Bell's cathedrals: The cathedral church of Southwell / a description of its fabric and a brief history of the Episcopal see
Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Southwell Minster (Southwell; Nottinghamshire; England)

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Title: Bell's cathedrals: The cathedral church of Southwell

Author: Arthur Dimock

Release date: August 15, 2026 [eBook #79369]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BELL'S CATHEDRALS: THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SOUTHWELL ***

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

SOUTHWELL CATHEDRAL, FROM THE WEST.

THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF
SOUTHWELL

A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC
AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
EPISCOPAL SEE

BY THE REV. ARTHUR DIMOCK, M.A.

WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1898

GENERAL PREFACE

This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist.

To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:—(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees.

Gleeson White,
E. F. Strange,
Editors of the Series.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The MSS. at Southwell include the following:— The “White Book,” of which the earlier part is in a fourteenth-century handwriting. It contains bulls, charters, etc., the earliest of the date of 1106. The “Register of Thurgarton Priory” is almost a duplicate of this.

The “Chapter Register” contains the Acts of the Chapter from 1467-1542, and includes the Visitations by the Chapter, and probate matters, entered without regard to order.

The “Register of Leases” is chiefly concerned with a date still later. Extracts from one or other of these appeared in Dugdale’s “Monasticon” and other works. A century ago William Dickinson (afterwards Rastall) of Muskham Grange used the MSS. in compiling his “Antiquities.” He was a laborious but inaccurate scholar, resembling Jonathan Oldbuck, and his Ad Pontem theory, together with similar inferences, has met the fate of the Prætorium of the Laird of Monkbarns. His book contains a certain amount of useful information; and I am indebted to Mr G.T. Knowles of Southwell for the loan of his copy of this scarce work. A late edition of Le Neve’s “Fasti” (1854) contains a list, necessarily incomplete, of the canons by the Rev. J.F. Dimock, a former minor canon; and in various papers read before learned societies my father quoted from the records. The report of the Historical MSS. Commission for 1891 has a short notice.

In 1891 Mr Arthur Francis Leach, Assistant Charity Commissioner, and formerly fellow of All Souls, Oxford, published for the Camden Society his “Visitations and Memorials.” The documents are chiefly from the Chapter Register: “the book was intended to exhibit the church in its inner relations.” This volume is the most valuable that has been published; and the introduction and the lists enhance its importance. Mr Leach has kindly written to me about the mysterious criminal court alluded to in the corrections by the chapter.

Outside sources of information are scanty. An occasional reference in an old chronicle or in the York records includes almost everything of value.

A folio on the architecture was published by Mr Dimock in 1853. He was familiar with the records in the library, and, in the conclusions he drew, had the assistance of many of the leading architects and antiquaries. So far as I know his inferences have not been superseded in any important particulars; and the only drawback to this folio (of which a popular edition appeared in 1875) is, that it is rather an explanation of the plates than a complete treatise.

I am indebted to Mr A.H. Lyell, the honorary secretary of the Royal Archæological Institute, for a copy of the Rev. J.L. Petit’s paper, and to Messrs S. B. Bolas & Co., and Mr A.J. Loughton of the Market Place, Southwell, for the use of the photographs—duly attributed to each.

A. D.

CONTENTS

Chapter I.—History of the Building— |
Part I. The Town and Church | 3
Part II. Constitution of the Chapter | 18
Chapter II.—The Exterior—Nave and Transept— |
Part I. Norman | 24
Part II. Early English | 46
Part III. Early Decorated or Geometrical | 52
Chapter III.—The Interior— |
Part I. Norman | 57
Part II. Early English | 73
Part III. Decorated | 87
Chapter IV.—The Palace and Wolsey | 110
Chapter V.—The Dissolution of the Chapter | 124
Appendices |
A. The Culdees | 128
B. A story of the supernatural | 128
C. Chantries, chapels, and altars | 128
D. A story of Charles I. | 129
E. Patronage of the chapter | 129
F. The last of the clergy | 130

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Southwell Cathedral from the West | Frontispiece
Arms of the See | Title
Southwell, and Palace Ruins, from the Parks | 3
Detail of Transept | 26
Pinnacle—Central Tower | 27
North Porch | 31
North Porch, Chimney of | 32
North Porch, Interior | 33
West Door | 36
West Front (in 1850) | 39
Doorway facing the Palace | 43
Flying Buttress and Pinnacle of Choir | 48
Clerestory Window | 56
Bay of Nave | 58
Nave—looking East | 59
Nave, Pillar in | 61
Nave, North side of Arcade | 63
Nave, South Aisle | 65
Norman Arch of Central Tower | 69
Sculpture on Norman Capitals | 71
Choir, looking East | 75
Choir, Sectional drawing of one Bay | 77
Choir from South Aisle | 79
Choir, looking East | 81
The Sedilia | 83
Arcading of the Vestibule | 89
Doorway to Chapter-House | 93
Canopies of Stalls | 96
Details of Doorway | 97
Capital—Chapter-House | 99
Capital—Chapter-House | 100
Capital—Chapter-House | 101
Carving of Stall Canopy | 102
Rood Screen from the Nave | 103
Rood Screen—Under the Screen, looking South | 106
Choir, looking West | 107
Southwell, West Tower before Restoration | 125
PLAN | 131

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

SOUTHWELL FROM THE PARKS—THE PALACE RUINS IN FRONT.

CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

PART I.—THE TOWN AND CHURCH

The compilers of Domesday found Southwell with “clerks” holding prebends: before the close of the thirteenth century these canons or prebendaries had been gradually raised by successive endowments to their final complement of sixteen. The chapter thus constituted successfully survived the storm and stress of the Tudor Reformation, only to experience dissolution from the zeal for change following in the train of the first Reform Bill. Limitations of space permit only of a bird’s-eye sketch of the rise and progress of this remarkable college, the history of which is identical with the history of the town, and to a certain extent of the county; and which has left as its enduring monument that stately minster, since 1884 the cathedral church of the new diocese for Notts and Derbyshire.

Existing remains demonstrate that in the time of the Roman occupation, the four wells with their abundant supply of fresh spring water attracted a few Britons. Of these wells, one is at the south-east of the town, and, from its situation on the property of the Lord of the Manor, was subsequently called the Lord’s Well; two more are within the minster precincts—the Holy Well in the open court, and the Lady’s Well in the churchyard; and a fourth, St. Catherine’s, to the west, where the chapel of that name was built. Six or seven miles to the north-east, a neighbouring village received the name of Norwell; and for a parallel reason came the name of the place by the south wells, and thence Southwell, the first syllable pronounced as in Southwark. The researches of Gibbon led him to conclude that the Britons had some thirty to forty bishops and a widespread organisation; but of Southwell and the surrounding district there is really nothing known for certain during this time beyond that it was christianised.

After the withdrawal of the Romans there is a blank of more than two hundred years until, under date A.D. 627, Baeda records that Paulinus of York, one of the missionaries of Augustine, who had the active support of his convert, King Eadwine of Northumbria, baptised in the river Trent; and to these two—Paulinus and Eadwine—the invading Angles of the Trent Valley owed their conversion.[1]

During the troubled times that followed, the northern part of the Trent Valley—parts of Lindsey and Southumbria—was now in one kingdom, now in another; now in one diocese, now in another. It will come as a surprise to most people to learn that what was afterwards called Notts, or, at least, that part which included Southwell, was for a short time not only in the diocese of Leicester, but in the province of Lichfield.

The diocese of Leicester came to an end—the chroniclers tell us they know not how—and after the disappearance of the short-lived archbishopric of Lichfield, at the beginning of the eighth century, Southwell went back to the province and diocese of York.

It was after this that Southwell became an important religious centre. At Ripon and Beverley the early missionary priests had given way to a more settled ministry; and at Southwell secular canons, who were also parish priests, were by degrees appointed. Whether at Beverley or Ripon they were ever regulars had better be left an open question; at Southwell, when we first come across them, they had been already for some time in existence as seculars. They were in effect before they were supported by separate prebendal endowments Colidei or Culdees, as at York—that is to say, bound by no especial vows, and belonging to no particular order.[2] A mapping-out of the country into parishes had begun in the days of Theodore of Tarsus: it took centuries to complete. Many villages around Southwell were quite out of the reach of any parish priest, and the resident clergy, besides serving their own church, supplied the deficiencies of the district. Why was it that so small and obscure a place was chosen in preference to Nottingham? The answer must be that its very quietness and remoteness was in its favour, since at the same time it was both central and accessible. Nottingham was the scene of constant strife, and became one of those “five burghs,” such a source of contention between English and Dane: Southwell was comparatively exempt. It was not liable to siege and capture first by one and then by another; if any place was peaceful, that place was Southwell. The archbishops wished for a capital for the southern part of their diocese with a cathedral church and staff of clergy, to be what Beverley was for the east and Ripon for the west, and Southwell, with its long traditions, was ready at hand. And afterwards, while the Danes were ravaging Northumbria, it was impossible for the archbishop to obtain anything from his property there: and in order that he might have a livelihood, the see of Worcester went with York. During this time (972-1016) Southwell became a convenient half-way house between the two dioceses.

The earliest recorded endowment, though not of necessity the first granted, is a royal donation to Oskytel the Danish Archbishop of York (circa A.D. 956) of a demesne of twenty mansas at Southwell; and power was especially retained to the archbishop to dispose of it at his death as he deemed best. Archbishop Alfred Putta (1023-51) was a great supporter of secular foundations. Beverley and Southwell both benefited from his liberality. Most likely during his reign that rude Anglo-Saxon church was built, which supplanted some other of which we have no information. Putta lived a great deal at Southwell, and died there, so that a manor house or palace was then in existence. He was buried at Peterborough Abbey. Kinsius, his successor, gave to the old minster two bells.

We have now come to a time when we may speak of the county of Notts, and of canons and their prebends, and we can well understand why any archbishop, monk though he might be, as Kinsius was, would encourage establishments like Southwell. Of what practical use to a diocese was a body of Benedictines? Their interests were confined to the boundaries of their own monasteries; but secular clergy appointed by the archbishop himself were of great assistance. As the parishes increased in number, and the outside duties were by degrees confined to their own particular churches, they could still help in many ways in general diocesan matters; and in this way York, Beverley, and Ripon grew up, not to mention smaller colleges like Howden. The system was abused afterwards; but originally it was of great practical utility. In the eleventh century, if not in the tenth, certain of the clergy had separate endowments or prebends, and their outside duties were confined to one particular church, situated in the township or parish of the endowment, while one residence in Southwell and a second in the prebendal village were allotted to them, and afterwards their stalls and benefices came to be called by the names of these particular prebends. In this way the Culdee system developed into the prebendal; and what with the archbishop’s occasional residence, and the staff of clergy, we can understand the statement of Leland: “Ther was a Se at Southwel of the Merches which now longeth to the Archbishop of York.” Before the Conquest Southwell was the southern capital of the diocese.

Aldred, to whom befell the strange fortune of consecrating both Harold and William, enlarged York and Beverley; and Hugh the Chanter of York tells us that he made prebends at Southwell.[3]

By the time of his death (1070 or 1075) the following at least were in existence, although it might be later on they were called by their local names:—Normanton, Norwell Overhall, Norwell Palace Hall (or Palishall), Oxton and Cropwell, Woodborough, North Muskham.

Aldred attempted, without success, to enforce celibacy amongst the clergy.

The First Norman Archbishops.—With Aldred, that judicious benefactor of Southwell, passed away for a long period the archbishops who spoke and taught in the common tongue of the people. His successors looked down on the English as the English had previously looked down on the Britons, and appointed other Normans to the stalls, with whom they could take counsel; and the strange sight began to be witnessed of prebendaries using a kind of “pigeon” English to make themselves understood. The first Norman, Thomas I. of Bayeux, “a prelate of great genius, and a friend of the Muses,” had to part with Lindsey (and for a time with Newark) when the capital of the huge neighbouring diocese was removed from the Oxfordshire Dorchester to Lincoln. Lincoln is now reckoned as of a venerable antiquity, yet her chapter is appreciably the junior of Southwell. Archbishop Gerard (21 May 1108) died at Southwell while asleep in his garden, and with a MS. on astrology under his pillow, and was buried at York. His successor Thomas II. (1108-1114), a son of the first Norman bishop of Worcester, addressed a pastoral letter to the people of Nottinghamshire, begging for their contributions for the building of the church of S. Mary of Southwell (de Suwellae) “and that ye may the more willingly do this, we release you, so that you need not visit every year the church of York, as all our other people (or parishioners) do, but the church of S. Mary of Southwell instead, and there have the same pardon as at York.”

This letter helps to explain the raison d’être of Southwell. York was too far away for the Notts people, 70 to 80 miles from Nottingham by road, and Southwell was central for the whole county. The favourite Norman system of choosing the leading town was not adopted because a chapter and a residence were both in existence at Southwell, and because of the situation of the town. Driven like a wedge into the southern province, if Nottinghamshire was to make procession anywhere, Southwell was easier of access than Nottingham. Already for administrative purposes the archbishop’s capital for the county, the minster now became the mother church in every respect.

But if this was to be the case, the small and roughly-built minster then standing was quite inadequate according to the more magnificent Norman ideas. Every one of the old Saxon cathedrals either had or then was undergoing the process of pulling down, only to be rebuilt on a larger scale and in a better manner. Southwell’s turn came rather late in the day; and the proportions and the masonry both benefited in consequence. As at York, the work was done piecemeal, the old coming down as the new progressed. Thomas could hardly have lived long enough to see the whole completed, with its chancel square at the east and four eastern apses now no more; but he would at least have the gratification of knowing that everything was advancing towards completion.[4]

The late Mr J.R. Green has made clear one obscure point in this universal system of rebuilding on a more magnificent scale. Where, we ask, did the money come from? Neither the contributions of the liberal, nor forced labour, would suffice. The Jews found the money required. They had come over with or after the Conqueror, and settled in the towns in their different Jewries under the king’s immediate protection. “Castle and cathedral alike owed their existence to the loans of the Jews.” The Jewish money-lenders of York and Lincoln assisted in the building of Southwell.

By this time, if not earlier, the number of stalls was ten, Norwell Tertia Pars, Oxton Altera Pars, and St. Muskham having been created, and the office of sacrist or sexton raised to the dignity of a canonry. Henry I. and Stephen both granted rights and immunities, civil, criminal, and forest. Archbishop Thurstan (1119-1135) founded the stalls of Beckingham and Dunham, prebends in the north of the county, with the village tithes and some glebe, and Halloughton or Halton, near to Southwell. Pope Honorius (circa 1125) wrote to the archbishop against the marriage of the cathedral clergy. “In your churches [York, Beverley, Ripon, Southwell] be earnest to reform discipline, and restore the refectory at Southwell to the good condition in which it existed in times past.” The pope objected to the canons being married and living with their families; he wanted them to be celibate, and take their meals together; but he was mistaken in supposing that they ever had done so at Southwell.

Alexander III. promulgated two bulls, one to the minster clergy (1171), and the other to his “well beloved the archdeacon, dean[5] and the other clergy of the county.” After confirming the Whitsuntide procession and directing that the chrism or consecrated oil should be distributed at that synod by the rural deans throughout the county, he exempted the chapter from the control of the archbishop, and almost annihilated the authority of the latter.[6]

Archbishop Roger had obtained the pope’s support to disallow the over-lordship of Canterbury, and this was the payment demanded. It was a cruel blow, for the church and its staff owed nearly everything to the archbishop, and the prebendaries were his advisers and assistant curates. Now they were quite independent. An imperium in imperio was established, and what York lost Rome was expected to gain. The chapter naturally preferred being placed on an equality with York; for in spite of Whitsuntide processions and synods, York, as in the matter of the confirmation of the Halloughton prebend, had exercised some sort of authority. Now they could do so no longer, and the two chapters became in every sense equal. The canons were also permitted to appoint vicars both to their stalls and to their parishes.

After the death of Roger the see was vacant for a number of years, and, in the absence of King Richard, William, Bishop of Ely and papal legate, as chancellor, acted as regent. He controlled the northern province, and punished those who had violated the king’s peculiar by massacring Jews. Richard, however, despatched to England Hugh, Bishop of Durham, with full power as justiciary north of the Humber. At Ely the two prelates met; and on Hugh presenting his credentials superseding William in the north, William said that he would cheerfully resign his power there. William then inveigled his rival to the quiet and seclusion of Southwell, and here, having Bishop Hugh completely in his power, put him under arrest. He kept him in custody in the palace until Hugh had promised to resign Windsor and all the other places entrusted to him; and even then would not release him until he had his son (so Roger de Hoveden calls him) as his hostage. William was eventually deposed by John and the council.

When Richard returned he chose Southwell for the place at which to meet William the Lion of Scotland in order to settle differences. After reducing Nottingham by the help of some engines which threw large stones, Palm Sunday 1194 saw Cœur de Lion at his palace or hunting-box of Clipstone in Sherwood Forest, and William at Worksop. Each rested “on account of the solemnity of the day,” and on the morrow (4th April) met at Southwell. Roger de Hoveden says that they repaired the next day to Melton, but Florence of Worcester that they continued at Southwell over the Tuesday, and that during their stay, William demanded of Richard “all the dignities and honours which his predecessors held in England,” and that Richard answered, that “he would give him satisfaction after he had consulted his barons.” The council was held at Northampton on Easter Eve, and Richard declined to concede the demands of the Scotch King.

Archbishop Walter de Gray (1216-56).—Beyond that Pavia, daughter of Nigel de Rampton, and widow of Robert de Maluvel, founded the fourteenth prebend, that of Rampton, some twenty miles north of Southwell, there is nothing to record before Gray’s episcopate. The diocese was in a constant state of turmoil and disorder from political affairs, and this had its effect upon the architecture of the minster. From the late Norman of Thomas II. there is nothing until we arrive at the maturity of the Lancet Gothic or Early English of the thirteenth century. The transition between the two is entirely wanting. Gray was a great and many-sided prelate; in spite of his political duties, he both governed his diocese and built extensively. At Southwell he considered the Norman choir too small, and issued (1233) an indulgence for thirty days for the completion of that Early English building, which to this day, although externally shorn of its high roof, is internally almost exactly as he left it, and a fitting commemoration of his reign. He also endeavoured to mitigate some of the harmful results of the Bull of Independence. As the canons were allowed to appoint vicars, it was equivalent to granting them leave of non-residence. Gray tried to enforce that they really should appoint deputies, both vicars-choral for their stalls, and perpetual vicars for their prebendal parishes. Other ranks of the minster clergy date from his time. At first the vicars-choral said or chanted the masses for the dead; but in 1241 Robert de Lexington, canon of one of the Norwells, and Chief Justiciary, founded two chantries in the church, and made provision for a third to be removed there from a chapel in the town. He gave to the chapter the presentation of Barnburgh in South Yorkshire, and, by some power difficult now to understand, provided that the rector was to pay 23 merks yearly for the support of two priests, two deacons and two sub-deacons, “who for ever at the altar of the blessed Thomas the Martyr in the church of Southwell” were to celebrate the divine offices for the repose of his own soul and those of his relatives and others. As a distinct body ranking below the vicars-choral, the chantry priests now became a regular part of the minster staff, and eventually numbered thirteen.

As the prebendaries might now be non-resident without his licence, Gray tried to establish a dean as head of the chapter in permanent residence. He was only visitor and patron, and in having no regular president, other than the senior canon in residence, Southwell differed from all other churches. York had its dean, Beverley its provost, Ripon its permanent president in the prebendary of Stanwick; and during Gray’s time a dean named Hugh appears for a short time. But it was not to be; and we soon hear no more of him.[7]

Gray’s reforming zeal urged the chapter to consent to various statutes and regulations. Those who were ordained to serve in the church had to pass an examination before the canons in residence, and to be of a good character. A canon, accompanied by a vicar and the registrar, was to visit yearly the churches within the jurisdiction, and put an end to abuses. The canons-resident were likewise given complete authority over all the other clergy, and these were to be fined for absence from worship. The readers of the lessons (lectiones), whether in the choir or pulpit, were to look the passages over beforehand, and to read audibly and distinctly. Those who failed in this, and more particularly those who upset the gravity of the others, were to be flogged in the chapter-house. The inferior clergy of the choir were to look over their music before service, were not to use their books during service, but to look at the music or order board (tabulam). Bad and violent language outside the church was punishable by one flogging or a shilling fine, or, as a second alternative, by the wearing of the bulgewarium round the culprit’s neck “according to the ancient use of the church.” The same offence committed inside was to be punished by two floggings or a two shillings fine, and for the third expulsion ensued.

By the Portsmouth charter of Henry III., dated July 1253, in confirmation of previous ones, the chapter in civil and criminal matters over its officials and property became, if anything, more independent than ever of the ordinary law of the land. “The canons of S. Mary of Southwell shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those of S. Peter of York, particularly they shall receive the amercements of their tenants, and fines for all such offences as they have been guilty of ... exemptions from tolls and duties, from suits of counties, hundreds, and wapentakes, and from all gelds such as Danegeld, Horngeld, etc. etc., and that they shall have their courts of justice with soc and sac.” There is also mention made at this period of rights of some kind over parts of Sherwood Forest.

Archbishop John Romanus (1286-96).—Romanus had a somewhat troubled reign. He had quarrels with the Pope, who wanted to appoint foreigners, and with the York chapter about his right of visitation. This latter was settled by arbitration, and is of interest as the Southwell statutes were always based on York. The archbishop was to visit once in five years, and was to enter the chapter-house unattended by chaplains or clerks, two canons sworn to secrecy being the only persons allowed to act with him; and canonical obedience was to be rendered by the dean.[8] The visitation held at Southwell on the Tuesday after the Epiphany 1294 has been preserved, and from this we gather that the old provisions, which enacted that non-resident canons were to provide vicars, had not been carried out, for it was decreed that they were to provide perpetual vicars (vicarii perpetui) to their parish churches before the next visitation. Vicars-choral and clerks were forbidden to laugh and talk in the choir, particularly during service, under pain of expulsion, and no women, other than relatives of good repute, were to live in the houses of the vicars-choral and perpetual vicars. The number of stalls was brought up to sixteen by the addition of Eaton, and by carving N. Leverton out of Beckingham. In this way the archbishop endeavoured to provide for the residence of at least some canons; and the non-resident were to provide proctors or proxies (generally their vicars-choral) to answer for them in chapter.

