Part 4

The transepts differ slightly in detail on their north and south fronts. It has also been pointed out that while in the one transept the lancet form rules, in the other the free employment of the circle and the quatrefoil almost foreshadows the Early Decorated style. The windows of both are so singularly pure in design and beautiful in proportion, that they have often been selected as typical examples of the best work in their style.

The east front of the choir is flanked with square pinnacled buttresses. Above the Lady Chapel is an arcade with five members pierced with three windows, and in the gable a similar arrangement of five lancets, three being windows, arranged in harmony with the triangular space it fills. The flying buttresses on the south side were added by Bishop Beauchamp in 1450-58.

The east front of the Lady Chapel is divided by buttresses into three bays, and has crocketed gables to each. The aisles show a lancet in the lower story, with a blind couplet beneath a quatrefoil in the gable; the central compartment has a triplet in each story.

The south side corresponds in character to the north, but is partly hidden by the chapter house, the muniment room, the library, and cloisters. The walls of the latter are high, and the quadrangle they inclose entirely separated from the building, the long narrow space between being known as the Plumbery.

Many consecration crosses of beautiful design are to be found on the building marking the spots touched by the oil of unction at the dedication of the edifice. (See initial letter, page 1.)

The cathedral is built of freestone from the Chilmark quarries twelve miles distant, with a lavish use of Purbeck marble in its interior. The grey colour of the leaden roofs and the pure unstained tone of its walls, impart a quasi-modern aspect to it, which, no matter how little justified by facts, always presents Salisbury to one's mind, as a late addition to the superb array of English churches; yet considering that as we see it from the Close no portion (except possibly the spire) later than the twelfth century comes into the picture, there is no other cathedral that so little justifies such an impression, and one cannot escape a return to the first reason advanced, namely, that its singular unity has given it an aspect of perpetual youth.

[Illustration: THE CHOIR SCREEN. _From a Photograph by Carl Norman and Co._]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This was carefully replaced in its original position inclosed in a copper cylinder.

[5] Recently, however, anxiety has been again aroused, and the spire has been once more strengthened.

[6] This lantern story was removed in 1757 by order of the Dean and Chapter.

THE INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL AND CHAPTER HOUSE.

The ground plan of Salisbury is a well-proportioned double cross with the arms, of the choir transepts, more important than usual. Indeed, the exquisitely proportioned and balanced symmetry of every portion, as of the whole, which almost places Salisbury among classic buildings, is as marked in its ground plan as in any part of the building. As an appreciative student of the building has written: "This is the great beauty of Salisbury, the composition of its mighty body as a whole. So finely proportioned and arranged are its square masses of different heights and sizes, so splendid are the broad effects of light and shadow they produce, so appropriate is the slant of the roof lines, and so nicely placed and gracefully shaped are the simple windows, that for once we can give no thought of regret either to the circling apses of continental lands or the rich traceries and surface carvings and figures--sculptures of later generations. The whole effect is in the strictest sense architectural. Few large buildings teach so clearly the great lesson that beauty in a building depends first of all upon composition, not decoration; upon masses, not details; upon the use and shaping, not the ornamentation of features; and very few show half so plainly that mediaeval architects could realize this fact. We are too apt to think that Gothic art cannot be individual without being eccentric, or interesting without being heterogeneous ... but Salisbury is both grand and lovely, and yet it is quiet, rational, and all of a piece, clear and smooth, and refined to the point of utmost purity. No building in the world is more logical, more lucid in expression, more restful to the mind and eye."[7]

[Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._]

The number of its pillars, windows, and doorways is said to equal the hours, days, and months of the year; hence the local rhyme, attributed, on the authority of Godwin, to a certain Daniel Rogers:

"As many days as in one year there be, So many windows in this church we see; As many marble pillars here appear As there are hours throughout the fleeting year; As many gates as moons one year does view-- Strange tale to tell! yet not more strange than true."

Fuller, speaking of these, by a curious lapse falls into the vulgar error of believing Purbeck marble to be an artificial product melted and poured into moulds, says: "The cathedral is paramount of its kind, wherein the doors and chapels equal the months, the windows the days, the pillars and pillarets of fusile marble (an ancient art now shrewdly suspected to be lost) the hours of the year; so that all Europe affords not such an almanac of architecture. Once walking in this church (whereof then I was prebendary) I met a countryman wondering at the structure thereof. 'I once,' said he to me, 'admired that there could be a church that should have so many pillars as there be hours in the year, and now I admire more, that there should be so many hours in the year as I see pillars in this church.'"

