This fury of rage and perplexity overpast, however, the strenuous folk of those times began the work of rebuilding the church almost before the blackened stones and charred timbers of the ruined building were cold. They employed a French architect, William of Sens, and for four years he laboured in designing and superintending the construction of choir, retro-choir, and the easternmost chapels, incorporating with his work the old Norman towers and chapels which had, in part, survived the great fire. William of Sens did not live to see his task completed; for, one day, as he was on the lofty scaffolding, directing the work of turning the choir vault, he fell and was disabled for life. His successor, who brought the rebuilding to a close, was "William the Englishman," identified by some with that William de Hoo, the architect-Bishop of Rochester. [Sidenote: THE CHOIR] The present choir, then, shows the work of these two Williams; nearly all, in fact, to the eastward of the crossing, from choir-screen to Becket's Crown, is their handiwork. Meanwhile, Lanfranc's heavy Norman nave was left uninjured by fire and untouched by those mighty builders, and it was not until the fourteenth century that it was reconstructed in the Perpendicular style by Prior Chillenden. "It had grown ruinous," so say the records, but the greater probability is that it was not so crazy but that effectual renovation without rebuilding would have been possible. But the spirit of the age was altogether opposed to the ponderous character of Norman architecture. Men began to build so lightly and loftily that walls soon assumed the appearance of mere framings to the huge windows that characterize this ultimate phase of Gothic architecture. The constructional aspect was gone altogether, and most of the artistic interest too. Vulgar ostentation of skill--engineering knowledge that led architects to pile up slender alleys of stone to the last point of endurance--was the note of the age. Unfortunately, the age which witnessed the growth and development of the Perpendicular style was one of the greatest wealth and activity. A ceaseless and untiring energy pervaded the land, tearing down the Norman, the Early English, and the Decorated churches, and rearing upon their sites buildings immeasurably larger, loftier, and lighter, but less individual and less interesting in every way than the work of the builders who had gone before.