This was effected by the introduction of strong transverse arches crossing the whole chapel, and springing much lower than the vaulting (Fig. 397). These crossed the narrower spans, striking arbitrarily into their fans, and uniting themselves with the central vaulting. The pendants are not to be looked upon as constructionally interfering with these transverse arches, as they become, in fact, part of them, and the arches may be supposed to pass through them in an imaginary line, so that, as in the case of the Lady Chapel at Caudebec, the pendant is in reality a voussoir, the greater portion of which hangs down below the face of the vaulting; the small arches upwards towards the wall help to strengthen and weight the transverse arches at their weakest part. [Illustration: Fig. 398.--Divinity Schools, Oxford. Begun 1445. Finished about 1480.] In the Divinity Schools (Fig. 398) these great arches show themselves throughout as the supports of the otherwise helpless vault; in Henry VII.’s Chapel they are visible only in the side vaults, which are strutted up from them with strong tracery, but their upper portions penetrate the central vault, and become concealed from view. The same system is carried into the apse (Fig. 399), and that with the most surprising skill. The apse is supposed to be a portion of an entire octagon, with an aisle supported by eight small columns, of which two are lost by its conjunction with the straight part of the chapel. These columns being converted into pendants, the structural arches supply, as before described, the support demanded, but in this case they converge to the central part of the octagon. [Illustration: Fig. 399. Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, Plan of Apse.] The treatment of this point in detail cannot intelligibly be described in words. It is, perhaps, the most consummately skilled piece of designing to be found in the whole range of Mediæval vaulting. I have now completed my running (and all too rapid) sketch of the arched and vaulted systems of Mediæval architecture, though purposely leaving to another occasion the subject of domes. The limits of three lectures have only sufficed to give a somewhat cursory glance at its salient points, leaving the treasures of its detail to be searched out by the zealous student.