast by their flatness and deli cacy. At Dunstable are truncated cones of foliage, large " nail heads," and roll moulds, all much undercut, and the flat surfaces diapered, as at Westminster Abbey. In the central doorway (c. n 50), .to which these thirteenth century surroundings were given, are the little medallions of sculpture, men tioned p. 134, as in touch with the Malmes bury carvings. 170. WESTMINSTER, SOUTH TRANSEPT. (Before restoration.) CHAPTER V The Lesser Building of the Thirteenth Century The style of the thirteenth century expressed its energy in the achieve ment of its great quires, high-vaulted and square-ended ; in the extending and raising of great transepts to match the quire proportions ; in the westward finishings of the church body with screen-like fagades, and finally in the crowning of its compositions with tower and steeple. Yet most often this last would seem to have been at this date an intention 1 rather than an accomplished ideal in England, for although both Salis bury and Lincoln, as well as the great cathedral of London, had raised the towers of their crossings by the end of the thirteenth century, yet their spires came later, and at London and Lincoln were never achieved in stone. The fall of the Chichester spire 2 in 1861 took away from us a valuable example of the thirteenth century conception of a great church finished with its spire. We have in England now no chain of the first Gothic expressions in spire construction, such as there is in Normandy, nor anything to set beside the series of " clochers " of the He de France, that from Vendome and Chartres to Senlis illustrate the crowning ambition 3 of the mediaeval builder. Our spires must be generally taken as fourteenth century developments, as our towers were most characteristically those of the twelfth. Yet if the scale of its extensions of great church fabric shows the intrinsic force of thirteenth century art, its genius had its fete-days as well as its coups d'Jtdt, and proved itself just as readily in the smaller works, the outlying members of the great ecclesiastical fabric, which, insignificant beside the great limbs, add much to the suggestion and 1 This is, however, on the supposition that screen, called the Arundel shrine, in the we have in existence our most important ex- course of " restoration." The rebuilding is amples of thirteenth century design. Con- only an echo of the original, and has missed sidering the number of large churches which its proportions. have entirely perished, many of them with 3 Except in Normandy, however, the full steeples, teste William Worcester, it is but twin-spired completion of facade was hardly reasonable to surmise that some consider- anywhere accomplished in the thirteenth able towers and spires of thirteenth-century century. The best example elsewhere is at building have been destroyed. Bordeaux, built after 1 260 under the English 2 Occasioned by the removal of the rood domination. 224 GOTHIC ART effect of the whole. In the chapels, the vestries and sacristies, the porches, and notably in the chapter houses, the grace of the new designing took especial delight. In our many-dated English cathedrals these were often not of the time of the main building, sometimes being survivals of an earlier scheme, which later work has elsewhere replaced : or frequently themselves the additions to the substantial body of an earlier design. In either case they would show a disconnection from the main expression, an independence of its effect, and a certain completeness in themselves. The eastern chapels, however, and especially that " Lady-chapel," which grew in England into great architectural distinction, were so much the originating motives of quire reconstruction, that they show themselves continually the governing elements of design. By the methods of their attachment to the sanctuary were created those two types in our cathedrals and large churches which, as has been already pointed out, are in clear descent from the two endings, that of the aisled apse, and that of the parallel apses of the first Norman plannings (see p. 70). In the thirteenth century each of the types begins to have a distinct geographical range. If a line 1 be drawn from the estuary of the Dee to that of the Thames, it will be found that north and east of this the endings of all large churches at the present day are like that of Lincoln, which, in its thirteenth century rebuilding of St. Hugh's apse, included all the eastern chapels within the main lines of its great square-ended "presbytery" (see fig. 162, p. 210). Salisbury (see fig. 163, p. 211), on the other hand, like most of our great churches to the south and west of this line, throws its chapels out eastwards as half-heighted projections separate from the principal mass of the quire, whose gable stands above. If compared with the northern use, this latter method loses the sheer assertion of fagade height ; still the grouping of the gable of the sanc tuary, with the lower gables surrounding it, gives the charm of that broken pyramidal perspective which makes breadth for the proportion while it roots the base of the great spire firmly to the earth. And internally, this system of the south had the picturesqueness of long low vistas with varied lightings and the mystery of uncertain extensions. The slenderness of the shafting in the Salisbury Lady-chapel, and the playfulness and variety of its vault scheme, should make this the special example of the grace and lightness of the southern English planning. The temerity of construction is unequalled by anything in Gothic art, save, perhaps, by that of the Lady-chapel of Auxerre. Un fortunately, " restoration " has left to the chapels at Salisbury small sug gestion of any original art ; fancy has to go elsewhere to picture what it 1 A line that is almost that of Watling the Danelaw and Wessex, indicating to a Street, or what was so long the division of certain extent a cleavage of race. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 225 might have been. Of such aisled eastern chapels the neglected little eastern aisle of Dore l (fig. 171) has been mentioned as still retaining its original, if decayed, appearance. In the first years of the thirteenth century Winchester 2 carried out a great extension replacing the chapels 171. DORE, EASTERN CHAPELS, C. 1 1 90. and Lady-chapel of its Norman designing, and the work has all the grand scale of a capital cathedral, being set out in an oblong of three broad aisles, three bayed with a square-ended sanctuary to each aisle. In the aisles the double lancets rise above a trefoiled arcading in a ' 65 ft. by 18 ft. See plan, p. 76. About 100 ft. by 95 ft. See plan, p. 73, G G 226 GOTHIC ART design (fig. 172) that may have been the model Tor Salisbury twenty years after. But here the work is freer and bolder, and there is in the lordly spaciousness of the wide arches and hollowed vaults a some thing beyond the competition of Salisbury, at least as we see it now. A charming example of an aisled eastern chapel contempor ary with Salisbury, is furnished to us in London at St. Saviour's, Southwark (fig. 173). This is in four compartments with three bays, making an oblong 65 ft. by 38 ft. Triple lancets fill the eastern walls, and at the side the lights were single.1 Slender piers — four shafts set round a hollowed octagon, with short plain-moulded capitals — lift a range of steep vaults which are as beautiful as any in England. Salisbury (see plan, p. 205) made its Lady-chapel to project two bays from the side-chapels, and such projections had been, as already explained (see p. 75), the earliest English method of east ward enlargement, displayed still in the crypts of Winchester,2 where before the middle of the twelfth century a long chapel had been projected from the centre of the apse. In the thirteenth century additions3 of this kind were made to Sherborne, Lichfield, and Nor wich — the latter quite destroyed ; at Sherborne one bay remains, built up into a house, a beautiful example of the fine full detail of southern work. 172. WINCHESTER, CHAPELS, C. 1200. 1 Replaced by Decorated traceries, but externally all is now modern work. 2 See plan of crypt, p. 73. 3 Curiously these projecting Lady-chapels were mostly set out not quite in the axis of the quires, to which they were added. At Sherborne and Lichfield they turn to the south, as is the case, too, with Trinity Chapel, at Canterbury. At old St. Paul's the whole quire turned from the crossing northward, while at Whitby and Bridlington this cant was one of many degrees. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 227 In the abbey church1 at Chester, in connection with the thirteenth- century enlargement, was built out, three bays deep, a projecting Lady- chapel, into which the "path" behind the altar opened by a single many- shafted archway, to the right and left of which were deep-bayed octagonal chapels.2 Earlier than this at Hereford,'' in the last decade of the twelfth century, an eastern aisle with projecting "chapels" had superseded 173. ST. SAVIOURS, SOUTHWARK, CHAPELS, C. 1230. the Norman sanctuary, just as at the same time Bishop Siegfried at Chichester, too, squared his ending, and then, with similar planning, Archbishop O'Toole, at Christ Church, Dublin, built a " processional path," from which opened, between flanking altars, a projecting Lady- chapel. Afterwards4 the last half of the thirteenth century found both 1 Now the cathedral. Some parts of the original vaulting are left, but most of the work here is that of Sir G. G. Scott in 1869. 2 The work is commonly assigned to Abbot Simon, of Whitchurch, and to the date 1 265, on the authority of Sir G. G. Scott. But though he tuned his "restoration" up to the pitch of this theory, there are even now remains of the original work at the end of both north and south aisles which in dicate a considerably earlier rebuilding, and would suggest that the first eastward ex tension was that of Abbot Geoffry, who is re corded to have finished the quire 12 n. 3 See plan, p. 74. 1 At St, David's, about 1250, was built 228 GOTHIC ART Hereford and Chichester again lengthening their Lady-chapels beyond the earlier projections, till, in all, they were each five bays in length from the entrance. The earlier of these enlargements, that at Hereford, has suffered from destructive " restoration." Chichester, though its work is late in the style, remains perhaps better able to give the idea of that peculiarly English feature of the thirteenth century— the long, low- vaulted Lady-chapel, which here is more than 80 ft. by 22 ft. wide Ifehi t mKmm j illllilH m^-M mfiE^S?- — 'WBmL llife?._i'',". '^>l##f WF^Smi 1 - * ¥ ' • fife 1 1 n 1 mm.3- 174. CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL, LADY CHAPEL, C. 1 290. (fig. 174. See, too, fig. 250, p. 317). The fourteenth century continued this aisleless form, but heightened and widened it, as at Lichfield and Ely, and then its planning passed, with still greater elevation of vaulting, to the royal chapels of the fifteenth century. And this elongated aisleless plan is found in Lady-chapels not attached to the east end, as for the Augustinians of St. Frideswide's and Bristol — in the first case making a north aisle to the chancel, in the second opening from the north transept ; or, completely detached, as for an eastern aisle, which was quite detached from the east wall of the sanctuary, leaving a space which was afterwards filled by a chantry. A deep, two-bayed lady chapel fol lowed from the centre of this before the end of the century. These are now more or less ruined, but show beautiful work, as yet, in 1897, untouched by "restoration." THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 229 the Benedictines at Peterborough and Ely. The elder Lady-chapel, as it is called at Bristol, was once a beautiful building : 48 ft. by 19 ft., it has four bays of steep, richly-ribbed quadripartite vaulting, with shafts that rise two-thirds of the height of the walls. Inside, above the trefoiled arcade, the upper wall is arcaded in triple lights, with slender pillars, that stand quite free, carrying boldly stilted and foiled ribs, and some two feet behind is the outer wall, whose lancets are brought so close together that the piers are almost mullions. A work with the same elegance of detail, part only of which remains, was attached to the north transept of Tewkesbury (see plan fig. 284, p. 360), probably at the time when Henry III.'s queen was re sident there. To Benedictine feeling would seem due its planning, on the scheme of a parish church, in a position which took it so completely away from the approved chapels of monastic usage. Afterwards, in the late fourteenth century, when the prejudices of monkish seclusion had passed away, a new Lady-chapel was provided in the usual position at the east end, and then the first chapel was remodelled, and made to join itself to the eastern chapels of the transept. But in its first building it was a separate church of two divisions — a nave, some 52 ft. by 24 ft., vaulted in four wide oblong bays, entered by a peculiarly wide and ornamented door from the north transept ; — while a chancel projected beyond the transept wall two bays ; the separation being a magnificently arcaded wall screen of three lofty arches, the centre richly shafted to make a double doorway. Just again as the church's eastern limb grew into new shape from " chapel " additions, so did the transept have its Norman apses replaced by larger square-ended altar-spaces. In rebuildings, as we have seen, these took the form of an eastern aisle, divided at first by solid walls, as at Glastonbury,1 and afterwards by lower screen work, as at Lincoln. Often such chapels were thirteenth-century additions to the Romanesque plan. Thus Chichester Cathedral (plan, p. 74) supplies specimens of many varieties of chapel additions made from the middle of the twelfth century onwards throughout the thirteenth. That of St. Pantaleone, in the south transept, is of the earlier date, and externally its beautiful gable, with its richly-moulded " eye," is conspicuous from the cloister walk.2 Then to the north transept, c. 1 200, was put in place of the Norman apse, a big square chapel,3 called that of the Four Virgins, and vaulted in four compartments to a central pillar. Equally striking is the somewhat later sacristy (opening from the west side of the south transept), which has no central shaft, but is vaulted in two wide bays. 1 At Dore, too, is a good preservation of (now the chapter house) of St. Canice, Kil- this feature. See plan on page 76. kenny, an example of the clean-cut Irish style 0 In a similar position is the fine chapel of the thirteenth century. 3 35 ft. by 30 ft. >3Q GOTHIC ART And down each side of the nave single-bayed chapels were during the thirteenth century recessed from the aisles — a habit common in Normandy and the He de France, but which Chichester, alone among existing English churches, has preserved. Comparable with the transept chapels of Chichester are the sacristies of Ripon and Llandaff, early essays of Gothic vaulting to a central pillar.1 But the noblest exam ples of the chapels built in the second quarter of the thirteenth century are at Lincoln (see plan, p. 205), particularly the two in the western fagade,2 — where one is vaulted to a pillar, but the other, dispensing with this, contrives a groined dome for its central ceil ing. Not the least stately (fig. 175) of such "chapels" which remain to us is at Westminster, often called that of St. Blaise,3 but really the vestry, which, opening out of the South Tran sept, is a " slype " with its eastern bay, narrowed to allow of the direct passage from the church to the chapter house (see plan on p. 205). The charm of these rooms is in the expressions of their vault ings, and in the fancy and skill with which these are varied to meet every accident of shape or convenience. At Lacock, a nun nery of the thirteenth century, there remain two beautiful chambers4 approached from the cloister connected with the church, which is now destroyed. Each is in two aisles, and vaulted in six compartments upon two piers, octagonal or shafted. But one being the chapter house,5 this had for dignity the doorway central in the end, and, as the vaultings spring 175. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, THE VESTRY, c 1245. 1 The Lichfield sacristry, oblong vaulted in two bays, is of the same date, before 1 200. 2 40 ft. by 30 ft. See Sir G. G. Scott's " Lectures " for diagrams of "the vaulting. 3 60 ft. by 18 ft. " 35 ft. by 25 ft. 5 A very beautiful room of similar plan is the chapter house of the Premonstratensians at Beleigh, Essex, which still retains some of its painting (fig. 177). Here the difficulty of the central pillar range is got over by the doorway being double, set on each side of the mid respond. At Furness the chapter had in the same way double doors (see plan, p. 235). THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 231 low down, an extra severy was inserted to give the necessary height. The wall thus is in three divisfons, allowing a mid- entrance, while a tri angular sharply-pointed groin readily connects with the central pillar. The ease and simplicity of the arrangement is as marked as its pictur- esqueness (see plan, fig. 176). For the playfulness of this art we can turn to the eastern chapels of the Christchurch (Hants) transept, where in the Montacute chapels are some wonderful vault- 176. LACOCK, VESTRY AND CHAPTER, C. I240. ings, with ribs notched and zigzagged to fit the shapes that mere wan tonness seems to have devised to be as irregular as possible. The English qualities of vaulting are seen to advantage, too, in the great groined porches of the thirteenth cen tury. The peculiarly native develop ment of the porch has been already treated, as (along with the recurrence of the square east end), giving proof of English resurrection after the subjection of the Conquest. The Norman porches had at first been wide and shallow, as the continental Romanesque tradition had made them. But they had already become deep and richly ornamented at Southwell, Sherborne, and Malmesbury,2 before the third quarter of the twelfth century. In its last quarter Selby built on to the north side of its nave a porch which has been given a distinctly English style. Two storeys in height, each is marked by an arcading of elegantly pointed archings on slender shafting carried all round externally and internally, while 177. BELEIGH, CHAPTER HOUSE. 1 The plans here are to the scale of 25 ft. to the inch as are also the " chapter " plan in Chap. VII. 2 About 15 ft. square inside, 232 GOTHIC ART the full round arch opens to a wide oblong,1 vaulted with steep ribbed groins. Of the same date and still more characteristic of national style is the well-known north porch 2 of Wells, planned with two bays of vaulting, with the rich arcadings and banded shafts that have been illustrated on p. 1 1 1, fig. 74. There came c. 1200 the great "Galilee" of Ely,3 — at the west end, but still in its plan and designing following native traditions. Externally flat, it has the tiers of arcades like Selby : internally it is 38 ft. long and 25 ft. wide, vaulted in two bays, as at Wells, but with greater width and hollowness of vault : with, too, an upper storey much more developed, the gable showing three tall lancets. The internal wall arcading has all the many-shafted richness and the carved crocketings of Lincoln ; and the doorways are each double with midway pillars, and once i carried in their heads imagery like that in the west doorway of Crowland (see fig. 218, p. 282). Chichester has three porches of the thirteenth century to its nave, not on the scale of the above, but the south showing graceful vaults and a double doorway with richly carved niche-bracket. Much finer in scale are the north porches of Salisbury5 and Christchurch6 (Hants), their external plainness relieved by buttresses alone. Inside they have traceried arcadings, and the entrances with richly moulded arches, while the big, wide vaultings give grand effects of space and dignity. One of the most beautiful of such works must have been the "Galilee" of Glastonbury,7 which, connecting the chapel of St. Mary with the west entrance of the church, may be said to be almost cross planned, since it had its doorways north and south midway in the central of three vaulted bays. A wide flight of steps rose to the church entrance, and on either side there mounted with them a beautiful trefoiled arcade. Distinctly on the cross plan is the " Galilee," which extends from the west side of the great south transept of Lincoln (fig. 178); its three arms open to west, north and south, while the shaft of the cross admits to the church.8 Dated about 1235, its style begins to show a departure from the sculpturesque graces of Glastonbury and Ely. The elaborate vaulting is in wide shallow bays — two to the north and south, and three to the west — and two of these latter being sexpartite, the quick successions 1 15 ft. wide by 12 ft. deep. at Lynn, of about the same date. The west 2 24 ft. long and 15 ft. wide. front of Poitiers cathedral has these signi- 3 But in the tall shafted angle turrets of ficant shafted towers. this " Galilee " may be recognized a distinct ' The present filling of the spandrel is a connection with the Angevin style of Henry modern barbarity. 6 30 ft. by 15 ft. the Second's continental dominions. Some- ° 35 ft. by 18 ft. See fig. 215, p. 279. thing of the same kind is to be found, too, T 52 ft. long by 25 ft. wide. See plan iv. not far off Ely, in the tower of St. Nicholas, on p. 67. " 40 ft. long, the width 15 ft. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 233 of enriched ribs are enhanced by the gradual narrowing of the " nave " from 15 to 13 ft. In the warm Lincoln stone the whole effect is rather of a jewelled casket than of constructed masonry. Though possibly later in date, yet with more retention of the style of the earlier art, is the north porch of Hereford Cathedral, with its single bay finely vaulted, and a noble trefoiled doorway that gives entrance to the nave (see fig. 196, p. 262). Not quite in such immediate relation to the church as porch or sacristy, but yet indispensable to collegiate as well as to monastic founda tion, was the " capitulum" — the house, where the society met in chapter. In its individual composition, as in grouping it with the main design of the church, thirteenth century art showed at once an English distinctiveness and a consummate style. The Benedictine chapter-house, as it took form in England from the mon astic tradition of north-western Europe, had been an oblong room of a length about double its width, set parallel with the axis of the church, and (as dictated by convenience for the cloister) either north or south of the transept from which it was separated by a narrow passage or chamber called a "slype." It usually projected in an eastern apse, by the win dows of which it was lighted, while the entrance from the cloister was by a great round archway flanked on either side by round-arched, double- lighted, unglazed windows. The chapter house of Durham,1 whose vaulting has been already mentioned, 78 ft. by 34 ft., was a noble example of the twelfth-century manner. The ruins of Reading Abbey also give an idea of the same stately scale and lofty proportion, and at Gloucester the three bays, 30 ft. wide, of the pointed waggon roof remain. But of Winchester "chapter," 90 ft. in length and 40 ft. in width, there are left but fragments, and what at Canterbury was rebuilt on Norman lines late in the thirteenth century, was re-ceiled and re-windowed in the fifteenth.2 The Benedictine dormitory lay usually beyond or outside the im mediate neighbourhood of the transept, so that the " capitulum " could rise to full height with no storey above to suppress its ceiling. But the Augustinians and Cistercians, with their stricter habit of night service, 178. LINCOLN, GALILEE PORCH. 1 Allowed to fall down by the canons of 2 This room, beautiful until 1897, has 1780, but lately rebuilt in the "chiselled" now had its features vulgarized by a very Norman style of modern "Romanesque.'' garish "restoration." HH 234 GOTHIC ART had for convenience the dormitory immediately abutting on the transept, into which it descended by the night stair.1 Thus their chapter-houses, though following the traditional Benedictine position, had their western porticoes lower,2 so that over them might pass the passage way from the dormitory. The Benedictines of Chester adopted this arrangement in their thirteenth-century rebuilding, which remains now our best pre served example of the conventual build ings of a monastery. The vestibule (fig. 179) opens directly from the Nor man north transept (with no slype in this instance), and its triple aisles of three bays are vaulted to four central pillars, the ribs rising from the ground with no capitals. The triple openings 3 into the cloister are of the Norman tradition refined to a pointed expres sion, and eastwards, entered from the vestibule through a similar screen,4 the "chapter" rises to the full height of 30 ft. beyond the floor of the over head dormitory. It is 50 ft. long and 28 ft. wide, vaulted in three oblong, but steeply-pointed, bays, the ribbing (which has an extra "branch" and "ridge") springing low down upon three-shafted corbels. Completely fill ing each vault-spandrel with a stilted arcade are the galleries of tall triple lancets, while eastward a similar com position of five lights occupies the whole gable. Externally " restoration " has completely had its way, and nothing Gothic has survived. A very similar "chapter" to this, and almost of the same dimensions, but with four plainly vaulted bays, was that at St. Frideswide's, attached without vestibule to the Norman entrance from the old cloister. Lighted only by the lofty lancet windows of its projecting east end, it presents a perfect example of Gothic re-editing of Romanesque — from the apse tradition into square-ended English style. in the Hexham 179. CHESTER, CHAPTER-HOUSE. 1 Still preserved in the Hexham tran sept. 2 As at Bristol. See p. 89. 3 The carvings and the traceries here have a touch of the Normandy mason-craft of Coutances and Lisieux; but the chapter house and refectory are quite English in their detail. At Exeter there remains only the beau tiful wall arcades of a somewhat similar "chapter," the upper part having been rebuilt in the fifteenth century. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 235 But it was in the hands of the Cistercians that the chapter-house had its most English development. All their convents being abbeys, with a system of visitation from the mother-house to the daughters, considerable accommodation was needed for their assemblages. In the north of England especially were noble rooms, built with threefold aisles of three or four bays. Since no Cistercian church1 got the chance of preservation as a cathedral, whose canons might make use of its buildings, these " chapters " at the dissolution went at once to decay, and only scanty ruins of most of them are left.2 Usu ally built after the churches, when the austerities of the first Cistercian style had been tempered by the passion of building-craft, they exhibit steep quadripartite vaultings upon slender pillars, octagonal monoliths at Fountains and Jervaulx3 — eight shafted at Dundrennan and Furness4 — and with their delicate carv ings and elaborate mouldings represent some of the earliest advances of the rich North- England Gothic. Especially is the refined detail of the Cistercian doorways, with their flanking two-lighted openings, to be noted at Furness and Dundrennan, compared with the coarser style of the Premonstratensian Dryburgh.or, say, of the Benedictine 5 nunnery of St. Radegunde at Cam bridge — but all alike are of similar composition, and follow exactly the dispositions of Romanesque design such as it had been at Bristol 180. FURNESS, CHAPTER-HOUSE. 1 Not being in close connection with the towns, as the Austin houses often were. 2 The four best preserved are those of Fountains, 55 ft. by 40 ft. (with two-bayed ves tibule vaulted lower to carry the dormitory), in all 80 ft. by 40 ft. ; of Furness (fig. 180), 61 ft. by 45 ft., with one-bayed vestibule carrying passage to dormitory ; of Jervaulx and Dundrennan, each about 50 ft. by 35 ft., without vestibules from the cloister. 3 Probably about 1170-1190: see fig. 73, p. no, for shaft. The corbels here and at Fountains are beautifully carved. i Early in the thirteenth century. Among the most beautiful Early English carvings are the sculptured quatrefoils that decorate the w^lls here and at Dundrennan. 0 Shown in the cloister of Jesus College. 236 GOTHIC ART and Boxgrove. Later in the thirteenth century was this aisled planning of the "chapter" taken south to Netley,1 but generally, except in the Yorkshire district, the earliest Cistercian houses2 seem to have followed the Benedictine arrangement of a plain oblong vaulted room— square- ended, however, instead of apsed. But in the west there arose another very distinctive form, seem ingly in Cistercian hands, though the earliest example we can point to is at Worcester : 3 here the chapter - house is a circular room, nearly 60 ft. across, vaulted by ten arches to a cen tral pillar. Almost contem porary, however, would seem the circular chapter-house of Margam (fig. 181), vaulted with twelve arches ; 4 and, quickly following this, that of Dore, with twelve sides and a twelve-clustered shaft.5 In the thirteenth century the idea passed to the secular canons at Lincoln6 (fig. 182), where the ten-sided "chapter," about 60 ft. across, may possibly have been set out by St. Hugh before 1200 — though vaulted some thirty years later, when the deeply projected flying buttresses, which give it so distinctive an exterior (see fig. 162, p. 210) were probably added. At Beverley and then at Lichfield octagonal plans were adopted, and then, after the middle of the thirteenth century, in the building of these great rooms were developed those characteristic excellences of English style that will be later treated of.7 l8l. MARGAM, CHAPTER HOUSE. 1 35 ft- by 33 ft- 1 As, for example, at Ford, Bindon and Cleve. The first is now in use as a chapel : the beautiful vestibule of Cleve under the dor mitory remains, but the "chapter" is gone. 3 See note 2, page 91. The building of the Worcester "chapter" must have been but little before that of the west bays of nave, c. 1 160. Margam was founded in 1147, and its building seems to have come immediately. 1 Only the foundations and part of the central pillar remain. 5 43 ft. across, also with a two-bayed vesti bule, but now only foundations are left. c The windows are double lancets, sharply pointed. The whole has lately undergone a very severe "restoration," which has " re placed " all the original features. 7 See p. 319, where a list of the poly gonal chapter houses is given. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 237 We can pass here to the other conventual buildings of the thirteenth century, which whether grouped round the "cloister," or in only outlying connection with the inner life of the convent, show quite as much as 182. LINCOLN, CHAPTER HOUSE. church or chapter-house the bold constructiveness of the first Gothic building, and the clean touch of its sculpturesque design. However, of the monastic cloisters themselves we have standing now little that belongs to the twelfth or the first half of the thirteenth century,1 to compare with the Romanesque cloisters of southern France, or even the little courtyard ' At Canterbury are the best English ex amples, in the infirmary cloister, where the eastern alley is ascribed to n 15, and the southern to 1236. There are some small twelfth-century fragments at Boxgrove and in the " narthex '' portico of Fountains. 238 GOTHIC ART of Mont St. Michel.1 The slight inclosure of the monastic garth, with its wooden penthouse roofing, would soon yield to the destructions that followed the dissolution ; while in our collegiate and cathedral establish ments the later luxury of fifteenth-century arrangements has demolished what went before. Of the thirteenth-century refectory and dormitory there are, on the other hand, considerable remains, and still more have been left the ranges of vaulted undercrofts, which carried them, and on the west side made the cellarer's offices, or the basements of the lay brothers' quarters. Particularly in the Cistercian ruins the arrangements can still be seen to have that circumstance and dignity of scale which was characteristic of this monastic system. The conventual life centred in the cloister, and round its magnificent seclusion were grouped lofty halls, which, sub ordinate to the church, combined with it in the stately expression of ordered discipline. While on one side stretched the long-roofed nave, opposite it stood the refectory, that had run length-wise with the Bene dictines, but with the Cistercians was gabled to the garth, being flanked by warming-parlour2 and kitchen. Along the east and west sides were two-storeyed buildings : the upper floor, over the great doorways of the chapter vestibule, being the monks' dormitory, extending from the transept ; while opposite, on the west,3 were the "checkers" of the con vent and the lodging of the lay brothers. The dormitories and refectories had high-pitched wooden ceilings, but beneath them the undercrofts and cellars were vaulted. Enough remains at Fountains and Rivaulx4 to show the scale of these great monastic halls. The "Frater " at Fountains was i ioft. long, nearly 50 ft. wide, with a mid arcade ; that of Rivaulx, which, owing to the slope of the ground, stands on a vaulted cellar, is 120 ft. by 36 ft., roofed in one span.6 The lighting was from the south, where the end projecting beyond the surrounding buildings had gable and sides pierced with pointed lancets, some 15 ft. from the ground, set in the alternate bays of a rich arcading. But the feature of the interior lay in the pulpit, which was sumptuously treated, projecting on a richly carved corbel, its wide stair (arcaded to the hall and lighted by windows) running with easy steps up to the landing — the whole forming a 1 C. 1230. Of Normandy mason-craft, ' Other Cistercian refectories of the thir- though the shafting and circular plain caps teenth century which are well preserved are, seem to have been imported from Purbeck. (1) that of Tintern, with its beautiful shafted Now they have been restored in a local windows, which will be mentioned later ; and granite. '" Or calefactory. (2) that of Sibton, Essex, which is planned 3 In the Benedictine houses these were out of the usual rule of the Cistercian system. the offices of that important personage the s Both these seem to have been re-roofed cellarer ; in either case they were the victual- in the fifteenth century, with flatter pitches ling and service department of the convent, than the original. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 239 an annexe, which at Rivaulx is a third of the length of the hall. At 183. CHESTER, REFECTORY PULPIT. Beaulieu the refectory has survived the dissolution, being taken as the parish church, and its carved pulpit is still in use. Since the Benedictine " frater" ran lengthways with the church, it 240 GOTHIC ART could be lighted on both sides.1 The example at Chester is well known, and has lately been opened out to its whole length of 100 ft. The thirteenth-century pulpit (fig. 183), with its elegant stair, remains, but the windows were altered in the fifteenth century. The houses of the canons seem to have followed Benedictine patterns, and the "frater" of the Premonstratensians of St. Agatha at Easby has been well preserved ; it is 28 ft. wide and 1 10 ft. long, though this length was probably broken up by partitions. It was built after the middle of the thirteenth century, with beautiful traceries, which are interest ing in that development of English windows which will be afterwards described.2 The dormitories of the Cistercians have, in their northern houses, been destroyed, but Ford, in Dorsetshire, has a well-preserved example, with its walls, windows, and roof still intact, and since its use is still as a range of small sleeping-rooms, it may even retain some of the original parti tions. The style is plain, but with re markable elegance in the big window of the north gable,3 and in the groining of the undercroft, which is in a per fect state. Of the Benedictine dormitories, that of Durham4 is still in existence, now used as the cathedral library, but it dates from the end of the fourteenth century. Its undercroft, however, gives an excellent speci men of the plain early thirteenth-century style of the north. 1 The best early example which remains is vaulted from corbels at each angle in such 184. WAVERLEY, UNDERCROFT. is that of St. Martin's, at Dover, built indeed first for Augustinians, but afterwards a cell of Canterbury; this is 100 ft. long by 27 ft. wide, and is lighted by round-headed windows. " Of the thirteenth century monastic kit chens, which adjoined the west ends or sides of the refectories, not much has been pre served. In the larger Benedictine monas teries, as at Canterbury, Durham, and Glas tonbury, later and more sumptuous provision came to supersede them. At Canterbury only a fragment of the great octagon is left, but at Durham the striking building of the same plan is still in use. This is 39 ft. across, and a way that an octagon is left open to carry a central lantern. In four of its sides are deep fireplaces, while two lofty lancets in a fifth light it thoroughly. This is described as having been built in 1 3 1 8, but its plan and lancets seem to belong to an earlier erection. The well-known example of Glastonbury is a little later. 3 The cloister here lay to the north of the church. The total length of this dormi tory is about 140 ft., and its width about 22 ft. 4 194 ft. long by 41 ft. wide. It is on the position of the original dormitory, but on the west side of the cloister, THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 241 Such undercrofts, being solidly vaulted for the flooring above, are, indeed, usually the best preserved fragments of monastic building. The most striking is that at Fountains, which formed the ground-storey of what is called the " domus conversorum." Built at the end of the twelfth century, and afterwards extended in the thirteenth, it now shows a total length of 280 ft., being 40 ft. wide,1 and was originally divided by cross partitions into three or four separate apart ments. A similar chamber is that remaining at Furness, which ran under the dormitory, and was used as the parlour for the monks ; and, as at Fountains, here, too, was a long undercroft beneath the dormitory of the convent. At Waverley (fig. 184) are the considerable remains of a peculiarly refined example, with slender circular pillars and broad low vaults. Of the Benedictine constructions of this kind, one of the best pre served is that at Winchester (fig. 185), which, originally running under the great dor mitory, is now used as the porch to the dean's residence. Besides these main apart ments of conventual life, which grouped themselves round the great cloister, were other out lying connections, of which by l8S- Winchester, undercroft. far the most important was the infirmary. In the great Benedictine monasteries, this provision, which was not merely for the sickness, but for the infirmity and old age of the inmates, took a scale and sumptuous- ness which was in unison with the monastic system of design. _At Canterbury. Norwich, and especially at Ely,2 are the remains of the great twelfth-century halls, which formed the body ot thiTaccoiimiuda- 1 In two aisles vaulted steeply to the bendal houses. St. Catherine's Chapel at height of about 20 ft. Westminster was an infirmary hall of the 2 Built up now into three or four pre- first construction of the Confessor's abbey. I I 242 GOTHIC ART tion, double aisled, 100 ft. long by 40 ft. wide at Ely, at Canterbury 150 ft. by 72 ft., (fig. 186) with moulded arcades and lofty clerestory. Eastward, as the chancel to this nave, opened the chapel1 — a plan ning that passed on into the design of separately founded hospitals, as that of St. Mary's, Chichester, which, built in the last half of the thirteenth century, is in use as an alms house, with the method of the original divisioning still kept for separate quarters in the aisles of the nave. At Glou cester and Peterborough are standing the arcades of the thirteenth-century rebuilding of such "farmery "halls, which, besides their special chapel, had separate kitchens, cellars, and buttery complete.2 If the Cistercians seem at first to have been less bounti ful in their provision for the weakness of their brethren, still it can be seen at Foun tains and Furness that by the middle of the thirteenth cen tury they developed estab lishments of the kind that could vie with those of the Benedictines proper. The foundations of the hall3 at 186. canterbury infirmary. Fountains show it to have been 1 70 ft. long by 70 ft. wide, unvaulted, aisled all round with arcades of slender pillars. At Furness (fig. 187) the great hall was built at the end of the century, 48 ft. wide and 152 ft. long, and suggests a change of 1 Best preserved now in the eleventh century example of Westminster, and the fourteenth century rebuilding of Canterbury, where the total length of the "farmery" was finally near 250 ft. See plan, fig. 186, in which A is the hall, B the chapel, and C the kitchen. Here it had, too, its own cloister, D. 2 Going to the infirmary in a convent would be much as sick leave to a soldier, meaning not necessarily disabling illness, but the allowance of a fuller diet and relaxation from the more exacting observances of the conventual duty, as, for example, after the periodical bleedings. 3 This runs about north and south, with the chapel opening from the east side. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 243 idea, for it is in one span, entered from the east by a vaulted vestibule, along the side of which ran the chapel. This porch and chapel are fairly preserved, and are of a fine style and scale, but only the founda tions of the hall are indicated. The special interest of these monastic infirmaries lies in the close connection of their design with that of domestic architec ture, as this began to develop in the great halls of the kings and greater nobles and bishops. Indeed the remains at Fountains and Furness were long accepted as the mag nificent lodging 1 of abbots, instead of being recognized as hospitals. Of the halls of our mediaeval kings, the earliest and largest 2 is to some extent still left to us, for the walls of Westminster Hall prove that it was set out with its present ground dimensions for William Rufus. But as such it was most certainly aisled ; its present single-spanned roof being of the c. 1 300 construction. At any rate, on this plan, and in complete preservation, is the much smaller hall 3 of Oakham, built c. 1 1 75, with details advanced in the style of Gothic art. What, too, is now pretty clearly established as Bishop Pudsey's work,4 at Bishop Auckland, and therefore to be dated before 1 1 90, is another remarkable example, the details of which have been illustrated as proof of the quick creation of the English character istics of our art (figs. 77, 79). Such, indeed, might be expected in the hands of a prelate like Pudsey, who would not be bound by the conservative instincts of monastic building, but would in his own house adopt the newest ideas of mason-craft. In fact, such buildings are not ecclesiastical, but translations into stone of the wooden-aisled Anglo-Saxon house-hall. The adoption of 187. furness infirmary. a. Hall. b. Solar, c. Chapel. d. Vestibule, e. Kitchen. 1 At Canterbury and Ely they had been taken by antiquaries as those of early churches. " 239 ft. long by 68 ft. wide. 3 65 ft. by 43 ft. wide. Said to have been built by Walklyn de Ferrers in the third quarter of the twelfth century. 4 Converted in the seventeenth century into the chapel of his palace, by Bishop Cosin. See Hodgson's monograph on Auck land Castle. The hall would seem to have been 85 ft. long by 48 ft. wide, aisled with four arches on each side, and roofed in a single span, much as at Oakham, with butteries and kitchens opening from the east end. 244 GOTHIC ART its features in the monastic infirmary, and the association there with the newest detail of building style, suggest how the underlying current of native English feeling came to the front in the outburst of Gothic art. It is too often asserted that the domestic developments of mediaeval building were always in waiting on the ecclesiastical. But evidence to the contrary can be called from these great aisled halls of the thirteenth century, of one of which, that of Lincoln Palace, there are considerable remains, while the King's Hall at Win chester is still in use. The first was begun by St. Hugh before 1200, and finished by his namesake of Wells before 1234. Of the buttery and kitchen, and their vaulted undercrofts, a good deal is left, and enough of the hall1 (fig. 188) itself to show the elegance of style, and fine scale of the whole work. The details of the windows, which are seen to have been two-lighted and transomed, shuttered below and glazed above, are remarkable for a pro gress in the direction of tracery, such as in church architecture hardly came for another ten years. The hall at Win chester,2 built under the direction of Elias de Dereham, and finished in 1234, has less fine detail, but its windowings exhibit the same breadth and tracery design. It is probable that there were many other halls of similar style built in the twelfth and succeeding centuries, as is indeed known to have been the case at the Buckden Palace of the Bishops of Lin coln.3 But in the thirteenth century there grew up the aisleless form — that adopted in the Furness Infirmary on the model of the monastic refectory, which, fostered by the advance now made in the English wood roof, distinctly separates itself from anything that is found abroad. At Wells, Bishop Jocelyn, the brother of Bishop 188. LINCOLN, BISHOPS PALACE. A. Hall. b. Buttery, c. Kitchen. This and the two preceding plans are to the scale of 50 ft. to the inch. 1 90 ft. long by 60 ft. wide, aisled, like at Bishop Auckland, with four bays on eachside. 2 1 1 1 ft. long by 56 ft. wide, aisled with five bays on each side. The windows are stated by Parker to be later than the original building. 3 The wooden example of Nurstead, c. 1300, figured in Turner's " Domestic Archi tecture of the Middle Ages," has now been destroyed. A fifteenth-century hall of the kind is well preserved in the Guildhall, York. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 245 Hugh, of Lincoln, built the palace, which is the best preserved of thir teenth century domestic buildings, though modern ideas of taste have effaced much of the refinement of its thirteenth century beauty. The hall, 80 ft. by 40 ft., is upon a vaulted croft, but itself wood-roofed in a single span, with windows of the same traceried doublet forms as in the Lincoln and Winchester halls, but broader, and with beautifully cusped inner arches. Attached to this, besides the kitchens and other offices, was built a little later a beautiful chapel opening from the south-west corner, and then by Bishop Burrell, about 1280, a still larger hall,1 115 ft. long and 60 ft. wide, was added, the ceiling of which must have tested the skill and resource of English carpentry as decisively as the great hammer-beams which were contemporary at Westminster. Nothing, however, is left of the Wells roof, but the ruined walls show the beauty of the proportion, and the grace of its lofty traceried windows. In its grouping with the finished cathedral the thirteenth-century palace of the Bishop, as at Lincoln and Wells walled with the church in one inclosure of gates and towers, gave an effect of architectural magnificence such as only the greatest compositions can produce. At Wells we can still see some traces of this coherent motive which generally has passed away from our monastic cathedrals by the more or less complete destruction of the conventual buildings, the church alone being left standing in the bulk of its original proportion. The general effect of the monastic composition, however, would be somewhat different from that of the cathedral. From Fountains, perhaps, can be best gained a notion of the added scale and completeness which the conventual buildings gave to the central feature of the church. In the entirety of its thirteenth-century completion the whole body of such a religious house, with its definite inclosure and outlying dependencies which gradually led up to the central massing, gave a spectacle of artistic creation such as has been scarcely equalled in any other school of architecture. The unity and completeness of its idea must have been especially striking in the houses of the reformed societies, set down, as they most often were, in the midst of some desolate wilderness, in which their domain was the one oasis of cultivation, their walls the one centre of hospitality. Mangled as are Fountains and Rivaulx, Llanthony and Tintern, they to some extent convey this impression of secluded state liness, a haven after long travel across wood, moor and marshland. The loss of roofs has, of course, spoiled in part the solidity of the grouping, which in its original effect was that of a great massif, rising with considerable squareness above the level lawn of marsh and river 1 Two halls, each with their separate complement of a palace, as at Winchester, kitchens and offices, were the ordinary full Lincoln, Wells, and then at St. David's. 246 GOTHIC ART bottom, where in most instances the necessity of water for mills and fish-culture determined the site of a new " house." Lofty towers and spires were in the thirteenth century hardly part of this monastic scheme, the Cistercians, indeed, definitely rejecting them. The central motive of the composition would thus be the long level-roofed nave that on one side lifted its walls sheer from the grass, its unrelieved outline but little broken by projecting transept or the squat lantern of the crossing ; while on the other were the two-storeyed buildings set round the cloister, prolonging the returns of western fagade and transept ; so that the whole had an expression of full squareness, to which in their detachment infirmary and abbot's lodging only gave another note. Beyond, indeed, lay satellites with steep pitched gables, hostels and barns, and the square blocks of gateways, but all as it were graduated echoes of the main group, giving it scale, but subordinate, and in no competition with the effect of the central massing. In these magnificent combinations of great church and palace, whether cathedral or monastic, stand the proofs of the great style of Gothic art created by the thirteenth century, more clearly even than in the exquisite detail by which this creation was perfected. But the style of this achievement is not to be viewed as if it were a well-arranged marriage of the religious and secular characters in building : the two had never been separated in the birth of Gothic. Rather was manifested the growth of an art of great building only, in which the love of beautiful creation and the truth of its manifestation had admitted no dictation from the arrieres pense'es of prescription. Such singleness of ideal can come only at a summit :¦ — In the preceding century the Norman castle had stood beside the Norman church, as the embodiment of separate and antagonistic impulses, that often dominated the church and dwarfed it into insignificance : — In the fourteenth century house-building de veloped a domestic personation, whose advance on the stage threw church design into the role of retrospection. But in the thirteenth century chapel and kitchen, dormitory and chancel, could be built with the same expressions, the same great manner of advancing experiment in form as in feeling, showing only the necessities and circumstances of the building craft. No doubt such an art had sprung from ecclesiastical prompting in the power of Romanesque church-building, but in the hands of the bishops and the reformed orders this traditional complexion had been effaced. While Romanesque secular art had come to an end in the disuse of the keep, at the same time Romanesque religious art was laid aside as effete. Neither feudalism nor ecclesiasticism could control the youth of Gothic inspiration, which went its own way. As a pure art of building it was equipped for religious and domestic use, without distinction or any effort of selection, giving unity of expression THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 247 to all the varied appurtenances of a cathedral or conventual estab lishment. Thus it was that in the thirteenth century the hall of the noble and that of the hospital took practically the same structural form as the nave of the parish church. The idea that religious and secular art have held themselves essentially distinct is at fault, and still more unsound is the teaching that in Gothic art domestic architecture lagged behind that of churches, and was inclined to retain antiquated features of style which the church had discarded. Rather it was the Benedictine conservatism of church-building, which could not at once free itself. Not, indeed, till the end of the century did this latter generally exhibit the slenderness and open proportion of the Gothic ideal. But the Halls would be the new and complete creation of wealthy builders, while most often the parish church acquired its proportions bit by bit ; and since each addition was circumstanced by the conditions of a former building, Norman massiveness would often be retained in pier and arch, and Romanesque traditions of window-openings control the lighting. But the solidarity of the Gothic style as an art of building is manifest even under such conditions. The beauty of Early English detail is generally as conspicuous in the small parish as in the big con ventual church. There are the same refinements, the same statuesque creations of style: indeed/since the larger forms have so widely perished, these smaller but better preserved examples of Gothic have got a some what undue prominence. At any rate, Rickman, Parker and Paley have founded their reviews of our Gothic art very largely on the parish church examples of thirteenth century style ; so much so, that it is unnecessary to go over the same field. However, the local nature of these mani festations should be more recognized than they have been. For though in every considerable church Early English is found with a greater uniformity throughout the breadth of England than was the case with the other phases of Gothic art — so that we can recognize the same moulds and almost the same crockets in the thirteenth-century work of places as far apart say as Dryburgh and Sherborne, or as West Walton and St. Davids— the same, to a certain extent, being true of the simpler decoration of the humbler edifices — yet certain circumstances were bound to create local differences, if not in detail, at any rate in the use of that detail in the spasmodic recurrences of parish church building. The great mason-craft of the time passed naturally into the service of the wealthy corporations. There can be no doubt that by the middle of the thirteenth century the building activity had been systematized, and what in the twelfth century had been very much the passion of the whole community had become delegated to a distinct masonic class, which would be attracted to the big jobs of monastic building, and be engaged 248 GOTHIC ART on them for years. Only under special circumstances could there now grow up a body of parish-church building which would either equip a mason-craft of its own, or, on the other hand, command the services of the great masters of the established masonic order. That in every county of England can be found examples in parish churches of exquisite detail of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries indicates what only could be a fleeting phase of art. After 1250 some close connection with the headquarters of building design, the patronage of a great noble or abbot, would become necessary to give to the parish church that elaboration and ornament which before had grown very much out of the mere fact of building. New churches like Skelton, in Yorkshire, or Stone,1 in Kent, might get the same rich treatment for their smaller detail, as the cathedrals of York, or the Abbey of Westminster, and could be built in one effort, but only a plainer and simpler craft was obtainable for their less favoured neighbours, built haphazardly as opportunity allowed. Still in some parts of England we can point to a parish-church building that in the thirteenth century can be realized as the growth of local mason-craft. Its distinction would arise from two sets of circum stances : the one, that of geological formation, which has been already indicated, as necessarily splitting stone-craft into provinces — separating the art of the oolite band that stretches across England from that of the chalks of the south-east, and the sandstone and the grits of the west and north. The other lay in the increases of population, which promote church-building. Where, in the thirteenth century, came prosperity and a growing population, there would be an impetus to this new building ; and the nature of the parish system contributed a peculiar effect. For since the parish division remained to a certain extent as a fixed and immutable area from the original Saxon settlement which gave it birth, where that settlement had been thick and prosperous because it took possession of land already cultivated, the conditions were but little subject to change from century to century. The parish was of small area, so its population increased slowly and a small church always sufficed for its needs. In such districts the earliest Romanesque buildings have descended even to our own day, with hardly any increase to their first dimensions. But in the woodland centres of England the Saxon steadings had been further apart, and so the parishes were larger, and clearing and wider cultivation made great increases of inhabitants. The twelfth century had done much to reclaim the forest bottoms of mid England, and particularly the monastic system developed agriculture, so that by the 1 What is now to be seen here is largely away a good deal of fifteenth-century win- Sir G. G. Scott's " restoration " : he took dow-work and put in his own. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 249 middle of the thirteenth century a population had sprung up in many of the large parishes of mid-England that needed a considerable church for their services. A similar effect grew from the expansions of commerce. The export of English wool in the thirteenth century had reached dimensions which were making England a rich country. It was the sea trade of the Hanseatic towns which rapidly gave prosperity to all the eastern ports, where the commodities it brought were exchanged for the produce of the flocks and herds which monastic husbandry had made numerous. Wealth and population were so at hand to build considerable structures on many a creek of the Humber and the Wash, and along the coasts of Yorkshire and Norfolk, where the eleventh and twelfth centuries had seen only sparse popula tions and but tiny churches. From the incidence of these two sets of condi tions, the geological and social, came the reflection of our first Gothic style in the fabrics of our parish churches; andsomedistinct areas are at once indicated by them. First, a south-eastern district of Kent and Sus sex (with their bordering 189. ovingdean, south-eastern parish church. See also fig. 123. counties1), a land of chalk and sand and clay, generally far removed from any big-freestone mason-craft, but with (except in the forest of the Weald) considerable prosperity and population, conditions which produced in the first half of the thirteenth century a large remodelling of churches, the details of which have survived to our day. But in a country so long and closely settled the parishes were small, and it can be seen that the churches retain their twelfth-century dimensions, but little altered from the unaisled chamber-plannings2 of the Saxon church. So the local note of this thirteenth-century architecture is one of simple gracefulness. With the scarceness of any other building material but chalk-flints, or rag-rubble, it finds expression in such a 1 The edges of this district, as the Isle of show large early churches, which have been Wight and Surrey, North Hampshire and then Essex, came into contact with the fringes of other areas, and each exhibit a subvariety of treatment. In the Cinque Ports, too, the trade with France made population; so Shoreham, Hythe and Rye already mentioned and illustrated in Chaps. II. and IV. 2 See plans, page 48 : there are rare examples of cross-plans, as Elham, Kent, Clymping, Sussex, and a church near Marks Tey, Essex. K K 250 GOTHIC ART church as that of Tangmere, near Chichester (see fig. 123, p- l7°)> or of Ovingdean, near Brighton (fig. 189). No external bases or but tresses, no strings or dripstones break the traditional outlines, and inside dressed stone shows severest economy of use in door and window head ; yet everywhere is preserved the simple dignity of a great style. Hun dreds of such churches1 dot our south-eastern counties ; most often with a low western tower as at Womenswold, and enlarged by a single aisle only ; or when more ambitious with the double aisles, as at Leeds, brought under one span, and always low and unpretentious, for they are the outcome of a village mason-craft. Quite other conditions have play in the extended band of the oolitic strata,2 which from the cliffs of Portland Bay to those of Whitby stretch across England, where every ten miles or so may be dug stone of large scantling and free to work. Quarries such as those of the Isle of Purbeck, which sent its marble all over England ; or those in the neighbourhood of Tisbury, which gave Chilmark stone to Salisbury ; or those at Doulting, from which were built Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey ; or those of the Totternhoe stone of Dunstable ; or of the still more famous Barnack, which supplied three dioceses3 and six counties — these were the nursing mothers of stone-crafts, which grew into the great architecture of the thirteenth century. Three chief areas of parish-church building can be indicated in this district overlapping and running into one another on their edges. The first had its centre in the upper valley of the Thames, and is distinguished by the frequently cruciform, central-towered plans of its churches.4 The beginnings of this type may have lain in Bishop Rogers' church of St. John of Devizes, or in that of Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, for it spread far into the southern part of the diocese of Lincoln, until it was met by the Northamptonshire variety. In this district thirteenth-century prosperity brought a large population, and 1 Among the many may be mentioned caster it was quarried for the minsters of Smeeth, Chalke, Fordwich, Sturry, Haw- York and Beverley, and the great abbeys of kinge and Postling in Kent ; Clymping, the East Riding. Bosham, Fletching, Chailey and Rodmell 3 But Lincoln Cathedral had its own oolite in Sussex ; Calbourne, Shalfleet and Arre- stone from its neighbourhood and from An ton in the Isle of Wight; Little Braxstead, caster. Little Burghstead and South Ockendon in ' See plans of Potterne, Witney and Bar- Essex; Sheen, Chipstead and Witley in ford, pp. 54, 55. Also Bishops Cannings, Surrey. Downton and Purton, may be mentioned in Broken by the estuary of the Humber, Wiltshire; Witney, Bampton, Tackley and where the magnesian limestone, some twenty Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire ; Farring- miles west, takes its place as supplying the don and Uffington in Berkshire ; Leighton, stone for the great churches of south-east Berkhampstead, Northchurch and Ivinghoe Yorkshire. From near Bawtry and Tad- in the neighbourhood of Dunstable. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 251 much church-building : and the free, large-block stone of Box, Charl- bury, and Dunstable soon made a parish-church style of considerable pretensions and rich effect. The exteriors are marked by finely worked dressings, moulded string-courses and bases ; x as the plannings are by deep transepts and lofty central towers, often arcaded, and some times with spires of the thirteenth century, while the interiors are rich with moulded arches and carved screen-work. Of equal distinction was the parish-church art which has made Northamptonshire famous. Spreading from Stam ford and Peterborough, there came, as drainage and clear ing made a wider agriculture and an increasing population throughout the valley of the Nene, scores of churches, that show an extraordinary activity and progress of style in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Rutlandshire oolites gave everywhere for its perfection abundant stone of a coarser grain and more enduring than the Oxfordshire, so that the good preservation of the details has i°°- elton, Northamptonshire. made them illustrated in all the text-books of Gothic architecture. In plan the body of the church, double aisled with three or four bays, was almost a square, eastward from which stretched a lofty and long chancel (often with a "chapel" on one side or both), while westward opened the tower-space, over which the Northamptonshire mason poised his stone "broach" spire, the especial glory of his art (fig. 190). A third area was that of the coast, and the inlets of the Humber and the Wash, where the new-born sea trade made hamlets into towns, and gave occasion for our largest parish churches, such as Yarmouth,2 Lynn,3 1 See Urchfont(fig.i9i),lateinthecentury. The herrings of Yarmouth were sold throughout the Baltic in the thirteenth cen tury, teste Matthew Paris. The church there was attached to the Benedictines of Nor wich, and was largely built in the thirteenth century. Its spacious aisles make it no ft. wide, but it has been "restored" and "re stored" again, till now it is quite modern. 3 This belonged to the bishops of Nor wich. Its large churches, one the chapel of the other (for it is all one parish), show, both of them, considerable remains of the thir teenth century. 252 GOTHIC ART and Scarborough.1 Under the patronage of great ecclesiastics these fabrics would be carried out in communication with the most organized mason-craft of their time. But in their neighbourhood were many, only parish-churches, whose scale surpassed those of Oxfordshire and North amptonshire, following generally the latter's plan, but with longer naves and often low transepts, and sometimes cross-planned as the former. The easy water carriage gave for these churches 2 abundance of good stone, and their towers and spires are among the most striking in the kingdom. Beyond the western edges of these districts may be found some other areas of thirteenth-century parish-church building in the soft sandstones of mid-England, and particularly in the broad vale of Hereford, in Worcestershire and South Shropshire, where the com merce of the Wye and the Severn brought an increasing population. But the character of the work is less defined, the sandstone details have more completely perished, while the scale of the work was gener ally smaller, this century, than in the oolite midlands. Doubtless, too, besides the main distinctions of these districts, there developed many subvarieties which would be peculiar to a country-side, spreading from a quarry, or centre of building craft, often, perhaps, from a great monastic house, into whose hands the livings and manors had passed. It is a pity that archaeological attention was in the first fervour of the Gothic revival so much directed to the details of parish churches in the critical spirit of appreciation and depreciation rather than in that of tabulation ; most often for the avowed purpose of a correct repro duction of their styles instead of a record of their history. As it is, these attempts at reproduction have, under the mask of restoration, tainted the evidence. Whole masses of historical detail have been swept away as not showy enough for the imitators of the " best periods," who have substituted ideas of what should have been, for what was in fact. Still much might yet be done by a systematic and discriminating survey of our churches, to separate the various mason-crafts of the English quarry-centres, lay out their areas, and particularly to show their influence on the great tides of central style, which in each century 1 Granted by Richard I. to the Cister- south side of the Humber — most of these cians ; the part remaining is the nave, which being cruciform with central steeples. Along must have been built shortly following this the creeks of the Wash were Long Sutton, grant. Gedney, Whaplode, West Walton, Elm (see ' There may be mentioned in Yorkshire plan, p. 56), Emneth, and Walsoken, usually Hedon (already described) ; Filey, belonging of the Northamptonshire plan, but often with to Bridlington Priory, Snaith to Selby Abbey, transepts, and sometimes with the towers and Hemingborough to Durham; also Great attached unsymmetrically, or (as at West Grimsby ; Barton and Bottesford on the Walton) quite detached. THIRTEENTH CENTURY LESSER BUILDING 253 flushed the channels of great building, and sent waves which penetrated the whole region of English Gothic. Apart from these evidences of quarry- craft, the interest of parish- church building in the thirteenth century is great from the fact that in it really lay the germ of the after developments. Monastic building reached a zenith, and after the first half of the fourteenth century was to die away into comparative insignificance, but parish-church building became the growing influence. In the main areas that have been named it grew in the fourteenth century to a dignity and richness that nearly brought it level with monastic style. In the fifteenth it every where turned the tables, and its mason-craft was the dictator of monastic style, so that cathedrals like Winchester and Canterbury rebuilt_their naj££S-A^fy-much as large. editions__of__a_ parish^ church, and Cistercian abbeys, like Furness and Fountains, were fain to " sport " parish bell- towers. 191. URCHFONT, WILTSHIRE, C. 1280. . CHAPTER VI The Detail and Sculpture of the Thirteenth Century In selecting the salient character to distinguish each century of the Gothic story, there was assigned to the thirteenth the quality of being specially sculpturesque, that is, of appealing to our emotions with the power of sculpture. Nineteenth-century perceptions are, perhaps, not sympathetic to such a distinction, for we so very much associate the sculptor's art with the ideas of mimicry of life, that the possibilities of a wider range of his faculty are unrecognized. Statuary we take as the work of an artist, but any shaping of material for a less imitative purpose we hand over to the journeyman working at so much an hour. Yet when we stand before a thirteenth-century building the modern cataloguing of capacities must seem inept. The "imager," as the middle ages called him, clearly stood on no such pedestal as our distinctions o-ive him : he was but a craftsman among his fellows. If the broad cleavages of the building crafts can be traced back to origins in the thirteenth century, yet no hint is there of that social discrimination which in our days has made one stone-chipper a drawing-room knight, and left his brethren hand-to-mouth labourers. If figure sculptors of the thirteenth century can be identified in France, and more doubtfully in England,1 yet their art can scarcely be credited with personal distinc tion. Indeed, in the centuries following, when the image-shop was certainly in existence, and the " imaginator" supplied a stock article or to order, as the sculptor provides his wares to-day, the balance of the distinction was still the other way, giving in England, at least, import ance to the architectural faculty rather than to what we honour now as 1 Matthew Paris speaks of a " pulchra were employed, Richard of How, John of Mariola " of William of Colchester ; but Battle, Michael of Canterbury, Richard and the best ascertained "imagers" are those Robert of Crundale, got sums for each cross named in the accounts of the Eleanor of from ^6 5 to as much as j£6oo for Charing crosses and monuments ; William de Ire- Cross. Torell was paid about ^35 for each land ; Alexander de Abyngton ; and William of his bronze images apart from the metal, de Torell, the goldsmith. See "Archseo- and he was a "master," as were also the logia," vol. xxix. Five marks each, or under " caementarii," but the " imagers," who sup- _^4, were paid for the statues by Alexander plied the stone statuary, are not so de- and the first William, but the masons who signated. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 255 the artistic. It was the " architector," the " ingeniator," or the " ccemen- tarius" who was "master," "rector" of the enterprise to which the " imaginator " and "pictor" were only called in as accessories. Such conditions make the quality of art a pervading one : every instrument of its expression works with instinctive harmony. And this is particularly evident in the first Gothic, as it outgrew the bands of its Romanesque cradling : in the enlargement of the stonecutter's art, in the emancipation of the sculptor, was proved its strength. For the whole building was his work ; the large massing as much as the carved decora tion ; the spire as much as the pinnacle ; the trefoiled opening as the trefoiled crocket head ; the shafted pillar as the draped image itself. This sentiment of sculpture shows in the plainest and most utilitarian of the first Gothic constructions, in the Chateau Gaillard and the bridge of Cahors, as clearly as in a spire of Chartres or a portal of Notre Dame. The carved shapeliness of their utility is no less a marvel than is the sculpture of the wreathed capitals or the statuary of the porch. And English examples show the like pervading sentiment. The masoned harmonies of Gothic are audible in the plain constructions of our parish churches as in the canopies of the cathedral quire. More over, in England this sense of unison lasted longer. Too quickly in France the energy of the creative instinct passed out of the whole fabric, and concentrated itself on its decoration. The French figure sculpture gained thereby a perfection which puts it beside the Greek ; but the building as a whole was stricken. The mechanics of construction were left, as it were, without soul, and fell into the listless exercises of in genuity. This separation of the elements of art was at work in France well before the middle of the thirteenth century, and the process going further, decorative sculpture turned to a mechanical exhibition of naturalistic achievement. The force of Gothic art thenceforward lay no longer in the consummate whole of a great architectural achieve ment, but more and more in separated capacities of unequal function, in the engineering secrets of mason guilds, in the dexterities of a school of carving, in the gorgeous picture-painting of glass, and particularly in the furniture, the image, the casket, and the embroidery — the bijouterie and gauds of building rather than in its fair frame and radiant visage. The same tendencies of decay can be seen acting upon the course of our English art, but owing to what can be best described as our national idiosyncrasy, our building art did not so entirely succumb to the disease. To the end our architecture preserved the consciousness of being the complete art with a control over the whole display. After the thirteenth century, it must be admitted that it kept its power through the subordination, or even degradation, of some of the lively quality of 256 GOTHIC ART sculpture and painting to the level of the masonic ideal of the time. And this may be taken as the admission that our English sculpture in the figure never reached the supreme quality of the French, for it could be content to follow the architectural lead, instead of thrusting it aside. In view of what remains of English mediaeval statuary, beautiful as this is, the conclusion can hardly be contested. The full paean of sculptured eloquence which speaks from the portals of Chartres, Amiens, or Reims, has a tone more masterly than what Wells, Lincoln, and Westminster, with all their sweetness, can compass. But the corollary follows, that our English art was so no offshoot of the French, but the growth of a distinct national genius. Brought under the same influences, it was differently impressed by them. To both arts the thirteenth century brought a crisis. The power to achieve had mounted to the limits of aspiration, and now the means were become an end in themselves. The discovery of nature, its beauty and its mystery, had quickened in the heart till the pillar-shaft of the mason took the tender grace of womanly beauty, and the capital had blossom like the flowers of her chaplet. But the hand of the craftsman who could in mere building accomplish so much, could go further — could carve the man and woman themselves with mimicking fidelity, and shape the stony leaf as if it had been picked from the tree. To this goal art had striven, and the third quarter of the thirteenth century found it achieved. And the church perceived a ready use for the magic instrument that had grown to its hand. Its creed had long been that form should teach ; for symbolism had labelled figures, giving to every shape the expression of a doctrine and the sense of an exhortation ; but when it could speak with the power of mimicry, form made an appeal more intimate and personal. As it were with the voice of a living actor, it. instructed, exhorted, or denounced. The emotions, by which art exists, had been forged in the service of religion ; but now these could be sharpened by the imitative faculty of the artist. So sculpture and paint ing passed into a realism of their own, into which architecture could not follow. Ere long French mason-craft found itself but the cover and frame to the emotional preciousness of the statue, or the gorgeous jewellery of the glass painting. Gothic art had forked, and the main stem, that of building, grew stunted and sapless, for the best juices of its root were drawn away more and more to nourish the individual triumphs of a school of petty successes in imagery, enamelling and glass painting. In England the leading shoot was able to keep its pre-eminence, but so as to overshadow the other branches. And our art of sculpture, which had sprung with the architecture into grace and beauty, gets after the SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 257 thirteenth century a jejune and uninspired expression as being part of a magnificent decoration, not the free growth which the thirteenth century presented it. Still it is not in this sense that we call Early English sculpturesque, because it forwarded so markedly the power of free sculpture, which afterwards went back ; but because of the expression of shapeliness, which was innate in all its productions ; because that, in larger and lesser building alike, nobility of form is seen as the keynote of the composition ; and we can turn to the simplest as well as the most elaborate of its decorative works — to its base-courses as to its finials — to its fonts (see fig. 232 at end of Chapter) as to its shrines — to find the same proof of style in the delicacy and finish of every detail. In unison with its ideal did Gothic enrichment of surface take its fancies from the large facts of construction : the masoned arcade was the foundation of the decorative system of the thirteenth century. Romanesque art had shown the way with storied archings, whose forms in the hands of the first Gothic artists had grown increasingly rich and varied in contrast of differing curvatures,1 and in the recessing of arcade behind arcade,2 to which slender shaftings gave lightness and mystery. In this the trefoiled head had played a large part, and by further foilings fresh combinations were introduced, as in the beautiful arcades of St. Albans. But the more finished art of the mid-thirteenth century turned to the subtler gradations of texture, and to an interest in sculptured surfacing. The west front of Wells was the masterpiece of its style. Every arcade had its statue, every piercing was the frame of a figure subject. Yet standing or sitting, now life-size, now colossal, now mere puppets, the images have no confusion in their mixture or uncertainty of composition, for harmony is maintained by the emphasis of the con structional line. Every opening, every niche, is definitely controlled by the strong deep cutting of arch-mould or gable-line, and the serene uprightness of the slender pillaring. And to marry the two effects, between the deep accent of con struction and the soft contouring of the figure, is spread an intermediate value in the textures of carved cap and bracket — of crocketed moulds against which the shaft stands clean and straight, — of curtains of spandrel wreaths, and of finials and heads that stop the strong lines of the mould ings. Wells front is wall-sculpture on the largest scale, with a full combination of all forces, but in all its efforts the thirteenth century showed its greatest power of art on these principles, whether in big broad structures like the tower faces of Raunds or West Walton, or in the specially selected fields such as the doorways of Lincoln Presbytery or Crowland, the triforiums of Rivaulx, Ely and Westminster, or finally in 1 Byland, Rivaulx, etc. See pp. 124-126. ' As at Lincoln and the east front of Ely. LL 258 • GOTHIC ART the shrines and tomb canopies, such as that called the Cantelupe shrine at Hereford, the St. Frideswide's shrine at Oxford, or Bishop Bridport's tomb at Salisbury. While in such compositions design was of course conceived and must be judged as a whole, yet some analysis may well introduce and illustrate the stages by which it developed. It is to be observed that the thirteenth- century wall is first a framework, and then a filling, and that the two functions are distinctly separated. Founded on the struc tural scheme of pier, arch, vault and gable, the decorative use in the thirteenth century is very clearly the larger construction written small. The original parts are all in evidence, and reproduced distinctly, whether the archings serve for door or window, for the gallery of a shrine, or simply for a wall-tracery. Starting from the ground, the multiplications of shaft, arch and gable, are levelled up to form a horizontal base of another storey, which could repeat the same treatment, and so rectangular faces, large or small, are mapped out with arcadings, as at Lincoln or Dunstable (fig. 169, p. 221); or, secondly, with greater complication of enrichment and dignity of height, one arch is made to comprise a pair or more of inferior archings, this outer arching being either actually the line of vault or ceiling, or in representation of it, and in the latter case itself contoured by a gable line, either actually a roof or in representation of it, as in the front of Salisbury (see fig. 216, p. 280) ; in the latter case, too, being again capable of further similar treatments, by being again brought within containing archings. The thirteenth-century genius showed itself in the distinct pre servation of these vertebrate anatomies, the interspaces of which, when not pierced with window or doorway, were handed freely over to the decorator or sculptor. Not that the decorative reserve, which continually emphasises instead of overrunning the structural scheme, is to be taken as being always essential to the greatest art,1- — only it was so to Gothic ; because in the formative sculpture of stone-building lay the impetus which forced Gothic on its path, so that when, as followed shortly, the structural parts of its design began to melt into one another, to lose their individu ality, and become absorbed in the fancies of the decorator, it is the signal that the Gothic tide is no longer at flow. Early English decorative sculpture showed itself in fact as a passage between two insipidities. Behind it was the monotony of Romanesque richness, covering every surface with twist and fret, in the riot of the chisel. Before it lay the equal monotony of fourteenth century accentua tions, which so forced their piquancies that they ceased to emphasize. 1 Byzantine, just as Egyptian art, ig- flutings of the Greek pillar would trans- nored any principle of the sort, and the gress it. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 259 In both of these richnesses there is the barbaric note of useless display clinging really to the Ely triforium of 1340 as much as to the Iffley doorway of 1 1 50. In rejecting the Romanesque decoration the Gothic artist had made the discovery of the value of emphasis by reservation, and of the power that comes by playing the verve of the moulding-lines against the surfacing of the boss. Continually refining its processes, the mid- thirteenth century art wove a texture of light and shade, which brought all values into its harmonies, which drew the eye along the line that it might pause on the enrichment, and to provide escape from the soft intricacies of the carving, gave a set definiteness to the structural contour. No doubt both Romanesque and fourteenth century artist essayed such displays of asthetic finesse, but the power of the Early English achieve ment lay in its quality, which would let it be rich without elaboration, and strong without convulsion — to exhibit the full volume of its timbre and seem neither bombastic nor hysterical. Its secret was that one sculpturesque instinct controlled both framework and filling alike. Just as an art of free sculpture in relief was enriching every interspace, every spandrel, every projection with foliage and figure — just as this was coincident with the highest art of free figure-work which England has produced, so too moulding and shaft, the framework of these beauties, came under the dominating impulse, not by being merged into the texture of the decoration, but by being given the power of sculpture to emphasize their structural functions. It would seem as if the same master chisel was carving the sinews of the building as it would fashion a saint's effigy. There is no giving away of the vertebrate expression, but rather by the depths of the undercuttings and the values of modelled surfaces the emotional quality of sculptured life passes into the whole masonry. It is in this sense that early English art is throughout that of the sculptor. The influence of the Purbeck1 shaft in such an art has been already touched upon. The distinction of its use lay specially as a dark rich accent in the scheme of bright colour, and such we may conceive its effect in the clean monoliths at Wells and Lincoln ; in the fatter, fuller clusterings of Rochester and Chichester, and in the groupings of Wor cester (fig. 192 on next page) and Salisbury (see fig. 160, p. 207), and finally in the stately loftiness of the Westminster piers (fig. 193 over-leaf). In the setting of the windows, no less, such dark slender shaftings played a great part. And here the uniform and widespread development of the great Early English mason-craft did not completely mask a certain local flavour of usage. For while in the South the wide windowings, set 1 For the other dark marbles which were used see p. no. 260 GOTHIC ART shallow in the wall, gave small scope outside, but internally provided such exquisite free arcadings as those, say, of Christchurch and Bristol, _^_^___^ or that figured from Stone in Kent 4§y>-V^y I (fig. 194) ; in the North where after the twelfth century the glass of a window is usually set in the middle of the window- plan, as at Kirkham and Eggleston, inside and out there are repetitions of the same arcaded groupings : and mid way, in geographical position as in effect,1 Lincoln and Hereford show Purbeck shaftings and arcadings on both sides, but with a preponderance of richness for the interior. Exactly in accord with this dark yet slender rigidity of the upright shaft, was the deeply cut accent of the Early English arch-mould ; and alike were both given force, and kept to their functions by contrast — by the interweaving of the carved accent, by the bandings of the shafting, and particularly by the em phasized circlings of the capitals. But in enriching these several accents the thirteenth century artist did not obscure the structure of his frame-work. The Early English " dogtooth," for example, was not as the Norman zig-zag had been, a denial of the continuity of the moulding line, nor, as the fourteenth century ball- flower and crocket, was it a meditated break. In development as in expression it was an exact midway, and with clear- cut arris edges, it made a contrast to the soft modelling of the rolls and hollows, but still carried on their flow ; solely by the dexterous interchange is the senti ment of sculpture achieved.2 1 Generally in mid England and the west, the glass is set one third back in the thickness of the wall, and there is one order only of external arching. As examples, the doorway of Polebrook porch 192. Worcester quire, (fig. 195 over-leaf), the north transept of Hereford SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 261 They are the less characteristic uses of the dogtooth where it is ela borated in the arch-moulds of Dun stable 1 and in the quire-screen door ways of Lincoln ; which seem rather survivals of Romanesque feeling, and in succession to the enrichments of (see fig. 234, p. 303), and, in the north, the thirteenth century work at Furness, at Bolton (see fig. 167, p. 2 19), and Kirkham may be men tioned, leading on to the enriched mouldings of the Nine Altars of Durham (fig. 148, p. 195). 1 See also the Lichfield doorway, fig. 217, p. 281. 193. WESTMINSTER ABBEY CHOIR, 194. STONE CHURCH INTERIOR, 262 GOTHIC ART Malmesbury and Glastonbury doorways. For not in the line of this tradition, but rather in more complete rebound from it, was the breaking up of the "dogtooth," which came after the mid century, till it showed itself a spot1 rather than an enriched line, as in the north doorway of Hereford (fig. 196). The beautiful spray and leaflet enrichments of Early English moulding show just a similar transition from the organic life of stone- sculpture to the piquancies of decorative accent. At first with the mo- 195. POLEBROOK PORCH. Before restoration. 196. HEREFORD CATHEDRAL. NORTH PORCH. tive of a springing stem, the constructional mould-line would here and there lift an upward tendril, or throw a twisted leaf backwards. While the reserve of original experiment remained, we have some of the most beautiful creations of masonic sculpture that the world's art has produced.2 As in the cresting of the gables of the Lincoln buttresses, where the crooklike curvatures admit subjection to this law of re- 1 Essays in the "spot" use may be seen in the north transept eye of Lincoln, and in some of the strings at Salisbury, and especi ally on Bishop Bridport's tomb (fig. 224, p. 289) where the motive is well defined. ' See the West Walton window (fig. 197) and at Salisbury (fig. 222, p. 286). There are fine specimens at Westminster (in the " chapter "-vestibule), at Canterbury (in the doorway to the Martyrdom transept), at Ely, and in the ruins of Netley Abbey. Also at Raunds, Higham Ferrers and Woodford in Northamptonshire, and, of later date, in the Romsey east end on the inner window-arches. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 263 serve, but later acquired an accented detachment — Bishop Bridport's tomb (fig. 224, p. 289), shows just the turning-point — with an imitative realism, which soon gives place to the rolling flow and sprawling leafage of the accepted gable contour of the fourteenth century. As well as this spray-mould, the crocketed mould is very char acteristic of the early English genius, for its springing contours emphasize and vivify the hollows,1 against which the shafts stand stiff and clear. That genius delighted in the bold rendering of leaf curvatures, which gave vegetal force to the masonry lines. In the history of all art there is nothing to compare with the beauty of this suggestion of natural energy, which Gothic art breathed into the sinews of construction — the mason's and the sculptor's art have combined for its achievement. In some characteristics our English examples cannot, perhaps, compete with the archi volts of Notre Dame, or the strings of Amiens.2 Still, as in the archivolts 3 of the West minster chapter-house, and the, west doorways of St. Mary's, York, there is a refinement of feeling which is characteristically English. And if in some mid-century examples, as Bishop Bridport's tomb, the emphasis of the decorative accent is shown gradually invading, still it cannot be said to have, as yet, depreciated the connec tive vigour of the structural assertion. At Lichfield4 (see fig. 217, p. 281), however, rich as the carvings are, and beautiful as its enriched roll-moulds must be held, yet they show a transition from the garish elaboration of Romanesque to the piquant surfacings of the decorated genius, with less of the fine reserve 197. WEST WALTON. SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE. 1 See St. Hugh's pillar at Lincoln (fig. 75, p. 112), and at Wells, where in the west front are both spray and crocketed mouldings. ' On the north side of Lichfield the cornice has pieces that might match the French. 3 Now practically perished, but the arches of the vestibule show the style. 4 The same may be said of Lincoln quire- screen doorways already mentioned, and and then, too, of the naturalistic carvings of the Southwell passage to the chapter house. 264 GOTHIC ART which gives generally to thirteenth century art its sculpturesque dis tinction. Turning to the capital the same mounting path of sculpturesque expression and the same declensions can be traced. In the last years of the twelfth century the myriad fancies of spray and crocket motives had amalgamated into a typical early English form, with a hollow bell, expressive of the upward shaft-thrust— not like the dumb resistance of the Norman cushion to the burden of the load, but with the suggestion of an eager growth from the fibre of the pier. 198. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. CAPITAL IN QUIRE. This is done in the plain moulded capital with a wonderful sim plicity. If the habit of Purbeck mason-craft was the parent of this form in the South, the Cistercian art of the North found such construc tional sculpturing to its fancy, for especially abundant in north England 1 are examples of the reserve which in many buildings used plain mould ing throughout. Further south the genius of the western and midland crafts of Lincoln and Wells spread the carved capital far and wide, yet in the churches of all the religious orders without distinction2 the plain capital is often abundant, almost to the exclusion of the carved. At 1 Hexham, Rivaulx, and Whitby show plain capitals practically everywhere, and Beverley generally. 2 For example : the Benedictines at St. Albans, the Cluniacs at Wenlock, the Cis tercians at Netley, the Augustinians at Southwark, just as much as the Seculars at Salisbury. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 265 Westminster (fig. 198) are exquisite examples of the plain bell-capital, endowed with a music of pure form dissociated from any direct imitation of natural objects, that puts them in the category of ideal beauty beside the Attic amphora and the Doric column. And no less has the enriched capital become the flower of the shaft, with a sculpturesque intention dominating the imitative spray-motives of the Transition. As perfectly as in any leaf-capital of the world's art are the functions of construction vitalized by the Early English grace of natural suggestion. The springing stems carry up the strength of the shaft, while the horizontal load is emphasized by the deep furrowing of the abacus, beneath which the curvatures of leafy contour bow outwards in submission to the weight, but with a living resistance to it, and by their full bossage assert their competence to its burden. The petals of this shaft-flower have a marked form which has been called the " trefoil," and held to be a representation of clover ; but it would seem rather the English thir teenth-century abstraction of leaf- form in general.1 In this, as much as in its plain form, the English capital shows a style distinct from the contemporary French.2 The broad leaf- forms of the early crockets of Vezelay remained to the end with the French — the original nickings at the base are always in remembrance. But the vegetal motive in England l"' FRENCH CAPITAL" became after 1 200 an abstracted branch rather than an abstracted leaf, with a growth arrised out of the body of the shaft, and a head that exfoliates into sprays of twisted leafage. In the French examples (fig. 199) it is rather the stem that has exfoliated and split up into layers of leaf upon leaf, and in like fashion the nodding French head splits into divisions of horizontal rather than of vertical cleavage, bursting like a closely packed bud instead of throwing out tendrils of growth. So in the first French examples there is a more complicated structure, with a greater number and variety of leaves, which, with the advance of naturalism, develop a more copious flora than the English art. The 1 Just so the name acanthus has been appropriated for the Greek abstraction. Viollet-le-Duc speaks thus of the French forms : '• C'est une sorte de convention, qui resemble a la fiore naturelle et procdde comme elle, mais a laquelle on ne pourrait donne un nomme d'espsce." 2 Compare the Martin de Champs capital abovewith any at Chichester. The illustration of this latter hasbeen omitted, but see fig. 252. M M 266 GOTHIC ART French, in a word, abstracted other qualities from the treasur) of nature. But the worth of each art must be judged by its own intrinsic strength, not by its deficiency in the attributes of the other.1 Viollet-le-Duc, on the evidence of the capitals of S6ez, in Normandy, which he dates to 1230, and assigns to the Anglo-Norman style — the generalization under which French writers set English Gothic — accuses our carvers of showing cleverness and finish of detail rather than archi tectural composition. But however true this may be of the Caen mason, surely nothing is clearer than that the school of his craft was radically distinct from that of his English contemporary of the thirteenth century. In the plan of the Caen capital with its tall bell, round abacus, and simply contoured crockets there was English relationship,2 but when it came to their carving, each stem was given by the Caen mason a deeply incised line, instead of the folded arrises of the English art ; and in place of the bold full- relieved midrib, which on the bend of the crocket-head gives such substance and breadth to the English boss, the Caen mason again simply nicked the centre of his leaf (fig. 200). Generally in many of his expressions there is a niggling quaver in place of the strong rhythms of the English manner. Not S6ez or Coutances, but Chichester and Wells, and then Lin coln, Ely, and York are to be credited with the true characterization of the crocket form for the purposes of the circular- planned abacus.3 In each cathedral the course of the progress was to bring the sprays and crockets which had done service for the angles of square or octagon into the effect of a continuous support for the circle, with an after- 200. CAEN CAPITAL. The animal and human form in both arts now come rarely into the decoration of moulding and capital. St. Mary's, Shrews bury, shows some head-crockets, and at Wells little figures twist between the stems, both being of the twelfth century, but the thirteenth century work in its first half gen erally omits such insertions. At most a dove, as at Durham, or a thrush pecking at fruit, or, as at Lacock, two peacocks, are to be found as rare breaks to the continual presentation of leafy motives. 2 Or descent : for the arts of Normandy and England were so close together as to be almost one, until in the beginning of the thirteenth century Philip Augustus brought in by his conquest of the former the full tide of the He de France Gothic ; but an after reaction reinstated some of the forms of the English advancement of Gothic, and afterwards the Normandy mason would seem constantly in touch with our work. See the built up bays of Sherborne lady chapel, where there are well preserved and beautiful examples of engaged capitals, with three detached trefoiled crockets finely sup porting the abacus, SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 267 degeneration into a wreath or roll. There is a central type maintained, but each cathedral had an idea of its own upon which it worked, one that it conceived in the first flush of Gothic, and carried forward by the constant experiment of sculpturesque adaptation, no mere dexterity and ingenuity, but the gradual apprehension of its ideal. So every capital was different ; there was no acquiescence in perfection, nor acceptance of a model, and no copying of the one from the others. The mid-way crocket, most in evidence of a central type, and preserving the greatest uniformity throughout, is that of the Ely ] quire, where the same trefoil (fig. 201), broad, bluntly nosed, with angular ribbing and deeply lobed leaf, is to be seen in all the thirteenth-century work. The crocket-heads are made bunches of such trefoils, which toss 201. THE TREFOIL OF ELY QUIRE. themselves free, but preserve a distinct radiation from the centre ; and being in two ranges the upper heads nod to the lower, but there is no actual coalescing of their leaflets. All along the valley of the Nene are variations mixed with this set Ely type, generally with slenderer and more pointed leafage. The oolite mason-craft at and around Stamford worked out those forms of capital,2 which group the crockets in two ranges, an upper and a lower, and with this lighter leaf the mingling of the heads soon generate a festooned wreath.3 Down in the fen-lands by the Roman wall 4 we have the Ely trefoil brought into similar crowded clusters, but from their greater fullness there grows, rather, a roll of leafage 6 which in the quire of St. Margaret's, 1 The origin of the Ely form can, per haps, be traced back to the twelfth century in the west tower and galilee. 2 Founded on the double row of acanthus that ran round the parish-church capital. (See example at Oxford, fig. in, p. 150.) At Peterborough are the earlier capitals of this type, and at St. Mary's and All Saints, Stamford (fig. 202 on next page), good examples of the later. 4 As at West Walton (fig. 203 on next page) and Leveringham. 5 At Cambridge, in the entrance of the St. Radegunde's "chapter" (Jesus College) 268 GOTHIC ART Lynn (see fig. 128, p. 176), has quite a square blocking diapered with flowers. Another fashion was that of the Dunstable mason, whose finely 202. CAPITALS FROM STAMFORD. pinnated sprays, as at Ivinghoe, divide from the stalk ; or as at Warm- ington on the Nene, set back to back, twine their tendrils together ; at Lichfield are less restrained applications of the same mo tive, that soon get naturalistic, and losing the vital spring become circling bands of foliage.1 In the south of England Chichester reached this roll form, but by a different path, which we may see suggested for it in the twelfth-century capital of its earliest Lady- chapel (see fig. 252, p. 317). The various styles that ap pear in the first capitals of c. 1 200 pass into awell-defined crocket-motive with a trefoil- head, more tightly treated than further north, clustering to the abacus, in Caen fashion with the ball distinct. Later,2 with fuller growth, the 203. CAPITAL, WEST WALTON. NAVE. the leafage is a plain diapering of the roll — a surface enrichment more Romanesque than Gothic in feeling. 1 Some are fine, particularly those of the main vaulting shafts with an oak-leaf motive, and the ivy leafings on the wall piers. 2 See, for example, the capital of screen dividing the chapels on the north side. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 269 crocket-heads mingle their side shoots in one continuous roll, but always with a restrained elegance and a spherical contour. Westwards of the central types — Wells, Gloucester, and to some extent, Worcester — show their carved capitals retaining some of the fiery graces of their first forms in Transitional Gothic.1 At Wells there may be some uncertainty in separating the twelfth- from the thirteenth-century carving, but the capitals towards the west end of the nave may be taken as the later, and they, with those of the south doorway into cloister, are particularly remarkable for the involution of tendrils, so twisted, that they often make complete volutes. From these it is but a little way to the finely traced twinings of the Gloucester capitals, on what is called 204. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. CAPITAL IN TRANSEPT. the "reliquary." However, on the great west-front itself of Wells is less trace of this traditional crocket-motive, and on either side of the chapter-house staircase can be seen the unrolling of these twined tendrils, till in the central pillar of the "chapter," built about 1300, they wreath themselves into a crown of foliage (see fig. 319, p. 413). Northward, again, of the central types, the Lincoln methods went their own way upon the lines of its earliest Gothic. The trefoil here has none of the plumpness of the Ely form, nor the slenderer definiteness of the Stamford variety. Indeed, it sometimes seems scarcely to aim at the distinct trefoiling of its leaf-motive, but spreads with a broad fanlike spray with many offshoots only roughly triplet. As at Ely, the edges of the crocket-shoots make angular stems, but in the leaf they develop themselves as flat ribs, which in the later and more florid examples become entirely disengaged. The distinctness of the Lincoln (fig. 204) 1 See, too, Cwmhir, fig. 107, p. 148, and for Worcester, fig. 192, p. 260. 270 GOTHIC ART character is most seen in the sideway leaning of the crocket head, which is inclined tangentially instead of nodding forward on the normal of the plan-circle— so that it was close at hand to support the abacus, and by an easy deflection brought the upward lines of the shaft into obedience to the horizontal suggestions of the load. This peculiarity appears in the capitals of St. Hugh's work in his eastern transept, and in what came after him it is made the frequent though not the only motive of the varied art of the Lincoln mason. In the building of the 1240 nave the tendrils have come to twine in and out, circling and 205. SKELTON CHURCH. CAPITALS IN PORCH. uncircling in a continuous chain, with the deflections not all one way, and with often the stems crossing one another, till from such twisted wreathing the naturalistic chaplet was quickly reached in the quire- screen doorways. The types of Lincoln were often those, too, of the north : the dis engaged stem, the sideway twist of the crocket head, the less distinct use of the tiers of crockets, are characteristic of Southwell, York and Skelton (fig. 205), and pass on to the nine altars of Durham.1 But there is generally less delicacy in the northern treatment, and in the leaf more of the trefoil and less of the acanthus feeling than at Lincoln. At York the motive of the crossing spray2 in the crocket, can be traced in 1 With a coarser and later touch, how ever ; still there are some fine bold motives. In the bossy capitals of the wall-shafts on the walls of the quire birds peck at the fruit in the leafage of the crockets. 2 Which had its twelfth-century prototype in the Jervaulx capital (fig. 73, p. no), as at Fountains also. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 271 continuous development to the end of the century, till the twining sprays laid back to back are naturalized as leaves, laid crosswise, of oak, maple or ivy.1 So they cease at once to spring from the bell, or seem to lend support to the abacus, but twine up and down like a twisted chaplet that soon grew full and bossy, lost its noblest naturalism, and passed into the diapered roll of the fourteenth century, that invertebrate bell of decoration, which recked neither of necking nor abacus. The corbel compositions of the north, with their widespread capitals, treat with great boldness the motives of the pier capital. The Rivaulx transepts in their arcade responds (fig. 206) have examples, and (as see fig. 69, p. 107) in the projected pulpits of the Cistercian refectories was found a colossal 2 capital-sculpture. At Carlisle 3 is a fine respond- corbel, with triple capital below, widen ing into a crown of seven cross-sprayed crockets that support a big semicircular abacus. At Furness4 there are some elegant wall corbels, with the same cross- sprayed crockets, set to two tiers of bell capitals ; and in the chapter house the tiers merge into one long bracketed con tour. At York (fig. 207 on next page), and then at Ely and Lincoln, these long contoured corbels are developed for the vaulting shafts above the main arcade — distinctively English features, which seem to owe their origin to the Cistercian cradling of our Gothic. With their ranges of springing crockets, they lift a sheaf of broadly textured sculpture, with a note of noble fluency in con trast with the uprightness of the shafts that they carry. Just as in the decoration of the capital, so here we can trace, too, the path of style. While at Ely in the eastern bays of 1240 the shaft- corbels which rise from above the capitals of the arcade to the triforium string are sparingly set with delicate trefoil-crockets, the grace of whose sculptured treatment is remarkable ; later in the quire proper RIVAULX. CORBEL IN TRANSEPT. 1 See the midway capitals of the nave. The star motive is varied with the wreath, and the graces and skill of the sculpture are marvellous (see p. 410). 2 The pulpits of Chester (see fig. 183, p. 239) and Beaulieu show instead mere bands of sculpture and moulding ornament for their corbellings. 3 A similar motive of the end of twelfth century is to be seen in the respond of the arcade in Pudsey's Hall at Auckland. 1 Contrast the southern flavour of the vault- shaft corbels in the clerestory at Shoreham with their triple ranges of close-set leaves. 272 GOTHIC ART there has come a more crowded arrangement, rich and vigorous, but in which the fine sense of springing life is lost.1 To these succeeds the naturalistic interleafing, as in the Exeter quire of 1280 (see fig. 279, p. 353),2_what in its turn was the prelude to the beautifully decorative but unsculpturesque surfac ing of the corbels in Grandi- son's nave of the fourteenth century. On a smaller scale were the spots of emphasis which were carved for the stops of hood- and gable-moulds. While in the capitals and moulding of the thirteenth century animal or human representations are rare (contrasting in this matter very markedly with the Romanesque that preceded it), for the smaller accents of construction the human head comes frequently into use to give expression. As in its habit of the internal hood-mould for the framing of its arches, so, too, the English style had a note of its own in these headstops. The corbel-table of the Norman Romanesque, here and abroad, had been very frequently a row of carved heads, that were mostly grotesque. Next we find in our transitional art the same use for the corbels of vault shafts and ribs (see figs. 93, 94, pp. 1 37, 138). Finally, as at Glastonbury in 1285 (see fig. 86, p. 125), there are the delicately carved heads for label-stops, proving how quickly the sculptor's art in Doulting stone was perfecting itself for the achievements of Wells. On the galleries of that west front,3 the heads which stop 207. YORK. CORBEL IN SOUTH TRANSEPT, 1 The same may be said of the Lincoln corbel of the presbytery (see fig. 240, p. 308) compared with that of York above. 2 Much smaller in height : on the north side hazel, oak and palm ; and on the south sycamore, vine, maple and hawthorn, are beautifully represented. 3 Less individual in their modelling are SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 273 the gable ends of the canopies are as nobly and delicately conceived as are the famous statues that stand beneath them. Generally in our Early English art we can find such lively little bits of human expression, often the one purely sculptor's work, where all else is moulding and masonry. But Salisbury is the special home of this method : there, after the middle of the century, in the west front (see fig. 216, p. 280), the screen-work of the quire (see fig. 222, p. 286), and then in the chapter-house, the fine expression of the head-carved stops gives the note of the design.1 In some corbel uses,2 too, a figure or a grotesque is not unfrequent, such as that beautiful angel-corbel of Crowland that was the bracket of an image.3 But one must observe how the feeling of Early English art gave the figure-subject to the less constructional uses, to the niche- bracket rather than the corbel proper. So far, indeed, have been illus trated the chief phases of constructional enrichment, that dotting and lining which gave the sense of the building frame : in coming to the decorations of the statue niche we have before us the filling of the in terspaces of construction. The peopling of a great wall-screen with tiers of statuary set under the shadows of the wall-arcades had become a distinct English principle of design at the outset of the thirteenth century. At first, though shel tering under the projections of the structural scheme, the images were simply stood upon the platform of the arcade without any niching. So they are found on the gables of Peterborough, and we may conjecture them so to have been placed in the Ely galilee, and on the Lincoln front, where now the thirteenth-century figures are gone.4 But in the tall arcades of the latter there must have been intended two ranges, for brackets are provided halfway, with canopies beneath them to shelter the lower row. At Wells the stand and canopy have been made distinctly part of the scheme (see fig. 165, p. 216), by boldly baying out the gable of the arcade ; yet the structural groundwork of arcade is clearly displayed, as is also the case in the Salisbury and Crowland5 fronts. But the later works after the mid-century show signs of dissociating the image from the great heads of king and bishop that s The corresponding bracket, which car- project as corbels on each side of the nave. ries a headless figure conjectured to be that Similar great sketches in stone are those that of St. Guthlac (see fig. 218, p. 282), is project from the quatrefoils above the arches carved with the Temptation. of the Peterborough west front. ' Except, perhaps, two figures high up in 1 At Boxgrove, too, are finely modelled the gable, and the pinnacles of St. Hugh, heads' or corbels, as well as stops. and the swineherd of Stowe, if these latter 2 Also in the bosses of vault a figure are of the date. subject often centres or takes the place of 5 A fifteenth century reconstruction added leafage, as the beautiful Madonna in the statues and ol her features, but the peculiarity St Frideswide's chapter-house at Oxford. noted is in the thirteenth-century work, NN 274 GOTHIC ART its arcade base, and giving it a construction for itself. At Lichfield, towards 1300, the recessed niche has taken definite shape, with base and canopy of its own, and thenceforward we have it as a separate organism, ready for any location independently of the wall structure. In such further development the features belong to the four teenth century ; the whole change being significant of the progress of decorative motive, in supersession of the organic sculpture of masonry. In the thirteenth century, standing in the wall arcade, the line of the 208. LICHFIELD. IRONWORK ON WEST DOOR. draperied figure fell into its place with the upright sweep of the shaft — each echoed and emphasized the accent of the other. But it con trasted, too, with a variety and ex pression of texture that made a cadence of the mixture. In this lesson maybe read the general methods of Early English art in providing a texture for the interspaces of its arcade structure, whether door, window, or plain surfaced wall. Whereas the great doors of Romanesque art had been wooden mimicries of stone construction, the Gothic artist now made them surfaces of boarding, upon which the interlacing of the twisted scroll-work of iron 1 gave the accent of an interval in the constructive 1 These decorative hinges are claimed by dated by him to the eleventh century. The Mr. Starkie Gardiner to be of Norse origin, twelfth, as at Canterbury, Eastwood (Essex), and some of its specimens, with the C hinge etc., introduced flowery tendrils in place of and fishes, as at Staplehurst (Kent), are the grotesques. The thirteenth century, as CHAPTER DOOR. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 275 stonework. His method was a realization of space by means of a pat terning whose disconnection with the main lines of structure gave it the power of texture, without, however, degenerating into aimlessness, but always keeping the unity of vertebrate structure (see fig. 212 over-leaf). The leading qualities were the same, whether the interspaces of con struction were walls for painting or carving, or an opening that had to be screened in iron,1 or made weather-proof with the jewelled patterning of glass. And the method is found in the tendrilled vine- paintings of St. Albans,2 Beleigh Abbey,3 or Rochester,4 and as much in the set " stonings " which we illustrate from a church near Romsey, and in the painted tapestry of West Walton clerestory ; in the carved spandrels of 2IO. WELLOW, NEAR ROMSEY. WALL-PAINTING. 211. WESTMINSTER. DIAPERS IN "CHAPTER. rich vine-work at York,5 Hereford,6 or Stone church, Kent,7 and as much in the diapers of Westminster (fig. 211) and Dunstable (fig. 169, at Dore and Lincoln, began to model the twining stems, and, after 1250, with the use of the "swage-block" reached those exquisite surfacings that remain at Lichfield (fig. 208), York (fig. 209), Chichester, Chester, and Norwich, the richest of these being at Wind sor. (See "Transactions of Institute of British Architects," 1891.) 1 Such as the screen above Eleanor's tomb at Westminster : or see in the north aisle of the Winchester nave, near the entrance, an iron grill, now made into doors, but origin ally a screenwork put to keep the crowd of pilgrims back from the shrine of St. Swithin. Mr. Starkie Gardiner suggests for this a twelfth or even eleventh century date, but the above purpose would point to the early thirteenth, the great age of English pilgrim age, when St. Swithin's shrine was taken on the way to St Becket's at Canterbury. The Lincoln screenwork would seem of similar date ; as was that of Chichester, which was of extraordinary and varied beauty, but has been removed this century. 2 On window jamb in north transept. 3 In the chapter house. Seefig. 177^.231. 1 At back of tomb in north-east transept. 0 Archbishop Gray's tomb. 6 See recessed tomb in north-east tran sept, quite late in the century, but retaining the early feeling. In the spandrels of the wall arcade. 213- SALISBURY. THIRTEENTH CENTURY GLASS. 2 12. CARVED PANEL. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 277 p. 221), and particularly in the glass, where the one distinct thirteenth century quality is the homogeneous texture given by the absence of any set outline of defined colour partition.1 The full coloured earlier mosaics of Lincoln and Canterbury have this effect of woven back ground as much as the mid cen tury grisailles of York and Salis bury (fig. 213). Of course figure subjects were invading these fields of texture, as in painting (fig. 214), so in glass, but their appearance was, at first, as the flower or fruit of a branching tree. Despite the upright lines of the window, the medallion subject of the thirteenth century keeps this insertive ex pression just as the thirteenth- century image does in the arcade. And where in the glass the archi tectural order of ranged niches, as at Canterbury, has been borrowed from the arcaded front, it is re markable how vague and indis tinct is the appearance of marshal ling, and how the play of surface diaper is still maintained. As yet the baton of that architectural sergeant who was to grade everything to the ranks of the panel, was far off. He came to curb the riot of the de corative licentiousness in the fourteenth century, but in the thirteenth the self-discipline of the sculptor held ' its ground. Construction was the law of his design, and from willing consent to its restraints he made a value of his obedience. The permitted fields of his franchise were all the freer for the reserve of his confinement. When, in the fourteenth century, the license of decorative play broke up the structural scheme, at the same moment chains of construction were forged for the interspace, 1 In glass-painting the tendrils and diapers long into the fourteenth beside the niche- of thirteenth-century ornament survived for treatments of " Decorated." 214. ROMSEY. PAINTING AT EAST END. 278 GOTHIC ART and forthwith the broad spandrel of the arch-head was more and more to bow to the architectural tyranny of tracery-design. Certain phases of this long movement by which gradually structure shifted into ornament go back into the thirteenth century, for even at its beginning the open-work 1 spandrel had adoped a constructional in place of a sculptural filling ; but in the full current of the first Gothic genius the distinction of structural from ornamental emphasis is well kept. They are still surface-values, not line-values, that find expression in the thirteenth-century spandrel treatment. The ground is in partner ship with the relief ; there is not that separation which the after styles thought necessary for effect. The value of deep shadow is acknowledged as much as the sparkle of high light, but the shadow is not formless but contributory, and its deepest cuttings are in appreciation of the solidity of the ground, not in annihilation of it. As a field for ornament the reservation of the spandrel had of course been Romanesque : but the redundancy of the early decorative expression obscured its significance. However, the plain elements of construction — the spanning of a pair of arches by an enclosing arch which might be a vault line, or the representation of it, left a canopied space, and into this, in distaste for the fulsomeness of Romanesque decoration, the finer sense of Cistercians concentrated their ornament, crystallizing it, as it were, into roundels of traceried and delicate leafage, as at Dundrennan and Furness. Such foiled and ornamented figures on wall faces were general 2 in thirteenth-century art, and their expansion grew to the dignity of the round window, the great " roses " or " mari golds " of Lincoln and London gables. But as the special ornaments of the spandrel they belong to the moulded art of the North, as in the quire of Rivaulx, where they make the sole carvings. It is away from this intensity of figure rejection that we find the statue- niche in the spandrel, especially above the double doorway. In this position the quatrefoil comes as the rendering of the incised vesica piscis in which Romanesque art had set the figure of Christ, and all the greater churches of the thirteenth century accept and carry forward this tradition for their doorways.3 The figure motive is at first supreme, but soon its unity can be seen conditioned by more decorative impulses, which lead from the simple niche-expressions of Christchurch (fig. 215) 1 See in the transept triforium at Romsey, the Ely main arcade. the Infirmary arcade at Ely, and then in 3 The development from vesica piscis to the south transept of Lichfield, twelfth een- niche can be traced in the west doorway of tury examples, by which are reached the Llandaff (see fig. 166, p. 217), the south en- open-work door-heads of Ely galilee, and trance of Chichester, the north doorway of then of Westminster. Seep. 126. Christchurch, Hants (fig. 215), and the west 2 See quire arcade of Boxgrove, St. Mar- entrance of Glastonbury— the fgures, of garet's, Lynn, and Ihe trefoiled spandrils of course, gone, or replaced by "restoration." SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 279 and the Salisbury west-front (fig. 216), to the Crowland medallion (fig. 218), to the richer handlings of the Lincoln "Angel Choir" (fig. 219), 215. CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, HAMPSHIRE. NORTH DOORWAY, and the tracery schemes of the chapter-doorways at Salisbury and West minster. In the last the tracery, or constructive ornament, has become a motive side by side with the imagery ; it was soon, as at York, Here ford, and Wells (see fig. 255, p. 323), to free itself of the figure altogether. 280 GOTHIC ART The triforium arcade, with its development of a similar spandrel, must be accounted as influencing this transformation : there tracery ] developed long before it did in the window. Still, in long competition with the advance of the constructive, or geometrical, filling, there was at work that feeling for the texture of the interspace which showed itself in tendril-carvings such as in the arcade spandrels of Stone church and Westminster,2 and the tomb-niches of Hereford, as well as in the diapered grounds of Westminster and Tintern.3 And, indeed, the 2l6. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. WEST PORCHES. structural quatrefoil is quite banished from the doorheads of Lichfield (fig. 2 1 7) and Higham Ferrers. In the first the arabesques, that surface the roll- mouldings, meander, too, over the tympanum, broken only by a shallow niche. At Higham Ferrers there is no niche to the figure, but it is flanked on either side, over the square door-heads, with a flat carving of figure subjects, distributed as in a medallion window, upon a 1 The Chichester triforium spandrels of c. 1200 have adopted the niche motives of the doorway, see fig. 91, p. 135. 2 At Worcester, Salisbury, and Lincoln are other examples. 3 See in the west doorway of the latter, with all its fine development of tracery, how the ground is still surrendered to surface ornament, and the niche is an unadorned vesica, SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 281 ground of leafage — in fact, a rendering of painted decoration like that illustrated on page 277. At Crowland elegant twining leafage frames 217. LICHFIELD. DOORWAY OF NORTH TRANSEPT. The figures here and much of the carving are " restoration." the quatrefoil, where is told the story of St. Guthlac in relieved sculp ture (see fig. 218 on next page) : as yet the quatrefoil has no structural articulation. And at Lincoln, where over the door-head of the " Angel Choir " is the magnificent representation of the doom, the tracery is 00 282 GOTHIC ART clearly under subjection to the texture of the figure subject (fig. 219). But at Salisbury the spandrels of the chapter-doorway are solid, yet the geometrical motive is pronounced, and only as part of a tracery con struction does the quatrefoil frame the figure, while on either side circles 218. CROWLAND. WEST DOORWAY. inclose the adoring angels. So, too, in the chapter- doorways at West minster, a year or two earlier in date, the tracery scheme is complete, though its fillings are image-work, and diapers make backgrounds in the interspaces. Then, by the end of the century, in the similar position at York the statue is free of its ground, and is accounted not at all in the tracery-spandrels of Hereford and Wells. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 28 j The power and effect of the rounded sculpture in these thirteenth century door-heads is in great advance on the unmodelled block-relief of our Romanesque. And not only the door-heads, but the smaller 219. LINCOLN. SOUTH DOORWAY OF PRESBYTERY. spandrels of wall arcades show the highest beauty in the same style ot free, or highly relieved, figure work. Thus the Worcester quire (figs. 220 and 221) and the Salisbury chapter-house, have in such positions groupings and subjects, at the latter detailing the Bible history from the Creation to the Delivery of the Law. But, as already mentioned^ the finest expressions of the Salisbury sculpture are in the head-stops, and 284 GOTHIC ART in, what is a rare1 feature in English art, the figure-archivolt of the outer arch of the chapter-doorway, where the conflict between the Vices and the Virtues is characterized with " intense life and move ment. » 2 The colouring of such sculpture was, ot course, parts of its design ; still the smallness of its scale, and this evident treatment as a painting 2 20. WORCESTER. QUIRE SPANDREL CARVINGS. enforced by relief must indicate a clear step of departure from the first Gothic ideals. But we are in a different atmosphere, and one full of sculpturesque intention, in the great spandrel angels of the contemporary 1 The cloister doorway at Norwich, dated 1299, has its archivolt adorned with seven niches radiating from the centres of its arch ings. The character of the later style, with its decorative intention, is here clear. 