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In the year 1225, Richard Poore, Bishop of Sarum, "finding the fabric of the new church was by God's alliance so far advanced that divine service might be conveniently performed therein, he rejoiced exceedingly, since he bestowed great pains and contributed greatly towards it. Thereupon he commanded William the Dean to cite all the canons to be present on the day of S. Michael following, at the joyful solemnity of their mother church, that is to say, at the first celebration of divine service therein. According on the vigil of S. Michael, which happened on a Sunday, the bishop came in the morning and consecrated three altars, the first in the east part, in honour of the holy and undivided Trinity and All Saints, on which henceforth the mass of the Blessed Virgin was appointed to be said every day. And the said bishop offered that day for the service of the said altar and for daily service of the Blessed Virgin, two silver basons and two silver candlesticks which were bequeathed by the will of the noble lady Gundria de Warren to the church of Sarum. Moreover the bishop gave out of his property to the clerks that were to officiate at the said mass thirty marks of silver a year until he settled so much in certain rents, and likewise ten marks every year to maintain lamps round the said altar. Then he dedicated another altar in the north part of the church in honour of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles; he also dedicated another altar in the south part thereof to St. Stephen and the rest of the martyrs. At this dedication were present: Henry, Bishop of Dublin, Stephen, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury."

We read further in the same chronicle that the bishops and their retinues were entertained for a week by Bishop Poore at his sole charge.

The next day, the feast of SS. Michael and All Angels, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached to a large company including many English and foreign prelates, Otto, the Pope's nuncio, and others. On the Thursday following, "Our Lord the King and Hubert de Burgh the justice came to the church and the King there heard the mass of the glorious Virgin and offered ten marks of silver and one piece of silk, and he granted to the same place that every year there should be a fair." The same day the justice made a vow that he would give a gold text set in the precious stones and the relics of divers saints in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the service of the new church; afterwards the King went down with many of his nobles to the Bishop's palace and were entertained. On the Friday following Hubert de Burgh offered his "texte after John, gilt with gold and having precious stones and relics of divers saints."

"On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup of the weight of ten marks; and when the mass was celebrated the King told the dean that he would have that stone which he had offered and the gold of the ring applied to adorn the text which the justice had before given; and then the justice caused the text which he had given to be brought and offered with great devotion on the altar."

On the 10th of January, 1226, William Longesp?e, Earl of Salisbury, returned from Gascoigne, where he had resided twelve months with Richard, the King's brother, for the defence of Bordeaux , "and the said Earl came that day after nine o'clock to Sarum, where he was received with great joy, with a procession for the new fabric." The scandalous account of his death , which occurred at the castle of Old Sarum, on the 7th of March in the same year, and the part played in the transaction by Hubert de Burgh cannot be told here, beyond the fact that the justice was strongly suspected of poisoning him. On the 8th of March, at the same hour of the day on which he had been received with great joy, he was brought to New Sarum with many tears and lamentations, and honourably buried in the new church of the Blessed Virgin. Matthew Paris gravely records that at his funeral, despite gusts of wind and rain, the candles furnished a continual light the whole of the way. Of all secular figures connected with this cathedral his is perhaps the most prominent, nor is his fame merely local. He was active in public affairs during the reign of King John, and one of the noticeable heroes in an expedition to the Holy Land in 1220, when, at the battle of Damietta, Matthew Paris tells us, he resisted the shock of the infidels like a wall. He fought both in Flanders and in France, was at his King's side at Runnymede, and a witness to Magna Charta--a copy of which famous charter, made probably for his special use, is still preserved in the cathedral library.

In 1226, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, which was then the 18th day of the calends of July, the bodies of the three bishops, Jocelin, Roger, and Osmund , were brought from Old Sarum. Whether their tombs were also brought, is not said, nor is any mention made of Herman, who by popular report is credited with a monument in the cathedral.

Bishop Poore was ably supported in his great undertaking by a group of notable men, among whom were: William de Wanda, the Dean, who threw his whole soul into the work, and traversed the diocese of London to collect alms in its behalf, besides leaving us most elaborate accounts of the various ceremonies; and the Precentor, Roger de Sarum, a man of some weight, who soon after became Bishop of Bath and Wells; Henry de Bishopston, a learned man and a scholar, should also be remembered, and, if Leland could be credited, we should need to add another member to this group, and find in Robert Hilcot, of Sarum, the author of the "Philobiblon" so generally attributed to Richard de Bury.

