£10,000; the King gave “one hundred fair timber trees”; the prebendaries and canons subscribed half their income; every town, every village in the diocese aided the good work; the central tower was re-erected; most of the clerestory of the choir was rebuilt; his last task was to put in a peal of bells. “He went out of his bedchamber to hear it, and blessed God who had favoured him with life to hear it, but that it was his own passing-bell; whereupon he retired to his chamber and never left it till he was carried to his grave.” Next to St. Chad, one likes to think of good Bishop Hacket in connexion with Lichfield. In 1788 James Wyatt arrived, but did less mischief than at Salisbury, Hereford and Durham. Even more terrible vandals followed Wyatt, with a mania for Roman cement, in which beautiful material they reconstructed the statuary of the west front. All this is now swept away, and this fairest of façades is seen in its pristine beauty. At Lichfield there was as usual a Norman cathedral; and as usual the authorities set to work to improve it. Elsewhere the improvements were of a very conservative character. At Lichfield and at Wells they were drastic: the Norman cathedral was improved by being swept off the face of the earth, not a scrap of it being left above ground. Beginning at the east end, it was pulled down and rebuilt, the work occupying a century. The most astounding thing about Lichfield is that when the new thirteenth-century cathedral was finished, they set to work once more at rebuilding, and in the first half of the fourteenth century reconstructed the whole of the eastern limb of the cathedral. But though for convenience we divide the work into two great periods, that of the thirteenth and that of the fourteenth century, and each of these into shorter building-periods, it is not to be understood that there were any breaks or cessations in the works: the cathedral was never out of the builders’ hands from 1190 to 1350. [Illustration: NAVE.]