But his abiding work is architectural. At York he laid with great ceremony the foundation-stone of a new nave, and at the same time a new chapter-house was commenced there, and both have survived the storm and stress of six centuries. At Southwell he determined that the canons should likewise have a fitting house. The masons had now become a highly-organised body with supervisors, surveyors, overseers and a host of other officials. The master masons were first-rate architects, and the men below them—the freemasons—were not merely workmen but sculptors and artists.[9] Alike in elegance of proportion and elaborate beauty of detail, architecture was rapidly approaching the full glory of the Decorated epoch, and during his time was commenced at least, if not finished, that miracle of mediæval inspiration, the chapter-house.

At York, to help in meeting the cost of the new buildings, offenders of various kinds were punished by the infliction of fines, the amount of which was determined by the penancers. At Southwell, the archbishop resorted to a method which no doubt increased his popularity. At this same visitation of 1294 it was decreed that the houses (i.e. both in Southwell and on the prebends) of the alien canons, which had fallen into a ruinous condition, were to be repaired within a year under penalty of a heavy fine to go to the fabric of the new chapter-house. As the revenues of these alienigenae were collected by local officials, the penalties could be easily deducted, and by one and the same decree this prelate showed his objection to these foreigners, mulcted them in part of their benefices, prevented money from crossing the Alps, and aided the addition of the finest member to the minster. “The Sainte Chapelle at Paris, the Angel Choir at Lincoln, fall into a second rank compared with this Southwell chapter-house.” Nothing is known of the older one.

Archbishop Thomas de Corbridge (1300-4).—Corbridge endeavoured to check the abuse of illiterate clerks, by decreeing that no candidate was to be ordained by title of the chapter and no vicar was to be appointed until a satisfactory examination had been passed before the chapter. The canons were to pay the stipends of both their vicars punctually, so that the latter need not wander about the country to the scandal of all good people. The services were to be better rendered; and the precentor was to examine the music books and see that they agreed, to prevent discord in the singing, while the decani and cantoris sides were to be equal. As visitor he insisted that the statutes of Romanus were to be carried out, and that in the prebendal churches perpetual vicars were to be appointed within a year; his predecessor had granted five years in vain. Whilst he ruled that there must always be in residence three, or at least two, canons; he saw how, in spite of the recently added stalls, neither he nor his successors could enforce even so much as that, and it was settled that when none were resident “from any cause inevitable and legitimate, leave having been asked of us,” some discreet person under oath was to govern, while only canons who had duly qualified as residents were to share in the common fund. The reign of Corbridge was short; he left no mark in the diocese, but his efforts to purify the chapter were praiseworthy. He died at the palace, and was buried in the choir near the pulpit; but the exact spot is now lost.

The Bull of Independence did its work; and non-residence became the rule. The popes further made use of their claim to appoint foreigners to vacant stalls; and amongst others Stephen de Ferentino, cardinal priest, held Norwell Overhall, and Stephen of St. Mary beyond Tiber, also cardinal priest, held Normanton, both during the thirteenth century. The kings, like the popes, wanted the stalls as a cheap way of paying those priests who served them as lawyers and secretaries. In this way John Clavell, the king’s clerk, received Norwell Overhall; and in the fourteenth century, William de Melton (who succeeded Dominus Lambertus, a foreigner appointed by Letters Apostolic) obtained a stall, holding, at the same time, another in Lincoln, the provostship of Beverley, and the archdeaconry of Barnstaple. He gave these up on his accession to the throne of York in 1317. His active life was mainly spent as secretary to Edward II., and lord keeper and then treasurer to Edward III. It is unnecessary to multiply instances. Mr Gairdner has pointed out how monarchs found their shrewdest administrators in the ranks of the clergy; and this was a cheap and easy way of paying them. It was not expected that a candidate for the priesthood should have what an age with a higher standard would call vocation. A promising young man applied for orders as he would now try for the Civil Service or be called to the Bar. Nobody expected him to be a winning preacher, or to have an ardent zeal for souls. For years it was well that he employed himself usefully somehow, and did not, on the plea of dulness and boredom, live a life of complete idleness or worse away from Southwell.

In the first half of the fourteenth century the beautiful rood screen was carved: the last work worthy of praise, for it was followed by the insertion of the huge west window with the idea of lighting up the gloom of the nave, and the lowering of the roofs throughout. In numerous cases brought before the courts of law, the chapter proved their rights to their property and privileges; and benefactors multiplied. Amongst others, Canon Richard de Chesterfield (1379) built a new home for the sixteen vicars-choral on the site of the present one. Canon Thomas Haxey (1415) built another for the chantry priests on the site of the present Grammar School, and Archbishop Cardinal John Kempe (1439) purchased for three hundred merks, from the Crown, the confiscated alien priory of Ravensdale in Lindsey, and presented it to the vicars-choral.

Later on the triennial visitations (1469 to 1540) by the chapter show that the inferior clergy had deteriorated in religion and morals, more than one-half being frequently accused of offences more or less serious.

There is an inventory of the goods of Richard de Normanton, parish vicar in 1369.[10] This functionary performed the duties of parish priest for the residuary parish, and was appointed by the prebendary of Normanton; and for certain purposes the parishioners had part of the minster allotted to them as their “parish church within the collegiate church.” The parish altar was dedicated to St. Vincent, and had one frontal of silk, and a second of coarser material, decorated with the royal arms; and there were four towels (tobalia), two ferials and a corporal. For mass were five sets of vestments, each with chasuble, stole, fanon (or maniple), alb, amice, and girdle. Two were reckoned as “principals,” one with and the other without the tunic; the others were for ordinary Sundays and week days. Two cushions covered with red syndon and a lectern belonged to the altar, as did nine napkins, besides a carpet for “double” feasts. At Easter the parishioners made their communion at a long table (mensa domini) covered with two long cloths.

The choral robes (for the parish vicar assisted the choir) were cope, almuce (almicium, not the amicium or amice for celebrations), rochet and surplice (super-pellicium). The parish plate included two silver-gilt chalices, of which the more valuable was for Easter, a portable silver-gilt cross, and a plated staff; and there were candlesticks of iron or wood and a gilt copper cup for the host. A breviary or portiforium with music was estimated at five pounds—a chantry priest’s stipend; and Richard was provided with surplice or lantern for visiting the sick, as well as with a set of sermons on the epistles and gospels throughout the year. Undoubtedly the parishioners were accustomed to hear somebody’s sermons read; and the parish priests performed the duty instead of a prebendary.

The Brothers Booth.—There is a ready explanation of Archbishop William Booth (1452-65) making Southwell his favourite residence. Like a wise man, he did not care to have anything to do with the Wars of the Roses; and during the whole of this time Southwell, true to its traditions, was remote from armies and battlefields. He improved the stipends of the chantry priests, and enlarged the chapel of Henry le Vavasour outside the south-west angle of the nave, the home of the Grammar School, and there he elected to be buried.[11] His successor, George Neville, brother to the king-maker, was unwise enough to interfere in matters of State, and was rewarded by the seizure of his vast private property and exile and imprisonment at Calais and at Guisnes. At Neville’s death William’s brother Laurence was translated from Durham, and during his reign (1476-80) showed his brother’s preference for Southwell. He added two chantries to the Vavasour or Grammar School chapel, and was buried by his brother’s side. This adjunct, needlessly pulled down in the last century, came to be called the Booth chapel. While Laurence was at Southwell, in July 1479, the two resident canons gave themselves leave of absence, pleading the ravages of the plague.

Canon Christopher Urswick, LL.D.—Amongst the non-resident dignitaries immersed in affairs of State was Christopher Urswick, instituted to Norwell Palishall by proxy (6th April 1509). He was taken into the service of the Lady Margaret, wife of Richmond and mother of Henry VII., whose third husband was Stanley the first Earl of Derby of the present creation. Engaged in plots and suffering exile for his mistress and her son, after Bosworth he became Henry’s chaplain and almoner, and obtained the deanery of York, which he exchanged for a canonry on receiving the more coveted deanery of Windsor. He was also at some time or other rector of Hackney and archdeacon of Richmond, of Wells, and of Surrey. Before he was a prebendary he would accompany Henry on the royal progress through the north, when the king, avoiding Newark on account of the plague, passed through Southwell on his way from Lincoln to Nottingham. He was employed as special plenipotentiary to settle with the Emperor Maximilian I. the terms on which Henry was to be admitted into the Holy League. He died in 1522, and Wolsey appointed to the vacant stall his own illegitimate son, Thomas Wynter.

Urswick is chiefly mentioned here, because to him belongs the distinguished honour of figuring in Shakespeare (Richard III. Act iv. scene 5). To him, on the eve of Bosworth, Stanley laments that his own hands are tied, as his son is a hostage in Richard’s power—

My son George Stanley is franked up in hold.

If I revolt, off goes young George’s head.

It is unnecessary to remind the reader that “Sir” does not there mean a knight, but is the equivalent for the modern “Reverend.”

PART II.—CONSTITUTION OF THE CHAPTER

The constitution by which the minster was governed was unique, and so remarkable as to require a special summary, excepting in so far as has been already anticipated.

Southwell was the cathedral city and mother church of the county from the time that Nottinghamshire first became a county at all—let us say, from a hundred years before the Conquest. The Whitsuntide procession merely emphasised and ratified this fact. At this festival a synod was held, which would seem to have been more for the purpose of festivity than of legislation, and the chrism or holy oil was distributed through the rural deans to the various parishes of the county. Each parish had to pay a specified tax, called the Pentecostal offering, varying from the humble sixpence of Staunton to the merk of Nottingham and Newark. Of this offering ten per cent. went to the sacrist, and forty per cent. each to the prebendary of Normanton and the residents’ common fund; altogether some fifteen or sixteen pounds. In the palmy days of pilgrimages and processions Southwell must have looked very gay at Whitsuntide. After gradually dying out, Archbishop Drummond, in the last century, on his own authority, put a stop to the little that was left of this time-honoured pageant. It is strange that no one has ever been able to fix the exact day of the week on which it was held.

The Liberty of Southwell and Scrooby was a civil jurisdiction of the archbishop as a great landowner, and extended over some twenty parishes. Besides his Southwell manor house or palace, he had another at Scrooby, on the famous north road near the Yorkshire border[12]; and his property was for the most part contiguous to these two seats. Within his Liberty he appears up to quite recent times to have been very much his own Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff, with sessions independent of the county, and justices of the peace of his own nomination.

The Peculiar of Southwell was an ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the chapter over the ancient manor or lordship of Southwell and the prebendal villages. With the exception of ordination and confirmation, the canons were their own archbishop, as they were their own archdeacon and rural dean. They had full authority over their subordinates, including the perpetual vicars of the prebendaries, and over all, clergy and laity alike, for certain matters then seemingly reckoned as ecclesiastical offences, such as slander, perjury, and immorality. They could punish by fine, suspension, penance, and ex-communication, but in later years dropped the punishment of flogging.

The court of the chapter (or rather Dr William Worseley, the one resident canon) sentenced Cristina Saynton to walk three Sunday mornings before the Cross in the processions, carrying a wax candle, and clad in a loose unfastened “tunic,” with bare feet and legs, and towel over her head. Agnes Nothorne was sentenced to walk round Edingley Churchyard on Palm Sunday, barefooted, and with a net over her head; and on Good Friday to approach the Cross with bended knees, and then crawl with bare feet and head covered as before, and kneeling before two altars in the church, say before each five times the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the Creed.

This ecclesiastical jurisdiction included the proving of wills of all persons; and the records contain many instances of probate. To this was added the civil jurisdiction of “assizes of bread and ale,” with power to punish fraud, and authority over weights and measures. In respect of their own property, the chapter had their court “views of Frank pledge,” etc., and the individual prebendaries likewise had theirs in respect of their endowments in land; and there were appeals from the prebendal courts to those of the chapter. In short, they had a complete feudal jurisdiction, both over their own lands and over those they held in trust for the service of the minster and for their subordinates. But there were in addition certain marked privileges. The lands of the prebends were free from the authority of the sheriff and all other officers of the king, unless the canon consented. The canons had “in their houses and lands Soc and Sac, Tol and Theam, and infanganthef (the right of executing a thief) and intol and utol, and all those same customs of the honour and liberty which the king has in his own lands.” Their tenants were almost, if not entirely, exempt from military service, and their taxes, when any were required, were levied by the York Convocation, to which they sent a proctor, and not, it would seem, by king and parliament; and the fines did not go to the Crown.

Although a large part of the manor had been mapped out into daughter parishes, such as Edingley and Upton, a residuary parish of considerable area always remained[13]; and from the beginning of non-residence the chapter delegated their pastoral duties to the parish vicar. There were five chapels in the town, besides chapels of ease in the more remote parts of the parish. The actual town was divided into the Burgage, between the Greet and the market-place, and the Prebendage; and the latter was chiefly ecclesiastical property of various kinds. To the church itself appertained the old tradition of sanctuary. A man charged with murder even, or an outlaw, could take sanctuary for thirty days; and if by that time he had not made his peace, some of the clergy were to escort him for thirty leagues (leugae), “with some sign of the Church’s peace,” and also relics, wherever the accused wanted to go, and bring him back three times. Interference involved the crime of “breaking the Church’s peace.” It is difficult to say when sanctuary was abolished or died out.

Another peculiar privilege was, that the clergy were not tried by the usual courts for the most serious crimes. There is only one such recorded, a bad case of felony[14]; and this came before “judges (or justiciaries) of our Lord the King, nominated (? deputatis) to preserve the peace,” and was tried at the south door of the church or in one of the canons’ houses. Whether these judges were the ordinary itinerant justices, or those of the Court of Eyre north of the Trent, or the archbishop’s in right of his liberty of Southwell and Scrooby, or a special commission—this is a puzzle.

The Clergy and Staff.—The archbishops were at first head of the chapter, and the canons their curates. They must have begun to lose touch when, in the twelfth century, the chapter became independent. Henceforth they were visitors, and at their visitations held what were in reality courts. Subsequently the statute of Premunire, by putting a stop, or at least a check, to papal bulls, and that of Provisors, by forbidding the appointment of foreigners to vacant stalls, increased somewhat their authority. They were always patrons of the sixteen stalls by right of their having endowed them (with one exception); and it is clear from what happened in Wolsey’s time, that they could by use celebrate when they pleased, and appoint the preachers. Sometimes, but not always, the statutes or decrees of the chapter read de consensu & voluntate of the archbishop.

The prebendaries, addressed in chapter as “venerable,” were sixteen in number, and their prebends were:—Beckingham, Dunham, Eton, Halloughton, N. Leverton, N. Muskham, S. Muskham, Normanton (with the chancellorship), Norwell Overhall, Norwell Palishall (or Palace Hall), Norwell Tertia Pars, Oxton cum Cropwell, Oxton Secunda Pars, Rampton, Sacristaria, Woodborough.

By the valuation of 1547, Norwell Overhall was worth £50 a year, and Eton only £2. These valuations were, however, below the real profits, as the tenants paid part of their rents in a lump sum (technically called a “fine”) at the commencement of the lease. The chapter, in conjunction with the church-wardens appointed by them, controlled their common fund for the residents as well as the fabric fund or “ladie land,” and they were trustees of the endowments of the inferior clergy, and the several miscellaneous bequests for tapers, lamps, etc.

Next we may place the perpetual vicars, of whom there were twelve, Normanton (within the residuary parish) and the Sacrist prebend (the duties of which were limited to the church) not requiring them.[15] Their stipends from land, the lesser tithes, rent charges on the prebends, and other sources were small. They had no duties in the minster itself, but were subject to the chapter. Each canon appointed the vicar of his prebend. The daughter churches of the parish were also under the chapter.

Passing over the parish vicar, there were vicars-choral for all the prebends; and these performed, as deputies of the canons, the long round of daily services. They were paid £3 a year by their prebendaries, and shared in their own common fund, and lived in common in their own college. They had a common seal for their property, but were never a separate corporation, being appointed by their canons and under the control of the chapter, who made the bye-laws that governed them. In chapter meetings they often acted as proctors or proxies for their absent chiefs. One of them was appointed “hebdomodary” each week, and took the priest’s part. They had a precentor for each side of the choir; and there seems to have been as well a precentor in chief. They were always in priests’ orders, and the chapter strictly prohibited their holding any care of souls. Their use was that of York. In ancient times they were not called minor canons.

Next ranked those peculiar officers against whom Sir Walter Besant waxes so eloquent. The chantry priests or chaplains were an offshoot of the vicars-choral, who previously said or sang the appointed masses for the departed. The earliest donation was that of Prebendary and Justiciary Robert de Lexington, 9th October 1241; and the latest that of Laurence Booth (1479), who endowed two in the Vavasour Chapel: altogether thirteen priests, and nine or ten altars. They “followed the choir,” or, in addition to their specific duties, assisted in the singing; and the priest of St. Nicholas also served the parochial chapel of ease of Halam, while others performed similar outside duties, and one was usher of the Grammar School and a second “player at the organs.”

The chantry priests, besides their endowments, which averaged four or five pounds a year each, shared a small common fund, and, thanks to Canon Thomas Haxey, from the year 1415 lived together in their own house on the site of the present Grammar School, and could lodge outsiders. The chantry of St. John the Evangelist was in the gift of the vicars-choral, and to the rest the chapter appointed. The vicars-choral were generally promoted from this body. Next ranked two deacons, who, besides other duties, marshalled the processions, and two sub-deacons: the pay of the former being £3, 10s. and of the latter £2, 13s. Clerks were ordained as sub-deacons, and advanced to priests’ orders; and all four offices were sometimes combined with vicar-choralships. The six choristers were laymen, as was the incense-bearer or thuribuler. Then there were the registrar (an important official), the master of Our Lady’s works, the vergers, or wand-bearers, and others: altogether some sixty or more, not counting the wardens who were generally vicars-choral. But the list of offices is not yet exhausted; for the prebendary of Normanton, in his capacity of chancellor, was the secretary for education for the county, and appointed to such grammar schools as Nottingham, Newark, and Wollaton, as well as to Southwell.

Southwell Grammar School must be one of the very oldest educational establishments in the country, and the present headmaster (appointed by the bishop of the diocese) has a long unbroken line of predecessors going back to Norman times. The master was a vicar-choral or chantry priest, and received £2 a year out of the Normanton prebend, and his assistant half that sum. Complaints were made latterly that the master shirked his duties, was too fond of giving “remedies” or holidays, so that the boys paid their parents’ substance for nothing, and allowed English to be talked in school instead of Latin. The “Song School” was a separate establishment, of which the master was paid £1 a year, and taught other subjects besides singing. Possibly his pupils were choir boys, and the school held in the north transept chapel of the nave.

The sacrist, besides his vicar-choral, had “clerks” under him; and complaints were made that these, as well as other clerks and ministers of the church, did not attend the Grammar School. At Wollaton school, adults (viri) were likewise taught; and at Southwell, it would seem that these “clerks” received, or were supposed to receive, some smattering of Latin with a view to ordination, for in spite of their name they do not appear to have been already in orders.

The archbishop presented to the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene; and there was a nunnery. No trace is left of either of these institutions.

In value and importance, Southwell ranked below London and York, but quite on a level with many cathedrals.

CHAPTER II
EXTERIOR—THE NAVE AND TRANSEPT

PART I.—NORMAN

Very happy in their choice of situation, the first builders selected an extensive tract of meadow land with a gentle slope from west to east; and consecrated the meadow itself for a burial-ground. Later builders never changed this site; and the church of Edwy and Edgar, and that of the eleventh century, as well as the present one, occupy the ground on which first stood a rude and hastily-constructed edifice of wood. Every one must at once be struck with the ample and unbroken space on all sides, allowing, as it does, full justice to be done to the fair proportions. In mediæval, as in modern, buildings the site is often too limited or too insignificant to do full justice to the architecture. It is otherwise here, and to this charm is added a second which, again, modern architects are apt to ignore. The building follows the natural slope of the ground it occupies; it is not constructed upon an artificial dead level. And the advantage of this in adding to the picturesque appearance becomes evident as we look at the building as a whole from different points of view: it grows upon one. And this effect of the spacious churchyard is still further enhanced by the position of the surrounding houses. There is not an unsuitable building in sight. The beautiful avenue of elms, called the Prebends’ Walk, at the northern side, half-conceals, half-reveals a row of detached houses environed by gardens, some of them in the prosperous days of the collegiate chapter prebendaries’ residences. The buildings of the Grammar School are at the north-west angle. Along the west side are other houses, and the churchyard surroundings are completed by the gardens and partially restored ruins of the palace of Wolsey and of Sandys, and by the open gateway and railing which leave to view the lawn-covered Vicars’ Court with its five houses. The old Whitsuntide ceremonials, in times when Whitsuntide fell ten days later than now, were rendered more impressive by the surrounding bloom; and at no time of the year does the general aspect now present a more charming appearance than at the County Choral Festival in June, when the foliage of the trees, arrived at its first maturity, has not yet lost its early freshness.

The principal gateway is on the west: a simple Norman structure with a niche overhead, in which, before the destructive days of Puritan iconoclasts, was placed a statue. The work on either side dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. A second and plainer gives entrance on the north by the Prebends’ Walk; and a third by the Vicars’ Court.

There is no eminence from which to get a bird’s-eye view. The western front and towers are commanded from the west gateway, the ground sloping gently. Standing by the corner of the palace and vicars’ gardens we get the south-east view of choir, south transept, and central tower. Going round to the north-east, and standing by the small entrance from the street by the corner house of the Vicars’ Court, the solid Early English choir on the left, the late Norman central tower in the middle, and the elegant Decorated chapter-house with the restored high-pitched roof are grouped together. And the due north view from the north gateway comprises the beautifully broken front from the west tower and north porch to the late Early English of the transept chapel, the whole being flanked on the left by the chapter-house. But the grouping of the three towers can only be properly appreciated from a greater distance: from the meadows on the south-east, where they combine with the palace ruins, or from the more distant view when approaching by rail from Rolleston.

The external dimensions in feet are as follow:—Extreme length, 318, of which the Norman nave and tower comprise 185; extreme length of transepts, 137; breadth of nave, 72; breadth of south transept, about 40; of north, a trifle less; breadth of choir, same as nave, and including the two chapels, 108.

Thus it will be seen that Southwell occupies a place amongst the smaller cathedrals. Not only is it less than Durham, York, and Lincoln, but also than Norwich and Exeter. It is, in fact, a little larger than Rochester. The original Norman choir was of course different. The dedication is to the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Southwell.

