Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells: A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal SeeDearmer, Percy
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells: A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See
Dearmer, Percy
Wells Cathedral
During the episcopate of Reginald's immediate successor Savaric
(1192-1205), something further may have been done to the nave. But
there was small opportunity for church building during this bishop's
wandering and litigious life; and all we know for certain is that,
owing no doubt to the civil war, the intolerable exactions of papal
legates, and the quarrel with Glastonbury, the cathedral church of
Wells had fallen into a state of dilapidation when Jocelin became
bishop in 1206; and that it remained in this condition till King John
was dead: for Jocelin was an exile abroad, the property of the see was
confiscated, and its income paid yearly into the king's purse.
From the year 1218, when the land was again at peace, and a profitable
arrangement had been come to with the monks of Glastonbury, Jocelin
devoted himself to the fabric and chapter of Wells, up to the year of
his death in 1242. Grants of money and of timber, which are extant,
show that by 1220 the work was recommenced, and that it was in
progress in 1225. By 1239 the church was sufficiently advanced to be
dedicated.
Jocelin and his brother Hugh (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) were
natives of the city they loved so well. They had both lived through
Reginald's episcopate--Jocelin as canon and Hugh as archdeacon of
Wells. After, when they rose to high positions as judges, and became
honourably rich, Hugh, who built much in Lincoln Cathedral, gave
largely of his great wealth to Jocelin for Wells, and Jocelin himself
spent all that he had upon the place where he had been brought up from
infancy.
Thus Jocelin was in a real sense a "maker of Wells." But he was not
the only maker, for he must share the honour with two other master
builders--Robert, whose work is entirely gone, and Reginald, whose
work remains. He did not, as Godwin led us to suppose, pull down and
rebuild the whole church. But he loyally carried on the work of his
predecessor, and he executed the great work which has been always
rightly attributed to him, the present west front; this he joined to
Reginald's unfinished nave by building the three western bays in
strict accordance with the earlier style. The front belongs to the
fully-developed Early English style in which Salisbury is built,
agreeing exactly with the date of the consecration of the church by
Jocelin in 1239,--as was pointed out by Professor Willis, who was
puzzled by the great difference in its style from that of the nave,
which was then thought to belong to the same period. We know that
Jocelin was a frequent visitor to Salisbury while Bishop Poore was
building it; and thus all the lines of evidence combine to support the
unshaken tradition that Jocelin was the author of the west front.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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