How low the original Norman pier-arcade was, is shown by the Norman capitals which are left in the eastern piers of the northern arcade. The Norman triforium was exceptionally large. Its floor was on a level with the capitals of the new arches, and it reached up to the sill of the present clerestory windows. A glance round the corner into the transepts will make this clear. Again, the Norman nave had a flat wooden ceiling like that of Peterborough; this was replaced by a magnificent lierne vault of stone, completed by Wykeham’s successors, as is shown by the arms of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop William of Waynflete on the bosses of the vault and in the string-course under the triforium. Magnificent as this vault is, it was no improvement to break the free flow of the diagonal and ridge-ribs by the insertion of these little liernes or tie-ribs. The earlier vault of Exeter is massive enough and quite sufficiently complicated without them. In the aisles the liernes are grouped into simple hexagonal or “stellar” patterns. The vault of the nave is often said to be unsupported by flying buttresses. They are there, however, between the vault and the outer roof of the aisles, sheltered from the weather, as are the Norman flying-buttresses of Durham and Gloucester. Such are the chief features of this, the finest cathedral-nave we possess, the work of Edingdon, Wykeham, Beaufort and Waynflete. We shall hardly be wrong in attributing the inception of this great transformation to Wykeham, whether as Edingdon’s secretary or as his successor to the bishopric. [Illustration: REREDOS.] We must not, however, overrate, as is often done, the novelty of the proceeding. For an even greater transformation had been wrought at Exeter before this, between 1280 and 1307, by Bishops Quivil and Bitton, who transformed the Transitional Norman choir of Bishop Marshall into the style of their day. From Exeter Wykeham borrowed the idea of the transformation, from Gloucester the style in which the transformation was effected.