=The Nave.=--The first glimpse as we enter by the west door is undoubtedly impressive, notwithstanding the absence of colour and the lack of mystery for which the complete vista obtained at such a cruel cost by Wyatt is insufficient compensation. The whole scheme of decoration in its pristine state must have been extremely beautiful. "If you can imagine it with the walls and piers exhibiting strong contrasts of colour in the dark and polished Purbeck shafts and the lighter freestones, the arches picked out with colours, the groining elaborately decorated, and the whole lighted by brilliantly painted windows with a preponderance of dark blue and ruby, together with a flood of white light showing through the lancet of the centre, we may be allowed a doubt whether Tintern or York could have compared with it." Add to this picture the movable hangings and decorations of its many altars, and we cannot honestly attribute the coldness of the present effect to any fault in the original design. Elsewhere this austerity of monochrome is modified to a great extent by the variety (anachronisms though they be) of later architectural insertions. Salisbury, through the very purity of its design, especially suffers from its translation from chromatic harmony to monotone, for although possibly the architectural details are thereby rendered more apparent, yet the exaggeration of what is after all but the skeleton of the building, destroys the effect of the whole as its architect imagined it.

Clustered columns of unpolished Purbeck marble on a quatrefoil plan, with smaller detached shafts of lustrous marble at the cardinal points, support, on either side, the ten great arches of the first story of the nave. These polished shafts are generally in two pieces, with a brass ring covering the joint; Francis Price discusses, at great length, this constant feature of the whole building, and points out, that although most of the shafts were probably not in place until after the masonry was fairly set, yet frequently subsequent settlement has crushed them; although, in the nave, the main piers in small blocks laid according to the natural bed of the stone, are still perfectly sound. The large arches are gracefully moulded with masses of carved foliage at the intersections.

[Illustration: THE NAVE--SOUTH SIDE.]

In the nave of this cathedral we have a very uncommon feature in the connected base of the main columns, which was doubtless introduced to aid in distributing the weight over a larger surface, and so to overcome the treacherous character of the foundation.

The triforium, which, from its style, naturally suggests comparison with Westminster, and the Angel Choir of Lincoln, is simple, but extremely beautiful. Each of its rather flat-pointed arches, equalling in span that of the main arch below, is subdivided into pairs, which again each inclose two smaller ones. These are decorated with trefoils and quatrefoils, alternately with cinquefoils and octofoils. Immediately above the carving, at the intersection of the main arches, is a corbelled head, from which rises a triple vaulting-shaft with foliated capitals, on a line with the base of the clerestory. This upper story has, in each bay of the vaulting, simple lancet windows grouped in threes. The arches here, as in almost every instance throughout the building, are supported by Purbeck marble shafts. The nave aisles are lighted by double lancet-windows in each bay. The most noticeable feature of these aisles is the stone bench which extends the whole length of the building on both the north and south sides.

[Illustration: NORTH AISLE.]

The west wall is panelled in three main arches, with an upper story reaching to the height of the triforium base, and containing an arcade of four arches, subdivided each into two smaller trefoiled ones, with cinquefoil heads. Above these is the triplet lancet of the great west window. The effect of the nave looking west is clearly shown in the photograph here reproduced.

Of the chapels and altars once existing we have records in various documents. In the "Sarum Processional" twelve altars are mentioned, dedicated respectively to SS. Andrew, Nicholas, John the Baptist, Margaret, Mary Magdalene, Laurence, Michael, Martin, Catherine, Edward, Edmund the King, and Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. The sites of these so far as they can be traced appears to have been: St. Catherine and St. Martin in the north choir transept, St. Nicholas and St. Mary Magdalene in the south, and St. Edmund of Canterbury and St. Margaret respectively in the north and south great transepts.

Throughout the nave it is evident that the first plans were rigidly obeyed, although the severity of the early years of the style had become much modified before the work was finished. The absence of ornate decoration, the simplicity of the mouldings, and the plate-tracery of the triforium all indicate the first period of "Early English."

[Illustration: NAVE TRANSEPT.]

The dimensions of the nave are: 229 feet 6 inches long, 82 feet wide, and 81 feet high. The aisles are 17 feet 6 inches wide, and 39 feet 9 inches high.

=The Nave Transepts= are in three stories, with eastern aisles divided into three bays. The screens inclosing chapels in these were demolished by Wyatt. Above the entrances to the great transepts are arches inserted by Bishop Beauchamp (1450-1481) to withstand the side thrust of the great tower. These are of perpendicular work, with their spandrils panelled and their cornices battlemented, as shown in the engraving. Canterbury and Wells, in a far more prominent fashion, have similar features; in this instance the addition appears to have succeeded in its purpose to insure the stability of the tower. In the choir transepts these additional features take the form of an inverted arch, above the main arch. The vaulting of the tower roof is also in the perpendicular style and shows excellent groined work. Both Sir Christopher Wren and Francis Price, call its four main pillars the legs of the tower.

