“About four years after the murder on the 5th of September, 1174, a fire broke out in the Cathedral which reduced the Choir--hitherto its chief architectural glory--to ashes. The grief of the people is described in terms which show how closely the expression of Mediæval feeling resembled what can now only be seen in Italy or the East--‘They tore their hair; they beat the walls and pavements of the church with their shoulders and the palms of their hands; they uttered tremendous curses against God and his saints--even to the patron saint of the church; they wished they had rather have died than seen such a day.’ How far more like the description of a Neapolitan mob in disappointment at the slow liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius than of the citizens of a quiet cathedral town in the county of Kent! The monks, though appalled by the calamity for a time, soon recovered themselves; workmen and architects, French and English, were procured; and among the former, William, from the city of Sens, so familiar to all Canterbury at that period as the scene of Becket’s exile. No observant traveller can have seen the two Cathedrals without remarking how closely the details of William’s workmanship at Canterbury were suggested by his recollections of his own church at Sens, built a short time before. The forms of the pillars, the vaulting of the roof, even the very bars and patterns of the windows are almost identical.... The French architect unfortunately met with an accident which disabled him from continuing his operations. After a vain struggle to superintend the works by being carried round the church in a litter, he was compelled to surrender the task to a namesake, an Englishman, and it is to him that we owe the design of that part of the Cathedral which was destined to receive the sacred Shrine.”--(A. P. S.)