During the year in which he accompanied Bishop Poore in his translation to Durham, and from 1230 to 1238, he was employed upon some architectural work connected with Durham Cathedral, which, when Bishop Poore accepted it was a stately Norman fane with an apsidal choir; he removed this east end, and remodelled it in the early English manner. The chapel of the Nine Altars, as this portion is called, is remarkably similar in its details to much of the work at Salisbury. It is curious that two southern churches so near as Salisbury and Christchurch Priory should be found influencing or influenced by the great northern cathedral, but the likeness between Flambard's Norman work at Christchurch and the same bishop's work at Durham is as strongly marked as the Early English of Bishop Poore at both the churches in which he was enthroned. That Elias de Dereham is responsible for much of the work of both cathedrals is also a fair assumption. Curiously enough his name, hitherto hastily assumed to be equivalent to Elias of Durham, has probably no connection with that city; whether, however, his patronym should be traced to the Norfolk Dereham, or the Gloucester Dyrham, it is impossible to say with any certainty. On somewhat insufficient grounds it has been hazarded that his portrait may be found in a figure on the east side of the staircase buttress of what was formerly the great entrance to Wells Cathedral.

Owing to the fact that the original design of the building was fully carried out, with the addition of a tower and spire, its architectural history ceases just where most others begin their chequered career. At the time of the Reformation it suffered but little, except in the wholesale destruction of its stained glass. Dr. Pope, in his "Life of Bishop Ward," says that even during the Civil War, when it was abandoned, workmen were engaged to keep it in repair, who when questioned as to the authority by which they worked, said, "Those who employ'd us will pay us; trouble not your selves to inquire who they are. Whoever they are, they do not desire to have their names known." We find as evidence of the secret influence exerted in its behalf that when one of Waller's officers sent up to the Parliament certain plate and a pulpit cloth from Salisbury Cathedral, he was ordered to restore them, as it was considered that he had overstepped his commission; all that was retained being certain copes, hangings, and a picture of the Virgin.

At the Restoration, Bishop Ward, after a great thunderstorm in 1668, when fears were entertained for the safety of the spire, called in Sir Christopher Wren, who, after examining the tower, expressed his belief "that a spire was not contemplated by its builders;" that "out of fear to overburden the four piers of the tower, its inside was carried for 40 feet above the nave with a slender hollow work of pillars and arches, nor hath it any buttresses; the spire itself is but 9 inches thick, though the height be above 150 feet." This work of pillars and arches led him to conclude that the architect laid his first floor of timber 40 feet higher than the vault beneath.

Dr. Walter Pope, in his "Life of Bishop Seth Ward," 1697, describes the restorations accomplished by this excellent prelate: "There being, therefore, not much to be done as to reparation, he employ'd himself in the Decoration of the Cathedral: First, at his proper charges Paving the Cloyster. I mean that side of it which leads out of his garden into the church. At his exhortation, and more than proportinable expence the Pavement of the Church was mended where it was faulty, and the whole Quire laid with white and black squares of marble. The Bishops, Deans, and all the Prebendaries Stalls made New & Magnificent, and the whole church was kept so clean, that anyone who had occasion for Dust to throw on the Superscription of a Letter, he would have a hard task to find it there.... His next care was to repair, I might almost say rebuild his Palace, which was much ruined, the Hall being pulled down, & the Greater part of the House converted to an Inn ... what remained of the Palace was divided into small Tenements and let out to poor Handicraft-men. This dilapidation was the work of one Van Ling, a Dutchman, by trade a Taylor, who bought it of Parliament when Bishop's lands were exposed to sale."

FOOTNOTES:

The headpiece is from an engraving in Walpoole's "British Traveller."

A paper on this subject was printed in the Wiltshire Archaeological Mag., No. lvi.

So misspelt in the text quoted.

THE CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR.