The stone chiefly came from quarries in the neighbourhood of Mansfield, twelve or fourteen miles away through Sherwood Forest. That used by the Norman builders is of a dark yellowish hue, while their Early English and Decorated successors found some of a lighter hue with blue-tinted veins. Fortunate in other matters, Southwell was fortunate in the choice of material. That eminent geologist Sir Roderick Murchison once expressed his regret that, when the Houses of Parliament were rebuilt, these quarries were not used. “If the Mansfield stone had been selected, not one pinnacle in that otherwise grand building would have been subjected, as it now was, to perish.” There is no fear of the minster perishing. Nave and transepts have already withstood the storms and rains of seven hundred and fifty years of the climate of the midlands, and choir and chapter-house almost as long. And this stone was chiselled by competent masons, after the fine pointed masonry of the later Norman had taken the place of the ruder work of earlier churches.

The Central Tower is a massive building of rather less than 40 feet square, and rises 105 feet from the ground. The decoration of the upper part is divided into two stages, separated by string courses; and the four faces of the same stage are alike. The lower consists of an arcade or series of arches; and, as is so often the case in Norman buildings of the twelfth century, these arches intersect. This same intersecting work is repeated in the corresponding stage of the north-west tower, as well as on either side of the interior of the north porch. The arcade of the upper stage is different in design, inasmuch as the arches are separate and do not intersect. They are seven in number. The space on either side of the central arch is rather more than the others; and the three central arches are pierced for windows, and, like the windows in the other towers, were once divided by a shaft into two lights. Above the upper stage the usual Norman corbel table is carried round the four sides. Originally the tower may have ended with a simple parapet; but if there were any spire, it would probably be of stone, of no great height, and rising from the outer surface of the walls—in fact, little more than a roof of pyramidal shape. The present roof dates from after the fire of 1711. The parapet is an addition, but contains stones with the Norman zigzag and circular hollow work. As the transept gables are similarly ornamented, it is assumed that these stones were removed from there and placed in their present position when the transept roofs were lowered; and accordingly the parapet of the tower is of the same date as the debasing of the transept roof. This—Mr Dimock’s theory—has been generally adopted by experts, and is interesting as an example of how archæologists are enabled to mark even the minor changes in detail. The somewhat elaborately carved pinnacles are, like the parapet, out of place on a Norman tower, although of Norman masonry. Originally placed at the ends of the transept gables, they corresponded with others in the north porch. Seen from below, they look too dwarfed and insignificant for their present altitude.

WALL OF TRANSEPT

PINNACLE—CENTRAL TOWER

The Bells, eight in number, are in this tower. If the first pair, the gift of Archbishop Kinsius before the Conquest, were ever placed here, they have long since been either destroyed or recast.

An inscription on the wall of the interior, near the north door of the choir, tells us that “Thomas Wymondesold, of Lambeth in the county of Surry, Esquire, gave unto this church a set of chimes and 20 shillings per annum for ever toward the keeping of them. 1693.” Wymondesold’s gift was reduced to a shapeless mass by the above-mentioned fire of 1711, and Ruddall of Gloucester cast a new peal with the following inscriptions:—

1st. Abraham Ruddall of Gloucester cast us all 1721.

2nd. Peace and good neighbourhood.

3rd. Prosperity to this Town.

4th. Prosperity to our Benefactors.

5th. From Lightning and Tempest, Good Lord, deliver us.

6th. Prosperity to the Chapter.

7th. Prosperity to the Church of England.

8th. I to the Church the Living call, and to the Grave do summon all.

Since then some have been recast and the inscriptions altered—

2nd. G. Mears, founders, London, 1849.

4th. T. Mears of London, fecit 1819.

5th. T. Mears of London, fecit 1819.

The wish expressed on the sixth bell has unhappily not been fulfilled. The chimes are set to the National Anthem.

The Nave and Aisles.—The length, including the west towers, of the external wall is 135 feet, the breadth 73. The division is into seven bays (broken on the north side by the famous porch) separated by buttresses. The effect is massive, stern, and bare to a degree. The buttresses are flat: of the same breadth and thickness throughout, and terminate in the parapet wall, which overhangs sufficiently to receive them. They would seem to have been constructed as much for ornament as for support. The only other relief of the Norman builders was those slightly projecting horizontal bands, the string courses. Two of these go round the whole of the Norman building, including the buttresses, excepting where by later alterations or other causes the continuity is broken. The lower of these, with heavy zigzag or chevron moulding—a peculiarity of late Norman—passes underneath such of the original windows as are left. But, as is so commonly the case, after-ages found that these windows did not give sufficient light, and enlarged several of them. The string course had to be removed to its corresponding position underneath the new windows, and was connected with the old by upright and vertical bands, the material being found in the somewhat similar zigzag mouldings of the sides of the destroyed Norman windows. This ready and economical use of the displaced stonework gives a peculiar appearance to the exterior of the early Perpendicular windows, which architecturally are quite out of place. The higher continuous string course above the aisle windows was not broken from this cause, and remained unaltered until the great west window was inserted. Exceedingly interesting are the small and plain square windows in the aisles above the second string course, intended to give light to the triforium. In the nave and both aisles the projecting eaves have given place to parapets, supported by the old simple yet bold nebule corbel table beneath.

As has been just stated incidentally, the windows of the two nave aisles represent various ages and different styles. Fortunately, from some unexplained reason, one of the original lights has been left intact, that in the north aisle nearest to the north-west tower, and is similar in detail to the lower tier of the transepts. In this we again meet with the zigzag ornament round both the sides and the arch, with outer side shafts supporting a semicircular edge-roll above; while the hood-moulding or dripstone is of the double billet, like the zigzag, a favourite Norman moulding. In the south aisle the three windows nearest to the tower at the west are imitations of the one just mentioned. They were put in about 1847, when the last remains of Booth’s (or Le Vavasour’s) Chapel were removed, and the old foundation near the north-west tower disturbed.

The four windows in either aisle to the east are early Perpendicular of the end of the fourteenth century. They are of three lights, and the arches are four-centred. They have transoms, while the tracery of the upper part is in flowing lines. The outer hood-moulding or dripstone arch terminates with the head-dress of the latter part of the fourteenth century. These windows are poor and meagre, and unworthy of their position; but are historically interesting as specimens of the work of a time when the land had been stricken down and everything upset by the great pestilence. The remaining window—that immediately to the west of the north porch—is modern. A pleasing detail is the central broken string course of either aisle. This is simply a continuation of the plain square abacus or top ornament of the side shafts of the first Norman windows. Broken by both buttresses and windows, it supplements the continuous upper and lower string courses, and assists them in relieving the bareness of the walls.

The Clerestory of the Nave.—Rising above the aisles the clerestories constitute one of those features which makes Southwell quite unique amongst English churches. The circular windows lighting up the interior of the nave are so peculiar, as to make the architect, when he first sees them, imagine himself for the moment in Normandy or the German Palatinate; and, in common with other details presently to be noticed, mark off the Norman exterior as belonging to that particular late style and period sometimes called Romanesque. “More singular perhaps than beautiful” is an authoritative criticism passed upon them. In these windows the only ornament is the plain round-patterned mouldings, suggestive of gigantic wedding rings, which encircle them. The parapet and corbel are of the same style as those of the aisle beneath; and there are no buttresses, the round windows alone separating the different bays. Generally when the high-pitched Norman roof has been (as at Southwell) replaced by one of lower elevation, we find that the clerestory windows are inserted at the same time; but here these plain circular windows, lighting up the interior, form part of the original building, and no other church in England possesses the same characteristic.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

NORTH PORCH.

CHIMNEY—NORTH PORCH.

The North Porch.—The north side of the nave differs from the south in its possession of this charming feature which occupies the third bay from the west. It is universally cited, with such examples as Sherborne and Malmesbury, as one of the finest specimens left. Perhaps it excels both of these, and certainly adds materially to the general beauty and interest of the north view, while the details are full of interest. Externally it is some 19 ft. broad, the massive walls leaving an internal breadth of about 14 ft., and it projects from the nave about 22 ft. In the outer portal two semi-cylindrical shafts worked into and engaged with the front terminate in capitals with cushion and scalloped mouldings. From these capitals (or, more accurately, from the string course above) spring the arches of two orders, with square, round, and hollow mouldings. That lower continuous zigzag string course, already described, is here utilised in an ingenious manner. Continued from beneath the aisle windows, it passes along the outside walls of the porch. Next it forms the abacus (or top of the capitals) of the pillars of the outer portals, and then doubles round along the interior walls above the arcading, finally losing itself in the outermost capital of the inner portal. Above the outer portal is the gable formed by an angle of about thirty degrees. Three windows, the centre by a frequent arrangement larger than the others, give light to the quaint paradise or upper room. These windows, glazed with diamond panes, have, as elsewhere, their inner arches unbroken by capitals or abaci, and ornamented with the zigzag; but the outer arch has the shafts and capitals, and is less ornamented; and above these the dripstone with the triple nebule and finished off with grotesquely carved heads. The two gable ends are crowned with round turrets pointed at the summit; and the western serves the purpose of a chimney flue to the upper room, being pierced with air holes. When this arrangement was first made it is impossible to say. The interior walls to the height of the continued string course are richly adorned with arcades. These are formed of the beautiful intersecting arches, and rest upon plain stone benches. The inner portal is formed by six receding arches. In the innermost the unbroken and rich zigzag is repeated; in the rest the arches stand upon shafts and capitals, and exhibit great variety of moulding, that next to the innermost having the unusual beakhead. This inner doorway almost comes up to the west door of Rochester in showing what the Norman craftsmen were capable of; and it is a pity that the waggon-vaulted roof of unfinished stone is too plain to harmonise. The oaken doors of the fourteenth century have flowing tracery carved on the wood. Access to the upper room or paradise is obtained from the triforium. The fireplace, chimney, and cupboards, made out of the thickness of the walls, show the dwelling-place of the sacrist, whose duty it was to sleep in the church that he might be at hand to ring the bells and perform other offices. This paradise over a Norman porch has set archæologists to work in order to find others; and they have succeeded in discovering one only, that of Bredon, in Worcestershire. But the peculiarities of this member of the north front of the cathedral are its least charm.

The outer archway and gable, the intersecting arcades of the inside walls, and the glorious inner portal, are matched by the way in which the whole combines with the varied architecture of the north front. In the floor is the slab of the grave of some unknown person who died in 1536. The inscription is illegible, but the “tau” T cross and heart have been deciphered. Is it by any chance that the last sacristan’s clerk of the old order of things elected that his lifeless remains should sleep their long last sleep underneath the time-honoured chamber where he had been wont to take his nightly rest?

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

NORTH PORCH, INTERIOR.

Booth’s Chapel.—The curious, by scanning closely the south wall of the nave near the south-west tower and the adjoining ground, may discern some recent alterations. It is the site of a chantry chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and erected about 1280 by one of the prebendaries Henry le Vavasour. This means that Le Vavasour gave or bequeathed some small endowment to support a priest whose duty it was to celebrate a specified number of masses for the repose of the soul of some particular person, probably of Le Vavasour himself. At first it was always called after the patron saint. Archbishop William Booth (1452-65), who enlarged it, was buried here; and his brother, Archbishop Laurence Booth (1476-80) endowed two more chantries to Our Lady and St. Cuthbert. He had previously (1457-76) been Bishop of Durham, and hence St. Cuthbert’s name. At the time of his death he was busy in improving the chapel, and directed in his will that his body was to be interred in the south side. It is now impossible to trace the exact spot where the remains of these two prelates, who were so attached to Southwell, and who died there, were laid, nor of those others whom we know by the wills proved before the chapter to have been buried inside. The second chantry and altar thus founded in 1480 are the only dedication to the Blessed Virgin within the minster, although the church itself was named in her honour; for there never has been any Lady Chapel properly so called. Yet this name is given to the chapel by William Enkersol, chantry priest of St. John the Baptist. In his will he directed “my bodie to be buryed in the churche yerde of our ladie of Suthwell beforesaide of the est side of our ladie is chapel.” From the death of Archbishop Laurence the building was called Booth’s Chapel; and the only chantries we are able to localise are the three here. Dickinson tells us that the windows formerly contained the coats of arms of the Booth family and their connections. While still a chantry, it was also the Grammar School under the direction of the prebendary of Normanton, ex officio chancellor. As the Grammar School it continued until in the year 1784 it was demolished on the ground that it marred the symmetry of the buildings; and on the site of the old chantry house the present school was built, after the chapel had been its home for nearly four hundred years. During some alterations in 1847 the wall of the aisle fell in, and was then restored to its present state. In its later days the chapel was also used as the library; and when pulled down, the books and manuscripts were deposited in the north transept chapel of the nave.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

WEST DOOR.

The West Front.—The western door has a striking resemblance to the still more beautiful inner one of the north porch, and likewise illustrates the care bestowed by Norman artificers upon this part of their edifices. It is of five arches; and here again the innermost arch is unbroken and profusely adorned with the familiar zigzag. The outer four rest upon shafts with scalloped capitals, and are alternately ornamented with the edge-roll and zigzag, two with each kind of moulding; and the hood-moulding above is of the double billet. The oaken doors, of the same date as those of the north porch, are covered with elaborate iron scroll work. Very beautiful is the effect of doorway and door; and we wish the same could be said of the window, but we have unhappily come to the great eyesore and disfigurement of the building. For this great west window takes up almost the whole space between the towers from doorway to summit. The style is late Perpendicular—probably not earlier than 1450. It is of seven lights, with many mullions and transoms and much tracery. In itself this does not harmonise or blend with Norman architecture, and the straight perpendicular lines of the tracery are inelegant; but the chief fault is the enormous size, occupying the entire centre of the front and, without exaggeration, suggestive rather of a railway station or the Crystal Palace than of a Norman nave. The string courses of the two towers tell us the probable size and position of the original windows, even though not connected from tower to tower; so do the transepts, and suggest three lights one above the other, either arched as in the nave aisles, or circular as in the clerestory, with perhaps at the top a small square window like those beneath the clerestory. What windows the Normans put in they put in after some such fashion as this. Then came the Early English architects, and they may have inserted larger lancet-headed lights, which would match well enough with the rest, and display no such incongruity as we now see. Rochester Cathedral and the little-known priory church of Cartmel are two other typical examples of this fifteenth-century want of taste. Can we then assign any reason for this? I think we can, as has been already foreshadowed in the description of the four eastern windows of the nave aisles. Norman windows were small for two reasons: light was not valued, and glass was scarce, if used at all, for we cannot trace glass prior to the closing years of the twelfth century. Early English builders made their windows larger than the Norman, and the Decorated still further increased the size. But both performed their work in such due proportion as to take away the idea of gloom and add to the beauty. So things went on until in the middle of the fourteenth century came that terrible pestilence which, among other and more important things, in some buildings seems to have broken the orderly and systematic evolution of our architecture. The old school appears to have died out, and the new were not always mere copyists or followers who made gradual alterations of merely minor importance, but alas! sometimes parodists.

Certainly we owe much to men like William of Wykeham; but let us in our ecclesiastical architecture fix upon the exact year of 1350. Let us compare in the same building what was finished before this with what was finished after, and we arrive at this result—evolutionary development of beauty before, evolutionary development of ugliness after. Undoubtedly this theory works out at Southwell. The north porch and west doorway are more beautiful than any earlier Norman; the Early English choir is more beautiful than these; but the great glory of Southwell is neither nave nor choir, but the chapter-house of 1290, while the least beautiful parts are the eastern windows of the nave aisles of a century later, and worst of all this great west window of the fifteenth century. Let those whose recollections go back twenty years add the flattened and debased roofs that everywhere obtained, and the minster surely points the moral and adorns the tale. The improvements of men are often more destructive than the hand of time.[16]

The height of the western towers is 99 feet, and with the modern spires 149 feet; the external base a square of 23 feet. They are divided into seven stages.

The buttresses, flat and broad, are placed near the angles, and extend to the height of the parapet—that is to say, to the summit of the fifth stage, while the different stages are separated by plain string courses. In the second stage from the ground the west windows are imitation Norman of quite recent introduction, copied from the original in the nave aisle and transepts, for the Normans themselves left these lower stages blank. Formerly Decorated windows of three lights of the time of Edward III., with double foliated tracery, were inserted, and that of the southern tower, after various vicissitudes, has found a home in one of the gardens of the Vicars’ Court. The slits piercing the wall at different heights near the outer angle are staircase windows. The fifth stage has an arcade of three round arches on each face; the centre, which has zigzag mouldings, pierced for lights. It is when we come to the sixth stage, the first above the base of the roof, that we notice an interesting difference in the work of the two towers. Here the Normans artistically began their more elaborate decoration, so as to finish off their work gracefully. In the northern tower is an arcading of intersecting round-headed arches, similar to those of the central tower, and in the interior of the north porch; but in the southern tower the design differs, for the workmen caused the arches to stop at the point of intersection, the upper stones being omitted. The result is, that these arches are not round-headed, but lancet-shaped. Intentionally or unintentionally, the round Norman dies away into the pointed Gothic of Early English. Was the pointed arch invented in this way? This used to be maintained, and there is something to be said in favour of a theory so ingenious; but the general consensus of opinion amongst experts is not to extend inferences from this interesting peculiarity too far. The pointed arch, in its use upon a large scale for doorways, aisles, windows, and the like, it is now held, was of independent origin. The ornamentation is continued in the top stage, where the arcades are similar to those of the fifth, excepting that the central light is larger and double. The Normans, when they crowned their towers with spires at all, generally made them correspond in plan. Thus to the square towers of Southwell they would have added, if they added anything, pyramidal or square spires, and these would be of no great height; but we do not know how they finished off here, and are equally ignorant of any early alterations. Engravings up to the fire of 1711 (which has to be so frequently mentioned) show spires which seem too lofty and tapering for Norman work; but no one is satisfied as to their date. After the fire, similar ones of wood and sheeted lead took their place. At the beginning of this century the lower part of the northern tower threatened danger, and the spires, being ignorantly thought too heavy for safety, were removed, and parapets and corner pinnacles to match the central tower substituted.

The restoration under the auspices of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners included the addition of spires 50 feet high, after the pattern of those removed, and this was accomplished by 1880. There will always be a difference of opinion as to whether there was any gain, for these spires do not match the flat summit of the central tower. It is not only that while all three still possessed the same pattern of summit that they were cited as amongst the finest specimens of their kind; but so great an authority as Mr E.A. Freeman, whose knowledge of architecture extended over Western Europe, was always wont to declare that the grouping of the three, as he saw them before 1880, was as nearly as possible perfect. And it is extremely doubtful whether the new spires resemble the original Norman at all. The straight lines of the string courses, and the flat buttresses of the towers added to the clerestory windows, give the peculiar tone and character to the nave, and assist in marking it off as belonging to that Norman style, more Continental than English, called Romanesque.[17]

WEST FRONT: (AS IN 1850) THE TOWERS WITHOUT THE SPIRES, THE SOUTH TOWER SHOWING THE EARLIEST POINTED ARCHES IN THE TOP STAGE BUT ONE.

The Transepts, or the transept (for the term is sometimes used in the singular), were intended to carry out the idea of a cross. In such early buildings as the basilican churches of Rome they are represented by a space at the east end, and the head of the cross is only an apse. In course of time arms were extended, especially towards the east, as in the original Norman choir of Southwell, and the Early English choir is almost as long as the nave. Still later, the Decorated nave of York was made of the same length as the choir. At Southwell the dimensions are 128 feet by about 40, but owing to the chapel on its eastern side, the north front is not quite equal to the south. With exceptions comparatively slight, to be mentioned presently, the Norman work has not been tampered with.

Of the three string courses mentioned in the description of the nave, the highest and the lowest are here continued, and above them a third, level with the base of the clerestory; the three together dividing the different fronts into four stages, which are further relieved by buttresses reaching up to the corbel tables. The windows of the second stage are of the usual pattern of the original aisle windows of the nave. In the third stage they are larger, and the inner arches have the edge-roll, while the outer have large, rude cable moulding of a peculiar pattern—“a series of what is called the double cone, arranged spirally after the fashion of the ordinary cable moulding.” The hood is of three overhanging rows of a small square-footed nebules. The transoms and mullions are later and questionable additions. The topmost stage has the circular windows like those of the clerestory; but in the north transept there is the cable moulding of the usual pattern, alternating with a special row of beads instead of the plain rounds or “large wedding rings.” The gables of the north and south fronts, low pitched and without windows, are exceedingly singular and striking, the whole surface being filled in with zigzag and small circles, incised in the north front and embossed in the south. Altogether these details display many peculiarities, and one writer describes the general effect as “almost barbaric.” The bear on the north gable was formerly in the workshop of one of the builders employed, and from thence found its way to Upton Hall, two miles away, and elsewhere. It was placed in its present place on the supposition that it originally occupied the same; and a modern lion to match now adorns the south gable.

In the south front facing the palace is a doorway of moderate size, which was restored in 1847. It is original Norman of three orders, profusely enriched with zigzags, and of the usual pattern, the inner order continuous, and the two outer arches resting upon detached jamb shafts, with the zigzag string course running over all as a hood-mould. There was no corresponding door in the north transept, for that shown in old engravings, an after-addition, has been filled up. A residence stood on the site of the palace from the earliest times, and this south door was intended for the use of the inhabitants. In the east wall of the south transept two short buttresses, which stop in the third stage, and the pattern and arrangement of the stones show that a chapel with an apse has been pulled down; and the former existence of this explains the absence of windows excepting in the top stage.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

DOORWAY FACING THE PALACE.

With the transepts we have come to the end of the existing Norman exterior; and the present is a suitable place to add a few remarks on the roofs, and on the Norman choir which has been pulled down and superseded.

In both late Norman and Early English work the roof was generally high pitched; and the marks on each face of the central tower proved that the entire roof was elevated to an angle of about forty-five degrees. In course of time the ends of the beams became decayed, and then in a degenerate age ensued an unhappy change. In order that the work might be cheaply done, the rotten ends were sawn off, and the old beams still used; but, so as to make their now shortened dimensions of sufficient length, the high pitch had to give way to one much lower. A general rule may be laid down that whenever a twelfth-century roof has been lowered the cause and the method were of this nature.

