In the Guildhall, which is a picturesque Elizabethan building, are two full-length portraits: one depicts the features of General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, painted by Sir Peter Lely; the other was given by Charles II. to the Corporation as some slight acknowledgment of the city's loyalty. It represents the portrait of his sister, Princess Henrietta, then Duchess of Orleans. James II. was the next sovereign to bestow favour, which he did by establishing a mint in 1688. His influence was shortlived, for on the arrival of the Prince of Orange in the August of the same year the inhabitants readily submitted. This prince is credited with establishing a mint at Exeter, or it may be he simply completed or confirmed that of his predecessor. The following year saw him on the throne of the kingdom as William III., which ratified the declaration he had caused to be read by Burnet in the Cathedral of Exeter. Though visited by subsequent reigning princes, their presence may be said to have conferred more honour than to have promoted any material changes to the prosperity of Exeter. The mainstay of the city is the glorious Cathedral, and the quaintness of some of its houses and streets is unique. They afford a great attraction to visitors, who are willing to go a long railway journey west simply to see and compare the merits and demerits of the Cathedral with the many others dotted throughout Great Britain. The actual date of the Cathedral is in 1049. Its origin, as we have seen, occasioned no turning of the soil to receive foundations, but merely the conventual church of the monks, removed by Edward the Confessor to his new abbey at Westminster, adapted to meet the requirements of Bishop Leofric and his secular canons appointed to the united Sees of Devon and Cornwall. The head of the Diocese was at Exeter. What was the size and character of the converted monastic church at that time no two authorities seem able to agree. According to an old record at Oxford its lease soon ran out, for in the year 1112 a new church was commenced by Bishop Warlewast, continued by his successors, and finally completed by Bishop Marshall, who died in 1206. They are supposed to have carried out the plan of Warlewast; but as the whole of the fabric, with the exception of the towers, was entirely rebuilt in 1280, the original design is chiefly conjectural. The body of the church probably corresponded in character with the two massive transeptal towers. These are quite a feature in that, with the exception of those at the collegiate church of Ottery in Devonshire, they exist nowhere else in England. This arrangement of the towers did away with the necessity of either a central tower or lantern. It enabled the architect to extend a long unbroken roof throughout the nave and choir. The aisles, with the intervention of richly clustered pillars and pointed arches springing from their caps, range along on either side of the nave.