From the lavatory tower a covered pa.s.sage leads into the great cloister, which can also be approached from a door in the north-west transept. The cloister, though it stands upon the s.p.a.ce covered by that built by Lanfranc, is largely the work of the indefatigable Prior Chillenden. It shows traces of many architectural periods. The east walk contains a door, leading into the transept, embellished with a triple arcade of early English; under the central arch of the arcade is the doorway itself, a later addition in Perpendicular. There is also a Norman doorway which once communicated with the monks" dormitory: after the Reformation it was walled up, but in 1813 the plaster which concealed it was taken away, and since then it has been carefully restored. The rest of the work in this part of the cloister is chiefly Perpendicular. The north walk is adorned with an Early English arcade, against which the shafts which support Chillenden"s vaulting work are placed with rather unsatisfactory effect.
Towards the western end of this walk is the door of the refectory.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TURRET OF SOUTH-WEST TRANSEPT.]
The cellarer"s quarters were outside the west walk, and they were connected with the cloister by a doorway at the north-west corner: opposite this entrance was a door leading to the archbishop"s palace, and through this Becket made his way towards the cathedral when his murderers were in pursuit of him.
The great dormitory of the monks was built along the east walk of the cloister, extending some way beyond it. It was pulled down in 1547, but the substructure was left standing, and some private houses were erected upon it. These were removed in the middle of the last century, and a good deal of the substructure remained until 1867, when the vaulting which survived was pulled down to make way for the new library, which was erected on the dormitory site. Some of the pillars on which the vault of the substructure rested are preserved in a garden in the precincts; and a fragment of the upper part of the dormitory building, which escaped the demolition in 1547, may be seen in the gable of the new library. The substructure was a fine building, 148 feet by 78 feet; the vaulting was, as described by Professor Willis, "of the earliest kind; constructed of light tufa, having no transverse ribs, and retaining the impressions of the rough, boarded centring upon which they had been formed." A second minor dormitory ran eastward from the larger one, while outside this was the third dormitory, fronting the Green Court. Some portion of the vaults of this building is still preserved in the garden before the lavatory tower.
#The Chapter House# lies eastward of the wall of the cloister, on the site of the original Norman building, which was rather less extensive. The present structure is oblong in shape, measuring 90 feet by 35 feet. The roof consists of a "barrel vault" and was built by Prior Chillenden, along with the whole of the upper storey at the end of the fourteenth century.
The windows, high and four-lighted, are also his work; those at the east and west ends exceed in size all those of the cathedral, having seven lights. The lower storey was built by Prior de Estria about a century before the work was completed by Chillenden. De Estria also erected the choir-screen in the cathedral, which will be described in its proper place. The walls of the chapter house are embellished with an arcade of trefoiled arches, surmounted by a cornice. At the east end stands a throne with a splendid canopy. This building was at one time, after the Reformation, used as a sermon house, but the inconvenience caused by moving the congregation from the choir, where service was held, across to the chapter house to hear the discourse, was so great that the practice was not long continued. It has been restored, and its opening by H.R.H.
the Prince of Wales, May 29th, 1897, is announced just as this edition goes to press.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLOISTERS.]
#The Library# covers a portion of the site of the monks" dormitory. Stored within it is a fine collection of books, some of which are exceedingly rare. The most valuable specimens--among which are some highly interesting bibles and prayer-books--are jealously guarded in a separate apartment called the study. The most interesting doc.u.ment in the collection of charters and other papers connected with the foundation is the charter of Edred, probably written by Dunstan _propriis digitorum articulis_; this room also contains an ancient picture of Queen Edgiva painted on wood, with an inscription below enlarging on the beauties of her character and her munificence towards the monastery.
In the garden before the lavatory tower, to the west of the prior"s gateway, two columns are preserved which once were part of the ancient church at Reculver--formerly Regulbium, whither Ethelbert retired after making over his palace in Canterbury to Augustine. These columns were brought to Canterbury after the destruction, nearly a hundred years ago, of the church to which they belonged. After lying neglected for some time they were placed in their present position by Mr. Sheppard, who bestowed so much care on all the "antiquities" connected with the cathedral. These columns are believed by experts to be undoubted relics of Roman work: they are of circular form with Ionic capitals. A curious ropework decoration on the bases is said to be characteristically Roman, occurs on a monument outside the Porta Maggiore at Rome.
