“The first impression on viewing this nave is a sense of its magnitude. Archbishop Romeyn and his builders determined to build a vast church which would eclipse all other rivals. They would have large windows, high, towering piers, a huge, vaulted roof, and everything that was grand and impressive. Edward I. was then fighting with the Scots and made York his chief city. It was immensely prosperous and the ecclesiastical treasury was replete with the offerings of knights and nobles, kings and pilgrims. Nowhere should there be so mighty a church as York Minster. In order to have space for large windows they made the triforium unusually small, which is formed only by a continuation of the arches of the clerestory windows. The design for the stone vaulted roof was never carried out. The builders feared that the great weight of a roof with so large a span would be too much for the walls, so a wooden vault was substituted. The piers have octagonal bases and consist of various sized shafts closely connected. The capitals are beautifully enriched with foliage of oak and thorn, and sometimes a figure is seen amidst the foliage. We notice thirty-two sculptured busts at the intersection of the hood-moulding with the vaulting shafts. Coats-of-arms of the benefactors of York appear on each side of the main arches. The clerestory windows have each five lights. The old roof was destroyed by fire in 1840. The present one has a vast number of bosses representing the Annunciation, Nativity, Magi, Resurrection, besides a quantity of smaller ones.”--(P. H. D.) Looking up at the west end of the nave we have a double study in the splendid =West Window= (only surpassed by the famous window of Carlisle Cathedral); for the tracery of the Curvilinear, or flowing Decorated style has been carefully restored, and the window, which measures 56 × 25 feet, is almost entirely filled with the original glass given by Archbishop Melton in 1338. “This is remarkable not only for the purity and boldness of its scheme of colours, but for the admirable way in which the design of the glass fits the elaborate pattern of the tracery. It will be noticed that both the figures and the architectural ornaments are in bolder relief than in the earlier glass of the Five Sisters, or the later of the choir. Some of the faces of the figures have been restored by Peckett, but not so as to interfere with the decorative effect of the whole. The window contains three rows of figures, the lowest a row of eight archbishops, the next a row of eight saints, including St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James and St. Katharine, and above this a row of smaller figures unidentified.