When this was done at Southwell we do not know, but shall probably be not far out of our reckoning in assuming that the low roof and the west window, both out of place, were the work of the same designer and the same time. Thoroton’s “History of Notts” and Hollar’s engravings in Dugdale’s Monasticon both show the low roof. After the great fire the restoration was carried out by the ignorant and indifferent chapter on the same lines; and the material itself was poor and covered with slate. “The poor church has become,” complained Mr Dimock, “in comparison with what it once was, mutilated, debased, and earth clinging; a wretched lifeless monument.” And in endorsing this his friend Mr E.A. Freeman, in his characteristic Saturday Review style, added—“A poor parody of its former self,” “the mutilated wreck of storm and fire, the victim of a base economy which executed essential repairs at the smallest possible cost, and brutally pulled down what it was inconvenient to restore.”[18] But these two and others of a like mind and a like authority were fortunately able to influence that slowly-moving corporation, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; and at length that body resolved to devote part of the corporate revenues of the dissolved and extinct chapter to a thorough restoration after the designs of Mr Ewan Christian. In 1879-80 the roofs, excepting the choir, were restored to their original pitch, and the old material was cast aside for massive English oak covered with cast-lead. In this not only was the external roof made after the original pattern, but, in thus going back to archæological correctness the dignity and stateliness of Archbishop Thomas the Second’s minster were greatly enhanced. Looked at, then, from either point of view—that of antiquity or that of beauty—it is difficult to see how exception can be taken for leaving out of our estimate the western towers the two combine. Yet, at the time, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was up in arms, and Mr Christian’s noble conceptions vigorously opposed. A wordy war of the roofs followed, and it was gravely contended, although the four faces of the central tower told their own tale of the pitch of the original roofs, that the taking away of the flattened floor of 1711 was an act of vandalism. Had this low covering been constructed on Norman lines, it would have been another matter; Mr Christian would then have been in a dilemma as to whether archæology or beauty ought to be satisfied. As things really were, both were on his side. Fortunately the controversy was useless, and Mr Christian and his skilled workmen had their way. It is amazing that any highly-cultivated body of men, students of art in art’s highest phases, should ever have raised such a storm in a tea-cup; but when we come to the interior of the choir they will appear in a light even worse.

The foundations show that before the present Early English choir a Norman choir extended eastwards from the base of the central tower to a length of 59 feet—that is to say, to less than half of its beautiful successor. It had north and south aisles of about 40 feet in length, terminating in apses. In all probability it was of the same date as the nave and transepts, and not part of the earlier church existing in the eleventh century, for there are sufficient marks upon the east side of the central tower to suggest that the triforium and clerestory corresponded to the nave, in which case they would naturally be of the same date. The external breadth was the same as now, but the extra thickness of Norman walls made the internal breadth about a foot less.[19]

It becomes, then, comparatively easy to picture to ourselves in rough outline the Norman church of the twelfth century as a whole. Substitute for the present choir one reaching only some 60 ft. eastwards of the central tower, with aisles and clerestory similar to the nave, and terminating with a rectangular eastern wall. Make the aisles terminate with apses, and add to the east face of either transept a short and broad apsidal chapel. Next add windows after the patterns of the transepts and put a high-pitched roof everywhere with overhanging eaves and no parapets; and we have a general idea. The one difficulty is how to crown the tower summits. Mr J.H. Parker seemed to think that, judging by such stone specimens as are still left, wherever in late Norman there is anything to be called a spire at all, it is of low proportions, “little more than a pyramidal roof, but becoming gradually elongated as time advanced, and so leading the way to the gracefully elevated spire proper of the Early English.” We may then finish off the three towers with pyramids of four sides and overhanging eaves.

The date of the Norman work can be disposed of in a few words. Archbishop Thomas the Second wrote his letter to the people of Notts, asking for contributions for the building of their mother church, during his episcopate, which began in 1109 and lasted only six years. This evidence is corroborated by the building itself. The general good workmanship, the fine pointed masonry, and the Romanesque details of the exterior synchronise with the archbishop’s letter, as do the edge-roll flanked by hollows, the more elaborate zigzag and other mouldings, which could only have been made with a skilfully-used chisel. From 1110 to 1115 is then the date of commencement, while it is well not to attempt to decide the duration of the building operations. Amongst others, the naves of Durham, Norwich, and Rochester are contemporary.

PART II.—EARLY ENGLISH

The Choir.-One of the few good services rendered by King John was the influence he brought to bear upon the York chapter to elect Walter de Gray to the long-vacant see. A wave of enthusiasm for the new style was passing over the land, and Gray encouraged fresh works at York, Ripon, Southwell, and elsewhere. When the new building was commenced at Southwell, first of all an Early English addition was made to the existing Norman choir, and the high altar was removed nearly 70 feet eastwards. After this had been finished, the Norman choir and choir aisles were pulled down, and on their site the Early English choir completed, and, with the exception of the roof, almost exactly as we now see. The foundations of the eastern part are entirely of local stone, but on the site of the older choir a quantity of Mansfield stone is used, which came from the fabric pulled down. This method of enlargement by degrees was not uncommon. The plan is of eight bays, not counting a small blank bay at the junction with the transepts. The choir aisles extend along six of these, and from the fifth a small transeptal chapel projects on either aisle. The dimensions in feet are—Length, 128; of aisles, 98; breadth, including aisles, 73; and including the two transept chapels, 108; breadth of east end, 40.

The material is sandstone. The northern front was afterwards in a great measure hidden away by the erection of the chapter-house and vestibule. The walls are less thick than in the Norman work, and generally this part is less massive, and the roof was loftier. There used to be a doorway on the south side, apparently for the convenience of the palace, but this has long since been closed.

The South Front.—The base mouldings show the first point of difference from the Norman work. These mouldings and the continuous string course below the second or window stage run all round the eastern part of the building—the early Decorated additions on the north side equally with the Early English, and are distinguished for their bold and effective outline, and more particularly for their deep undercutting. A second point of difference from the Norman, and more striking, is seen in the buttresses. They have a much greater projection, and less breadth, although unusually broad for Early English work, and are square in the lower stage, but chamfered—i.e. the edges are shaved off—above. They are finished off with lofty acute-angled heads or pediments, which have their faces sunken. These heads rise up above the parapet wall, and are ornamented with that typical Early English moulding, the so-called dog-tooth. Some idea of it may be gained in the following way:—Take four (or in certain instances only three) leaves of the common beech, place their stems together so as to overlap a little, and cause this central point to be raised somewhat after the fashion of a dwarfed pyramid. The simpler term of “leaf” moulding would be more suggestive than “dog-tooth.”

The buttresses at the angles, both of the transept chapel and of the east end of the aisle, are grouped in pairs, one on either front. These are without the lofty pediment, but terminate in a slope beneath the cornice. The windows in the bays formed by the buttresses are single-light lancets and without tracery. Between the two south transepts—those of the nave and choir—are four bays; the two central have the windows in pairs, the others singly. The circular turret-shaped projection at the south-west angle of the choir transept is a staircase leading to the triforium, which causes the adjacent window to be smaller. On the other hand, the single window to the west is larger. These windows are the typical lancets of their period, the pointed arch appearing as though formed on an acute-angled triangle. So are those in the transept chapel, and the smaller one in the gable of the east end of the aisle and the pair beneath it. These are all deeply set and with chamfered jambs. The outer arches spring from single shafts, engaged and with the fillet moulding—a small flat band placed between the rounds, which first came into vogue at this time—and have bold hood-moulds. The cornice moulding of the aisle is original, but the parapet above a later substitute for the eave roof. The displacement of the roof of the transept chapel by lowering to the flat level of the second stage has caused this to resemble a mere projection from the adjacent aisle; but the marks on the clerestory wall show clearly that originally it possessed a high-pitched roof and lofty gable, and formed a transept to the choir proper, as did the other on the north side. In consequence, above the aisle the bay of the clerestory is here blank, while the others have a pair of small lancets placed a little apart. Here, again, the jamb shafts are engaged, while the hood-moulds are beautifully enriched with the dog-tooth. Above the clerestory the parapet is original and extremely fine. It is carried on a corbel table of grotesque heads, with cornice mouldings enriched with dog-tooth, as also above the plain face in a deep hollow below the ridge. The two flying buttresses were added later, as the pinnacles adorned with crockets show. The licence of 1337 probably points to their age. There must have been alarm for the stability of the wall and roof, and these were placed as supports. Formerly the western one had a water drain emerging from the heavy stonework at the base.

FLYING BUTTRESS AND PINNACLE OF CHOIR.

The Chancel.—By this is meant that part of the choir east of the aisles. In a minster dedicated to St. Mary we expect to find a Lady Chapel eastward of the high altar; but there is none here, neither has there ever been: her altar was elsewhere.[20] This east end extends two bays beyond the aisles, and is square-fronted like York. It has been remarked—“The architecture here is in the purest and most refined Early English style; very reticent of ornament, but with an almost Greek refinement and delicacy in the design of the buttresses, and the general composition of the lines; and in general effect, and in the detail of the buttress-heads, the base course, and other points, is so similar to the work of the nave and south transept of Lincoln that one cannot but think some of the same hands were employed on both.”[21] This may well have been the case, as these parts of Lincoln were erected between 1203-1253, during the episcopate of William of Blois and his two successors. All the buttresses, both those which separate the two easternmost bays and those which stand in the usual pairs at the angles are of larger dimensions in width and projection than the others farther west. Otherwise they are similar in character, and have four string courses between the base and parapet. The pairs at the corners have massive octagonal pinnacles, shafted at the angles, have each side finished with a sharp gabled head enriched with dog-tooth, and at the summit conical cappings with ribs rising to the apex from the capitals of the angle shafts. The arrangement of the windows is as follows:—The bays adjoining the aisle have them in pairs, and the easternmost bays singly; the east front has four—both stages everywhere the same. The windows on the north and south sides are similar to those previously described; but the east front calls for remark. The arrangement of four in each stage is singular; and when in the same stage all four are of equal height, peculiarly so. In those rare instances of a series of four the rule is for the central pair to be higher than the outside ones. In the upper stage are also blank arches adjoining the buttresses; as is the case with the adjacent bays. The abaci of these lancets are continued round the buttresses and walls as string courses, dividing the two stages into upper and lower parts. The windows, deeply set, have the sides chamfered; and the finely-moulded triple clustered shafts are filleted. The arches are enriched with the dog-tooth, and the outer one constitutes a continuous arcade. In the lower stage, almost the entire width of the front is occupied: in the upper the windows are less deeply set and in consequence narrower, but the blank arches completely fill up the whole available space between the buttresses, and here the lights are of a greater height; and this heightening and narrowing, so as to add to the effect, must be pronounced most successful. The windows of the end bays are similar in pattern; and the chancel, flanked as it is by the aisles and chapels, in spite of being “very reticent of ornament”—for there is no tracery—has been commended and admired by every expert and architect who has seen it.

But as with the west front, so here again with the east we have to lament that later men have marred what their predecessors have bequeathed to them. Early English roofs were almost, if not quite, universally of a steep slope, more so than the Norman; and at Southwell the marks still left, and particularly on the east front of the central tower, demonstrate that this was the case. The old lofty roof is gone and the old lofty gable with it; and above the third stage a dwarfed window in a dwarfed gable, and a late battlement surmounted by a late cross is what we now see. What used to be seen at first was this lofty gable pierced either with yet another tier of lancets or with a circular light after the manner of the circular windows of York, Lincoln, and Beverley, the whole surmounted by a lofty cross rising above the lofty buttress-heads, conspicuous from far and near. We have only to go to Lincoln (or indeed judge by the restored roof of the nave) to see what a difference this makes. When was this, “as complete a mutilation as the headless trunk of some fine ancient statue,” perpetrated? Some time after the completion of the chapter-house, and by the same people, or at least in the same spirit, as that which lowered the roof and pierced the west wall of the nave.

The North Front. From the exterior the only parts visible are the end bay of the aisle and the transept chapel; and this latter is partly overlapped by the chapter-house. The details are similar to the rest; but the flying buttress has no pinnacles, and the small window in the gable of the aisle has a peculiar flattened hood-mould, almost semicircular. There seems to be no reason for this difference from the corresponding window on the other side. When standing against the north front of the chapel, one is almost shut in by the buttresses of the chapter-house.

The choir illustrates that the striking difference between the Norman and Early English styles lies not only in the greater massiveness of the former, and in the pointed lancet arches of the latter, but also in the greater window space, the chancel alone possessing twenty ample lights. It has been proved that glass came into use in Early English times, and this circumstance may explain the development.

The indulgence of Archbishop Walter Gray fixes the date of the commencement of building at about 1230.

The North Transept Chapel.—Before leaving the Early English part of the exterior, and still taking the building in its chronological order, this addition to the Norman transept next demands attention. The only part visible from the exterior is the north front, which projects slightly from the transept, the east front being hidden by the vestibule. A peculiarity is that the buttresses, which project in the first stage as far as those at the east end, have their angles chamfered in the second stage only. In the third stage the projection is diminished; and the chamfering of the stage below ends in a point against the square face. The buttresses to the west originally terminated, like those of the choir, with a triangular head, ornamented with the dog-tooth, but when the gable parapet was added a crocketed gable head was placed above this head and behind it. The eastern buttress, adjoining the vestibule, ends in a slope beneath the parapet. The large window in the second stage is a later development, enlarged to give more light to the chapel within. The shafts are not purely circular, but what Professor Willis called keeled—i.e. with bands or fillets in the front resembling the keel of a boat; and they support an arch with a hood-mould over all. The general appearance is somewhat heavy and inelegant, as the arch seems too large. Mullions divide the lower part into three lights, and the tracery above is double foliated, and what is styled reticulated—i.e. diamond-shaped or with squares placed diagonally. This window, with its peculiarities, affords a hastily-made example of indifferent and late Decorated; but in the stage above we go back to pure Early English. This is an arcading of five lancets, of which two are pierced for lights, supported by circular shafts detached from the wall. The window in the fourth stage has an arch resembling the segmental pointed; and the filleted shafts are engaged. The mouldings of the arch are peculiar; they are not of the same pattern as the adjoining buttress, but more nearly than anything else resemble a transition from the Norman nail-head to the Early English dog-tooth. And the tracery and mullions are very late work, suggesting that alterations were made long after.

This chapel is partly built upon the site of a smaller apse-shaped Norman one. A buttress of the north aisle of the choir, partly worked into the south-east angle of the chapel, shows by the cornice moulding that the choir wall once joined on to the transept; remains of a Norman arch are still visible in the transept wall. The work as a whole, and emphatically the central arcading of lancets, are of the date of the middle of the thirteenth century. There is documentary evidence that in 1249 and 1260 additions were made to the fabric; and to one of these dates we may safely assign it.

PART III.—EARLY DECORATED OR GEOMETRICAL

The chapter-house and its vestibule are the last additions to the fabric, and were added after the chapter had been endowed with the three additional prebends of Eaton, North Leverton, and Beckingham at the end of the thirteenth century, and increased to its final complement of sixteen. The thirteen prebendaries (or such of them as lived in England and were resident) met before in a smaller and earlier chapter-house on the same site as the existing one. In view of the increased number and importance of the college, a more spacious assembly room was felt to be necessary; and, like their brethren of York, Lichfield, Wells, and elsewhere, they built the present fine council chamber for the transaction of business.

This part of the minster belongs to that beautiful style of architecture which some call Early Decorated and others Geometrical. It is a legitimate development of the Early English, and prevailed, roughly speaking, during the last thirty years of the thirteenth and the first fifteen of the succeeding century, gradually verging into the Decorated proper.[22]

The Vestibule.—The only parts of this seen from the exterior are the north front and so much of the western as extends beyond the chapel: this projection is of about twenty feet. It is built outwards from the second bay of the choir aisle. At the north-west corner are a pair of buttresses the height of the wall, set at right angles to each other, with square edges and shallow niches at the top, and terminated with acute gable heads with crockets and finials. They are surmounted at the back by other gables standing out from the roof. In the western front is an ogee-shaped window arch, formed of two contrasted curves and sharp-pointed. Owing to the difficulty of construction, this form is not usual for large openings, though common enough over tombs, niches, and small doorways. The solitary window of the north front has the arch more equilateral and sharp-pointed than those of the chapter-house. It is much plainer, and is not sufficiently broad to fill up the entire space. The arch is of two orders, and springs from attached keeled jamb shafts: the lights trefoiled at the head, and above two trefoiled circles with one quatrefoiled under the apex. Generally the greater plainness, as well as the comparative narrowness, of the north window, suggest that the vestibule is slightly prior in date to the chapter-house.

The Chapter-House.—On the east side of the vestibule, and at its northern end, this unique adornment was added to the fabric. It is in front of the third and fourth bays and the transept chapel of the choir aisle, completing the enclosure of the open court, and is of such large dimensions as to overlap the projecting chapel, one of the great buttresses actually touching. At Wells, where the chapter-house is in a similar position and on a larger scale, this overlapping does not occur, as the choir is on a relatively larger scale; and it seems a pity that at Southwell the example of Lincoln was not followed, and the chapter-house built on to the end of the vestibule as distinct from the side. There is nothing in the lie of the ground to prevent this; and the beautiful northern front of the choir would not have been so much shut out from view. The only reason that can be assigned is that there was a wish for an enclosed courtyard; and undoubtedly, whether or not we accept the tradition that it was anciently used as a baptistery, it was, as we shall see, used for some purpose of importance.

The building is an exact octagon, each side of 17 feet; and five sides are visible from the exterior. The basement mouldings correspond with those of the vestibule; but the continued string course immediately under the windows is higher, as is the blank stage below. The four corner buttresses which are visible (the fifth is partly hidden) show distinctly a point of difference between the two styles of architecture—the Early English and the Early Decorated. They are divided into stages, as are the Early English, by a string course from the spring of the window arches; but are at once narrower and of greater projection than the corner ones at the east end. The edges are unchamfered; and the buttresses continue with undiminished projection until they terminate at a point some feet below the parapet. As with the vestibule, they have shallow niches at the summit, which are trefoiled at the top under acute-headed gablets. Above the buttresses proper and at the back, rising through the parapet, are square pedestals with rounded edges, with faces sunk concavely to make shallow niches. Like the niches below, these terminate in a trefoil; and the pedestals are crowned with pinnacles, with most elaborate crockets and finials. Some of these really resemble bishop’s crooks, from which the name may have been derived, while others show signs of repair not always in the best taste. At the base of the pinnacles are grotesque gargoyle-shaped figures projecting from their feet. As these are not images of saints, they have been spared by iconoclasts; but we have to lament that destructive and ill-regulated zeal which pulled down the statues from their niches, for if the same hands that worked the carving of the interior worked these, the effect must have been glorious to a degree. The buttresses more than any other part suggest York: though it still remains unsettled which of the two chapter-houses is the older. The original parapet has fortunately been spared. Below is a corbel table of trefoil arches springing from heads with the triangular spaces between also trefoiled: next, the hollow cornice moulding with a late variety of the dog-tooth: next, a broad plain face, and over all a series of open quatrefoils. Six of the octagon sides have windows, of which five are visible from the exterior. These occupy the entire breadth from buttress to buttress; and it is doubtful whether anything is gained by this. The arrangement at the east end, where a small blank space is allowed on either side, certainly produces a better effect; and this enlargement of the Decorated style does not cause it to compare favourably with its predecessor, so far as this particular point is concerned. The arches are of three orders; the shafts attached and keeled with mouldings of rounds and hollows.

The windows are of three lights, trefoiled in the heads, with two trefoiled circles above, and a quatrefoil above these under the apex of the arch, very much the same as with the north window of the vestibule. The cusping is largely pierced and springs from the soffit only, not from the sloping sides of the tracery as in later work of the kind; and the mullions have a small shaft in front with base and capital, and with chamfered sides. By comparing these windows with those of the choir the difference of style is brought out still more prominently than by the buttresses or parapets. The roof has been restored to its old lofty pitch; and all whose memories go back to the old flattened one, prior to 1881, will unanimously concur in approval. When the statues were in their places the effect must have been considerably enhanced; as it is, the exterior scarcely prepares us for the culminating glories within.

The document of the date 1294 speaks somewhat vaguely of “the new chapter-house” as either contemplated or building or completed; and this date agrees with the architecture.

The Open Court.—The boundaries are the chapter-house, the small transept chapel of the choir, the third and fourth bays of the choir aisle, and the vestibule. The peculiar way in which one of the buttresses of the chapter-house abuts against the chapel so as to complete the enclosure is again noticeable, while those parts of the choir visible from here and from nowhere else suggest regrets that so fine a specimen of pure Early English was ever hidden away. A doorway, now blocked up, with a low segmental arch of wedge-shaped stones or voussoirs, at first formed part of the choir aisle. The holy well was closed up in 1764, after a member of the Fowler family had lost his life by falling in. It was this well that probably suggested the tradition of a baptistery standing here.

The north front as seen standing by the Prebends’ Walk or in the adjoining street affords the most picturesque view of the minster, broken, as it is, by the north porch, the Norman transept, and the chapter-house. We have here every kind of architecture from the stern and comparatively rude late Norman to the elaborate and finished Early Decorated—one hundred and eighty years of steady progress and evolution—and this seeming want of unity constitutes an artistic harmony. But, looking at the south-east front from the more distant point of view of the parks, it becomes evident that the restoration is not yet complete, and that the heightening of the nave roof has rendered the corresponding heightening of the choir roof urgent and indispensable.

CLERESTORY WINDOW IN NAVE TRANSEPT.

CHAPTER III
THE INTERIOR

PART I.—NORMAN

The Nave.—“Internally the nave at Southwell is a grand specimen of Norman architecture.” Such is an authoritative criticism passed upon it; and the massiveness and solidity of the structure is immediately impressed upon the mind, while the thickness and shortness of the pillars and the width of the arches further convey the idea of lowness. And yet this general sternness, not to say gloom, is not what it was before the windows, and notably the west one, were enlarged. We have to imagine Norman windows throughout, and without glazing, in order to picture to ourselves the nave in the days of our rude forefathers. And as we look round upon the vast quantities of material required in the construction of the interior, we cannot but wonder at the toil and industry required to convey all these great blocks of limestone along the rough paths of Sherwood Forest, and place them in position.

The dimensions already given have, of course, been those of the exterior; but owing to the thickness of the walls, and notably of the west front, a sensible diminution has to be made to arrive at the internal measurements. The length to the inside of the lower arch is 136 feet, and looking through the arch and across the transept to the rood screen 168 feet. The breadth is 63 feet, and, to give an idea of the massiveness of the pillars at the base, the width between two opposite pillars is only some 28 feet, and that of each aisle inside the pillars is but 12 feet. The aisles extend the entire length, and are separated from the body by seven pillars on either side, forming eight bays: the width between two adjacent pillars being about 13 feet 2 inches.[23] The elevation of the walls presents the usual three stages of nave arcade, triforium, and clerestory in large buildings of the periods, differing from the later choir. The whitewash on the walls and the plaster work which formerly filled up the triforium arches were both removed some years before the more recent restoration was taken in hand. With the exception of the windows already mentioned and of the roof and flooring the interior is pure Norman, unchanged since the first completion; and the Romanesque details noticeable in the exterior are wanting. There is a small quantity of ornament, particularly in the different mouldings, to relieve the heaviness of the structure; but simplicity and massive grandeur, as distinct from grace and elegance, are what the Normans aimed at; and it is so here.