#The Deanery# is a very much revised version of what once was the "New Lodging," a building set up for the entertainment of strangers by Prior Goldstone at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Nicholas Wotton, the first Dean, chose this mansion for his abode, but since his day the building has been very materially altered.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NORMAN STAIRCASE IN THE CLOSE (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: DETAILS OF THE NORMAN STAIRCASE IN THE CLOSE.]
The main gate of the #Green Court# is noticeable as a choice specimen of Norman work; on its northern side formerly stood the Aula Nova which was built in the twelfth century; the modern buildings which house the King"s School have supplanted the hall itself, but the splendid staircase, a perfect example of Norman style and quite unrivalled in England, is luckily preserved, and ranks among the chief glories of Canterbury.
The site of the archbishop"s palace is commemorated by the name of the street--Palace Street--in which a ruined archway, all that remains of the building, may still be seen. This mansion, in which so many royal and imperial guests had been entertained with "solemne dauncing" and other good cheer, was pillaged and destroyed by the Puritans; since then the archbishops have had no official house in their cathedral city.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DETAILS OF ORNAMENT.]
CHAPTER III.
INTERIOR.
Dean Stanley tells us that in the days of our Saxon forefathers and for some time after, "all disputes throughout the whole kingdom that could not be legally referred to the king"s court or to the hundreds of counties"
were heard and judged on in the south porch of Canterbury Cathedral. This was always the princ.i.p.al entrance, and was known in early days as the "Suthdure" by which name it is often mentioned in "the law books of the ancient kings." Through this door we enter the nave of the cathedral; this part of the building was erected towards the end of the fourteenth century; Lanfranc"s nave seems to have fallen into an unsafe and ruinous state, so much so that in December, 1378, Sudbury, who was then archbishop, "issued a mandate addressed to all ecclesiastical persons in his diocese enjoining them to solicit subscriptions for rebuilding the nave of the church, "_propter ipsius notoriam et evidentem ruinam_" and granting forty days" indulgence to all contributors." Archbishop Courtenay gave a thousand marks and more for the building fund, and Archbishop Arundell gave a similar contribution, as well as the five bells which were known as the "Arundell ryng." We are told also that "King Henry the 4th helped to build up a good part of the Body of the Chirch." The immediate direction of the work was in the hands of Prior Chillenden, already frequently mentioned; his epitaph, quoted by Professor Willis, states that "Here lieth Thomas Chyllindene formerly Prior of this Church, _Decretorum Doctor egregius_, who caused the nave of this Church and divers other buildings to be made anew. Who after n.o.bly ruling as prior of this Church for twenty years twenty five weeks and five days, at length on the day of the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary closed his last day. In the year of the Lord 1411." It is not certain that Chillenden actually designed the buildings which were erected under his care, with which his name is connected. For we know that work which was conceived and executed by humble monks was ascribed as a matter of course to the head of the monastery, under whose auspices and sanction it was carried out. Matthew Paris records that a new oaken roof, well covered with lead, was built for the aisles and tower of St. Alban"s by Michael of Thydenhanger, monk and _camerarius_; but he adds that "these works must be ascribed to the abbot, out of respect for his office, for he who sanctions the performance of a thing by his authority, is really the person who does the thing." Prior Chillenden became prior in 1390, and seems at any rate to have devoted a considerable amount of zeal to the work of renovating the ruined portions of the church.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MURDER OF ST. THOMAS a BECKET.
(Restoration, by T. Carter, of a painting on board hung on a column near the tomb of Henry IV.).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS a BECKET.
(Specially reproduced from a drawing among the Cottonian MSS. Brit. Mus.)]