Of the transept Fuller says: "The cross aisle of this church is the most beautiful and lightsome of any I have yet beheld. The spire steeple (not founded on the ground, but for the main supported by four pillars,) is of great height and greater workmanship. I have been credibly informed that some foreign artists beholding this building brake forth into tears, which some imputed to their admiration (though I see not how wondering could cause weeping): others to their envy, grieving that they had not the like in their own land."

=Monuments in the Nave.=[8]--The peculiar arrangements of the ancient monuments in two long rows on the continuous plinth that connects the bases of the pillars on each side of the nave is another of Wyatt's freaks during his terrible innovations in 1789. Not only did he sever the historical associations of centuries by these arbitrary removals, but paid so little attention to consistency that portions of monuments belonging to entirely different periods were combined with curious results, and remains transferred to other "receptacles" than those designed for them. It is true that the effect of the present arrangement is not entirely bad, but it was not worth achieving at such a cost.

The first monument on the south side as we enter by the great west door, is in memory of Thomas Lord Wyndham of Finglass, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, (1) who died in 1745; the marble figure of Hibernia which surmounts it is by Rysbrack. At the western base of the first south pillar is a Purbeck marble slab, (2) coffin-shaped, probably the oldest monument in the building. This is usually assigned to Bishop Herman, whose tomb it is supposed to have covered in Old Sarum; but no evidence exists to support this theory. In the first place his original burial-place is entirely unknown, and William de Wanda, who chronicles minutely the removal of the bodies of other bishops from the old cathedral, does not even mention Herman's name.

[Illustration]

The next (3) is an effigy of a bishop in full pontificals, also believed to have been originally at Old Sarum. The carving is rich, and the design a fine example of the early Norman style. The chasuble is decorated with stars, and the dalmatic has a rich border. Elaborately carved foliage, with birds, frames the figure, which has its right hand raised in the attitude of benediction, and grasps a pastoral staff in the left. It is usually believed that it commemorates Bishop Jocelin, who died in 1184, and was probably removed from Old Sarum at the translation of the bodies of the three bishops. The head of the effigy is evidently a much later restoration, probably, from the style of the richly ornamented mitre, about the time of Henry III. or Edward I. As the face is cleanly shaven, while the seal of Bishop Jocelin depicts him as bearded, some antiquaries hold this monument to belong to Bishop Roger, and assign to Bishop Jocelin the one formerly attributed to Bishop Herman. If, however, differences of opinion exist concerning the identity of these two effigies, they are as nothing compared to the uncertainty regarding the next, (4) which represents a bishop holding a pastoral staff. Down the front of this cope are the words, "Affer opem devenies in idem." Hatcher and Duke believe that it represents Bishop Jocelin. Britton, Gough and Planche, prefer to think that it commemorates Bishop Roger. Its inscription on the edge of the slab runs:

"Flent hodie Salesberie quia decidit ensis Justitie, pater ecclesiae Salisberiensis Dum viguit, miseros aluit, fastusque potentum Non timuit, sed clava fuit terrorque nocentum De Ducibus, de nobilibus primordia duxit Principibus, propeque tibi gemma reluxit."

A version given in the Wilts Archeo. Mag. vol. xvii. runs: "They mourn to-day at Salesberie because there has fallen the sword of justice, the Father of the Church of Salesberie. While he lived he sustained the oppressed and wretched, and feared not the arrogance of the powerful, but himself was the scourge (literally, the club) and terror of the guilty. He traced his ancestry from dukes and noble princes, who shone near thee as a precious gem." Another item of indirect evidence supplied by this inscription is worth noting, namely, the "l" in Sa_l_isberie. The period when this letter superseded the "r" was about the time of Jocelin's death. Only a single coin of Stephen's has the "l."

To Bishop Roger reference is made on page 100, and it is evident that even the fulsome praise of an epitaph would hardly go out of its way to describe him as "sprung from dukes and noble princes." Planche, despite this objection, does not deem it convincing, as poor priests were often of noble lineage. If, however, we assume it represents Bishop Jocelin, one of the house of Bohun, a great Norman family, and compare the effigy with the seal of that bishop, the later theory that deprives Bishop Roger of this much discussed monument will probably be chosen as the most acceptable. In a record at least three centuries old his burial-place is said to be near the chapel of St. Stephen; and in a plan of the Cathedral, dated 1773, and in Price's account, 1774, a plain slab with a cross upon it, in a shallow recess of the wall east of the north aisle, is assigned to Bishop Roger.

