His choir consisted of but two bays and an apse. This was altogether inadequate for the church of a big monastery, and the seat of the Primate of all England. In 1096 it was pulled down and replaced by an enormous apsidal choir, some ten bays long, with a square Saint’s chapel to the east as at Rochester, with northern and southern towers flanking the main eastern apse, and crossed midway by a big eastern transept, from each arm of which two apsidal chapels projected to the east. What was the object of this vast eastward extension? It was probably due to the increasing tendency towards sacerdotalism, to the increase of veneration for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and to the increase of Saint-worship. (1) In the monastic churches the monks were accustomed to sit in the crossing and in the western bays of the nave, where their stalls still remain at Norwich, Gloucester, and St. Albans. They wanted to be segregated and screened off from the laity, the sheep from the goats; the very stones of the church must preach the dignity of the priestly function. So they removed to the east, and shut themselves up in a choir of their own. (2) Secondly, they wanted a clear space for the high altar, a sanctuary for it. (3) They wanted space for many chapels and altars; not only those of the greater saints of the church, St. Mary, St. Peter, and the rest, but those saints—and they were very numerous at Canterbury—whose bodies or relics of whom were among the treasures of the cathedral—such as St. Dunstan, the destroyer of Secular Canons, and the martyred Archbishop Alphege. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Canterbury to these shrines; room had to be found for them to pass round, to gaze for a moment at the holy relics, to say one prayer. Whatever the object of the extension, it set a precedent which was followed in the great majority of the cathedrals of England. In the latter days of the twelfth century Hereford and Chichester extended their choirs; in the thirteenth century the choirs of Lincoln, Lichfield, Worcester, Ely, and Exeter were rebuilt, and those of Winchester, Durham, and Lincoln were enlarged. In the fourteenth century those of Lichfield and Wells were enlarged, and that of York was rebuilt on a magnificent scale. Old St. Paul’s had a choir twelve bays long. Thus, till the end of the fourteenth century, the history of the English cathedrals was largely a history of the rebuilding or enlarging, or, as at Gloucester and Norwich, of the remodelling of choirs. [Illustration: CAPITAL IN CRYPT.]