The new #Nave# replaced the original building of Lanfranc. Professor Willis says: "The whole of Lanfranc"s piers, and all that rested on them, appear to have been utterly demolished, nothing remaining but the plinth of the side-aisle walls.... The style [of Chillenden"s new work] is a light Perpendicular, and the arrangement of the parts has a considerable resemblance to that of the nave of Winchester, although the latter is of a much bolder character. Winchester nave was going on at the same time with Canterbury nave, and a similar uncertainty exists about the exact commencement. In both, a Norman nave was to be transformed; but at Winchester the original piers were either clothed with new ashlaring, or the old ashlaring was wrought into new forms and mouldings where possible; while in Canterbury the piers were altogether rebuilt. Hence the piers of Winchester are much more ma.s.sive. The side-aisles of Canterbury are higher in proportion, the tracery of the side windows different, but those of the clerestory are almost identical in pattern, although they differ in the management of the mouldings. Both have "lierne" vaults [_i.e._, vaults in which short transverse ribs or "liernes" are mixed with the ribs that branch from the vaulting capitals], and in both the triforium is obtained by prolonging the clerestory windows downward, and making panels of the lower lights, which panels have a plain opening cut through them, by which the triforium s.p.a.ce communicates with the pa.s.sage over the roof of the side-aisles." Chillenden, then, setting to work with the thoroughness that marks his handiwork throughout, rebuilt the nave from top to bottom, leaving nothing of Lanfranc"s original structure save the "plinth of the side-aisle walls," which still remains. The resemblance between the naves of Canterbury and Winchester, pointed out by Professor Willis, will at once strike a close observer, though the greater boldness of character shown in the Winchester architecture is by no means the only point of difference. The most obvious feature in the Canterbury nave--a point which renders its arrangement unique among the cathedrals both of England and the Continent--is the curious manner in which the choir is raised aloft above the level of the floor; this is owing to the fact that it stands immediately above the crypt; the flight of steps which is therefore necessarily placed between the choir and the nave adds considerably to the general effect of our first view of the interior. On the other hand, the raising of the choir is probably to some extent responsible for the great height of the nave in comparison with its length, a point which spoils its effectiveness when we view it from end to end. Stanley, in describing the entrance of the pilgrims into the cathedral, points out how different a scene must have met their eyes. "The external aspect of the cathedral itself," he says, "with the exception of the numerous statues which then filled its now vacant niches, must have been much what it is now. Not so its interior. Bright colours on the roof, on the windows, on the monuments; hangings suspended from the rods which may still be seen running from pillar to pillar; chapels, and altars, and chantries intercepting the view, where now all is clear, must have rendered it so different, that at first we should hardly recognize it to be the same building." The pilgrims on entering were met by a monk, who sprinkled their heads with holy water from a "sprengel," and, owing to the crowd of devout visitors, they generally had to wait some time before they could proceed towards a view of the shrine. Chaucer relates that the "pardoner, and the miller, and other lewd sots," whiled away the time with staring at the painted windows which then adorned the nave, and wondering what they were supposed to represent:
""He beareth a ball-staff," quoth the one, "and also a rake"s end;"
"Thou failest," quoth the miller, "thou hast not well thy mind; It is a spear, if thou canst see, with a p.r.i.c.k set before, To push adown his enemy, and through the shoulder bore.""
[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPITALS OF COLUMNS IN THE EASTERN APSE.]
None of these windows now remain entire, though the west window has been put together out of fragments of the ancient gla.s.s. The latter-day pilgrims will do well to look as little as possible at the hideous gla.s.s which the Philistinism of modern piety has inserted, during the last half-century, in the windows of the clerestory and the nave. Its obtrusive unpleasantness make one wish that "Blue d.i.c.k" and his Puritan troopers might once more be let loose, under judicious direction, for half an hour on the cathedral. When Erasmus visited Canterbury, the nave contained nothing but some books chained to the pillars, among them the "Gospel of Nicodemus"--printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509--and the "tomb of some person unknown." The last words must refer either to the chapel in the south wall, which was built by Lady Joan Brenchley in 1447, and removed in 1787, or to the monument of Archbishop William Wittlesey, who died in 1374, and was interred in the south side of the nave in a marble tomb with a bra.s.s, now destroyed. At present the south aisle contains a monument, in alabaster, to Dr. Broughton, sometime Bishop of Sydney, who was educated in the King"s School, under the shadow of the cathedral. The figure is rec.u.mbent, and the base of the monument, which is by Lough, is decorated with the arms of the six Australian sees. In the north aisle we find monuments to Orlando Gibbons, Charles I."s organist; Adrian Saravia, prebendary of Canterbury, and the friend of Hooker, the author of the "Ecclesiastical Polity;" Sir John Boys, who founded a hospital for the poor outside the north gate of the town, and died in 1614; Dean Lyall, who died in 1857; and Archbishop Sumner, who died in 1862. These last two monuments are by Phillips and H. Weekes, R.A., respectively.
