The Cathedral of Saint Andrew at Rochester is at least equally interesting with that of Canterbury; and that this should be so is only natural, for one is the complement of the other. Canterbury was the earliest Cathedral in England; the See of Rochester was established immediately afterwards, and was for many years not only intimately associated with that great metropolitan church, but was actually dependent upon it. Then, the early Norman Archbishops and Priors of Canterbury and the Bishops and Priors of Rochester were often intimate personal friends who had come over together from Normandy to England; and the close relations thus established lasted for many years. The See of Rochester was founded by Saint Augustine about A.D. 600, and by him the first Bishop was consecrated, four years later. [Sidenote: ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL] But when the Norman Conquest brought a new era of church building into England, Rochester Cathedral was rebuilt. Gundulf, the second Norman Bishop, the friend of Anselm and Lanfranc, the greatest military and ecclesiastical architect of his time, prepared to erect a new and grander edifice on the ruins of the Saxon church. The number and extent of this great architect's works are simply prodigious. How he could have packed into even _his_ lengthy life the duties of a Churchman, which we are told by those who knew him he never missed for a single day; the cares of statecraft which also fell to his lot; and the building, not only of his Cathedral, but also of the Tower of London, Rochester Keep, Dartford Church, Malling Abbey, and minor works, we are at a loss to conceive. He was consecrated in 1077 and died in 1108, before he had completed his work here. Ernulf, Prior of Canterbury, succeeded him, and finished the building, which was consecrated in 1130, in the same year that witnessed the completion and consecration of Ernulf's and Conrad's new Cathedral at Canterbury. Here, then, we see at once the close connection between the architectural history of these two neighbouring churches. Ernulf had a hand in both; a very large share of the crypt, the west front, and a part of the nave of Rochester was his; while at Canterbury the crypt and the choir were built in collaboration with Prior Conrad. These facts partly explain the unusual and beautiful feature of a choir raised many feet above the level of the nave, which is characteristic both of Canterbury and Rochester Cathedrals, and seen nowhere else in England. And not only in these most prominent features of their architectural construction are the two buildings alike; their stories run curiously parallel, both in their building and in their destruction. Less than fifty years after their simultaneous consecration, both churches were partly destroyed by fire, and their ruined portions rebuilt in the Transitional Norman and Early English styles, by those two architects who are supposed to be one and the