2 See " Iconography of the Salisbury Chapter House," W. Burgess. Under his direction the heads were restored to the figure subjects, and the whole given a re painting, which, owing to the imperfection of its medium, quickly perished, and has now been cleaned off, carrying with it the vestiges of the ancient painting. In attempt ing "restoration," one must think even the great skill of such an artist as William Burges was misapplied. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 285 Lincoln presbytery. Here no doubt colour1 was used, but the scale and technique are boldly independent of it, and the style has the moral earnestness of the Wells statues. We have come, as it were, to the parting of the capacities which had hitherto been in combination to make the whole masonry design one great sculpture. The architectural 221. WORCESTER. QUIRE SPANDREL-CARVINGS, carver (or " entailer," 2 as he came to be called in the fourteenth century) was now getting a style, which distinguished him from the "imaginator" the figure-sculptor by profession. The latter, as at Lincoln, could still keep the fine sense of his art, and the force and seriousness of it, while the former was turning to the facetice and piquancies of a purely decora tive motive. For in much of the architectural carving of the " Angel ' " A great quantity of painted ornament dral." In the Exeter fabric rolls, " talliari " was discovered and destroyed." ("Assoc, is used generally for all kinds of archi- Arch. Societies' Rep.," vol. viii.) tectural carving, whether of the figure or See Browne's " History of York Cathe- decorative. 286 GOTHIC ART Choir " there is to be noted the profuse touch of a decaying sense, in the same way as the Salisbury figures (fig. 222) show a luxuriant petti ness of ideal. The spring and life of structural sculp ture was giving place to sumptuousness of detail, proof that its energies had been formalized ; that the husk of ripened archi tecture was, as it were, separating from the kernel. And that kernel was every day becoming of greater prominence : the furniture of the fabric, its shrines, its screens, and the multiplied imagery of its altars, had created a body of crafts distinct from the main pur poses of building, and no longer exercised therein. Unfortunately these images, these shrines and altars, have in effect all perished, and gone with them is the evidence of those special "artists," as we in modern parlance speak of sculptors and painters. This is the reason why such works of great sculpture as we have noted at Wells and Lincoln seem isolated, and we are at a loss to imagine their connections. But, in fact, every church once had the examples of this art to show, though now there is left to us scarcely the hint of its wide abundance. However, one class of all this furniture had, by its nature, a better chance of preservation, and we can still look to tombs and to the effigies and canopies that surmount them, as examples of the ornamental con ceptions of the thirteenth century. The sepulchral monument had 2 2 2. SALISBURY. QUIRE INCLOSURE. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 287 moreover, an added suggestion, apart from the masonic beauty which is now most often the chief part of its effect, since the transition from the glorified tomb to the shrine was an immediate one, the sanctity of the dead making an altar of his tomb. At first only the founders or bene factors of the establishment 1 could claim burial within the walls of its church. But since in the miracles wrought at the saint's tomb was the best proof of his quality, the offerings of pilgrims made him a perpetual benefactor. And so the tomb advanced to its place beside the altar, with an enclosure to protect its treasures and a canopy to honour them. The first tombs of founders or " ecclesiastics " whose fame for sanc tity entitled them to a place near the sanctuary, were let into the wall, their coffin stones spanned by the arches of the necessary recesses. The coffin lid, at first simply incised 2 in record of the dead, was soon shaped to his image, and as the skill of the chisel grew, so came the art of the imager.3 But in many of the first monuments of the thirteenth century the figure-motive is dominated by that sense of the texture of interspace, which sculptured its expression in the leaf-twinings of the spandrels, of the arch cover and of the side and of coffin chest, but left the lid with a plain cross.4 So in the effigies of this time there are many like those of Bishops Northwold and Kilkenny of Ely,5 whose figures are woven into the leafage of the ground as part of its textures. Soon, however, the image becomes a true reclining effigy, and with this in the wall- backed monument came some of the finest sculpture compositions of the last half of the thirteenth century. The gable head adopted from the wall-arcade is made to span the arch as a great canopy, creating a form of bold distinction whose whole face was field for the sculptor.6 And such great erections of pride and piety were now not confined to the walls, they crowded between the piers of the presbytery. A king, such as John at Worcester, or a bishop, like Jocelyn of Wells, might be laid in the middle of the quire ; but usually, since it was for the more elaborate showing of the principal shrine that the great enlargements of the thirteenth century were achieved, the sacred precincts of its inclosure became the choice burial ground of bishop and abbot, noble and king. At first, if itself low and flat, the memorial stone had no doubt always its herse of wooden framework,7 painted and gilt, and with em broidered hangings. Such a construction gave the motive of an arcaded 1 The earlier use in monastic establish- " See the Prior's tomb at Rochester. merits was for Abbots and Priors to be buried 5 See also Archbishop de Gray's effigy at in the chapter-house, while outside at the York, and those of the early Bishops of back to the east was the general cemetery. Wells executed in the thirteenth century. 2 See side of south chapel at Bredon. ° See fig. 303, p. 389. 3 In the nave of Salisbury, brought from 7 See the base preserved in the tomb of Old Sarum, is a fine example of the mid- the first Earl of Salisbury, with a small por- twelfth century. tion of the ornament still left. 288 GOTHIC ART inclosure rather than the gable form of the recessed tomb ; and, carried out in stone, the idea of the herse is beautifully rendered in Archbishop Gray's monument at York,1 and in that of Bishop Aqua Blanca2 (fig. 223) at Hereford, where the arcadings are of the utmost slenderness. But the more solid masonry construction is that of Bishop Bridport's tomb3 (fig. 224) at Salisbury, where appear some of the gable ideas of the wall tomb, and the whole shows the highest style of the sculpturesque feeling of the thirteenth century. Usually after 1250 the bier loses its coffin shape, and takes rather that of a bed or chest,4 with sides panelled or with figure-work set in niches that speedily in the fourteenth century grew complex and decorative. The Cantelupe tomb,5 or shrine, at Here ford is, however, of the earlier form, coffin-shaped, with two arcaded tiers ; the upper open, with flatly carved spandrels, the lower sculptured with the figures 6 of knights Templar. The rich painting of this carved work, and of the effigy that stood on such a base — and, in the cases of knights and nobles, the armour and banners that decked their tombs — must have made a bright and noble display. And such effects and others, too, were multiplied for the great shrines of saints like Becket and St. Alban, or in that of the Confessor at Westminster,7 with the wrought and gilded metal work of their inclosures, the enamelling and inlaying of their relic coffers, their museums of costly jewellery and offerings, their image- screens and rich hangings. After destructions so complete as those of the sixteenth century we 223. HEREFORD. TOMB OF BISHOP AQUA BLANCA, 1 1260. 2 1268. 3 1263. 4 The ark-shape, or that of the reliquary ("its lower part red, typical of the martyr's resistance unto death ; the upper part blue, symbolical of his heavenly mansion ") came into this suggestion. The wooden bier of the Earl of Salisbury still remains, with much of its painting. ' 1282. 0 The "weepers," as they are called in the contracts for Earl Beauchamp's tomb in the fifteenth century. See, of the thirteenth cen tury, the charming figures on the lady's tomb in the north aisle of the Chichester nave (fig. 232, p. 297), and those holding musical instruments in the knight's tomb atHowden. 7 This, the best preserved of mediaeval shrines in England, being still in the position where it was set by Henry III. in 1269, was the work of Peter of Rome, and so belongs rather to Roman than to English art, 1 1 SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 289 are fortunate in having unearthed considerable masonry fragments of St. Frideswide's shrine at Oxford as well as of St. Albans in his abbey church; and still more fortunate in the taste and good sense with which the remains have been put together and treated, as such monuments should be, with the sole intention of the presenta tion of the beauties they have left. And at Oxford these beauties are very great. St. Frideswide's (figs. 225, 226) preserves to us what is, perhaps, the most exquisite leaf-carving of any mediaeval monu ment. For the naturalistic fidelity of its imitations of ivy, maple, hawthorn and columbine has firm hold of the sculpturesque motive which gives life to the marble.1 Some thirty years later, the shrine of St. Alban had the bolder and more decorative treatment, in which the sculpture still commands the eye, but it can be seen that the tracery scheme and the crocketed canopy have come in its place as the leading mo tives, while the leaf-carving has developed all the surface piquancies of fourteenth century conven tion.2 So we pass to the other great remaining example, that of St. Werburgh,3 at Chester, which, loftier and bolder, is now in its idea only an imposing piece of decorative architecture, a congeries of niche work 224. SALISBURY. BISHOP BRIDPORT'S TOMB. 1 The bones of the Saint were translated in 1289. Theconstruction is with solid base, and open arcaded canopy like the Cantelupe tomb, an oblong masonry standing for the coffer. 2 C. 1320 (see fig. 309, p. 397). The construction is on the old lines, the base solid, but the upper part with its openings made niches for the display of offerings. 3 C. 1340. At one time broken up to make the bishop's throne, its pieces have now been brought together again, but not, as yet, "restored." The lower storey here is niched for the display of offerings, while the upper, open all round, would seem to have shown the relic coffer behind its tra ceried screens, 14 ft. from the ground. PP 290 GOTHIC ART y&&M-&~'?-, ' -'s.<.i ' "_J 225. OXFORD. ANGLE OF ST, FRIDESWIDE'S SHRINE. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 291 Y & 226. OXFORD. SPANDREL OF ST. FRIDESWIDE'S SHRINE. 292 GOTHIC ART enlivened and set off by tracery. The sequence well illustrates the passage of mediaeval art from the genius of thirteenth-century style to that of the fourteenth. And what of the imagery that these magnificent settings held as their jewels? The creative sense, which had informed with sculpturesque texture the mosaics of thirteenth- century glazing, and woven their tints 227. ROCHESTER. PAINTING OF WHEEL OF FORTUNE IN QUIRE. into living leafage, had now come more and more to treat the human representation with the hand of the creative artist, who had left traditions and studied life. And just the same with the wall-painter ;x his textured vinings which had been in rebound from the full-bodied compositions of Romanesque design, were admitting now such lively figuring as that of the Rochester "Wheel of Fortune" (fig. 227) or the Easby scenes 1 The names of the painters employed on the palace of Clarendon are given in Hoare's " Wiltshire." The court-rolls mention many under Henry III., among whom Walter of Derham painted the cover of Queen Eleanor's tomb. Mr. C. E. Keyser's "Mural Paintings," published by S. Kensington Museum, shows how large is the record of mediaeval painting. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 293 (figs. 228, 229). And since sculpture was coloured, there was no break between the colour-artist's power and the genius of the " imaginator" who just as much had served apprenticeship in the constructive tex turing of diaper and tendril. Both painter? and sculptor2 were artisans; 228. EASBY CHURCH, NEAR RICHMOND. PAINTING IN CHANCEL. so in the creation of thirteenth-century architecture the solidarity of its crafts was complete. But while in carving effigies of noble dame or knight, or sainted ecclesiastic, the "imaginator" was exercising mason-craft, he had a shop-craft, too, and a trade-stock of bracket-images of saint, martyr 1 The statutes of the painters guild at Venice (1271) have been published, and indicates that the work of painters, from among whom were shortly to arise the Bellini, was chiefly the decorating of shields, platters and chests. In the accounts of the Eleanor crosses, in 1292, the "ccementarius" holds first place; and even 150 years later, in EarlBeauchamp's monument, the "marbler" comes as the primary director of the founder and copper smith, who were the figure-artists. 294 and king. GOTHIC ART And such a shop-trade was working to separate him from his mason's origin, gave him new ideals, and brought the "marbler" into com pany with picture-painter 1 and gold smith. So that there arose a body of craftsmen outside masonic con ditions whose activity lay in the rendering of the human figure. The destruction of the work of these figure artists has been almost complete. If of glass and wall- painting we have shattered frag ments,2 the images of the altars are quite gone, and on effigies and archi tectural statues there has wrought a continual defacement : for since the stone material was surfaced for paint ing, the powdering off3 of the outer skin, that of necessity followed ex posure and neglect, has only seldom left the perfect quality of the original has been such as to resist the effects 229. EARLY PAINTING ON WINDOW JAMB. style. Yet wherever its material of time, or its posi tion has shielded it from them, the beauty of the figure- work of the thir teenth century can claim a place among the greatest of the world's art. There are still to be seen Master Torel's bronzes in West minster Abbey, and no one can gaze at Eleanor's effigy, or 1 Who supplied the pictures of Madonna and the Child, called "anconaa" in the Venetian statutes, 2 Both at Easby and Rochester there has been restoration. The decay of mediaeval paintings, which are usually only discovered to be at once destroyed, must make ap- fc^M**""--^ 230. YARMOUTH. BORDERS TO WALL-PAINTINGS. praisement of the value of their technique impossible. It can only be guessed at in the light of the MS. paintings (see p. 414). 3 Stothard, in 181 2, complained of the layers of whitewash which concealed detail : now scraping has mostly destroyed it. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 295 at the earlier stone figures still original upon the chapter-house doorway : no one can walk by the front of Wells, or stand face to face with the great angels that sit between the arches of the Lincoln triforium : no one can study the glass of Canterbury, or, still more, such manuscripts as that called the Sadleir Apocalypse at Cambridge, but must admit the pre sumption that the modelling of form, the power of colour, the liveliness of representation, which we account the dexterities of the greatest epochs of art, had here in England a golden age in the thirteenth century. Yet of this figure-work, our greatest English art in figure delinea tion, there has been but little analysis : its national origin, its connections and schools, have hardly been considered. It is true that the noble quietude of the Wells statuary has been perceived1 in comparison with the jocund liveliness of the Salisbury figures, or the moral force of the Lincoln reliefs. But it may be asked if the Wells statues can be all at one hand, of the same style, and date ? At Salisbury the figure-work falls into three or four classes ; and it is easy to see that the chisel of more than one great sculptor has been at work on the Lincoln angels ; a second worked with a brilliant picture sense connecting him with the Doom2 in the south door-head;3 while a third had generally a duller grace. Scattered over the country are other statues and figures of the thir teenth century, which should be brought into comparison and given their place in the history of our art ; such as those of the Peterborough front ; the relief-sculpture at Westminster ; the St. Guthlac fragment at Crowland ; the beautiful Madonna in the gable at Lanercost ; all of various stones and crafts, whose skill passed to the fourteenth century, to the Lichfield Madonna and those Oxford masterpieces lately (all but one) cut down from the spire of St. Mary. And specially the relations of this architectural imagery need estab lishing with the effigies of which so many are still in evidence through out the whole length and breadth of England ; at places far apart and of such various stones, that they must indicate different styles of execution, which should be separated as clearly as the architectural distinctions. The clue to our English schools lies in this quarry-craft. For though the sculptor of architectural figure-work might, for the nonce, be im ported, and though image and effigy were capable of conveyance, still the craft of each stone would naturally lie in the neighbourhood of its 1 Cockerell's "Iconography of Wells" has, but they are most effective on the near view. however, been the only attempt in putting 3 Mr. W. R. Lethaby points out to me that examples of national sculpture side by side, the fine figures which flank the south porch and he avowedly leaves out effigy work. are not king and queen, as usually asserted, 2 The eighteen subjects nearest the tran- but are representations of the Jewish and sept are those that show the great sculptor, Christian Churches common in this position. 296 GOTHIC ART quarry. So the monastic centre or cathedral city 1 of each stone district by its constant calls upon the resources of imagers would create a body of technique and a style of expression. For in the hand of the thirteenth- century artist, the effigy has grown alive :2 it is no longer the block that the twelfth-century carver fashioned to indicate the dead ; it breathes beneath its drapery, and has muscles to grip the sword hilt : yet it is to be noted, that its sculpturesque motive makes its art all one with that of the architectural image (figs. 231, 232), and of the shapened masonry (figs. 233, 234). There is much waiting to be done by connoisseurship in the beauties of our ancient art. The student is met by the difficulty that our educated public of the nineteenth century has little interest in the evidences of our native arts, going abroad to satisfy its taste for culture. So the national museums give ranges of galleries to the Greek, to the Italian and the Dutch,3 but our mediaeval master pieces, which stand as high in the catalogue of the world's art, are left to be the flotsam and jetsam of archaeological cabinets, or to knock about as old stones in the rubbish heaps of cathedrals. Yet a decent tabulation and representation of our specimens might at least be attempted with the attention that has beerf bestowed on Assyrian bas-reliefs and Chinese ceramics. Since our central authorities are indifferent it might well 231. HIGHAM FERRERS. SPANDREL CARVING ON TOWER. 1 Or such royal residences as Clarendon or Corfe Castle. 2 The wide diffusion of fine style in effigy, in the thirteenth and early fourteenth cen turies, may be judged by the examples of ladies at Chichester and Ifield, Sussex; at Tickenham, Somerset; at Westminster Abbey (Countess of Lancaster) ; in the south quire aisle, Worcester ; at Bedale, Yorkshire : of knights at the Temple Church and at Salisbury ; of Duke Robert (so called) at Gloucester ; the Earl of Oxford at Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex ; the Montfort at Hitch- enden, Bucks ; and the Fitzalan at Bedale : of ecclesiastics such as those at the Temple Church ; of Bishop Northwold at Ely ; and Bishop Branscombe at Exeter. The paint ings on the last give still a fair representa tion of the beautiful colour which Stothard eighty years ago could find on many figures that now have been stripped clean and bare, or have been gaudily and falsely repainted. 3 The British Museum, in one small room, has all its mediaeval antiquities mixed together, English and foreign. Except in the department of illuminated MSS. study of the progress and character of English work is not encouraged at our Universities. SCULPTURE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 297 232. CHICHESTER. SIDE OF COFFIN CHEST. NORTH AISLE OF NAVE. 233. BEVERLEY, FONT. QQ 298 GOTHIC ART prove the pride of one of our ancient cities such as Norwich, York, or Lincoln (which already possess in situ some of the great architectural achievements of our great English mediaeval art) to supplement these with an historical representation of our knowledge of its great figure- painting and sculpture. 234. HEXHAM. TRANSEPT WINDOW. CHAPTER VII The Summit of Gothic Art In treating of the decorative ornament of the thirteenth century the limits of its style were overstepped ; for before the close of the century that ornament had gone from the sculpturesque intention of the first Gothic : it had passed through the short portal of a mimetic naturalism into the gorgeous mise en scene of fourteenth century convention. The passage was curiously rapid,1 and the moment of the change has been taken as the excuse for dividing our Gothic into "Early English" and "Decorated" at the year 1290. But for our architectural style as a whole, such neat division is not justified. From King John to the Black Death of 1349 there ran an even and continuous course ; that indicated the broad summit of English Gothic, and so had not two but three stretches — the mounting stage of "Early English," the level crest of the " Geometrical,"2 and the declining speciousness of the " Decorated." For in quality the " Geometrical Gothic " is the centre of our style. Within the limits of its comprehension are to be grouped our most perfect buildings, as well as our most consummate sculpture. With the shrines and tombs already mentioned may be ranked such architecture as that of St. Mary's Abbey at York, of Tintern Abbey by the Wye, of St. Etheldreda's chapel at Holborn, and, finally, that of the chapter house at Wells ; works which have left behind all Romanesque archaism, and the uncertainties of pupilage ; which have an assured suavity of style, but still an unimpaired vigour of ideal, such as has as yet no need to call on extravagance to give it interest. It will be seen how, in comparison with the French peak of Gothic art, our summit is round and broad ; the set of its contours is not as immediately distinguished as in their art. Like the tide on the French side of the Channel, so came the height of their Gothic flood, flushing half Europe with its style, but with an immediate stagnation of the 1 As, for example, in York nave or at 2 A sufficiently significant name, see next Exeter, from the vault corbels of Quivil to page. The Edwards reigned too long to those of Stapledon, or from the Eleanor allow the title "Edwardian" to be distinc- tomb at Westminster to the Eleanor cross tive, though it is sometimes used for the at Waltham. same period. 300 GOTHIC ART lively qualities of its inrush, a leaving of barren sands and shallow pools. Our art came like the " spring " on our pebble banks, where for an hour after high water the billows still leap to the farthest water-mark. For half a century we produced our masterpieces of Gothic, the ebb of our art being revealed only by the deeper sinkings between the waves. It, is, indeed by the evidences of the fourteenth century that in England must be reckoned the first decline of the spirit of the thirteenth — the suggestion of a limitation in its latest works rather than the actual sense of a decadence. Our Geometrical style is still alive with the manifestation of the first Gothic principles : it is specifically distinct from that surfaced and decorative robing of structure, by which the four teenth century made its art of architecture. Yet one must recognize that to separate it from " Early English " there has gradually come into its ideal a new motive, in the guise of a wider appreciation of Gothic building-life. After the middle of the century this subtle change becomes marked. It must be recognized as a revolution of principle, to be distinguished from the ordinary wearing away of the asperities of eruptive creation — that denudation of style by the lightening and refining of form and moulding which went on very evenly, so that the sections of pier and arch and string can be traced in continuous series, varying little by little from the first quarter to the last of the thirteenth century. But the upheaval of Romanesque that created Gothic had lain in the constant striving after loftier proportion, and now had come a reversal of this process. The pointed lancet is no longer after 1250 in English art to be found with that intense expression of slender height ; but both wall- mass and its penetrations get broad and full. The fancy of design has found a new world to conquer in the exhibition of Gothic openness. The window gives the immediate reflection of this shift of ideal, showing its purpose in the creation of " Geometrical " tracery. The term, therefore, contains the significance of the change, and can be adopted to denote that distinct midway style, for which Rickman's divisions of Early English and Decorated left no place. Sharpe ' with his "first," "second," and "third pointed "better recognized the cleavages, and it is a pity that Rickman's classifications held their ground. For thereby has come the confusion that the " Decorated " style is by some taken to begin with Edward the Second's reign, and so made synony mous for the rich decadent expressions of the fourteenth century— while since others denote by the same term all the work after 1 260, this impres sion of decadence is conveyed back to the frontiers of Early English itself. In relying too much on the distinctions of moulding, the former classifiers missed the significance of the change of design which came 1 Professor Freeman similarly pleaded for the fourfold division of our Gothic. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 301 after 1250: while the latter would seem to make of the distinct and complete Geometrical forms only a transitional interlude to the com pleter Decorated of the fourteenth century. An equal wrong has been done to our art by the custom of describ ing the change that came about 1 250 as the breaking down of our English isolation — the overmastering of our art by the perfected form of the great French Gothic. England in this view was now at the end of Henry the third's reign architecturally annexed to France, and, like Germany and Spain, was to see its Gothic style following the triumphal car of Amiens and Rheims. " Was not the building of Westminster Abbey the protocol of this submission ? " it is said — so that the next century of English art showed a compulsory,- if sometimes grudging, acceptance of the French inventions. The difficulties in the way of this theory have been already dis cussed : the tracing of the plan of Westminster quire is from Paris, but its beauties are not French.1 Still less did that plan become a model for our English Cathedrals. Indeed, the distinction of Westminster in the English style is largely that it adheres to the elder ideals ; to the loftiness and the narrowness of proportion, which had made the first strivings of our Gothic genius. True, that in our lancet window had lain the com- pletest expression of this English fancy : in the ceiling English caution clung to tradition, or perhaps want of means kept back our vaults from reaching the magnificent altitudes of the French. Still Durham, Tyne mouth and Beverley show something done, and when freed from the anxieties of vault-mechanism, how daring is the achievement of verticality at Hexham (fig. 234), say, or Fountains (fig. 147, p. 194) !2 Standing, too, before the west front of Romsey (see fig. 85, p. 124), or in the quire of Brecon (see fig. 125, p. 172), one cannot doubt the expression of design. Yet there follow almost immediately the broad spacings of St. Mary's Abbey ; Tintern succeeds to Brecon ; Netley3 to Romsey : the delight of width and openness has superseded that of height and slenderness. The builders of these abbeys in north, west and south, must have been aware of the great Royal Abbey building near London, yet their art has a like unconsciousness of the French plan as of the French verticality. In London itself, in sight of Westminster, the great quire of St. Paul's (see fig. 271, p. 345) was raised square and broad-ended, lofty enough, but in motive of design clearly no competitor of Cologne or 1 Sir G. G. Scott called Westminster Abbey 2 It is doubtful, however, if the Fountains "A great French thought expressed in ex- "chapels" may not have had vaults, which cellent English." " The history of English the fifteenth century reconstruction removed. Church Architecture " by his son describes 3 Netley was founded from Beaulieu about it as "one of Chaucer's Lays, a sweetly Eng- 1230. Its quire would seem to have been lish poem inspired by a French romance." built about 1250. 302 GOTHIC ART Beauvais. So, too, the quire of St. Albans, and the nave of York, tell the tale ; and coming to the broad low serenities of Exeter and Tewkes bury — whose initial designings came in the same half-century as the completion of the Westminster work1— -we can appreciate the revolution : the contrast of their styles is as marked with that of the Royal Abbey, as it is with the Beverley and Worcester transepts of thirty years earlier. Of course it can be urged that these low am bitions were things of neces sity to the Englishman, not choice : that lacking re sources he cut according to his cloth. And certainly a cogent controller of his pur pose was the strong tradi tion of the Norman work, and often indeed the masses of it that remained. For if at St. Mary's, York, or at Netley, the design was un der little or no compulsion from earlier building, yet in the other instances twelfth- and early thirteenth-century dispositions were certainly in evidence, and handing on their heights and pro portions. How differently, however, is the necessity of 235. Hereford, north transept, c. 1270. this traditi0n acknowledged at Westminster on the one hand, and in the Cathedrals of York and London on the other ! And in any case, the acknowledgment is no more than the fact that the English ideal showed itself conscious of its conditions. Our art was no imported casting, which we hammered and chased with the best skill we had to make it fit our necessities : it was run pure English metal, so fluxed by the vigour of our genius, that it streamed freely into the English matrix and filled every crevice of the mould. 1 The approximate dates of the greater works of the latter half of the thirteenth century are as follows : Westminster quire, 1245 — 1269. Lincoln "presbytery," 1255 — 1270. St. Mary's, York, 1260— 1290. Bridlington and Thornton quires were con temporary. St. Albans presbytery and chapels, 1260 — 1300. Exeter quire, 1280 and onwards. York nave, 1 290 and onwards. Ripon and Guisborough were c. 1295, and the Tewkesbury " chapels " came about 1320. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 3°3 By the caprice of its exhibition was shown, too, the free nature of our choice of ideal. In the tran septs1 of Tintern, and of Here ford (figs. 235, 236), as in the Lady-chapel of Lichfield, it is to be seen how lofty pro portions were not everywhere discarded. In Scotland, more over, the broad traceries of the English took no root at all. At Dunblane (see fig. 145, p. 192), Elgin, and Glasgow (see fig. 144, p. 191), the lancet propor tions are retained right through the fourteenth century, and effects obtained by them, which are alien to the French as well as to the English systems of design. And much the same may be said for the Irish Gothic, which drew its inspira tion from the Welsh art of the Cistercians. But in England itself, it must be noted that these exceptions group them selves in the West and North, districts least affected by con tinental sympathy : yet where early in the thirteenth century came that disregard of the usual horizontal divisioning of triforium and clerestory in favour of a simpler verticality (see figs, on pp. 183, 184, 185). And the western district, too, is that where we shall soon see fourteenth-century design turning away from the canons by which (from Ripon and „ ., . . 1 ^ t- 236. HEREFORD. NORTH TRANSEPT, C. 1270. Selby in the north, to Exeter and Winchester in the south) the great quires of the rest of England Tintern, c. 1260-80; Hereford, N. transept, 1265-75 i Lichfield, Lady-chapel, c. 1300. 3o4 GOTHIC ART for nearly a hundred years had been achieved. Verticality revived at Bristol by 1320, and then there followed shortly in the transepts of Gloucester the proportions which were to establish themselves as the Perpendicular of the end of the century. It would seem as if a separate river of Gothic design ran its own course on the western side of mid-England — from the Cistercian sources of the Transition, into the full flood of Perpendicular— a narrow but quick-running stream in comparison with the broad backwater of the great stretch of fourteenth-century style which, in this sense, came almost as an episode in the channel of the English art. But Westminster Abbey cannot be ranked as a tributary to either. Its Frenchisms are no part of the western art, yet, on the other hand, gave nothing to the sturdy fullness of the northern and eastern overflow. For in style the long series of great Yorkshire quires which lead from Rivaulx and Kirk ham to St. Mary's, York, and through Ripon and Guisborough to Selby and Howden, created a distinct expression, which in this question of proportion is essentially one with the noble art of the Ely Lady-chapel and the bright romance of Exeter. The English beauty of Westminster Abbey may be of this school, but no kin thereto were its French plan nings and its French loftiness. This question is to be argued on the side of proportions and of planning, for these two things lay at the root of the great French design ing, which the thirteenth century made current in Europe. Westminster Abbey stands alone in England in its French chevet,1 for the spreading eastward chapels of the south are as clearly native as the square east-fronts of the north : their succession remains unbroken before and after. The short five-aisled plannings, with which Germany, Spain and Italy replaced Romanesque are after, as before, Westminster foreign to our style. On the other hand, the new sense of English proportioning threw itself into the English plan and intensified its ex pression. It has been with a certain neglect of the greater attributes of Gothic creation that the study of its art has expended itself on the details of manipulation : in these, undoubtedly the crests of the English and French developments, Gothic found themselves in very close company. Be tween 1260 and 1290, the treatment of moulding and its sections came as near together in the two arts as in any part of their course : and in their decorative treatment of opening they are often to be found standing on common ground: also just at the naturalistic moment of English 1 Tewkesbury, of course, was a remodel- (see plan and fig. on p. 360). The Cistercian ling of a Norman quire : the breadth and low endings ofCroxden and Beaulieuwere earlier proportion, as well as the detail of its style, than Westminster. Endings like Pershore or takeit asfar as possiblefromFrenchcharacter Lichfield can hardly be called " chevets." THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 305 carving its method (if in its least characteristic expression as at Lich field and Southwell), is certainly allied to the French. But there is this peculiarity about these rapprochements, that at their moment the English style was changing rapidly, while the neighbouring Gothic held to the same form for long together. The paths of the two, that started from practically the same basis of Romanesque detail, may have their representation in a figure : the English line being that of the even curvature of a semicircle, the French that of an ellipse which with a bolder start runs level in its mid-course, till the return is made at the Renaissance with as quick a flexure as that which was the beginning (fig. 237). At the apex of the Gothic development the lines almost touched, but the French course at the moment was almost tangential, while the English went on its even curve. 237. COMPARATIVE PATHS OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH GOTHIC.1 A. Showing course of detail from Roman esque to Renaissance classicality. b. Showing the heights of Gothic energy in its creation of style. But if the apex of Gothic Art 2 brought about in both countries this similar expression of its genius, it must not be concluded that there was in the thirteenth century an admitted prestige for the French style which carried its particulars into English use. If some of the earliest forms of window tracery, as in Westminster Abbey, suggest such a conveyance, it must be observed that there was the English development of tracery going on alongside, and not a little of the general likenesses in the details of the two styles is due to sporadic appearances of this latter at Amiens, Rouen and elsewhere. The same may be said of the English 1 The path was that from traditional or " Roman " to Renaissance or "classic " detail. The figure in the text is of course only a rough graphical expression, and has no bear ing on the question of the Gothic quality at the different periods, but only of its Gothic differentiation from "classic." Quality is the mean solution of too many complex formulae to be expressed by a simple line representation, but the attempt to illustrate this view has been made as above. 2 The political and social connections brought the two countries close together, so that French and Norman craftsmen must often have come across, and, vice versa, Eng lishmen went abroad (see pp. 19, 20). R 306 GOTHIC ART peculiarities of vaulting, which now made their way abroad, and particu larly of that fuller use of moulded detail which had at first been specially English. On the other hand, the constructional scheme of Gothic, which in the Frenchman's hands had so early made a skeleton of the wall, reached now in England greater distinctness than the first ideals of Early English had permitted it. How near such give and take brought the mid-Gothic of the two countries, may be judged by putting side by side the eastern chapel of Chartres and that of Chichester (fig. 252, p. 317), or a bay of the quire of S£ez ] by that of York nave, or of Guisborough quire (figs. 277 and 278, pp. 351, 352). The French writers on Gothic are, however, the last people in the world to recognize any indebtedness of their later thirteenth-century style to absorptions of English detail. With them every feature that appears shared by the two Gothics, must by patriotic necessity be of French derivation, although by compulsion of this conviction sad havoc 2 has to be made of the accepted dates of English building, or a judicious reserve exercised in the citation of English examples.3 It is necessary to men tion this, because more and more during the last thirty years French writers on Gothic have been allowed to dictate not only to Transatlantic but to our English handbooks, and one can now scarcely take up an account of any English cathedral, without seeing our characteristic work called of French extraction, on the evidence of such foreign authority backed by hazy reminiscence of something seen abroad. After the middle of the thirteenth century the dates show generally the English to have been beforehand in some of the characteristic uses of later Gothic detail, and it is not difficult to find evidence that even before Edward I.'s reign the nationality of England had begun to assert an ascendancy by the side of that of France, and send ideas across the channel, Normandy being the special gateway of the architectural influ ence. There after its first flood came a retreat of the great He de France architecture which had followed the conquests of Philip Augustus : the originally Anglo-Norman craft of the Caen i mason revived, so that his mid-century works at Coutances and Lisieux have the round abacus and rich moulding of English work. Particularly a curious mimicry of our art is to be found in the shaft- 1 Viollet-le-Duc, " Dictionnaire de l'Archi- Albans, Exeter, York, etc., are neglected; tecture, etc.," vol. ix., p. 258. or p. 503 of same volume, where Westmin- 2 See Corroyer, etc., quoted pp. 13, 14. ster is antedated to 1230 in order to make it 3 As in Viollet-le-Duc's " Dictionnaire," precede the Ely quire of 1 240, and so suggest vol. ix., p. 304, where Ely and Lincoln are a French impetus for the vault of the latter. taken as proving the late thirteenth-century 4 It is likely that the constant importa- retention of the Norman triforium in Eng- tions of Caen stone into England led to in land, while the evidences of Beverley, St. terchanges of mason-craft, THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 307 238. SECTION OF CAEN PIER. use of the Normandy mason. Ambitious of the Purbeck effects of our side of the channel, but having no dark marble for monoliths, he gives a full projection to his coursed Caen- stone shafts, as if they stood free, keying them behind to the body of the pier with a continuous square bonding (fig. 238).1 Later Coutances is found with some white monoliths, but generally has a coursed many- shafted pier much as at Pershore and Lichfield. And when we revert to the main stream of the great French art, as at Amiens, we find that in 1260 the quire piers have quite left the cylindrical distinctness of the He de France pier of Paris and Chartres ; they have developed attached shafts, that carry the vault mechanism to the ground, with the " fillet " and soft rounded junctions which had been for some time since the English suggestion.2 So also at this date have come into the Amiens vault system — which, indeed, in its first conception3 had already ad vanced into some English likeness — those peculiar features of the English develop ment (fig. 239), the "branch" and "lierne" or midrib.4 Now, too, mixing with the double-lighted evolution of the French traceried windows, are to be seen triple and five-lighted compositions,5 whose methods tell of a different evolution of Gothic than that of the He de France. And it is to be seen that the suggestion in these borrowings is 239. AMIENS. CROSSING VAULT, 1270. 1 From the thirteenth century transept chapels of the Abbaye aux Dames, Caen ; the same peculiarity being found at Norrey, Coutances, and St. Pol de Leon. In the chevets the French double cylinder is used for the pier. See pier sections pp. 108, 109. J As in its oblong vault compartment and level ridge. There are to be seen, too, the influences of the first Gothic of Champagne and Burgundy, as originally allied to the English, in the (c. 1 2 30) pier section of Reims and Amiens, as in the triforium of the nave of the latter. 1 In the vault of the crossing — considered by Viollet-le-Duc to be c. 1 270. The similar vaults at Lincoln would be thirty years earlier. 5 In the traceries of the north transept triforium. Also about the same date in the Coutances nave chapels, the Le Mans sac risty, the transept of St. Urbain, Troyes, and the quire of Seez. 3o8 GOTHIC ART clearly one of translation : they come as variations in the logical events of the French style, whose use, merging them in the structural expres sion of its own aspiring ideal, infects them with the leanness of its own mechanical decadence. There has been no conveyance to Amiens and Troyes of the full body of effect which made the English pier and vault and window congenial to the course of the English de velopment. However much each art might take detail from the other, there was still the essential difference of quality in the styles of the two nations. The piers of the Lincoln presbytery (fig. 240) are suf ficiently illustrative of the change of feeling, which after 1 250 in English Art required the soft modellings of breadth to take the place of the trenchant uprightness of the Purbeck monolith. The Corfe mason 1 was still to supply Purbeck columns for the richest English Gothic in many parts of England, but they were now no longer the round turned shafts, but sheafs of modelled roll-sec tions. And the full round contours of the pier were echoed in the vault and arch members, which it fore shadowed and carried. The deep-cut accent of the first thirteenth-cen tury masonry faded away before the multiplied expressions of a decor ative breadth. And in immediate sympathy with this shift of interest in the wall- 1 Thus, for the Eleanor crosses Robert Exeter in 1330 there was paid ^35 2s. %d., of Corfe supplied shafts and capitals ; at for marble from Corfe for columns. 240. LINCOLN. BAY OF PRESBYTERY. 1260. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 309 241. CROXDEN. WEST FRONT. C. I2IO. mass came one in the interspace. What an extraordinary trans formation is that of the window idea from Hexham (fig. 234, p. 298), Croxden (fig. 241) or Romsey (fig. 85, p. 124), to St. Agatha's (fig. 249, p. 315), Bin- ham (fig. 242), or St. Mary's, Chichester (fig. 250, p. 316) ! It must be judged as no mere freak of a designing architect, but as a revolution worked by Gothic creativeness in some thirty years, 242. BINHAM. WEST FRONT. C. I260. 310 GOTHIC ART such as the centuries of Egyptian or Greek art did not accomplish. It remains the salient feature of the Gothic story, so that the progress of tracery1 has been thoroughly studied, and there is no need to linger on the familiar ground. A scientific nomenclature has been elaborated for its description, and Professor Freeman published a book2 that analysed a thousand examples, praising or blaming their patterns with the confidence of a scholarly critic. But he somewhat overlooked that the function of a window was to be glazed, and that in the power of this glazing lay the credit of the window ; it is as if he had made an analysis of beaux yeux from a collection of skulls. Mr. Ruskin's bold summaries are, at any rate, better reading. We have no scientific dissections in the famous rhetoric of the " Seven Lamps of Architecture," where we are told of the strait boundary between the earlier and the later traceries — to cross which was the transference of interest from the mass to the line, from the substantial to the ephemeral, from the true to the false — a moral turpitude, whose chastisement could not tarry — the sin that found not forgiveness, but drew Gothic deeper and deeper into "the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless ornament, the liny moulding, the distorted and extravagant foliation, until the time came when over these wrecks and remnants rose the foul torrent of the Renaissance and swept them all away." Mr. Ruskin himself, in his later editions, has annotated this passage as being " very pretty, but unfortunately nonsense," and it must be admitted, quite apart from its ethical pronouncement, its concern is with Southern Gothic, which made little of the glass-window. The Venetian sun, indeed, makes of tracery outside a modelling of light upon black, and inside of shadow on brilliancy. But the colder, broader half-lights of our northern skies keep the glass with its pattern- ings of co-ordinate value with the framework of the windows, or at least an element in their design. No analysis of the position is adequate that does not recognize the mutual interdependence of the " form-pieces " and the "panels,"3 and, moreover, the continually increasing function of the glass -painter's art in determining the architecture of the window. Yet at this date, the second half of the thirteenth century, it will be going too far to lay at the door of our English glass-painters the widenings and refinings of window construction that brought into the field geometrical and then flowing traceries. It is to be observed that the progress in the direction of a better display of glass-pictures did not really march along with this elaboration of the window-head. The 1 Sharpe's "Origin of Decorative Tracery" " "Origin and Development of Window is the most stimulating of these treatises. But Tracery." G. G. Scott's " History of English Church 3 Tracery and its glazing were so called, Architecture" gives an excellent epitome. respectively, in mediaeval craft-speech. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 311 French craft of glass figure-work was certainly not behind the English ; yet the plain undivided windowings of Chartres and Paris, six or even eight feet across, early in the thirteenth century made canvasses which the mullions and traceries of the next hundred years only cut up and curtailed. Not till nearly the sixteenth century did the glass-painter get from the mason again such a field for his picture-work as he had in the twelfth. The engineering ideal was now, and for a long time, in command, and the mason's concern was still with the whole of the architecture too strongly to let his ambitions be ham pered for the sake of the petty effects of the subsidiary crafts. And a similar position held in England : till the middle of the four teenth century, if not longer, the in creasing richness of glass was but part of a general elaboration of decoration, whose method came in the full part nership of masonic and pictorial genius, with no special reservations made for the benefit of this or that craft's monopolies. So the tracery develop ment was primarily a building one — the outcome of that architectonic pas sion for breadth and lightness, which aimed at giving to each constructional 243- Salisbury, cloister, c. 1240. bay unity of design ; not in space of canvas, but in attenuation of material, lay the real purpose which brought the separate lancets under one arch, and obliterated their divisions. Earlier than in England, the French traceries reached the point that was exactly in accord with the definiteness of their Gothic scheme. After the essays at Chartres and Reims, the two lights with the circle in the head make a stereotyped filling for the constructional arch. And the French ideal required no more ;— to enrich or enlarge, they simply dupli cated ; and this logical, if hardly fanciful, solution of the problem sufficed for a hundred years, for the reason that their constructional opening was lofty and narrow in proportion. The Westminster Abbey windows (see bay, p. 205) of 1250 are clearly of this likeness, but it does not follow that here was its introduction, for, indeed, this " doublet " production of space-filling had all along been in the English art, and as at Salisbury (fig. 243), for example, we can trace its continuous and natural develop- 312 GOTHIC ART ment from the triforium of 1220 to the transept-window matching the triforium, and, we can hardly doubt, passing thus to the cloister arcades, and on to the chapter house windows (see fig. 253, p. 320). In indication of this simple connection with the arcade-arching is the wide proportion of the English light, and the thickness of the central pier that prefigures that "subordination" of bar-section— both of which, later, distinguish English traceries from the French. The pillar in the mullion as at Grantham (fig. 244) was thus the survival of a real constructional use,1 and no mimicry of French logic, as it has been often assumed : and it was early and rightly dis carded by the English mason when the goal of his own ideal was in view. In fact, the French annihilated the wall in favour of an articulated vault structure, between the legs of which their glass was only a weather-screen. The English still held to the wall, and to the expression of the wall as sur face ; and in keeping this ex pression, the stonework was built as the framework of the glass, so that it soon rejected the suggestions of an open arcade. Thus even when adopting the same skeleton of 244. grantham. nave window, c. 1 280. design as the Frenchman, the English keeps a fullness of surface which at once separates his rendering. At the root of these doublet forms was the aisle-bay which the single lancet insufficiently filled, and the double lancet left with an unsatisfying sense of division inconsistent with unity of design. As at Salisbury, so at Netley, Stone and Tintern, is to be seen the transference and expansion of the aisle-idea for the broad spaces of the east-end gables, till at Lincoln are reached the double reduplications of the great east window of the "Angel Choir" (see fig. 162, p. 210). However, the most characteristic expressions of English tracery are not due to mere novelty of treatment in geometrical piercings ; but they came directly and at once in that search after breadth of design in 1 See also Binham (fig. 242, p. 309). THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 313 connection with the square endings of the English quire. The lancet groupings of gable - ends such as at York, Ely, and Rivaulx, sent on their in spiration and determined the after course of our window ideals : by the tradition of p Ly^MJ II 1 245. egglestone. east window, c. 1260. 246. EASBY church, east window, c. 1260. their triple and quintuple designings came the geometrical piercing into Eng lish tracery. The North, the home of great lancet effects, was the transmitter of this influence ; north of Lincoln, though the doublet of two lights is of course common, yet its reduplication to form a four-light window is compara tively rare : instead the triplet and its combinations are predominant. And particularly may be seen there from its first conception to its magnificent achievement, the five and seven lighted compositions, which so rapidly de veloped the genius of English tracery. The rough vigorous expressions of ex periment are often more indicative of the spirit of a movement, than its final and polished outcome, and Egglestone (fig. 245) and Easby (fig. 246) may in dicate how largely the motif of window expansion grew from the desire to bring 247. egglestone nave. c. 1300. the divided lancet to the breadth and unity of the square ended gable, SS 3*4 GOTHIC ART Afterwards in the nave at Egglestone (fig. 247) and southwards in many parts of England— as in the " Elder" Lady -chapel at Bristol, in the Mayor's chapel there, as well as at Netley, came more polished trials of the scheme of lancet combination. But this was for the service of the aisle-bay ; l in the east end St. Albans, Romsey, and Lichfield seem to show the gable-expression of the window in the South, for a time at least, less decisive than in the North. However, by the side of such doublet and apsidal use came the great east window of St. Paul's (see fig. 271, p. 345): and shortly afterwards the Exeter and Chichester Lady-chapels (see fig. 252 on next page) have the idea of lancet- grouping into broad, five, and seven-lighted windows; which there after, with cusped variations and added richnesses, continue on to the end of the fifteenth century to play a great part in English design.2 But it was in combination with the doublet element, and its geo metrical piercing, that the ideal of the central lancet worked the won derful change which came in the great windows of the Yorkshire gable-ends. St. Agatha's3 refec tory, which may be dated at 1260, has a fine east window which shows the germ of much that followed. It is a broadly designed piece of "plate tracery" (fig. 249), but be tween the conventional doublet a central lancet butts with blunted point against the big circle of the head : — and, behold, this marriage of triplet and doublet has immediately had issue in those pointed trefoil forms whose widening was to grow till they left the dividing fillets mere notches on the constructional line, the pinched-out cusps of later tracery. Twenty years after, in the east end of Ripon (see fig. 259, p. 335), came a design which in plan is exactly simi lar, but there the central light boldly pierces the circle, the geometrical 248. STANDLAKE, NORTHANTS. 1 See the nave aisles at Lichfield. The elegant quire clerestory of St. Albans (fig. 2 7 6, p. 3 5 1 ) has been lately destroyed. Many of the Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire churches show this lancet tracery (fig. 248). In this district it is found brought under segmental arches, with a continuous suc cession leading to the perpendicular panels of the last half of the fourteenth century. 2 Ottery St. Mary in the fourteenth cen tury was windowed entirely in this method. (See fig. 288, p. 363). 3 Near Richmond in Yorkshire, now called Easby Abbey. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 3i5 piercings have developed bar tracery, and the lancet shapes have melted their forms into the network of a linear design. Such accented effects of the English triplet combination were there after in window design more and more to break up the staid combinations of the Salisbury type, and modify its geometrical precision, the roundness of which sat uneasily on lancet heads. In the heat of this struggle inven- 249. ST. AGATHA S. REFECTORY. tion was, as it were, fluxed : ideas of design ran hither and thither like a torrent escaping its channel, incapable of return and impossible of control. Stone grew plastic as wax in the hands of the modeller — shaped for one idea to-day and for another to-morrow — in the same building often every window was now different. There are the free fancies of a sketch in stone in the characteristic English traceries of Netley south aisle, Tintern west front, and the chapels of the Christchurch transepts. There are still left to us some thousands of examples of the traceries built between 1 250 ind 1 350, and scarcely two can be found alike. Indeed, for the time, the 316 GOTHIC ART progress of architectural style showed itself almost solely in the varied invention of the " form-piece " fillings of the window-head, and every portion of the building borrowed ideas therefrom. How quickly and far such a movement had carried window design from the sedate evolutions of Salisbury, may be seen at Exeter (see fig. 279, p. 353) and Chichester (fig. 250) in the seven-lighted east win dow of Merton chapel, Oxford, and the west window of Tintern — to be dated c. 1280; and then in those of Ely chapel, Holborn, and York chapter house (see fig. 254, p. 322) — the works of the last decade of the century. Very analogous in its course was that other movement of the last half of the thirteenth cen tury, which was also to lead the Gothic ideal far afield. By 1 260 250. CHICHESTER. ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL. C.I28o. EngHsh vaultJng had deter. mined its path in a direction as decisively away from any French likeness as the tracery movement was taking the window. The French had early reached their ideal, and stereotyped it, so that for two hundred years after Amiens there was hardly variation, while all the time the English were passing from stage to stage with a constant advance of expression. As we have seen, very early had Lincoln quire shown the tendency of its experiment, and Lincoln nave before 1240 already had developed the "branches" and contoured vault-conoids,1 that are the earn est of the richness of Exeter. The "branches" (tiercerons) are the ribs extra to the groinings (arcs diagonaux) and principal (or "arching") ribs {arc doubleaux). (See fig. at side, and also fig. 54, p. 94.) The vault-conoid is the body of masonry which lies at the back of the ribs for about one-third the height of their arches, and being bounded by their filling and the wall, has so the shape of an inverted cone, whose plan is a trapezium. In the French Art this trapezium, by the stilting of the wall-ribs of the vault, was almost a 251. PLANS OF VAULT CONOIDS. I. French. II. English. III. Branch. IV. Fan. T. Transverse-rib. D. Diagonal-rib. w. Wall-rib. b. Branch-ribs. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 3i7 Viollet-le-Duc refers the peculiarities of the English system to their habit of framing up wood vaults in mimicry of stone. But we may trust Henry the Third's instruction (quoted p. 197) to Archbishop Gray to show 252. CHICHESTER. LADY CHAPEL, 1 3 00. In front is the earlier groining of the first chapel, c. 1160, that the wood-vault was in 1 243 a new idea. The south transept at Lich field, which was building in 1238, had probably the ceiling in question ; but a later stone vault now replaces it, and the wooden vaults of Arch bishop Gray's own Cathedral transept at York would seem to have been renewed after 1400. Still, like the ceiling of the Lincoln cloister of 1 296, triangle ; in the English art it was nearly a its inner sides, developed into the semicircle square, which gradually by the contouring of of fan-vaulting. 318 GOTHIC ART these first wood-vaultings copied the plain thirteenth-century vault, as at Warmington, Northamptonshire (which may be dated c. 1250) ; while the " branched " ceilings of St. Albans (see fig. 281, p. 357) and the richer wood groinings of the York chapter house were after 1300. So with the evidence before us of the Lincoln chapter house, stone-vaulted in c. 1 235 with "branch" ribs, we must judge that, not in wood constructions, but in evolution of the circular "chapter" had the eye of the English artist first conceived the fullness of ribbed expression, which thereafter alone could satisfy him in the perspective of his vaults. As a matter of construction as of appearance, the outer severies of a ceiling vaulted to a central pillar required such a balance to the crowded grouping of the inner ribs. And the builders of Lincoln nave and Ely quire adopted this manner for the filling of their broad vault-bays, and thereafter, as in the Lichfield nave, the Chester, St. Albans, and Chichester (fig. 252) Lady-chapels, the extra branches are seen as necessary accents of the wide spacings of the late thirteenth-century vault, till we reach in the superb style of Exeter, the masterpiece of this expression, with a suggestion at once of open width and lofty elegance : such as elsewhere the more complicated sur- facings of the fourteenth century never attained. With the widening of bay and window came of necessity in English art a deepening of abutments, for greater mass was needed to balance the concentration of thrusts. So the sheer aspiring pinnacle of the Early English art gives place to the wide-footed, many-weathered buttress, whose contrasts of breadth and fullness tell against the rich expansions of the interspaced traceries. The northern quires were the especial exhibitors of this art, for from Whitby and Tynemouth to Durham and Ripon, we have a chain of development by which we pass to the grouped buttresses, and tower-like pinnacles of the Guisborough and Walsing- ham fronts. These great fronted quires of the fourteenth century will be later treated with the advance southward of this feeling of design — for at first it had a less overmastering development at Salisbury, West minster, and London, though afterwards at Exeter, Tewkesbury, and Bristol, finding considerable expression. (See pp. 335-338.) But south as well as north in one set of buildings which belong particularly to the last half of the thirteenth century, were exhibited the strongest elements of its art. In the polygonal chapter-house the English feeling for breadth of surface in vault and window, and for its contrast in mass of abutment, combine for a perfect Gothic achievement, which is as completely constructive and as logically satisfying as in any French 1 Norwich cloister is another beautiful ing, begun 1290, was continued for another example, where the same pattern of vault- hundred years. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 3i9 building. The interpenetration of the two arts, and yet the distinct genius of each, is well illustrated in these chapter-houses, which at once come nearest in their completely Gothic suggestion to the polygonal endings of the French chevet, and yet in their origin and treatment are so characteristically English. They are at the summit of our building art at once in their Gothic as in their national quality. The history of their peculiar form can be best gathered from the accompanying list, DATE I-'OKM AND CONSTRUCTION < f 2 H E ¦*> h < 23 POSITION 1 Worcester Cath. (B.) u. 1 140 circular ten-bayed with central pillar feet 59. feet 17 ordinary monastic with cloister. 2 Margam Abb.* (C.) c. 1160 ,, twelve ,, ,, ,, 49 13 ,, ,, 3DoreAbb.*(C.) ... c. 1180 twelve-sided and bayed 45 12 ,, 11 4 Lincoln Cath. (Sec.) 1190-1230 ten ,, ,, 63 19 off N. E. Transept with small cloister. 5 Beverley Mins.*(Sec.) c. 1230 eight ,, ,, 31 13 N. of Quire with crypt. 6 Lichfield Cath. (Sec.) c. 1240 ,, ,, and ten-bayed 42X.27 "I E. of N. Transept with no cloister. 7 Westminster Abb. (B ) t. 1250 , , , , and eight , , 62 24 ordinary monastic with cloister. 8 Salisbury Cath. (Sec.) c. 1260 ,, ,, ,, ,, 63 23 n ,1 9 Wells Cath. (Sec.) ... 1 260- 1 290 ,, ,, ,, ,, S6 21 N. side of Quire with crypt. 10 Southwell (Sec. ) u. 1280 ,, ,, with no pillar 3£ J3 , , without cloister. 11 York Cath. (Sec.) ... I29O-131O ,, ,, ,, ,, 59 23 11 11 12 HerefordCath.*(Sec.) u. 13OO ten-sided and bayed with central pillar 42 13 ordinary monastic with cloister. * These are destroyed. Evesham Abbey had an octagonal " chapter " of the size and date of Wells. There were smaller octagons of c. 1280 at Elgin, Thornton Abbey, and Cockersand Abbey. See plan, p. 78, for that of London, which was in two stories, and approached from the upper floor of a two-storied cloister. which gives details of the most important.1 Generally their addition was made to all the secular cathedrals of England during the thirteenth century, Chichester and Exeter alone remaining content with the oblong room of Benedictine tradition. With its accompanying arcaded passage this secular chapter-house must be regarded as a great chamber of state, a palatial appendage designed to enhance collegiate dignity, and make it vie with monastic consequence. As such Lincoln 2 may have led the way with its decagonal hall, whose foundation was possibly St. Hugh's, though its vaulting came later — its little cloister was not added till the end of the century. At Beverley was possibly first built the octagon, which thereafter was the accepted plan. Here it was in two stories, and though now quite perished, its office of state and distinction is to be seen in the elegant staircase that led from the north side of the canons' quire. In this form of a state apartment was the building at Westminster, superseding there the original Benedictine hall, and one side of the old 1 A complete list, with details of the later smaller octagonal "chapters," is given by Mr. Bilson in " Archseologia," vol. liv. " Based on the ten bays of Worcester. It is to be observed how the original Worcester circle of about sixty feet diameter, set the modulus of dimension for the great group of thirteenth-century chapter-houses. 320 GOTHIC ART penthouse cloister, the king designing it thus magnificently as an adjunct for his palace * as well as for the uses of the monastery. And so, too, Salisbury received the idea, making stately garth as well as chapter hall, in the latter being followed by Wells, York, and Southwell. These last two dispensed with the central pillar, but the groining of York was only in wood, and the Southwell hall is but half the size of the greater pillared chapter-houses, At this time or later, many of the monks or canons adopted the secular poly gon : but particularly did the breadth and circumstance of the secular cloister of state, with its window-heads tra ceried and glazed, and its elaborate vaultings, react on the simpler pillared con structions and penthouse roofings of the earlier mon- asticism. In emulation of its luxurious style Norwich, Winchester, Gloucester, and Canterbury 2 had by the end of the fourteenth century rebuilt and vaulted their cloisters, and probably many another monastic house be sides, whose record is gone. Unless they were attached to a cathedral little mercy at the dissolution was found for these adjuncts of our great churches : chapter houses and cloisters 3 fell into immediate ruin, and generally nothing but their foundations are to be traced. Of the great chapter-halls of the thirteenth century, which have 253. SALISBURY. CHAPTER-HOUSE, 1260. 1 " ^Fdificavitque dom. Rex Capitulum incomparabile." (Matt. Westm., 349.) Stan ley, "Memorials of Westminster Abbey," p. 437. Parliament was summoned there in 1256. In the 25th of Edward III. it is called " their ancient place, the house of the chapter in the great cloister of the Abbey of Westminster," 2 Followed by Worcester, St. Albans, St. Frideswides, Oxford, and St. Werburgh's at Chester in the fifteenth century. 3 At Laycock nunnery in Wiltshire is one of the best preserved cloisters in England, built in the fifteenth century, with its paint ing intact. THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 321 come down to us, that of Lincoln has lately and specially suffered from the severe " restoration " of Mr. Pearson, and that of Westminster is now externally nothing but the work of Sir G. G. Scott, with its thirteenth-century cloister more than once rebuilt. But though their ancient charm has gone, and modern eyes can see them now only as good specimens of our imitative Gothic, there is still in the character of their broad English designing evidence of the native vigour of our mid- thirteenth-century ideal. Very widely1 and finely do they plant the bases of their expression — those weathered and sloping flying buttresses which contrast with the scaffold-like erections of the contemporary French construction. Salisbury " chapter" 2 externally has less of this English power, but internally (fig. 253) the charm is fully that of Westminster.3 Repair has been here, too, — if not quite so thorough in its obliteration of the ancient beauty ; but the cloister perhaps needing, or at any rate receiving, less drastic treatment, remains to us, with its finely conceived upper loft, as beautiful a monument of Gothic genius as is to be found in Europe. In their window-design and in their vaults both the Salisbury and Westminster houses are less indicative of the English feeling4 than were to be shortly the Northern and Western examples. At York6 and Wells, as at Lincoln, the "chapters" are each of two periods, their com pletions coming some thirty years after their first settings out. With both, time and the chances of restoration have so far dealt leniently ;6 we can still see at first hand much of the genuine Gothic inspiration. The external shapeliness of York (fig. 254 over-leaf), its pillarless spacious ness, make a remarkable impression, and its walls and wood ceiling are richly detailed with the romantic profusion of the fourteenth century. But yet, exquisite as is their handling, such arcades (see fig. 302, p. 386) and such vaults have the sense of having stepped beyond that moment in art, when its prodigalities are as yet unconscious, and its passion as it were virginal. 1 With the internal diameters of 6 2 feet, the may be classed with York, has a fine stone Lincoln and Westminster buttresses give them vault richly lierned, and a vestibule remark- outside measurements of 140 feet. See plan able for the leafy naturalism of its carvings, of Lincoln, p. 237, and of Westminster, p. 203. which, however, have less style than the ' Its outside measurement about 80 feet, York carvings. The Hereford pentagon, somewhat less than Westminster and Lin- which stands in the same position to Wells, coin, not reckoning the legs of their flying has almost passed away, but its remains show buttresses. extremely delicate work. 3 The vestibules of both, particularly that c At York, in 1840, .£3,000 was unfor- of Westminster, add much to the state and tunately spent in wiping out the ancient beauty of their designs. colourings and gilding, and replacing the old 4 In its cloister, however, Westminster floor — just as in the year 1897 a sum was has some beautiful English traceries. spent on the Canterbury chapter-house in 6 The smaller octagonal Southwell, which similar obliteration. TT t22 GOTHIC ART Wells chapter-house was by some twenty years earlier in its original setting out, as in its' finishing, and we can turn to it with a surer impress sion that we have here an ideal building in the centre of the English style, exhibiting its essence and its quality.- Passing, into it from the picturesque stairway, which its under storey made necessary— in style 254. VORK. CHAPTER-HOUSE EXTERIOR, 1 290. and date as well as in fact leading up to it — we can note how its canopied arcadings, wide windowings with the lancet traceries of mid-England, and richly branched up-arching vaults, sum up the tendencies of the central phase of our Gothic. Midway between the lava-like out-pour ing of the earliest Gothic eruption, and that slow crystallization of form which slowly yielded up its heat in the last Gothic phase, there can be traced here neither the first crudeness nor the latest, mannerisms; C'K <. .^^-=^_. - -- 255. WELLS, CHAPTER-HOUSE DOORWAY, 1290. 324 GOTHIC ART and middle, too, in point of place and style among the works of its time, it is just half-way between the superb stateliness of the Yorkshire manner and the sunny, romantic grace of the Southern. And in this sense we may read its position at the summit level of our Gothic mspira- 256. YORK. CHAPTER-HOUSE PLAN. tion : that as an architectonic whole, its effect is to make the earlier efforts of Gothic interior seem somewhat empty, and the later somewhat tawdry. Yet it is to be observed that in this building, beautiful exceedingly and unsurpassed as it is, figure-sculpture has no part, and that, too, in the house of our greatest school of sculpture, Wells itself. A note has THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 325 somehow dropped out of the full keyboard of architecture, and even in the diapason of triumph is heard a jingle of incompleteness. In the last chapter it has been indicated how, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the records show the " imager " or statue-maker given a per sonality as if he were independent of the body of " artifices" whose crafts combined to make architecture. It is in the accounts of the Eleanor crosses of 1 29 1 that this separation finds such clear expression, as would be likely when the employer was a king who could pick his men from where he would, taking each from his country for his special capacity. No doubt, however, the separations of the building crafts in the ma sonic body had been long in existence.1 Mason and carpenter, lead- worker and glass-painter had been ranked in their companies. Yet for a generation or so these necessary craft- divisions would little affect the unity of building de sign which, sprung from a combination of craft-in terest in church building, still exercised itself upon the same material. But this unity would be at once impaired when one craft found a separate in terest which made it inde pendent of employment with the others. Such separate usage came first distinctly for the statue- makers,2 whose wares might be made and distributed like other articles of commerce. Wells chapter-house seems to mark the stage where the "imager" went his way unconditioned by the mason, and so the mason, too, built now without reference to the image. 1 Yet if their organization was now com- Benedictines though they were, 257. WELLS. CHAPTER-HOUSE PLAN, The plans here are to the scale of 25 feet to the inch, like those in Chapter V. plete, it had not been very long since. The antecedent process of definitely separating a craft of building itself from the community at large was of no great standing. For in 1243 did not the monks of Gloucester, animosa virtute sine auxilio fabrorum," undertake to finish the vaulting of their nave ? See their " Chronicle," 29. 2 The picture-painters would be as early. See, as to Venice Guild, pp. 295, 296, 326 GOTHIC ART And in the Eleanor crosses themselves, beautiful as their remains show them to have been,1 the individualism that the accounts suggest can be seen in their art. There is not that perfect oneness of idea, which. in the Wells front and the tomb of Bishop Bridport at Salisbury makes effigy and cover a single consummate sculpture. The enrichments, the crockets, are now skilled decorative carving, and the statue equally skilled imitative statuary, but we recognize in the shrines of St. Frideswide or the doorway of Westminster a higher note than just a juxtaposition of skilfulnesses. This independence of the highest art of sculpture that appears in the rich buildings of the last quarter of the thirteenth century does not, however, make itself generally felt, because we have grown accustomed to the almost universal destruction of our mediaeval imagery. The architecture can stand by itself, and with this want unperceived can be called our greatest masterpieces. Personal idiosyncrasies, or the passing fashion of the modern copyist, may sometimes assert other preferences, declaring now for the clean-cut sincerities of the earlier style, now for the florid romanticism of the later Decorated, or the rich stateliness of the Perpendicular; but buildings like Wells chapter-house or St. Ethel- dreda's, Holborn, keep their ground. The critics who have tried to penetrate the sentiment of Gothic Art all seem agreed in finding in them a stage of excellence, such as all that went before aimed at but never quite achieved, and all that came after varied but never equalled. The reason of this constant appreciation lies in this — that Gothic Art is here seen to have annexed the province of its desire : it has achieved the creation from constructive necessities of an articulate sculpture — alive and breathing, as it were, by the force of emotional inspiration, as clearly as the statue of Phidias or the painting of Raphael. We cannot regard the great thirteenth-century buildings as if they were only happy com binations of ground plan and elevation, worked upwards by rule and compass, masoned and carved, painted and glazed, wonderful and beau tiful, miracles of noble shaping and artistic forethought. That way lay only the processes of their making, comparable with the brush-work of the painter or the chisel-strokes of the sculptor : the estimation of their art is outside this marvel of their workmanship. They hold their position not as careful exercises of masonic design, but as being them selves broad sculptures and mighty painted canvases worked upon by the creative instinct which was abroad in the English people. In fact, the expression of a national emotion was delegated to- the masonic craft as the artist delegates to his hand the function of portrayal : 1 The best preserved, though not men- but at Northampton and Waltham are con doned in the accounts on account of its being siderable remains. Of the largest and most later built, is that at Geddington, Northants: sumptuous, that of Charing, nothing is left, THE SUMMIT OF GOTHIC ART 327 and now had come the time when this hand had passed through its apprenticeship, and with the full ease of practice could command its effects. But no single man, in such an art as this, nor even any craft of workmen, could give the soul to it, any more than it is the single finger, or the hand itself, which makes the intention of the brush. We must dismiss the idea that the great ecclesiastics of the thir^ teenth century were the personal artists, whose religious elevation gave to the architecture of their age its consummate position. Such prelates as Archbishop Gray, and Bishops Jocelyn and Poore, whose names are intimately associated with the great building of the first half of the thir teenth century, were not the creators of any individualities of style. These were in each case local and collective : Poore could not carry them to Durham for the Nine Altars, nor could the brotherhood of Jocelyn of Wells and Hugh of Lincoln make their cathedrals alike. The connec tion of the great Ecclesiastic with building at this era was plainly that of originator and administrator of the enterprise, responsible for its scope and expense, but not for its design or craft. And we search in vain for any other personal source for these latter. Such accounts of English building as exist have no suggestion of any great designing class, from which an architect or master mason might be drawn, whose individuality might be connected with what we account the extraordinary artistry of mediaeval building. Instead we generally find quite haphazard refer ences to workmen used as if indifferently under the varied titles given on page 139. And since we know that in the thirteenth century the trading towns included in the merchant-guild craftsmen and tradesmen alike with no distinction, we must believe that the religious communities, too, drew their instinct of noble building as yet from no class of specialized experts but from the body of the nation's life. So though local uses in quarry-craft might create differences, the master style was one, still as evident in small work as in great ; in the great planning, and in the least detail ; — the whole one master's achieve ment, because that master was the nation itself, and each particular workman or craft was but as a hair in his paint brush, or a molecule of his chisel. But this poise of perfect balance between inspiration and execution was an unstable one — the necessary shift from such conditions was by the lessening of the racial inspiration and the increase of the individual. The business of the original church- wright had descended, as it were, to his family, and one of his eldest sons, the " imager," was withdrawing himself from the firm to set up a business of his own. In the French art the painter sons, too — glass-painter, enameller, and shrine decker, thought to better themselves outside the old common trade. And rapidly in that art the building-craft, the poorer for these desertions, became specialized as architectural engineering. Rapidly the skill of the 328 GOTHIC ART engineer grew more and more ambitious, till its effects were outside the role of the ordinary artist and needed a specialist class, a guild of free masonry to "hold, and hand down its secrets. In England, however for the time, the painting instincts still held to the firm, and there lived on a fresher and more homogeneous art of building in our fourteenth century than in the French. But none the less the divisions had declared themselves — divisions as natural to the growth of art as to the seed pod of the full-flowered plant ; wherein the single life has become a crowd of separate entities, whose scattering cannot long be delayed, for the ripening sun is destroying their cohesion. The growth of the flower-plant is ended, though each seed may start an independent life. Thus has come the first ebb of the tide of Art, though the foam seems to dance as high as ever. The like drama runs its course in the recurring waves of our many art movements, and even in the ripples of our individual artists' careers. The energy of the primitive impulsion carries forward the power of technique, gives its substance and dash, and then leaves it stranded, as a sparkle on the strand, when the waters have retreated. In the thirteenth century the flood of great Gothic Art was as the majesty of a great tide ; the national life was in its stately sweep, and though the turn had come, still broad and white lay the sheets of its foam, the limitmarks of its achievement. CHAPTER VIII The Building of the Fourteenth Century The indications are marked in our art that by 1 300 a change had come in its spirit : this admission is due even from those who have a taste for the florid perfections of the fourteenth century. The seeds of this change may have had their sowing in the thirteenth century, and the crop have taken time to ripen ; but with individuality in art is sown inequality, and of this inequality we are immediately conscious, as we look at our Gothic building at the close of the century. Hitherto it has been difficult upon any distinct standard to suggest a want of Gothic inspiration in the performance of this or that artist, or to find out the great masters by rejecting the lesser. Immaturities in the growing style, archaic retentions, timidities, and even some clumsiness have been noted in the broad sense of the still lingering traditions of Romanesque ; perhaps even as evidence that the guiding hand in a design had lived too long upon it — as at Salisbury, where it is recorded " Robertus ccementarius rexit per xxv annos," and was, no doubt, dog matic and old fashioned in his " ruling " by the end of such a term. But save in the sphere of such necessary conditions, there is no evidence of the inequality of artistic gift, which with us is at the basis of our classi fication of artists. As one line the body of thirteenth-century craftsmen pressed forward to the accomplishment of the Gothic ideal ; if there were sixty different ways, such as sixty different quarries or centres of craftsmanship may have conditioned, yet every one of them had the right of the perfect expression of the whole art of its time. But after 1300 this line is breaking up — whim as well as character has split it into sections with the defects as well as the virtues of in dividuality. Extravagance has appeared along with variety : dullness sometimes side by side with vividness of conception. Were it not for this, an art so radiant as that of the nave of Exeter could not reasonably be set in an epoch of decline. Yet we must judge it so, when we find in the contemporary quire of Wells so much that is vapid and insincere. These contrasts are not to be found in thirteenth-century art as now they show in the redundant piquancies of the Gloucester aisle within ten miles of the sunny simplicities of Tewkesbury ; in the pomp of York UU 330 GOTHIC ART nave, that seems uninspired close by the gay braveries of Selby quire ; in the richness of Ely quire, that cloys after the clear sweetness of the Ely chapel in London ; in the Percy shrine at Beverley that is prodigal to fulsomeness when we think of the Gower screen at St. David's. In fact, the uncertainties of artistic temperament are confronting us, and, moreover, the incidents of competition, for the artist is express ing his age less than himself. It is not, as in the thirteenth century, the creative instinct of a people blossoming in art, but a dispersement into a spread of competing branches, which must go widely to get freedom of development ; and while some flower splendidly in the light, others dwindle in shadow. But in the trunk of art 1 was still running the full sap that gave a wide luxuriance to its growth, for at its root ran the streams of fourteenth-century romance. In the pomp and pride of chivalry the system of feudalism had a glorious sunset, whose magic make-believe transformed its moralities and softened its iniquities, so that to this day its glamour is alive in the " Morte d' Arthur " and the chronicles of Froissart. The creed of romance was the making of life a pageant, with all its austere facts apparelled, as it were, for the stage — a stage on which war was to be counted as a game, religion took the guise of knighthood, and duty passed as gallantry. Hitherto the church had made itself responsible for the moral emotions of mankind, but now the power of its asceticism was largely over, and the education of society was attempted by the religion of chivalry. In romance and joust, in the passion and play of the life of the fourteenth century bloomed, as it were, the first spring flush of that garden of "humanism," whose summer luxuriance came a hundred years later with the Italian Renaissance. Here our concern is only with the reflections of this romantic life in the art of the day — that art which has come down to us almost solely in the buildings of the church. But these reflections were immediate and vivid : the church service and tourney had met on the common ground of a magnificent display, whose pulse was ever beating with the undercurrent of emotion ; in the devotion of each the religious and the sexual element curiously intermingled. But particularly the pageant of life was given its final scene in the splendour of the Church ; in the elaborate obsequies, and oft-repeated services,2 that prolonged the funerals of the great ; in the hearse bright with colour and gilding ; in the costly monument of the dead, that represented him as he lived and loved, riding in the lists,3 or holding the hand of his lady;4 and finally in 1 The legends of the Virgin were now to Abbey became those of a vast tomb- be the favourite subject in church decoration, house.'' 2 Stanley, "Memorials of Westminster 3 As Aymer de Valence at Westminster, or Abbey." " Services were multiplied, and the effigy with squire and knight at Exeter. churches adorned at every stage of the 4 As at Ingham, Norfolk, and later at funeral ; the arrangements of Westminster Wimborne, THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 331 the magnificent architecture of quire or chantry blazoned with his heraldry and jewelled with his badges, set up as it were as the per manent pavilion of his lying in state, the temple of his eternal welfare, — because therein his priests continually prayed for his soul. An art that grew up so in our churches necessarily had its basis in the aristocratic idea, in the privilege and well-being of a caste, for whose distinction all else was levelled. The reign of the priest, as such, which had been powerful in the preceding centuries, was now at an end : as a noble or great land-owner the ecclesiastic lived and died. In proof of his magnificence he rebuilt and adorned cathedral or abbey, and was buried therein as in a costly shrine. And so every lord and knight and squire in his degree had now his chancel or his chantry, his endowed priest at his altar, by whose masses his earthly greatness might be linked to the chariots of eternity. Into the service of this aristocratic monopoly of religion was the fourteenth-century craftsman pressed, and it was by his skill that all the revelry of colour, the blazoning of heraldry, the pride of circumstance, scarlet dress, crested helm, the barded horse and quartered jupon — all that had glorified the career of knighthood, found its place in the carved and painted sepulchre, which was the passport to Paradise of the glories of his nobility. The gauds of architecture, crocket and spirelet, cusp and tracery, boss and fret, made him a monument in which magnificence never faltered for device. And the chancel as the tomb, the quire as the chantry, caught up the same note of redundant adornment, so that in this sense with some significance has our fourteenth-century archi tecture been labelled " Decorated." However, this groundwork of emotional ostentation, from which our English style took its tone, must equally have conditioned art abroad ; yet, though France was the peculiar province of chivalry, there is no such vivid architectural evidence : indeed, the art of Evreux and Rouen is lean and cold beside the full-blooded romance of Selby, Exeter, and Tewkesbury. The explanation is supplied by the course of our English art, which longer than abroad retained its architectonic unity. It must be admitted that not in its architecture lay the expression of French art in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, but in the dexterities which had separated themselves from it ; in such free statuary as that of Reims and Amiens ; in the ivory images and retables of Paris ; in the paintings of the domes at Cahors ; in the glass of St. Urban, Troyes, or St. Pierre Chartres ; in reliquaries, such as the silver shrine of St. Taurinus at Evreux ; in the enamels of Limoges, rather than in the engineering of St. Urban or St. Ouen. The decay of French architecture therefore had developed in its 332 GOTHIC ART essence some time before it was due to the external political conditions. It was not for another generation that warfare and civil turbulence limited the role of French building. These latter causes may account for the mixed uncertain finishings of so many of the French architec tural enterprises which were begun late ; but they do not explain the slack architectural heat of the first quarter of the fourteenth century that shone dead in France, while in England it flushed glowingly. Undoubtedly in 1300 France was the wealthier kingdom of the two, yet in the fifty years to the Black Death the English had created a clear ascendancy for their style, so much so that its absorption abroad (mixed with the elements of Flemish expansion of art) came as the spring of the Flamboyant development. Normandy, after sharing with us her twelfth-century style, had early in the thirteenth century been drawn into the stream of the He de France Gothic, and then later had again taken up English details into her Caen-stone Mason-craft. But, in the early fourteenth century, the antagonism of the two nations declared itself, specially on the seaboard of the Channel. French raidings of our Cinque-ports, and the English reprisals, must have suppressed any comradeship for the mason-crafts of Normandy and Sussex. Farther west, however, the conditions were different. Jean II. of Brittany had been brother-in-law of Edward I.; he held the earldom of Richmond, and was often at the English court ; his son, Arthur, who succeeded him, was Edward's nephew ; and Jean de Montfort, Arthur's son by his second marriage, was supported by Edward III. against Charles le Blois, the claimant who had the French support to the dukedom. So for a hundred years had existed a connection by which art, not so much now the appurtenance of religion as of chivalry, might follow the English abroad, and be at the service of the knighthood .of their allies. At any rate during the fourteenth century Brittany would seem, architecturally, a province of western England. While in the thirteenth century masons of Caen had brought stone and style to the cathedral of St. Pol, and at Dol the nave of the cathedral was built with the art of Mont St. Michel — in both the later quires of the fourteenth century are found with the square eastern chapels, much as Pershore or Ottery St. Mary ; with tomb-niches and doorways that might have been carved for Bishop Gower at St. David's ; with many details of triforium and window- tracery that would be in place at Exeter or Bristol. So, too, the long eastern limbs of Brittany's other two cathedrals Quimper x and Treguier 2 are suggestive, with their broad windowings, of Exeter. And there- 1 Consecrated 1289. Inkersley, "Sue- those of Dorchester and St. Frideswide's, cession of Styles in France." The Lady- Oxford. chapel projects square-ended with win- 2 Rebuilt 1339. Its transeptal towers dows of full-headed tracery, which match make still greater the likeness to Exeter. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 333 after, when, c. 1370, in rivalry for the affections of the Bretons, Jean de Montfort at Folgoet, and Charles le Blois at Lamballe, built quires to the local saints, each was made with the bluff square end and big traceried window of the Dorset Abbey, Milton, or the Oxfordshire Dor chester. The spire of Folgoet, too, like so many of the late spires of western France,1 is on the English model ; while the famous Kreizker2 itself, the boast of Brittany, is fabled on an English architect, and cer tainly the church from which it rises might have been transplanted from Cornwall. They were the essential motives of English decorated design that Breton Masonry caught up, and continued them, when after 1350 they had passed away in England itself. The fourteenth century became the golden age of Breton building, while eastwards, in central France, war and desolation had put a stop to architectural enterprise. And when at the close of the hundred years' war, the rapid recovery of French prosperity fostered that second period of French art, which from 1426 3 flourished for a century, then, passing back through Normandy to Paris itself, can be traced this Anglo- Breton style, giving its feeling to the Flamboyant architectures ; so that in the English breadth of mass, con trasted with the infinite delicacy of filling, lies the magic of the best moments of Flamboyant art. The English era of romance, which made this style its own — till the Black Death would seem to have frightened it away — was a brilliant and prolific one in building". Especially in Yorkshire was manifested the pro gress of the aristocratic sentiment which gave it its spirit. K irkham gateway (fig. 238) is evidence not only of the position taken now by the monastic house in rivalry with the castle of the noble,4 but by its heraldry in dicates how the thoughts of Augustinian canons ran on pageantry and knightly achievement. The monastery now had its knights5 and its 1 See the spires of Bordeaux and Bayonne. sidered one of the first examples of Central Edward III. sent from Bordeaux to London French Flamboyant. requiring English masons to be sent to him. ' So at Peterborough, the long room A large number of the Gascon churches over the abbot's gateway of 1305 was are of the English occupation. called the Knights' Hall. Refer also to 2 It is, however, on the regular Normandy page 378, pattern, except in its parapet, the square 5 See Whitaker's " History of Craven " for projection of which, with its openwork pin- the Archbishop of York in 1340 hunting nacles, became the model for so many Brit- through his diocese with a train of two tany spires during the next three centuries, hundred horsemen. We find in legal in- And these features are curiously like what is struments of this date (as in Robert de to be seen on the Gloucester, Bristol, and Faringdon's grant of lands for his chantry Taunton towers. See the pinnacles, fig. 331, at Bridport) the title "Sir" applied to the p. 435. clergy, to the chantry priest, as well as to 3 Caudebec church of this date is con- the Bishop of Salisbury. 334 GOTHIC ART squires ; abbot and prior their retinues like princes ; and the ecclesiastic dressed, drank, and hunted as bravely as any lord. And in lordly manner too did the monks and canons, regular and secular, now set out their quires in Yorkshire. From Kirkham and Bridlington to Howden and York lies a record of sumptuous building 258. KIRKHAM. GATEWAY, C. 1280. that it would be difficult to match in architectural magnificence. Soon after Kirkham the Benedictines of St. Mary, York,1 started their great church, which, with its west front, ioo ft. wide, must at this date have vied with the cathedral, and in the breadth and elaborate stateliness of its style was the precursor of what quickly followed in the canons' churches of Bridlington and Guisborough, 355 and 380 ft. in length. 1 1271-92. Another great quire contem- made a church 360 ft. in length, now com- porary was that of Thornton Abbey in pletely perished. Its scale can be judged Lincolnshire, building 1 260-1300, which by the beautiful gateway remaining. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 335 Of these three all has now been nearly destroyed : better preserved is the quire-rebuilding of Ripon, with its plainer but not less stately east 259. RIPON. EAST FRONT, C. 1300. front (fig. 259). The quires too of Selby, Howden, and the aisleless Bolton, on a smaller scale, remain to show the same vivid sense of romantic design. And all the while from 1291 onwards the great York 336 GOTHIC ART Cathedral was building, first the nave, and then the eastern " chapels," and finally the quire replacing that of Archbishop Roger, and making this the church of largest area, save St. Paul's of London, yet built in mediaeval Europe.1 These works are remarkable for their striking treatment of the fronts both east and west. One sees the direct descent of this feature from the fronts of Tynemouth and Whitby, York transept and Ely east end giving intermediate stages. The tower-like massing of the but tresses, in contrast with the broad windowings of the gable, begun at Whitby (see fig. 141, p. 188) and Rivaulx, was given emphasis at Durham and Southwell, and then in the Lincoln presbytery (see fig. 162, p. 210) systematized. But at the end of the century Ripon (fig. 259) and Guisborough (fig. 260) advanced the effect with fronts,2 90 and 100 ft. across respectively, whose buttresses project 10 or 12 ft. from the wall, whose gabled offsets are boldly grouped in compositions of spire-like pinnacles— plain in the first, richly crocketed and panelled in the latter, but alike in giving, by the breadth and massive contour of their masonry, suggestion and contrast to the wide and lofty traceries of stone and the glass lacework of the windows that stretched between. At Selby (fig. 261) lower and broader but still richer in effect are the groupings of crocketed spirelets octagonal and square. The depth and solidity of these screen fronts, with their broadly weathered gables, take from their finish of the aisles all hint of architectural veneer. A massif of its own is created by the stonework, whose shapely robust ness of solid spirelet and gabled buttress builds up a sense of scale much beyond the actual dimensions ; so that though no larger than at Lincoln or Ely,3 the Yorkshire fronts strike us as some of the most notable achievements of our English architecture. Of the same class as Selby, but still more decorated with mounting niches and with a striding canopy over its great window, with crocketed coping, and a storied and niched gable top, was the east end of Howden. Yet it was thinner in its idea, and has somewhat left the stronger sense of the earlier style — a shift still more pronounced in the west front, whose lofty pinnacles and transomed windows are in sight of that com plete change in the feeling of design that was to come before the end of the century. And the west front of York, 140 ft. wide, with its towers 202 ft. high, however much its first planned details may be accounted 1 Carlisle quire was also rebuilt after its Guisborough church. burning in 1292, and is in the same north- 3 Bristol is the only front in the south ern style, but flatter and less spirited than that has somewhat the same sense. How- the Yorkshire work. It has now been very ever, during this last year (1898) this fine completely "restored." work has been much spoilt by unnecessary 2 The only portion preserved of the fine " restoration," THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 337 " Decorated," is still of this later inspiration : a splendid piece of pompous design that yet has never gained the " kingdom," which came to Guis- 260. GUISBOROUGH. EAST FRONT (SHARPE's RESTORATION), C. 1300. borough and Selby by no mere mechanical observation of feet and inches. It can be seen how in this Yorkshire building the many-mullioned XX 33* GOTHIC ART window, with its spread of tracery occupying three-quarters of the field, was at once the motive and condition of structure. Such as in the 261. SELBY. EAST FRONT, I3OO AND 1340. Guisborough front, seven-lighted, 30 ft. across and 60 ft. high, it gave an immense surface for the art of the glass-painter. Yet in idea it was architectural ; no easel set up to take a painter's canvas, but rather a decorator's display of coloured and patterned texture. Selby still has its THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 339 glass in combination with the fourteenth-century screen backing the altar. Though the great east window is to be seen from the body of the church, yet its subject-painting is on the scale of appreciation only from the " Chapels " passage that ran beneath it, at a further distance appearing but as a background of scintillating colour. It was later that, as at Gloucester, this back ground was ranged into tiers of niches ; the com pany of the saints, behind the gilded and imaged erections of the majesty, which were raised on beams above the altar (see fig. 330, P- 431)- At Selby (and it is still just the same at York, fifty years later) the tracery is to be taken as a great masoned enamel, that had its "cloissons" built up in stone, into' which the glass was laid as the trans lucent filling. It was the mason's design that furn ished the "form pieces" and dictated his " panels " to the glazier, who might array his saints in the lights, but in the head was expected to compound with the decorative scheme of. the architecture. At Dor chester, Oxfordshire, (in the quire windows) stone and glass are seen to have equal functions, not only in the head but downward in the lights as well (fig. 262) ; the painting of the last and the carving of the first show themselves almost interchangeable, as parts of one decora tive design. The " northern" window never perhaps played with stone construc tion like this ; the memory of the tall level-headed lancets of Hexham, York, and Fountains made a tradition, so that the tracery never encroaches 262. DORCHESTER. JESSE WINDOW, C. 1310. 346 GOTHIC ART on the light, nor does the light rise into the province of the head ; and generally in the method of the North a definite statement of structure is presented. No doubt from somewhere or other in Yorkshire or Lin colnshire specimens of every chief variety1 of tracery might be instanced, yet their great windows can still be classified as having always a declared organic method — that which we saw in its inception at St. Agatha's (see fig. 249, p. 315), — and this is maintained in the geometrical stateliness of Ripon, Guisborough, and York "chap ter " ; and alike in the flowing brilli ancies of Selby quire and Beverley nave, as in the flamboyance of Bolton, till we note it too in the straight lined divisionings of the east windows of York and Beverley in the last quarter of this century. This feeling can be recognized in the " northern "2 exam ples as distinct beside the " southern," even when the tracery scheme is on really identical lines in both3: asforex- ample, taking the great east windows of Guisborough and Tintern ; or those of Carlisle and Bristol ; or that of Ripon east front (fig. 259, p. 335) be side the almost exactly similar design of St. Mary's Hospital at Chichester (fig. 250, p. 316). And when in the window-head the geometrical " wheel " was resolved into the curves of the sub-arches creatine- that ^ — =j*g T-1 1 ~~Zmp/^iA v ' r — iH\ r" ^ "l/M % ||||i 1/ arXnl i ' HP 1 v| 1 1 — 1, "4 l|l 2311 1 - -" IP?'5' I 1 | ^1 1-" Jr 1 263. PATRINGTON. CHANCEL, C. I345. 1 The wide-spread " restoration " of Dec orated tracery in place of Perpendicular makes most of our churches now no longer evidence. But Professor Freeman's collec tion of examples was made in 1846, and has the value of being before the greatest de structions. It is, however, rather as a curiosity in the pedantries of scientific ec clesiology, that we give his analysis of deco rated tracery. His divisions are: (1) foil tracery, (2) arch tracery, (3) geometrical tracery, (4) geometrical and foil tracery, (5) geometrical and arch tracery, (6) arch and foil tracery, (7) subarcuated foil tracery, (8) geometrical wheel tracery, (9) foil wheel tracery, (10) spiked foliation; (n) flowing tracery, (12) reticulated tracery, (13) ogee tracery, (14) flowing wheel tracery, (15) divergent tracery, (16) convergent horizontal tracery, (17) convergent reversed tracery, (18) combinated tracery, (19) subarcuated flowing tracery, (20) quasi subarcuated tracery, (21) flamboyant. " Northern " here would be more pro perly northern and eastern, as " southern " should be western and southern. 3 Of this "northern" type the fine ex amples are at Melrose ; Carlisle ; Houghton-. le-Spring, Durham ; Selby, Cottingham and Hedon, Yorkshire; Nantwich, Cheshire; and Boston, Heckington and Sleaford, Lin colnshire. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 341 great ogee patterning which is characteristic at Selby, Howden, and so many of the Lincolnshire windows, then the " panels " take a vegetable growth1 (as if the form-pieces "branched" from the strongly marked stems of their organism), which gives a very distinct note by the side of the "net work " textures of the " southern " fancy. The rough boundary of these distinctions would seem pretty nearly that already mentioned, as separating the system of bluff, square fronts from the spreading chapel-endings of the South. Chester and Lich field lay on the borderland, but the diocese of Ely — as in Prior ¦7rr?777?7? 264. GEDNEY (NEAR WISBECH). C. 1340. 265. TILTY (NEAR DUNMOW). C. 1330. Crawdenrs chapel, and then in the Lady-chapel of the cathedral (see fig. 272, p. 346) — acknowledged generally the northern ideal : and this formed, too, the groundwork of the later Norfolk tracery (fig. 264), as that stiffened into the straight-lined forms (see Houghton-le-Dale, fig. 339, p. 441) of the Norwich diocese, as in the clerestory of the cathedral, or the east window of S waff ham. But there is a style of its own in the East- 1 Freeman's, (15) and (16), "convergent" Flemish or German suggestion in the big and "divergent" traceries. Hull transept square quatrefoils, and something of the and Howden west end, c. 1340, have a same can be seen at Hedon, and at Gad- different style, which may possibly show desby, Lincolnshire. 342 GOTHIC ART Anglian window with a special fineness of tracery, that makes its type distinct : while southwards, with less definition of the distinctions, the manners of the south-eastern window overlay the constructional scheme, as in the example from Essex (fig. 265). In the great diocese of Lincoln the "northern" type is clear in the great Lincolnshire churches; but from Peterborough westward, the Northamptonshire, and, still more, the Oxfordshire traceries are marked with the "southern" 266. HEREFORD. EASTERN CHAPELS. C. 1300. 267. SOUTH DARLEV, DERBYSHIRE. peculiarities. The chief of these lay in the general network-texture of large windows in the South and West. Even when the original com plexion of the " southern " doublet was retained, yet the organic system of " arches " and " wheels " has yielded to the effect of a decorative surfacing. The beginnings of this " southern " manner may have lain.4n those multi plications of circles in the head, such as are to be found in the Tintern chapter-house and the north transept of Hereford (see fig. 235, p. .302), and in so many churches of Northamptonshire and some in Lincolnshire. In triple lights the North and the Midlands, as well as the South, can give examples of the elaboration of these simple piercings into groups of THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 343 bar-quatrefoils and trefoils ; and so there is a type of "foiled"1 windows to be seen at St. Mary's, York, in the aisle of York Cathedral, at Selby (see fig. 261, p. 338) and Howden, while the notable examples of its use are the beautiful long windows of the Lady-chapel of Lichfield (c. 1300). After that date, however, these gave place in the North to the organic (or " branch ") tracery. But the western counterparts of such triple - lighted "foiled" windows were continued as in the Hereford chapels (fig. 266), Malmes bury clerestory, and Merton chancel, Oxford ; and the principle of their arrays of similar figures was in the South and West carried into the broad, many-lighted windows of fourteenth century art, the foiled circles being woven into " net works " of waving lines instead of the " branch " organism of the North.2 The excess and monotony of the "network"3 is that of Wells quire of 1330, where one is conscious that the strength of architecture has succumbed to the efforts' of a brilliant decorativeness. But in Oxfordshire the quality remained one of distinctly masonic development — from the geometrical traceries of Merton to the wonderful Dorchester examples, or that in Bishop Lucy's Chapel, St. Frideswide's (fig. 268), where the varied expressions of the stone and glass weave a texture, inside and out, at once sculpturesque and decorative — over filling the window head and coming down to invade the lights below. 268. ST. FRIDESWIDES, OXFORD. c. 1320. 1 Freeman's foil traceries, (i), (4), and (9). See p. 126 as to "foiling "and "foliation." 2 There was a wide borderland between the two schools, the " branch " and the " net work," with many instances of mixture, as, say, at Crick, near Rugby ; South Darley, in Derbyshire (fig. 267) ; and many of the Leicestershire churches ; and also further inside the southern boundary, at Chipping Norton, Witney, and Cheltenham — in all cases the " branch " system being modified by the feeling of the " network." 3 Freeman's " Reticulated Tracery " (12). The fine examples of its regular use in large windows are all along the south ; at New Romney and Old Shoreham, Sussex ; at Wareham and Milton Abbey, Dorset; St. Germans, Cornwall ; and inland, Madeley, Hereford; St. Mary Magdalen (1320), Ox ford; Shottesbrook (1327), Berkshire. See also Holy Cross Abbey, Ireland, and in the north and east of England later examples, such as at Selby (fig. 261, p. 338), Yaxley in Norfolk, and Orford in Suffolk. 344 GOTHIC ART WALTHAM ABBEY 270. MIDDLETON CHENEY, NORTH ANTS, WINDOW IN LADY-CHAPEL. C. 1330. Just the reverse of this was the feeling that, in continuation of the triple lancets of the earlier Gothic and their graduation to the vault space, carried the " arches 'n of the lights up into the broad head of the window. The range of this method in the triple light may be as wide as that of the " network," but in the larger windows it is a " southern " system, and found very often combined with the reticulated. In many churches the aisle win dows 2 have the simpler "arch" forms ; while the broad head of the many-lighted east window shows " the network." In the South this 1 Called by Freeman " arch tracery " (2 and 6 of his system ; see p. 340). ' So at Tintern ; Dorchester, Oxfordshire ; St. Albans, and then at Tewkesbury. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 345 lancet-basis is the motive throughout the windows of many buildings, as in the Chichester Lady-chapel of 1300 (see fig. 252, p. 317), and the 271. st. paul's, london (from hollar's print), c. 1280. quire of Ottery St. Mary (see fig. 288, p. 363). The examples run from the first sculpturesque essays of tracery at Netley, and the clean shape liness of the St. Albans clerestory (see fig. 276, p. 351), on to elaborate development in the broad window-heads of Tintern and Ely chapel ; at YV 346 GOTHIC ART first breaking up the "doublet" system (fig. 270) or as at St. Paul's (fig. 271) and Waltham (fig. 269) set in ranges which later crystallised into the blunt, many-cusped headings of Dunmow quire, in earnest of the Perpendicular use.1 272. ELY. EAST WINDOW OF LADY-CHAPEL. C. 1345. And in the South,2 besides these " arch " and " network " forms, the 1 Good examples are also at Canterbury; in Tisbury south transept; at Wimborne and Milton Abbey, Dorset ; at Bristol, and a- round; in Northampton and Peterborough. 2 Freeman's " Wheel Tracery " (8) and (9). The prominent examples may be men tioned at Ledbury, Herefordshire ; at Min- chinhampton, Gloucestershire ; at Plympton and many of the Cornish churches ; and so in Brittany and Normandy, with very English features at Treguier, Dol, Bayeux, and at Caen in St. Etienne le Vieux. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 347 great "rose" or "marigold " retained its place in the window head quite to the close of the flowing period of tracery. What had been the ideal for the east end of St. Paul's (fig. 27 1)— a range of many lancets, and a great " wheel " above— continued still to close a vista, or centre a gable. As at Merton, Oxford,1 so, fifty years after, at Tewkesbury (see fig. 283, p. 359), the east window has its rose ; and at Exeter, with a motive distinct among the varied network and flowing fancies of the " western " mason —from Bishop Quivil of 1280 to Bishop Grandison of 1360 the great " wheel " centres each gable as prominently in the west window of the last as in the Lady-chapel gable of the first bishop. In fact the distinction, which our scientific analysis of Gothic Art has thought so essen tial, between the "geometrical" or regular perforation of tracery, and its irregular or flowing "panels," was without any basis of principle in the practice of the fourteenth- century mason : his " form-pieces " provided for one shape or the other with indifference. The flowing lines were side by side with the formal until the Perpendicular idea suppressed both. Indeed in England the geometrical perforation was the longer-lived, appearing to the end even in sixteenth century traceries. Still, if the mason was in fact master of the window in the fourteenth century, and the glass-painter's triumph tarried, yet symptoms of this latter's influence were not wanting. That centralization of effect which the mason achieved by his elaborate " marigold " was attempted in many windows by a distinctly painter's conception, the specialization of the central light of a composition for the display of his skill. While at Dor chester, Oxfordshire, the east window had got its effect by the central stone mullion being thickened and given a niche, now it was the central light that was specialized by being given greater breadth and height at Gloucester, Lichfield,2 Exeter, and Bodmin, and notably in the great east window of Bristol, as afterwards at Ely (fig. 272) and at Edington. Another concession to the technique of the glass-painter was the 273. WINCHELSEA. C. 1300. 1 The canopies and pinnacles to the lights under the great wheel show it in immediate descent from the St. Paul's window, with which it was contemporary. In the one fourteenth-century window left in the clerestory of quire. So also at Portishead, near Bristol, and Hawkhurst, Kent. 348 GOTHIC ART provision in the tracery-head of reservations, usually more or less square (figs. 269, 273) and large enough for a medallion, or figure-subject.1 Examples may be taken from all parts of England, but the character of the type was most often shown in south-eastern England, sufficiently to have given the name " Kentish tracery " to the straight-lined quatrefoils and trefoils, which are so distinct at Winchelsea, Chartham, and Wool- field. But this " medallion " treatment of tracery did not spread ; the representation of the architectural niche had got too firmly fixed in the ideal of the glass-painter, and by its fourteenth-century vogue fixed the lines of the window for two hundred years. For they were the ranged niches of the English front, arcade above arcade telling the story of the church, as at Wells and Lichfield, which made the tradition of our school in glass. And when the array of the saints was transferred from the portico to the window, for internal as well as external contemplation, the halfway stone transom 2 came immediately upon the scene, so that the window developed tier upon tier of painted niches. And then taking possession of the head of the window, the niche-panel ousted with extraordinary rapidity all the tangled fantasies of the fourteenth-century mason. In both north and south we see the tendency before 1350, tenta tively at Hull and Bridlington, as well as at Ely (fig. 272) and Bristol (fig. 274), but earliest at this last, where most significantly in the quire of Abbot Knowle of 1330 came the invasion of perpendicular aspiration. So that quickly afterwards at Gloucester Decorated style, as it were, capitulated and the new ideas, marching by Beverley to York and by Edington to Winchester and Canterbury, established themselves throughout the length and breadth of English art. It has been indicated, how broad window and solid buttress were necessarily each other's complement, tower-like abutment and wide- headed tracery being developed in the grand style of fourteenth-century art, whose vigorous exposition was the Yorkshire one. Bristol, as has been mentioned, retains a considerable sense of this effect ; but Gloucester seems to have put it quite away. Another principle, that of panelled 1 The " spiked foliation tracery " of Free- " The domestic window had already man (10). To be found in the Whitby nave ; developed the transom for other purposes, in the Howden west window ; at Cartmel ; i.e., to frame the lower wooden shutter, in the Mayor's Chapel, Bristol ; at Great while only the upper part of the window was Bedwyn, Wiltshire, as well as the many ex- glazed, as in the halls of Lincoln, Winches- amples in south-eastern England— a re- ter, and Wells ; and this same intention is markable one being the great trefoil in the shown, too, in the west front of Binham (see window of the Infirmary Chapel, Canter- fig. 242, p. 309), and in the Chapter-house bufy- of St. Frideswide's, Oxford. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 349 surfacing, is there set up in the transept of Saint Andrew ; and the 274. BRISTOL. ABBOT KNOWLES' PRESBYTERY. C. 1330. window, whose demand for expansion had first created fourteenth- century proportion, now turns its back on it, and makes of its company 35o GOTHIC ART the arcade-bay and the vault. The divisioning of the great church bay,1 which had come to us from Cluniac discipline, was at length to be super seded. Chapter IV. showed how heavily this tradition had weighted thirteenth- century art, and how in the West, starting from the less orthodox designs of the western nave (and as if from Cistercian rejection of Benedictine building-rule), Llanthony, Dore, and Tintern had done without the triforium, while St. David's, Christ Church, Dublin, and not ably Pershore (see figs. 136, 137, pp. 184, 1 85), took it into the clerestory. The quire of Abbot Knowle is here, too, equally an earnest of the course of the later English Gothic, and the evidence of a run of tradition that went outside the orthodox construc tions of Early English. Itsbayscheme (fig. 275) is the Gothic rendering of that of the great naves of Tewkes bury and Gloucester, and paves the way for the quire of Gloucester and the nave of Canterbury. In the north Southwell, Dryburgh, as many of the Scotch churches about 1340 had omitted or modified the tri forium. But Beverley may be accepted as the precursor of the York treat ment of the fourteenth century. The step, too, from the Beverley (see fig. 151, p. 199) to St. Albans (fig. 276) can be seen to have been an easy one. Yet even in this fourteenth century Worcester nave, as Ely quire (see fig. 289, p. 364), accepted the per sistence of the Romanesque scheme. St. Albans, however, declined having its quire on the model of the long nave ; and York, too, discarding the predisposition of its transept, set out its immense church wall (fig. 277) on the grand scale of only two great storeys. In the alignment of triforium gallery with clerestory-window, York and Guisborough (fig. 278) made a grander rendering of Beverley than was achieved at St. Albans ; but Bridlington, in reducing, on one side of its nave, the mid-division to a mere openwork balcony, can be seen to have taken a further step in the direction of the Perpendicular clerestory by the introduction of the panel rendering of construction. So before 1 350 it is clear that in North and West alike had been preluded 275. BRISTOL. HALF SECTION OF QUIRE. 1 The bay-diagrams here and throughout are to scale of those in Chapter III. but the British and Exeter sections are only half this. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 351 the proportions which were to make one great storey of the wall-bay in Chillenden's Canterbury and Wykeham's Winchester. And to this same destination, side by side with the great church treatment, were marching the ideas of the parish church, now grown to full stature in the sea ports of East England, rich with 276. ST. ALBANS. QUIRE BAY, 1 290, 277. YORK. NAVE BAY, 1300. 352 GOTHIC ART Hanseatic trade. Howden nave, whose raising followed that of the collegiate quire, has the lofty arcade and ranged clerestory of the art that had built Hedon, and was to employ itself at Trinity Church, Hull, and St. Botolph's, Boston, and the many great churches of Lincolnshire and the Humber lowlands. But Howden quire had been, like that of Selby, still monastic in its mo tive, with neither this homelier style nor the grand secular air of York, but rather with that mellower feeling of the southern building which be longed to the spreading chapels of St. Albans and Tewkesbury. As strongly as in the stately structure of the Northern " front," beat, too, the pulse of " Decorated " feeling in the low proportions and sunny spaciousness of the Southern plan ning. It is this which is the dis tinctly fourteenth-century character, the direct offspring of that chapter house art that was dealt with in the last chapter — separated at once from the sculptured gracefulness of the Early English, and from the archi tectural pomp of the Perpendicular. The bay treatment of this style came to it, no doubt, in continuation of such ambitious parish schemes as those of Winchelsea and Rye, as well as of the Cistercian simplicities of Netley and Tintern. And in its simplest form was it adopted in the rebuilding (c. 1280) of the quire of the great Winchester that, rejecting the Romanesque wall-storyings, was content with a plain, widely-spaced arcade, with no provision for vaulting. So was it, too, at Milton Abbey, Dorset, and with the same spirit of design was at Exeter the work which, begun under Bishop Quivil (1280 — 1291) and continued at inter vals for some eighty years, has evidence of a regular school of masonry,1 278. GUISBOROUGH. QUIRE BAY. 1 See the "Fabric Rolls," partly published by Canon Freeman, The stone came from Purbeck and Branscombe (Beer), and for the vaulting of the quire from Portland, The THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 353 instituted in the same way as at York, for the purpose of gradually transforming the fabric of the cathedral. The style thus taken into the service of the aristocratic Bishops of Exeter, may be accounted the most typical expression of the Romance of English art : it is from here that it went, as has been suggested, across the Channel to Tr6guier and St. Pol de Leon.1 279. EXETER. QUIRE BAY. 280. EXETER. HALF SECTION OF NAVE. The bay design of Exeter (fig. 279) and its cross section (fig. 280) give its character — its smiling breadth of feature — its wealth of full- Purbeck art of its columns is a continuation of that of the Lincoln presbytery, which first left the slender shafting of the Early English. But generally at Exeter design and detail were entirely native, with an early carving that is as sculpturesque as that of St. Frides wide's shrine, and a later that is as romantic as that of Tewkesbury. 