#The Central Tower.#--In the nave the whole of Lanfranc"s work was destroyed, but in the central tower, which we will next examine, the original supporting piers were left standing, though they were covered over by Prior Chillenden with work more in keeping with the style in which he had renewed the nave. "Of the tower piers," says Willis, "the western are probably mere casings of the original, and the eastern certainly appendages to the original.... Of course I have no evidence to show how much of Lanfranc"s piers was allowed to remain in the heart of the work.
The interior faces of the tower walls appear to have been brought forward by a lining so as to increase their thickness and the strength of the piers, with a view to the erection of a lofty tower, which however was not carried above the roof until another century had nearly elapsed." It was Prior Goldstone the second who, about 1500, carried upward the central tower, which Chillenden seems to have left level with the roof of the cathedral. "With the countenance and help of Cardinal John Morton and Prior William Sellyng he magnificently completed that lofty tower commonly called Angyll Stepyll in the middle of the church. The vaulting of the tower is his work--_testudine pulcherrima concameratam consummavit_--and he also added the b.u.t.tressing arches--with great care and industry he annexed to the columns which support the same tower two arches or vaults of stonework, curiously carved, and four smaller ones, to a.s.sist in sustaining the said tower." The addition of these b.u.t.tressing arches, not altogether happy in its artistic effect, was probably rendered necessary by some signs of weakness shown by the piers of the tower, for the north-west pier, which was not so substantially reinforced as the others, now shows a considerable bend in an eastward direction. The "two arches or vaults of stonework" were inserted under the western and southern tower arches. "The eastern arch having stronger piers did not require this precaution, and the northern, which opened upon the "Martyrium," seems to have been left free, out of reverence to the altar of the martyrdom, and accordingly to have suffered the dislocation just mentioned." The four smaller arches connected the two western tower-piers with the nearest nave-pier and the wall of the transept. The b.u.t.tressing arches are strongly built, and are adorned with curious bands of reticulated work. The central western arch occupies the place of the rood-loft, and it is probable that until the Reformation the great rood was placed over it. The rebus of Prior Thomas Goldstone--a shield with three gold stones--is carved upon these arches.
#The Western Screen#, which separates the nave from the choir, is now more commonly known as the organ-screen: it is a highly elaborate and beautiful piece of work, and the carvings which decorate it are well worthy of examination. In the lower niches there are six crowned figures: one holding a church is believed to be Ethelbert, while it has been a.s.sumed that the figure on the extreme right represents Richard II.: probably Henry IV., who, as has been already mentioned, "helped to build a good part of the body of the Church" has a place of honour here, but no certainty on this matter is possible. The thirteen mitred niches which encircle the arch once contained figures of Christ and the twelve Apostles, but these were destroyed by the Puritans. The exact date of this outward screen is uncertain, but it was set up at some time during the fifteenth century. "A little examination," says Willis, "of its central archway will detect the junction of this new work with the stone enclosure of the choir." In fact, this archway is considerably higher than that of De Estria which still remains behind it. The apex of this arch reaches but a little above the capitals of the new arch, and the flat s.p.a.ce, or tympanum, thus left between the two, is filled with Perpendicular tracery.
