How to Visit the English CathedralsSingleton, Esther
History
How to Visit the English Cathedrals
Singleton, Esther
Cathedrals -- England
This, of course, fell a victim to the change of fashion, and was pulled
down gradually as the new building--the one we know to-day--arose. The
first thing that was done was the building of a new choir (Early
English) from the central tower to the seventh bay of the present choir.
Some of this was destroyed at a later period. The sacristy and adjoining
room were also built. Then, about 1220, the south transept was begun,
then the nave, north transept and west front, with the two towers.
Walter de Langton (1296-1321) began the Lady-Chapel; and while this was
being built the Early English presbytery was pulled down and rebuilt in
the Decorated style, to be uniform with the Lady-Chapel. The old
clerestory of the choir was also rebuilt in the same style. Walter de
Langton also built the Bishop’s Palace, which was destroyed in 1643,
bridged the Cathedral Pool, and erected a splendid shrine to St. Chad,
which cost £2,000. This stood behind the high altar in the eastern bay
of the retro-choir, with an altar to this saint on its west.
St. Chad, or Ceadda (669-672), was the patron saint of Lichfield, who,
when Bishop of Mercia, chose Lichfield as his seat and thus founded the
diocese; and he built a small church near St. Chad’s Well. His service
was short and he died in 672.
Miracles were immediately performed at his shrine in Stowe Church; but
his remains were removed to the Cathedral. St. Chad’s Head was placed in
a separate chapel (see page 213).
When Henry VIII. despoiled the shrine he found a great horde of
treasures--jewels, golden and silver crosses, chalices, maces, and
copes, and other vestments had accumulated in great number. In the
Fourteenth Century a document mentions “the head of Blessed Chad, in a
certain painted wooden case; also an arm of Blessed Chad; also bones of
the said saint in a certain portable shrine.”
Lichfield suffered greatly during the Civil Wars. The Royalists hoisted
the king’s flag on the central steeple and defied the Roundheads led by
Lord Brooke. The Cathedral was besieged in March, 1643; and on the
second day of that month, which happened to be St. Chad’s Day, Lord
Brooke was killed by a shot fired by a son of Sir Richard Dyott, called
“Dumb Dyott,” because he was deaf and dumb. This was regarded as a
miracle. A contemporary letter notes:
“We have had the honour in these parts to bring my Lord Brooke to a
quiet condition. That enemy of our Church (March 2) was slain in
his quarrel against our Church, by the God of our Church, with a
shot out of the Cathedral, by a bullet made of Church lead, through
the mouth which reviled our Church; and (if this be worth your
reading) this Cathedral was dedicated to the memory of an old Saxon
holy man (called Ceadda, commonly Chad); the blow of death came
from St. Chad’s Church upon St. Chad’s Day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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