Another uncommon feature not so apparent at first sight, but yet almost, if not quite as rare, is that the present building was erected on a virgin site. It is hard to find a mediaeval church of any importance in England that is not only upon the self-same site, but more often in part upon the actual foundation of an earlier edifice. Consistency is the especial character of Salisbury, and now, owing to Wyatt's iconoclastic destruction of the two later chapels at its east end, we have in Salisbury "the most typical English cathedral," which is also our most complete example of Early English.

Dean Stanley, in comparing it with Westminster Abbey, hardly overpraised it in saying: "Salisbury is all-glorious without, Westminster is all-glorious within." Canon Venables considers it "as an architectural composition, more especially as seen from the outside, the most perfectly designed building in the world." Elsewhere he speaks of it as "presenting none of those architectural problems so baffling and perplexing at Canterbury, Lichfield, or Lincoln." Its appearance from a distance has been the theme of poets, and a favourite subject for artists. Constable especially delighted to paint it. Among several of his different versions of the theme, the view from the meadows , made popular by Lucas' mezzotint, is perhaps the best known.

Studying the building more closely one feels it is not accident that gives to it its peculiar charm, but pre-arranged design; the idea of one conception carried to its logical completion. This striking unity certainly helps to impart an air of modernity to the building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even bands, and you may follow it from the south transept, eastward, round to the north transept, after which they have not taken such great pains in their regularity. It is almost impossible to distinguish where they could have left off, for it is hardly to be supposed they could have gone on with all at the same time."

If at first sight this regular and symmetrical detail offers a suspicion of mere mechanism, yet it is no less evident that after longer study the charms of this exquisite structure tell with a lasting power. Too subtle to extort admiration at first, it bewitches a student of architecture who notes the scholarly reticence of its detail, the masterly way in which, as a rule, the construction is legitimately ornamented and the decoration made an integral part of the whole design.

Bishop Godwin, in his "Catalogue of Bishops," notes that in 1258 the cathedral was rehallowed by Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, and this fact is the basis of most of the argument for the earlier date of the spire, the completion of which, according to some, could alone have justified the ceremony.

Remembering that Winchester had lost its central tower, which fell in 1107, we can understand the reasons which induced the original architect to distrust a spire, and to adopt a lantern in its place. If, however, timidity delayed it at first, when it was undertaken, its builder left it not only the most lofty in England then and since, but in actual effect the most lofty in the world. This is claimed in spite of its 404 feet being exceeded by Amiens , and Strasburg , and although it might appear special pleading to urge such a theory against contradictory facts, yet since at Amiens the nave roof is 208 feet high, against the 115 feet of Salisbury, it is obvious that the apparent height of the latter exceeds its French rival. At Strasburg the excess of elaboration in the ornament is detrimental to the effect of height, and the same may be said of Antwerp or Mechlin, where the whole effect is not so much that of a spire, as of an elaborately fretted finial, insubstantial if exquisite in itself, but merely an added ornament, not appearing part of the solid structure.

It consists of five bays, of which the lateral ones are square turrets, covered with arcades, and terminated by spires. The lower story of the central bay is composed of three pedimented porches deeply recessed, each with a niche in its gable. Above these is a story of canopied trefoiled arches, with quatrefoil lozenges in their centres. Over this arcade is the large west window, a triplet of lancets with slender shafts and chevron ornament. Above this again is a band of quatrefoils at the foot of the gable, which is filled with double couplets of lancets with quatrefoils above their heads; and in the upper spandrils is a quatrefoiled aureole. The buttresses flanking this central bay have similar arcading continued around them. The side bays each have a triple porch, a two-lighted window with a quatrefoil in the head, with a window of the same form above it, and higher still the arcading continued from the towers.

In 1863 the hundred and odd niches designed to contain statues were either despoiled or had never been occupied, with the exception of eight which held figures mutilated beyond certain recognition. Mr. Cockerell conjectured that two on the buttress of the south tower represented St. Peter and St. John the Baptist, on that to the north St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist, while a figure facing north on the same buttress he believed to represent Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Other figures are supposed to commemorate Bishop Poore, William Longesp?e, 1st Earl of Salisbury, St. Stephen, and Bishop Giles de Bridport.

