Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David Cortesi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: Wells Cathedral From St. Andrews Spring.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY THE REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. [Illustration: Arms of the See] WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899 _First Published October 1898_ _Second Edition revised October 1899_ W.H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH 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 Archaeological 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