1 Most remarkable at St. Pol is the change in style from the thirteenth-century Caen- stone of the nave to the fourteenth-century granite of the quire. The first shows the Normandy detail, which has so much in common with Netley ; the latter, save in a few Breton peculiarities, might have been worked in Devonshire or Cornwall. But the granite of Brittany is a finer and freer stone than that of south-western England. ZZ 354 GOTHIC ART headed window, the solid wall-massing and the full projection of the buttress ; and inside the pierced balustrades and low wall passage of the triforium, simply arcaded, but rich in expression. The hint of all this arrangement was in the twelfth-century western art of Glastonbury; but the progress of Exeter from the intervening ideal of Salisbury (see fig. 1 60, p. 207) is distinct, though coming but forty years later — so light is Exeter where that was robust, so full of warmth where that was cold and empty. For it is the vault which is the rich element of the Exeter effect ; springing not high up and hollowed as in the Early English vaults of Salisbury and Beverley; nor as at Lincoln, seeming to have sunk into the area and to overwhelm the proportion of the wall ; and equally avoided has been the petty character of the Lichfield dispositions, though the actual dimensions are hardly greater. At Exeter a rich spaciousness has been got by the accurate proportions of the scheme, while the springing grace of the curves makes the vault-ribs real " branches " of the wall design, so that their multiplication gives perspective and area as well as substance. The decorative sense of the fourteenth century had now increased the number of such extra ribs (or tiercerons, see fig. 251, p. 316), and their effect was to take from the vault-conoid its square boundaries, and gradually to bring it to a semicircle. But as yet, at Exeter, the distinct ness of the side groins is maintained — there has been no flattening of the crown. Yet, as away from continental tradition, the vault was taking a step as distinct here, in the South, as were the " Heme " vaults of mid- England or the wooden groinings of Yorkshire. A word should now be said as to the place of this wood-ceiling in the Northern style. After the works of the mid-thirteenth century in the Nine Altars and Southwell quire, the reign of the stone vault in northern England is over. What at Durham and Tynemouth in the twelfth century had been achieved so nobly, was afterwards north of Beverley 1 scarcely attempted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The in decisions shown in the York transept have already been mentioned, which ended in the final triumph of the wooden ceiling in all the high vaults of that cathedral. Still the home of the wood-vault lay doubtless in the woodland centre of England, where a carpenter's craft of oak building had grown to maturity on the borders of the great forests of Sherwood, Charnwood, and Rockingham. 1 And this at Beverley was onlya continua- fifteenth century barrel vaulting of Scotland tion in 1330 of the thirteenth century vault, belongs entirely to its own style, having no but the " nave " of Guisborough would seem cognate development this side of the border, to have been stone vaulted. The peculiar nor indeed in France. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 355 In the roofs of Romanesque carpentry the great oak beams that stretched from wall to wall (tying together the plates from which sprung the steep-trussed rafter-construction) were ceiled beneath with boarding painted as at Ely and Peterborough. But over the top of the stone groinings of the thirteenth century, as at Salisbury and Wells, the fram ings were of lighter scantling, and the carpenter's craft therein grew more learned. Then it was that among the forests of mid-England it advanced to the pride of showing the shapeliness of an open ceiling, and in this district by 1300 we have at Polebrook in Northamptonshire, St. Martin's in Leicester, Sparsholt in Rutlandshire, and at Kiddington and Adderbury in Oxfordshire, framed and carved carpentries of principal, purlein, and rafter, at once roofs and ceilings.1 These were somewhat flat-pitched, but soon the Gothic ideal of constructional grace worked its power here as plainly as in stonework, and so came the graceful arch-principals of St. Mary's, Reading;2 the cusped traceries of the west, as at Malvern, and in the old Guesten Hall of Worcester ; 3 and finally the stately hammer-beams of Westminster Hall. All this, however, lay rather on the domestic side of building, in immediate descent from the timber-work of the Saxon hall, whose oaken pillars and great spanned roofs gave a design very near that of the parish church (see pp. 243, 247) ; many a fine barn, like that of Har- penden, remains to show its scheme.4 But on the monastic side in abbey and cathedral there lingered in the carpentries the Romanesque tradition of covering construction with a robe of ornament. In its first thir teenth century escape from this, the carpenter's craft was still at the mercy of the masons, for whose vaultings he had so long made centrings. His ceilings show a mimicry of stonework just as his first screenworks are reproductions of the stone-mason's carving.5 No doubt some idea of temporary economy, as with the Lichfield transept — where was put a wooden vault, c. 1240, that was afterwards replaced in stone — gave the 1 See G. E. Street, "Transactions of the century the old carpenter's craft that had been Royal Institute of British Architects," First elaborated in the halls of kings remained Series (1865), who quotes the roof of the for our barns. In no stone-craft of this barn at St. Agatha's, Easby, as being the century has such stately work of architecture earliest remaining instance of this construe- been possible, as this old tradition be- tion. queathed to a barn-building at Roxeth, near 2 Said to have been brought there from Harrow, in 1850. the friars' church after the Dissolution. 5 See the Compton screen, Surrey, and 3 Both pulled down this century. The the Rochester desks. The carpenter's treat- roof of the latter was made up for a modern ment of detail, however, soon became differ- church in Worcester, but so used and so ent, and of "wooden" inspiration, as at St. surrounded that its charm is gone. Mary's Hospital, Chichester, and the screen 4 Even to the middle of this nineteenth at Old Shoreharn, 356 GOTHIC ART carpenter his chance. However, Henry III.'s injunction1 to Archbishop Gray in this matter comes at once to connect York with this develop ment, so that in the work initiated by him, that was carried on for 1 50 years, there were a series of wood vaultings for the high compartments. Perhaps the earliest of such ceilings that remain to us2 is one at Warmington, Northamptonshire, figured in Rickman ; but that of the quire of St. Albans — pulled down in 1257, and rebuilt with its Lady- chapel before 1303 — must have been almost contemporary, and still retains a painting, the scheme of which was possibly of the same date (fig. 281). And evidently no makeshift, but in acceptance of wooden decorativeness, were the Hemes and elaborate bosses of the Lincoln cloisters of 1296. At York, except in the chapter-house, the original wood vaultings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have perished;3 but at Selby we have the masterly work of the finishing of the quire, c. 1340, with numerous ribs and bosses, a rich translation into oak4 of the "branched" stone5 vaultings of the South (see fig. 282, over leaf). It has been said, how Selby in its clerestories, with their broad-jambed windows and balconied passages, as in the rich spaciousness of its effects, has picked up much of the " Southern" inspiration of Exeter and Win- chelsea, though the detail of its carvings and the scheme of its east front (see fig. 261, p. 338) are entirely " northern." And it is this touch of the South, though with less vividness, that appears in the Beverley nave, and in many of the great Lincolnshire parish-chancels. There are other hybrids between the aristocratic grandeur of York Cathedral and the aristocratic romance of Exeter, but with a duller quality, in the quire rebuildings of Abbot Simeon, c. 1283, at Chester, and of Bishop Walter de Langton, c. 1300, at Lichfield. The Chester Mason designed his high ceilings to be wooden, but Lichfield has a fine " branched " vault of stone, though of " northern " motive is the planning and detail of the apsed Lady-chapel— the child, as it were, of York Chapter-house. Worcester, too, in the rebuilding of its nave in 1330 received a 1 I.e., "to expedite the works at St. i At present its colour is that of dark George's Chapel, Windsor, with a lofty oak, but it was no doubt painted and gilded. wooden roof, like that of the new work at The wood vaultings of the lantern at Ely Lichfield, to appear like stone, with good and those of Prior Crauden's Chapel are ceiling and painting." contemporary works. 2 It would seem, too, that the nave of old 5 The most elaborate specimen of the St. Paul's was vaulted in wood, to match the " branched " vaulting in the North is that of stone vaultings of the quire, for Hollar's the Zouche Chapel at York, but this, unlike prints show no flying buttresses. Selby, has its "conoids" on the fan system 3 Those of nave and quire were burnt this (see p. 316) and a flat crown : in fact, it is century. That of transept is early fifteenth very much, a stone rendering of wood-vault century. construction, THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 357 281. ST. ALBANS. WOOD GROINING OF QUIRE. C. 1280. "branched" vault,1 which might compare with that of Exeter. But 1 In its cloister Norwich continued a section to the semicircular — this gradual " branch " vault-scheme from the beginning, change being here the only evidence of at the end of the thirteenth century, up to advance in the mason's craft of fourteenth the finishing in 1426. See Professor Willis's and fifteenth century vaulting. The same illustrations of the gradual progression of the phenomenon may be observed in the West- section of the vault conoid — from the square minster cloister. 358 GOTHIC ART 282. SELBY quire, c. 1300 and 1340. generally in the Western dioceses there came for ceilings a peculiarly English development of the vault, which was to lead it far. This has been called "Heme" vaulting, as if its essence lay in the elaboration of THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 359 ridge ribs. But it would better deserve the name of " tracery "vaulting, as distinguished from the " branch " system, which by the end of the century it virtually superseded ; for the extra ribs are not " ridges," but make tracery patterns with the "branches." In fact it was the western and southern feeling for " network " tracery, which was thus taken into the ceiling, so that its surface diapers gradually smoothed away the groin intersection, until was actually brought back again the barrel vault of the eleventh century. It is possible, as Viollet-le-Duc does, to read in this transformation a leaning on the custom of wood-vaulting, in which groin rib-structure went for nothing, except as stone-imitation. But still more possibly the elabor ate tomb constructions of the early fourteenth century gave the actual lessons in substi tuting decorative fancies for the constructive grace of the first Gothic. The wood testers, that made the bier-canopies of the thirteenth century, were in the elaborate monuments of the fourteenth often carried out in carved stone, and in this material mimic vaults were substituted for the soffite- paintings of the wood-work. The suggestions of this pro gress, however, belong to what 283. TEWKESBURY. VAULT OF QUIRE. will be treated in Chapter X, the history of the decorated "fan- vault," by the side of which the " tracery- vault " maintained its place all through the fifteenth century. Most remarkably in the Severn Valley and the Avon were the decorative aspects of both departures from the severer Early English types achieved. The germ of the development had, no doubt, been started in the chapel of Lincoln west-end, and then in the pillarless chapter-houses of Southwell and York. But we find it most decidedly suggested in that Pershore quire vault that came after the fire of 1288. And the school of its craft lay undoubtedly in the ceilings of the great Romanesque abbeys of the south-west, Malmesbury and Tewkesbury (fig. 283), from which it passed into the quires of Bristol and Wells, and into the elaborate developments of Gloucester, where the fan-vault, too, came as its progeny. 360 GOTHIC ART The lofty clerestory of Malmesbury, that lifted the Romanesque construction of 1 130 another five- and-twenty feet, has a fine range of flying buttresses and lofty spire- let pinnacles. The style of its traceried parapets and windows,' and the grace and strength of its traceried vault make it one of the most vigorous examples of the fourteenth century. At Tewkes bury, though its quire-enlargement was built (figs. 284, 285) in plan and detail very differently from the square-ended " Yorkshire " of Selby, yet it has the same sense of easy openness and English radiance. The original robustness b %g\ b$sz '^E^Llfm-^W #-:-^" vT ©''rv'UiC W> .-* *¦ .5J ^A---^. --< #'¦ #f^a> Tn y : ..... -jfe.:.— ; . :t $-*.--$-:. TF w^?^ =3f7?|-*l:-r-:;«'-^^^* »*:;H>i! :>..;-*-., . vv : -—-*!*; — -¦ ; ,\*w'**C >£ R #%mmm #f T7k\?M''^k^^ B r>k:|t fe4*i -^r- Tl~^- 284 TEWKESBURY QUIRE. A. Romanesque Church. b. Xlllth Century Lady Chapel. c. XlVth Century Chapels. d. Later Lady Chapel. 285. TEWKESBURY. CHAPELS OF CHEVET. C. 1325. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 361 of the Romanesque chevet-apse gives the key l to the varied and pic turesque groupings of the chapels (fig. 285), as they were rebuilt about 1325; but with this breadth of proportion was combined the decorative feeling of the four teenth century — its "romance" so blended with Romanesque proportion that it seems to make of no account the intervening two hun dred years of Gothic slendernesses. This style, which was to make the flamboyant charm of the fifteenth century in France, is here reached with a freshness of inspiration such as the later more elaborate dressings of Norman construction at Gloucester, Winches ter, and Norwich never achieved. Yet it is curious — and the fact has al ready been noted as symptomatic of the four teenth-century position in Gothic art — that close as is Tewkesbury to Gloucester, and though this Tewkesbury quire-building came in date alongside of, or between the two four teenth-century works of the other, yet the style of its architecture does not ally itself with either of them. The cleanness of its masoncraft, as well as the idealism of its sculpture, is alien to the flower bespattered effects of the south aisle of Gloucester nave (c. 1 3 18), whose fully moulded method — which is that, too, of Ledbury and Leominster — was in directer descent from the late thir teenth-century masoncraft of Northampton shire and Oxfordshire ; what eastward had its great achievement at St. Albans, whose chapels, ruined but still beautiful until 1890, have now been " restored" OLit of the know ledge of fourteenth-century art. But instead of leaning on this school, the Tewkesbury5 mason has built in the style of Bishop Gower of St. David's, and in near alliance with Exeter. 1 There is nothing of the French chevet about Tewkesbury, as maybe seen by putting the plan (on p. 360) by the side of that of Notre Dame p. 79, or of Westminster p. 203. - The latest chapel built out on the south side loses much of this characteristic : and 3 2 286. WELLS. BAY OF QUIRE. after 1340 the Despencer chantries (see p. 434) and the groinings are Gloucester masonwork. The later Lady-chapel, now destroyed, would seem to have been in the manner of Wells quire (fig. 286), and St, Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 362 GOTHIC ART Nor, on the other hand, does the architecture of Tewkesbury show itself the prelude to the lofty panellings and hollow mouldings of Gloucester, which came there with a new sense of proportion in the casing of the Norman transept and quire after 1330. To the wealth and luxury of the Bristol traders must be assigned the impetus which started our architecture in the path to Perpendicular. The quire of the Bristol Augustinians was rebuilt under Abbot Knowle (131 1- 1332), 287. GLOUCESTER. QUIRE CASING FROM THE TRIFORIUM. and the indications of his work cannot be mistaken. While the quire (fig. 286) of Wells, too, close at hand, was contemporary and with a bay-design, equally with Bristol's significant of the motives which were introducing panelled proportions into architecture. And from these suggestions Gloucester stepped at once 1 into the Perpendicular scheme. An expressive patterning has here taken the place of the solid emphasis of structure, which Decorated art contrasted with its emotional richness of ornament; but though given the distinctive function of replacing Norman heaviness, in reality the wall and vault 1 1329-1337. The chronicles say how, finem alam S, Andrea? produxit," and how within six years of the burial of Edward IL, in the time of Adam de Stanton (1337-135 1), Abbot Wygmore, "a fundamentis usque ad " constructa est alta volta chori," THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 363 are returning to the traditions of the earliest Romanesque, that which grew first in the barrel vaultings of Poitiers. The shafts, which make the wall-piers, though they profess to take their structural energy from the ground, are but the make-believes of such an office, and really only the framing of a panelled veneer (fig. 287), which is carried on over the waggon-tilt of the ceiling, so that the construction has returned to that of the chapter-house of 1140 (also see fig. 330, p. 431). At Gloucester the architectural detail was in accord with the vigor ous tour de force of this conception: at Bristol the detail kept — though the idea of proportion was changed — the earlier south-western breadth of feeling with the rhythm of broad massing and interwoven delicacy ; and the vault there has all the Malmesbury vigour and lift. But at Wells, though there is a vivid decorative sense, piquancy and angularity have come in place of the flowing motives of architectural design. In the chapels at the east end there is much picturesqueness and grace in the planning, but the solid frame of architecture has retreated behind a network of ornament, applied to vault1, panel and window alike (see bay p. 361, and plan p. 67). Bristol and Gloucester were giving at least a meaning besides that of mere diaper to the spacings of the vault-ribs (see fig. 297, p. 380), if they somewhat missed the strong, rich fancy which underlies the effect of Tewkesbury. The individualist tendencies of fourteenth century art are to be recognized in such con trasts of method and feeling as these four great churches display. We seem to recognize the " architect" rather than the mason in their several methods ; the de signing of variety at any cost, rather than the progressive growth of experiment. Ely, in the east of England, affords in the almost con temporary works of its fourteenth century crossing, quire and Lady chapel, an instance of a similar kind, all in one cathedral. The great design of the octagon, whose building, begun in 1322, after the fall of the Norman tower, was finished in 1342, is associated with the name of of Alan of Walsingham — the sacrist of the monastery. Its style and wooden vault has much of the grand manner of York, the details of the stonework are large and the mouldings full ; the ornaments are rich, but restrained ; and the eight tall figures, some 9 ft. high in their long 1 A more restrained application of the on a small scale, in the quire of Ottery St. Wells spirit in bay and vault is that shown, Mary, whose bay is here given (fig. 288). /mm tuftf u n if Y«& ¦S ' \ 1 Ifl . OTTERY ST. MARY. BAY OF QUIRE. 364 GOTHIC ART niches on each pier, must have given a solemn dignity to the conception of the octagon hall. But in another manner were the quire-bays built on in 1338 to join the crossing to the thir teenth-century presbytery. The squatness (fig. 289) of design, which the storeys of the latter rendered obligatory, is not re deemed here by any happy in spiration of treatment, but only crowded with a florid prodigality ot ornament, and an uneasy ac centuation of liny moulding ; ^witri — very different craft had Beverley and Bridlington faced similar problems.1 Still the Ejy vaultings are effective as welLas rich — ot the Western "tracery " pattern,2 thoughin the lines of the thirteenth-century "branch"-vault of the east end. And when we pass into the Lady-chapel, build ing from 1 32 1 to 1349, we have a vault that has quite the broad waggon tilt and rich spacing of Tewkesbury, and throughout very much of 'the same fine grasp of decorative intention — a little less spontaneous, but still with no degeneration into meaningless profusion. Of other examples of the fourteenth-century manner of great building in the east of Eng land we have but little left. The 289. ELY. BAY OF QUIRE. complete destruction of the great London churches, such as the Christ Church (or Holy Trinity) of the Augustinians, as well as of Friars' 1 It is curious how the fourteenth century work has missed even the Romanesque elegance of the twelfth century, which had its disposition of one, two, and three division- ings for the triple stories of the wall. The squat traceries of this Ely quire are those of the Norwich cloister, and the fillings of the Peterborough Romanesque window — very different from the free Norfolk and Cam bridgeshire fourteenth century traceries found in their parish churches. 2 Those of the north aisle are fine examples. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 365 churches, has cut out a large chapter of our Gothic history. We have, indeed, the crypt1 of St. Stephens, the royal collegiate church of the Westminster Palace. But though founded by Edward I. in 1290, and commenced again in 1 330, the chief building of this chapel was from 1 349 to 1354, what had been much defaced by 1840, when it was burnt out. The style of this latter work was not as Ely Chapel in Holborn or as Walsingham's Lady-chapel at Ely (which may be accepted as the English counterparts of Sainte Chapelle, Paris, and St. Germer), but here there had come the manner of the great fifteenth-century chapels, which were soon to be at Windsor, at Oxford and Cambridge — a manner that has travelled far from the genuine associations of the fourteenth century.2 But the detail of this " London" mason-craft is perhaps shown at Dun- mow, where is left the aisle of the great quire, with the lean lacework traceries already mentioned ; and as having been with the same refine ments of moulding may be noted the beautiful chapel attached to the south aisle of Waltham Abbey, built about 1318. This has the window illustrated (fig. 269 on p. 344) and, externally, that panelling3 of flint and stone which has come down to us as characteristic of the parish- church art of the eastern counties. Such examples are interesting despite the insignificance of their scale, for in the fineness of their methods, and their architectural economy of structure, they introduce the notes of style that distin guished for two centuries the city churches of East England.4 The friars' churches were the great exponents of a church-building whose aisled openness, however elegantly and richly expressed, was that of the democratic church, which drew all classes into it, in opposition to the aristocratic seclusion and splendour of the elder monastic prestige. The great church of the London Franciscans had an importance only less than the Cathedral of St. Paul's ; but, like those of the White. and Black Friars, it has entirely disappeared — as, too, except in a few. frag ments, have most of the Dominican5 and Franciscan churches, once to be found in every town in England. So the record is almost blank 1 Another fourteenth-century crypt of with the aisle of St. Mary Magdalen at great beauty in London is that of the church Oxford to indicate how the feeling of the of the Hospital of St. John in Clerkenwell. western and eastern arts had separated. 3 See the drawings of Mackenzie pub- 5 The best preserved is the 1450 church lished by the Government. of the Dominicans at Norwich. At Rich- 3 St. Ethelbert's gate at Norwich, rebuilt mond, Yorkshire, and at Lynn are the after the riot of 1272, had this panelling, towers of friars' churches, also fifteenth but not apparently of the date of the gate- century, and at Gloucester the most part of way; now it is a "restoration." the Grey Friars' (double-aisle) church re- 4 The church at Cambridge, rebuilt about mains built up into houses. There is, too, a the middle of the fourteenth century, as St. little ruined chancel of the Grey Friars at Mary the Less, may be taken in comparison Winchelsea of the late thirteenth century. 366 GOTHIC ART that would show the early fourteenth-century beginnings of what, about 1350, came in the building of many city churches like those of St. Mary the Less at Cambridge ; St. Nicholas, Lynn ; and Holy Trinity, Hull. But apart from this city development, there belonged to the early fourteenth century two important branches of parish-church style which have considerable distinction. The first is that of south-eastern England, whose especial glory is the noble chancel of Winchelsea.1 This town, whelmed in the sea in 1270, was rebuilt on the promontory where it now stands, from 1277 to 1280, and the church must have immediately followed, for its monuments begin to date early in the fourteenth century. Its wide triple-gabled front and the proportions of its aisles carry on the twelfth-century tradition of the neighbouring Rye, while the cleanly- cut, full, but delicately rendered, moulding is that of the masons of Chichester2 — the art of the Quarr Abbey stone of the Isle of Wight. At Canterbury, Prior D'Estria's screen of 1304, and his window3 in St. Anselm's chapel have the same kind of tracery as Winchelsea, and the craft passed to the chancel of the Infirmary chapel, and later to the chantry of the Black Prince of 1 363. The chancels 4 and chantry chapels of Kent show the extension of this craft in the service of many knightly families, whose tombs (as at Winchelsea) or brasses (such as those of Cobham and Chartham) are still evidences of its patrons. The broad rubble wallings set off by the sculpturesque detail of its mouldings and the elegant traceries of the windows (that often have still their beautiful fourteenth-century glass, as at Upper Hardres (see fig. 301 p. 385) and Chartham,) give these small Kentish churches a flavour as characteristic of the best " Decorated " art as anything that we have left. Very different in the feeling of its design, much grander in scale, and often with a luxuriant ornament, is that other parish-church style, which flourished in the fourteenth century in Lincolnshire and its adjoining counties, and stretched an influence far into the midlands of England to Oxfordshire and Derbyshire. Instead of the elegant aristocratic charm of the south-eastern manner, we have here represented the ambitious projects and bustling energy of growing communities. In the greater sea-ports, such as Boston, Hull, and Lynn, the churches of the mid- fourteenth century (on a planning learned from the friars' churches), achieved a scale which left behind all but the first rank of monastic 1 Except for some inept repairs of the done at Canterbury. east windows, this valuable and beautiful ' Chartham, Meopham, etc. At Hitcham, example has hitherto escaped the destruc- Bucks, is a chancel very like the Kentish tive " restorations " which have swept bare work ; and with some of its character but of interest almost every Sussex church. bordering on the fuller method of the mid- " See the chancel of St. Mary's Hospital, lands, are the Essex chancels such as Law- 3 The stone here is Caen, if the accounts ford, Stanstead Montfitchet and Tilty (see have been read rightly, but the work was fig. 265, p. 341). THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 367 structures. Inland, however, we have churches built under the same impulse of trade prosperity, but more genuinely of the fourteenth- century inspiration, in the neighbourhood of the great Ancaster quarries, as at Navenby, Sleaford, Heckington, and Helpringham, or on the Nottinghamshire border at Hawton, Grantham, and Newark, and further west at Woodborough, Notts ; Aylestone and Claybrook, Leicestershire ; Norbury and Blithfield, Derbyshire ; Checkley, Staffordshire ; and Chaddesley Corbett, Worcestershire ; or north wards along the Humber at Patrington and St. Marys,1 Beverley. 290. YAXLEY. EXAMPLE OF MID-ENGLAND XIV. CENTURY CHURCH. This mid-England art (fig. 290) came directly in continuation of the thirteenth-century Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire style. Par ticularly in its chancels and its spires were illustrated the motives of its development. The glory of the first lay in the rich traceries of their wide windows, moulded of many orders, such as were easily cut in the free oolites of mid England. But in addition these churches are re markable for the stone-carved furniture of their chancels, in which, as detailed in the next chapter, were abundantly displayed the richest " Decorated" feeling of fourteenth-century style. 1 Really a chapel of the Minster, just as St. Nicholas, Lynn, was a chapel of St. Margaret's. x68 GOTHIC ART Such richly-ornamented chancels still spoke of the aristocratic con nections of architecture, but in its steeple the parish church obtained a distinction of its own, that has significance rather as the crown of demo cratic design — dominating village or small town with an emphasis that was indeed rarely achieved, however aimed at, by the lordly pretension of cathedral and abbey. What at Durham, Lincoln and London was raised but in lead and wood, and has passed away — what the Royal Abbey of Westminster never got at all — came in solid stone, in the many spires which to this day are the enduring monuments of fourteenth- century building in hundreds of Midland village churches. The Romanesque towers that have come down to us have now only modern finishings, or at earliest those of fifteenth-century rebuild- Ipn I. Romanesque, Southwell. 291. DIAGRAM OF STEEPLES. II. He de France, III. Normandy, Senlis. Bernieres. IV. English, Norwich. ing : so we have lost sense of the square conical roofings, laid with tiles or oak shingles, such as in Saxon illuminated MS. and the Bayeux tapestry are always seen as their terminations. The Southwell west front, however, retained to this century the wood and leaden spires,1 which if not of the date of their building, were probably much of the Norman form (see 1, fig. 291). On the Continent the early Gothic art of Normandy had before the end of the twelfth century made a great stride from this, and advanced by a series of experiments to the full expression of an octagonal stone-built pyramid. In this progress it had added to its ideal the ambition of mid-France — that which with receding platforms, storey above storey, and the crown of a four-gabled 1 Shown in J. M. W. Turner's " Liber spires of St. Etienne, Caen, are to be seen Studiorum." A latter-day "restoration" with their original stone terminations of the has now put them again. The small eastern twelfth century. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 369 dome, started its career in the eleventh century at Puy-en-Velay and Cahors, and reached in mid-twelfth century a wonder of shapely sym metry at Chartres. In England, however, there is no hint that our great Norman steeples ever achieved or attempted a stone completion such as this. Most of them have indeed fallen, but when they remain, as at Tewkesbury, Exeter and Norwich, they are all alike remarkable for the uncompromising squareness of their outlines — which has a grandeur of its own, but suggests nothing to put beside the twin spires of St. Etienne, Caen. The He de France Gothic took up the elements of Chartres and developed a spire of striking individuality, though but too rarely achieved on the grandest scale.1 Its method made three main storeys (see 11, fig. 291) of the steeple — the first a sheer square base; then, between this and the spire-shaft, a mid-storey — what was made often half of the whole structure2 — the square in this being gradually con toured into the octagon, and the junction elaborated with flanking pin nacles, and lofty gable lights. So the French spire was a pyramid from ground to finial— a composition of receding stages, growing one out of the other in unbroken expression of verticality. The steeple of Normandy had also its three stages (see in, fig. 291), but in distinction from the mid-French use, its mid-storey, above the widely weathered base, shot up as an unbuttressed long-windowed clean-angled campanile ; above which, as high again came, with a quick reduction masked by angle pinnacles, a sharply pointed spire. In England, however, when the thirteenth century achieved its first stone spires, our mason- craft followed neither of these three storied models, but from the fashion of the Norman steeple made one of its own (see iv, fig. 291) — taking the whole square height of the tower as one storey of its composition, and then above this set up an aspiring transla tion into stone of the wood and lead of the Norman steeple-roof.3 Thus while the French method masked and suppressed the square angles of the tower plan, the English accentuated them and gave them projected prominence from ground to spire-base. In every century of our build ing may be cited examples of this emphasis of the tower corners : St. Albans in the eleventh ; Norwich in the twelfth ; West Walton in the thirteenth ; Lincoln in the fourteenth ; Wymondham in the fifteenth ; 1 Thus Notre Dame, Reims, Amiens, are Castor and Norwich, where the stone without their spires, and at Chartres only steeples are of the thirteenth and four- the two western were accomplished. That teenth century respectively. In the latter at Beauvais, 460 ft. high, fell within six case the wood steeple had been put 1297, years of its erection in 1420. and was blown off in 1361, whereupon the 2 See particularly Senlis, 1 in diagram, pinnacles, and probably the spire, were fig. 289. built, though damaged again in 1463, and 3 Such as the prominent examples of repaired. o B 370 GOTHIC ART and close upon the sixteenth century, Canterbury in her "Angyll Steeple" and Oxford in her Magdalen Tower — all planned alike in giving to each angle an octagon tourelle rising sheer from ground to parapet.1 One of the earliest of remaining spires in England, that of Barnack in Northamptonshire, would seem to indicate the extreme limits of date as in habitat of the southern continental influences, which prescribed an octagonal shaping to the mid-story; for the pretty fifteenth-century spire of Chester-le-street, Durham, can hardly be taken as of this type. Of course, plain octagonal towers are found of all dates, some with spires, as Standlake (Northants), West Wickham (Suffolk) and the beautiful example of Lostwithiel (Cornwall), as well as the little spirelet of Wan- borough (Wilts), and the belfries of the York churches. But these are not of continental inspiration, but an enlargment of the English pinnacle to form the lantern for a bell (see fig. 261, p. 338). But besides the Barnack example, there should be noted as of the last quarter of the twelfth century New Romsey, Sussex, where the apex of the spire is gone, but the lower courses remain : here the four pinnacles assert the English principle of angle accentuation, their weight counterpoising the thrust of the squinches. And of this pattern, too, is the scarcely later spire of St. Frideswide's, Oxford, now rebuilt by Sir G. G. Scott, as well as the more elaborate and striking steeple of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, which, though finished in lead, is a complete design, tower and spire together of the early thirteenth century. However, the Northamptonshire mason elaborated a simpler method, which spread into the adjoining shires of Huntingdon, Lincoln, Leicester and Nottingham 2 and is known by the name of the " broach." The English ideal of two storeys is here distinct, but the shift from square tower to octagonal spire is managed by an unadorned rendering in stone of the shingle- covered wooden constructions like the southern examples (v, fig. 292, p. 372), Newhaven (Sussex), Merstham (Surrey), or Doddinghurst (Essex). Working a stone weathering for the exposed angle of the square which his octagon had to cover, his skill, without break or parapet, raised his pyramidal shell of coursed stone higher and higher (see the spire of Elton, p. 251) with the audacity of experiment ; 1 A stranger's sense of a peculiarity is borough in South Yorkshire, Bourn in Cam- often more vivid than an intimate's, and bridgeshire, Kingston Seymour in Glouces- Gonse, in his " L'Art Gothique," notices our tershire, and even right in the west, as to English "tours carrees d'une insupportable St. Cuthbert's, Cornwall, and to Kidwelly, roideur." Carmarthenshire, whose elegant spire is * Stamford may be taken as the centre, and the Kreizker of South Wales. Also the the spire of St. Mary's there as the typical charming little broach spirelets of Rivaulx, example. But its method spread widely, Yorkshire, and of B. Gower's Palace, St, as to Horsley in Derbyshire, Heming- David's should be mentioned, THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 371 giving it a shapely entasis,1 and a wonderful lightness, its steep sides broken only by ranges of gabled tower lights. This was the mason craft of the Barnack oolites, stones of great scantling and perfect weathering, so that to this day their spires remain,2 of thickness often barely six inches. Under the spur of Gothic feeling, from such early examples as Raurids (Northants), Frampton (Lincolnshire), and Water Newton (Hunts), of the thirteenth century, there was a gradual advance in slenderness and height, till in the fourteenth, Ketton (vi, fig. 292) and Newark (xi, fig. 293) have their spires as lofty as the towers; and at Hemingborough, still more acute, the spire has double the tower-height. But by the middle of the thirteenth century, other local styles had developed by the side of that of the Northamptonshire broach, making invasions on its simplicity and introducing first the pinnacle and then the parapet. This last had sprung up in the habit of the military tower, whose wooden roofings were the constant exercise of the " ingeniator," 3 so that his carpenter's skill could be called in for church and cathedral, for the erection of lofty wooden lead-covered spires, first the models and then the copies of the stone. Such steeples were specially congenial to English carpentry, and no tower, up to the fifteenth century, was complete till its roofing had achieved this aspiring distinction. Storms and fire were perpetually destroying 4 them, but in mediaeval times their renewal came quickly ; Durham, Lincoln and Ely were each crowned with lofty spires, central 5 and western, as the old prints show ; and then the Great St. Paul's, of London, had in the fourteenth century the loftiest spire in Europe, conjectured to have been over 500 ft. in height. All these greater examples have now gone, and of the hundreds of smaller lead-covered spires there are but few left, and their designings it is difficult to date. Of those that remain, that at Long Sutton, near Spalding, is considered of the early thirteenth century ; but at Danbury, Essex; Godalming, Surrey; Almondsbury, Gloucestershire; Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire; and Bideford, Devon, maybe cited striking examples (see vn, fig. 292), which, being wood and lead reproductions of the Northamptonshire " broach," may be conjectured as originally due to its influence.6 But braced and tied from inside, instead of buttressed from without, 1 Nothing shows the futility of our re- base, without the slightest disturbance of its vival Gothic more clearly than the attempts cohesion and stability. of our architects to copy the "broach "spire. 3 Or military engineer, seep. 139. There are hundreds of these efforts, all either 4 See note on p. 269, as to Norwich spire. clumsy or spiky — not one has reached the 5 So, too, Hereford in the seventeenth untaught grace of the mediaeval mason. century. 2 A few years ago one was bodily lifted, ° At East Harling, Norfolk, is an elaborate and then let down again upon its rebuilt crown, with lead pinnacles and ornaments. 372 GOTHIC ART such a construction was on a different footing from the stone spire. It more naturally followed the wood roof, of which it was but an accentuated form ; and for the convenience of its erection as well as of its repair, it asked for a platform and a parapet, in the tower that carried it So as the southern fringe to the great midland spires, outside the district of their big " weather-stone," was the region of massive rubble towers with parapets, from inside which rise wooden and leaded spires.1 In the East, as in south Cambridgeshire and Essex, they are low and generally much inside the tower ; but westwards, in Berks, Wilts and Gloucestershire, lofty and in outline a full match for the stone. To replace such with more lasting masonry 2 must often have been thought expedient after V 292. DIAGRAM OF SPIRES. V. Wood and Shingle, VI. Stone Broach, VII. Lead Broach, VIII. Parapetted Cowden, Kent. Ketton, Rutland. Braunton, Devon. Broach, King's Norton, Worcestershire. destruction by lightning; and the stone copied the original lead, without the entasis or broach of the Northamptonshire type,3 but with straight outlines, and based within the parapet. And this fashion reacted on the stone-broach, and, combined with the pinnacle, became the rule in the later lofty spires of the Midlands, such as were built at Stamford, Newark (xi, fig. 293), and Grantham, the last 290 ft. in height. Hereupon we perceive two manners that gradually superseded the broach — one, that of South Lincolnshire, and the other, that of Oxfordshire. This latter was in direct descent from the early spire of 1 An excellent fifteenth-century example is at Harrow ( Middlesex). The parapets were often rebuilt with battlements in the fifteenth century. Most are, however, now " restorations," put in place of plain parapets, such as remain but rarely. 3 So we get the Wiltshire spires, like Bishops Cannings, and those of Abingdon and Shottesbrook, Berks, and the fine spires of King's Norton (vm, fig. 292) and Bredon, in Worcestershire. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 373 St. Frideswide's, where, as at Witney (ix, fig. 293), which followed it shortly, a tall gable light between lofty pinnacles centres, each of the tower quarters at the spring of the spire, which above this dispenses with upper spire lights, but has its angles ribbed and moulded. Elaborating these elements, we have the fine series of Oxfordshire steeples — Shipley and Bampton with their carved and imaged pinna cles, East Adderbury, Bloxham, and King's Sutton (x, fig. 293), with their angle buttresses, traceried parapets and enriched gabled lights ; these three are with crocketed spires, and the last with a double pinnacled flying buttress. The peculiarity of the type lies in the angle contouring that takes the pinnacles close into the octagon sides, and often doubling ,fi&T 293. DIAGRAM OF SPIRES. IX. "Oxfordshire" X. " Oxfordshire " XI. " Lincolnshire " XII. "Lincolnshire" (early), Witney. (late), King's Sutton, (early), Newark. (late), Coventry. them, makes clustered compositions as the base of the main shaft. At St. Mary's, Oxford,1 was the greatest elaboration of the method, a beautiful variant of which may be seen in the little south-west spire of Peterborough (fig. 294). On this principle,2 though on a less energetic scale, as indeed was suited to its mass, was the modelling of the great Salisbury spire upon its lofty tower (see fig. 163, p. 21 1) — the work of the mason, Richard of Farleigh, who, as he was working also at Bath and Reading, may be expected to have been skilled in the craft of the soft oolites that made the building of the south midland district. The other manner, that of south Lincolnshire and the Marshland, kept the pinnacle in its independent emphasis at the angle of the tower, 1 Rebuilt in 1850, and again on a slightly its fall in 1861, altered its outline and takes different pattern in 1897 (see note, p. 423). away all claim to its being now considered as 2 The rebuilding of Chichester spire after a mediaeval example (see p. 223). 374 GOTHIC ART instead of bringing it within. From the west steeples of Lichfield, c. 1330, 200 ft. high (where the pinnacles are so full that they crowd close to the spire base), to the great central spire of Norwich, 315 ft. (iv, fig. 291), c. 1360, where the lofty pinnacles stand clear and distinct; from the crocketed gracefulness of Wakefield, to that most elegant of small spires on the west front of Peterborough (fig. 294), where a midway pinnacle is planted on each angle arch, we have a series of varied and notable erections of the fourteenth century that succeeded to the Northampton shire " broach," and enlarged its pre tensions. The parapet was added with the angle pinnacle — both with plain outlines, at Oakham, Rutland ; St. Mary's, Ely; and Helpringham, near Sleaford : but traceried and with crocketed finials at Newark and Grantham : and then battlemented at Walsoken and Leverington, near Wisbech, as later in the fine fifteenth- century example of Kettering. At Oakham, a level weathering has taken the place of the broach, and at Ely and Helpringham a flying buttress leans from the pinnacle to the spire face. Along with the pin nacles comes the elaboration of the crocketed angle, that makes so rich the elegant examples of Rushden and Higham Ferrers, Northants ; and Heckington, Lincolnshire. As at St. Michael's, Coventry (xn, fig. 293)i spire-elaboration went on for another hundred years ; and well 294. PETERBOROUGH. WEST TOWER. , _ ' ' into the sixteenth century was built at Wittlesea the loftiest in Cambridgshire ; and at Louth, 300 ft. high, was finished in 15 15 the loftiest spire of Lincolnshire. The THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 375 latest development of the flying-buttresses was that engineering feat which squeezed out the spire, and left it as a mere pinnacle or suspended lantern strutted by the four arches, as at St. Nicholas, Newcastle, and com monly in Scotland in the fifteenth century. But in England greater sig nificance is to be attached to the appearance, after 1350, of a crown or lantern storey forming the first stage of the spire, inclosed be tween the outstanding pinnacles. From Barnack to such spires as that of Exton, Rutland (fig. 295), may have come this idea of an octagonal upper storey that had an. influence in the steeples of Patrington and Norwich after the middle of the fourteenth century, and is the especial distinction of the design of St. Michael's, Coventry, that loftiest parish spire in England, which with its neigh bour of Trinity came in the last quarter of the century to assert itself beside the cathedral abbey, as it were in token of equality that now the parish had won beside the convent. But without its spire such a lantern had a still greater signifi cance, as in the steeple of Boston as lofty as that of Coventry ; for the unspired tower was in the fifteenth century, throughout the length and breadth of England, to be the peculiar badge of parish- church art. In its building 1 the 295- EXT0N' *utland. great trading town of the east coast may have aspired to rival the other 1 Though its foundations were laid in remarkable " stump " of the earlier century. 1306, the tower is of the fifteenth century. Unfortunately a vulgar substitution has At Irthlingborough, Northants, was another lately destroyed this example. 376 GOTHIC ART great church of the fenland, Ely Cathedral, to which Alan of Walsing- ham had, in 1340, just given its central lantern, and where, in 1380, a similar erection replaced the original western spire that crowned its Romanesque tower. For the cathedral and abbey equally with the parish church the fourteenth century was the age of steeple-building. Besides the comple tions of Chichester and Salisbury, the central towers of Lincoln (1307), Hereford (1320), and Wells (1320), (followed before the end of the century by the raising of its western towers) are remarkable evidences of the vigour of the fourteenth-century mason-craft. And so doubtless were their wooden steeples of its carpentry,1 — but these latter have passed away. York and Durham, too, have been left with spireless towers, so that the little Lichfield now alone remains to show the inten tions of the fourteenth-century builder. Lincoln, 271 ft. high, is the loftiest of these towers ; for the building of it Richard of Stowe (see p. 406) contracted, and it is thoroughly English in its detail, with the big intention and strong broad character of the northern mason-craft — a craft that Richard may have practised in the building of the great Lincolnshire abbey of Thornton. In the west, though the towers of Hereford and Wells are fine in their proportions, and both are richly treated — the first with an abund ance of ball-flower and broad traceried bands, the latter with many canopied divisions — their crafts have not this bold handling,2 but are comparatively lean, with a panelled extension of surface that lacks the dignity of the great double lights of Lincoln. The central tower of Pershore should be mentioned as a plainer, earlier essay of the Hereford scheme, and remarkable for its fine internal lantern (fig. 296) open to the crossing, which has much of the feeling of the Ely octagon. In this great development of its towers the art of church-building had set up with ever-increasing ambition the symbol of earthly lordship. Abbey and cathedral had emulated the keep of the feudal fortress, and with like intention in the fourteenth century they were now ambitious for its castellated " close " and frowning gateway. The great Bene dictine abbeys of the Conquest, set down, as they were, almost as strong holds among an alien population, had made themselves secure behind wall and gate-tower. So we have at Bury, Norwich, Canterbury, and Gloucester towered gateways of the twelfth century. But in the four teenth the monastery was no longer in fear of regular war ; it was ambitious not so much for defence against the temporary aggression of 1 The central steeple of Lincoln is stated dean in 1808. to have risen to the height of 523 ft., but " Bristol has, perhaps, the finest central the spire fell in 1 548 ; and those on the tower of South England — it was given its western towers were pulled down by the form c. 1500. THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 377 296. PERSHORE. LANTERN OF TOWER. C. 1330. bandits or popular tumult, as for the expression of its feudal dignity. In fact the monastic house and secular college had taken their place 3^ 378 GOTHIC ART among the established orders of nobility. So, following the examples of Bishop Langton of Lichfield, Dean Hamilton of York, and the Prior of Tynemouth, most of the great monastic houses got licences to crenelate in Edward the Second and Third's reign, and in connection with their fortifications erected ambitious gateways. Still it was on the side of domestic and not military display, that were built such elegant structures as the St. Agatha's and Kirkham (see fig. 258, p. 334) gate-houses in Yorkshire, or that of St. Ethelbert which the citizens of Norwich were made to build in compensation of their riot in 1273. Show, not defence, was the motive of erection, and a sumptuous lodging for guests was provided in fine chambers over the gate-entrances, as the Knight's Hall in the abbot's gateway at Peter borough. So instead of the lofty castle plan, and its flanking of round towers, its machicolations and drawbridge, the abbey gate-house was built as an oblong structure with depth to allow of a stately room over its archway, or with the entrance flanked by domestic chambers — as at St. Martin's, Dover. Such examples as those of St. Augustine's abbey at Canterbury of 1309, or that of Bury of 1327, with the ornamented vaultings of their passages, and then those of Thornton Abbey of 1 38 1, and the great Ely Porta of the close of the century, are in fact the richest and finest specimens of the domestic architecture of the fourteenth century which have come down to us. Much interest lies in their introduction of this domestic feeling into the domain of the " Edwardian Castle." The military buildings of the late thirteenth century, which are associated with this name, and rank after the cathedrals and abbeys, as the most distinguished buildings of their era, were in effect garrison barracks, built for the housing of an army of occupation more than for a lord's residence. They had dispensed with the great citadel keep of the Normans, and extended themselves as a ring of lofty curtain wall strengthened by circular and multangular towers. Purely military as are Conway, Carnarvon and Beaumaris, North Wales, or Pembroke, Caerphilly, and Chepstow, South Wales, they attest as much as the Chateau Gaillard of Richard Cceur de Lion the inherent shapeliness of mediaeval stone-building. The domestic occupation of such fortresses was secondary ; the fine halls and chapels, which form part of their inclosure, were not the centres of their planning, and only in their detail allowed the richness and refine ment of fourteenth-century design. However, such English castles as that of Warwick, Stokesay in Shropshire, or Corfe in Dorset, could show more luxury ; and Penshurst, Kent, and in the north, too, Yanworth, Westmoreland, and Markenfield, near Ripon, in their halls and solars show a considerable dispensation from the cramping precautions of military defence. But especially the Bishops' palaces could carry on THE BUILDING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 379 in the fourteenth century the style and consequence of domestic build ing, which in the thirteenth had lain almost entirely in the adjuncts of monastic and cathedral establishment. Unfortunately the Parlia mentarian wars have left us nothing whatever of the most sumptuous example, the palace 1 of Walter de Langton at Lichfield, so magni ficently built c. 1300. At Southwell are slight remains of the palace of the Archbishop of York, adjoining his collegiate church. Mayfield, the favourite residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury during the fourteenth century, shows still its beautiful hall, now restored and in use. But the best example now remaining is the Palace of St. David's, built by Bishop Gower in 1 328, where the ruins of great halls and chapels still make a quadrangle 1 50 ft. square, and have preserved a quantity of beautiful detail and ranges of arcaded battlements. Still neither in Edwardian Castle, nor in the Bishop's Hall, with its solar and chapel, came the real beginnings of that house, which little by little has progressed, till we build and Hve in it to-day ; the Hall and Manor of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries grew up rather in the development of the gate-house, which in the monastic building of the fourteenth century was built, as we have seen, with ranges of chambers on either hand at Ely and Battle. The security of the Abbey was, how ever, in many parts now shared by the smaller castle or mansion, the home of knight or bishop. So at Mettingham, Suffolk, and Maxstoke, Warwickshire, built c. 1343, the gate-house has become, as at Thornton Abbey, largely domestic. At Mackworth, Derbyshire, c. 1350 — the archway entrance is diminished almost to a doorway, and there are ranges of fine rooms above it. At Saltwood, Kent, built by Arch bishop Courtney in 1 390, the gate-house is a complete dwelling, and the large apartment over the entrance has many chambers opening from it, with staircases to the upper rooms. And then at Middleton, near Lynn, hardly later, the gate-house has become the whole dwelling, its doorway leading only to a court behind — so far has it gone in the direction of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hall. The record of the distinctive art of the fourteenth century, as the last stage of that Gothic summit of style which rose like a wave on the flood of its expansion, comes fitly to an end in these latter developments — the parish steeple and the chambered gate-house of the manor. In reaching them we have the sense of leaving Gothic behind, and are in sight of a new era. For refectory, dormitory, and cloister made the domestic side of the great Gothic and they were the state-apartments of a communal life. But now the room, that is, the chamber of private life, comes before us in the gate-house : the aggregations of such rooms were 1 We have lost, too, the Royal Palaces, except the halls of Westminster and Winchester. 3So GOTHIC ART to make the plans of Tudor art. And just as clearly also, the genuine church of Gothic art had been that of monastic inspiration and of monastic dictation. But now in the growth and consequence of the parish steeple was evidence to show that the reign of this art was threatened. 297. BRISTOL. VAULTING OF QUIRE. C. 1320. CHAPTER IX The Decoration and Sculpture of the Fourteenth Century In its use of the canopied niche was summed up the decorative temper of the fourteenth century ; as had been that of the thirteenth century in the shafted arcade, and that of the fifteenth was to be in the cusped panel. The first Gothic artist had worked his enrichments in the vertebrate ex pression of the wall, but, with the Decorated, his ornament was not to be articulated but applied to the structure — an insertion into the construct ive scheme, with neither the vital energy of the Early English sculpture, nor the broad reasonable accomplishment of the Perpendicular panelling. Still, there was its own quality in fourteenth-century style, — a compen sation in the power of decorative contrasts — for the insertive ornament sparkled like a jewel on the broad texture of its simplicities. A sunny sense of space lay in the glitter of it, backed by the masses of broad walling, which in the best works were used with a dexterous freedom. At first the full round contourings of the constructive fibre were flecked with piquancies of enrichment, with spots of flower and crocket. Then as these multiplied and became bossy themselves, as foils to them, lines of shallow hollowings were spread in delicate breadth upon the fabric background. This expression of line coarsened and left its meaning by the end of the century, as the Perpendicular instinct suc ceeded to the Decorated. But in all the phases of his varied art, the building-artist of the fourteenth century never quite lost hold of this his especial quality. Yet while on the big scale of architectural achievement there re mained such a legacy from the mid- Gothic wealth of style, on the side of decorative taste there was an evident impairment of ideal. The reserve, by which the fourteenth-century artist created the value of his decorative passages, was too seldom brought into those pieces themselves. The sculpturesque restraint, which inform with almost a Greek serenity alike the arcades of Wells chapter house, the effigy of Queen Eleanor, and the leafage of St. Frideswide's shrine, yield after 1300 to the finesse of a merely decorative exhibition. Divorced from its structural con nection, the ornament would acknowledge no limit to its revelry ; so the triforium of Ely quire and the screen of Lincoln are to be seen as 298. CHERTSEY. TILES OF. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 383 loaded with unconstructive richnesses as the Iffley doorway, or that of Rochester chapter house. For when, in place of the shapeliness of substance, the piquancy of decoration has attracted attention, the multiplication and exaggeration of its elements follows. Line is of more account than form ; bossiness is forced into the place of roundness ; angularity and prickliness are sought after to the exclusion of the natural curves of construction. By this shift of decorative interest the niche appears as the especial sample of the Decorated method and the plaything of its effort. It was a clear break with the past, when the decora tive setting of the statue grew of separate account outside the statue itself. In the preceding century the image and its in closing arcade were one by the harmony of a like sculpturesque intention, which took its point from the life of the figure. But now the predominant partner came in the trappings of pedestal and canopy with their flanking pinnacles ; which, re gardless of the image, aspired to stand alone — an empty framework, sufficient as a decoration, as the set-off of a merely structural filling, or, as ornament, in itself an excuse for its multiplication.1 So the niche declares itself as the " obsession " of the fourteenth-century 2 decorator — its pinnacles and striding canopy are pressed into every service, for sedilia and wall arcade, as for tomb-recess and free-standing monument. Wood con struction, equally with stone, is ruled by its motives, and its representations are engraved on floor-tile (fig. 298), on me morial-slab (fig. 299), on brass (see fig. 300), or painted on the glass for the imagery of the window (fig. 301). Carved in flat extension, they were taken to decorate a marble font, as at Hitchin ; or were ranged on a tomb-chest, as on Queen Eleanor's monument, there framing its heraldry, or here an array of weepers as on John of Eltham's ; again, to 299. CROWLAND. MEMORIAL SLAB OF MASON. 1 Vet current text-books of Gothic art not unfrequently point to this decorative niche work as proof of the superior sculp tural excellence of the fourteenth century ! 2 The last ten years of the thirteenth century, as already explained, must be grouped with the first fifty of the fourteenth century in decorative feeling. 384 GOTHIC ART be made the setting of a series of paintings on the Exeter screen. Open work niches, with, slender columns, are grouped back to back to form pinnacles, as at Boston ; or spires, as in the Eleanor crosses, or in the oaken throne-cover at Exeter. Set up side by side, and tier above tier, they make stone tabernacles like on Edward II.'s tomb at Gloucester, or the spiky oaken canopies of the Winchester stalls. On a larger scale, their canopies frame the arch lines of the great stone screens of Southwell and Lincoln ; -and equally the wall sedilia of Ely, or the traceries of the wood screens of St. Mary's Hospital, Chichester, and St. Margaret's, Lynn. Even in the window- head, nichegable lines appear spanning the lights at St. Albans, and Merton, Oxford ; and then they dominate the win dow itself, as at Wells, Tewkesbury, and Howden ; and are found, too, striding a gateway at Kirkham, or outlining a porchway, as at St. Mary's, Beverley. In this last use was a curious re turn — with some accretion of fanciful design — to the model of the original motive, for in its inception the image- l^iHililP^i niche had been the mimic diminution of i *>k»ilsw f 1 jm&Mm&B. a p0rch — such a one as that of West Walton, or the south doorway of the Lincoln presbytery (see fig. 219, p. 283). The reliquary, with its petty representa tion of architecture, was at hand to prompt this derivation : but they were the devices of the painter, especially his MS. illuminations that gave the sugges tion most clearly. To him the signifi cance of the figure in his illustration of history and legend was the important matter : any architecture for his purpose was treated with a diminishing perspective. To connect a building with its founder, or the incident of which it was the scene, the scale of a church was brought down to the standard of representation as a porch, in which the figures are seen through an opening and framed by the diminutive rendering of pavement, flanking pinnacle, arch, and gable. Translated into stone this diminutive painted architecture became 300. SALISBURY. BRASS OF BISHOP. 1365. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 385 the orthodox niche, whose features were thereupon copied back into glass and wall-painting, while, as has been pointed out, they remained in architectural currency as an established decoration. The suggestion of a stringcourse outlining, as if with a gable- end, the arched niche of an opening, has been noticed as part of the scheme of thirteenth-century wall-enrichment. It is found e.g. in the canopies of the figures on the west front of Wells (see fig. 165, p. 214), 301. UPPER HARDRES, KENT. GLASS IN EAST WINDOW. as well as for the arcadings, and then in the doorway of the chapter house crypt of 1270. Similar is its use at Salisbury (see figs. 216, 224, pp. 278, 289) irt the west front, and for the reredos niches of 1260 ; and at Lincoln in the buttress niches of 1270, and lining the south porch of the presbytery, and there with crockets to the gables, as, too, at Lichfield in the wall arcades of the nave. Such were, too, the restrained thir teenth-century uses of the canopy-line, in the doorway of Hereford chapter-house, the interior of St. Ethelreda's Chapel, Holborn, and the west front of St. Mary's, York ; as still to be seen in the Wells 3d 386 GOTHIC ART chapter-house itself — associated with that moment of most refined leaf- sculpture, that, as has been noted, had so brief a passage that the Purbeck bier on which Eleanor's image lies at Westminster may show 302. YORK CHAPTER-HOUSE. SEDILIA ARCADES, C. 1300. it, but in her Northamptonshire crosses it has been left behind. But if after 1290 in the arcadings (fig. 302) of the York chapter-house there is still this sense of thirteenth-century style, the aisles of York nave have certainly acquired that of the fourteenth century. Its canopied DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 387 arcadings have all the florid mannerisms of flanking pinnacle, blobby crocket, and full-flowered finial, which were to be the conventional stereo type for another two hundred years of Gothic. And with this constant sameness of motive, the varied elaborations of the niche are what create the body of fourteenth-century decora tion. They may be systematized roughly under four different headings : first, in their development of the striding canopy as a great gable of fully-carved surface-relief: secondly, in their enrichments of the cusp- motive of the niche-arch, which became often elaborated as a screen of tracery bounded by the gable lines : thirdly, in their " ogee " or reversed renderings of tracery arches and gable lines : finally, in their multiplications — the crowding of them into schemes such as make pinnacles with cappings of solid spirework, or lift openwork tabernacles tier upon tier. These varieties of enrichment were in effect contemporary, and of a piece with the varied architectures which they accompanied. In the detail of their distinctions, there was perhaps no local signification, but all had a general vogue ; still, the manners of their use sufficiently separate some three or four districts, roughly those of the fourteenth- century building crafts, which have been distinguished in the last chapter by their methods of vaulting and window tracery. The strong rich detail of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire arts, and their bold constructive traceries, had their allies in the broad ogee manner of the niche-use with redundant ornament that stretched south as far as Ely. West ward, the style of "reticulated " traceries and panelled vaultings had its echo in the system of multiplied canopies, rising side by side and tier above tier in openwork tabernacles, spiky and lean in detail. And in the South-east, too, the flavour of the Kentish traceries lingers in the sculpturesque perfection and modelled flatness of lofty gabled canopies, whose bold proportions may be traced, in long ancestry, back to the gabled doorways of Cliffe and Rye. Such distinct types as these come readily to the front, and may be accepted as of local style. Yet, in the numberless fancies of the in dividual craftsmanship of the fourteenth century, overlappings of such styles and conveyances of ideas from one district to another were con stant, so that no type of canopy can be claimed to have kept strictly to its locale.1 Of course, direct importations of things of such easy 1 Thus Hereford as well as Exeter has Ottery St. Mary. The reversed canopy an example of the great flat-gabled tombs head of the west is used to frame the win- of Winchelsea and Westminster. The dows of the pretty little chapel on the south projected ogee arch-head, so characteristic side of St. Mary's, Hull, while the upper of Beverley, Southwell, and Ely, is seen part of the Bishop's throne at Durham is with some modification at Bristol in St. to be noted as a regular Gloucester taber- Mary's porch, Redcliffe, at Exeter, too, and nacle. 388 GOTHIC ART carriage as monuments or stall-work, were likely in the beginning of the fourteenth century, as we know they occurred at its end.1 And, moreover, some of these prominent distinctions were a matter of date. For though such marked examples of style (see figs. 303, 309) as, say, the Aymer de Valence monument at Westminster, the Stapledon sedilia at Exeter, and those of Prior Crauden's chapel at Ely might have been in erection together about the year 1325, yet the first of these was about the latest of its class, while the two latter were among the first to show the peculiar tendencies of their several crafts — which twenty-five years later were still producing similar pieces in the Despencer monuments at Tewkesbury, and the Percy tomb (or " shrine," as it is miscalled) at Beverley. In its less defined initiatory stage the broad flat canopy striding the niche-arch, which may be called the south-eastern form, found many forerunners in almost all parts of England, after the middle of the thirteenth century ; as mere gablets in Archbishop Gray's monument at York, but with some emphasis in Bishop Bridport's tomb at Salisbury (see fig. 224, p. 289), and at Hereford in Bishop Aquablanca's of 1271 (see fig. 223, p. 288), where they are sharply pointed between spiry pinnacles. These were free-standing erections, with double or triple gablets to their inclosures of screen-work guarding the effigy. But at Tewkesbury2 and Hereford3 there are, too, wall-tombs where niche- arches have broad gabled canopies spanning the effigies, giving the exact motives of niche-design that passed to the striking crocketed erections of Exeter and Canterbury. At Exeter is the tomb — which goes by the name of Leofric's — in the chapel of St. James on the south of the quire, to be dated before 1300.4 Though much defaced, it is a lofty and conspicuous example, with some fine remains in the gable head of a sculptured " majesty " and censing angels. At Canterbury is Archbishop Peckham's monument 1 In the accounts of the Waltham cross, assumption that Bishop Marshall (1194- 1292, the "Virg: Cap: Anul" are recorded 1206) built out a quire and Lady-chapel as supplied worked from Purbeck (Corfe). to the extent of the present building. A The reredos of Durham (c. 1380) was made record states that Bishop Branscombe, in London, and shipped by way of New- when he died in 1280, had lately built a castle. chapel close to the Lady-chapel on the 2 In the south aisle of quire, one of south side, and this has been assumed to which is called that of Abbot Alan. be the chapel of St. Gabriel by the south of 3 C. 1 280-1 300 in the Lady-chapel, and the present Lady-chapel, where, indeed, his then in the eastern chapels on either effigy is now placed. But the style of this side. chapel of St. James is of Bishop Brans- 4 The chapel would seem that of Bishop combe's date, while nothing east of it would Branscombe (1 257-1 280), and it is possible seem as early, and, moreover, its position that this tomb is his, though his effigy was would be that " south side of the Lady afterwards removed to its present place. The chapel," as that would be most likely to history of Exeter has been confused by the have been built by Bishop Marshall. 303. DIAGRAM OF EASTERN CANOPIES. 1. South-eastern. a. Winchelsea. Sedilia, c. 1300. b. Westminster. Aymer de Valence's tomb, c. 1325. 11. Midland. c. St. Albans. Shrine, c. 1320. d. Luton. Font-inclosure, c. 1330. m. Northern. e. Ely. Lady chapel, c. 1330. / Beverley. Percy tomb, c. 1350. 39Q GOTHIC ART of 1292, the niche-arch of which has double cuspings, with flowered points, the lofty gable being richly crocketed, its spandrel traceried, the rose-centre carved with a bold flat flower. At both these cathedrals there were wall-arcadings, suggesting the lines of these monuments ; at Exeter the sedilia of the Lady chapel1 may have preceded Leofric's monument, and at Canterbury in the east wall of the chapter house is the Priors' sedile2 contemporary with Peckham's tomb. However, the feeling of this south-eastern art, and its pro gress to fourteenth-century ex pression, can be best traced from Chichester to Winchelsea. In natural sequence from the wall- arcades and screens of the cathe dral, and the sedilia of St. Mary's Hospital, came those at Win chelsea, schemed with striding canopies (a, fig. 304), whose suggestion is taken up by the famous wall-tombs, which are some of the finest in England. On the north side are those ac counted the earliest, and their gable spandrels have a remark able diapering of bold sculp turesque leafage. On the south side the monument called that of Gervase Alard3 may be dated about 1320, while some twenty years later would come its west ern neighbour. Both have the same scheme of a great pedi ment, flanked by smaller and steeper gablets, while the cusp ings of the arch-heads and their traceried roses are of the " Kentish " type. At the same date as these Winchelsea tombs were building those that wall in the north side of the sanctuary at Westminster. The earliest is that of Countess Aveline,4 though it may have very little 304. CANTERBURY. D ESTRIA S QUIRE SCREEN. Showing the original painting. 1 Bishop Quivil's (1 280-1 291). 2 With glass mosaics on the spandrels of the throne. 3 The earlier of the two monuments has the much crisper and finer carving. 4 She died in 1273. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 391 preceded that of her husband, the Earl of Lancaster (Crouchback), who died in 1293. This last monument is not a wall-niche like those above, but stands free, with great gables facing both ways, and with that of Aymer de Valence (b, fig. 303), which followed in similar style in 1324, may be cited as the boldest and most graceful of all the niche expressions of the fourteenth century.1 The flat relief and sculptural elegance of the carvings may be contrasted alike with the florid bossiness of northern style and the decorative touch of western. This south-eastern manner has been already associated with sculpturesque feeling in its mouldings and traceries, and indeed, except in the bold prominence of the above great monuments, the canopy-head does not reign so conspicuously in this south-eastern art as elsewhere. Most of its decoration is schemed with the tracery-motive, with only here and there a canopy line, as in St. Augustine's gate at Canterbury ; or entirely without it, as in D'Estria's screen (fig. 304) in the cathedral quire, or in that most beautiful of monuments, the black marble chantry of Archbishop Meopham, 1 333/ at the entrance of St. Aurelius's chapel, which, though much defaced and broken, retains still some ex quisite sculpture.3 And attuned in style to the lordly graces of the cathedral were, as has been noted, not a few village churches in south-east England, whose sedilia and piscina had the same fine traceries and head- carvings. Westwell and Wandsborough, in Kent, may be cited,4 and their method is found as far as Hitcham in Buckinghamshire. Apart from the " Kentish " character of the cusping, the adoption of traceried enrichment in panels, as distinct from niche-canopies may be taken as generally marking the parish-church use that came for simpler needs in the furnishing of the chancel. This is especially so in southern mid-England ; where the traceried sedilia (fig. 305) often give a note of style to what would otherwise seem quite plain work, dependent for its effect only on the structural features and the perfect spacings of their proportion. Berkshire and Oxfordshire give many examples like the sedilia of Chesterton, or the piscina at Fyfield. In the latter the niche motive of the fourteenth century comes in as a gable outline, framing the tracery ; and so it is in the quire of Dor chester. Generally as a borderland across the middle of England, between the marked styles of the solid canopy-gable, we can trace 1 On the same plan, but much coarser in Sudbury, have lost the character of this style (or at least now so restored as to have style. lost its delicacy), is the tomb of Bishop de 3 Note the evangelists, and the censing Luda at Ely. angels. 2 The later monuments of Canterbury, i Isfield and Buxstead may be referred those of Archbishops Stratford and to in Sussex as having similar sedilia. 392 GOTHIC ART the region of the traceried niche-gable — often showing mixture with other canopy influences,1 as in the ogee heads of the fine example of Great Haseley, Oxfordshire;2 or with figure sculpture, as in the St. Albans shrine 3 (c, fig. 303) ; but not seldom keeping itself quite distinct, as in the typical mid- England examples i of the Prior's tomb in the Lady chapel of St. Frideswide's, Oxford, and the 305. BREDON. SEDILIA. baptistery or font-inclosure at Luton (d, fig. 303). This latter readily suggests it self as a stone rendering of a wood construction — a tour deforce of the neighbouring Dunstable quarry- craft.5 So this region of the tra ceried gable may be accepted as deriving its features from the craft of mid-England carpentries, which developed on the borders of the great quarry districts. Here, on a line stretching from Lincoln to Sussex, are most of the thirteenth- and 306. CHICHESTER. ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL. OAK SCREEN TO CHAPEL. 1 Of such traceried sedilia, are good ex amples at Grafton Underwood, Northamp tonshire, and Tidewell, Derbyshire. a So, also, Masey Hamden on the Wilt shire border. 3 The canopied fabric of the Eleanor Crosses, 1295, like the St. Albans shrine, 1320, where the tracery spandrels are occu pied with figure subject, shows alliance with the sculpturesque style of Westminster. * Fine sedilia of this class are at Sandi- acre and Whitwell, Derbyshire. 5 In the chapel at Willingham in Cam bridgeshire may be seen the same hardihood in translation of wooden roof-construction into stone. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 393 fourteenth-century oak screens that have come down to us, showing how for a long period the carpenter's craft, where timber was in plenty but freestone often difficult to get, exercised itself in copying the stone constructions of the oolite country. In the twelfth century, as Compton in Surrey shows, and early in the thirteenth, as at Kirkstead, near Lincoln, and Old Shoreham, Sussex, the wood is to be seen in close mimicry of the arching of stone. But towards 1300, just when stone construction itself was losing sight of the masonic ideals of its origin, and tracery was developing as mere pat terning, it was found how easily and appropriately the oak board could be adapted for such orna mental designing, as in the solid oak screenworks of Guilden- Morden, Waltham Abbey, and Ottery St. Mary. The straight lines of the canopy gable came directly into such carpenter's construction, as suitably fram ing the pierced panels of tracery which were the heads of the screen-bays. So was schemed at St. Mary's Hospital, Chi chester (fig. 306), an accom plished piece of pure carpentry (c. 1280), which adopting the Decorated feeling of the stone work of the period, yet has its own technique. Of this craft the elaborate and finished ex ample that has come down to us is in the range of stalls at Winchester, whose lofty traceries, spire-like gables, and flat panelled carvings, echo the stone graces of Winchelsea, but have the sense of wood-craft in every treatment. So, too, at St. Margaret's, Lynn (fig. 307),1 where the screens show a carpenter's trans lation of all the decorative features of the stone niche-arcade, and the canopy gables are panelled with pierced traceries ; a method of decoration which we can see translated back into stone again behind the altar screen at Selby. 307. lynn. st. Margaret's, chancel- screen of oak. So a little later at Wallington, near Lynn, where there is a fine screen with network tracery. 3E 394 GOTHIC ART It is to be seen, however, that in works of the south-eastern style, the " ogee " fancy of enrichment occurs only as the incident of the cusping, and not in the main lines of the niche-head, its arches or its canopies (i. fig. 303). This distinction disappears immediately we pass northwards into the dioceses of Ely and Lincoln. A curious illustra tion is given as early as the Eleanor Crosses of 1292,1 which, alike as they are in general design at Waltham and Northampton, have in the latter the niches 2 showing ogee heads, that are absent at Waltham.3 But as was natural in the district of the spires, in the Eleanor crosses the niche-head developed as a crocketed spire-like finial : and the sedilia at Dorchester (Oxfordshire), are fine examples of forms which were current in the "broaches" of Oxfordshire (fig. 293, p. 373). Later, this spired niche became the regular form in use with the image ; and had constant place in design, not only for such doorway statues as those of the west front of Lichfield, but in the quire bay-scheme, as at Selby (see fig. 282, p. 358) and St. Mary's, Beverley.4 And, of course, upon altar-reredos and rood-screen were to be found the natural homes of the image-niche, as in Beverley Minster and St. Albans ; and, extern ally too, on the fronts of York, Howden, and Hull, as on the Oxfordshire spires, such niches come into direct alliance with the pinnacle, as the conventional material of ornamental construction. It was the ranging of such ornaments that soon brought them in sight of the horizontal divisionings that belonged to the change of style. But in the fourteenth century the peculiar genius of architecture lay in the suppression of horizontal line ; in hiding its natural significance by interruptions of broken curve and striding gable. And the northern artist, in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire especially, distinguished himself by the fine bold curves of his canopy heads, with the " ogee " arch nodding forward, compassed by a straight-lined crocketed gable (11. fig. 303). From Lancaster to Ely this method reigned ; the starting point of its style may be traced in the spiky gables of the Lincoln " Easter Sepulchre" before 1290, and in the crowding, too, of the steep canopy heads into triplets, which make the niche arcades of the York chapter house (a, fig. 302, p. 386), c. 1300. Southwell screen, c. 1330, 1 After 1350, however, the ogee arch and Crundale worked this. The latter did the label came generally into use in the south- great cross at Charing, as well as the marble east as elsewhere, as in Prior Chillenden's of Eleanor's tomb in the Abbey. cloisters at Canterbury, or the doors of * So, too, it has been restored at Lich- the Westminster cloisters ; and markedly in field by Sir G. G. Scott,— it is said on some St. Stephen's Chapel and cloister. sufficient evidence. The manner of the 2 This was John de Bello's work, who south, with its flatter niche is that at Ottery also did the crosses at St. Albans, Dun- St. Mary, shown in fig. 288, p. 363. Striking stable, and Stony Stratford, which have uses of the detached image-niche are on the been destroyed. altar screen of Tideswell, Derbyshire, and 3 Nicholas Dymenze and Richard de in the south transept of Tisbury, Wiltshire. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 395 combined these ideas, which are seen at Ely, in the chapel of Crauden's Lodge, and the contemporary statue-niches in Walsingham's octagon. The richest and most extended work of this class, very ornamented and covered with delicate figure sculpture, is to be found in the niched arcadings of the Ely Lady-chapel {e, fig. 303, p. 391). The construc tional value of the motive is here so well expressed that the richness is kept wholesome, but in the tomb at Beverley (where, like in the Valence monument at Westminster, the gables spanning the effigy are faced both ways), the boldness of the masonry is too much compromised by prodigality of ornament. If the boldest example of this florid style, the Percy " shrine " is the least satisfying. Indeed the fourteenth-century genius of the north was exhibited not only in the exuberance of curvature, but in the crowded fullness of the ornament ; the bossy crockets troop closely after one another up the canopy-gables — projecting figure-brackets and massive finials break every outline ; every background is embossed with luxuriant diapers ; every surface is fretted with leaf and figure carving ; every cusp has its head, every point its statuette. What a decorative carnival1 has thus succeeded to the sculpturesque restraint of the earlier art may be well seen by passing from the " Easter sepulchre " of Lincoln to the quire screen of some forty years later. However, the effect of this northern richness is never trivial or intricate, but rather bossy and solid — its first sculpture allying itself with the flat restrained enrichments of the south-eastern art : its later inclinations were those fulsome expressions which at least needed the colour, that has now been lost, to make them cleanly. Perhaps the best qualities of the Lincolnshire art can be read less in cathedral-screen or minster-tomb, than in the many fine parish chancels, which have been indicated as representing its local style. In the sedilia and piscina, the tomb-niches, and " Easter sepulchres," richly carved throughout this district of fine Ancaster stone, are to be found noble scions from the thirteenth-century craft of the Lincoln sculptor. At Sibthorpe and Hawton in Nottinghamshire, as well as at Navenby and Heckington in Lincolnshire, are noted examples. Lining either wall of the chancel the varied ogee archings cusped and carved, and the steep gables that surmount them, are the constructive elements, and these are lightened by the power of a fine decorative figure-carving which falls into place with the architecture. Many scarcely less striking instances might be cited of the solid manner and florid romanticism of this art, in various methods of use, in its district north and east of Watling street ; as in the wood canopies of 1 But at Beverley the parclose screen, is an earlier, and much more refined ex- whose niches have been already mentioned, ample of northern style. 396 GOTHIC ART the Lancaster stalls (fig. 308), in the wall arcades of the quire and Lady chapel of Lichfield, or externally in the porches of Gaddesby, Leicester shire, and Leverington, near Wisbech ; or again on the larger scale of such fronts as those of Howden. Generally the whole east side of England, with a stretch reaching far across the midlands, may be taken as the domain of the strong forms (see fig. 303, p. 389) of niche-head, with the straight-lined gable canopy that was flatly and delicately surfaced in the South, traceried in a middle border-land, and heavily and bossily contoured in the North. Outside, all round this to the south and westward, were the regions of the weak or ogee canopies 1 (fig. 309). The south eastern and midland style had ad mitted the ogee into the traceries ; the northern and eastern had used it for the niche-head ; but the western and southern in the most typical form, omitting the ogee from both cusping and arch, took its outline for the canopy. The suggestion is in beau tiful use in Bishop Gower's tomb (a, fig. 309) in his screen at St. David's, and in the earlier of the Douglas monuments in the Isle of Man. Very soon, however, the outer curve of the canopy line licked up, as it were, the arch line, and we have the character istic ogee-niche richly crocketed and moulded, and flanked by pinnacles. This form is shown (b, fig. 309) in the beautiful double-niched tomb-cover at Stanton Harcourt, which was used as the " Easter sepulchre." The lower storey of St. Werburgh's shrine at Chester is a similarly designed double-niched composition, above which are the gabled traceries of mid-England, flanked, however, by solid buttressed pinnacles, and, as at Stanton Harcourt and St. Albans (c, fig. 303, p. 389), finished to a 308. LANCASTER. STALLS. 1 After 1330 the ogee canopy became common in the east: but, as early as 1300, was the doorway to the Norwich cloister where the radiating niche-heads set in the arch are alternately straight lined and ogee. 309. DIAGRAM OF WESTERN CANOPIES. 1. Ogee Niches. ii. Ogee Canopies. hi. Tabernacle Canopies. a. St. David's. Bishop Gower's tomb. b. Stanton Harcourt. Tomb in chancel. c. Ottery St. Mary. Sedilia. d. Wells. Bishop Marcia's tomb. e. Exeter. Sedilia. / Tewkesbury. Despencer's tomb. 398 GOTHIC ART horizontal line. These examples with their full carvings come in well as a half-way between the Lincolnshire decoration and the light spiry ogee tabernacles of the south-west. Such, too, is the remarkable tomb of Sir John Harrington at Cartmel — planned likewise in two panels of rich traceries, ogee-headed, but brought to a level top, above which is a rich cresting of figure sculpture. The ogee arching had, of course, spread eastwards for win dows and door-heads. In North amptonshire are examples of the first, and at Beverley are rich ogee arcadings in the minster, and an ogee door-arch at St. Mary's. So at Stamford, in St. Mary's is a fine tomb in the chancel chapel with an elaborate ogee canopy, and the form occurs in the Ely arcadings, and at Peterborough in the inner arcadings, put c. 1320 to the apse windows. These have all the rich manner of the four teenth-century Lincolnshire art, and it is so, too, with Bishop Hatfield's tomb at Durham. He was translated there in 1345, and though he did not die till 1381 this monument would seem to have been immediately proceeded 3iiM.ji- — ' ^^^^^^ffljlili-]] w'tn> to f°rm tne Liase °f n's [ ! '"" throne in the quire. Still retaining some traces of its gilding and colour, this is a beautiful instance of mediaeval decorative work, with diapers of extreme delicacy and a crisper touch in the crocket carv ing than was usual in the Yorkshire mason. The upper parts — the bishop's chair and its tabernacle — are equally fine, but they have the later style, which would seem founded on the western Perpendicular of Gloucester and Tewkesbury. The tomb-arch of Bishop Hatfield is with flat segmental curve. However, the characteristic form of the tomb-niche, outside the in fluence of the eastern styles, is the great ogee arch, cusped or enriched, and flanked by bold pinnacles — its ogee hood set with bold separated 310. ST. DAVID'S. BISHOP'S PALACE. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 399 crockets, and rising to a massive finiai. Examples may be cited all round the South and West of England, and stretching indeed from Brittany to Scotland. The general design is flavoured with local manners ; as at Chichester in the south aisle of quire, where the cusping of the arch has the Kentish ogee ; or at Ottery St. Mary, where in the free-standing monuments of the nave the plain shafted pinnacles sug gest the Dorset style of the sedilia at Wimborne and Milton Abbey. Exeter and Tewkesbury, as well as St. David's and the Douglas Chapel in the Isle of Man, afford examples which can be matched equally in Scotland and Brittany, where the door and niche-heads, as at St. Pol de Leon and Tr6guier, are constantly of this form. In examples like these, the connection of the niche-head is with the door-arch, which in the second quarter of the fourteenth century is to be seen taking ogee and fanciful shapes, as is figured from St. David's (fig. 310). In the chapel porch of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, the door-head is trefoil,1 with each foil reversely curved, and so out lined with moulding that on the outer edge the hood-mould is straight- lined.2 Thus the motive can be recognized as that of the contemporary (c. 1320) tomb-niches of Abbot Knowle's quire (see fig. 272, p. 349) ; and the sedilia (fig 311) show how the form has arisen in the inter lacing of ogee canopy lines, in alliance with the motive of the network window traceries.3 But such degenerations of the canopy into mere ornamental appendage, contrast strongly with the bold constructive erections of the east side of England. It is this weak or recurved use of the canopy line which, in its multiplied employment, creates the character of the fourth type in the niche decorations of the fourteenth century — that which made up lofty tabernacles of astonishing lightness with range upon range of such niches. The niche-heads of Wells front gave an early hint of this "ogee" outline4; — where, as, too, in the later screenwork at the back of the Winchester reredos, the canopy gablets, though straight-lined, spring inside the " trifoliation " of the niche-arches, and thus delicately suggest a reversal of curve; and a bold, striking use of this idea is figured from the sedilia of Ottery St. Mary6 (c, fig. 309). But at Wells the arcadings of sharply pointed canopies, behind which lies the effigy of Bishop William de Marcia (1302) in the south transept (d, fig. 309), 1 See also in the east of England, the tiquities," vol. iii. curious straight-arched door-heads of St. 3 See, too, in the Sacristy by the side of Nicholas, Lynn (built c. 1370), where there the Berkeley Tombs. seems much borrowed from the Bristol ' So in the niche head of the recumbent source. Eleanor at Westminster. 2 Now "restored," but an excellent print 5 Also in the reredos, but a great deal of of its original appearance in 1850 is the restoration has taken place here at the. frontispiece of Britton's " Architectural An- hands of Mr. Butterfield. 400 GOTHIC ART show a distinct if slight recurve in their gablets; and then in the Lady-chapel the tomb (unassigned) which stands free, has its enclosure crested with spiky ogee gablets, whose curve, at first only delicately 311. BRISTOL. SEDILIA OF BISHOP KNOWLE'S QUIRE. reversed, is seen more pronounced in the niche-heads of Dean Husee's1 tomb-chest. 1 He died 1304. There has been a "chapels" was made as part of Husee's shifting of monuments at Wells, and it is a monument, which is now in the Transept guess that the canopied enclosure in the Chapel. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 401 At Exeter, in Bishop Stapledon's (1308-13.25) sedilia and throne, the grouping of such ogee niches made its most characteristic develop ment — forming veritable spires of extraordinary lightness. The sedilia (e, fig. 309) in their lower storey would seem a translation into stone of the oak arcadings of the Winchester stalls ; while above is an array of niches, whose ogee archings and openwork pinnacles have taken all the conventional forms, that afterwards did so much service in the lacework creations of this art. Indeed the oak-work of the throne is really the heavier construction of the two,1 and above its solid posts and broad ogee canopies rise tiers of open niches making an actual fleche finished with a traceried and richly crocketed spire. Edward the Second's shrine at Gloucester of c. 1335 is another remarkable composition of this class, planned in three bays that rise in aspiring tabernacles, compounded of such " ogee " canopied niches. The De- spencer tomb (f fig. 309) at Tewkesbury may be dated about 1350, and is of like design, but has its central tabernacle lifted again in another storey of astonishing lightness, while some thirty years later was the tomb of Sir Guy Bryan on an identical model. The vertical assertion of this tabernacle- work was its fourteenth- century characterization ; the Decorated, most of all the Gothic styles, aimed at ignoring and banishing from its compositions the level line of structure; yet before 1350 there was an inevitable return to it. At Exeter the niche forms (which had grouped themselves as spires in Bishop Stapledon's sedilia and throne) in his quire screen are ranged in a markedly horizontal scheme. The date of this, in the form we see it, seems doubtfully so early;2 but after 1350 the tomb-niche3 and the free standing monument alike developed the level cornice in place of the lofty gables and spiky canopies of the earlier fourteenth century. The flat tester crowns Edward the Third's effigy at Westminster, and the Black Prince's at Canterbury : and now the altar tomb has its inclosure forming a chapel, or chantry, like those of Bishop Edingdon and Bishop Wykeham at Winchester. But to the West of England must be referred the origin of the motive. In the Despencer monuments at Tewkesbury (see p. 434) — from the earlier of 1350 to the later of 1375 — can be traced the evolution, not only of fan-vaulting, but of a new 1 We have the same phenomenon at put in the north quire-aisle at Llandaff, which Ottery St. Mary, where the wood screens are has the same flat painted panels under ogee stouter than the stone sedilia. heads. 2 The fabric rolls, as interpreted by 3 At Edington church is a fine monument Canon Freeman, seem indisputably to that sums up the later conceptions — the connect this screen with 1324. But its square outline is distinct — a flat brass has style is much more what would have been taken the place of the effigy, and the tomb- expected under Bishop Brantinghamini 371. base is not niched for figures, but panelled Very similar to it in idea is the reredos now in quatrefoils. 3V 402 GOTHIC ART fashion of design, that of the Gloucester mason, who with his panel- work screening ruled the fourteenth-century gable canopy away. The Decorated niche-motive, just as the Decorated tracery-motive suc cumbed to horizontality ; in window and wall alike the same language had to be spoken. In quire screens such as those of St. Albans and Howden of 1360, and in the beautiful Christ Church reredos (fig. 312), where the expression of verticality is still nominally supreme, it can be seen how niche-arrangement must tend to the wide level lines of horizontal staging, which make the expression of the Exeter west front. The decoration of the screen, as decisively as that. of window, was squared into panels : straightforward, reasonable dispositions were to take the place of the varied piquancies of " Decorated " fancy. In the pinnacle, however, as in the spire, the vertical motive had a most enduring value, for here it could evade the conditions of statue ranging. Particularly in the North, in the wooden tabernacles of the Choir-stalls — such as those of Lincoln of c. 1360, and of Chester, which followed shortly after — we can recognize the glorification of the pinnacle, and the multiplication of its motives into a forest of finials. The earlier and distinctly different expression was that of the stall canopies in the South ; after Winchester they are found, as at Chichester, backed against a level line. At Canterbury D'Estria's painted screen (see fig. 304, p. 389) made the stall-backs ; and these were similarly quite plainly treated at Exeter,1 while at Gloucester, Bristol, as it has been at Wells,2 the oak stall-range is to be seen as a succession of traceried panels levelled to a cornice. Outside, the pinnacle sustained its ground as the unfailing em phasis of exterior effort. Its niched and crocketed enrichment was in fact the great contribution of the Decorated design to the equipment of the later Gothic detail. The short square pinnacle of the north has been already described with its commanding effect in the east fronts of the Yorkshire style at Ripon and Selby; and in its octagon use of the first half of the fourteenth century it kept the same sturdy massiveness ; only at York did its weaker offspring degenerate, till from such less lusty finials, were begot the merely ornamental spikelets of Beverley and Hull. Further south in Mid-England, though this strong bold use is not in evidence, yet there are some striking pinnacles, as that on the north side of Lichfield, octagonal with ripples of crowded crockets racing up the angle rolls ; and at Ely the somewhat similar spirelets of 1340 that flank the thirteenth-century gable of the east 1 At Exeter, therefore, Sir G. G. Scott's " The present stone stalls are a stupid " restoration " of tabernacles is a false one, "restoration" for which was destroyed and indeed the eighteenth century stalls were beautiful fourteenth-century oak-work ; only a less jarring note beside the bishop's throne, the "miserere's" now remain. See p. 418. 312. CHRISTCHURCH, HANTS. ALTAR-SCREEN- 4°4 GOTHIC ART front. The figure from Boston (fig. 3 1 3) illustrates the distinctly niched pinnacle, whose construction would seem to derive from the design of the Eleanor crosses. However, the "southern" use of the pinnacle was in connection with the flying buttress, the con structive counterpoise of its thrusts as well as the decorative finish of its outlines. Old St. Paul's, as portrayed in Hollar's prints (see fig. 2 7 1 , p. 345) > had ranges of pin nacles and buttresses that would have matched those of the French cathedrals. The North of England found generally no occasion for this use, since its wooden ceilings 1 did not need the elaboratebuttress- ings of the French Gothic scheme : York has decorative pinnacles, but no flying arches. And even in the South the massiveness of the Ro manesque construction, as at Glou cester and Tewkesbury, allowed their thirteenth- and fourteenth- century vaultings to stand without additional provision ; and so was it at Winchester till late in the fif teenth century, when an elaborate buttressing was provided for the wood groinings of the quire — but they were the thinner construc tions of Gothic which there were needing abutment. Of course the decays of time have played greater havoc with such exposed pieces of decorative construction than with most parts of the Gothic fabric. But more destructive have been the attacks of "re storation," whose reproductions of parapet and pinnacle have hopelessly vitiated the external credit of Gothic art.2 Most of our great churches, 1 Still it would seem that at Ripon a the buttress. So, too, at Beverley, where the 313. BOSTON. PINNACLE. stone vault was designed in 1300, though a wooden was built. The flying buttresses are bold, and the "restored" pinnacles striking, though of but little projection above fourteenth-century vaulting followed the thir teenth-century lines. ' In 1897 both Salisbury and Lincoln were undergoing this treatment of substitution, DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 405 such as Chester,1 Worcester,2 Gloucester, and Lichfield Cathedrals have been be-pinnacled by our Gothic confectioners, and lost any claim to suggest what was the architecture of their building; untouched evidences in great examples are hard to find. Still the progress of the English flying buttress can perhaps be instanced from the sturdy specimen of the thirteenth century at New Shoreham, with its square-spired pinnacle, and then by way of the picturesque refinement of Malmesbury on to the romantic expressions, which tell for so much at Exeter. There the con tour and mass of the buttressing is in fine contrast with the lofty-spired pinnacles of the English squareness. At Bristol there is the same buttress effect, but with a cleverness that was really one of constructive logic,3 the arch of the buttress was brought under the roof and has become the enrichment of the vaulting. We can see both buttressing and pinnacle given greater elegance in the more conventional treatments that were added (c. 1330) at Salisbury to help the spire and strengthen the nave vaulting : and at Ely, built for Walsingham's quire, came some of our richest examples with magnificent outer pinnacles. But the fining away of the solid flying arch into tracery, of which there are some indications at Salis bury, as too at Wells,4 came as the note of the later fourteenth century. Its idea had been repugnant to that earlier English ideal, which, as already indicated, kept so constantly the mass of its constructive work as the foil to its decorative play. Still, early in the diminutive use of tomb canopy and niche-head, as at Exeter and Tewkesbury, the whole pinnacle and buttress had become an openwork panel of sculptured tracery. And externally in the contouring of the pinnacled angles of the later spires such frippery was common (see fig. 293, p. 373), and after 1380 made its way into the flying buttress of the vault as at Can terbury,5 the fifteenth century examples of which are at Fotheringhay and Winchester. But of the fourteenth were those elaborate construc tions in the craft of the Northamptonshire mason, the "strainer-arches," which are illustrated over page from Rushden (fig. 314). In parapets, moreover, the "Decorated" taste for luxuriant and ' Sir G. G. Scott's was a rebuilding of ' The characteristic steep slope of the every external feature of this cathedral in English flying buttress is very effective at the style of his own Victorian Gothic. Wells and then at Norwich. The beauty of Worcester, before the ' A fine early example of the traceried fly- work which, initiated under Perkins, 1857, ing arch is that at Rye, built to strut the east was completed under Sir G. G. Scott in gable (see fig. 129, p. 177), after the French 1874, can be seen in the water-colour draw- burning of 1377. There were two such, but ing of James Powell at South Kensing- one has been lately rebuilt, and is good ton. sample of the degradation both of beauty 3 As bringing under cover the essential and interest that comes by " restoration.'' structure. See p. 11, 406 GOTHIC ART romantic variety had from the first legitimate field. It early nicked them into battlements, as at Ripon, or pierced them into lacework traceries, as on Wells chapter house, and later on the quire and nave.1 Winchelsea, Malmesbury, and Tewkesbury retain their pierced parapets, 314. RUSHDEN. STRAINER ARCH. but in most instances, like the pinnacle, they have met with complete destruction, or suffered deplorable "restorations." Still, inside at Selby (see fig. 282, p. 358), Lichfield, and Exeter (see fig. 279, p. 353) the traceried balustradings of the clerestory passages have a particular value. The battlemented enrichment had the greater significance and also the more enduring vogue as an architectural decoration for Gothic style. 1 The work of Richard of Stovve — who had had the building of the Eleanor Cross at Grantham — is especially remarkable at Lincoln, in 1306, for the traceried lightness of his tower canopies and strings ; but his parapets have perished. The brattishing of the tower as we see it now was the work of Essex, c. 1740. The parapet of the south transept gable is a copy of what was blown away in 1804. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 407 It is to be observed that the working battlement of defence, that which in the thirteenth century was replacing in stone the wooden galleries of the fortified wall, never in England came into the custom of church design.1 At Ripon, where the liability to Scotch raidings might have suggested a practical purpose in the interrupted parapet of the 1 300 quire, yet the bow-slits are not such that they can be shot through. In fact, these cross-shaped bow-slits indicate the origin of the fourteenth- century battlement, as well as its suggestion in our architecture. Its treatment was merely decorative, to be fathered on the fancies of the illuminator, the portrayer of scenes of chivalry and the castles of Romance. Under the system which continued the pomp and circum stance of knighthood in the pageantry of its monuments, the tomb was given the insignia of the Castle, and the canopy of the saint's shrine was embattled as the keep of Paradise. This was not church archi tecture copying military, but rather the pride of life taking its seat in the courts of the saints. So a deeper signification than that of mere fancy was bequeathed to the later Gothic in this unfailing cornice, when, as at Exeter, they were angels that were carved to look from the battlements of the front. Of the same sentiment is the heraldry of the fourteenth century that became very widely its decorative material, and here, too, the action of the monument upon architectural art is conspicuous. The arms of the dead knight, as much as the crook of the ecclesiastic, had been laid on his bier, and carried to the grave, and then the achievement of his shield,2 as his individuality, was painted or carved with his effigy. But in the Eleanor monument, as in the Kirkham gateway, the sentiment has now become that of pride of race — the declaration of royal lineage in the only daughter of Castile and Leon. Just so in the monastic gateway it can be read how the knightly consequence of the patrons of Kirkham (see fig. 258, p. 334) was overshadowing the religious attribu tions and constructional motives that hitherto had made the ornaments of Gothic. So in York nave3 the shield has taken the place of the quatrefoils of Ely, and the angels of Lincoln, in the spandrels of the pier-arches. So in the Henry de Valence tomb 4 at Westminster the escutcheons are the sole ornament of the base, and the enamelled 1 Except perhaps in some of the border points out that the architectural heraldry of churches of Wales. The great fortified the fourteenth century was mostly of the churches are those of the south of France, north. where the exteriors are entirely controlled by ' The Earl of Lancaster is represented as the practical purposes of defence. praying, though on horseback ; Aymer de See Geoffrey Plantagenet's enamel at Le Valence is riding at full gallop, after the Mans of 1 150, and the Temple effigies. seal-motive traditionary from the eleventh J Mr. St. John Hope, " Royal Institute century in the great seals of the English of British Architects' Proceedings,'' 189*7, kings. 408 GOTHIC ART heraldry has left no interest even in the figure.1 Still this latter was Limoges work ; the English sculptor puts more life into his display on the canopy gable of Crouchback and Aymer de Valence, where horse and man, in the gorgeous trappings of the tourney, make an heraldic achievement — but in the place where, at Exeter, had been the Majesty of Christ. Thereafter in church architecture the shield of the founder is seen to be of as much importance as the sacred symbols which dedicate his liberality ; in window, as in vault-boss, the dignity of the patron or donor2 is extolled beside the signification of his gift. The accessory or incidental character of fourteenth-century decora tion is plain in its use of both battlement and shield — and it is no less so in its ornamental foliage. The distinguishing mark of its leaf- sculpture is often described as being its "naturalism," with the meaning of direct dependence on the truth of Nature. But a large discount must be made from any but a sophistic definition of these terms, before we can apply them to the "Decorated" manner of carving. Such definitions have, in truth, been coloured by the art-ideas of our own days, which have for some hundred years made a god of the coarsest forms of imitative dexterity. Each age has really its convention in art, which it quotes as "nature" — a convention which may be judged as the measure of its appreciation of natural facts, but must not be taken as the ultimate scale 1)y which the conventions of other times are to be graded. Because of the uninspired shapelessness of our " natural " representations, we call thirteenth-century foliage "stiff" — since it was sculptured to be shapely; and the fourteenth-century oak-leaf " natural " — when we see that it is ragged. The first we have no power to emulate, but our " revival " carving in its many restorations has thought it saw its chance in the latter; and with vitiated taste has achieved such unnatural "naturalism" as has been wrought on the west front at Lichfield. But Nature for the mediaeval artist was, indeed, a different thing from such as this : she was shapely life and brilliant colour. To him of the thirteenth century she showed herself in the grace of organic life ; to his successor of the fourteenth it was the sparkle of her robe that was the revelation — the consummate glory of her colour textures, the passion of her gesture. Still the worship was to each a convention— an affectation that evidenced affection — whether the one made structural growth from the bones of masonry and exhibited delicacy by springing 1 Sir John Harrington's tomb at Cartmel York, where the donor is represented accom- has shields and heraldry everywhere. panied by knights as supporters. Generally 2 Coats of arms are a distinguishing at York the donor is in evidence; and see characteristic of fourteenth-century glass ; at Beer Ferris, Devon, the charming figures see the so-called "heraldic'' window at of Sir William Ferris and his lady. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 409 line in the thirteenth century, or the other in the fourteenth elaborated spot and boss to decorate his textures. Nor does the evolution of tracery contradict this position ; the advance of the geometrical to flow ing lines was, as has been indicated, the creation of an enamel-diaper in which the glass made the jewel-spots:1 exactly as the Decorated niche came as a broach applied to the texture of construction, and the pinnacle was set as a "star" in its crown. And, picked to pieces, these spots were crystallizations or conglomerates of decorative centres instead of the shaped growth of decorative organism, as the earlier system had made its ornament. In the window glass the medallion- motive2 drops out and the ranged statue or subject becomes pre dominant ; in the wall-ornament the check and diaper patterns — piec- ings together of star patterns — displace the scroll and spray-motives ; in the moulding the ball-flower or hawks-bell — a dot of emphasis and nothing but a dot — rejects all the leaf-like growths of the dogtooth ; instead of the sprouting crocket a detached leaf has dropped, as it were, upon the canopy gable ; and so, too, in the capital, what was in the thirteenth century the flower of the shaft is made in the fourteenth as a festoon of separate leaves. And these leaves themselves are as characteristic as their application — it is no longer the growing curve of the shooting life that makes the interest in their carvings ; now most acutely rendered are the spot of the fold of the leaf, the boss of its rounding, and the nicking of its stem junction. The drill has taken the place of the chisel in the hand of the sculptor. Though with results at last summary, such a change was in its preparation gradual : surface-accent in aid of organic form appears on many sides after 1250. The power of the thirteenth-century sculptor culminated in his mastery of both resources, and his true " naturalism " belongs to the highest range of sculpture, as exhibited in the carvings of St. Frideswide's shrine ; less vividly, but with great beauty in the Cantilupe tomb at Hereford, in the piscina of St. Mary's Hospital, Chichester, or the quire corbels of Exeter ; with a smack of cleverness at Southwell ; with a loss of much of its fine style in the profuse luxuriance of Lichfield nave. One of the most striking illustrations of the progress of Decorated leaf-carving c. 1290 can be studied at York. In the ruined front of St. Mary's Abbey are some fragments — a hollow mould garlanded with 1 See p. 339. The iron-work of the Salis- decoration. The Jesse subject belonged bury quire-screen, which is the creation of to all ages, but its treatment became merely a pattern diaper instead of the flowing (see panelled by the end of the fourteenth cen- p. 275) treatment of Winchester, is an illus- tury : from the Dorchester window (see fig. tration of the same process of design. 262, p. 339), to the Christ Church screen 2 Which had hung the figure-subject as (see fig. 312, p. 403), the course of this the fruit on a twining tree of growing change is clearly marked, 410 GOTHIC ART a delicately modelled vine leaf ; a capital whose equally exquisite wreath is a naturalistic application, not a growth from the bell, while above the crockets of the canopies1 have the dull character which is that of later stereotype. The seeds of the coarser conventions that followed so quickly are here sown, though nothing of the lively grace of the earlier art seems surrendered. In the minster chapter-house— though the capitals keep to the thirteenth-century type and are beautiful— in the finial bosses, as in the charming vine-wreathed stringcourse itself, (fig. 315) can be seen the decided mannerisms of bossing and pricking that became to the " Decorated " artist, what his trefoil shoot had been to the "Early English." Passing to the nave we find wreathing applied to the capitals with alternate leaves pointing up and down ; and here and there are now sprigs of at tached leafage, sprays of oak and chestnut set like stars to the bell of the capital. But after 1 300 all these varied mo tives grow duller and are merged in a con ventional system of bosses and wriggles, emphasized by sharply Since certain types 315. YORK. CHAPTER-HOUSE STRING. C. I290. drilled holes, and often considerably undercut. of natural foliage, such as the oak and vine, have superficially this boss and wriggle, a certain imitative purpose is retained in connection with these leaves. But no "naturalism," as we regard it, is in the purpose of the sculptor — his motive is the decorative expression of surface for the enhancement of colour. The sculpturesque intention was confined to the bossiness of the ball of foliage, and very boldly are such capitals conceived at York, and especially at Selby (figs. 316 and 317), where the abacus has sunk beneath their projection. But otherwise the sculptor's craft expended itself in the undercutting — in the dexterity with which it provided a chiaroscuro in the broad intricacy of its surfacing. Now all sadly wants the original colour to give dis tinction ; very niggled and flaccid in expression appears much of this work at Southwell, Lincoln, and Beverley, which has to be judged in its present cold whiteness ; very often the multiplications of wriggling 1 As already noticed, a very similar juxta position is that of the Eleanor cross at Northampton, where there are conven tional crocket-blobs, but beneath, in the spandrels, a beautiful expression of leaf carving. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 411 ripples, which make the gist of its convention are, as on the Percy tomb, nothing less than irritating. Yet but a few years earlier at Beverley there had been grace and delicacy in the leaf crockets of the niches of the altar screen. And elsewhere in the fourteenth-century carvings of the north there is a leaf treatment that is singularly broad 316. SELBY. QUIRE CAPITALS. 317. SELBY. QUIRE CARVING. and fine, as in the south aisle of Selby, where oak and vine spray set in the hollows between the capitals give a bold leaf to each.1 At York there is a fine use of big flowing motive in protest to any niggling "naturalism," wreathing itself like the oar-seaweed as this is washed about in the shallow tide, and in the south, too, there is something similar in the large diapers on the Winchelsea tombs and in the span drels of the Berkeley Sacristy at Bristol. 1 So largely treated that in one case two maple leaves do duty for three capitals ! 412 GOTHIC ART There is a difference, however, in this "southern" work, which west wards can be seen chiefly in the absence of that deep undercutting, which at York and Selby gave such a detached expression to the foliage bosses, that in their accentuation of the surface-plane they ally themselves to Indian and Chinese carvings. At Exeter, Ottery St. Mary, Wimborne, and Milton Abbey, and then, too, in the Gower screen at St. David's there is a distinct school of fourteenth-cen tury leaf-carving, coarser than the " northern," but very often of more solid decorativeness. But apart from this, there was in the West a school of foliage, in connection with figure-work, in which may be traced, from the work of c. 1 300 in Wells chapter house, and in the eastern chapels at Hereford, the survival of the earlier sculptur esque instincts, which passed on to the corbels and bosses at Tewkesbury, and in some meas ure to the sacristy carvings at Bristol. It has been noted how in the west a path of architectural proportion seemed to lead the thirteenth on to the fifteenth cen turies outside the high road by which the body of Decorated achievements went on their way ; and so it would seem in these leaf-carvings, the Early English style links itself to the Perpen dicular in the carving of such a capital as is figured from Gloucester (fig. 318), and from the Chapter house of Wells (fig. 319). The wood carvings in the misereres of Wells— all that are left of the comely stalls1 — illustrate this phase; but very different were the stone 2 capitals of the Lady-chapel, though its building was in effect contemporary, c. 1325, for there the puckered 318. GLOUCESTER. CAPITAL. 1 Destroyed in Salvin's " restorations," 1848-1854. 2 A similar distinction of the wood-carving craft over the contemporary stone ornament, may be seen at Lincoln in comparing the bosses of the cloisters of 1295 with the leafage on the eastern sepulchre, and the quire-arch doorways ; and at Peterborough the bosses of the wood groining of the crossing of 1340 have the same sense of sculpturesque style in comparison with the contemporary stone carving. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 413 conventionalities are so merely decorative that they need gilding and colour to explain them. Thus it would seem that from the end of the thirteenth century 319. WELLS. CAPITAL OF CHAPTER-HOUSE SHAFT. C. 1290. there were two arts of architectural sculpture side by side, one of which was that of the sculptor of head and figure-corbel, in touch with the " imaginator," the worker in wood or stone, the bronze founder and goldsmith ; and in his craft survived many of the finer traditions of leaf-carving after they had passed out of the range of the " en- 4i4 GOTHIC ART tailer " ! or ornamental stone-carver. For the art of this latter went hand in hand with glass and wall-painting, and with him the charac teristic foliage of fourteenth-century crocket and capital took its com plexion as a decorative tracing emphasized by splendid colouring. The spot and the wriggle that in painter's technique made up fourteenth century naturalism, was taken as the stock-in-trade of the chiseller of capitals and strings. In its colour this craft had its justification, though we may weigh this in the scale of art as less than the sense of sculp turesque shapeliness which made the thirteenth century the summit of Gothic art. But this colour has generally passed beyond our appreciation ; its faint traces can be seen at Hereford, Durham, and Exeter in fourteenth- century carvings, giving them still a grace, which must be helped by imagination. Our " restorations " of it have usually been its ruin, for they have attempted the impossible task of reproducing a Titian under the conditions which give us the German oleograph. It is the illogical remark sometimes made by people of taste, that the painting of ancient carving must have made it what would seem garish and tawdry to our modern eyes. If the fourteenth-century glass, as at Tewkesbury, Wells, and Oxford, has colour effects, with which fifty years of emu lation have made us despair of competing ; if in the fourteenth-century manuscript, like that of the Louttrell Psalter, there is a wealth of golden brightness which only the greatest masters of painting have equalled, is it open to us to doubt the existence of a similar incomparable sense in their colourings of architecture ? Still, not only in the sphere of coloured leaf-carving had the painter's art begun its trespass on the domain of the sculptor ; in the representation of subject-carving a similar disposition is manifested, the effects of which were gradually to draw away the " imaginator " him self. No longer does the serene intensity of statuesque grace in the figure make for what it did ; now the incidents of the story, and the liveliness of its action have come into the sculptor's ideal. Miniature subject-pieces, like those in the Salisbury chapter-house, were to be the scheme of most of the fourteenth- century figure-treatment, while such great reliefs as the angels of the Lincoln presbytery, or those of Westminster, pass out of its ambitions. The little sculptured scenes show the growing interest of a literary intention, drawn not only from sacred but from romantic sources. The stock motives of the traditional religious art, as elaborated by the Byzantines, had become wearisome to the fourteenth-century artist, and he takes his ideas from 1 Taking this term in the use in which for all carving whether in wood or stone, it is found in the York records. But in as also for the sculpture of figures and the Exeter Fabric Rolls talliari seems used effigies. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 415 the Acta Sanctorum in place of the Acts of the Apostles, from the apocryphal gospels and the legends of the Virgin,1 and as much, too, from the gospels of chivalry and the legends of King Arthur. And in this sphere the literary artist was the dictator ; the production of illu minated Manuscript was in the hands of the abbeys, whose cloister illuminator relied on the chronicler and the romancists for the details of his picturings ; and in following him the sculptor of the church, as the painter of the hall, found himself a competitor for the same interest. So just as the religious book, like the Loutrell Psalter,2 exhibits the 320. WINCHESTER. SPANDREL CARVING OF STALLS. C. 1300. jocularity and burlesque of a painting-art in which not only the sacred theme is illustrated, .but every aspect of contemporary life— its work, and particularly its play ; feasting, music, and morris dancing ; all the liveliness of gesture and joyousness of mediseval life that Chaucer's tales have made so real to us — so, too, was it with the church carvings of stall (figs. 320, 321) and niche. The sculptor's skill was annexed by the painting faculty of portrayal, and the incident of the scene had to grow in expression at the expense of the finer sense of its meaning. 1 Mr. J. T. James " Monograph on Ely 2 So, too, Queen Mary's Psalter of the Lady-chapel." "The smallest details have fourteenth century has its bestiary as well as a meaning derived from the literary source." its painting of New Testament scenes, 416 GOTHIC ART The church in place of religious sculpture spread a picture-book for its votaries to look at, a novel for them to read in the arcaded niches of Ely, or the Easter Sepulchres of Lincolnshire. And a gorgeous picture-book x it was that the fourteenth-century painting could present. Professor Middleton has said of English Art, from 1 260- 1 320 : " The painting of England was unequalled by that of any other country; even in Italy, Cimabue and his associates were still labouring in the fetters of Byzantine conventionalism, and produced no works which for jewel-like colour and grace of form were quite equal to the painting under Edward the First." 321. WINCHESTER. SPANDREL CARVING OF STALLS. C. I3OO. But in the sphere of sculpture such an influence was downwards — only by a forgetfulness of his function could the sculptor lean on the 1 The frontal of the High Altar of West minster is preserved and has beautiful little paintings. The English MS. painting of greatest beauty is to be seen in the Sadleir Apocalypse at Trinity College, Cambridge ; in the Tenison Psalter in the British Museum, which was made for Queen Eleanor in 1284; and in the Manerius Bible at Paris, that came from Canterbury. The Poynz book of hours at Cambridge is dated about 1350, and Lord Lovel's lectionary in the British Museum is of the end of the century. A few fragments of the paintings of West minster Palace are preserved in the British Museum. Stothard made drawings of those that remained in the House of Lords in 1819, which the fire afterwards destroyed. They were mostly small figure-subjects, rich in colour and expression, and with the nude cleverly drawn. The triumph of the virtues over the vices such as " Largess over Avarice," " Debencrete (or Meekness) over Anger," were in a large style, that would have com peted with the greatest sculpture of the period. See " Vetusta Monumenta," vol. vi. The painter was Master Walter, who executed the work in 1280, and afterwards repaired the paintings with the help of his son in 1297, and again in 1320. The records of St. Stephen's show four painters to have been employed in embellishing it, DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 417 painting sense, as in the figure-spandrels of the Winchester stalls (figs. 320, 321), or the corbels of the chapter-stair at Wells (fig. 322) : too soon the colour-effect was taken to re deem coarseness of execution and the literary interest to condone exaggerated gesture. Thus if the fine style of the architectural carving of 1 300 at Winchel sea lingered in the earliest tombs, the later exhibit a decadence. The fancies are the same, but the crisper touch is less in evidence ; a stock, well-worn manner has taken its place in head and leafage alike. So a stock elegance, as well as a lively sway of form make the fourteenth-century characteristic of the Virgin- and Angel- figures, but the earnestness of the earlier ideal is lost. The statuettes that fill the side niches of John of Eltham's tomb at Westminster are charming little figures, but have a triviality beside those of the earlier Chichester tomb. At Howden they are not angels but minstrels that play their instruments round the bier. At Reepham the delineation of portraiture and costume is cleverly made the in terest of the "weepers," now filling the panels of the tomb-chest in place of the sculpture that told of the resurrection. At Ingham a forest scene and the wonders of the world are painted for the con templation of the sleeping effigy, who lies on a bed of stone as if ready to rise again to the chase. Such things indicate the change of feeling as of technique from the simple piety of the earlier sculpture. And the inequality of the fourteenth- century inspiration shows how dependent it was on individual skill. In the little scenes of the Ely Lady chapel there are many charming conceptions, but much that is dull and block-like; while in the corbels of the con temporary octagon, though the grouping and interest of the subjects are 3H 322. WELLS. CHAPTER STAIR. 