Formerly the west window, in some of its seven lights, and other windows of the nave contained coats of arms, of which the church throughout possessed so many Specimens. Unfortunately these heraldic emblems fell under the ban of the Roundheads during the Civil War and the Commonwealth; a few, however, are still preserved in the chapter-house.

NAVE, SHOWING THREE STAGES IN THE INTERIOR.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

INTERIOR OF NAVE, LOOKING EAST.

The Nave Arcade.—The round pillars are about sixteen feet in circumference, and only nine in height between base and capital—i.e. the height of the actual circular part is less than twice the diameter. They have plain square bases; and the round capitals, of no great projection, have mouldings different in the different pillars, in their way as interesting a piece of detail as any in the minster. The first on the south side, reckoning from the west, and the last on the north have the cable, and others the lozenge, nebule, and hatchet. But most remarkable is the fifth on the south side with a series of four—the beaded cable, lotus leaf, triple nebule, and lozenge. This last seems almost too elaborate for the date, and rather suggests a decoration of later times. The arches are of two orders of voussoir-shaped stones: the moulding of the inferior is a square keel set diamond-wise between two edge-rolls, and of the superior a plain soffit with a smaller edge-roll flanked with a filleted hollow. Above the two orders the hood is of a double round billet. Immediately above the arches the string course separating the two lower stages has the hatch both on the sides and beneath.

PILLAR IN NAVE.

The Triforium.—The series of arches in the second stage open on to galleries the complete width of the aisles beneath, and resting upon their vaulting. Above the round pillars of the nave arcade, and supported by them, are other pillars, massive and rectangular, and attached to these two semi-cylindrical shafts with scalloped cushion capitals. From these shafts spring the two orders of the arch, of the same span as those of the nave arcade beneath, but of less height and with similar mouldings. The moulding of the hood above is composed of three overhanging rows of the square-footed nebule. There is here a curious circumstance, the meaning of which everyone asks, and which is deserving of mention. Both from the crown of the arches, and from the abaci of the capitals of the inferior shafts large stones project. It would seem that the Norman builders thought these arches too large to remain without further ornament, and began to place two smaller arches within each, with an upright continued from the supporting shaft to the crown of the arch above. This is the case in the triforium of Romsey Abbey; but either a change of builders or a change of mind took place at Southwell to prevent the carrying out of this intention. Mr Christian took the trouble to fill in one of the arches after the Romsey pattern to judge of the effect.

The Clerestory.—The walls of the topmost stage are blank and uninteresting. The arches of one order only spring from semi-cylindrical shafts; and shafts and arches are quite plain. They were considered too remote to be worthy of the ornamentation bestowed on the lower stages. The circular windows, not seen from below, are so small and in such deep recesses, as partially to defeat their object of giving additional light to the body of the building. Between the arches and the windows a passage constructed in the thickness of the wall runs round the whole Norman building, nave and transepts alike.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

NAVE, NORTH SIDE OF ARCADE, SHOWING PART OF THE TRIFORIUM.

The Nave Aisles.—These, the full length of the nave, are plain and without the arcading often to be found in Norman churches of this size: a bench table runs along the foot. Beneath the windows is a string course chamfered underneath. The solitary window of the whole thirteen left in its original state—that nearest to the north-west tower—has the side shafts extensively splayed; the nave arch has a continuous edge-roll flanked by a filleted hollow, and the sill is worked in steps ascending to the actual opening. To restore the building to its original state we have to imagine the remaining twelve windows similar to this.

The Perpendicular windows are as poor inside as out; but when, as at the first, the side shafts were ornamented with colouring, they may have presented a more favourable appearance. All the glass is modern. Very different in character to the windows are the roof or ceiling of both aisles underneath the triforium galleries; for here we have quadripartite vaulting with groined ribs, as fine as any in England. The ribs spring in the outside from corbels beneath the windows, and in the inside from the abaci of the capitals of the nave pillars. Generally they intersect at the keystone without ornament; but here and there a simple and by no means prominent boss is formed; and underneath the north-west tower the keystone, by a further development, has a grotesque double head. The mouldings are a double diamond-shaped keel between edge-rolls. During the earlier period of the Norman style the groins were left perfectly plain; and it was not until some considerable advance had been made that they were constructed with ribs; and, again, these ribs at first were mere flat bands without mouldings, so that the aisle roofs show late and complete work.

In the wall of the bay immediately west of the north porch is a sepulchral recess with Norman arch and late Early English shafts and mouldings. It contains a slab of Purbeck marble with a raised cross, which in Rastall Dickinson’s work is placed under the north-west tower; but is now doubtless in its proper place. When the whitewash was removed, it was ascertained that the vaulting of this bay alone had been ornamented with painting. Here lie the remains of some unknown and unrecorded dignitary of the church, probably a prebendary; and the painting would seem to show that the bay was fitted up as a chantry chapel, for masses to be said for the repose of his departed soul. It is likely that the second bay from the east on the south side was also used for a similar purpose, as some remains of a sculpture of the Virgin and lily are still to be traced. The bays of the north aisle west of the north porch contain no less than seven sepulchral slabs with incised crosses of the patterns of the twelfth and two succeeding centuries. These, more or less mutilated, have been gathered from various parts of the building, and worked into the pavement. One of these, besides the cross with arms ending in trefoils, has a chalice tipped as the celebrant would tip in order to partake—the sign of a priest’s monument. The others do not call for comment, nor does that of a choir boy in the opposite aisle near the font. The stone font, which possesses no features of interest, was presented after the restoration by a resident of Easthorpe named Ballard. By standing at the west end of either aisle and looking due east a fine view is obtained across the transepts the full length of the choir aisles, and a second from the south aisle of the transept chapel.

SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE.

The Roof.—In former days it was justly written: “Grand and striking as the interior of the nave is, still it is sadly disfigured by the present flat ceiling.” This charge can no longer be brought; but it still remains an open question what the original roof of the interior really was. Professor Freeman remarked of the former ceiling, and he was as likely to be accurate as any one: “That these ceilings, however ‘broad and simple in design,’ dwarf the church, and have no intrinsic beauty to recommend them is certain; and it is equally beyond a doubt that the interior will gain greatly in dignity by their removal. But a ceiling either perfectly, as at S. Albans, and the transepts of Peterborough, or slightly coved, as in the nave of that cathedral, was the normal covering of the wider spaces of our great Norman churches; and, if the desire of the architect is to reproduce the church in its original form, a ceiling on the old lines, but of better workmanship would have been more in accordance with the design of the first builders.” These remarks apply, it must be remembered, to the interior ceiling as distinct from the exterior roof; and whether they are correct or no, the restoration, of which so much was written, has resulted in a compromise or via media: something more than a ceiling on the old lines, something less than an open roof. Mr Christian’s work of good oak is barrel-shaped, and somewhat higher than any Norman ceiling is likely to have been. Whatever fault may be found with its historical appropriateness as a true and faithful copy of the original Norman work, there is no doubt that it is a great improvement artistically on anything we know of before. And it is this in spite of the disfiguring tie or cross beams found necessary for support.[24]

The Central Tower.—Slightly altering the order, this is placed after the nave, and not before, as in treating of the exterior. By the removal of the flat ceiling the ringers no longer have a floor to themselves; and the interior is thrown open as a lantern, excepting the stages containing the bells and the clock. The base is about 20 feet square. The tower is supported by four massive square pillars, the most massive in the whole of the interior, with responds attached for the support of the arches. Owing to their greater size, those of the western or nave arch project considerably beyond the nave pillars. For the same reason the eastern pillars do not project so far into the transepts as those of the western arch; and in consequence the centres of the north and south arches are not quite in line with the transepts, and at the same time the transept arches have the greater span. The arches are of three orders: the east and west spring from the attached semi-cylindrical shafts; but those to the north and south are different. Instead of the three more slender shafts, one only, and of the diameter of the pillars of the nave arcade, like the rest attached and semi-cylindrical, carries the three orders. One of the mouldings of the central order of the arches is worthy of mention: it is a cable of that peculiar form where each fold bulges out from almost a point until at the centre it becomes a large keeled round, somewhat like, but more elaborate than, the cable mouldings of the exterior of the transepts. This is used on both sides of the western arch, and on the transept side of the eastern; but not on the choir side, for, according to a common practice, here the ornamentation is less elaborate, and not, as we should have expected, more so.

In each of the two stages above these great arches, and on all the four sides of the interior of the tower, are two other arches. These upper stages, which, looked at from outside the building, are more richly ornamented than the lowest stage, are simpler in the interior. In most Norman central towers belonging to the larger churches, we may remark that the richer work externally corresponds with the plainer internally, and vice versa. These pairs of arches open into galleries which run all round the tower; and on their outer side are other arches which in the lower stage correspond and open into the four arms of the church. In the upper stage are windows opening into the open air, and, since the removal of the ceiling, giving light to the interior. The two arcades surmounting the great arches, rising one above the other, with the light streaming down from the small windows, seen from the outside, produce a really fine effect, and if only the bells could be removed to one of the western towers, and the ringers’ gallery removed, this effect would be enhanced.

The absence of ornamentation in the capitals of the Norman pillars is continued throughout, with the exception of the eastern arch opening into the choir. Here, however, are rude attempts at sculpture, wholly or partially hidden by the organ. Of these some still defy all efforts to explain what they were intended to represent; and this is not to be wondered at, seeing that Mr A.J. Loughton of Southwell, who took photographs when the organ was taken down, describes them as “mere scratches, if anything, looking better in the photographs than in the original.” On the northern pillar are, amongst others, the Last Supper, the Adoration of the Magi, and what is perhaps intended as the procession to Calvary; while those on the southern pillar include the Washing of the Disciples’ Feet, the Triumphal Entry, and a varied group of ornamentation.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

NORMAN ARCH OF CENTRAL TOWER, WITH CABLE MOULDING.

Loughton, Southwell, Photo.

CAPITALS OF NORMAN PILLARS TO EASTERN ARCH OF TOWER.

The Transepts.—The north and south transepts are with few exceptions similar to one another, and are best taken together. They retain their Norman features intact still more than the nave. From the tower arches either transept extends 43 feet, and is 28 feet broad, and is three bays in length, two in breadth, and of a height of three stages. The windows in the lowest stage looking west are more enriched than the one remaining Norman window in the nave aisles, although externally similar, as they have an additional order with the edge-roll, springing from detached shafts. The extra thickness of the walls accounts for this. Above these in the next stage the window arches spring from attached semi-cylindrical shafts, and have a cable moulding underneath a hood of the triple nebule. The windows at the north and south ends are similar in the lowest stage, with this exception, that in the south transept the more western one is dwarfed to allow room for the door leading to the palace. In the second stage they have a rere arch with the edge-roll, a second order with the cable, resting on detached shafts, and the hood with the triple nebule. Here, as elsewhere, the bold cable moulding is exceedingly fine. The plain shafts and arches of the windows of the third stage nowhere call for comment. Over the two windows of the first stage at the ends a pair of arches span the whole breadth, and project two feet. These spring from corbels at the sides, and from a cylindrical shaft which passes between the windows to the pavement. The cable moulding of the arches is twisted in opposite directions. The object of these projections is to support a gallery; and this gallery, like that in the third stage, is continued in the thickness of the wall along the sides. The four archways opening into the nave and choir aisles are without moulding or ornament, save a plain string, and hood of the double billet; and above these are other arches in the second stage, less lofty and without the hood, opening into the triforium galleries. This stage in the two outward bays of the east side has an arcading of three arches.

Formerly Norman chapels opened from either transept on the east side. On the north side the larger Early English chapel, to be noticed in due course, has superseded its Norman predecessor; on the south the east wall still shows signs of the arch of communication, now blocked up. It was of two orders—the inner of a double row of cable, and the outer of the zigzag. There are also signs of a window on a smaller scale but similar to those in the first stage adjacent, but this has been blocked up; and this side now presents the peculiar appearance of a large wall space unrelieved by windows. In the north transept a doorway with a semicircular arch ornamented with the double billet, judging from the masonry an after insertion, is situated between the choir aisle and chapel, and leads to a long narrow room, of which the use is not apparent.

Over the door in the north transept leading to the belfry is a curious piece of sculpture about three feet in length, and half as much in width, forming a tympanum. When Bishop Warburton and his friend Allen visited Southwell, it particularly attracted their attention, and they bestowed great pains, but without success, to interpret it. In the centre an angel is subduing a figure on the right resembling an impossible bird. On the left a man, but with the head wanting, is also engaged in subduing what appears to be a lion or a leopard with a smaller animal represented above, its forefeet resting on the larger one’s head. Dickinson, taking the smaller figure as a lamb, ingeniously deciphered it, “Under the protection of the lamb, Daniel was able to overcome the lion, and Michael the devil.” A second interpretation substitutes David rescuing the lamb from the lion; and a third renders it, “Thou shall go upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet.” Whether or not any of these was intended, we have the oldest piece of sculpture in the building, almost as old as anything in the Midlands. Not only does the character of the workmanship show this, and the way in which it is fitted into the wall; but when the transept was built and the doorway inserted, the man’s head was evidently cut away to adapt it to its new position. Before this it must have served as a tympanum in the earlier building of the time of the Confessor.

Archbishop Sandys himself will be mentioned in his proper place, but his tomb at the north-east angle requires notice as the only fine one in the church. Originally placed, as was right, inside the sacrarium on the north side, and afterwards removed to the transept chapel of the north choir aisle, at length it has found another resting-place in its present position. It is a large alabaster monument, with the recumbent figure of the prelate above, his robes of long chasuble with rochet, chimere, and tippet, his hands folded in prayer. A Latin inscription runs round the top, setting forth the three sees of Worcester, London, and York, over which he had ruled, and the length of his successive episcopates. In the front are kneeling figures of his wife and children, together with his coat of arms, and an inscription enumerating his virtues.

In the south transept are two tablets on the eastern wall which call for notice. The first, dated 1750, is an interesting specimen of its time of marble and painted. The subject of this effigy, a son of Sir William Cook of Wheatley, near Doncaster, had been chaplain to one of the archbishops (probably to Launcelot Blackburne), and died prebendary of York, of Ripon, of Southwell, as well as rector of Stokesley, all these preferments having been received from the archbishop of the day, an instance of how recklessly, until checked by the Pluralities Act, a number of posts were lavished upon the same individual in the eighteenth century, as well as in the fifteenth. There was no need for Cook, so long as he found a substitute to take his term of residence, or made other arrangements with the easy-going chapter, ever to have been at Southwell in his life. The second is that of John Thomas Becher, vicar-general and senior prebendary, the friend and counsellor of Byron’s earlier and happier days.

At the south end of the transepts by the door leading to the palace the judges presided over those civil cases in which the ministers or tenants of property of the church were concerned. When a criminal charge was preferred against any of the clergy, here too the court was held; when against a layman, in one of the prebendaries’ houses. In this way, at the summer assizes of 1475, four of the vicars-choral and three of the chantry priests were indicted for felony.[25]

PART II.—EARLY ENGLISH

The Choir.—Although considerably larger than the Norman building it supplanted, we still somehow, on entering underneath the rood screen from the nave, receive the impression of a certain want of size. The length is 114 feet, the breadth 52, and at the east end, and also across between pillar and pillar, 27 feet. It is possible likewise to take objection to the height; and perhaps in combining the triforium and clerestory into one stage and making it so low, the extent of the elevation was suggested to the builders by the already existing nave. Beyond this there is nothing but admiration to express at so perfect a piece of Early English architecture. The window most to the west on the north side has been replaced by an early Decorated one of inferior workmanship, so as to make way for the door leading to the vestibule of the chapter-house, and some images have disappeared; everything else of the masonry is as it was six hundred and fifty years ago; everywhere we see how carefully the stone was selected, and how well put together. The completely detached pillars on each side number five, and on a level with the eye are about eleven feet apart, at the base less. A line drawn between the third and fourth from the west will show the dimensions of the old Norman choir, and all east of this line was first built. Three of the four eastern and earlier pillars above their broad and plain plinth, with its irregular sides, have a moulding of two rounds with a filleted hollow between capable of holding water. Of the six western and somewhat later pillars only one has the same ornamentation; the remainder have one or two rounds above a larger one. Where the base mouldings are capable of holding water it is a sign that they belong to the earlier examples of the style. These ten pillars are octofoil, with the shafts engaged and filleted. But the half pillars at the east end and those at the two entrances of the chapels show a difference: the engaged shafts are smaller, though of the same number; and between them are detached shafts banded mid-way. There is then no trace of the most primitive form of Early English, for this consists of detached and isolated shafts. In the intermediate stage of development the detached and engaged are combined as in these last-mentioned instances; and the late, or completely developed, Early English shows pillars with the shafts fully engaged. The capitals have mouldings of the inverted bell shape.

On the choir side the arches are of three orders besides the hood; on the side of the aisles of two only, the roof being lower. The dog-tooth moulding is as conspicuous in the arches as is the cable in the transepts, excepting in the three to the east on the south side, and is placed in a peculiar way; between two rounds a broad fillet is raised on to which it is worked. The rounds and hollows are also lavishly used; and the hood is finished off with foliage.

For some reason which no one has been able to solve, one of the arches on the south side is lower than the rest; and the apex does not quite reach up to the string course which separates the higher double stage. In this space is a curious piece of sculpture which tradition asserted to be the Prince of Wales’ feathers. The historian of the minster, in following this tradition, added that the heads of Edward III., his queen, and the Black Prince “support the ribs or springs of several arches in the choir.” The beautiful foliage bears no resemblance to these heads, neither is there anything resembling the feathers. Assisted by the misreading of two fourteenth-century documents, those of 1337 and 1352, he hence drew the following inference, which was widely credited before the more accurate study of archæology and architecture dissipated it:—“By these numerous compliments to the Prince we may presume this part was erected just at that point of time, when by his conquest of France he [the Black Prince] was in the zenith of his popularity.” In spite of Archbishop Grey’s indulgence of 1233, which gives the real date, in spite of the arches, windows, pillars, and the dog-tooth and round and hollow mouldings, where everything points to the first half of the thirteenth century, Dickinson introduced an interior as purely Early English as anything in the country into the midst of Decorated times.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.

Triforium and Clerestory.—These two stages are combined: an effective arrangement considering the dimensions and altitude of the choir. Perhaps the best explanation is to say that the clerestory is not above the triforium and separated by a string course on a bare wall space, but that the clerestory windows are behind the upper part of the lofty lancet arches of the triforium, through which they shed their light. This combination, although in the Norman church at Steyning, and in the Early English one of Pershore, both of which, however, are on a smaller scale, marks off a choir of the date and the size of Southwell as quite unique. The intimate connection, always maintained between York and Southwell, is shown in the like arrangement in the early Decorated nave of the former. The architect had seen the beautiful effect, and determined to adopt it. A bold, deep undercut string course continued round the upright vaulting shafts separates this double stage from that below. These triple shafts rest on corbels or brackets, placed as low down as possible between the great arches of the choir arcade, and rising some three feet above the string course, terminate in foliaged capitals from which springs the vaulting of the roof. It is these shafts running up the wall, and the vaulting springing from them, that divide the second stage into bays like the first. In each bay are a pair of lofty lancet arches reaching from the string course right up to the cross vault of the roof above. In the centre of each bay triple clustered shafts are between the two lancets, and two engaged shafts at the sides with capitals of foliage or plain moulded; and above are the well moulded acute lancet arches; and dog-tooth everywhere in the shafts and arches. Behind these arches runs the triforium passage or gallery; and, again, behind the passage is the following arrangement:—First, plain blank arches opening into the space between the vaulting and roof of the aisles; next, a blank wall space, and then above the level of the aisle roofs the clerestory lancets throwing their light from the outside through the upper part of the lofty lancet arches of the triforium, and then underneath the lower part of the choir vaulting. The combination of this stage can only be appreciated by the study of an illustration.

SECTIONAL DRAWING, SHOWING TRIFORIUM AND CLERESTORY OF CHOIR IN ONE STAGE.

The Roof.—Internally the vaulting has not suffered from the lowering of the external roof, but remains intact. At the apex, a longitudinal rib runs the whole length; and the vaulting is quadripartite, consisting of diagonals with the addition of cross springers. At the points of intersection are fine bosses of foliage; but figures are not introduced as in the chapter-house at Oxford of the same date. All the ribs are deeply moulded, and the longitudinal rib as well as the cross springers of the eastern bay have the dog-tooth. Mr Petit remarked “from the narrowness of the cells compared with the principal vault, the elliptical curve in the clerestory arches is very evident; this is the case with most Early English vaulting.” The western compartment of vaulting nearest the tower is very narrow, and has no arch corresponding, the whole bay being filled up by the wall. To the neglect of this precaution in rebuilding choirs is attributed the collapse of several Norman central towers. At the east end is a striking peculiarity. The great longitudinal rib is continued below the vaulting, and brought down right into the shaft between the two centre windows of the upper stage. This bisection of the east front, which prevents the introduction of a central window, occurs at Romsey and in Glasgow Cathedral.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHOIR FROM SOUTH AISLE.

The Aisles and Chapels.—Beyond what has been already said of the windows in treating of the exterior, it should be added that in the inside the edges of the chamfered arches are moulded with a keeled roll. Beneath the windows is an undercut string course, which is continued all round the east end. As in the main part of the choir, the vaulting is quadripartite, but with more elaboration, for additional ribs are introduced besides the cross springers, and the vaulting shafts of these rest on corbels plainly moulded on a level with the window sills. This is because there is no external buttress; but where there is such a buttress, no shaft is used, the strength of the buttress being considered sufficient, and the ribs merely terminate in corbels. The mouldings of the ribs and shafts are similar to those of the main vaulting.