However, whether wantonly destroyed or not, it is certain that the present figures must be all regarded as modern, since the eight actually left have been, with the exception of St. John the Baptist, very much restored. Redfern, the well-known sculptor, is responsible for the present statues. If not possessing the vigour of the old work, which from fragments in other parts of the building was certainly superior to these modern additions, yet they are creditable in design and scholarly in treatment.

The arrangement is probably in harmony with the original scheme. It represents the orders of terrestrial and celestial beings mentioned in the four verses of the hymn, "Te Deum Laudamus." In "The Legend of Christian Art," by the Rev. H.T. Armfield, Minor Canon of Salisbury , the symbolism and history of the whole design is given at great length. Here it must suffice to quote a few of the more salient points.

The statues are arranged in five horizontal lines from north to south, exclusive of the figure in the "vesica," the oval above. In the principal niches of the top row is a tier of angels, below this a tier of Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, then a tier of doctors, virgins, and martyrs, and lowest of all a tier of worthies, including princes, martyrs, bishops, and founders connected with the diocese and the Cathedral.

The Vesica contains a figure of our Lord seated, known technically as a "Majesty." In the tier of angels below, noting them from left to right, are the celestial hierarchies, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominions, Powers, and Authorities; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. The Old Testament prophets are: David with the harp, Moses with the Tables of the Law, Abraham with the knife, Noah with the ark, Samuel with a sceptre, and Solomon with a church. The eight vacant niches should contain figures of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Elijah, Melchizedek, Enoch, Job, Daniel, and Jeremiah. The tier with the Apostles observes this order: On the northern turret St. Jude with a halberd, St. Simon Zelotes with a saw, St. Andrew with the cross that bears his name, St. Thomas with a builder's square; on the north buttress St. Peter with the keys; on the southern buttress St. Paul with a sword ; on the southern turret St. James the Less with a club, St. James the Greater with a pilgrim's staff, St. Bartholomew with the knife of his martyrdom and St. Matthias with a lance.

Another figure on the north side of the north-west turret, for some time assumed to be St. Christopher, is now assigned to St. Birinus, or possibly with more truth to St. Nicholas, who had an altar dedicated to him, "probably just at the back of this spot."

On the apex of the west front is an ancient carving of a bird on a scroll, which has puzzled many specialists. Mr. Armfield believes it to be intended for a dove, the emblem of the Holy Spirit, in a scroll to typify The Word, and thus with the "Majesty" near, to be a representation of the three persons of the Trinity, in a mode in accordance with English taste.

This porch, sometimes called the Galilee, was possibly a place where penitents met, and from which they were expelled from the church on Ash-Wednesday until Maundy Thursday. Externally, although of exquisite proportions, it has no very important details, yet its pinnacles deserve notice; but the interior is very beautiful, the walls have sunk panelling, a base arcade of foliated arches, and in the upper tier large foliated circles with sub-arches, each comprising two trefoiled arches with quatrefoil heads. Mr. G.E. Street, who thoroughly appreciated this particular period of English Gothic as his work at the New Law Courts proves, just before his death restored this part of the cathedral admirably.

Another porch, formerly the entrance to the north transept, removed by Wyatt for the most trivial reason, is now in the grounds of the college which occupies the site of the secular buildings belonging to the church of St. Edmund, founded in 1268.

The fronts of the main transepts show four stories, the two lower being divided into three bays by buttresses, and flanked by pinnacled buttresses at each side. The doors that had a ritual use have long since been walled up both on the north and south sides. A triplet window is in the lower stage, three-light windows with quatrefoil heads occupying the second, while the third has an arcade of six lancets below a floriated circle flanked by sunk panels and quatrefoils. The windows in the gable consist of two lesser windows, two-light, with quatrefoil heads, beneath a large octofoil, the whole grouped with blank panels at the side, beneath a cinquefoil moulding. The aisle has flying buttresses reaching to the clerestory, and good angle-pinnacles. The choir transept has no dividing buttresses, and a different grouping of windows. In the lower stage is a triple lancet; there is a group of three two-light windows in the story above, and in the upper one an arcade of four lancets grouped under a comprising arch with a quatrefoil in the head. The gable is lighted by a triplet window flanked with blind lancets, and terminates in a cross.

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.

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 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.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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."

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 the hours of the year; so that all Europe affords not such an almanac of architecture. Once walking in this church 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.'"

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.

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.

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.

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