#The Choir.#--"In the year of grace one thousand one hundred and seventy-four, by the just but occult judgment of G.o.d, the Church of Christ at Canterbury was consumed by fire, in the forty-fourth year from its dedication, that glorious choir, to wit, which had been so magnificently completed by the care and industry of Prior Conrad" ("Gervase," translated by Willis). The work of rebuilding was immediately begun by William, the architect of Sens. At the beginning of the fifth year of his work, he was, by a fall from the height of the capitals of the upper vault, "rendered helpless alike to himself and for the work, but no other person than himself was in the least injured. Against the master only was the vengeance of G.o.d or spite of the devil directed." He was succeeded in his charge by one "William by name, English by nation, small in body, but in workmanship of many kinds acute and honest." Now in the sixth year from the fire, we read that the monks were "seized with a violent longing to prepare the choir, so that they might enter it at the coming Easter. And the master, perceiving their desires, set himself manfully to work, to satisfy the wishes of the convent. He constructed, with all diligence, the wall which encloses the choir and presbytery. He carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege. The choir thus hardly completed even with the greatest labour and diligence, the monks were resolved to enter on Easter Eve with the "new fire,"" that is, the paschal candle which was lit on Easter Eve and burnt until Ascension Day.
The kindling of this light was carried out in a very ceremonious manner as enjoined in Lanfranc"s statutes. A fire was made in the cloister and duly consecrated, and the monks, having lit a taper at this fire carried it on the end of a staff in solemn procession, singing psalms and hymns and burning incense, and lit the paschal candle in the choir with it.
Thus was the new choir completed, in the sixth year after the burning of Conrad"s. This part of the cathedral will be peculiarly interesting to the architectural student, owing to the curious mixture of styles, which enables him to compare the Norman and Early English characteristics side by side. A striking feature in the aspect of the building, as seen from the choir, is the remarkable inward bend with which the walls turn towards one another at the end of the cathedral. The choir itself is peculiar in the matter of length (180 feet--the longest in any English church), and the lowness of the vaulting. The pillars, with their pier-arches and the clerestory wall above are said by Willis to be without doubt the work of William of Sens: but the whole question as to where the French William left off and his English namesake began is extremely uncertain, as there can be no doubt that William of Sens had fully planned out the work which he was destined never to complete, and it is more than probable that his successor worked largely upon his plans. We are on safer ground when we a.s.sert that the new choir was altogether different from the building which it replaced. The style was much more ornate and considerably lighter: the characteristics of the work of the Williams are rich mouldings, varied and elaborately carved capitals on the pillars, and the introduction of gracefully slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that "the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured.
The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones.
Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir." "Sculptured with an axe," reads rather curiously, but Professor Willis points out that "the axe is not quite so rude a weapon in the hands of a mason as it might appear at first sight. The French masons use it to the present day with great dexterity in carving." The mouldings used by Ernulf were extremely simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow cla.s.s of notched ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate employment of round and pointed arches. This feature, as Willis remarks, "may have arisen either from the indifference of the artist as to the mixture of forms or else from deliberate contrivance, for as he was compelled, from the nature of his work, to retain round-headed arcades, windows, and arches, in the side-aisles, and yet was accustomed to and desirous of employing pointed arches in his new building, he might discreetly mix some round-headed arches with them, in order to make the contrast less offensive by causing the mixture of forms to pervade the whole composition, as if an intentional principle."
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).]
Whatever the motive, this daring mixture renders the study of the architectural features of our cathedral peculiarly interesting. In the triforium we find a semicircular outer arch circ.u.mscribing two inner pointed ones. The clerestory arch is pointed, while some of the transverse ribs of the great vault are pointed and some round.
The inward bend of the walls at the end of the choir was necessitated by the fact that the towers of St. Anselm and St. Andrew had survived the great fire of 1174. Naturally the pious builders did not wish to pull down these relics of the former church, so that a certain amount of contraction had to be effected in order that these towers should form part of the new plan. This arrangement also fitted in with the determination to build a chapel of the martyred St. Thomas at the end of the church, on the site of the former Trinity Chapel. For the Trinity Chapel had been much narrower than the new choir, but this contraction enabled the rebuilders to preserve its dimensions.
#The Altar#, when the choir was at first completed by William, stood entirely alone, and without a reredos; behind it the archbishop"s chair was originally placed, but this was afterwards transferred to the corona.