4i8 GOTHIC ART well expressed, the figure-work itself is curiously degenerate, compared with the Lincoln expression of fifty years earlier. At Chester and Selby —1 the same must be said of all the architectural figure- work, and in the Percy tomb at Beverley, if there is ¦f£ undoubted vigour, there is a strangely ' M bizarre treatment ; what is evident, too, in all the minstrel figures that are so common at Beverley. At Worcester (fig. 323) is like illustra tion of generally more contortion than power; and at Gloucester of more intensity than grace in the figures at the Pilgrim's door of the transept, though they make a ro mantic style of decorative carving. At Lichfield, in the spandrel-heads of 323. Worcester, figures in nave. fae quire wall-arcade, there has been a more serious hand at work ; but it is to Wells, Tewkesbury and Exeter that we must go, if we are to find the earlier feeling of sculpture, 324. TEWKESBURY. BOSSES IN NAVE. leaving at least a legacy of its earnestness in the smaller figure-work of corbel- and boss-carving. At the first1 the wood carving of the misereres have some beautiful heads and grotesques combined with the 1 See also the heads on Marcias' tomb eastern transept, which seem of the same at Wells, and at Hereford the bosses of school as the Tewkesbury carvings. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 419 foliage that has been noticed ; at Tewkesbury there is fine style in the bosses (fig. 324), and the corbel (fig. 325) figure-work that makes one 325. TEWKESBURY. CORBEL IN NAVE. doubt of decadence ; and if at Exeter we must admit that the touch of the " entailer " in the little figures of Grandison's vault is not that 326. EXETER. NAVE. MINSTREL GALLERY. of the " imaginator " of the Bronescombe effigy, yet in the gallery of 1340 the angel minstrelsy (fig. 326), still having their coloured robes 420 GOTHIC ART on the background of red, have a sunny grace of sculpture that lightens the whole nave. And the craft passed, too, to the carver of the angel- haunted battlements that crown the west front above the images of the saints. And there was still for long a great art of imagery beside those lesser dexterities of architectural carv ing which had yielded so much to the painter's technique. But this art separated itself from such direct service of architecture as the earlier " imaginator " had maintained. It had become by the beginning of the fourteenth century largely a skill of model ling and metal founding — such a goldsmith's art as that of the Fitz Othos', who had made for Edward the First the Confes sor's shrine of gold — who in the royal seals l have left evidence to our day of a power rarely equalled in rich design. Such an art had made the silver statuettes of English saints that stood at the back of the altar screen at Winchester ; and at Exeter had been paid by what would be ,£10,000 of our money for the golden screen of Bishop Stapledon. Of its school was the bronze imagery of Master Torel, whose effigies of Henry the Third and Queen Eleanor have fortunately come down to us ; and if, at Westminster fifty years later, Edward the Third's figure shows a duller style, the Black Prince's at Canterbury is a fine bronze ; 2 Richard the Second's and his queen's at Westminster are of charming portraiture,3 and in 327. NORWICH. LECTERN. « 1 The same elaborate and beautiful medal design is to be found in the seals of the towns of the fourteenth century. 2 Described in his will to be " an image of relieved work in laton gilt, in memory of us, all armed in steel for battle." 3 1395. By Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest, citizens and coppersmiths. the the DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 421 14.40 at Warwick the armoured image of Richard Beauchamp is a marvel of craftsmanship.1 \ The destruction of this kind of work in England has been of course almost entire — no gold or silver image 2 could escape the metal-pot of Dissolution, and copper, too, had a value that then, and afterwards in later Cromwell's time, except under special circumstances, inevitably made the effigy a prey to the spoiler. However, some of the "latten" lecterns have come down to us, as the Pelican (fig. 327) at Norwich which is of the fourteenth century. What, however, has had the best chance of survival to indicate the quality of the figure-portrayal of the century is the flat tracery on metal known as the memorial "brass."3 The fine style of the earliest — those which date from the end of the thirteenth century or early in the next — gives them a place beside the royal effigies of* the Abbey, or the painted " Virtues " of Westminster Palace. Such were those of " Dame Jone de Kobeham" in Kent, of the ecclesiastic at Higham Ferrers, or the knight from Gorleston, Suffolk, which is figured by Stoddart ; so, too, the Robert de Septuans of Chartham, and the John d'Aubemoun of Stoke Dabernon, Surrey, of 1327. But these last, with the Minster brass in Sheppey, show how the details of costume are being forced into attention; and, after 1350, as may be well seen in the Cobham brasses, the stiff attitudes and conventional treatment speak of the stock ideas of shop-production.4 A decline in style just as marked can be traced in the craft of wood and stone effigies.5 The thirteenth-century figure had been of Purbeck or Sussex marble, but the simple draperies and ideal pose •of such figures as noted in Chapter VI. were succeeded by the ambi tion of a greater naturalism, particularly in the rendering of costume. The stone effigy was soon given a face of gesso in which the richest and most delicate ornament could be executed, which gilded and painted brought it to the pitch of the pageantry surrounding it. And an equal delicacy was got in the oaken image, which after 12806 became as common as the stone. At first there was with this romantic 1 By William Austen and Bartholomew * The later great brasses are those ascribed Lambspring, the latter a Dutchman, but a to Flemish workmanship after 1349, such as citizen of London. those at Lynn, North Mymms, and Newark. 2 A composite statue of wood with a 3 Stothard's beautiful book, " Monumental silver head and embroidered gilded plates Effigies," though published as long ago as of brass, was that of Henry V. at Westminster. 1817, remains still the only serious attempt 3 The brass of Sir Roger de Trumpington, to put English mediaeval sculpture before in Cambridgeshire, is dated 1289. Another the public. There have been a score that beautiful brass in this neighbourhood is that have illustrated the French. of Sir John de Creke and his lady (c. 1324) 8 We learn that Henry III. had oak at Westley Waterless. statues made for Glastonbury. 422 GOTHIC ART colouring but little loss of the life of sculpture. Indeed there came a livelier movement — not that only of the theatrical Duke of Normandy at Gloucester, but of the Kerdiston and Ingham figures in Norfolk, carved as if just starting out of sleep with hand on sword ; and now is there the romantic touch, too, in the clasped hands of the De Bois, knight and lady, at Ingham, and of Richard and his queen at West minster.1 Yet in most cases after 1340 a block-like anatomy succeeds, and the interest, apart from some portraiture in the face, is concentrated on the details of costume, in the knight on the splendour of his armour, and its painted achievements, or in the lady on the fashion of her headdress. And soon, too, the angel figures, that had still with Crouchback and Aymer supported the head or received the soul of the dead, are replaced by the tilting helm in the effigy of the Black Prince and those of his contemporaries. Now the ecclesiastic, as at Beverley, has coats-of-arms on the embroidery of his maniple and the border of his chasuble ; or, as with Bishop John of Sheppey at Rochester, is shown with every vestment embroidered and jewelled. It is plain the pride of life and the pomp of chivalry were to conduct the soul to heaven's gate. In the second quarter of the fourteenth century the wood effigy becomes rarer, and with it died too that subtler use of gesso work, while the soft marble of alabaster became the common material of figure work. The fame of this English alabaster by the end of the century got recognition abroad. We learn2 that in 1408 three imagers of London, Thomas Colyne, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehowe, had safe conduct to carry into Brittany their alabaster monument of Jean IV. for erection in Nantes Cathedral. And, twenty years earlier, Richard II. had given license to Cosmo Gentilio, the Pope's collector, to carry away with him three great alabaster images of our Lady, St. Peter, and St. Paul, and a smaller image of the Trinity. Of such image-work there has survived at Kidwelly, in South Wales, by a rare chance a fourteenth-century Virgin and Child,3 and at Evesham has been un- 1 Among the finest of these late thir- are Archbishop Peckham at Canterbury, teenth and early fourteenth-century effigies, the ecclesiastic in the north aisle of the Countess Aveline at Westminster and Beverley, the King Edward IL, at Glou- the beautiful lady at Bedale may be men- cester, and the boy William of Hatfield at tioned; at Bedale, too, the Fitzalan knight York. and in Northamptonshire the wooden effi- 2 Rymers' "Fcedera," quoted by West- gies of the Trailli's at Woodford, and of the macott — "Archaeological Journal," 1846. De Gaytons, at Gayton ; at Westminster, 3 This is described as having the English those of Crouchback and Aymer de Val- touch in the style of the head — which in ence, and that attributed as of Gervase the fourteenth century can be distinctly Alard at Winchelsea. Other noble figures separated from the Prench. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 423 earthed a superb piece of decorative carving that would seem to have come from a Jesse reredos. But save in such scanty fragments, the record of the Derbyshire craft remains to our churches only in the effigies, which, though numerous, have been usually much defaced. The upright Bakewell monument of the Foljambes is well-known, and from Derbyshire quarries x alabaster effigies were carried to all parts of England, and in the fifteenth century took the place alike of the Purbeck and Sussex effigy and the wooden figure of the Midlands. Thus it was that the delicate gesso-detail was quite superseded by the end of the fourteenth century, for in the soft material of alabaster the intricacies of costume could be faithfully rendered. But in the cultivation of this carver's dexterity the fine styles of the earlier sculptors, their idealism, and generally their portraiture also, were superseded.2 So in the Neville monument at Staindrop, Durham, the two ladies of the first Earl of Westmorland are carved as like as two peas. Such mere expressions of knight and lady, with a dexterous rendering of the appropriate fashions of costume were evidently no more than the shop articles of a sculptor's commerce. Still even less is left of that stone image-work that once was abundant in the exterior niches of fourteenth-century design, — to bridge the gap in our art between the statuary of the Wells front and that of the Exeter. Until 1895 there remained on the spire pinnacles ol St. Mary's, Oxford, our richest possession 3 of fourteenth-century sculp ture. There were nine figures whose carving would be about 1320, and though some renewal had taken place, still the attitude and feeling, and, indeed, a genuine greater part, of the original sculpture remained in their niches ; these had a priceless value that is ill exchanged now for their mere preservation as museum curiosities, for, sad to say, these unimpeachable witnesses to the power of our English art have been degraded to the obscurity of a neglected chapel — so that their purpose is falsified and the evidence of their style divorced from its original expression. At Lichfield, on the south side of the cathedral, fortunately out of ken of the savage " restorations " of the west front, is a noble 1 Near Hartshorne, Chellaston, and Tut- Wimborne, 1444. bury. The agreement as to the effigies of 3 At Peterborough the abbot's gate-house Ralph Green and his wife at Lowick, still has the statues of 1305. At Oxford Northamptonshire with Thomas Prentys they were pronounced unsafe, but had to be and Robert Sutton of Chellaston, in 1419, sawn off; the return of only one of them to specifies them thus: "Image countre fait a un its "restored" niche has been considered esquier en Armes en toutz pointz, et countre- "possible." See Mr. T. G. Jackson's " His- fait a une dame gisant en sa surcote ouverte." tory of St. Mary's, Oxford," where are given 2 The most striking alabaster figures are good photographs of them in the original those of Henry IV. and his queen at positions, whence our " restoration"-method Canterbury, 141 2, and of the Beauforts at has filched them. 424 GOTHIC ART Madonna, and though the head has been defaced and the Child knocked away, remaining in position, it is a beautiful study of four teenth-century pose and drapery. At Howden there are four statues, about four feet high — one the blindfold figure, which in mediseval imagery was carved to represent the Jewish synagogue. They are set now on the rood screen that is used for the reredos of the church, but originally were in the outside niches of the transept. The sway of their posing has the fourteenth-century sense, and it can be seen how there has been a loss of the earlier idealism. Such is the meagre know ledge left to us of mid-century style, but after 1370 we have more ; for there was a revival of the English tradition in a remark able manner in the screenworks of canopied niches with ranges of statues.1 Exeter, in Bishop Brantyngham's front of 1375, car ried out the style of Wells, set ting up in its west front a great iconostasis with tiers of apostles, saints, and kings — the church on earth below, and above the angel- crowded battlements of heaven. Though there has been here much decay, and the figures are blackened, fortunately there has been little restoration, and the remains have the power and char acter of their original art. At Christchurch (see fig. 3 1 2, p. 403), of scarcely later date, this icono stasis has been carried inside the church, set up now at the east end behind the altar.2 The figures here are ranged on the system of the 328. CHRISTCHURCH. ALTAR SCREEN. 1 Thus at Lincoln a range of figures was 1380, and those at Winchester and St. added to the west front in 1380, but they Alban's of the latter part of the fifteenth have none of the style of Exeter. century are of the same design, but their 2 The screens at New College, Oxford, of statuary has completely gone. DECORATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 425 Jesse motive, but the style (fig. 328) is that of Exeter, and the sculp ture might have come from the same hand. Granted that the quietude of the earlier work at Oxford has passed out of the sculptor's expression of the latest fourteenth century, yet there is an energy in the concep tion of his figure work, and still more, the religious earnestness of the Wells tradition survives in him. Unfortunately the record has been left too defaced to suggest whether elsewhere than here in the West a local style of imagery lasted on with power to stand against that general decadence of the intrinsic qualities of Gothic, which is plain in the lesser sculpture and the effigy. The figure-work that remains of the fifteenth century in Henry the Fifth's chantry, or on the screen at York, is certainly of a quality different from that at Christchurch, one that speaks of the hack neyed decorative mannerism — with a well-worn religious expression, and an ideal that has surrendered sculpture to the technique of the painter. 329. WELLS. GLASS IN LADY-CHAPEL. CHAPTER X Gothic Architecture after 1350 The last years of the first half of the fourteenth century are of peculiar import in the history of English Gothic architecture, for from 1346 to 1 349 two events were in progress that were to be the turning points of its destinies. The First was the passage over England of the Black Death — the deadliest of our historical pestilences— which, coming across the Channel in 1348, during that year and the next reduced by one-third the population of our island : l the Second was that successful invasion of France by Edward III., which, after the battle of Crecy, culminated in the capture of Calais. In the first full spate of a great art the barriers of social circum stance make for little, but when the flood begins to slacken, they appear again as the boundaries, and finally directors of its channel. So was it now : the shapers of our art were to appear in these two events with effects that were immediate, and finally determinant of its course. They produced the conditions which dominated fifteenth century architecture, and in exhibiting our style of Perpendicular brought Gothic to a close. On the one hand the gradual secularizing of church-building was largely the outcome of the Black Death ; on the other the effect of the hundred years' war with France was a social revolution, that took architecture upon a new field. In its rise in England, architecture, as has been insisted, was essentially a monastic development, made such by the policy and in stinct of our first Norman kings. Gothic art, though a revolution in Benedictine regime, was none the less firmly grounded on the habits and discipline of conventual life. That "laic" sentiment, which the French Gothic imbibed from its cradling in the communistic environ ment of the great French towns, has no expression in the ambitions of our great church-buildings, which expended themselves on the monastic church, or on cathedral and minster that were fashioned just in its likeness. And if in the fourteenth century the conventual establish ment apparelled itself and fared sumptuously as a noble, its magnificent 1 In some of the counties it is said to population. See Dr. Jessop's suggestive have carried off seventy-five per cent, of the essay on its effects in East England. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 427 building only exhibited this shift of interest in the ornamental complexion, not in the essential anatomy of its art. But the Black Death put the limit to this monastic dominance, for its effect on the monastery itself was to sow the seeds of a mortal malady that could only run its course in dissolution. It is said that many of the smaller monasteries were practically wiped out of exist ence,1 or had such a decrease of their inmates, that the continuity of existence, which was the essence of conventual life, was broken. Apart from decrease in numbers, the effect was one on discipline and repute — the monasteries and canons' houses, that had been aristocratic estab lishments with traditions of prestige, saintly and worldly combined, now with the dearth of membership admitted a lower social grade, and a coarser practice of rule. And though in the fifteenth century efforts were made to rehabilitate monastic institutions as centres of social standing and religious enthusiasm, the position was not recovered : the Black Death prepared for the Dissolution, though that consummation did not follow for one hundred and eighty years. But if loss of numbers and loss of prestige put an end to the great monastic building that for the last hundred years had been such that many an Augustinian church had taken the dimensions of a cathe dral, yet the tide of the nation's life flowed on. It recovered from the check of the pestilence ; and in the prosperity of trade, the still un exhausted activities of Gothic art found themselves on a new field — in the buildings of the burgher and the guildsman, of the wool stapler and clothier, of that manufacturing population which grew rich in Norfolk and Somerset. These classes made their churches their own ; no longer could they be kept as an ecclesiastic and aristocratic preserve, when guilds and fraternities brought the whole populace into possession of an archi tecture of display which they had a pride in building. And in this spirit were built the Parish Nave, the Guild Chapel, the Guild Chantry, the Market-cross, the Trade Hall as well as the town-houses and country manors of the ever-increasing classes of rich traders and merchant gentry. And in the direction of this same issue went the effect of the French wars. The early success of Edward the Third's arms fostered the ambitions which for a hundred years made a constant pouring of English knighthood into France, while the peculiar conditions of mediaeval warfare made this drain one upon a class only. The blood spilt and the purses emptied were those of the aristocracies, feudal and monastic, which had been so long the sinews of mediseval 1 The Cistercians' houses appear most to monks and one hundred and fifty lay breth- have fallen into dotage, e.g. Louth Park in ren, at its dissolution was found with only Lincolnshire, that in 1291 had its sixty-six ten or twelve inmates. 428 GOTHIC ART polity. In its effect on the English nation at large, aristocratic decimation made way for the wider energies of rapidly rising classes of tradesmen and landowners, enriched and thriving from the close connections with Flemish commerce and manufactures which were secured to England by the calamities of France. So the spirit of fourteenth century art passed away. The bright flower of Chivalry, which for the time had bloomed so freshly, began to get smirched in the dust and rapine of a warfare that grew ever more hard-featured and ferocious in the mclSes of military campaigns. The sentiment of feudal romance died out of our style, or was left only in the stateliness and pride of feudal pretence, the more stately and punctilious because of its waning authority. Still, conditions such as these, if they altered the character, need not have lowered the achievement of art, had it not been for the set of a circumstance that lay outside their causation. The decline of a great art, it has been maintained, lies in the constant limitation of its expres sive representation. When it is the expression of a whole nation's sense of beauty, the Art has become monumental and creative ; and the momentum of this universality lay behind the outburst of Gothic style, and carried it to the end of the thirteenth century. But by this time a building caste, distinct from the nation, had not only developed itself but separated into many dexterities : each craft had now become a mystery, that sought protection for its secrets in a guild, and so immediately had interests of its own outside the common fund. Its skill increased thereby, but its expression of beauty was narrower. Still, while monastic and aristocratic patronage directed the skill, it was voicing the feeling of its age, though it did this with individual differences and individual shortcomings. But the Black Death and the French wars combined to raise the status of the craftsman and so promoted the decline of his art, by the specializing of his individuality. As a result of the decrease of population, and the drain of the fighting classes into France a premium was put on the labourer, so that statutes1 were thought necessary to make him work at all, at a wage that was not prohibitive. Such legislation was of course, in practice, inoperative upon any craftsmanship that was worth its salt, and could demand its own honour and its own pay. The "artist," mason or marbler, founder or goldsmith, took his place beside the manufacturer and merchant; was a citizen of London,2— the master of his price, who could make his contracts or refuse.3 His individuality could no longer 1 The Statutes of Labourers were of 1349, 3 See the difficulties of the Louth authori- i3S°! x360. !368. I398> 1414. and 1424. ties with their mason, who deserted them in 2 See the accounts of Earl Beauchamp's the middle of his contract for building their tombs at Warwick. spire and had to be cajoled back. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 429 be pressed, but had to be begged so that its importance could make its own terms. In fact, the conditions with which we are familiar in re gard to our painters and sculptors — which modern notions have picked out of the ruck of labourers, to call them "artists " — were in existence in the fifteenth century for the whole body of craftsmen. Every trade that ministered to the bright-coloured, art-endowed life of the fifteenth century, had the honour and emoluments which we reserve mostly for the professors of easel-painting. But Art, which had been the matter of course of environment, though a widespread, had now become a privileged article, sold for the honour and enrichment of its producer. And the competition of sale necessarily deteriorates the quality of art; Mammon and Beauty can have no alliance save on the terms of degradation, for Art is no longer virgin when she is bought. The expert who sells his skill finds that what is best paid is superintendence, not craftsmanship, and this held good in the fourteenth century as to-day. Already, at the raising of Salisbury spire (1334), Richard de Farleigh had other works on hand at Bath and Reading, and went from one to the other — the master-mason was selling his skill like the master- imager did his statue. The common or secular art was dying out ; the commercial or individual art was taking its place. Such conditions, however, are not instantaneously potent — the "artist" with 'us does not cease to be an artist immediately he is in demand : and the body of fourteenth century craftsmen started with a fund of traditional art — a rich lading that had been got on board from the full produce of a great art. Such a cargo was not to be exchanged at the first port of visit — indeed, to get rid of it entirely has taken five centuries of exchanges. In a sense, too, those very rules of guilds, and the systematizing of art, which are the symptoms of decline, are a crystallization of the flowing lava of an eruptive creation that gives it substance and endur ance. But though the commodities of such tradition may be beautiful, its shop is still a shop, and the tendencies of its method assert them selves as economy of production, and subservience to the purchaser. Art does not brook mixture — any alloy of it proves itself pinchbeck. So early in the fifteenth century the cheap inefficient thought of a divided interest, as well as the cheap inefficient work of a scamping craftsmanship appeared contemporary with the solid architecture and sumptuous decorativeness of the best Perpendicular which is the pride of our latest English style. In this way must be sketched the course of fifteenth century art, the outcome of the conditions that came into existence from the notable events of 1349. But the final page of Gothic art must not be dismissed 43Q GOTHIC ART as entirely consequent on these conditions. The fourteenth century had still a card to play in its own creativeness, unbiassed by the pressure of conditions, and this was the achievement of the Perpendicular style itself. Indeed, had there been no Black Death and no One hundred years' war, the coming of a new style was predestined — nay, already, before 1350, in accomplishment. Its peculiarities lay in the root of the English character of art, and its fore-tokens can be seen in all the phases of our Gothic. The arrays of round-arched arcades of Norman Romanesque, as at Christchurch (Hants), and Castle Acre, were succeeded by the pointed arcadings of Early English at Lincoln, Wells, and Lichfield ; were echoed again in the fourteenth century by the tiers of niches that built Lip Edward the Second's shrine at Gloucester, or the Tewkesbury monuments ; while at its end their method crystallized in the setting out of screens like the reredos of Christ Church, or the front of Exeter. As has been insisted, the first feeling of the fourteenth century expressed itself in the accessory or applied character of its decorative motives, and afterwards, as the century advanced, in the multiplication of these motives, till was thereby created an architecture of application, that was to construction as an extended skin or surface-pattern. In the West this system found an ally in the principle of lofty proportions, which was native in the " western " style, and never entirely yielded to the broad openness of design that elsewhere made the character of the English Decorated art. At Bristol, Abbot Knowles' quire, of 1320, expressed this eclecticism, but Gloucester a few years later made a style of it in conjunction with the latest phases of the decorative ideal. The architectural " entailer," brought so intimately under the influences of the painter's craft, treated window and monument-canopy under the same system— making each up of ranges of figure-work, framed in niches that rose tier above tier in similar stories. The west windows of Edingdon and Winchester are so the exact counterparts of the Despencer tombs : the skeleton of either purpose has become the same, and whether the decoration was in the " solid " of the niched wall, or in the " light" of the traceried window, the stereotyped anatomy of its construction was made by a trellis of oblong panels. The process had gone far in the designing of the quire of Wells, ^S0 (%• 286, p. 361); and then in the Gloucester transept the "ala S. Andreae," which Abbot Wigmore completed in 1337, the niche-head is to be seen resolved into the canopied light-head— its features de graded, its lines simplified, its projections effaced, till the " orb " of the Perpendicular method is developed, which could be used for wall and window with equal significance. In the "quire" (fig. 330) under the cross ing that at Gloucester immediately followed, this significance has created a definite style of architectural art, one which really was not varied 330. GLOUCESTER QUIRE, C. 1350. 432 GOTHIC ART for the 150 years of later Gothic. Here at Gloucester the Black Death made no break in the work — or at any rate has left no trace on the course of the building which was continued in the presbytery and north transept or aisle of St. Paul's. And so great was the wealth that was poured upon the shrine of the murdered king, Edward the Second, that before 1377 the quire (see plan on p. 63) was complete with high altar and stalls, and its great east window glazed, it is said, in commemoration of the battle of Crecy,1 and therefore even possibly before 1360. The unconstructional, decorative character of this style is clearly indicated in its birth at Gloucester, where it is the avowed casing or veneer of the Norman construction. And this is plain, too, in the distinctness of its break from the ornamented but still accentuated con structive expression that marked the 1320 aisle of the nave, as well as from the dissimilar rebuilding of the neighbouring abbey of Tewkesbury. The Gloucester manner had derived from the art of the maker of those sumptuous canopies and stone tabernacles, that the fourteenth century elab orated for the monuments and furniture of its churches, an art that had learnt to deal with the facts of masonry in a new spirit. True that the patternings of its design were based on the me chanics of the arch, in which Gothic had found the Genii which worked its will : but in this decora tive use the spell that had conjured them no longer worked. The arch- heads that now were no longer voussoired : the tracery " form pieces " — stereotyped as patterns, and carved out of a single stone — were returns to lintel-construction, which was unable to transport Gothic art into new realms. Yet the terms of arch-construction, though their meaning was dead, were still the vogue — mumbled in a thousand repetitions, though wanting the magic of their first creativeness. And just as the arches of wall-arcade and window degraded into lifeless formulary, so a like fate awaited the arch of the vault-rib. Multiplied, it lost its structural sense ; the living curves, by which " diagonal," " transverse," and " wall-rib " had expressed their offices, 331. GLOUCESTER. PLAN OF FAN-VAULT OF CLOISTER. See Winston, " Glass Painting," who makes this deduction from the heraldry. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 433 were replaced by the line of neat and equal radius, that in effect shaped the vault conoid (see fig. 251, p. 316) as a decorative corbel on which the ceiling rested like a level flag. This was the system of the " fan " vault (figs. 331, 332), needing on a large scale considerable engineering to make it constructively safe — an engineering that was in evidence at the back of the vault, but had little or no function of expression in the beauty of the ceiling. 332. GLOUCESTER. CLOISTER, WITH ENTRANCE TO LAVATORY. On the small scale of its first trials, however, no engineer's skill was necessary; the effect was the reality, for the " fan " conoids were actually corbels of one or two stone blocks, and the level fillings between were a mere decorated cover that rested on them. In such minor archi tecture there was constructively no difficulty in making variations and elaborations of the " network " vault-fancies that had come in with the " network" traceries in the Decorated schemes of the West. In such the high vault was masking its rib-structure, though obliged to use it for the stability of its masonry (see figs. 286, 288 in Chapter VIII.). So in the small ceilings of the tomb chantries where no rib-arches were necessary for construction, as in the tomb of Sir Hugh Despencer at 3K 434 GOTHIC ART Tewkesbury (1349), the " fan-conoids" are found shaped for painting as a mere piece of elaborate decoration, what twenty years later in Sir Edward's1 was carved in stone. With such examples at hand there is no reason to doubt the date given by the " Gloucester Chronicle," which puts the furnishing of the cloister (fig. 332) with its beautiful fan-vaulting to the year 1381.2 And the width of its span there, only 12 ft, does not really make its constructive feat such a very great advance on the 6 ft. of the Tewkesbury chantries. But the stability of a great vault like that of the transepts of Gloucester, 33 ft. across, on the new principle, was a matter of no small engineering. In the south transept there is a sort of half trial at it with some clumsy expedients : but in the north transept, finished before 1377, the fan system is actually achieved, though without the decorative circlings which af terwards pointed the expres sion of the great " conoids " of the fan-corbels : an almost flat panelling is wedged as a ceiling between the over-hang ing corbels of multiplied ribs. In the Tewkesbury transepts3 the vaultings (fig. 333) are of this form, just as at Gloucester varying from the barrel ceil ings of the main "naves." 333. tewkesbury. transept- vault. iact tne engineering attainment of this Gloucester mason-craft is extraordinary. Though in its method only a magnifying 1 Called the chapel of the Holy Trinity. Sir Edward died in 1 3 7 5 . The corresponding, or Founders', chapel is dated 1397. Both these chantries in all their details exhibit the touch of the Gloucester mason of 1360. 2 " W. Froucestre Claustrum monasterii, quod fuit inceptum tempore T. Horton, Abb., et ad ostium Capitule perductum magnis expensis honorific? construxit." It has been doubted, however, by G. G. Scott in his "History of English Church Architecture," who would put the in troduction of the "fan" some fifty years later. However, besides the Tewkesbury examples, the " fan " vault of Warwick gate would seem certainly fourteenth century. The quire ceiling twenty years earlier had really developed " fan-conoids " in the GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 435 of "entailer's " construction, that had been learned in the puny works of monument and furniture, it grew immediately bold to make the fabric of the church thereby — a colossal chantry for the shrine of a king. The east end of Gloucester (fig, 334) has a temerity of construction that is unmatched even in Gothic art, yet it has stood triumphantly for five hundred years. And its essay in lightness is the more striking in view of the massive solidity of the Romanesque which it replaced (see fig. 287, p. 362). It is this adept mason-craft which makes the great ness of our Perpendicular style. In the Decorated the painting tres passed on the architectural domain, and compelled its sculpture to the service of decoration. But now the architectural function of building es tablishes its province, and is the dic tator to the lesser crafts ; not indeed merged with them in one enterprise as in the birth of Gothic, but deter- minately marshalling them to its necessities, or doing without them if occasion required. The perfect stability of the architectural pre eminence is what gives the sense of style to the Winchester and Canter bury naves, and remained a posses sion of our Gothic in its last greatest church building, that of King's Col lege, Cambridge. And the Glouces ter mason must be credited with the creation of this architectural assertion. He at any rate before 1350 had found his way to that embodied sanity of masoned construction — the Perpendicular manner,1 which was the last word of Gothic. 334. GLOUCESTER. EAST END. C. I360. apse, but the vault there, like that of the Gloucester quire, is really barrel vaulting, though the ribs are made as if to stiffen and bind the ceiling surfaces (see p. 363). 1 The monstrous credit of William of Wykeham as a great "architect" and the special "inventor" of the Perpendicular style has been sufficiently pricked by Wyatt Papworth in his paper in the " Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Archi tects." And no better case can be made out for his predecessor at Winchester, Bishop Edington — even as the employer of the masons who first built Perpendicular — on account of his Edington College of 1352- 1361, for Abbot Knowle built Bristol quire 335- YORK. NORTH SIDE OF QUIRE. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 437 Accordingly, in the north of England, when, after the break caused by the plague, building actively begins again, we find this style has come distinctly in the place of the native Decorated at York, Beverley, and Hull, as well as at Canterbury and Winchester. In the minster of York the work of replacing Archbishop Roger's quire with an eastern limb (fig. 335) in proportion with the great transepts and nave, began with the laying of the foundation stone on July 30th, 1361 — twelve years after the great pestilence ; and in another twelve years the quire was prac tically complete. There is a good deal in it in con tinuation of the nave- work, which, as has been pointed out, had from the first the motive of a certain masonic stiffness outside the ro mantic grace of the general Yorkshire Decorated. But now with all this, here as in the west end of Bever ley, are found immediately the panelled constructions of the Gloucester mason. Yorkshire and the East of England were particularly scourged by the Black Death, which returned again and again — but the west side of England suf fered less.1 One must be lieve that an influx of masons came from the Severn Valley to refill the decimated ranks of the craftsmen, and carried with them the Perpen dicular methods far and wide.2 At Edington (fig. 336), in the south of England, came in natural growth a different type, deriving from the same western origin. A breadth of wall- surface, and a generally less dependence on the panelled before 1332, Abbot Wigmore cased the Gloucester south transept before 1337, and Abbot Stanton vaulted the quire there be fore 1350. 1 After the second great visitation of the pestilence in 1361-1368, Parliament was held at Gloucester apparently because of 336. EDINGTON. WEST FRONT. its comparative immunity from the visita tions. 2 So the occurrence of the openwork tabernacle for Bishop Hatfield's throne at Durham, as already noted, p. 398, and of the Bristol and Hereford doorways at St. Nicholas, Lynn. 438 GOTHIC ART enrichment of surface, indicate descent from the solidities of Exeter. The segmental or flattened arch came here in 1360 — just as, too, in Bishop Edington's west front of Winchester — a sensible modification of the elaborate arch-fancies of the Bristol doorways : no less is the window CHRISTCHURCH, TWYNHAM. EAST END. design a reasonable architectural construction of broad panels suited to the big figure-work of the glass-painter ; while buttress, parapet and pinnacle have all a similar expression of straightforward mason-craft. Much in this style is the finishing of Bishop Grandison's Collegiate Church of St. Mary Ottery, which would be contemporary with Edington. But the great quire of Christchurch, Twynham, in Hampshire (fig. 2>2>7)> 338. CHRISTCHURCH, TWYNHAM. LADY-CHAPEL. 440 GOTHIC ART is the fine example of this southern craft of early Perpendicular. The clean-cut development of its architectural ideal, the dignity of its sim plicities, their independence of the fripperies of adornment, are significant after the trouble and fret of line, and the profligate exuberance that made so much of the Decorated manner. Yet there is no coldness or lack of ornament delicately, yet strongly, expressed ; externally the parapets are boldly quatrefoiled, nearly four feet high ; while the modelled heads and gabled pinnacles have a thirteenth-century grace, and a bold moulding, as in a thirteenth century Yorkshire abbey, bases the wall. Internally the vaulting is a combination of "fan M1 (fig. 338) and flat dome — each arch-rib of its network starting with the same curve, but afterwards dexterously modulated to its position in the dome. The whole shows a reasonable, straightforward adaptation of means to ends, and all with an easy variety ; with nothing forced for effect, but a calculation that has eliminated clumsiness, yet retained the sense of being spontaneous. And the planning has given to this detail a picturesqueness of light and shade, such as few Gothic interiors2 in England have been left to us to show still " unrestored." Its craft is the successor to that of Winchelsea, as that was to the beauties of Chichester and Netley — making a noble chain of the south-coast expression of Gothic Art, and showing in each century the distinctive feature of its style — in the thirteenth, sculptural ; in the fourteenth, romantically decorative; and now, in the fifteenth, vigorously architectural. Equally distinctive in its way was the passage of Decorated Art into the Perpendicular in East Anglia. Later here than elsewhere the Decorated detail and much of its instinct remained with a peculiar flavour derived from the conditions of the district. In the wall-decora tion, the native rubble waitings and the scarcity of weather-stone caused a rejection of the deep cut panellings of the west and north, and sub stituted a flat diapering of black and white in flint and chalkstone. The traceries have developed the straight lines, but in a different way from elsewhere, grafting them into the big ogee pattern instead of developing parallel niche-panels, and they show, too, a peculiar fineness and delicacy of cusping. Of this transitional art the beautiful chapel of Houghton-le- Dale (fig. 339), near Walsingham, is a well preserved specimen. But the lofty quire of Walsingham (fig. 340) itself has still its great ruined gable remaining in evidence of the scale and style of the Norfolk work of the Augustinians what came scarcely second in quality to their fifty- years earlier building in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. But the outcome of this "eastern" art was distinctively in its parish church-building— in St. Peter's, Mancroft, at Norwich, rather than in 1 Note the expression of the fan-vault 2 The retention of screen and stalls is of given by the attached corbel-pendants. course here the great preservative of effect. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 441 the cathedral apse ; in the great churches of Lynn, Boston, and Bury, rather than in the eastern aisle of Peterborough ; in the parish nave 339. HOUGHTON-LE-DALE. WEST FRONT. walled off from the monastic church at Wymondham, and the great parish aisle set at the side of the nave at Crowland. Into this de velopment, however, it is not proposed to follow it. The " northern " 3L 442 GOTHIC ART Transitional style, as it was elaborating at York, expressed itself in the great parish churches of Hull, Patrington, and Newcastle ; and in their spirit were built the south transept, that was the parish church of St. 340. WALSINGHAM. EAST FRONT. Oswald's, added to the monk's church at Chester ; and then, too, the new nave for the canon's church at Ripon. And the western craft of the masons of Gloucester and Bristol branched in two directions : in the midlands in great parish fabrics like those of Coventry and Not tingham, creating the expression that was afterwards built into the GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 443 abbeys of Malvern and Bath. While southwards this same craft, de veloping in churches such as St. Mary's, Redcliffe, or St. John's, Cirencester, laid the foundations of that Somersetshire type of parish church, which made its mark in the rebuilding of Sherborne Abbey as in the towers and clerestories of Taunton and Crewkerne ; just as the art of Edington and Ottery found continuation in Wykeham's cathedral nave at Winchester and Chillenden's at Canterbury — which were in effect parish church designs grown to the scale of the mightiest creations of the Norman monk. Thus the quires of Christchurch and Walsingham close the main chapter of the Gothic story in England, for their ideas, though survivals, were still part of that whole body of monastic building in which Gothic had arisen and flourished. But the abbey-building of the fifteenth century at Malvern, Sherborne, or Bath, had a different complexion, from the spirit of the mason-craft shown in the nave-rebuildings of cathedrals and minsters like Canterbury, Winchester, and Ripon, in touch with the great chapel-building of regal and episcopal foundations like St. Stephen's, Westminster ; New College, Oxford ; St. George's, Wind sor ; and King's College, Cambridge. The expression of all this architecture was, after 1400, one with that of the parish-church in the freemasonry of a craft that had grown secular and democratic in the atmosphere of the fifteenth century. After the Black Death Gothic art rose, as it were, for its second flight but with no such mission as that which had lifted it so high in its first. As stated in the preface, this review of English Gothic art has been attempted with a twofold object — first, in separating the English style from that of the Continent, to show that from the first Norman impulse of its Romanesque origin it ran an independent course ; and secondly, in again separating the different schools of English style, to define as far as oossible their local characters. Two causes have lately lessened the due appreciation of the national and unborrowed distinction of our first. Gothic— two causes that have really connected themselves : for the widespread " restoration" of mediaeval buildings, having the start in England, by lessening their beauties, made an undue appreciation forwhatwas still untouched abroad. So it became the widespread habit of English culture to look outside for its idea of art, and thus we have been made, as a rule, more acquainted with the Continental examples of Gothic than with our own. The very just admiration of the French architecture, as of the Italian painting and sculpture, has created a partisanship for the foreign forms of these arts, which seems rarely to leave room for a sense of the English mediaeval genius. A taste has been formed imperceptive and incredulous of 444 GOTHIC ART the native character of our Gothic : the non-existence of any dis tinguished English art, except as an importation from abroad, having been taken for granted as to ancient painting and sculpture, architec ture is dealt with under the same assumption, extended even to the denial of the history of English art. Our literary culture has shown little acumen in this matter. It may be admitted that abroad mediaeval architecture has very gener ally preserved an aspect with which the English cannot now compete ; for it still holds there the body of its concomitant tradition ; the faith of the mediaeval Church may give it still that perspective of life and religion which was the background of its display. Our remains of Gothic art have lost this setting, and the existing ecclesiastical furnishings of our cathedrals and churches can be very readily seen to be with out that sincerity of art-instinct which travellers have in memory from the genuine preservation, which exists, or lately existed, in so many great churches on the Continent. Still it is not a fair deduction, when in our churches some scrap of the ancient beauty has escaped the thrice- repeated mandates of annihilation that Dissolution, Puritanism and Restoration, have each in their turn executed, to stamp this beauty as necessarily of foreign-make because of its unlikeness to the poor parodies that are favoured by ecclesiastical authorities, and their architects. Yet when we find Dean Stanley convinced that the Torel, who made the Eleanor bronze, was an Italian ; and Professor Freeman, so positive with his haphazard assertion, that De Noyer of Lincoln was a " crazy Frenchman," it is not surprising that the latest guide-books to our cathedrals should describe the retable of Norwich as the work of an Italian artist of 1370 — the chancel screen at Exeter as erected by French workmen, and even the west front of that cathedral itself as a memory of French cathedrals. The presumption is clearly current that everything beautiful in our painting or sculpture must be Italian, and that everything striking in our mediaeval architecture must be French. Moreover, the official dilettante regime, which has stocked our museums with the " objets " of every nation and age, has given no protection to our great mediaeval art, and has mostly left it unrecorded, until it has been restored away.1 But it is strange that literary culture should have had so rarely any mind of its own, except to voice the conclusions of the dilettante absorbed solely in portable and saleable art. As it is, however, the sense of a great period in England, whose creations, wrought by English hands, have been the match of the greatest painting, 1 A cast from the original sculpture in South Kensington, as also a copy of the the Lincoln doorway is, however, now at Westminster retable, GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 445 sculpture, and architecture of the world, would seem as scarce in our literature as any specimens of its masterpieces in our museums. How much the history of our art is being clouded by this mis- appreciation may be judged when we find an authority like the late Professor Middleton — whose staunch opinion can be quoted : as to the true grade of English mediaeval art — as to the origin of its architecture, taking the cue from Professor Moore of Cambridge, in America, and undescribing our Gothic style as necessarily borrowed from the French. We seem, indeed, to have lately travelled backwards from that understanding of the case which, forty years ago, Sir G. G. Scott unhesitatingly gave in his lectures to the Royal Academy. "So far from our Gothic being an exotic, the country appears to have been actually saturated with transitional buildings ; and these, so far from showing any of the inaptitude which would accompany the use of mere imported style, actually evince a degree of originality and a revelry (if I may use the term) in the new art, which displays beauties wholly different from any I have seen in other countries." If, however, the writer of the above words unfortunately did his part in discrediting them, by, as at Chester, restoring away the very documents which were his evidence — yet to anyone looking behind "restoration," it is still clear that his words represent a fact that is patent throughout. To the object of making this plain as regards the real distinction of our thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Gothic, these pages have been largely devoted. But as to English fifteenth-century style, there is no need to labour to free this from the suspicion of French origin or French prompting ; though even here some people wish to read Flemish influences in what has no real likeness of repre sentation in Flanders itself. Surely the evident distinctions of the latest phases of Gothic Art, separating them so widely in France and the Netherlands, in Spain, in Italy, in south and north Germany, as well as in England and Scotland, can prevent any idea of our Perpen dicular style being taken for anything else but English. On the other hand, the attempt to individualize the local characters of Perpendicular is beyond the compass of these pages. As in its latest phases the families of Gothic grew numerous and distinct, so their genera and species became equally multiplied and individual in each country. A book by itself is needed to do justice to the last chapter of English Gothic. The structures of our parish churches have come down to us much as the fifteenth century artist left them : 1 See his " Illuminated Manuscripts " : and more especially on English soil, had "There is, in short, ample evidence to reached a higher pitch of perfection, sesthetic show that the Anglo-Norman Art of the and technical, than has been obtained by thirteenth century in almost all branches, any other country of the world." 446 GOTHIC ART his has been the final touch that to-day most usually makes their effects. The history of the Perpendicular style can be read as the local domesti cation of Gothic in churches that may be counted by the thousand throughout the length and breadth of our land. Up to the end of the fourteenth century there were broad provinces of style, which have had to be catalogued and discussed, in which examples could be taken from the great cathedral or monastic sources. But in the parish- church art, which gave the soul, as it made up the bulk of Perpendicular Gothic, it was no longer the diocese or monastery that in its district set a building-manner of its own, but in every county, batches of churches separate themselves as distinctive. Moreover, this wide and interest ing field has been but little explored. If such prominent difference as that of the church-building of Norfolk from that of Somerset, or that of the Yorkshire fifteenth-century from the Devonshire has been recognized, there remain some score of others waiting to be characterized, The investigation of Gothic style has been most largely of its detail, but only up to 1400 was there that continual progress in this easily recognized attribute to justify the exclusive attention given to this side of the story. The advance of Perpendicular was no longer condi tioned by detail, which remained practically the same from the build ing of Gloucester quire to that of its Lady-chapel — or from the west front of Winchester to that of King's College chapel — periods of nearly 150 years. The history of our latest Gothic is written not in the carving of the banker-mason, but in the larger usage — the architecture of the building-mason. The words and the theme were those in com mon use, but the tale had still a different telling in every countryside : for the artist had his local audience, and played up to their humours. So Perpendicular is the art of the most completely local in dividuality, yet of the widest democracy. They had been the great aristocracies that had governed the earlier Gothic styles : the priest in the thirteenth and the noble in the fourteenth had made, in large areas, the usage and design of building, if to the craftsman was left the detail in the smaller areas of quarry distribution. But now the crafts man was master in his own house ; his was now both the spirit and the detail of an architecture that had come down to the service of the masses and took distinction in the smallest areas, where communities were growing in the power of trade every day freer from the bondage of monk and lord. No longer was it priest and knight that commanded, but the mason worked his fancies for the public opinion of traders and guildsmen, his fellow members in fraternities or associations as demo cratic and self governing, as local in their interests, as the Parish Council or the Benefit Clubs of to-day. His art was for his fellows, among whom the mystery of his craft was in esteem ; so that in the life of GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AFTER 1350 447 his town and countryside the architect craftsman ranked with the highest. In the view of such conditions fifteenth-century church-building is interesting: its essence lies in this individualism of local expression, by which church-building and house-building were assimilated, because the church was the great house of the parish — -built with the pride and interest of personal occupation, with conception and adornment alike given it at the hands of its own people. And still in these hands lay the art of a great building tradition — one incapable of further development, but still the matured style of a great period with the bloom fresh upon it. The varying applications of this art in the solid homely sense of English life can be read in the make of our parish churches ; and so we ought to study them, country side by countryside, noting their fancies and their shifts, their love and their simplicity, and praising the fathers that begat us. If this art has been accounted homely (and it has been despised as such), yet of this it was that William Morris wrote eloquently in the words quoted in the first chapter. Homely, perhaps, but the pleasure of this home-sense is the true note of the English character.. Displayed in varying humours, the flavour of it was to be tasted in thousands of village churches up to our day, making the interest and beauty of them, as of genuine works of a great national art, overlaid by later occupa tions, yet not denied and scouted, but rather echoed and enforced by the necessities of succeeding generations. Up to our day ! but it has been the iniquity of revival Gothic, that in place of building churches of its own for the display of its theories, it has laid its cuckoo egg in the nests of this old English beauty. Few, indeed, are the village churches now left, where the intruder has not trampled out the rightful nestlings — the sim plicities of local feeling. In their place have been set over-wrought mimicries of ecclesiastic style, the reproductions of a fancied ritual, and, withal, the Early English detail of the Yorkshire abbey, the Decorated luxury of the cathedral. In an interest alien to the native beauty have been imported into Kent the Northamptonshire spire, and the Norfolk flint-panelling into Devonshire — with an intemperate zeal have been thrust in the geometrical orthodoxy of tracery, the elaborate porch, the weathered buttress, the laboured parapet and pinnacle — all the fashion of the "best style," which was only a mistaken sham in a village church, where expression lay in the very opposite of such imported interests — whose simple local craftsmanship could be only stifled in the atmosphere of a commercial building-use, founded on professional at tainment, and execution by contract. Yet was not the wayside flower despised thus and too often rooted out, more precious than any exotic cultivation of our doctored taste ? 448 GOTHIC ART Surely it had a history and a meaning which outvalued the showy smartness of " restoration," what was as the beauty and fitness of the native flora, part of the traditional landscape of English life. The form of the Parish Church was the Saxon contribution to our English Gothic. \ Its square east end, its wooden roof, its western tower, lived on in our art, outstaying the apse, the vault, and the spire of the great era of monastic building, which has been traced from its first step towards Gothic in the Confessor's Abbey, till, in the Christchurch and Walsing ham quires it had wellnigh finished its course. j Honoured still in our churches is our Saxon planning — we treasure its history. But was not just as precious the conservation of Saxon feeling that lay in the homely simplicities of the village church, handed on in its constructions till, in the fifteenth century, they expanded to the grace and glory of a fresh inspiration, come as an autumn glow into our latest Gothic ? Yes ! Our village art of Perpendicular is not to be despised because it came too late to be Decorated or Early English. The fifteenth century was to our Gothic Art an Indian summer, whose suns might seem to recall the splendour of June, though their golden haze told of a past, not a future of brightness, though their warmth brought the remembrance but had not the creativeness of spring, with brilliant hues that were of the falling leaf, not of the budding flower of Gothic. INDEX * Indicates illustration given. p Indicates plan given. Abacus, square planned, 120; round do., 120, 266; XII. cent, south-eastern, 109*, 155*; do. western octagonal, 108*, 158; do. northern, 108*, 159*. Acton Burnell church, XIII. cent, plan, 56 p. Aisle, in small church planning, 55 ; chantry, 175; eastern, 192,225,226; transept, 229. Amiens cathedral, area and cubic contents of, 30; French type, 8i#; XIII. cent, pier, 307; do. vault, 307*; do. statuary at, 331. Apse, in early church plan, 49, 52, 53; two types of in Norman building, 6 1 seq. ; English rejection of, 40, 48, n. 5, 53 ; survival of in Cistercian churches, 18, n. 2, 76*, 169. Arbroath abbey, XIII. cent, west front, 218. Arch, Pointed, pedigree of, 84, 85 ; early northern use of, 85, 86 ; early western use of, 86, 87 ; in bay-design, 98 seq . ; in windows, 122-125. „ Trefoil, 126, 127. „ XIV. cent, ogee, 398. „ XV. cent, flattened, 27. Arcadings, foundation of thirteenth century decoration, 257 ; northern use of, 124, 125; English method of with statuary, 213, 424, 430. Areas and dimensions, of great churches, 30, 31, 32; of Romanesque churches, 34; of Norman building in England, 34, 35, 64; of English churches, 31, 32, 40, 164; of French churches, 30; of "chapters," 234 seq., 319; of " infirmaries and halls," 241 seq. ; of transepts, 39, 196, 208 ; of west fronts, 38, 217; of east fronts, 40, 194, 336 seq. Art, caprice of, 1 ; independence of, 6 ; great periods of, 7, 8. See also Craftsmanship. Auckland, Bishop; late XII. cent. Hall, 37, 243; do. pier-section, 108*; do. arch- section, 116*. Augustinian building, XII. cent, extent of, 32i 33J XIII. cent, do., 168; XIV. cent. do., 333 seq. ; destruction of, 32, 41, 83, 333 seq., 365 ; quire type in, 29, 71 ; quire developments in, 77; XII. cent, bay-de signing in, 103 ; XIII. cent, fronts, 220 seq. Authorities : " Archaeologia," 18, n. 1, 254, n. 1. "Archaeologia y£liana," 178, n. 2, 179, n. 1. "Archaeological Journal," 174, n. 2. "Ass. Soe. Rep.," 285, n. 1. Bilson, "Archseologia," 319, 11. 1. Bloxam, M. H, "Prin. Gothic Arch.," 57, n. 4, 58, n. 1, 85, 11. 1, 88, n. 3, 131, n. 1, 132, n. 1. Britton, J., "Arch. Antiq.," 133, n. 1. Browne, J., "York Cath.," 285, n. 2. Burgess, W., "Salis. Chapter," 284, n. 2. Cattaneo, "Arch. Ital.," 50, n. 1, 62, n. 3. Church, C. M., 69, n. 1, 134, n. 1. Cockerell, C. R., "Icon. Wells," 295, n. 1. Corroyer, " L' Architecture Gothique," n, 13. Mi «• 1. 