Formerly there were altars in the two transepts, and in the end bays, four in all, and the piscinas and aumbries remain, while in the end bay of the south aisle and in both transepts are sedilia. It is to be regretted that no one has been able to settle to which chantries these belonged. In the north aisle two of the windows look into the court; and underneath the western one a blocked-up doorway, and adjacent to it the doorway of the vestibule—a Decorated insertion for the use of the chapter-house. It is double, with a central shaft of Purbeck marble, and an open trefoil above, and under this a head supporting a bracket; but the statue, unfortunately, has shared the common fate. Up this central shaft crawls a grotesque serpent; and into its folds the bolts of the door slide. The Purbeck marble is again used for the detached outer shafts; and the hood terminates in two heads, one with a crown and the other with a mitre. Altogether this is very fine, but the same cannot be said of the window above. When the doorway was made, the pair of lancets came too low; and a shorter and broader triple light with the old shafts and arches replaced it. It can be seen at once that the proportions are not so elegant as the original lancets to the east.

There is reason to believe that Thomas de Corbridge, Archbishop of York at the commencement of the fourteenth century for a few years, was buried in the choir. Dickinson asserts that his remains lay near the pulpit, and that the inscription “lately remained legible.” In a statement of this kind, he is likely to be correct. This prelate is quite unknown to fame; and in the uncertainty regarding his burial, he resembles more distinguished occupants of the throne of York. In the south transept chapel is a sepulchral recess with a semicircular arch of earlier date. It shares with other monuments in the general neglect; and owing to its mutilated condition, it is impossible to say who lies buried under it. According to Mr Bloxam, the robes on the effigy are those of a priest; and the remains must be those of a prebendary, or of the founder of the chantry. Dickinson (p. 60) has a plate of a fine fifteenth-century canopy reaching from arch to arch on the north side over a tomb; and his plate and description correspond with the effigy. If this be so, when the canopy was removed or fell down the monument was placed where it now is.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.

The Chancel.—The longitudinal rib of the vaulting, as already explained, bisects the upper stage, and explains the unusual number of four windows. The lower stage has a continuous arcade with richly foliated capitals. The bosses of the outer arches, excepting the centre, which is foliated, are faces, and have a peculiar effect.

The four lower windows are filled with Cinque Cento[26] glass paintings of the French school. An inscription states that they were given by Mr Henry Gully, Knight, in 1818. The donor, a member of Parliament, visited Paris after the peace, and found the glass in a neglected heap, in a corner of some shop; and the shopkeeper told him it came from the chapel of the Temple prison. The subjects represented are the Baptism of Christ, the Raising of Lazarus, the Triumphal Entry, and the Mocking in the Pretorium. Below the knees of Christ the glass of the first figure is modern, and the remainder poor both in colour and shadow; but the others are fine effective specimens, particularly the second, and the perspective of buildings in the background excellent. The glass in the upper tier, representing the four evangelists, is modern, like the rest of the painted work in the choir.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

THE SEDILIA.

To the south wall of the chancel the Sedilia was added in the fourteenth century; and of the same style is the arch or canopy of the adjoining piscina. This addition was intended for the use of the clergy during the singing or chanting of part of the office. The usual number of these seats is three—for the celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon. At Furness there were four, at others two or only one. In the possession of five, as in other things, Southwell is always quoted as unique; and the probable explanation is to be found in the constitution of the chapter. Since all prebendaries in residence were equal, all would expect during the celebration to occupy a position of equal dignity. The ogee-shaped arches have double foliations, with crockets and finials; and in the spandrels between are figures. These, mutilated like so much of the carved work supposed to represent “graven images,” have been restored in composition. Above the stalls are a row of detached ornaments of foliage work. A miniature battlement with merlons and embrasures—very frequent as an ornament in tabernacle work and the like—here surmounts the sedilia. It is difficult to fix the date of this beautiful addition to the chancel. The double foliation of the arches suggests a later date than the rood screen (1237); and we must put it at some short time after this.

There yet remain some features of interest.

The Lectern, a finely-worked brazen eagle with wings expanded to receive the book, was presented in 1805 by Sir Richard Kaye, prebendary of Dunham, and subsequently of North Muskham and Dean of Lincoln. It bears the inscription “Orate pro ana Radulphi Savage, et pro anabus Omn Fidelium Defunctorum.” It was formerly the property of the neighbouring abbey of Newstead; and at the dissolution the monks hid some documents inside, and threw it into the lake. During the last century it was discovered and passed into the hands of a Nottingham dealer. Readers of Washington Irving’s visit to Newstead will remember that he says that in one of these documents a plenary “pardon is assured in advance for all kinds of crimes.” As a matter of fact, the pardon was one granted by Henry V. to the abbey on the payment of a round sum of money, because the monks had acquired property without the royal licence. This was merely a way of raising money to meet the expense of the French war without the consent of Parliament; and the document reflects in no way on the morals of Newstead.

The restorations of the late Mr Christian have so improved the choir by allowing the original beauties to be exposed, that only those who remember the days of the sixties can fully appreciate the services rendered by him. To one part, however, exception has been taken in high quarters. The plaster work and screens of Bernasconi at the west end between the arches, said Professor Freeman, “may legitimately be regretted by the most orthodox ecclesiologist as really remarkable works, full of ancient feeling, and well-deserving the place they have found in the Art Museum of Nottingham.” The screens have been replaced by new ones of oak on the model of those which formerly existed; but it seems a pity the arches were not left exposed. Beyond this it is only possible to commend. A new flooring of stone and marble has been laid down, and the old deal pews with their thin oak-panelled fronts of the last years of George III. (for which the money was procured by selling the very lead of the roofs) have been replaced by chairs, while at the west end oaken stalls for the clergy and choir have been placed in position. But most needed of all the galleries, which formerly hid the arches and aisles, while underneath in the darkness were passages and coal cellars, through which the preacher wended his way ere he reappeared in the pulpit—these have gone. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in their protest to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, included the removal of these galleries, only put in during the present century. This protest declared that they imparted “a fitted look,” and that the choir was “never intended to be nakedly seen from the base to the apex.”

The Rood Screen with its stalls belongs to the Geometrical period. In the olden days, besides the six stalls facing east, which still remain, were seven on either side. The one immediately to the right on entering was the archbishop’s throne; and by courtesy the Prior of Thurgarton was allowed the outside one on the south side, that on the other side facing not being appropriated. The stall to the left on entering belonged to the senior prebendary who happened to be in residence, and the remaining sixteen were assigned to the particular prebends. After the reorganisation of the sixteenth century, the archbishop’s stall was appropriated for the new official, the vicar-general. The visitor may take time to reflect that in the summer of 1530 this stall was usually occupied by the disgraced and fallen Wolsey; and looking towards the east end may picture to himself the great cardinal singing high mass on Corpus Christi Day, as at other times, assisted by his chaplains and the minster staff.

Almost exactly, then, as it left the builder’s hand, the choir yet remains; and we see in its structure how much depends upon the measurement by eye alone. That stiffness characteristic of modern buildings is entirely absent. Archbishop Benson learnt the secret when Chancellor of Lincoln, and in his new cathedral at Truro is said to have urged the builders to discard measuring instruments so far as possible.

The North Transept Chapel of the Nave.—When the choir had been completed, there still remained the small Norman apsidal chapels projecting eastward from the nave transepts. That to the south in course of time was simply pulled down after falling into decay; but a different fate awaited its fellow to the north. Projecting only some fifteen feet, and of so slight a width as to stand quite clear of the choir aisle, it was found to be too small, and a larger one took its place. This projects some seven feet more than its predecessor, and is of such a width as to abut against the choir aisle to the south, and extend slightly beyond the line of the transept to the north. Like its predecessor, it has two storeys; and the lower in addition to the actual chapel includes the passage next the staircase, part of which is taken up by the staircase leading to the upper room.

The date of erection is readily found by a combination of evidence. It has been already said, while treating of the exterior, that where this addition abuts upon the choir aisle, the marks still left show that it was added after the choir was completed; and it has further been said that documentary evidence shows the workmen to have been busy in the middle of the thirteenth century. While the interior is plainly of the same date, and other records show that several chantries were then being founded, the general arrangement of the interior of the lower storey, and more particularly two piscinas and aumbries, demonstrate its purpose. We may then assign it as built for two of these newly-founded chantries, and of the date of the middle of the thirteenth century.

The lower storey, of which the floor is now on a lower level than the transept, is of two bays, each with its east window, the division being made by two triple clustered vaulting shafts. The east shaft is attached to the wall between the windows, the west to the pillar in the centre at the west side. Owing to the chapel projecting some feet beyond the transept, this is not the centre as seen from the transept itself outside the chapel; and the consequence is that the two fine acute arches between the chapel and the transept were made unequal in height and span, that to the south being considerably the larger. While the general character of the interior agrees with that of the choir, the difference in size and shape and other reasons cause certain peculiarities. In the four corners are single vaulting shafts; and by altering the curve of the ribs springing from them these latter unite with the mouldings of the window arches on the east side, and with those of the arches opening into the transept on the west; and, again, the filleted mouldings of the choir are replaced by that peculiar kind of keel which consists of ogee-shaped curves with a sharp edge. The upper storey is reached by the staircase which opens from the choir aisle; and the only feature of interest is a blocked-up Norman doorway, formerly opening into the triforium gallery of the transept. Even in the days of the chantries, it would seem that the lower storey served also as the “song” schoolroom, where the choir boys were taught. Since then it has served for the music-school for the choir, for the vicars’ vestry, and for the library. It is now utilised as a robing-room and vestry. The room above, once used as the treasury, now contains the library.

PART III.—DECORATED

The Vestibule.[27]—Passing through the beautiful doorway in the north aisle of the choir we enter the long passage, fifty-four feet by ten, leading to the chapter-house. This passage, although built in Decorated times, presents certain features in common with the Early English of the choir; and represents a transitional stage between the two styles. This is particularly marked in the southern part adjoining the choir. The roof clearly points out where the two parts join. At the choir end opposite the court, this is of wood and modern, but facing the chapter-house at the far end, it is a plain quadripartite vaulting, and low as this first part is, it would seem to have been raised; for the wall above the double arcading looking into the court, with its uninteresting square-headed windows, is evidently an after-addition. The point of junction of the two pieces of work on the west side is the second buttress of the north transept chapel, and on the east side the middle of one of the arches a little nearer the door. By some the earlier part is called the cloister, and the northern and after-part the vestibule; but as they both form part of the same passage, it is simpler to give one name to the whole. The unfoliated arcading overlooking the court is double, forming an inner and outer with a distance between of rather less than a foot. The arches are lancet-shaped, and joined by transoms or cross lintels at the capitals, both transoms and capitals being ornamented with natural foliage. The hood-moulding above is continuous, and at each base we come across the first of the carved figures.

A. J. Loughton, Photo.

ARCADING OF THE VESTIBULE.

The archway nearest to the choir has been converted into a door leading into the court; and the shaft to the left is partly cut away. On the under side of the doorway arch, between the inner and outer arches, is diaper work, but with the remainder this is quite plain. Unfortunately, to keep out the cold and wet, the lower part of the space between the double arches has been built up with stone; and in consequence the effect of the double pillars and arches is in a great measure lost. It is also to be regretted that, owing to the dampness of the hemmed-in and almost sunless courtyard, the outer arcading, which faces due east, has suffered from the action of the climate, and been repaired. The upper part of the spaces has been filled with glass on the outside. The usual cloister bench supports the interior arcading, and the mouldings of the bases are hollow of the Early English style. On the opposite or west side, adjoining the north transept chapel, the blank arcading is single, and broken by the buttresses of the chapel, and the arches trefoiled. Coming to the northern part opposite to the entrance of the chapter-house the arcading is still lancet-shaped: the window arches of three lancets moulded with a filleted kidney-shaped round, less elaborate altogether than in the chapter-house. The small doorway on the right opens on a circular staircase leading to a small room above the vestibule. Anywhere else the end of this passage would attract the notice its intrinsic merits call for. The graceful lines and curves of the roof vaulting; the two windows, each with its tracery of trefoiled circles with pierced cuspings above the three lights; the arcading with the simple cusped trefoiling of the arches; the foliage and the figure carving: all this forms a combination which for tasteful variety leaves little to be desired. As it is, it is passed over for the chapter-house doorway.

At the point of junction on the east side is a curious figure of a man astride some nameless animal. The mouldings of a half-arch, constructed or altered in order to join the new work to the older, terminate partly on the man, partly on the beast. The string course from the choir terminates in a bunch of foliage and fruit, which the beast appears to be gnawing, and that from the far end on the man’s head. The shafts of the arch between the wooden roof and quadripartite vaulting both terminate in the mouth of a head which forms the lower part of the capital.

In this cloister-vestibule the idea of the architect would seem to have been to form a gradual connection between the pure Early English of the choir and the pure Geometrical and Decorated of the chapter-house. Not only does his work partake of both styles; but that nearer to the choir has more of the Early English, and that nearer to the chapter-house more of the Decorated. It is best to look at the two parts as the work of one man, the second erected slightly after the completion of the first, and both as forming one conception with the chapter-house itself. “In some cases,” wrote Mr Louis Petit, “the architect’s intention seems to have been to make the transition as gradual, in others as startling as possible.” Here from the commencement of the cloister part of the vestibule, with its lancet arches of one style finished off with the carving of another, the idea was to prepare us by degrees for the more elaborate and artistic workmanship of a date and style later than that of the chapter-house.

The Chapter-House.—“In design and execution alike, in its general proportions and in its minutest details, it is impossible to conceive anything more beautiful. It is the most perfect work of the most perfect style of Gothic architecture.”—A. F. Leach.

“What either Cologne Cathedral or Ratisbon or Weisen Kirche are to Germany, Amiens Cathedral or the Sainte Chapelle are to France, the Scalegere in Verona to Italy, are the choir of Westminster and the chapter-house at Southwell to England.”—G. E. Street, R.A.

A. J. Loughton, Photo.

DOORWAY TO CHAPTER-HOUSE.

The Doorway.—The archway is of five orders, and is divided by a clustered shaft in the centre into two smaller arches with a quatrefoiled circle above. There are no doors. The outside member of the main arch, which carries the hood, stands apart against the wall; the others are against the main jamb, of which the mouldings are visible underneath. The four outer shafts of Purbeck marble are detached, a somewhat unusual arrangement in Decorated work, though usual in Early English. The innermost shafts are not detached, and have neither base nor capital; and from them spring both the corresponding order of the arch as well as the outer limb of the two subordinate archways. Above the plinth the bases of the detached shafts are octagonal, with round mouldings. On the north side, between the two outer shafts, a band of foliage is worked upon the edge of the wall. An additional is made by two small arches on the face of the wall resting on the outside capitals. All the capitals are foliaged. Of the five orders, the outer or hood has foliage upon a deep hollow; the third or central, two strings of leaves worked upon hollows which are separated by a round; the second and fourth are moulded with rounds and hollows, and so is the fifth or innermost, with which is combined the two subordinate arches and the tracery above. In the third order more especially, so painstaking and elaborate is the tool work that it is difficult to see how the artist could make the mouldings underneath the foliage. But for the evidence of the stone itself, the presumption would be that the foliage was worked on separate material and afterwards placed in position. The slender clustered shaft in the centre of the doorway has base and capitals similar; and the two subordinate arches have filleted round mouldings with foliage. They are trefoiled, and the circle above quatrefoiled; and in arches and circle the cusping is moulded with the fillet and pierced.

Such is a plain account of the main features; but it is impossible to give any accurate idea of the impression it makes. The mingled grandeur and delicacy of the workmanship is enhanced by the background of the chapter-house, and by the particular effect caused by the light streaming down from the windows within. “One of the most beautiful specimens,” wrote Mr Louis Petit, “within the range of Gothic art.” “Faerial” is the particular word suggested looking through the archway; but “faerial” does not adequately represent the scale of workmanship. Amongst the numerous artists and architects the minster has attracted is Mr Ruskin; and Mr Ruskin alone could have worthily depicted the effect produced.

The Interior.—It has been said that there is a difference of opinion as to whether York or Southwell is the older; but, according to Professor Willis, York must be the copy of Southwell. The two certainly have a great deal in common; for not only are both octagonal and placed in the same position, but both lack the central pillar, which in all the remaining chapter-houses in the country supports the vaulting of the roof. While York is by far the larger, there is universal agreement that Southwell excels it, as all others, in beauty.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHAPTER-HOUSE—CANOPIES OF STALLS.

The diameter is somewhat less than 30 feet, and each side of the octagon is about 12 feet. The side due west is occupied by the archway, and that immediately to the south of it by a wall, behind which is the circular newel staircase. This—the south-west wall—as well as the west, has a blank arch, resembling but not quite so lofty as the window arches, and the space above is ornamented with the universal foliage. The remaining six sides are pierced with the broad Decorated windows; and of these, that in the south wall overlooks the courtyard. Round all the seven sides not occupied by the doorway runs a low stone bench, and above the bench the stalls, five for each side: each series separated by a vaulting shaft reaching down to the bench and engaged. The shafts of the stalls are circular and detached, their bases variously moulded and their capitals of foliage. The arches are simple trefoils—not merely trefoiled underneath, as in the vestibule—and moulded with filleted rounds and hollows. Above there are acute-shaped canopies with corbels carved with both foliage and figures, the sides relieved by crockets which bear no resemblance to crooks, and finials which pass through the string course and terminate below the windows. The woodwork and nomenclature of the stalls are a recent addition, added for the use of the modern canons.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

DETAILS OF DOORWAY, CHAPTER-HOUSE.

The spandrels between the canopies are similarly ornamented, making the whole wall space below the windows a mass of sculpture in endless variety. The window arches are of two orders only, one less than the exterior, and the capitals are of foliage instead of the plain mouldings of the exterior. The lower parts of the engaged vaulting shafts from the bench to the corbels of the canopies are combined with the stall shafts in either side. Rising through the string course they then pass upwards in the angles of the wall between the window shafts, and the group of three shafts terminate together in united capitals of foliage at the spring of the arch. From the capital a groin rib reaches to the boss of foliage in the centre of the roof; two wall ribs form an arch over each window, and from the apex of the windows project horizontal ribs to the large central boss. The moulding of the ribs is the deep hollow; and at every point of intersection occasion is taken to introduce a subordinate boss.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHAPTER-HOUSE—CAPITAL.

The glass has suffered by time and neglect, and probably from wanton damage; before this the interior must have presented an appearance even more striking. A few scattered fragments, however, still remain, some of it collected from other windows. In the border of one of the northern lights are depicted the yellow castles of Castile. They are the arms of Eleanor of Castile, the first wife of Edward I. and mother of the unhappy Edward II. As she died in 1290, and as her arms would not have been inserted any length of time after her death, we have an interesting corroboration of the date of the building. In the same border is a white lion rampant on a red field: according to Mr Winston, of the same date; but according to Mr Planché, the arms of John Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and somewhat later. In one of the trefoiled tracery lights of the south window is a small medallion of white glass, on which is a knight, with spear under arm, tilting. He wears a long surcoat with hauberk and chausses of mail, and helmet with crest resembling a bird’s wing. There are also imitations of the crockets and finials of the stalls, and of the brass represented in the carving of one of the capitals.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHAPTER-HOUSE—CAPITAL.

It is interesting to observe how this earlier Decorated workmanship availed itself of some of the Early English ideas, and how readily the two combined. The deeply-cut hollow moulding, for instance, is adhered to in the arches and groin ribs; and in spite of the great variety of more elaborate carving, room is still found for the conventional triple-lobed leaf in a few of the capitals. In this respect Southwell conforms with the general rule, as the rounds and hollows continued to prevail until long after the chapter-house was completed. On the other hand, the scroll or roll moulding—a round with one half smaller than the other, and with a sharp edge—extensively used in the arches, is characteristic of the Decorated, and must have been used at Southwell almost as soon as anywhere.

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

CHAPTER-HOUSE—CAPITAL.

Other chapter-houses may have proportions and symmetry of a like elegance; none have the wealth and luxuriance of carving to be found here. The artist’s tool is used everywhere possible, right up to the roof; and the quantity is too great to admit of the accepted tradition that all is the work of one and the same hand. There is, it is true, every mark of one general conception; but more than one sculptor must have been employed, each a man of such taste and skill that, had he lived in our day, he would have earned both name and competence. As it is, we know not to whom we are indebted. Discarding all accepted conventionalities, the foliage is natural to a degree, largely undercut and standing boldly forward. Bryony and ivy; the vine leaf, the fig leaf, and the hop; the white thorn and the rose, the oak and the maple are among the plants faithfully portrayed, and this part has been compared to the delicate lace pattern of Chinese work. There are also human heads, as above the stall now marked “Alto Pecco,” with two stems issuing from the mouth, and others from the head-dress, or the bare-headed one to the left of the doorway, both with a life-like expression. Again, there are animals, birds of various kinds, lizards, boars, and the rest. “No two capitals or bosses or spandrels can be found alike, no wearisome repetition of beautiful parts tires the eye, but everywhere we meet, in ever-changing and ever-charming variety, with some fresh object of interest and admiration.... A man reclines beneath a tree, puffing lustily away at a horn, or a goat is gnawing the leaves, or a bird pecking the berries, or a pair of pigs are grubbing up the acorns, or a brace of hounds just grabbing a hare.... Of very much of it, it is not too much to say, that it is the work of no mere chiseller of stone, but of a consummate artist; than whom it may well be doubted whether any sculptor, of any age or country, ever produced anything more life-like and exquisitely graceful.”

A. J. Loughton, Photo.

CARVING ABOVE STALL, NOW CALLED “ALTO PECCO”

Unhappily there is a certain amount of injury for which, without authority, the Roundheads have been blamed. They may have broken the stained glass; but there is no authenticated instance of their interference with work of this kind. Images of saints, inscriptions implying the doctrine of purgatory or prayers for the dead, are the kinds of carving that excited their abhorrence. Here the sculpture is so secular that Bishop Christopher Wordsworth said of it upon the spot: “Perhaps even the beautiful sculptured foliage in some of the ornamental work of this fair chapter-house might be referred to as showing that reverence for holy things and holy places was not a characteristic of some who had chief authority.” As indeed there was not; for while a regular and a secular priest are both represented, they are engaged, not at prayer, but as tussling with one another, the secular of course having the best of it. The dilapidations have been caused by broken windows and a neglected roof, and by the allowing of unskilful hands to take casts.[28]

S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo.

ROOD SCREEN FROM THE NAVE.

The Rood Screen.—This, the latest piece of the work, dating some forty years after the chapter-house, is under the eastern arch of the central tower, and on the western side presents a picturesque insertion of Decorated architecture in the midst of Norman surroundings. Marks in the stonework show that it replaced an earlier one, coeval with the choir. The great cross or holy rood itself must have been a striking feature, looking from the west door or the chancel: the organ merely blocks up the way. It was probably removed in the reign of Edward VI., and the like fate awaited the statues which adorned the western face.