The remarkable height at which the altar was set up is due to the fact that it is placed over the new crypt, which is a good deal higher than the older, or western crypt. Before the Reformation the high altar was richly embellished with all kinds of precious and sacred ornaments and vessels: while beneath it, in a vault, were stored a priceless collection of gold and silver vessels: such of these as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII.
were destroyed by the bigotry of the Puritan zealots: the latter made havoc of the reredos which had been erected behind the high altar, probably during the fourteenth century, and also a "most idolatrous costly glory cloth," the gift of Archbishop Laud. The reredos was replaced by a Corinthian screen, which was of elaborate design, but must have been strangely out of keeping with its surroundings; it was removed about 1870, to make way for the present reredos which was designed in the style of the screen work in the Lady Chapel in the crypt, but which cannot be commended as an object of beauty. The altar coverings which are now in use were presented to the cathedral by Queen Mary, the wife of William III., when she visited Canterbury. A chalice, given by the Earl of Arundel in 1636, is among the communion-plate. In his account of the building of the new choir, Gervase tells us that "the Master carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege--the co-exiles of the monks."
When the choir was ready, "Prior Alan, taking with him nine of the brethren of the Church in whom he could trust, went by night to the tombs of the saints, so that he might not be incommoded by a crowd, and having locked the doors of the church, he commanded the stone-work that inclosed them to be taken down. The monks and the servants of the Church, in obedience to the Prior"s commands, took the structure to pieces, opened the stone coffins of the saints, and bore their relics to the _vestiarium_. Then, having removed the cloths in which they had been wrapped, and which were half-consumed from age and rottenness, they covered them with other and more handsome palls, and bound them with linen bands. They bore the saints, thus prepared, to their altars, and deposited them in wooden chests, covered within and without with lead: which chests, thus lead-covered, and strongly bound with iron, were inclosed in stone-work that was consolidated with melted lead." This translation was thus carried out by Prior Alan on the night before the formal re-entry into the choir: the rest of the monks, who had not a.s.sisted at the ceremony, were highly incensed by the prior"s action, for they had intended that the translation of the fathers should have been performed with great and devout solemnity. They even went so far as to cite the prior and the trusty monks who had a.s.sisted him before the Archbishop, and it was only by the intervention of the latter, and other men of authority, and "after due apology and repentance," that harmony was restored in the convent.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHOIR BEFORE RESTORATION.]
The bones of St. Dunstan were long a cause of contention between the churches of Canterbury and Glas...o...b..ry. The monks of Glas...o...b..ry considered that they had a prior claim on the relics of the sainted archbishop, and stoutly contended that his body had been conveyed to their own sanctuary after the sack of Canterbury by the Danes; and they used to exhibit a coffin as containing Dunstan"s remains. But early in the fourteenth century they went so far as to set up a gorgeous shrine in which they placed, with much pomp and circ.u.mstance, the supposed relics.
Archbishop Warham, who then ruled at Canterbury, accordingly replied by causing the shrine in our cathedral to be opened, and was able to declare triumphantly that he had found therein the remains of a human body, in the costume of an archbishop, with a plate of lead on his breast, inscribed with the words "SANCTUS DUNSTa.n.u.s." In the course of the subsequent correspondence which pa.s.sed between the two monasteries, the Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, after trying to argue that perhaps part only of the saint"s relics had been conveyed to his church, at last frankly confesses "the people had believed in the genuineness of their saint for so long, that he is afraid to tell them the truth." This shrine of St. Dunstan stood on the south of the high altar, and was erected after the manner of a tomb: though the shrine itself perished at the time of the Reformation, there still remains, on the south wall of the choir, between the monuments of Archbishops Stratford and Sudbury, some very fine open diaper-work, in what is known as the Decorated style, which once formed part of the ornamentation of St. Dunstan"s altar. The shrine of St. Elfege, or Alphege, who was archbishop at the time of the sacking of Canterbury by the Danes, and was murdered by them, has been altogether destroyed.
