[1] Cathedrals "of the old foundation" were cathedrals from the first, and had deans and chapters of secular canons. Those that were once conventual churches had no deans or canons till Henry VIII. An easy way of identifying cathedrals of the old foundation is this: if the non-resident canons have the title of prebendaries, they are members of a cathedral of the old foundation. The modern dignity of honorary canon was created in order that all other cathedrals might have a body of clergy corresponding to the prebendaries of the ancient cathedrals. [2] He is called, in Bishop Stubbs' "Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum," Herve le Breton. [3] Quoted by Bentham, p. 187. [4] Of Peterborough, in his "Musae Subsecivae." [5] Bentham, p. 213. [Illustration: PRIOR CRAUDEN'S CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] CHAPTER VI. THE PRECINCTS. Besides numerous remains of mediaeval architecture to be found in the residences and private grounds of the cathedral clergy, there are some buildings of great interest to the south of the cathedral, the two most remarkable being the infirmary and Prior Crauden's chapel. Of the former no more than the piers and arches are to be seen, as the roof is gone, and the whole has been converted into residences. The latter is quite perfect. The #Infirmary# is in the same relative position to the church as at Peterborough, at the south-east. The plan was that of an ordinary church, with nave, aisles, and chancel; but the chancel was the chapel, the aisles were the quarters of the inmates, and the nave was a common hall, or ambulatory. So complete was the resemblance to a church that the true purpose of this and other similar buildings elsewhere had been quite forgotten, and it was left to Professor Willis to discover that the remains were not those of a disused church. Bentham[1] has an engraving of the arches and clerestory, divested of all the domestic additions, which to a modern student of ecclesiastical architecture indicates at once a building of Norman date, which is described as an elevation "of the remains of the Old Conventual Church of Ely, built in the time of the Heptarchy, A.D. 673, and repaired in King Edgar's Reign, A.D. 970." In the plan given in the same plate an imaginary apse is marked out with dotted lines.[2] In the chapel is a groined roof, and this belongs to the latter part of the twelfth century; but the nave arches, where are some very good and unusual mouldings, have nothing of Transitional work, and in the absence of documentary evidence would be assigned to 1140 or 1150. The hall, situated to the north of what would, in a church, be called the north aisle of the nave, is the work of Walsingham. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE INFIRMARY AS GIVEN IN BENTHAM'S "HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES"]