History of the Cathedral Church of Wells: As Illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old FoundationFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
History of the Cathedral Church of Wells: As Illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Wells Cathedral
In the intermediate ages we sometimes find works
of this sort attributed to the Bishop alone, sometimes to the Chapter
alone, sometimes to the Bishop and Chapter working together. I suspect
that this last would commonly be the truer account in all cases; at
any rate, what either Bishop or Chapter did the other party must have
consented to. Jocelin was doubtless the great mover in the work, the
life and soul of the whole undertaking. The whole would be done under
his care, and his personal contributions would doubtless be large. But
all this in no way shuts out the co-operation of the Chapter, of the
clergy and laity of the diocese, and of well-disposed persons wherever
they might be found.[39]
Another part of the buildings of the church belongs to the age of
Jocelin, where his hand might not have been looked for at first. This
is the cloister as it stood in its first estate. You will remember that
the cloister which was built by Gisa, together with his dormitory and
refectory, was pulled down by John of Tours. You will also remember
that a cloister, which in a monastery is an essential part of the
building, and is always built after a particular model, is in a
secular church a mere convenience, which may perfectly well be left
out, and which may be built in any place and after any fashion which
may be thought good. Jocelin then, or his Canons, now built them a
cloister, but it was a cloister which was no longer accompanied, as in
Gisa's time, by any refectory or dormitory. It is more like a monastic
cloister than those of Chichester and Hereford; it is less like one
than that of Salisbury. It occupies, like a monastic cloister, one
side of the nave; still it is not a perfect square, but an irregular
parallelogram; it has no walk on the north side, and the eastern walk
comes up against the south end of the transept, while in a monastery
it would have been built against its western wall. To the east,
where the chapter-house would have stood in a monastery, there was
a detached Lady chapel, of which the traces may easily be seen, but
which was rebuilt late in the fifteenth century and wholly destroyed
in the sixteenth. Now that the cloister was first built at this time
is plain, as all the outer walls, including that very pretty doorway
leading to the Palace, are all of Jocelin's date. The doorway leading
from the transept into the cloister is also mentioned in an Act of
Chapter in 1297, printed in Dugdale's Monasticon.[40] But this very
doorway, and the doorway which is in some sort the fellow to it in the
south-western tower, give us the surest signs that the cloister is not
now in the same state in which it was originally designed. Even in its
first estate, it seems to have been, as we should expect, an addition,
though an addition made not very long after the building of the part
of the church which it joins. The wall comes up uncomfortably close
against this fine doorway, though it does not mutilate it in the way
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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