The screen opens into the nave with three canopied arches. The base mouldings overlap the plinth, and the pillars are of four graceful clustered shafts. The inner arches are cinque-foil, with pierced cusps, and those above ornamented with crockets. The foliage of the capitals clings closely, more so than in the chapter-house, and shows the advance in the style.

UNDER THE SCREEN, LOOKING SOUTH.

The parapet also is typical of the style: the leading line of the stonework is pierced so as to form a continuous undulation; and the openings are foliated. The flat stone roof is supported by flying ribs, and in the spandrels between these and the corresponding ribs of the roof above are trefoiled circles, and the points of intersection are worked with bosses. On either side is a staircase leading to the organ gallery above. The side walls are richly ornamented with flowing tracery. On the eastern face besides the ogee shape of the arches, the main feature of interest is the profuse introduction of carved heads, at the outer angles of the cusps, in the spandrels, and on the capitals. Some are angels, others ecclesiastics, and others like those in the chapter-house, have a life-like expression. Above the central arch is a figure of the Virgin and Child. Edward Cludd, when the minster was threatened, used his influence with the Protector in time to save the screen, which, possessing so many religious emblems, would otherwise have been speedily demolished. The ball flower is used above the canopies of the stalls. There are three stalls on either side, and the back of the first to the south, in olden times the archbishop’s throne, is decorated with diaper work, each square with a different flower pattern. The seats are fixed with hinges, and make regular misereres, so that when turned up the prebendaries would be able to rest against them while standing or kneeling. The wood carving is chiefly of foliage.

The rood screen, with its profuse elaboration of ornament forming an integral part of the structure, and with its characteristic base mouldings, capitals, and parapet, is as fine a specimen of the full maturity of the Decorated style, as is the chapter-house of the earlier or Geometrical stage.

A. J. Loughton, Photo.

CHOIR, LOOKING WEST, AND SHOWING ROOD SCREEN.

CHAPTER IV
THE PALACE AND WOLSEY

Very effective must the grouping of minster and palace have been before the latter was suffered to sink into decay; and even now its dismantled walls and gables, clad in ivy and moss and lichen, add considerably to the picturesqueness of the scene. The only building near the church—it lies on the south side—a walk of some twenty to five-and-twenty yards would take the archbishops from their postern or garden gate to the south transept door. Its plan is best described as a quadrangle with battlemented walls and round turrets at intervals for defence. In the valuation made in the sixteenth century it is called “a goodelie Mansion House of the Bishoppe builded of timber and stone, and the most of stone, adjoynenge to the Collegiat Churche there wiche House is well and sufficientlie repayred.” On the side remote from the church was a small park, now fields, and traces of the fish pond are clearly visible; and three larger parks belonging to the archbishops were in the neighbourhood.

The State apartments were to the east, the living rooms to the south, the offices to the north, and the chapel and great hall were on the north side adjoining the churchyard. It is difficult to fix the exact spot where the different rooms were situated, but on the east side the great window near the church belonged to the chapel, and that at the other end to the library. The remains belong to two distinct periods, for some roll mouldings and other work show that part of the walls, the buttresses, and the lower part of the chimneys are of the fourteenth century; and Dugdale is probably correct in telling us that Archbishop Thoresby, a prelate of taste and munificence, built a new palace about 1360. The great windows and the upper part of the chimneys belong to a later time, and are perhaps due to that magnificent prelate, Cardinal John Kempe, whose arms of three corn sheaves (in allusion to his father, a husbandman of Rye in Sussex), supported by an angel, are still preserved in the walls. The great hall is usually ascribed to Kempe, but experts date the chimney earlier. Some very interesting carved stonework has been inserted in the wall opposite the church.

Its decay dates from the Civil War. Archbishop Williams fled into Wales and died there. The royal garrison inflicted grave injury, and no later archbishop repaired it. A private dwelling-house was built inside the walls; the hall became the local session-house, and the site of the offices first a bowling-green, and then a garden. Dr Trollope, bishop suffragan of Nottingham, purchased the freehold from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and commenced a partial restoration with the intention that it should once again become the residence of the bishop of the diocese, but in this he failed. It now belongs to the bishopric of Southwell; and Dr Ridding has made additional restorations.

It has been seen that Alfric Puttoc, Gerard, Corbridge and the two Booths died here, as did Sandys afterwards; and the more doubtful Aldred (1069) and Godfrey de Ludham (1266) are also cited. Where some of the archbishops died and were buried is so uncertain that it is not surprising to find York and Southwell both mentioned. And even Robert Holgate, who died in 1556, is assigned to Southwell, though, as he had been deprived and was in disgrace, this is not likely.[29] The one archbishop who has made the greatest mark in the history of the whole roll is also the one whose movements at Southwell are the best known.

With Wolsey as “perhaps the greatest political genius whom England has ever produced,” Southwell has nothing to do. He was Archbishop of York as he was Bishop of Winchester and Abbot of St. Albans, and held other preferments, in order to support his great state out of the multiplied revenues. He never set foot in his diocese until after his fall, and the manner of his coming was in this wise:

As the king’s Prime Minister, his arrogance had angered the nobles, his taxes the people, his mode of life, setting “the clergy ill example,” had weakened his prestige, and the affair of Anne Boleyn was his ruin. On the adjournment of the special court, he repaired with Campeggio to Grafton in Northamptonshire (19th Sept. 1529). Henry received him graciously; but Wolsey knew how the king had been prejudiced against him, for no preparations had been made for him, and was resolved on retiring from politics. Supping that night with the Lords of the Council, the following conversation was held:—

Wolsey—It were well done if the king would send his chaplains and bishops to their cures and benefices.

Norfolk—Yea, marry, and so it were for you, too.

Wolsey—I would be contented therewith very well, if it were the king’s pleasure to grant me licence, with his favour, to go to my benefice of Winchester.

Norfolk—Nay, to your benefice of York, where consisteth your greatest honour and charge.

Wolsey—Even as it shall please the king.

Farnham would have been too near Windsor to suit his enemies: and he was not even allowed to retire quietly to York, while his son, Thomas Wynter, was compelled to resign his stall of Norwell Overhall and his other preferments.

Almost persecuted to death, and stripped of everything but his archbishopric, Wolsey was at length suffered to go north, and reached Southwell on the Thursday after Low Sunday 1530. As the palace required repairs, he occupied the house of a non-resident prebendary for five weeks until Whitsuntide. He was then sixty years old.

A pamphlet published six years later, quoted by Bishop Creighton, gives an interesting account of the way he discharged his duties.

“Who was less beloved in the north than my lord cardinal before he was amongst them? Who better beloved after he had been there awhile? He gave bishops a right good example how they might win men’s hearts. There were few holy days but he would ride five or six miles from his house, now to this parish, now to that, and there cause one or other of his doctors to make a sermon unto the people. He sat amongst them, and said mass before all the parish; he saw why churches were made; he began to restore them to their right and proper use; he brought his dinner with him, and bade divers of the parish to it. He inquired whether there were any debate or grudge between any of them. If there were, after dinner he sent for the parties to the church and made them all one.” George Cavendish, his gentleman usher, speaks to a similar effect of his kindness to rich and poor, and his endeavours to patch up quarrels. “He made many agreements and concords between gentleman and gentleman, and between some gentlemen and their wives that had been long asunder and in great trouble, and divers other agreements between other persons; making great assemblies for the same purpose, and feasting of them, not sparing for any costs, where he might make a peace and amity; which purchased him much love and friendship in the country.” The Whitsuntide of 1530 must have offered an exceedingly brilliant spectacle; for people would come from far and near, not only to attend the procession and synod, but to get a glimpse of the once all-powerful cardinal in his fallen estate.

Cavendish relates that on the night of the Wednesday after Whitweek he had just fallen asleep when he was disturbed by a message that two travellers were at the gate demanding an instant interview with the archbishop from the king. He went down, and found Brereton, a gentleman of the privy chamber, and Wrotherly, and directed the porter to admit them into his lodge.

When Cavendish had aroused Wolsey, the king’s emissaries had their interview in the latter’s private dining-room. “After long talk they took out of a male a certain coffer covered with green velvet, and bound with bars of silver and gilt, with a lock of the same, having a key which was gilt, with the which they opened the same chest; out of the which they took a certain instrument or writing, containing more than one skin or parchment, having many great seals hanging at it, whereunto they put more wax for my lord’s seal; the which my lord sealed with his own seal, and subscribed his name to the same.” This document was either a transfer to the king of some property that had escaped forfeiture, or of the French king’s pension, which Henry was determined to have. The messengers were refreshed with wine and cold meat, and went away directly afterwards, refusing Wolsey’s offer of a bed, and grumbling to themselves because he only gave them four sovereigns each, which, says Cavendish, was more than he could then afford. The next day, Corpus Christi, in spite of his night’s rest having been disturbed, Wolsey sang high mass in the minster. He left Southwell at the end of the summer for Scrooby and Cawood. He had intended to be enthroned in York minster, but was arrested before the day fixed for the ceremonial. He died at Leicester Abbey on November 30th the same year.

The Beginning of the Reformation.—In 1540 the chapter, wisely advised, surrendered their estates to the king. Things went on just as before, until by a special Act (Private Acts, 33 Henry VIII. c. 10) it was provided that the church and chapter shall stand in the same perfect state “as it was or stood the first day of June in the 32nd yere of the reigne of our sovereign lord the king, or at anie time before, and shall remaine, continue and be for ever, a perfecte bodie corporate.” It was declared to be the head and mother church of the town and county of Notts, and everything was returned. Henry had no political objection to establishments like Southwell: they did not support the authority of the Pope in the way the abbeys did. In sparing the chapter, some say the king was influenced by Cranmer, a native of the county; others that the leading men of the county pleaded, while an inscription in the nave gives the credit to Archbishop Lee. The changes made were the abolition of the papal authority, the omission of the Pope’s name in the service books, and the reciting of the Litany in English, with one chapter in English from the Old Testament, and another from the New; and in these changes everyone acquiesced.

A bishopric of Southwell, with jurisdiction over Notts and Derby, was actually projected at this time, with Dr Richard Cox (afterwards Bishop of Ely) as the private first prelate of the new see. The old endowments, with some fresh additions, altogether valued at £1003 per annum, were set aside for this purpose. But it was not to be; either the extravagance of Henry or the rapacity of his courtiers prevented the allocation of any of the confiscated church lands; and Southwell was destined to wait and become one of the Victorian bishoprics.

The First Interregnum.—In the autumn of 1545 the first Chantries Act was passed (37 Henry VIII. c. 4), by the provisions of which not only chantries but colleges were conferred upon the king in order to pay the debts his extravagance had contracted. The Court of Augmentations, to which was entrusted the alienation of the different estates, left Southwell alone, as the list of 1547 shows that the prebendaries and other clergy were in the full enjoyment of their benefices. But a similar Act passed at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign involved the whole of the Southwell properties; and the chapter became moribund. Some of the clergy were pensioned; but vested interests were not generally recognised. On the petition of the parishioners, the minster was continued as the parish church; and the sacrist prebendary, John Adams, was made vicar of Southwell at a stipend of £20 a year, with his vicar-choral, Matthew Fort, and the old parish vicar, Robert Salwyne, as “assistants to the cure,” with £5 a year each.

The Restoration of the Chapter.—The greater part of the property had been obtained by Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey’s father-in-law, and afterwards went to John Beaumont, Master of the Rolls. By an Act of 1557 this property reverted to the Crown in payment of Beaumont’s debts. What follows is very much of a mystery, but some of the prebendaries went back: and an action was brought against them in the Court of Exchequer for trespass. The judgment delivered was remarkable; it was decided that the Private Act exempted the chapter from the later Chantry Acts of Henry and Edward. The simplest explanation is that suggested by Mr Leach: Mary wished to restore the chapter and the church lands, and the action at law was collusive.

Shortly after Mary died, and during the reign of Elizabeth this decision of the Court of Exchequer was upheld in the numerous suits brought by the chapter to recover different fragments of their estates. Eventually almost the whole were recovered. The vicars-choral were reduced to six, of whom one was to be parish vicar and a second the master of the Grammar School. The chantry priests were abolished, their property being retained by the chapter, and their house let on lease in various tenements; but provision was made for the priests, and a lease of 1574 stipulates for the life interest in their respective lodgings of the two who still remained. Being illiterate, they had been unable to find other preferment, and with a pension of £4 and the use of their old rooms they were mercifully allowed to spend the rest of their lives where they had formerly served.

Archbishop Sandys (1577-1589) was held in high esteem by the queen, and was constantly consulted by her. As he had to organise both diocese and province, as well as attend the council, Southwell was his most central palace, and there he made his home. Through his instrumentality a fresh body of statutes was drawn up. Provisions were made for divine worship three times a day, for study and preaching, and one of the canons was to deliver at least two theological lectures in English during the week. The prebendaries were to preside in turn, and were to elect a vicar-general from amongst themselves. This officer exercised all jurisdiction over the peculiar not specifically reserved for the chapter or the residentiary. But as the chapter had no permanent chief, and no means were provided for enforcing residence, the statute became a dead letter, and the vicars-choral, or minor canons as they came to be called, were promoted by the chapter to benefices in their gift, and also became pluralists.

King James passed through Southwell on his accession, travelling from Scotland to London, and was greatly astonished at finding so large a church in so small a town. When a member of his suite pointed out that he had just seen two larger ones in Durham and York, the king answered peevishly in his Scotch accent, “Vary weel, vary weel, but by my blude this kirk shall justle with York or Durham, or any kirk in Christendom.” It may have been the impression derived from his visit, when the chapter greeted him with a loyal address, which caused him to issue letters-patent, confirming the chapter in their disputed estates, and so putting an end to the incessant, if always successful, legislation.

The Saracen’s Head and Charles I.—Situated at the junction of the roads from Mansfield, Newark, and Nottingham, this famous inn was conveyed by Archbishop Arundel to John Fysher in 1396. It is so covered with plaster that it is impossible to assign any date to the building; but it appears never to have been rebuilt, only repaired from time to time. The east side faces the street, and with the outbuildings surrounds a courtyard, entered under an archway with oaken doors. Internally it contains long rambling passages; but the great point of attraction is the coffee-room in which Charles I. is traditionally said to have given himself up to the Scotch army. It is two rooms thrown into one; the ceiling is papered, but the wainscotting remains on the walls; and although the windows have been altered, the old settles beneath are left. The long passage over the archway leads to the King’s Room, also two thrown into one, in which Bishop Selwyn passed a night, and composed some halting rhymes. The inn is associated with the Whitsuntide feasts, and with supposed royal visits from Edward I. and Edward III., who were more likely to have rested at the palace.

It is a typical old posting-house; and there is no reason whatever to doubt the story that Charles here, as distinct from the palace, met the Scotch commissioners, as it has been handed down uninterruptedly.

In the spring of 1646 the affairs of the king were desperate; and on 23rd March he sent a message through Montreuil, the French “resident in Scotland,” for the leaders of the Scotch army. Montreuil was at Southwell, and the army was besieging the royalist castle of Newark. Charles hoped that as the Scotch feared the length to which matters were tending, he could more easily make terms with them than with the Parliamentary party. On the evening of 26th April he misled his council by telling them that he was going to London to treat; and at three in the morning, accompanied by Ashburnham and his chaplain, Dr Hudson, and disguised as Ashburnham’s servant, with hair and beard trimmed, secretly left Oxford.

The forlorn monarch at one time entertained the idea of escaping by sea from Lynn; but this was abandoned; and Hudson went to Montreuil at Southwell to urge him to get conditions from the Scotch that would satisfy the king. Turning westward the king reached Stamford on the evening of 3rd May; and staying there, still in disguise, he set out on the night of the 4th, and reached the Saracen’s Head at Southwell at 7 A.M. on the morning of 5th May, where he was received by Montreuil. At Southwell, says Mr S.R. Gardiner, “he fancied himself a guest; but the days of his captivity had in fact begun.” The negotiations which followed may best be described as a game at bluff, Lothian (on the part of the Scotch) and the king each trying to overreach the other; and when Charles finally gave himself up, Montreuil and the Scotch alike believed him pledged to Presbyterianism, while Charles fully trusted that his life and person were safe. The same day he was removed to Kelham Hall, where David Leslie, the commander of the army, had his headquarters. The action of the king in giving himself up was a complete surprise for the Scotch leaders, who wrote to the Parliament from Southwell that it made them feel like men in a dream.

Bishop Selwyn is wrong in supposing that Charles slept in the king’s room: unless he there took such necessary rest as he was able after his arrival; but just as likely he made use of Montreuil’s bedroom, which appears to have been the back part of the present coffee-room. Neither is there anything to show that he slept there the previous year after Naseby, when “he wandered helplessly in search of fresh forces.” That he did stay at the Saracen’s Head, however, seems certain. The palace was already in a state of dilapidation, and Charles still in disguise as Ashburnham’s servant. No house was in itself more likely; and the account dates from the time. As he passed under the archway of the hostelry with Lothian and his Scotch escort to the Kelham road, he was but beginning the initial stage of that sad journey which was to end only on the scaffold at Whitehall, and convert the life-story of this able but untrustworthy sovereign into the most pathetic of any king in English history.

The Second Interregnum.—During the Civil War and the Commonwealth the prebendaries were compelled to vacate their stalls and seek refuge where they could: the usual services were prohibited, and a great deal of injury inflicted on the statues both outside and in. A warrant was issued to pull down the nave and all parts not actually required for worship. Edward Cludd, who had purchased Normanton Park, a man of influence in the Parliamentary party, saved the building from demolition. He was a justice of the peace, and celebrated marriages under an oak in his park, that was called after him. He lived to see the restoration, and was buried in the church. When the chapter was restored in 1660, nearly all the stalls were found to be vacant, and the king filled most of them up by royal mandate without waiting for the new archbishop.

On the fifth of November 1711, a storm, with thunder and lightning, passed over the town, accompanied by a high west wind. The conical roof of the south-west tower took fire, and the flames spread, injuring the roof of the nave. It spread along the nave to the central tower, melting the bells, and destroying the organ. Beyond this the annals of the church and town possess little or nothing further of interest.

In 1780 the buildings in the Vicars’ Court were pulled down, and the present houses erected in their place. The large one at the end was for the prebendary in residence; and the two on either side for four of the minor canons; the parish vicar and Grammar School master being provided for elsewhere. Four years later Booth’s chapel was pulled down, and the Grammar School removed to the old house of the chantry priests, where the red brick building now stands.

One prebendary (in residence for three months every four years), and even that frequently by proxy, was considered sufficient, and so continued to the end.

Some distinguished Prebendaries.—Some members of the chapter, after the Reformation, became distinguished, and are deserving of notice. Lancelot Andrewes (North Muskham, 1589-99) is still remembered for his Sermons, Devotions, and Manual for the Sick. At the same time that he held his Southwell stall, he held another at Westminster, and was master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He afterwards became Dean of Westminster, and in succession Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester. On the death of Bancroft, the bishops met and agreed to recommend Andrewes for the primacy; but he was passed over in favour of a far inferior man, George Abbot, owing to the Scotch favourites that had the ear of King James. Andrewes was the first preacher of his day, though the puns in his sermons would excite the laughter of a modern congregation. He was looked up to for his high character; and in learning and administrative ability ranked higher than any of his brother prelates, and was renowned as a controversialist against Bellarmine. He found time to keep his residence at Southwell, and became attached to it. Some of his family settled there, but died out in the eighteenth century.

The other prebendary who calls for notice owes his name and fame to different circumstances altogether.

William Mompesson (Normanton, 1671-1709) was a son of the rector of Eakring, and was living at Southwell at the time Monk passed through on his way from Scotland. The year after the plague he was vicar of the lonely parish of Eyam, to the north of Bakewell, in the Derbyshire Peak. In the April of 1666 the contagion was conveyed to Eyam in some patterns of tailors’ cloth, and rapidly spread. His wife urged him to leave, but he declined; and she remained, their infant son and daughter being sent to Barnburgh Rectory, in Yorkshire, a Southwell benefice held by a relative. Mompesson proposed to the Earl of Devonshire to be responsible for no parishioner crossing the parish boundary, provided that food was left at stated places. This arrangement was faithfully carried out, and the contagion did not spread to any other village. Mompesson, wisely abandoning the church, held the services on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, underneath a curiously-formed rock hard by, that is still pointed out. His wife died—there is a monument to her in the churchyard,—and no less than four-fifths of the people. A new burying-ground had to be marked out in the heath above the village before the cold weather of late autumn finally stopped the ravages of the pest. There can be no doubt that the influence and devotion of this one man isolated the plague, and kept it strictly confined to the one small village. Archbishop Sterne gave him the well-earned stall of Normanton; and the chapter elected him their vicar-general. He succeeded his father at Eakring, and was buried there, refusing the deanery of Lincoln.

The virulence of the pest at Eyam may be gathered from the fact that, ninety-one years later, five labourers, digging on the extemporised burial-ground, contracted a putrid fever, of whom three died, as well as other parishioners. The infant son, who was removed from Eyam, became prebendary of Oxton and Cropwell, and succeeded his father as vicar-general. It is to be regretted that this name is now extinct in the county.

A number of other prebendaries rose to high preferment. Matthew Hutton, like Andrewes, a master of Pembroke college, became Archbishop of York in the reign of Elizabeth. In the next century Robert Snowden became in succession bishop of Carlisle, Bristol, and Chichester; John Jegon obtained Norwich, and made his brother Thomas (also a prebendary) archdeacon and canon residentiary in his diocese; Robert Sanderson, a noted casuist, and one of the few prebendaries who survived the Civil War, was appointed to the throne of Lincoln at the Restoration; and William Jackson, after holding Dunham for thirty-two years, was Bishop of Oxford in 1812. We now come to a more distinguished inhabitant.

