[Illustration: A BISHOP PLACING RELICS IN AN ALTAR. _From a Pontifical of the Fourteenth Century. British Museum, Lans._ 451.] [Illustration: A PAPAL LEGATE. _From the Decretals of Boniface VIII. British Museum_, 23923.] In the Bodleian Library there is an inventory of these relics, amongst them part of the wood of the cross, a stone of the Holy Sepulchre, a stone from the spot of the Ascension, and some bones of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne. The high altar was renewed in 1309 under an indented covenant between Bishop Baldock and a citizen named Richard Pickerill. "A beautiful tablet was set thereon, variously adorned with many precious stones and enamelled work; as also with divers images of metal; which tablet stood betwixt two columns, within a frame of wood to cover it, richly set out with curious pictures, the charge whereof amounted to two hundred marks." Dugdale also tells of "a picture of St. Paul, richly painted, and placed in a beautiful tabernacle of wood on the right hand of the high altar _in anno_ 1398, the price of its workmanship amounting to 12_l._ 16_s._" Quoting from a MS. of Matthew of Westminster, he gives the dimensions of the church, in the course of which he says the length was 690 feet. This is undoubtedly wrong, as Wren showed. I take the measurements from Mr. Gilbertson's admirable little handbook, who, with some modifications, has taken them from Longman's _Three Cathedrals_. Breadth 104 ft. Height of Nave roof to ridge of vaulting 93 ft. " Choir 101 ft. 3 in. " Lady Chapel 98 ft. 6 in. " Tower from the ground 285 ft. " Spire from parapet of tower 204 ft. " Spire from the ground 489 ft. Length of church (excluding Inigo Jones's porch) 586 ft. Wren (_Parentalia_) thinks this estimate of the spire height too great; he reckons it at 460 feet.