tained for ever at that altar, for the support of which he bought, with the Bishop's licence, lands and tenements in North Pittingdon, Ulneston, and Billingham, for which he paid £66 10s. 9d. and for the erection and repair of buildings there, £20. The form of the ordination of the said chantry is inscribed in the Martyrology, and in the beginning of the missal of the said altar. He also presented to the same altar a chalice, worth £6 13s. 4d., with three albes, and chasubles, and altar cloths, besides images of the Holy TRINITY, and of the Blessed Virgin, in alabaster, with tabernacles and other ornaments at the cost of £22. He also made a long and splendid window of six lights in the northern transept of the church, near the said altar, for which he paid £100, and for glazing, £52, and for other buildings, debts, and ornaments of the church, £402 6s. 8d., and for one window in the south end of the prior's hall, £40; making together £2076 8s. 10d. In his time also was erected a great window of seven lights, at the west end of the nave of the church, and three others on the north side of the nave, and two on the north side of the quire, by John of Tickhill, and two on the south side of the quire, through the shrine."

1 Postea vero idem prior fecit per obedientiarios et ministratores omnia missalia infra septennium de novo reparari, ipso priore incipiente de missali quod jacet ad altare Sanctorum Nicholai et Ægidii, pro quo solvit de oblationibus suis £22. Item unam cantariam, quæ de Trinitate nominatur, de consensu conventus ordinavit in dicto altari perpetuo celebrandam. Ad cujus sustentationem terras et tenementa in Northpittingdon, Ulneston et Billingham de licentia episcopi emit, pro quibus solvit £66 10s. 9d. Et pro ædificiis ibidem factis et reparatis £20. Forma autem ordinationis dictæ cantariæ scribitur in Martiro

logio et in principio missalis dicti altaris. Idem prior ordinavit dicto altari unum calicem, pretium £6 13s. 4d.

una cum tribus albis et casulis et palliis altaris. Item imagines Sanctæ Trinitatis et Beatæ Virginis de alabastro, cum tabernaculis cum aliis ornamentis, pretium £22. Item fecit unam fenestram VI. luminarium, longam et sumptuosam, in boreali parte crucis dictæ ecclesiæ juxta dictum altare, pro quo solvit £100, et pro vitreatione £52. Item pro aliis ecclesiæ ædificiis, debitis et ornamentis £402 6s. 8d. Item pro una fenestra in fine australi aulæ prioris £40. Summa omnium summarum præcedentium est hæc, £2076 8s. 10d. Item in tempore suo fiebant de novo magna fenestra VII. luminarium in capite occidentali navis ecclesiæ, et III. aliæ in parte boreali parte australi chori per feretrum-Ib. 768.

313

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DECORATED PERIOD.

UNIVERSAL ADOPTION OF FLOWING AND INDIRECT LINES.-OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DECORATED STYLE.-EXETER CATHEDRAL.-YORK MINSTER. HULL.-HEDON.-PATRINGTON.-CARLISLE. - Durham.— BOSTON.-GRANTHAM.-HECKINGTON.-NORBURY.-CHESTERFIELD.FINEDON.-FREQUENT POVERTY OF EXECUTION.-STANford.-BRIDGE CHAPELS.-WAKEFIELD.-CHAPEL OF S. WILLIAM, YORK.—WAYSIDE CHAPEL AT HOUGHTON-IN-THE-DALE.-ELY CATHEDRAL.-FALL OF THE TOWER, AND FOUNDATION OF THE OCTAGON BY ALAN OF WALSINGHAM. THE CONSTRUCTIVE CHARACTER, AND THE GENERAL EFFECT OF THIS WORK.-BISHOP HOTHAM AND THE PRESBYTERY. -THE LADY CHAPEL, JOHN OF WISBEACH.- SEQUEL OF THE LIFE OF ALAN OF WALSINGHAM.

THE architects of the period at which we have now arrived, employed the flowing line, as constantly as if they had anticipated all that Hogarth laid down on the perfection of the curve in his Analysis of Beauty, and all that Burke, Alison, and Uvedale Price ever asserted on the grace of undulating surfaces, in their more general expositions of the philosophy of beauty. Indeed it has been observed that the only line which actually occurs in architecture answering to the perfection of beauty in a line, as stated by Hogarth,-the spiral or the curve described by a line encircling a cone,-is the complex ogee, bending forwards as well as upwards, as it sometimes does in the head of a Decorated canopy and it would be almost impossible to imagine any fair exposition of the principles of grace and beauty, which should not find, if it condescended to seek them, several happy illustrations from the characteristic forms of fully developed Decorated.

