With the Norman Conquest a new state of things was inaugurated. Great tracts of country and great part of the wealth of the conquered races escheated to the Conqueror, and in the division of the spoil the clergy seem in some cases to have been even more fortunate than the laity. But however this may have been, it will be easily understood that a French hierarchy vowed to celibacy would be able to find no better way of employing their easily acquired wealth than in the display of architectural magnificence. During the century which succeeded the Conquest, the Saxon cathedrals, with scarcely an exception, were swept away to make room for nobler buildings designed by foreign architects, and all the larger abbey churches were likewise rebuilt. All this was done with such grandeur of conception, and so just an appreciation of the true principles of architectural effect, that even now the Norman nave, in spite of its rudeness, is frequently a more impressive specimen of art than the more polished productions of the succeeding centuries. The impulse once so nobly given, the good work proceeded steadily but rapidly. During the three centuries which succeeded the Conquest, all the artistic intellect of the nation seems to have been concentrated on this one art. Poetry hardly existed, and Painting and Sculpture were only employed as the handmaids of architecture. But year by year new and improved forms of construction were invented and universally adopted. New mouldings, and new applications of carvings and foliage, were introduced; and painting on opaque substances and even on glass was carried to an astonishing degree of perfection. All this was done without borrowing and without extraneous aid, but by steadily progressing to a well-understood object with a definite aim. It is true that occasionally, as at Westminster Abbey, we detect the influence of French arrangements; but even there the design is carried on in so essentially English a manner, with details so purely English, as to make us feel even more strongly how essentially native the style had become.