3o6» n- 2- Cox, "Arch. Journ.," 4, n. 1. De Vogue", 142, n. 1. Fergusson, J., "Hist. Arch.," 34, n. 5, 61, n. 2. Ferrey, "St. Paul's," 203, n. 2. Freeman (Canon), " Exeter Fabric Rolls," 352, n. 1, 401, n. 2. Freeman, Prof., 213, 444; "Norman Conquest," 20, n. 1, 300, n. 1; "Window Tracery," 310, 340, n. 1. Gervase, 12, 42, 65, n. 3, 129, n. 4. Giraldus Cambrensis, 43, n. 5. "Gloucester Chron.," 140, n. 1, 325, n. 1, 362, n. r, 432, n. 2. Gonse, "L'Art Gothique," 13, 14. «• 2, 161, n. 1, 370, n. 1. Green, J. R., "History of Eng. Peo.," 43, 44. M 450 INDEX Authorities — continued. Hamlin, Prof., 14, n. 3. "Hist. Dunelm.," 10, n. 3. Hoare, "Wilts," 292, n. 1. Hodgson, " Auckland Castle," 243, n. 4. Hollar, "Prints," 164, n. 1, 202. Hope, St. John, 407, n. 3. Honecort, Wilars de, 71, n. 3. Hugh of Lincoln, "Metrical Life of," 14, n. 2. Inkersley, T., " Styles in France," 332, n. 1. Jackson, T. G, "St. Mary's, Oxford," 3,- n. 2, 423, n. 3. James, J. T, " Ely Lady-chapel," 415, n. 1. Keyser, C. E., "Mural Paintings," 292, n. 1. Lethaby and Swainson, 139, n. 3. Longman, W., "St. Paul's," 78, 203, n. 2. Malmesbury, William of, 68, n. 1, 69, n. 3, 93, n. 1. Map, W. de, 18, n. 1. Micklethwaite, J. T., "Arch. Journal," 47, n. 6, 48, n. 2, 49, nn. 1, 6, 7, 52, n. 2, 53, n. 1. Middleton, J H, "Illustrated MS.," 14, n. 3, 128, nn. 2, 3, 4, 445. Moore, C. H, "Gothic Architecture," 11, 13, n. 1, 14, n. 2, 99, n. 1, 445. Morris, W., 5, 28. Oman, "Mediae. War," 140, n. 4. Papworth, W., "R.I.B.A. Trans.," 169, n. 1, 435. «¦ i- Paris, Mat., 162, n, 3, 251, n. 2, 254, n. 1, 320, n. 1. Park, Harrison, 52, n. 2, 62, tz. i. Parker, J. H, "Intro. Gothic Architecture," 15, 19, n. 1. "Piers Plowman's Vision," 24, n. 1. Pugin, A., 5. Rickman, T., " Styles of Arch.," 43, n. 2. Ruskin, J., 5 ; "Stones of Venice," 126; "Seven Lamps," 310. Scott, Sir G. G., "Lectures," 3, n. 1, 15, 88, n. 1, 94, n. 2, 108, n. 3, 137, n. 1, 196, n. 2, 230, n. 2, 301, n. 1, 445. Scott, G., " Hist. Church Arch.," 20, n. r, 47, n. 2, 48, n. 5, 49, n. 3, 65, n. 2, 301, n. 1, 310, n. 1, 434, n. 2. Sharpe, E., "Trans. Arch.," 16, 300. Spiers, P.,' "R.I.B.A. Journal," 58, n. 2. Stanley, A. P., "Westm. Abb.," 320, n. 1, 330, n. 2, 444. Starkie Gardner, "R.I.B.A. Trans.," 274, n. 1. Stothard, C. A, "Mon. Effig.," 294, n. 3, 421, n. 5. Street, G. E., "Christchurch Cathedral," 43, n. 5 ; "R.I.B.A. Trans.," 60, n. 4, 7°> »¦ 1. 355. «• !• Texier, " Asi. Min.," 62, 72. 2. Turner, H.,"Dom. Arch., "162, ». 2, 244,72.3. Turner, J. M. W., "Lib. Stud.," 368, n. 1, Viollet le Due, " Diet, de l'arch. francaise," 10, 18, n. 5, 38, n. 1, 40, 42, 61, n. 1, 92, n. 1, 97, n. 2, 129, nn. 2, 3, 209, n. -1, 255, n. 1, 265, 306, nn. 1, 3, 307, "• 4> 359 5 " Gentleman's Magazine," 19, n. 3 ; " Entretiens," 30. Westlake, "Hist. Paint. Glass^" 130, n. 2. Westmacott, Sir R., " Archae. Joum.,"422, ». 2. Whitaker, "Hist. Craven," 333, n. 5. Willis, Prof., "Cant. Cath.," 15; "Cant. Convent," 44, n. 2 ; "Arch. Journ.," 39, n. 2; "Vaulting," 35, «.. 1, "Glaston bury," 77, n. 1 ; "Worcester," 91, n.2. Winstone, "Glass Painting," 432, n. 1. Worcester, William of, 222, n. 1. Wren, Sir C, "Drawings," 164, 203, n. 1. Base, Romanesque and Gothic, 1 14* ; XIII. cent, moulds, 257. Barn-building, 355. Barnack church, XII. cent, spire, 370. Bath abbey, Romanesque nave, 35 ; do. di mensions, 64; do. pier-section, 98*. Battle abbey XIV. cent, gatehouse, 369. Bay-design, XII. cent. Gothic, 98, 104; do. Augustinian, 103*, 182; do. Benedictine, 99*, 100*; do. English, 102*; do, French, 100, 101*; do. Parish church, 104*. „ Purbeck shaft in, 113. „ XIII. cent, two-storeyed, 181* seq.; do. three-storeyed, 197* seq., 202* seq. „ XIV. cent, two-storeyed, 350*; dp. northern type, 350* seq.; do. southern type, 352* seq.; do. three-storeyed, 364*; do. "perpendicular," 361* seq. Beaulieu abbey, XIII. cent, chevet, 18, 169 ; do. refectory, 239. Beauvais cathedral, 10; area of, 30; XIII. cent, spire, 269. Beleigh abbey, XIII. cent, "chapter," 231*; do. painting, 231*, 275. Benedictine building, in England, 33, 35 ; conservatism of, 36, 37, 168, 229; bay- design in, 98, gg; "chapters" in, 233; Lady-chapels in, 168. INDEX 45i Bernay (Normandy) abbey, plan, 59. Bernieres (Normandy) church, steeple, 368*. Beverley colleg. church, XIII. cent, quire • bay, 199*, 350.; do. transept front, 200*; do. font, 297; do. "chapter," 319; XIV. cent, Percy tomb, 330, 391* 395, 418; do. west front, 437. „ St. Mary's church, XIV. cent, porch, 384, 394 ; do. niches at, 394 ; do. sculpture at, 418. Bindon abbey, XII. cent, plan of, 66 p. Binham priory, XIII. cent, west front, 309* ; do. window-transom, 348. Bishops, versus Benedictines, 36; neo-monastic alliance with, 37 ; XIII. cent, building of, 163, 164; do. quire enlargements of, 165; not the Gothic artists, 327. See also Builders. Bishops Canning church, XIII. cent, chancel, 171. Bolton abbey, XIII. cent, west front, 218*, 221 ; XIV. cent, quire, 335, 340. Boston church, 56, 366, 441 ; XIV. cent. bay-design, 352; do. "stump," 375; do. pinnacle, 404*. Boxgrove priory, Romanesque cloister, 257; XIII. cent, quire, 179*, i8o#; do. bay, 181*. Bradford on Avon, Saxon church, 48 p. Bradsole abbey, Premonstratensian plan, 66 p. Brecon priory, XHI. cent, bay of chancel, 172*. Bredon church, XII. cent, porch, 54; do. chancel arch, 84* ; do. chantry aisle, 175 ; XIV. cent, sedilia, 392*. Breton style, connected with English, 332, 333 ; tomb niches in, 399. Bridlington abbey,. 334; XIV. cent, bay design, 350. Bristol abbey, XII. cent, vaults, 89; XIII. cent. Lady-chapel, 229; do. arcaded win dows of, 260, 314; XIV. cent, quire, 348 seq., 362 ; do. end, 349* ; do. vault section, 350*; quire vault, 359, 363, 380; do. front, 336, 348; do. sedilia, 399*, 400; do. carvings, 411. „ Mayors' chapel, XIII. cent, windows, 3!4- „ St. Mary Redcliffe church, 361, 443; XIV. cent, porch, 399. Brixworth, Saxon plan, 49 p. Broadwater, church, XII. cent, chancel, 53 p- Builders, Founders, and Patrons : Kings: Ethelred, 52; Canute, 53; Edward the Confessor, 34, 59 ; William the Con queror, 34 ; William Rufus, 34, 243 ; Henry I., 35, 65, 66, 67 ; Stephen, 68 ; Henry IL, 36, 65, 69, 70, 86, 92, 155, 161, 232; Richard I., 43, 44, 217; Philip Augustus of France, 21, 146, 161 ; John, 161, 162, 217; Henry III., 14, 19, 162, 163, 229, 320, 356; Edward I. and Eleanor, 167, 299, 365. Ecclesiastics : St. Augustine, 49 ; Stephen Harding, 70; St. Francis, 167; St. Ber nard, 167. Archbishops of Canterbury : Lanfranc, 13, 34, 36» 54, 60, 72; Anselm, 72 ; Cor- beuil, 18; Baldwin, 36, 43; Langton, 162, 166. Do. of York: Thurston, 37; Roger, 16, 37, 39, 74, 75, 92, i°5> l9* > Gray, 163, 196, 218, 327, 356. Do. of Dublin : O'Toole, 43, 227. Bishops : Chichester, Sigfried, 32. Coventry, Hugh, 36. Durham, Carileph, 60, 93 ; Pudsey, 1 6, 37, 43, 57, 74, 86, 108, 172, 243. Ely, Simon, 60; North wold, 168. Exeter, Warelwast, 7 1 ; Marshall, 7 1 ; Quivil, 352; Grandisson, 438; Staple- don, 401. Hereford, de Lossing, 69. Lichfield, de Langton, 356, 379. Lincoln, Remigius, 60; Alexander, 163; St. Hugh, 14, 21, 39, 71, 74, 88, 97, 121, 163, 204, 236; Hugh II., 163, 204, 327; Grosstete, 163. Llandaff, Urban, 69. Norwich, Lusinga, 60. Rochester, Gundulph, 18, 60, 69, 219; Ernulph, 43, 127; de Ros, 168. Salisbury, Roger, 18, 43; Poore, 163, 191, 194, 327; Bingham, 164; Brid- port, 164. St. Davids, de Leia, 32, 69, 85 ; Gower, 379, 396- Wells, Reginald, 32, 69; Savanc, 36; . Jocelyn, 69, 163, 215, 244, 327. Winchester, Walkelyn, 60, 1 14; De Blois, 21, 68, 76; De Lucy, 16, 40, 139; Edington, 435; Wykeham, 36, 114, 184, 35i, 435, 443- Worcester, . St. Wulstan, 91;" de Page- ham, qi. 452 INDEX Builders, Founders, and Patrons — continued. Abbots : Beaulieu, 169. Bristol, Knowle, 348, 362, 430, 437. Chester, Simeon of Whitchurch, 227, 356 ; Geoffrey, 227. Gloucester, Serlo, 60 ; Wigmore, 362, 43°, 437 ; Stanton, 362, 437; Horton, 434- St. Albans, Paul, 60 ; John de Cella, 39, 217. St. Edmunds Bury, 60. Priors : Canterbury, Conrad, 39, 72, 130, 139; Ernulph, 43, 219; D'Estria, 366; Chil- lenden, 184, 351, 443. Ely, Walsingham, 365. Rochester, de Hoo, 15. Masons : De Noyer, 14, 95, 97, 121, 204, 444. Durandus, 169. John of Battle, 254. Michael of Canterbury, 254. Richard of Farleigh, 373, 429. Richard of How, 254. Richard of Stowe, 376, 406. Robert and Richard Crundale, 254. Robertus of Salisbury, 328. Wilars de Honecort, 71. Walter (William) of Coventry, 15. William the Englishman, 15, 21, 83, 92, "3, *38- William of Sens, 14, 15, 16, 19, 83, 85, 94, 109, !38, J54- Buildwas abbey, XII. cent, nave arches 86*, 115 ; do. windows, 122. Burford church plan, 55 p. Bury St. Edmunds abbey, 35, 62 p. ; date, 64; area, 34; XII. cent, west front, 38; do. transept, 38 ; XIV. cent, gateway ; XV. cent, churches of, 441. Buttresses, mid XIII. cent., 318; XIV. cent. Yorkshire, 336; do. flying, 405, Byland abbey, 76 p. ; XII. cent, arch-section, 115*; do. west front, 126*; do. capitals, 142*, 144*, 147*. Caen, St. Stephen's abbey, area, 34, 59 p. Caen stone. See Masoncraft, French. Cambridge : St. Benet's church, Saxon tower, 5 1 ; do. abacus, 120. St. Radegunde's nunnery, XIII. cent. "chapter," 235. St. Mary the Less church, XIV. cent:, 365, 366. King's College chapel, 443. Canterbury cathedral, 73 p.; relics at, 166; master masons at, 15, 19, 21, 83 ; Norman dimensions of, 64; final length of, 40; late XI. cent, quire enlargement, 72; do. east transept, 39, 65; do. crypt, 142; do; carvings, 140; do. wall-painting, 129; do. images and screens, 131 ; XII. cent, quire, 14 seq., 21, 72; do. crypt, 92, 120, 192; do. vault, 92* 94*; do. bay, 85, 101*; do. pier-sections, 109*; do. arch-sections, 117*; do. base-sections, 92, 114*, 155*; do. vault-ribs, 157*; do. glass painting, 131 ; do. sculpture, 138; XIII. cent, carv ing, 262 ; XIV. cent, quire-screen, 390*, 402 ; A. B. Peckham's tomb, 388 ; A. B. Meopham's tomb, 391 ; monument of Black Prince, 401, 420; late XIV. cent. nave, 253, 443; XII. cent, infirmary, 242 p.; XIV. cent, chapel of do., 366 ; kitchen, 246 ; cloister (Romanesque), 237 ; XIII. cent. "chapter," 223; do. Prior's sedile, 390. „ St. Martin's and St. Pancras plans, 52. „ St. Augustine's abbey, XIV. cent, gate way, 378. Capital, XII. cent, plain, 120; do. leafage, 137 seq.; do. northern "bell," 141, 142; do. southern " cushion," 142 ; XIII. cent. plain, 264, 265 ; do. leafage, 265 seq. ; do. French type, 265 ; do. Caen type, 266 ; XIV. cent, carved, 411. Carlisle cathedral, XIV. cent, quire, 336 ; do. east window, 340. Carpentry, in vaults, 3 1 7, 354; in ceilings, 35 5 ; in steeples, 371 ; in screen works, 392, 393. Cartmel priory, XII. cent, moulding, 118; XIV. cent, tomb, 398. Cashel, St. Cormac's chapel, 47 p. Castle Acre priory, Cluniac foundation of, 35 ; XII. cent, nave-bay, 99*. Cathedrals, English and French compared, 78-82; first Gothic building of, 31, 32; Lincoln and Salisbury compared, 204 seq., 210, 211; divisions of thirteenth century, 165 ; the grouping of do. with surround ings, 245. Caudebec (Normandy), St. Saturnin plan, 52 ; Flamboyant church, 333. Chancel, in early planning, 53 ; XIII. cent. development of, 169, 170; do. aisled, 174, 175; XIV. cent, southern, 366; do. Mid- England, 367. INDEX 453 Chapels, eastern high gabled, 195, 224; do. low aisled, 72, 224 seq. ; transept, 229. Chapter-houses, early vaultings of, 88, 89; thirteenth century types of, 2345^.; Bene dictine, 234; Cistercian, 235; polygonal, 236, 319; do. as examples of Mid-Gothic style, 318; do. tabulated list, 319; do. as halls of state, 319; Salisbury and West minster, 320, 321; York and Wells, 322 seq. Chartres, French type of cathedral, 82* ; XIII. cent, sculpture, 256 ; XIV. cent. east chapel, 306 ; spires of, 369. Cherry Hinton church, XIII. cent, chancel, 171*. Chertsey abbey, XIII. cent, tiles from, 382*. Chester abbey, late XI I. cent, caps., 143; XIII. cent, quire, 227; do. "chapter," 234 p. ; do. refectory, 239*, 240; XIV. cent, quire, 356 ; do. shrine of S. Werburgh, 289 ; do. stalls, 402 ; do. transept, 39, 442. „ St. John's colleg. church, XII. cent. nave-bay, 104*; do. arch-section, 115*. Chevet, in France, 18, 40, 79; in England, 18, 169, 203. Chichester cathedral, 74 p. ; XII. cent. Lady- chapel, 69; do. capitals, 146, 268; late do. rebuilding, 32; do. presbytery, 72; do. vault, 94* ; do. bay, 102* ; do. pier-section, 109*; do. carvings, 135*; XIII. cent. spire, 222; do. chapels, 229; do. porches, 232; do. capitals, 268; early XIV. cent. Lady-chapel, 228*, 317*; do. windows, 316, 345 ; XIII. cent, effigy of lady, 296; weepers on coffin, 297*. „ St. Mary's hosp., late XIII. cent, plan, 242; do. window, 316*, 340; do. screen, 392*, 393 ; do. sedilia, 390 ; do. piscina carving, 409. Chivalry in fourteenth century art, 23, 25, 330 seq. ; pomp of, in Yorkshire style, 333 ; romance of, at Exeter, 353 ; romance of, at Tewkesbury, 361; heraldry of, in Decora tion, 334, 407 seq. ; in fourteenth century subject-painting, 4 1 5 ; in fourteenth century sculpture, 417; decay of, 428. ChristChurch. See Dublin; London; Oxford, St. Frideswide's. Christchurch (Hants.) priory, XIII. cent. porch, 232, 279; do. nave windows, 260; , do. chapels of transept, 231 ; do. tracery of . windows, 315 ; late XIV. cent, screen, 402, 403*, 424; do. figures, 424*; do. east front, 438* ; do. Lady-chapel, 439*, 44°- Choir, early and late positions of, 72, 75' n. 2 ; in XIII. cent, church, 164. Church-plan : Small, 47 seq. ; Keltic element in, 47 ; early chamber type of, 48, 52, 249; early Basilican type of, 49 ; early mid-towered type of, 51, 52; early cross-plained type of, 52 seq., 250, 251; developments of, 55 seq. ; XIV. cent, do., 253, 365 seq., 376. Great, 57 seq.; pedigree of, 58; Roman esque development of, 59; Norman developments in England, 60; apsed types in England, 61 ; eastern and west ern types in England, 62 seq. ; square- ended development, 65, 70; neo-monastic development, 66 ; bishops' development, 67 ; transeptal development, 38, 39 ; eastern projection in, 69 ; high fronts in, 71 ; spreading chapels in, 72 ; quire development, cathedrals, 72 seq. ; quire development, Cistercian, 76 ; quire de velopment, northern, 77 ; XIII. cent. changes in, 165, 166; XIV. cent, do., 253*> 365 seq., 376. Cistercian building, style of in England not "French," 18; architectural influence of, 21, 37, i27; early extent of, 31, 153; XIII. cent, do., 168, 169; destruction of, 31, 41, 83; do. in Lincolnshire, 121, 160; western style of, 86, 115, 152, 183; northern do., 86, 91, 92, 106, n6#, 158, 190, 264; early quire-type of, 29*; later developments of plan in, 76*; arcaded uses of, r25; bay-design of, 86, 183, 350; corbel uses in, 106; thirteenth century, moulded art of, 189; rejection in of Bene dictine decoration, 127, 279; do. of figure sculpture, 134; do. of bell-towers, 246; leafage carving of, 140 seq. ,, "chapters," 235, 236; "fraters," 238; infirmaries, 242 ; general grouping of, 238, 264. Clerestory, XII. cent., 103*, 104; XIII. cent., 1785^.; XIV. cent., 350, 360. See also Bay-design. Cluniac building, not "French" in style, 18 extent of in England, 35, 37 ; areas of churches, 35 ; narthex-hall in, 38 ; "obedi ence " of, 88 ; early square-ended churches, 70; influence of in decoration, 129. See also Lewes, Castle Acre, Wenlock. Cluny abbey, area, 34; XII. cent, eastern transept, 65. 454 INDEX Colour decoration, XII. cent., 24, 129, 130; do. constructional, 121 ; XIII. cent, at Salisbury, 207, 208; do. at Wells, 215; do. on walls, 275*, 294*; do. on sculpture, 284; do. on effigies, 296; do. mosaic and enamel, 288, 390, 408; XIV. cent, on leaf-carving, 410, 414 ; do. constructional, 365, 440; modern, at Salisbury, 207, 284; do. at Canterbury, 233. Conques abbey, XI. cent, plan of, 59 p. Constantinople, S. Sophia, dome of, 58 ; building, method of, 139. Corbel, XII. cent, 105 seq. ; XIII. cent. sculpture of, 271, 272. Coutances cathedral, "Caen" capitals of, 306; do. piers of, 307. Coventry : St. Michael's church, 56 ; XIV. cent. steeple, 373* seq. ; do. plan, 442. Trinity church, late XIV. cent, plan, 442. Cowden church, XIII. cent, spire, 372*. Craft companies, early indistinctness of, 139; XIII. cent, creation of, 254, 293, 294, 325; XIV. cent, developments, 428, 429 ; painters, at Venice, 293. Craftsmanship, titles of, 139, 254, 255 ; prac tical sense in, 96 ; early solidarity of, 139 ; separations of, 325, 329, 331 ; in service of fourteenth century chivalry, 331 ; after 135°, 428, 429, 446- Crocket in moulding, 112*, 262, 263; in early capitals, 142 seq., 143*, 144*; in thir teenth century capitals, 265 seq. ; Ely or central type, 267*; Chichester or southern type, 268; Wells or western type, 269; Lincoln or northern type, 269, 270. Crowland abbey, XIII. cent, figure bracket at, 273; do. statuary at, 273; do. west doorway, 282* ; memorial slab, 383*; XV. cent, aisle, 441. Croxden abbey, XII. cent, chevet, 18, 76 p., 189; XIII. cent, west front, 222, 309*. Crusaders, in Cistercian building, 141. Crypt, early confessional, 49; XIII. cent., 192. Cwm-hir abbey, late XII. cent, nave, 31 ; do. pier-section, 108*; do. arch-section, 116*; do. capitals, 148*. Dalmeny church, early plan of, 52 p. Darlington colleg. church, 57 p.; XII. cent. exterior, 172*; do. arch-section, 116*. Decorative art : Romanesque, Keltic elements of, 128; Norse elements of, 128, 132; Roman elements of, 128; Cluniac influence oh, 129, 136; crusading influence on, 140. German, beginnings of, 129, n. 3. Gothic, origin in Cistercian austerity, 127, 279; compared with Romanesque, 152, 259 ; thirteenth century, motives of, 256 seq.; analysis of do., 258 seq.; textural motives in do., 274 seq., 277 ; spandrel reservations in do., 278, 279; late thir teenth century developments, 289 seq., 299 ; fourteenth century, the niche in, 381 seq. ; do. accessory character.of, 383, 408; later tendencies of, 414, 415, 429, 43°- Deerhurst church, early tower, 50 ; late XII. cent, capitals at, 146*. Devizes, St. John's church, XII. cent, vaulted chancel, 68; do. pointed arch, 85; do. cross plan, 250. ,, St. James's church, chancel, 68. Dingle (Ireland), Gallerus' oratory, 47 p. Dominicans. See Friars. Doorway. See Arch. Dorchester (Oxon.) abbey, early XIV. cent. windows, 339* 343, 347 ; do. sedilia, 394. Dore abbey, late XII. cent, quire, 76 p., 183*; do. vaults, 92; do. arches, 86*; do. corbels, 106*; do. arch-section, 116*; do. papitals, 142, 143*, 144* ; do. Eastern chapels, 225*; do. "Chapter," 236. Dormitory, XIII. cent., 240. Dover, Saxon church, 51 p. ; St. Martin's church, 18. Dublin, Christ Church cathedral, foundation and dimensions, 32, 69; late XII. cent. plan, 227 ; do. bay-design, 69, 105 ; XIII. cent, nave, 184*; sculpture, 142. Dunblane cathedral, XIII. cent, west end, 192*; do. front, 221. Dunmow abbey, XIV. cent, quire, 32, 365 ; do. window tracery, 346. Dunstable abbey, XII. cent, bay-design, 103 ; XIII. cent, front, 221*; do. dogtooth of, 261. Durham cathedral, 201 p.; Romanesque build ing, 64 ; Benedictine conservatism of, 37 ; XII. cent. Galilee at, 38; do. "chapter" vault, 88; "chapter," 233 ; do. nave vault, 92, 93*; do. pier-section, 98*; do. do. of Galilee, 108; do. figure sculpture, 131 ; do. carving in library, 136*; XIII. cent. " Nine Altars," 194*^.; do. carving, 266, 270; do. dormitory, 240.; do. kitchen, 240; XIV. cent, reredos at, 388; Bishop Hatfield's .tomb, 398. INDEX 455 Early English. See English Gothic, styles and phases of. Easby church, XIII. cent, paintings at, 293*, 294*; do. east window, 313*. „ St. Agatha's abbey, Premonstratensian building of, 32 ; XIII. cent, refectory, 240 ; do. window, 315*; do. gatehouse, 378. Ecclesiastic influence, not " French," in Eng land, 20, 21; incidence of upon art, 45, 46; golden age of in England, 23, 162; privilege of in great church planning, 165; do. in small church planning, 169; upon sculpture, 256; not responsible for art, 327. Edington colleg. church, early Perpendicular of, 435, 437*; XIV. cent, tomb at, 401. Effigies; early, 130; XIII. cent, 287, 296; XIV. cent, wood and stone, 421 ; do. ala baster, 422. Egilsey church, Keltic plan, 47 p. Egglestone abbey, XIII. cent, east window, 313*; do. nave window, 313*- Eleanor crosses, accounts of, 254; style of, 326, 385, 394. Elgin cathedral, style of, 192; XIII. cent. west front, 218. Elm church, XIII. cent, plan, 56 P., 252. Elton church, Northamptonshire type, 251*; XIII. cent, spire, 366. Ely: -^i&te. Cathedralf^oi p. ; Romanesque building of, 35, 64; do. western transept of, 38, 213; do. squared apse, 65 ; do. Infirmary, 242 ; do. pier-section, 98* ; do. painting and carving, 129, 130; XIII. cent. Galilee porch, 112, 131, 232; do. pres bytery bay, 201,242*; do. trefoil curving, 267*; do. corbels, 272; do. east front, 202, 336 ; XIV. cent, crossing, 364 ; do. lantern, 374; do. quire-bay, 364*; do. quire pinnacles, 402, 405 ; do. Lady- chapel, 168 ; do. window, 346*, 348; do. carvings, 364, 417; do. arcade, 389*, 395- Crauden chapel, XIV. cent, tracery, 341; do. sedilia, 395. Abbey gateway, "Porta," 378. St. Mary's church, XII. cent, moulding, 118; XIII. cent, chantry, 1 75 ; do. spire, 374- Emneth church, 252 ; XIII. cent. caps, at, 147. Engineering, development in French Gothic, 328; development in English Gpthic, 434- English Gothic, humour of, 10; no branch"" of French, 13, 19; authorities on, 13, 14, 15; erroneous views of, 13, 14, 301, 306; styles and phases of, 21, 22 ; succession of social motives in, 23, 446; do. of style motives in, 24, 25 ; do. of hobbies in, 26, 27 ; W.Morris's description of, 28; the first buildings of, 32, 33, 41; the "great church" of, 79 seq. ; first style of, 83 seq. ; early local provinces of, 152 seq. ; pause in its style, 161 ; XIII. cent, character of, 162 seq. ; do. Scottish branch from, 190; do. distinction from French, 255 ; do. summit and decline of, 298, 299; 1250 change of motive in, 300 seq. ; approach to French, 304, 305 ; reaction on French, 306, 337; expression of in chapter-house, 319 seq. ; XIV. cent, changes in, 329 ; do. in dividuality in, 329, 361, 363; do. effect of Black Death on, 25, 427; do. effect of French wars on, 427. ,, Quire-type of, 40, 72, 167 ; chancel-type of, 40, 170 ; bay-type of, 102 ; vault-type of, 88, 96, 202, 316, 357; steeple-type of, 367 ; carving-type of, 131, 265. Escombe Saxon church, 48 p. Evesham abbey, XIII. cent, "chapter," 319 ; do. alabaster sculpture, 422. Exeter cathedral; XIII. cent, "chapter," 234; late do. chapels, 71; do. quire, 352, 353*, 354J do. windows, 316, 347; do. corbels, 272, 409 ; XIV. cent, nave, 353* do. flying buttress, 405 ; do. sedilia, 397*, 401 ; do. screen, 401 ; do. bishop's throne, 401 ; do. stalls, 402 ; Leofric's tomb, 388 ; minstrels' gallery, 419*; late XIV. cent. statuary of west front, 424. Exton church, XIII. cent, spire, 375*. Fan-vault. See Vault. Flamboyant style, its origin in Breton building, 333. Folgoet (Brittany), English style of, 333. Fonts, 132*, 257, 297*. Ford abbey, XII. cent, "chapter" vault, 88, 236; XIII. cent, dormitory, 240. Fountains abbey, area of, 31 ; foundation of, 37 ; plan, original and enlarged, 76 p. ; late XII. cent, corbels at, 105, 107*, 147 ; do. use of marble, 1 10 ; do. arch-sections, 115*, 1 1 6*; do. capitals, 120; do. arcadings, 124; abacus mouldings, 159*; vault ribs 159*; do. "chapter," ,235; do. refectory, 238 ; XIII. cent, quire chapels, 193, 194* ; 456 INDEX Fountains abbey — continued. do. undercroft, 241; do. infirmary, 242; general grouping of, 245 ; XV. cent, bell tower, 253. Fransciscans. See Friars. French Gothic, logic of, 9 ; exclusive claim for, 11; Continental supremacy of, 13; accepted ideas of as to English Art, 13, 14 ; confusions of term "French," 16; laic expression of, 21, 36; creation and course of, 50, 255, 256, 305 ; summit and decline of, 9, 299, 327, 332 ; areas of French Cathedrals, 30, 31 ; .lengths of French Cathedrals, 40; great church plan of, 79 seq. ; approach to English style, 303 ; separation of crafts in, 327 ; XIV. cent. decay of, 331 ; Flamboyant creations of, 333 ; false ascription of English works to, 444 ; rose windows of, 208, 209 ; west fronts of, 216, 217; tower type of, 369; decorations and furniture of, 331 ; figure sculpture of, 131, 213, 255, 256, 331 ; leaf carving of, 136, 138, 265. French wars, effect on English art, 427. Friars' building, beginning of, 167 ; destruc tions of, 365 ; influence of, on parish church plan, 360. Fronts : East, XII. cent, 123* ; XIII. cent, 71, 72, 186, 193, 210*; XIV. cent, 335, seq. Transept, XIII. cent., 197, 200*, 208*, 222*. West, XII. cent, 38, 39 ; XIII. cent, 213 ; do. English type, 214, 215; do. twin- towered type, 217, 218; do. gabled, 219 seq., 309*. Furness abbey, late XII. cent, arch-section, 116*; do. arcadings, 124; early XIII. cent, "chapter," 235 p.; do. undercroft, 241 ; do. carvings, 280 ; XIV. cent, in firmary, 243 p. Gaillard, Chateau, Richard I. building of, 44, 255- Galilee, early meaning of, 38, n. 2. See also Porch. Gatehouse, monastic, 334, 378; castle, 378; development of, 379. Gedney church, XIV. cent, window, 341*. Glasgow cathedral, XIII. cent, quire, 193 p. ; do. crypt, 193 p. ; do. east front, 191*. Glass-painting, early, 129 ; XII. cent, in Eng land, 130; XIII. cent, at Salisbury, 208, 276*; do. motives of, 277; XIV. cent, 338, 339, 425*; do. in Kentish churches, 366, 388*; influence of on Decorated tracery, 339, 347, 348 ; do. on Perpendicu lar, 348 ; niche design in, 383, 385*. Glastonbury abbey, area and dimensions of, 32 ; east end of, 65, 70 ; plan, 67 p. ; late XII. cent, bay-design, 133*; do. mould ings of, 118*, 119*; do. nave window, 122*; St. Mary's chapel, 125*; do. vault, 87; do. carvings of, 133*, 134*; do. corbels, 272 ; XIII. cent. Galilee porch, 232. Gloucester abbey, 63 p. ; Romanesque date and dimensions of, 64 ; XII. cent, bay- design, 102; do. "chapter" vault, 88, 363; XIII. cent, "reliquary" capitals, 269; do. nave-vaulting by monks, 325; do. infirmary, 242 ; XIV. cent, south aisle, 361 ; do. transept and quire, 362*, 431 seq. ; do. east front, 435* ; do. cloister vault, 432* ; do. cloister bay, 433*; Edward the Second's shrine, 411. ,, West gate, late XII. cent, vault, 89*. ,, Church, XIV. cent, capital, 412*. ,, Grey Friars church, XIV. cent, remains of, 365- Gothic, moral and social theories of, 5 ; in England and France, 9, 2 7, 3 2 7 ; mechanical theory of, 1 1 ; economy of material in, 11; motive of, 12 ; in popular life, 42 ; in ex pression of art, 42 ; in expression of talent, 43 ; misunderstood, 43 seq. ; first language of, 83 ; advance of from Worcester to Lin coln, 121 ; great style of, 246 ; solidarity of, 247 ; mid XIII. cent, position of, 326. Goldsmiths. See Sculptors. Grantham church, late XIII. cent, window, 312* ; XIV. cent, spire, 372, 374. Guilds. See Craft-companies. Guilden Morden, early XIV. cent, wood- screen, 393. Guisborough abbey, early XIV. cent* quire, 334; do. east front, 336, 337* ; do. window, 338; do. bay-design, 352*. Hall, of infirmary, 242 ; early Norman, 243 ; XIII. cent, aisled, 244; unaisled, 245; domestic building-craft of, 246; connec tion with parish church, 247 ; wooden roofs of, 355. Harmondsworth, barn at, 355. Harrow church, late XII. cent, building, 57 P.; do. chancel windows, 127; XV. cent. spire, 372. INDEX 457 Harrow barn, 355. Hartlepool church, late XII. cent pier-section, 108*; do. chancel, 174. Hawton church, XIV. cent, chancel, 395. Heckington church, XIV. cent, chancel, 395; do. spire, 374. Hedon church, late XII. cent, chancel, 175, 252; do. head carving, 137*; do. capital, 159; XIV. cent, nave, 352. Helpringham church, XIV. cent, spire, 374. Hemingborough church, XIV. cent, spire, 371. Hereford cathedral, 74 p. ; Romanesque date and dimensions, 64 ; Norman building of, 69; late XII. cent, chapels, 91, 227; XIII. cent, porch, 262*; do. transept front, 302*; do. do. bays, 303*; do. Lady-chapel, 228; late do. chapel windows, 342*; do. " chapter" doorway, 282 ; Aqua Blanca tomb, 288*, 388; Cantelupe tomb, 288, 409 ; gabled wall-tomb at, 388. Hexham abbey, early XIII. cent quire, 77 ; do. transept, 185, 187*; do. transept window, 301 ; Canons' stair at, 234. Higham Ferrers church, late XIII. cent. door-carving, 280 ; do. minstrel figure, 296*. Houghton le Dale chapel, late XIV. cent. west front, 441*- Howden colleg. church, XIV. cent, east front, 336, 396 ; do. nave and quire design, 352; do. west window, 348; do. knight's monument at, 417 ; do. statuary at, 424. Hull, Holy Trinity church, XIV. cent, build ing of, 366, 442. Hythe, XIII. cent, chancel, 181*. He de France, Gothic style of. See French Gothic. Illumination. See Painting Manuscript. Imager. See Sculptor. Images. See Sculpture of free figures. Infirmary, Benedictine and Cistercian, 242, 243- Ingham church, XIV. cent, tomb at, 417. Irish. See Keltic. Irish Gothic, XII. cent, 70; XIII. cent, 183, 303. Ironwork. See Metalwork. Ivinghoe church, XIII. cent, capitals, 268. Jedburgh, late XII. cent, arch-section, 116*; do. bay, 103 ; do. west front, 221. Jervaulx abbey, late XII. cent, pier-section, 108*; do. " chapter " pier, no*, 235. Keltic Art, element in early church plans, 47, 48 ; do. in early decoration, 128, 129, 190 ; influence of in Italy, 50, n. 1 ; round tower of, 48. Kelso abbey, XII. cent, transept front, 220. Ketton church, XIII. cent, spire, 371, 372*. Kidwelly, XIII. cent, aisleless plan, 174; XIV. cent, spire, 370; do. image at, 422. Kilkenny, St. Canice's cathedral, XIII. cent. pulpitum at, 218; do. chapel at, 229. King's Norton church, XIV. cent, spire, 372*. King's Sutton church, XIV. cent, spire, 373*. Kirkham abbey, XIII. cent, quire, 334 ; early XIV. cent, gateway, 334*, 384. Kirkstall abbey, XII. cent, nave arch-sections, 116*; do. " chapter " arcadings, 124; do. pier-section, 160*; do. front, 220. Kirkstead abbey, late XII. cent, building of, 121 ; XIII. cent, wood screen in chapel, 393- Lacock abbey, XIII. cent, "chapter," 231 p.";" do. capital, 266. Lady-chapel, early position of, 75 ; English building of, 168; XIV. cent, type, 224 seq. ; eastern projections of, 227, 228; other attachments of, 228, 229. Laic. See French Gothic. Lamballe (Brittany), XIV. cent, east end of, 333- Lancaster church, XIV. cent, stalls, 396*- Lanercost abbey, late XII. cent, quire ar.ches, 85*; do. vault, 92; do. abacus, 159*; Augustinian style of, 190; XIII. cent. west front, 218, 220*; do. figure, 295. Laon cathedral, late XII. cent, squared end ing, 18; do. quire-bay, 100; do. pier- section, 109*- ,, St. Martin's, XII. cent, monoliths at, 109. Ledbury church, XIV. cent style of, 361. Leicester, St. Mary de Pratis, aisleless plan, 174 ; St. Martin's, wood roof, 355. Le Mans, XIII. cent, quire building and area, 30 ; do. section, 80* ; XII. cent. nave, 95; do. glass at, 130; do. enamel at, 408. Leominster church, XIV. cent, window of, 361. Leverington church, XIII. cent, capitals, 147; XIV. cent, porch, 396 ; do. spire, 374. Lewes priory, Cluniac foundation of, 35 ; XII. cent, eastern transept, 39, 61 p.; do. conveniences at, 44. N 458 INDEX Lichfield cathedral, English type, 81*; late XII. cent, mouldings, 119*; do. tracery, 126; XIII. cent, leafage, 263, 268; do. iron work, 274*; do. transept doorway, 281*; do. statue, 295, 424; do. nave vault, 318 ; do. "chapter," 236, 319; do. wooden vault at, 356 ; XIV. cent. Lady-chapel window, 343; do. quire vault, 356; do. pinnacle, 402; do. arcade figure, 418. „ XIV. cent, bishop's palace, 378, 379. Lincoln cathedral, 205 p. ; area, 31; XIII. cent. nave-section (English type), 80*; St. Hugh's building of, 14, 16, 19, 31, 74, 204, 205*; late XII. cent, caps., 84 ; do. quire-vault, 95*, 96, 97; do. bay, 100*; do. arcading, 112, 113; do. pier, 112*; do. pier-section, 160*; do. arch-section, 116*; do. capitals, 151, 152 ; do. style, significance of, 19, 121, 152, 160; compared with Salisbury, 204 seq. ; XIII. cent, nave-bay, 206* ; do. vault, 207, 316, 318, 359; do. transept, 208, 209*; do. east view, 210*; do. west front, 211; do. chapels, 211, 230, 359; do. capitals, 269*; do. presbytery, 302 ; do. bay, 308* ; do. windows, 312 ; do. carving, 261, 283, 285 ; do. figure-sculpture, 285, 295 ; do. door way, 281, 283* ; do. Galilee, 233 p. ; do. "chapter," 237 p.; do. "chapter" vault, 318, 319; late XIII. cent, cloister vault, 317; XIV. cent, tower, 376; do. quire stalls, 402 ; do. " Easter Sepulchre," 394 ; do. quire-screen figure-sculpture, 424. „ Bishop's Palace, XIII. cent, hall, 244 p. ,, St. Peter-at-Gowtz church, XII. cent. tower, 51. „ St. Mary-le-Wigford church, XII. cent. tower, 51. Lincolnshire style. See Provinces, Northern and Midland. „ Abbeys, destruction of, 121, 162, 334. Llandaff cathedral, late XII. cent, plan, 69 ; do. vault, 91 ; do. doorway, 127 ; do. nave capitals, 145*, 151*; XIII. cent, west front, 217*; XIV. cent, altar screen, 401. Llanthony abbey, front, 66, 217 ; date, 86, 91; XII. cent, nave arches, 86, 87*; do. corbels, 105 ; general aspect of, 245. London, St. Paul's cathedral, 78 p. ; compared with Notre Dame, 79 seq. ; Romanesque dimensions, 34, 40 ; XIII. cent, rebuilding of, 164; do. rose window, 209; do. crypt, 192; do. east windows, 314, 345*, 347; do. spire, 371 ; XIV. cent, "chapter," 78 p-, 3J9- London, Temple church, XII. cent, pointed arch, 85 ; do. effigies at, 296 ; XIII. cent. quire, 177. „ St. Bartholomew's abbey, XII. cent. presbytery, 66 ; do. pointed arch, 85 ; do. pier-section, 109*; do. quire, 177. ,, Christchurch of the Augustinians, 364. „ St. Ethelreda's or "Ely" chapel, late XIII. cent, building of, 299, 330 ; do. window tracery, 316. „ Franciscan church, building and style of, 167, 365. ,, St. John's hospital church, XIV. cent. crypt, 365- Long Sutton church, XIII. cent, steeple, 370, 37i- Louth church, XV. cent, steeple, 374, 428. Ludlow, XII. cent, plan of Heath Chapel, 48 p. Luton church, XIV. cent, inclosure of font, 389*, 392. Lyminge, Saxon plan, 52. Lynn, St. Margaret's church, XIII. cent. chancel, 176*, 251 ; do. rose window, 209; do. caps., 147, 268; XIV. cent, screen, 393*. „ St. Nicholas, 366, 441 ; XII. cent, shaft ings of tower, 232 ; XIV. cent, doorways, 399- Malmesbury abbey, Romanesque dimensions, 64 ; XII. cent, pointed vault, 84, 85 ; do. pier-section, 160*; do. arch-section, 116*; do. porch, 55, 251; do. figure sculpture, 133 ; XIV. cent, clerestory and vault, 359; do. flying buttress, 405. Malton priory, late XII. cent, west front, 218. Malvern abbey, Romanesque base, 114*; XV. cent, rebuilding, 443. Manuscripts. See Painting of MSS. Maps, of Transitional Gothic, 17; of De veloped Gothic, 29 ; of late XII. cent. northern style, 158; of do. southern style, 156; of do. western style, 157. Margam abbey, late XII. cent, "chapter," 91, 236 p. Mason-craft, phases and schools of, 42, 139, 246, 247 seq., 254 seq., 285, 293 seq., 325 se?-, 329, 339, 414, 428 seq. „ English, 41, 96, 97, 151, 154, 178, 253, 311, 329, 369, 446; first Gothic Cistercian, 124, 140, 158, 159; do. midland, 121, 160, 25°, 251, 361; do. northern, 158, 159; do. Purbeck, no seq., 156, 308; do. south eastern, 154, 211, 249; do. western, 70, INDEX 459 89, 91, 156, 157, 158; XIV. cent. Duns table, 392 ; do. East Anglian, 342, 365, 440; do. Exeter, 332, 352, 353; do. Gloucester and Tewkesbury, 361, 432, 434 seq.; do. midland, 367, 395; do. southern, 366, 390, 391, 440; do. York shire, 395, 437, 442. Mason-craft, French, 328, 331, 369; Breton, 332, 353 J He de France, 256, 305, 369; Normandy and Caen, 118, 154, 234, 238, 266, 305 seq., 332, 369. Masons. See Builders. Metalwork, English XIII. cent, iron, 274, 275, 288 ; do. XIV. cent, gold and bronze, 420, iron, 449; do. "brasses," 421 ; French silver and enamels, 331 ; German early bronze, 129; Irish early gold, 128. Metalworkers. See Sculptors. Middleton church, XIV. cent, window, 344*- Milan, S. Alliate, ninth century, 59 p. Milton abbey, XIV. cent front, 332 ; do. style of, 352 ; do. sedilia at, 399. Monasticism, stamp of on English Gothic, 20, 21, 36, 253; French bishops' stand against, 2 1 ; English bishops' stand against, 36 ; decay of, 427. Monastic building, solidarity of in north, 190; parish church rivalry of, 273, 375. See also Benedictine, Cistercian, etc., as well as Refectory, Dormitory, etc. Moulding, Gothic elegance of, 113; do. in base, 114; do. in arch, northern, 116, 117; do. south-eastern, 117; do. western, 115, 116; XII. cent, enrichments of, 1 18 ; XIII. cent, do., 260 seq. ; XIV. cent, do., 364, 408, 409. Naturalism, Early Gothic feeling for in English carving, 137 ; XIII. cent. English and French conventions of, 263, 265; 1290 moment of, 271, 272, 289, 299, 386, 409; XIV. cent, conventions of, 408 seq. Navenby church, XIV. cent. Easter sepulchre, 395- Neo-Monasticism, expression of in English Gothic, 21. See also Cistercian, Augustinian, Premonstratensian, etc. Netley abbey, XIII. cent, quire-bay, 183, 189*; do. "Chapter," 236; do. aisle windows, 314. Newark church, XIV. cent, spire, 373*. Newcastle, St. Nicholas church, late XIV. cent, spire, 374. Niche, the obsession of fourteenth century decoration, 384 seq. ; early development of, 280 seq., 385 ; tradition of in glass, 348 ; XIV. cent, styles, 386, 387 ; south-eastern or " gable " type, 388 seq. ; midland or "tracery" type, 391 seq.; midland spired tyPe> 394 J northern " ogee " type, 394, 395 ; strong and weak forms, 396 ; western or "ogee canopied" types, 399 seq. ; western "tabernacled" types, 401 ; do. ranging, 401, 402, 430; development into panel, 339, 43°, 43 1- Norfolk style. See Masoncraft, English XIV. cent. East Anglian and Provinces, eastern. Normandy style. See Masoncraft, French. Norman bujlding, scale of in England and Normandy, 34, 35 ; influence in small church plan, 57 ; plans of in England, 60, 61, 62; particulars of in England, 64; early towers of in Normandy, 222. Norse element in early sculpture, 128, 190. Northamptonshire style. See Masoncraft, English Midland. Norwich cathedral, Romanesque plan, 62 p. ; Romanesque dimensions, 64; XII. cent. infirmary, 241 ; XIII. cent. Lady-chapel, 265 ; XIV. cent, cloister vault, 356 ; do. steeple, 368*, 369,374; do. quire buttresses, 405 ; do. lectern, 420* ; painting at, 444. ,, St. Ethelbert's, XIV. cent, gateway, 365. ,, St. Peter's Mancroft, XV. cent, church, 440. Ottery St. Mary colleg. church, XIV. cent. window tracery, 345 ; do. bay-design, 363 ; do. wood screen, 393 ; do. sedilia, 397*, 399 ; late do. quire, 438. Ovingdean church, XIII. cent, chancel, 249*. Oxford, XIII. cent, appearance of, 44. „ St. Frideswide's abbey, 33; early church of, 52; XII. cent. Augustinian quire, 71; do. bay, 103*; do. spire, 370; do. head carving, 138*; do. capitals, 147, 148*, 149*, 150*; do. pier-section, 160*; XIII. cent, shrine of St. Frideswide, 289, 290*, 291*, 409; do. Lady-chapel, 228; do. "chapter," 234; XIV. cent, window tracery, 343*- „ Oseney abbey, 33. „ Merton chancel, late XIII. cent, tracery, 316, 343- „ St. Peter's church, XII. cent, vault, 88. „ St. Giles's church, XII. cent, chamber over vault, 53. 460 INDEX Oxford, St. Mary Magdalen church, XIV. cent, aisle, 365. ,, St. Mary's church, XIV. cent, spire, 373 ; do. statuary, 3, 423. Oxfordshire style. See Masoncraft, English midland. Painters : Walter of Derham, 292 ; Master Walter and son, 416; Venetian, 293. Painting, influence of on early sculpture, 128, 129; do. on tracery, 347; do. on figure sculpture, 414, 416. See also Colour Decoration, and Glass. „ Figure, early German, 1 29 ; early English, 129, 130; XIII. cent., 277, 292 seq. ; XIV. cent. 416; do. French, 331. „ Manuscript, early Irish, 128; early German, 129; early English, 130; XIII. cent, English, 416. Panel in Gothic architecture, XIV. cent. development of, 402, 430, 432; the basis of XV. cent, style, 27, 430. Paris, Notre Dame, 79 p.; area, 30; French type, 80. „ Sainte Chapelle, 365. „ Martin des Champs, XIII. cent, capital, 265*. Parapets, to steeples, 372 ; XIV. cent, traceried, 405 ; do. battlemented, 407. Parish churches, monastic encouragement of, 35; XII. cent., 42; aisleless planning of, 50 seq. ; west tower in, 5 1 ; porches in, 54 ; developments of planning, 55 seq., 58; bay design of in monastic churches, 103, 104; XII. cent, midland style of, 160; XIII. cent, chancel development of, 169 seq. ; do. aisled chancels in, 1 74 seq. ; do. condi tions of building of, 249 ; do. provinces of style in, 249 seq. ; influence of, on monastic building, 58, 253, 375, 427 ; XIV. cent, change in, 331; do. bay-design of, 352 ; do. development, 365 ; do. provinces of style in, 366^.; significance of steeple in, 368, 375 ; springs of later development of, 427 ; XV. cent, conditions of, 446 ; our possession in the style of our, 447. Patrington church, 442 ; XIV. cent window, 340* ; do. spire, 375. Pavia, S. Michele, early plan, 59 p. Perigueux, St. Front, plan and date, 58. Pershore abbey, XIII. cent, quire bay, 183 . seq., 185*, 350; do. vault, 359; do. pier- section, 109; XIV. cent, lantern, 377*. Peterborough abbey, Romanesque building, 35, 64 ; transept, 39 ; late XII. cent, nave, 14, 37 ; do. pier-section, 98* ; do. painted ceiling, 64, 130 ; do. aisle vaults, 87, 88, 96; XIII. cent, west front, 212*, 213, 214; do. Lady-chapel, 229 ; XIV. cent, spire, 374* ; do. window tracery, 342 ; do. statuary, 423. Peterborough, Abbot's gate-house, 378. Pier, sections, 98, 108, 109, 160; early Gothic northern, 108, 158; do. south-eastern, 109, 154; do. western, 108, 155; monolithic and Purbeck use,. 109, no; XIII. cent. northern and Scottish use, 190 ; do. de velopment, 260, 308 ; Caen masons use, 307 ; Gloucester masons do., 363. Pinnacle, XIV. cent. 402, 404 ; do. in stall- work, 402. Polebrook church, XIII. cent, porch, 262* Porch, early function of, 38 ; XII. cent. Galilee, 37, 38, 67 p., 201 P., 231, 232 p.; in Saxon planning, 54, 55 ; XIII. develop ment, 231 seq. ; French figure sculpture in, 131. Potterne church, XIII. cent, cross plan of, 54 p- Premonstratensian building, in England, 32 ; plans of, 67 ; refectory, 240. Provinces of English Gothic, determination of, 153, !54, 443, 445- „ XII. cent, eastern, 21, 41, 85; do. mid land, 116, 120, 135, 160; do. northern, 85, 86, 115 seq., 120, 123, 134, 159, 218; do. south-eastern, 109, 117, 123, 124, 154 seq.; do. western, 86, 87, 108, 115, 116, 120, 122, 133, 157, 158, 218. „ XIII. cent, midland, 250, 251, 267 ; do. northern, 175, 185 seq., 224, 269, 270, 303, 313, 314, 318; do. south-eastern, 249; do. southern, 176, 177, 189, 224, 268, 311; do. western, 184, 185, 252, 269, 303. „ XIV. cent, eastern, 341, 365, 389, 396; do. midland, 342, 367, 370 seq., 392, 394, 405 ; do. northern, 334 seq., 339 seq., 342, 350 seq., 402, 410; do. south-eastern, 360, 390, 391 ; do. southern, 343, 345, 352, 353, 402, 404; do. western, 350, 359 seq., 376, 397 seq., 412 seq., 425. ,, After 1350 : eastern, 440, 443 seq., 446 ; northern, 437, 442, 446; southern, 437 seq., 443 ; western, 433, 442, 446. Pulpit, in west front, 218; in refectory, 238. Quarries, English marble, 109, no, 112, 215, 250, 422; English stone, 115, 160, 210, 211, 250, 366, 367. INDEX 461 Quarry craft, early effect on style, 154; XIII. cent, effect in Parish church, 248 seq. ; in decoration, 392 ; in figure sculpture, 295, 296, 423. See also Masoncraft. Quimper (Brittany) cathedral, English east end of, 332. Quire, enlargement and significance of in English plan, 39, 40, 63 seq., 72 seq., 166; two types of, 71, 72, 224; position and divisions of, 72, 165, 166; XIII. cent. aisleless, 172, 173; do. smaller monastic, 179 seq. ; do. western, 182, 183; do. northern, 185 seq.; do. great church, 199, 200; XIV. cent. Yorkshire, 334 seq. ; do. western, 348 seq., 360 ; late XIV. cent. 43° seq. Ramsey abbey, early steeple at, 51. Reading abbey, planning of, 65 ; XII. cent. "chapter," 233 ; do. chapter vault, 88. Reepham church, XIV. cent, tomb at, 417. Refectory, XII. and XIII. cent. 238, 239; do. pulpit corbels of, 107*, 239*. Restoration. See Revival Gothic. Revival Gothic : Prejudice to history, 2, 4; do. to credit of Gothic, 4, 443. Futility of its effort, 3; as to vaults, 96 ; as to figure sculpture, 2 r 3 ; as to spires, 371; as to glass, 207 ; as to painting, 284 ; as to leaf carving, 408 ; as to external decoration, 405. Obliteration of parish church art by, 252, 447, 448. Effects of at Bristol, 336; at Canterbury, 233; at Carlisle, 336; at Chester, 227, 334, 405, 445 ,' at Chichester, 223 ; at Christ Church, Dublin, 32 ; at Durham, 233 ; at Exeter, 402 ; at Gloucester, 4, 405; at Hereford, 228; at Hexham, 185; at Hythe, 181 ; at Lichfield, 4, 281, 394, 405, 408, 423; at Lincoln, 236, 321, 404; at London, Temple, 177; at Oxford, St. Mary's, 423, St. Frideswide's, 209, 370; at Rye, 405 ; at Salisbury, 207, 224, 284, 321, 404; at St. Albans, 361; at St. Cross, no; at Stone, 248; at Wells, 215, 245, 402, 412; at Westminster, 321 ; at Winchelsea, 366; at Wimborne, 173; at Worcester, 200, 355, 405; at Yarmouth, 351 ; at York, 321. Ripon colleg. church, late XII. cent, quire, 33 ; , do. vaults, 92 ; do. bay, 101*; do. corbel shafts, 105; do. piers, 108; do. nave clerestory, 113*; XIII. cent, west front, 163, 218 ; early XIV. cent, east front, 302, 335*, 336 J do- east window, 314, 340 ; do. battlemented parapet, 407 ; XV. cent. nave, 442. Rivaulx abbey, late XII. cent, refectory, 238 ; do. door, 127; do. capitals, 141; XIII. cent. quire building, 188; do. east front, 189, 336; do. bay-design, 189*; do. corbel, 271*; do. carvings, 279, 280. Rochester cathedral, 74 p. ; Gundulph's build ing of, 43, 65, 74 P. ; Ernulph's building of, 43; Ernulph's carving, 127; XII. cent. statuary on west doorway, 131; do. Majesty on west doorway, 133; XIII. cent, quire- building, 32, 174; do. transept front, 173* ; do. paintings, 292*. Roman element, in early Saxon church plan, 49; in do. decoration, 128. Romance. See Chivalry. Rome, area of basilicas, 33; area of St. Peter's, 3i- Romney (New) church, XII. cent, steeple, 370. Romsey abbey, Saxon rood at, 131 ; Roman esque east end, 68 p., 71 ; do. foundation, 35, 68; do. bay-design, 103; do. arch- mould, 115; late XII. cent, archmould, 117*; do. west front, 123, 124*; XIII. cent, painting, 275*, 277*; late XIII. cent, enriched moulding, 262 ; do. east end, 314. Rouen cathedral, early XIII. cent, west front, 3i- „ St. Ouen, XIV. cent, style, 331. Rushden church, XIV. cent. " strainer arch '', 406*. Rye church, XII. cent, gabled doorway, 387 ; late XII. cent, plan, 57 p.; do. chancel, 177*; XIV. cent, buttresses, 405. St. Alban's abbey, Romanesque plan, 62 p. do. dimensions, 64 ; do. pier-section, 98* ; late XII. cent, west front, 39, 217; late XIII. cent, quire, 302, 314; do. windows, 345; do. bay, 351*; do. ceiling, 357; XIV. cent, chapels, 361 ; do. shrine of St. Alban, 289, 389*, 391 ; do. painting, 275. St. Andrew's cathedral, late XIL cent, build ing, 77 P., 79; XIII. cent, west front, 221. St. Regulus, Keltic plan, 48 p. St. Cross colleg. church, 67 p. ; XII. cent. building of, 33, 68 ; do. east end, 68 ; do. front, 123; do. base-section, 114*; do. arch-section, 117*. 462 INDEX St. David's cathedral, late XII. cent, building of, 32, 69; do. dimensions of, 64; do. bay-design of, 105 ; early Gothic carving of, 139, 142 ; XIII. cent, chapels, 227, 228; XIV. cent, screen, 397* ; do. Bishop's Palace, 379; do. doorway, 398*. St Germer (He de France,) XIII. cent. Lady- chapel, 365. St. Pol de Leon (Brittany) cathedral, 332 ; Kreizker steeple, 333. Salisbury cathedral, Old Sarum plan, 67 p. ; XIII. cent building and dimensions of, 31, 163,329; significance of plan, 164^.; compared with Lincoln, 204 seq. ; XIII. cent, quire plan, 40, 205 p, 224; do. bay- design, 207* ; do. piers, 259 ; do. vault, 95, 206; do. transept, 208; do. east view, 211*; do. west front, 213, 280*; do. Lady-chapel, 224; do. porch, 232 ; do. glass, 208, 276*; do. ReacT carvings^ 2 7 3,~~2g# "Chapter" figure subjects, (283^ doTdoorway, (28P; XIII. cent, quire screen, 286*; B. Brid port's tomb, 263, 289* ; XIII. cent, effigies do. window tracery, 311*; at,<257, 296.. "Chapter," 319, 320; cloister, 321 ; XIV. cent, spire, 373 ; do. brass, 384* ; do. flying buttresses, 405 ; do. quire screen, 409. Santiago di Compostella (Gaelicia), XI. cent. plan of, 58, 59. Saxon, church plans, 48 seq. ; survival in parish churches, 448. Scotch cathedrals, plans of, 69. Scotch Gothic, XIII. cent, style of, 190, 303 ; west fronts of, 218. Scottish. See Keltic. Sculptors and metalworkers : Alexander of Abyngton, 254; Austen, William, 421; Broker, Nicholas, 420 ; Bunton, family of, 134; Colyne, Thomas, 422; Fitz Otho and family of, 420 ; Holewell, Thomas, 422; Prentys, Thomas, 423; Prest, God frey, 420; Lambspring, Bartholomew, 421; Popplehowe, Thomas, 422; Sutton, Robert, 423; Torell, Master, 254, 294,444; William of Colchester, 254; William of Ireland, 254; William of Sens (?), 138. Sculpture : The Gothic motive in thirteenth century art, 24, 119, 254 seq. ; do. giving place to decorativeness, 24, 286; do. dispersed by individualism, 325 seq., 329. Decorative, XII. cent., 24, 128, 129, 131, 132, 152; do. in South England mould ings, 117 seq. ; do. Benedictine, 129; do. Cistercian, 106, 127, 140, 279; XIII. cent, 257 seq., 274; XIV.- cent, 408, 409. Leaf, XII. cent, origins of, 136, 137; French elements in, 138; Syrian elements in, 140; varied motives of, 137, 139, 142 seq. ; Gothic creation of style in, 151, 152; XIII. cent, method of, 263 seq.; do. in capitals, 265 seq. ; do. in corbel, 271 seq. ; naturalistic moment in, 289 seq., 409 ; XIV. cent, conventions of, 408 seq. ; do. south-eastern style, 389, 390 ; do. northern style, 395, 410, 411; do. southern style, 412, 413; do. colouring of, 414. Figure, early schools of, 133 seq. ; XIII. cent, method of, 266, 273; do. in door heads, 277 seq.; do. petty style, 284 seq. ; do. great style, 294, 295 ; late XIII. cent, change of feeling in, 326, 414 seq. ; XIV. cent, literary motives in, 415, 416; do. decline of, 417; do. western style of, 418 seq. Free figure, early, 130, 131; XIII. cent, 254, 255 ; do. English ranging of, 213^., 273, 274; do. at Wells, 215 seq.; do. niche method of, 280 seq. ; do. great style, 295 ; modern neglect of same, 296, 297 ; late XIII. cent, craft-separation in, 325 seq. ; XIV. cent, niche method of, 383 ; do. examples, 423 seq. ; destruction of, 286, 294, 423. See also Effigies. French, leafage, 138, 265 ; do. free figure, I3I, 255, 256, 331 ; Normandy or Caen leafage, 118, 138, 266. Sedilia and piscina, XIV. cent, south-eastern and midland type, 391; do. Lincolnshire type, 395- Seez cathedral, late XIII. cent, bay-design, 306. Selby abbey, late XII. cent, nave finishing of, 37, 217; do. porch of, 231; XIV. cent, quire, 336, 338* ; do. windows, 339, 343; do. wood vault, 356; do. glass, 339; do. bay-design, 358*; do. carvings, 411. Senlis cathedral, XIL cent, building and area of, 31 ; spire, 368*. Sens cathedral, XII. cent, building and area of, 31, 38; do. sexpartite vaults, 92. Sherborne abbey, Romanesque building of 35 ; XII. cent, porch, 55, 231; XIII. cent. Lady-chapel, 226 ; XV. cent, rebuilding of, 1Q3, 443- INDEX 463 Shoreham (New) church, late XII. cent, quire building, 57, 95, 178; do. vault, 95; do. pier-section, 109*; do. arch-section, 117*; do. enriched mould, 118*; do. east front, 123; XIII. cent, flying buttress, 405. Shoreham (Old) church, XII. cent, plan, 53 ; XIII. cent, screen, 355, 393. Shrewsbury abbey, Norman building of, 35. „ St. Mary's church, late XII. cent plan, 56; XIII. cent, chancel, 171; late XII. cent, arch-mould, 115; do. pier-section, 108*. Shrines, effect of on church building, 166, 167; destruction of, 286, 421; XIII. cent, examples, 288 seq. Sibthorpe church, XIV. cent.Easter sepulchre, 395- Sibton abbey, XIII. cent, refectory, 238. Skelton church, XIII. cent, style of, 248 ; do. capitals of, 270*. South Darley church, XIV. cent, window, 342*. Southrop church, late XII. cent, font, 132*. Southwark, St. Saviour's, XIII. cent, quire building, 182; do. bay-design, 182*; do. chapels, 227*. Southwell colleg. church, 77 p.; Romanesque date and dimensions, 64 ; do. plan, 66 p. ; XII. cent, west towers, 368* ; do. pier- section, 160*; XIII. cent, quire bay-design, 185; do. front, 186*, 336; do. "chapter," 319, 320; do. carvings, 409. Spires. See Steeples. Stalls, XIV. cent, northern and southern, 402. Stamford, St. Leonard's priory, XII. cent. carving, 141. „ St. Mary's church, 175; XIV. cent. tomb at, 398. „ All Saints church, 175; XIII. cent. capitals, 267, 268*. Standlake church, XIV. cent, window, 314* Stanton Harcourt church, XIV. cent, tomb, 396, 397* Steeples, west, in Saxon church plan, 50, 51; central in do., 51, 52, 58; in English great church design, 82 ; in cathedral design, 210*, 211*, 223, 376; in English and Scotch west fronts, 217; in Cistercian design, 246, 253; significance of in parish church, 368, 375 ; the English type, 369 ; the French and Normandy types, 223, 368, 369 ; first English stone spires, 370 ; Northamptonshire do., 251 ; Wooden do., 371; Oxfordshire do., 373; Lincolnshire do., 374 ; " Stump " towers, 375 ; cathedral "lanterns," 376; heights of various steeples, 371 seq. Stoke sub Hampden church, late XII. cent. capitals at, 143*. Stone .church, style of, 248; XIII. cent. diapers at, 277; do. window arcading, 261*. Strata Florida abbey, building of, 31 ; style of, 86 ; late XII. cent, pier-section, 108*, 109 ; do. base-mould, 114* ; do. vault-ribs, 92, 157*; do. arch-moulds, 115, 116* 156; do. capital, 140, 142. Studland church, XI. cent, plan of, 51 p. Tangmere church, XIII. cent, chancel, 170*, 250. Tewkesbury abbey, Romanesque buildinganc]^ dimensions, 35, 64 ; XII. cent. baynSesign, 102 ; do. apse, 361 ; XIII. cent. Lady- chapel, 75, 229 ; XIV. cent, quire building, 360 seq; do. windows, 347, 359*; do. vault, 359*, 434* ; do. chapels, 360* ; do. tombs, 397*, 401, 434 ; do. fan vault, 434 ; do. nave carvings, 418*, 419*; late do. Lady-chapel, 360. Texture in XIII. cent, decoration, 274. Thornton abbey, XIII. cent, building of, 334 ; XIV. cent, gateway, 378. Tintern abbey, building of, 399 ; XIII. cent. refectory, 238; do. "chapter" window, 342 ; late do. west doorway, 277 ; do. do. transept, 303 ; do. do. windows, 315, 316. Tilty church, XIV. cent, tracery, 341*. Tombs, XIII. cent., 287 seq. ; XIV. cent., 330, 388 seq. Toulouse, St. Sernin abbey, XII. cent, plan of, 58, 59- Tournai cathedral, XI. cent, plan of, 59. Tracery, motives in door head, 126, 278 seq. do. in XIV. cent, vault, 359 ; do. in decora tion, 391 seq. Triforium. See Bay-design. Transept, western, in English churches, 38, 213; eastern in do., 39, 195, 196, 200; main in do., 39, 185, 196, 208; in small church planning, 56. Troyes, St. Urbain, late XIII. cent, style of, 3°7- Tynemouth priory, late XII. cent, quire en largement, 77 p. ; do. vault, 94; do. east front, 123*. Undercrofts, XIII. cent., 241. Upper Hardres church, early chancel chantry at, 175; XIV cent, glass, 385* 464 INDEX Urchfont church, late XIII. cent, chancel, 253* Vault : French system of, 16, 97; do. doming of, 95- English XII. cent, pointed, 88 seq., 97; do. in chapters, 88, 89; do. oblongplanned 89 ; high do. western, 90, 91 ; do. do. northern, 92; do. do. south-eastern, 94; do. do. at Lincoln, 95 ; XIII. cent, in cathedrals, 196, 202; do. in chapels, etc., 230, 231; do. at Amiens, 307; mid XIII. cent, development, 316, 317; wooden, 3^7, 354, 356, 357 ; XIV. cent branch, 354^.; do. tracery, 359^.; latepQV. cent, development, 432 ; do. origin of "fan," 359, 433, 434- Template, 97*. Conoids, 316*. Wakefield church, XIV. cent, spire, 374. Wall-arcade, basis of XIII. cent, system of decoration, 257. Walsingham abbey, XIV. cent, quire, 442*. Waltham abbey, Romanesque building of, 60 ; XIV. cent, wood screen, 393 ; do. Lady-chapel window, 344*, 346; do. panel ling in flint, 365. Warmington church, XIII. cent, capitals at, 268; do. wooden vault, 318. Warwick church, Earl Beauchamp's tomb at, 421. Waverley abbey, XIII. cent, under-croft, 240*. Wellow church, XIII. cent, wall painting at, 275*.. Wells cathedral, 67 p; building and dimen sions of, 32 ; dates of, 69. „ late XII. cent, porch, 89, 232; do. arcad ing, in*; do. bay-design, 104*, 105 ; do. pier-section, 108*, 156; do., arch-section, 115*, 116*; do. nave capital, 145. „ XIII. cent, west front, 39, 213 seq., 214*, 257; do. capitals, 269; Langport shafting in, 215, 259; sculpture at, 272, 273, 295. ,, late XIII. cent, "chapter," 322, 323*, 324, 325 P. ; do. carving, 412, 413*, 417* ,, XIV. cent, misereres, 418; do. tombs, 397* 399, 4°o J do. quire windows, 343 ; do. bay-design, 361*, 363 ; do. tower, 376 ; do. glass, 425*. „ XIII. cent. Bishop's Palace, 245 ; do. windows, 127, 245; do. Halls, 245. Welsh style in carving, 158. See also Cister cian and Provinces, western. Wenlock priory, late XII. cent, building and dimensions, 32 ; do. bay-design, 101*. Westminster abbey, Romanesque building and dimensions, 34, 35, 39, 59 p., 64; do. presbytery, 63. „ XIII. cent, quire, place of in English Art, 14, 15, 19, 162, 301 seq., 304; do. plan, 20, 202, 203 p., 301 ; do. bay-design, 205*; do. pier, 261* ; do. capital, 264* ; do. window tracery, 305, 311; do. transept front, 219, 222; do. vestry, 230; do. carv ings, 263, 275*, 280; do. shrine, 288; do. sculpture, 295 ; Eleanor's effigy and monu ment, 254, 294, 386, 409, 444 ; XIII. cent. "chapter," 319, 320, 321; do. doorway, 282. ,, XIV. cent, tombs in, 388, 389* 391, 401, 407-8, 417, 420; do. effigies, 422. „ XV. cent, sculpture at, 425. „ Palace, 164; hall, Romanesque, 34, 243 ; XIV. cent, ceiling of, 243, 355 ; St. Stephen's chapel, XIV. cent, style of, 365 ; do. paintings, 416, 421. West Walton church, XIII. cent, building, 252 ; do. porch, 384 ; do. tower, 369 ; do. window, 263*; do. nave capital, 268*; do. painting at, 275. Whitby abbey, early XIII. cent, building of, 158*, 168, 186; do. windows, 124; do. quire bay, 186, 188*; do. transept front, 186, 188*, 336; XIV. cent, window, 348. Whitchurch church, late XIL cent, planning, 57; do. corbel, 105, 106*; do. capitals, M3, 146* Winborne colleg. church, Romanesque nave- bay, 85; XIII. cent, chancel, 173, 174; XIV. cent, sedilia, 399, 412; XV. cent. effigies, 423. Winchelsea church, early XIV. cent, building and style of, 366, 440 ; do. quire windows, 347*, 348 ; do. monuments, 390 ; sedilia, 391*; do. parapets, 406; do. effigy, 422. Winchester cathedral, Romanesque building and dimensions, 34, 39, 40, 64 ; do. tran sept, 39 ; do. choir under crossing, 75 ; XII. cent. Lady-chapel, 69, 75 ; do. " chapter," 233 ; do. base mould, 1 14* ; do. font, 134; do. iron work grill, 275. ,, Early XIII. cent, chapels, 33, 40, 225, 226*; do. vaults, 95, 226; do. windows "3- „ XIII. cent, undercroft, 241. INDEX 465 Winchester cathedral, XIV. cent, quire, 352 ; do. screen and stalls, 393, 399, 402 ; do. stall carvings, 415*, 416*. ,, Late XIV. cent, nave, 36, 253, 361, 443 ; do. front, 438 ; do. chantries, 401. ,, Palace Hall, 244. Window : Gothic proportion of, 22, 122; XII. cent. Purbeck shaft in, 113; provincial types of, 123 seq., 154 seq. ; Scotch in XIV. cent, 192 ; domestic, 246 ; rose and marigold, 209. Mid XIII. cent, change of expression in, 309; do. tracery-origins, 126, 280; various authors on tracery, 310; French treatment of do., 311. Late XIII. cent. English types of, 312 seq. XIV. cent, development of, 316, 336 seq. ; do. masonic control, 339 ; do. provincial types, northern "branch," 338 seq. ; do. southern " network," 343 ; do. " arch," 344 seq.; do. "wheel," 347; do. "me dallion," 348; do. "panel," 348; the niche in do., 384. Late XIV. cent, style of, 347, 348, 430, 438. Wing church, Saxon plan, 49 p. Witham chapel, XII. cent, vault, 88 ; do. corbel, 105*. Witney church, chantry-additions to, 55 p. ; cross planning of, 250; XIII. cent, spire, 372- Wittlesea church, XV. cent, spire, 374. Worcester cathedral : Romanesque date and dimensions, 64 ; XII. cent, base-mould, 114*; do. decora tive masonwork, 121; do. " chapter," 9 1 , 236; do. Cistercian style of, 91. „ Early Gothic west bays, date and design, 91, 121; do. vaults, 90*, 91; do. bay, 99*; do. pier-section, 108* ; do. base-mould, 114*; do. arch-mould, 116*; do. "dog tooth," 118. Worcester cathedral, XIII. cent, quire, 199, 200; do. pier, 260*; do. carvings, 284*, 285*; King John's tomb in, 287; XIII. cent, effigy at, 296. „ XIV. cent, nave, vault, 357; do. carv ings, 418*. „ Exterior, modern destruction of, 405. ,, Guesten hall, 355. Worksop abbey, XII. cent, plan, 66 ; do. arch-sections, 116* Worth church, Saxon plan of, 32 p. Wymondham priory, 153; XV. cent, nave, 441 ; do. tower, 369. Yarmouth church, XIII. cent, building of, r75, 251 ; do. painting at, 294*. Yaxley church, XIV. cent, style of, 367*. York cathedral : „ Romanesque nave, 37. ,, XII. cent, quire, 39, 43, 191 ; do. pier- section, 108*; do. glass, 130. ,, XIII. cent, transept, 163, 190, 196; do. bay-design, 197* ; do. front, 198 ; do. cor bel, 272*; Archbp. Grey's monument in do., 163, 277, 288; do. iron work, 274*; do. windows, 196, 208, 277, 339. ,, Late XIII. cent, "chapter," 319, 321, 322*, 324*; do. doorway, 282; do. wall- arcade, 386*; do. carving, 410*. „ Early XIV. cent, wood vault, 318, 356; do. nave, 302; do. front, 336, 337; do. bay-design, 350, 351*; do. leaf carvings, 410. „ Late XIV. cent, quire, 426*, 437; do. chapel-vaults, 356; do. carvings, 411 ; do. glass, 339. „ St Mary's Abbey, XII. cent, "chapter" pillars, 108 ; late XIII. cent, west front, 301, 302 ; do. carvings, 263, 410. „ City churches, belfries of, 370. ,, Guildhall, 244. Yorkshire style. See Provinces, Northern, and Mason-craft, Northern. 3° CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. Uniform in size with this volume. : Volumes, Imperial 8vo, £2 10s. net. With about 150 Illustrations from Pen Drawings by the Author, and 90 Plates in Collotype and Half-tone from Photographs, Drawings, and Prints. A. HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND, 1500-1800. By REGINALD BLOMFIELD, M.A. EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD, ARCHITECT. Opinions of the Press. " The two handsome and copiously illustrated volumes which Messrs. Bell and Sons have just published, from the capable pen and facile pencil of Mr. Reginald T. Blomfield, M.A., may at once be described as a distinctly valuable addition to any architect's library, and, at the same time, the work is not in any way so exclusively technical as to insure only a qualified welcome by a large number of readers among that immense class of artistic people who love old English houses, and are more or less acquainted with the history of our national architec ture. . . . He has given his treatment of the subject a distinct individuality ; his drawings are correct, spirited, and detailed, always bright and appreciative, while his writing is enter taining, comprehensive, and seldom over-dogmatic. These are words of no faint praise. . . . Our space is exhausted, but our interest is only quickened as we close our review of these two excellent volumes, which thus obtain our warmest praise." — Building News. " Nowadays students of architecture appear to consider that intuitively a knowledge of the history of architecture can come to them. They will, however, find it profitable to study Mr. Blomfield's two volumes with all the earnestness they can command. The subject is made more interesting than it commonly appears in technical treatises, and it has, moreover, the recommendation of expressing the author's own thoughts. The illustrations, which are abundant, consist of reproductions of Mr. Blomfield's sketches, of old drawings and engravings, and of photographs. ... If there are any followers of Gothic who still hold English Renais sance to be pestilential, Mr. Blomfield's work will convince them to the contrary, while admirers of the style should be glad to have a demonstration of the national qualities which English Renaissance exhibits." — Architect. "The two quarto volumes form an attractive book, well illustrated with a number of spirited drawings by the author, with reproductions of old drawings and published prints, and with photographic views of buildings. ... A large view of the whole period under review has been taken, and the various architects have been assigned their respective places and parts in the general movement." — Times. " So able and scholarly a book as the present should certainly have its influence in helping to raise the level of public taste, and thus preventing the continued disfigurement of our towns and rural districts while eventually leading, perhaps, to the growth of a noble natural style." — Morning Post. " In two handsome and lavishly illustrated volumes Mr. Reginald Blomfield ... has dealt with a topic which is interesting to nearly everybody, and fascinating to not a few. Himself an architect, he has brought to his task an equipment of knowledge and research, and a first-hand acquaintance with the monuments of architecture that were so lavishly scattered about the country during the three great building centuries, which are certainly unusual. Moreover, he writes well and with admirable lucidity, and has acquitted himself of a difficult task, spread over a wide field, with good judgment and an educated taste."— Standard. "The most thorough and scholarly contribution to the literature of English architecture which we remember for many years." — Daily Chronicle. " It is a book which is almost certain to become a standard authority of one of the most interesting chapters of the history of art in England."— Scotsman. LONDON : GEORGE BELL & SONS, York Street, Covent Garden, YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 05167 2187