view of the west front of the Cathedral to the windows of the Swan Inn, they were also opening the not very picturesque view of the Swan Inn to those who came out of the western doors of the Cathedral. They did not stop to think that the space before the west front was really too open already, and that at any rate matters were not mended by opening a view through so ludicrous a gap, which I have heard witty people compare to the space left in a man's mouth by drawing a single tooth. Still less did they think that, in a thoughtless moment of destruction, they were wiping out the whole history of the church and city. The house indeed was in itself valueless; I should not have wept for the removal of the house or of the whole row of houses of which it formed a part. But, along with the house, the destroyers overthrew the wall against which the house was built up, and that wall was the history of the city of Wells. At Wells, as I have already set forth, the church was not founded in the city, but the city grew up under the shadow of the church.[35] The church and its precincts were not taken into the city till the days of parliamentary and municipal reform. The wall of the Close is everywhere a sign of separation, marking off ecclesiastical and temporal property, and often marking the limits of distinct jurisdictions. But at Wells the wall has a special significance, as a memorial of the days when the city arose outside the ecclesiastical precinct. Thus, by a single thoughtless act, not only is a material piece of antiquity destroyed, but a page of local, and thereby of national, history is torn away. The only remaining work to be mentioned is one to which I have incidentally referred more than once, namely, the cloister and the buildings attached to it. I have now to add that the detached Lady chapel in the east walk of the cloister was rebuilt by Robert Stillington, who was Bishop from 1464 to 1487, an event which is best recorded in the words of Bishop Godwin. "He built that goodly Lady Chappell in the cloysters, that was pulled down by him that destroyed also the great hall of the palace ... and was entombed in the said Chappell, but rested not long there: For it is reported, that divers olde men, who in their youth had not onely seene the celebration of his funerals, but also the building of his toombe, Chappell and all; did also see, toombe and Chappell destroyed, and the bones of the Bishop that built them, turned out of the lead in which they were interred."[36]