The Burgage Manor House and Byron.—Byron is always interesting, and an account of his connection with Southwell may be useful. On her son’s accession to the title and estates, Mrs Byron was too poor to afford to live at Newstead, which was let; and after staying for a time at Nottingham and other places, in 1804 she took the Burgage Manor House at Southwell—the white house on the green coming up from the station. Here Byron came first from Harrow for the summer holidays of this year, at the age of sixteen. In 1805 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was generally at Southwell during the vacations up to June 1807, after which we have no more traces of him. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe saw him in the Eton and Harrow match of 1805, on the old Dorset Square Lord’s Ground, and afterwards described him to Tennyson as big for his years and moody-looking, and remembered to have seen him, “bat in hand, limp back to the Pavilion, having just lost his wicket, and evidently not over-pleased.” At Southwell, the future poet played cricket and bathed in the Greet, and, accompanied by John Pigot, made a visit to Harrogate with his two dogs “Nelson” and “Boatswain.” He would have been happy enough but for the usual quarrels with his mother, in one of which, to escape the poker, he took refuge in flight, keeping his address secret from Mrs Byron. While in hiding from her, he wrote to young Pigot: “Without doubt the dames of Southwell reprobate the pernicious example I have shown, and tremble lest their babes should disobey their mandates, and quit their mammas on any grievance.” But so far from blaming him, Southwell took his side, and in spite of constitutional shyness he was a decided favourite.

Not only the young medical student, John Pigot, but his sister Elizabeth, attracted Byron; and although the affection never ripened into a passion, Miss Chaworth was too recent—the young lady had the rare knack of overcoming his shyness, and in the Pigots’ house he felt at home, and went in and out as he pleased. One day Miss Pigot happened to read something of Burns to him, and in the talk that followed was surprised to find that Byron also composed verse. He recited to her the two short pieces to be found at the beginning of the “Hours of Idleness,” “In thee I fondly hoped to clasp,” and “When to this airy hall”; and shortly afterwards, urged partly by his friend and partly by his own budding ambition, commissioned Ridge of Newark to print a hundred copies of his juvenile efforts, which was duly done in November 1806. Miss Pigot lived some forty years after her friend’s death, and is still well remembered. His letters to her (including the earliest published) are in Moore’s life; and she is the Eliza of his youthful verse.

Another friend, nearly twenty years his senior, was the Rev. John Thomas Becher, already incidentally referred to in treating of the nave transepts. He was a son of the vicar-general, and afterwards succeeded his father. Byron presented Becher first with a copy of his little volume; and the result was remarkable. His friend, after reading the verses, initiated a discussion carried on in verse; and so unfavourable was Becher’s criticism, that the whole, with the exception of one or two copies which could not be recalled, were that same night committed to the flames. Many of them reappeared in “Hours of Idleness” the next year; and all, or nearly all, eventually in the complete editions of his works published by Murray. Mr Becher advised his friend to study the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton, and not to waste his time in devouring the current light literature. He also urged him, but without success, to cultivate the county magnates, and to mix more in general society. Byron’s answer may be found in the “Hours of Idleness.” In reality, the lord of Newstead was too proud and too shy to mix freely with the county world without making what he thought a sufficient display. Thomas Moore regretted that the young genius was so soon removed from Mr Becher’s influence; and expressed the opinion that, had he remained longer at Southwell, his after-life might have been free from vice.

In writing the “Hours of Idleness” he kept late hours. His first visit in the morning was to Miss Pigot, to whom he read the production of the previous night. He then went on to the Bechers’ and other houses. His evenings were given by preference to the Pigots, and he and Miss Pigot were accustomed to play and sing together such songs as the “Maid of Lodi.” Among his verses with a local tinge are some lines addressed to Miss Houson, who was alarmed one day at the sound of a bullet he had fired in his mother’s garden; the prologue to some private theatricals, a “Reply” to his friend, John Pigot; and the often-quoted punning epitaph on the drunken carrier. When he was seriously ill, and wrote his “Adieu,” he referred to the Greet—

Streamlet! along whose rippling surge
My youthful limbs were wont to urge,
At noontide heat, their pliant course;
Plunging with ardour from the shore,
Thy springs will lave these limbs no more,
Deprived of active force.

But the associations of the minster failed to make any impression on him; and the subject is ignored alike in his verse and letters. The silly affectation with which he bemoaned the quietness and dulness of the town has been constantly quoted; what he really thought was something quite different, and is conveyed in a letter to a friend named Dallas, written in 1811, whom he advised to settle there.

“Now, I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off [Newstead Abbey] where your family would have the advantage of very genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile affluence; where you would meet with men of information and independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, assemblies, etc. etc., which bring people together. My mother had a house there for some years, and I am well acquainted with the economy of Southwell, the name of this little commonwealth.”[30]

CHAPTER V
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CHAPTER

The difference between the Southwell depicted by Byron and the Southwell of to-day is due to organic changes. In 1837 Notts, less the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the chapter, was transferred from York to Lincoln; and four years later Southwell shared the same fate.

Thus was broken the long connection, not only with the diocese, but also with the province of York. In 1840 a clause or two in a Bill (3 and 4 Vict. c. 113), supplemented the next year by a special Act (4 and 5 Vict. c. 39), destroyed the chapter, after making allowance for vested interests, as a useless waste of ecclesiastical revenues. The canonries, as vacancies occurred, were not to be filled up, the minor canons were to be reduced to two (eventually to none at all); and the property was to go to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to help in founding Ripon and Manchester, although these two dioceses were quite wealthy enough to endow their own bishoprics. What the total revenues were at the time of the dissolution, it is impossible to say. A great part of the incomes, both of the common and trust funds and of the various prebends, was paid in lump sums, technically called “fines,” at the renewal of leases. It has been estimated as high as £30,000 a year: the real nett income of the whole of the properties may, perhaps, have reached a third of this high figure. It must, however, be remembered, in computing the real loss, that the Commissioners have borne the whole expense of restoring the edifice. In succession to the sixteen prebendaries and the six minor canons, a brand new benefice, a rectory, was created and endowed not over-liberally, and the minster reduced to the status of an ordinary parish church.

During a great part of the period of transition the two minor canons allowed temporarily to remain filled the duty usually assigned to canons in residence, and preached in the afternoon. The Act of 1840 for curtailing, or, as at Southwell, for abolishing, cathedral and collegiate chapters was passed during the heat wave of change which followed in the footsteps of the first Reform Bill. No one opposed it more vigorously than did the young Tory and High Church member for Newark, Mr W.E. Gladstone, who added to his rising fame by his great speech against its provisions. But, in spite of the numerous petitions that came pouring in, the general middle and upper class opinion of the day was against such colleges as Southwell, and in favour of devoting their revenues to other purposes. It has changed since; and if the present Bishop of Southwell were asked his opinion, he would probably answer that a chapter of sixteen prebendaries appointed by himself would have been of inestimable service in carrying on the administration of the diocese. So ended a clerical republic which had safely survived the storms of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

SOUTHWELL, SHOWING WEST TOWERS BEFORE RESTORATION— RUINS OF THE PALACE TO THE LEFT.

The Grammar School.—By yet another blow the Grammar School was crippled. Two fellowships and two scholarships at St. John’s, Cambridge, founded by Dr Keton in the reign of Henry VIII., with a preference for choristers, were confiscated. Under Dr William Fletcher (a first classman and Fellow of Brasenose) the school was the most flourishing in the county: thanks to the craze for meddling reform, it was afterwards reduced to three boys. It has been left for the present headmaster, who was appointed by Bishop Wordsworth when the fortunes of the school were at a low ebb, assisted by his son, to restore this time-honoured seat of education to a favourable and prominent position, although allowed by the Commissioners only the old sixteenth-century endowment of twenty-three pounds a year. At the next voidance of the one remaining minor canonry, the headmaster of the Grammar School will be the sole remaining officer allowed to continue; and a more generous policy might well be pursued with regard to the oldest educational establishment of the county. When it is added that the “very genteel society” of Byron successfully opposed the Nottingham and Lincoln Railway, it need not now be a cause for wonder that the town does not occupy that position the author of “Childe Harold” described.

The Foundation of the See.—The county of Nottingham had not time to settle into its new position before it was discovered that the reconstructed diocese of Lincoln, with over eight hundred benefices, was too large for one bishop to supervise. In Bishop Jackson’s time the need of a new diocese was mooted; with Bishop Wordsworth this idea took active shape; and during the administration of Lord Beaconsfield the necessary legislative sanction was obtained, although, as the main part of the endowment had to be collected by subscription, the see was not constituted until 1884. Bishop Wordsworth not only parted with a portion of his episcopal income, but was the most munificent subscriber; and to him it is due that Southwell had the preference as the see town over the large and growing city of Nottingham. It was also part of the scheme of this distinguished prelate that the diocese should be limited to the one county, and that the old palace should be restored for the bishop’s residence, but neither of these was carried into effect. The plan of Henry VIII. was adopted, and Derbyshire added, while the restoration of the palace was abandoned. The minster was thus chosen as the cathedral church out of sentiment; and it is to be regretted that it did not at the same time revert to its old province of York.

The new honorary canons of the diocese, with the bishop at their head as dean, took the names of the old prebends. The work they have done in the diocese has justified their appointment; but historical association, while respected in one sense, was here also strangely disregarded, since between the old prebendaries and the new canons there is no kind of connection. The first bishop, Dr George Ridding, headmaster of Winchester, has continued the untiring munificence of Dr Wordsworth; and his organising powers have found full scope in the working of the two counties.

Thus the outline of the story of this little town from the days of the Britons and Romans onwards comes to an end. Southwell may well take for her motto—

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A
THE CULDEES

The derivation is given from Cultor (or perhaps cola) Dei. The Culdees are generally supposed to have been a religious order founded by St. Columba in the middle of the sixth century; but this would seem to be a mistake, for, says Canon Ornsby, the name was unknown to Baeda, Eddi, and Andamnan, Deicola (= Gode-frihte, or God-fearing) was the appellation given first to anchorites, and afterwards to certain secular clergy.

The clergy of Canterbury were called Cultores [Dei] Clerici in 1006; those of York Colidei or Culdees so late as Henry I. Mr Leach says (p. xx.) that the clergy of Lichfield were likewise of Culdee origin under St. Chad. Perhaps the least unlikely inference is that at Southwell, as elsewhere, the Culdees represent an intermediate stage between the primitive missionaries and the prebendaries of a later time with their separate churches and endowments. They were allowed to marry, and shared in a common fund.

APPENDIX B
A STORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL

Florence of Worcester says (under date 1137): “At Southwell, a ‘vill’ of the archbishop’s, while a grave was being made for a funeral, there were found some relics of saints, and a glass phial with raised sides to prevent its being broken, and full of very clear water; which being given to the sick, they were on tasting it restored to their former health.” Florence says that this story was told him by Henry, Bishop of Winchester.

APPENDIX C
CHANTRIES, CHAPELS, AND ALTARS

The eight chantry foundations of the thirteenth century were St. Thomas the Martyr (three), St. Peter, St. Nicholas (with Halam annexed), St. Stephen, St. John Baptist, and St. John the Evangelist. After a lull of more than a century come St. Mary at the altar of St. Michael (with Wheatley annexed), a second St. John the Baptist, otherwise the Morrow Mass, St. Mary Magdalene, and Our Lady, and St. Cuthbert (two, founded in 1479).

The Lady Chapel is a puzzle: it was outside the choir, on the north side, and with the churchyard adjoining the east; and no site seems to satisfy these three conditions. Perhaps more than one chapel is so named in wills. The chapel of St. John the Baptist had two altars, one to that saint, and another to St. Cuthbert, each with two chantries: it was the Vavasour or Booth Chapel at the south-west of the nave, the place of the Grammar School. The chapel of St. John the Evangelist was in the north aisle (whether of nave or choir not stated).

The locality of St. Thomas’ Chapel with its three chantries is uncertain; and there is a mention of the chapels of St. Lawrence and of St. Margaret near one another, but their altars are not mentioned. The altar of St. Peter was within the choir, but the sites of the remaining chantry altars cannot be settled. Besides the parish altar of St. Vincent, that of Our Lady of Grace is twice mentioned in the wills. The high altar is in one place called “the greater altar of St. Mary.”

There were, besides, the chapels of St. Thomas the Martyr in the Burgage, St. Catherine at the end of Westhorpe near the holy well, two in Easthorpe half-a-mile apart, and one in Normanton. The names of the three last are unknown; and the five seem to have been chantries. I am chiefly indebted to Mr Leach for the above information.

APPENDIX D
A STORY OF CHARLES I.

Robert Thoroton, who published his “Nottinghamshire” in 1677, says that a Mr Savage told him the following story:—The time of this visit of the king was between Naseby and the subsequent residence at Oxford. The king, with a few faithful followers, took refuge at Southwell. “The day after his arrival he walked about the town not known, and entered the shop of a shoemaker, whose name was Lee, who was a fanatic of the day. His majesty, after some conversation with this man, bid him take measure for a pair of shoes. Lee, in taking the king’s foot in his hand and looking at him attentively, refused to proceed. The king, astonished at the man’s behaviour, desired him to do what he had requested; but the shoemaker actually refused, giving a reason that the king was the customer he had been warned against in a dream the night before, in which he [the customer] was doomed to destruction, and those who worked for him would never thrive. The forlorn monarch, whose misfortunes had opened his mind to the impressions of superstitions, uttered an ejaculation expressive of his resignation to the will of providence, and returned to the palace, which was the place of his abode.”

Thoroton says that Charles was many times at Southwell, and once with the queen.

APPENDIX E
PATRONAGE OF THE CHAPTER

The chapter were patrons of the daughter parishes of Bleasby-cum-Morton, Edingley, Farnsfield, Halam, Kirklington and Upton, and of Boughton, Kneesal, Rolleston, S. Wheatley and Woodborough in Notts; of Barnburgh in Yorkshire; and of Barnoldby, Beelsby, Brigsley, Hatcliffe, Howerby, Ravensdale, and Waltham in North Lincolnshire.

All the prebendaries but those of Normanton, Woodborough, Palishall, and the sacrist presented to their several vicarages, excepting that the two prebendaries presented alternately to both Oxton and Cropwell. The prebendary of Normanton presented to the Southwell parish vicarage, and North Muskham to Caunton. At the dissolution, after allowing for vested interests, the whole of this patronage was divided between the two new bishoprics of Ripon and Manchester, but until Mr Shepherd’s death, in 1873, the surviving prebendaries reserved their patronage. Barnburgh was at one time worth £550 a year nett, and Beelsby a hundred less; but most of the others were of small value. There were also some half-dozen chapelries.

APPENDIX F
THE LAST OF THE CLERGY

Prebendaries.

Beckingham

Thomas Henry Shepherd, the last of the prebendaries, died Feb. 1873, on whose death the patronage of the chapter went to the bishops of Ripon and Manchester. He was rector of Clayton and S. Wheatley.

Dunham | Thomas Cozens Percival.
Eton | William Barrow.
Halloughton | Robert Lowe.
North Leverton | Henry Smith.
North Muskham | Charles Boothby.
South Muskham | John Thomas Becher.

Normanton

George Wilkins, vicar-general and Archdeacon of Nottingham. After the Act of Dissolution he lived at the Residence House, and died there 1865.

Norwell Overhall | Chas. Geo. Venables Vernon.
Norwell Palishall | Robert Chaplin.
Norwell Tertia Pars | Edward Denison (B. of Salisbury).
Oxton and Cropwell | James Jarvis Cleaver.
Oxton Altera Pars | Frederick Anson (D. of Chester).
Rampton | Fitzgerald Wintour.
Sacrist | Charles Nixon.
Woodborough | Edward Garrard Marsh.
Parish Vicar | Morgan Watkins.

Minor Canons or Vicars-Choral.

Alfred Tatham (1841-76).

Robert Frederick Smith, M.A., vicar of Edingley-cum-Halam. Late scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford. Succeeded Mr Dimock (preferred to Barnburgh in 1863), and still remains. The last clergyman associated with the defunct chapter. He was ordained as curate to the Rector of Southwell in 1856.

PLAN OF SOUTHWELL CATHEDRAL.
DIMENSIONS—EXTERIOR.

Length—318 feet. Length of Nave—185 feet. Width of Nave—72 feet.
Choir—Length, 128 feet. Choir Aisles—Length, 98 ft.
Choir, with Aisles—Breadth, 73 feet.
Choir, with both Transept Chapels—Breadth, 108 feet.
Height of Central Tower, 105 feet.
Height of Western Tower, 99 feet.
Do., including Modern Spires, 149 feet.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The repeated attempts to connect Southwell with the Tiovulfingacestre of Baeda must be dismissed as unsupported. To make matters more puzzling still, Henry of Huntingdon, who says he relied upon Baeda, writing in the twelfth century, calls the place of the baptising the town “now called Fingecestre.”

There was no such town; there was the little riverside hamlet of Fiscartune, now called Fiskerton, the nearest spot on the Trent to Southwell; and Henry was perhaps thinking of this when he wrote. Baeda says that a convert told a monk named Daeda, and Daeda told him, that he, the convert, had been baptised in the Trent near the “civitas” called in the language of the Angles Tiovulfingacestre. This name has been hopelessly lost. In itself, no place so well satisfies this second-hand account, as where the river, after passing under Clifton Grove, sweeps by Wilford Church. Here the bed is so formed that the priest could stand in comfort, and have plenty of water for immersion; while Nottingham, close at hand, might then have been a settlement sufficiently large to be called a “civitas.” Southwell was not large enough. Or, perhaps, Torksey or Littleborough is meant.

[2] Appendix A. The Culdees.

[3] Prebendas apud Suthwell fecit.

[4] So far as the letter of Archbishop Thomas goes, being without date, it might have been written by either Thomas; but the finely pointed masonry and the later Norman in the architecture suggest the second Thomas.

[5] Decano; but there was no dean, though one appears afterwards.

[6] Ab omni jure & consuetudine episcopali ... penitus & immunes.

[7] Leach, p. xxxv. Dugdale also states that once there was a dean.

[8] Ornsby’s “York,” p. 161.

[9] On this subject see Gwilt’s “Architecture,” p. 126.

[10] Leach, p. 197.

[11] In the will of Robert Batemanson there is a reference to “my Lord William Bothe’s quer,” which implies that William, and not Laurence, restored it.

[12] There was a third at Laneham, on the Trent.

[13] The present area, including that of the modern daughter parish of Holy Trinity, is put down at over 5000 acres.

[14] In which, however, the accused was acquitted.

[15] There were two for the three prebends of Normanton, and one for Oxton.

[16] Mais si belle qu’elle se soit conservée en vieillissant, il est difficile de ne pas soupirer, de ne pas s’indigner devant les dégradations, les mutilations sans nombre que simultanément le temps et les hommes ont fait subir au vénérable monument ... Si nous avions le laisir d’examiner une à une avec le lecteur les diverses traces de destruction imprimées à l’antique église, la part du temps serait la moindre, la pira celle des hommes ... et ce que nous disons de l’église cathédrale de Paris, il faut le dire de toutes les églises de la chrétienté au moyen âge. (“Notre Dame,” livre troisième, c. 1.). I have discussed the effect of the Great Pestilence upon architecture in the Gentleman’s Magazine Aug. 1897.

[17] Builder, July 2, 1892, p. 12. This term “Romanesque” has become a ready source of confusion. It is used in at least two distinct senses.

(a) The architecture prevalent in Western Europe contemporary with our Anglo-Norman. In this sense it appears to be used by the writer in the Builder; and I should say that the intersection of the arcading ought to be added to the “Romanesque” peculiarities.

(b) As a general term for the architecture prevalent in Western Europe prior to the introduction of the Gothic. In this latter and more accepted use of the term English Saxon and Norman architecture would both be included. The term was intended to imply of Roman or Italian origin.

[18] Saturday Review, Nov. 29, 1879, p. 662.

[19] The dimensions of the Norman choir were discussed by Mr Dimock in a paper read before the British Archæological Association, and published in their Journal of January 1853. Mr C. Hodgson Fowler, who has been long intimately acquainted with his subject, in the Architect of June 23rd, 1877, takes a somewhat different view. The evidence appears to be too slight for the most careful and correct of experts to agree altogether.

[20] See the remarks on Booth’s Chapel and Appendix C.

[21] Builder, July 2nd, 1892.

[22] The Early Decorated tracery is arranged principally in circles, quatrefoils, and other regular figures, with the featherings for the most part confined to the larger piercings: this is usually called Geometrical tracery. (Parker’s “Glossary.”)

[23] These measurements, which have been carefully made from a ground plan, differ slightly from those of Mr Louis Petit in the Memoirs of the Archæological Institute of 1850, p. 208.

[24] Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that the reports that it is not watertight against storms are not correct.

[25] Vide p. 20.

[26] The Cinque Cento style prevailed from the “commencement of the fifteenth century until the general introduction of enamel colours about the middle of that century.”—Charles Winston.

[27] Called Passage on plan.

[28] It is to be regretted that the vestibule and chapter-house are so difficult of access. The authorities that be appear to treat them as a species of holy of holies. The only possible objection to a more liberal policy—a regard for vested interests—the Commissioners would surely make good.

[29] Canon Ornsby buries Aldred at York, and Mr Livett at Southwell. Holgate retired to Hemsworth; but his burial is not in that parish register. An old metrical chronicle makes Corbridge die at Laneham.

[30] Perhaps the last survivor of those who remembered Byron was Mrs Alfred Tatham, a daughter of Mr Becher. She told me she distinctly remembered, as a very little girl (it was about her earliest recollection), sitting on the poet’s knee, who was fond of children. Mr Becher’s grandson still lives in the house with which Byron was familiar.

Transcriber’s Notes.

Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Inconsistent spelling/hyphenation has been normalised.

A reiteration of the title has been discarded.

End of page footnotes have been sequentially numbered and gathered at the end of the text.

To improve text flow, illustrations have been relocated between paragraphs. Page numbers in the List of Illustrations may no longer be relevant, but will link to the image.

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Table of Contents

- THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SOUTHWELL
- GENERAL PREFACE
- AUTHOR’S PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

- CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

- PART I.—THE TOWN AND CHURCH

- PART II.—CONSTITUTION OF THE CHAPTER

- CHAPTER II EXTERIOR—THE NAVE AND TRANSEPT

- PART I.—NORMAN
- PART II.—EARLY ENGLISH
- PART III.—EARLY DECORATED OR GEOMETRICAL

- CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR

- PART I.—NORMAN
- PART II.—EARLY ENGLISH
- PART III.—DECORATED

- CHAPTER IV THE PALACE AND WOLSEY

- CHAPTER V THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CHAPTER

- APPENDICES

- APPENDIX A THE CULDEES
- APPENDIX B A STORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL
- APPENDIX C CHANTRIES, CHAPELS, AND ALTARS
- APPENDIX D A STORY OF CHARLES I.
- APPENDIX E PATRONAGE OF THE CHAPTER
- APPENDIX F THE LAST OF THE CLERGY

- FOOTNOTES

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE