He further gives a very clear description of the church, from which it appears that it was built in some degree on the model of the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. He minutely describes the eastern altar space as greatly raised above the general level of the church, and having beneath it a crypt or confessionary, made in the likeness of that of St. Peter’s at Rome. He further describes an oratory and altar to St. Mary at the western end raised on steps, behind which was the pontifical throne. Also two towers, the one on the north and the other on the south side of the nave, projecting beyond the aisles, and containing chapels. Professor Willis, in his admirable history of the cathedral, gives an able dissertation on its plan at this period, showing how precisely the description of the eastern arrangements agree with those of the Basilica of St. Peter, but that the Chapel of the Virgin at the west end must have been a western apse, like those so common in Germany, and of which we have an earlier instance in the ancient design for the arrangements of the monastery of St. Gall, supposed to be of the eighth century. Eadmer confirms his account by saying that he can answer for its correctness, for he saw the ruins himself when a boy at school. From the above description we learn, first, that a Roman model was taken; secondly, that the church was of stone or brick; thirdly, that it had aisles; fourthly, that it had both an eastern and western apse; beneath the former of which was an extensive crypt, called a confessionary, as containing the tombs of confessors. The additional church of St. John was clearly a baptistery; and Professor Willis thinks that Archbishop Odo’s addition to the height of the walls was a clerestory. I am not aware that we have any information as to the cathedrals built by the companions of Augustine (Mellitus and Justus) at London and Rochester; but it is unlikely that they would be otherwise than of cognate plan and materials; while, curiously enough, there continues to this day at Rochester, and continued to the seventeenth century in our own St. Paul’s, equally as at Canterbury, a crypt beneath the elevated sanctuary, no doubt the lineal successor and representative of those erected by these missionary bishops, in imitation of the great basilica at Rome, whence they had been sent to evangelise this distant region.