and took much more care of the church of Wells. Bath indeed was quite neglected, and by the end of the fifteenth century the church was in a great state of decay. It was then, in the year 1500, that Bishop Oliver King and Prior Bird began to build the present church on a smaller scale and in a widely different style of architecture. Besides what he did to the church, Bishop Robert built or rebuilt all the conventual buildings of his Abbey of Bath, the cloister, refectory, dormitory, and the rest, all which were necessary for the monks of Bath, though the secular priests of Wells could do without them.[8] It is to be noticed that Bishop Robert, himself a monk, when he began to reconstitute the Church of Wells in the way of which I now have to speak, made no attempt to bring in monks instead of secular canons, or even to subject the Canons to the same half-monastic discipline which had been brought in by Gisa. All his changes in fact tended in an exactly opposite direction. Hitherto the Canons had been altogether dependent on the Bishop. They do not seem to have formed a distinct corporation, and the lands which they held, when they were not taken away from them altogether were held by them as the Bishop's tenants. All Robert's changes tended to give them greater distinctness and independence. The first business was to get back the lands which had been alienated by the connivance of Bishop John, and which Bishop Godfrey had in vain tried to get back. John the Archdeacon, we are told, repented on his death-bed, and straitly charged his brother Reginald to restore the lands. This he now did; he came to Bath and surrendered everything to the Bishop, but we shall presently see that his vested interest was thought worthy of some respect. It is now that we are told that, instead of the sixty shillings which John had paid each Canon yearly, the Bishop was able to pay them a hundred shillings.[9] And now, to hinder anything of the kind happening again, Robert put the constitution and revenues of his Chapter on altogether a new footing. The Canons became a separate corporation, distinct from the Bishop; and, besides this, each Canon became for some purposes a separate corporation sole, distinct alike from the Bishop and from his brother Canons. For Robert first founded the dignities and prebends of the Church of Wells. The dignities are the chief offices of the Chapter, those of the Dean, the Precentor, the Chancellor, the Treasurer, and the Sub-Dean, all which offices still remain, to which we may add the Provostship, which still went on, and the Subchantership; these two no longer exist. Of these the Deanery and the Precentorship were certainly founded by Robert. Of the others I do not feel quite certain whether they were founded by Robert or by Jocelin.[10] But in any case all that Jocelin did in this matter was to carry out the plans of Robert somewhat more fully, and we may fairly discuss the whole constitution as one work at this point. We need not