#The Choir Screen#, a solid structure of stone we know to be the work of Prior de Estria, _i.e._, of Eastry in Kent, who was elected in 1285, and died in 1331. According to the Obituary record, he "fairly decorated the choir of the church with most beautiful stone-work cunningly carved." In his Register there is an entry which evidently refers to the same work: "Anno 1304-5. Reparation of the whole choir with three new doors and a new screen (_pulpito_)." The three doors referred to are the north and south entrances and the western one. It has already been pointed out that the present western screen is a later addition. Professor Willis, whose great work on the Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral should be studied by all who wish to examine the details of the building more closely than is allowed by the scope of this work, describes De Estria"s screen as follows: "The lateral portions of this wall of enclosure are in excellent order. In the western part of the choir, namely, between the eastern transepts and the organ-screen, this wall is built so that its inner face nearly ranges with the inner faces of the pillars; but eastward of the transepts it is built between the pillars. The north doorway remains perfect. The present south doorway, which is in a much later style, is manifestly a subsequent insertion. This enclosure consists of a solid wall, seven feet nine inches in height from the pavement of the side-aisles. It has a stone-bench towards the side-aisles, and above that a base, of the age of William of Sens; so that it is clear that the work of De Estria belongs to the upper part only of the enclosure, which consists of delicate and elaborately worked tracery, surmounted by an embattled crest.... The entire work is particularly valuable on account of its well-established date, combined with its great beauty and singularity."
A portion of the choir-pavement, lying between the two transepts, is interesting as being undoubtedly part of the original flooring of Conrad"s choir, and probably the only fragment of it that was left undisturbed after the great fire which destroyed "that glorious choir which had been so magnificently completed by the care and industry of Prior Conrad." This part of the pavement consists of large slabs of a peculiar "stone, or veined marble of a delicate brown colour. When parts of this are taken up for repair or alteration, it is usual to find lead which has run between the joints of the slabs and spread on each side below, and which is with great reason supposed to be the effect of the fire of 1174, which melted the lead of the roof, and caused it to run down between the paving stones in this manner." It is said that when the choir was filled with pews in 1706, and it was necessary to remove part of the pavement, the men engaged on the work picked up enough of this lead to make two large gluepots.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A MISERERE IN THE CHOIR.]
The original wooden #stalls of the choir# were described by the writer of a book published in 1640. He relates that there were two rows on each side, an upper and a lower, and that above the stalls on the south side stood the archbishop"s wooden chair, "sometime richly guilt, and otherwise richly set forth, but now nothing specious through age and late neglect."
Perhaps the battered and shabby condition of this part of the cathedral furniture accounts for its having survived the Puritan period; it is at least certain that it remained untouched until 1704, when the refurnishing of the choir was begun by Archbishop Tenison; he himself presented a wainscoted throne with lofty Corinthian canopy adorned with carving by Gibbons, while the altar, the pulpit, and the stalls for the dean and vice-dean were provided with rich fittings by Queen Mary II. The tracery of the screen was hidden by a lining of wainscoting, which was put before it. This arrangement lasted little more than a century. In the time of Archbishop Howley, who held office from 1828 to 1848, the wainscoting which concealed the screen was taken away, and Archbishop Tenison"s throne has made way for a lofty canopy of tabernacle work. Some carved work, which has been ascribed to Gibbons, still remains before the eastern front of the screen, between the choir and the nave.
The position of the organ has been frequently shifted. In Conrad"s choir it was placed upon the vault of the south transept; afterwards it was set up upon a large corbel of stone, over the arch of St. Michael in the same transept. This corbel has now been removed; subsequently it was placed between two pillars on the north side of the choir, and, later on, it was again transferred to a position over the west door of the choir, the usual place for the organ in cathedral churches; finally it has been "ingeniously deposited out of sight in the triforium of the south aisle of the choir; a low pedestal with its keys stands in the choir itself, so as to place the organist close to the singers, as he ought to be, and the communication between the keys and the organ is effected by trackers pa.s.sing under the pavement of the side aisles, and conducted up to the triforium, through a trunk let into the south wall." This arrangement not only secures the retirement from view of the organ, which, with its tedious rows of straight and unsightly pipes, is generally more or less an eyesore in cathedrals, but is said to have caused a great improvement in the effect of its music. The present organ, which was built by Samuel Green, is believed to have been used at the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey in 1784. It was enlarged by Hill in 1842, and entirely reconstructed in 1886. In this connection we may mention that Archbishop Theodore first introduced the ecclesiastical chant in Canterbury Cathedral.
The tombs in the choir are all occupied by famous archbishops and cardinals. On the south side, hard by the site of the shrine of St.