Still it must be confessed that beauty is here too unmixed with a severe and massive grandeur. Those who love to trace the connection between the moral character of a generation, and the development of its spirit in visible things, might half ad

mit a question, whether the luxury and licence of a court such as that of Edward II. had not something in aommon with the forms which were developed by contemporary architects. The straight line, the circle, and the right angle-types, as it were, and expressions of direct, straight forward, measured, stern duty and action,—are everywhere deserted or disguised. Horizontality and perpendicularity must predominate in the main lines of every building; but where it is possible they are masked by more devious lines. Monials branch off into various irregular curves. Circles become pointed and flowing ovals, and instead of simple curves we have ogees and spirals. Crockets and finials become more undulating in their outlines: and even buttresses desert the right angle, and meet the corners of the building which they support obliquely. In the arrangement and form of mouldings,—the minutest accessories of the several parts of a building,-the same thing occurs. Instead of the rectangular planes of the wall and soffit, the suites of mouldings take the diagonal, or chamfer plane: and angles, and parts of simple circles, are melted into undulating lines. The sterner generation that follows desiderates a more severe character in its great and enduring works, and the Perpendicular grows up under the tutorage of one of the most practical and accomplished men of business that our nation ever knew. Had William of Wykeham found the Geometrical style, he would perhaps have exerted himself to evolve its capabilities: finding the flowing Decorated, he deserted it, and erected a less beautiful, but a more perfect one in its place. On the Continent the turn of affairs was just the contrary; and we, in our insular complacency, shall perhaps admit, that national character is observable in each development. While the Perpendicular is asserting its proper dignity in the hands of Wykeham, the Flamboyant under foreign guidance wanders into mazes in comparison of which the undulations of our Decorated are sternness itself.

Having prefaced the history of this style with these general remarks on its character, I shall describe its details more minutely before I pass to particular examples.

1 Of course it will not be understood that these forms and arrange

ments are constant in this style; but they are frequent and characteristic.

There is of course a greater aggregation of chantries and exedral buildings, within and around older fabrics; but the general ground plan, where it is originally of Decorated date, is, if anything, more simple than in the preceding style. The western transept, or façade, independent of the internal terminations of nave and aisles, is omitted; nor does the second transept, either at the extreme east, as at Durham, or between the great cross and the east end, as at Wells or Salisbury, occur in the same form.1 There is a tendency even to sink the western towers, as at Exeter; though the west end of York gives us the two finest in the kingdom; and that of Lichfield (which is however very early in the style,)2 has the same noble features, crowned with beautiful spires. In small churches there is no difference in the main principles of arrangement between this and the antecedent and subsequent styles; nave and aisles, chancel, tower and south porch still forming the ordinary ground plan of the parish church.

In the interior of large churches the great difference is in the relative importance of the triforium and clerestory. In Early English, as in Norman, the triforium was a most prominent and important feature, the clerestory far less so now the clerestory lets fall its monials and tracery over the triforium, which ceases to be a distinct feature, and becomes, to the eye, an appendage of the clerestory. This arrangement also continues to the close of Gothic art, and is to be referred to the same principle of continuousness which throws aside the bands of the shafts, and sometimes even the capitals of pillars,3 and studiously leads the eye with as little break as possible from the ground to the roof. As it has been well put by Mr. Freeman in a paper read before the Oxford and Northampton Architectural Societies, the prominence of separate parts is sacrificed to the perfection of the whole.

Vaulting has become more complex, and at last the lierne

1 With some differences both are resumed in the Perpendicular: witness the intermediate transepts not extending beyond the aisles at York, and the transeptal Lady Chapel at the east of Peterborough.

2 The west end of York also was begun early.

3 As at Stanford, Northamptonshire, and at Ratley, Warwickshire; the latter figured by Mr. Bloxam.

vault is employed, as for instance by Bishop Hotham at Ely, (1336) and at Gloucester at few years earlier.2 This complexity of vaulting affords room also for greater decoration in the numerous bosses at the intersection of the groining ribs. The external roof still continues of high pitch; but clerestories are more frequently original, and lead is generally used as a covering.

Descending to particular parts, the doorway is more simple in general form, being less frequently double; but in the enrichment of the mouldings it is unsurpassed in any style, if both the elegance of particular parts, and the beauty of the whole effect be taken into account. Indeed nothing within the compass of architectural decoration exceeds the grace and effectiveness of the figures under canopies, or the branches of foliage, sometimes introduced in the wide and deep hollows of Decorated doorways.3

Windows still continue to form a very prominent part of the composition, as they began to do at the introduction of tracery; and this change in the principles of composition produces parallel changes in detail. For instance, the monials, if such they could be called, of Early English windows are at first flush with the wall; now an order of jamb-mouldings intervenes between the plane of the wall and that of the monials, enriching the window very greatly, as seen from without. It is rather a part of this change, than a consequence of it, that the glass is carried more nearly to the centre of the wall, instead of being nearly in the plane of the exterior; that the outside and inside jambs are alike considerably splayed, though not equally; whereas in Norman and Early English windows the interior splay is alone considerable. The effect of enriched jambs in the exterior is yet farther increased by the frequent addition of ogeed and foliated

1 A groined vault in which the main ribs are connected or tied together in the midst of their course, by transverse ribs.

2 Professor Willis, Winchester, p. 68.

3 I cannot refrain from noticing a surprisingly beautiful example in a

most retired part of a retired church, and nowhere figured that I know of,— the north door of Leamington Hastings, in Warwickshire. The west door of Cley church, Norfolk, is justly cited as a remarkably beautiful instance, in Brandon's Analysis, where it is figured. Sec. I. Decorated. Plate 39.