The question now arises how long the vestry and Chapter-house have served their present purpose. Of the arrangements in this storey before the time of Archbishop Roger nothing can be recovered with certainty, but the (presumably Norman) wall between the two parts of the crypt suggests by its thickness that it was intended to support a division of some kind above. After being remodelled in the time of Archbishop Roger, however, this upper storey was evidently open from end to end, and its apsidal termination, containing both piscina and altar-step, indicates that it was a chapel: indeed, as has been well suggested, it was probably the original Lady Chapel. Nevertheless, in an age when every action of life was invested with a religious character, the western part may have been used for capitular purposes even without a dividing wall, and the gritstone benches, so significant of those purposes, are doubtless of considerable age. The statement in the old Records that the trial of 1228[115] was held _apud Rypon in Aula Capituli_ is definite enough to show that there was a recognised place for Chapter meetings; nor is it improbable that the reference may be to the present building. Some doubt is thrown upon this conclusion by a proclamation of Archbishop Lee in 1537 sequestrating the Common Fund on the ground that "the Chapter-house is ruinous in walls, roof, and stonework generally, so that it is likely to fall." These words, it has been thought, can never have been applicable to the present Chapter-house, and it has been suggested therefore that there may have been another which has disappeared. Archbishop Lee's words, however, are perhaps not irreconcilable with the present building. They may refer to the serious settlement which necessitated the huge Perpendicular buttress at the corner of what is now the vestry. There is, it is true, some difficulty in the fact that it is not the vestry but the Chapter-house which is mentioned, and in the allusion to a dilapidated roof (_tectura_); but it is conceivable that there was as yet no dividing wall, that the vaulting of what is now the vestry was still standing, that it had been injured by the settlement above-mentioned--in fact that its removal and the erection of the dividing wall took place in the time of Archbishop Lee. His direction for repairs may also account for the presence of limestone in the north wall of the Chapter-house, and for the propping of the vault at the west end of the crypt.[116] As has already been shown, the history of the vestry is bound up with that of the Chapter-house. At what period services ceased to be held at the altar in the apse, it is difficult to say; perhaps on the completion of a Lady Chapel above, perhaps on the erection of the dividing wall,[117] perhaps through the advent of the Reformation. At any rate, it was probably not before this part of the church had ceased to be used for services that it began to be recognised as a robing-room.