The high altar was the scene twice a year of a strange custom, which was kept up for several centuries. Sir William le Band in 1275 commenced to give yearly a doe in winter and a fat buck in summer to be offered at the altar and then distributed to the resident canons. These were given in lieu of twenty-two acres of land lying within the lordship of Westlee in Essex, to be enclosed within his park of Toringham, so that the knight appears to have made a very good bargain. The reception of the buck and doe was 'till Queen Elizabeth's days solemnly performed at the steps of the quire by the canons of this Cathedral, attired in sacred vestments, and wearing garlands of flowers on their heads, and the horns of the buck carried on the top of a spear in procession round about within the body of the church, with a great noise of horn-blowers.'[368] As already stated the choir was rebuilt early in the thirteenth century, and in 1255 it was considerably extended. Previously a street ran close to the east end, from Watling Street to Cheapside, and here stood the old Church of St. Faith. The exact site of the houses was marked by nine wells in a row which were found by Wren. When this street was built over and the church pulled down the parishioners were provided with a church in the Crypt. About the middle of the north side of the choir was a low-arched door, and from this six-and-twenty steps led down to St. Faith's, at the eastern end of which was the Jesus Chapel.[369] We have now traced the principal features of the exterior and interior of old St. Paul's, and a few words may be said of the body who governed the Cathedral. Bishop Stubbs, in the remarkable Preface which he added to the Master of the Rolls' edition of the _Historical Works of Ralph de Diceto_, Dean of London, at the end of the twelfth century, has given a vivid picture of the ecclesiastical greatness of London during the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I. Ralph was the friend of Fitz-Stephen, the biographer of Becket, and before he became dean he had held the office of archdeacon. Stubbs writes: 'The fact that the Cathedral of Canterbury was in the hands of a monastic chapter left St. Paul's at the head of the secular clergy of southern England. It was an educational centre too, where young statesmen spent their leisure in something like self-culture. London with its 40,000 inhabitants had 120 churches all looking to the Cathedral as their mother. The resident canons had to exercise a magnificent hospitality, carefully prescribed in ancient Statutes; twice a year each of them had to entertain the whole staff of the Cathedral and to invite the Bishop, the Mayor, the sheriffs, aldermen, justices and great men of the Court.' The dean was a capable head, and his government stands out in history as one of the most successful during a very difficult period.