But this and the other disputed monuments are undoubtedly genuine memorials of the earliest bishops, and not merely interesting for that reason, but as (with the exception of two slabs dated 1086 and 1172 in Westminster Abbey) the earliest examples of their class in England. Although the question of their identity of the individuals they commemorate were best left to those few who are peculiarly concerned with the history of the period that includes them.

Near these effigies is a slab with faint traces of an incised figure, which may possibly have represented an abbot or prior. It can hardly be intended for a bishop, as no mitre can be traced, and the staff is held in the right hand. The monument (5) on the plinth under the next arch is also beyond identification.

Next in order comes the altar tomb (6) which now contains the remains of Bishop Beauchamp, who died in 1481. When this was removed from the aisle at the north end of the great transept it was empty, and showed no trace of its original dedication. During the wanton demolition of the Beauchamp chantry, where, "in marble tumbes," with his father and mother on either hand, the remains of Bishop Beauchamp had been unmolested for over three hundred years, his own tomb was "mislaid" and never recovered. It is pleasant to note that even the apologists for Wyatt felt this incident was beyond their sympathy. Dodsworth naively remarks, "After this the greatest possible care was taken that nothing of the kind should again occur," and so far as we know, not even a prior was subsequently lost. Of this bishop much is said elsewhere in this book, and his beautiful chantry described on page 90.

The elaborate effigy (7) beneath the next arch represents Robert Lord Hungerford clad in a superb suit of fifteenth century plate armour, with the collar of SS. round his neck, and with "his hair polled" in the fashion of Henry V. A superbly decorated sword and dagger hang from his jewelled girdle at his side, while his feet rest upon a dog wearing a rich collar. This monument was placed originally between the Lady Chapel and the (Hungerford) chantry founded by Margaret, his widow. By his will Lord Hungerford directed that his body should be interred before the altar of St. Osmund. The tomb beneath the effigy is made up from portions of the chapel.

The monument known as Lord Stourton's (8), removed from the east end of the Cathedral, is next in order. Its three apertures on each side are said to be emblematic of the six sources of the river Stour, which rises at Storrhead, the ancient family seat, from whence the name is derived. The whole shape of the tomb is so unusual that in spite of the theory that it represents the six sources of the Stour, the curious arched openings appear as if pierced to exhibit something behind them. Yet this could not have been an effigy, for the interior is divided by a solid partition of stone. The pillars which stood between the arches are gone. Lord Stourton, to whom it is attributed, was hanged with a silken cord on March 6th, 1556, in the Salisbury market-place. The tragedy is too long to give in detail, as it is told in the country histories and elsewhere, here a brief summary must suffice:--When his mother became a widow Lord Stourton attempted to induce her to sign a bond promising that she would never re-marry. The family agents, a father and son named Hartgill, sided with Lady Stourton and seemed to have influenced her in declining to assent to the scheme. The Hartgills after much physical maltreatment at the hands of Lord Stourton's mercenaries, took legal action against him, with the result that he was fined and imprisoned for awhile in the Fleet. When let out on parole he invited the Hartgills to meet him that he might pay them the fine. Upon their appearance at Kilmington Churchyard, the appointed place, they were seized by armed men, carried away and murdered in cold blood in full sight of Lord Stourton himself the same night. For this he was committed to the Tower, tried at Westminster and hanged with four of his men at Salisbury. So late as 1775 a wire twisted into a noose was suspended above his tomb.

The mutilated effigy (9) of Bishop de la Wyle (died 1271) rests on a base made up of portions of later work. The last monument on this side (10) is of the famous William Longespee, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the natural son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamond. This effigy still shows traces of the gorgeous ornament in gold and colours with which it was originally decorated. Westmacott, the sculptor, says: "The manly, warrior character of the figure is particularly striking even in its recumbent attitude, while the turn of the head, and the graceful flow of lines in the right hand and arm, with the natural heavy fall of the chain armour at the side, exhibit a feeling of art that would not do discredit to a very advanced school." The figure is clad in mail armour, which covers the mouth in a peculiar fashion, and wears a surcoat falling in simple folds, almost Greek in feeling, that are somewhat curious in connection with the rich mediaeval luxuriance of the surface ornament. On his shield are borne six heraldic leopards or lions. The slab and effigy are stone, but the base is of wood encircled by an arcade of trefoiled arches. One of its compartments protected with glass yet shows a piece of the beautiful diaper work, in silver overlaid on white linen, remains of the rich colourings of two successive periods are present on the effigy itself. (See p. 94.)