room. It may have been inserted when certain "defects" in the church were made good in 1342, principally at the cost of bishop Hamo of Hythe.* The two principal figures represent the Christian and Jewish Dispensations, but the female figure of the Church was "restored" by Mr. Cottingham with a bearded bishop's head! (FIG. 33.) By the exertions of Miss Louisa Twining the lady's head has lately been replaced. The figure of the Synagogue is mostly original. The four figures above, two on either side, are accompanied by most interesting representations of medieval studies with reading desks. The figures are supposed to be those of the Evangelists, or the Doctors of the Church, but there are no distinctive emblems to indicate them. In the apex of the arch, above the singing angels, is the little naked "soul" of the donor or builder.

To the same work as this doorway belong the two windows with flowing tracery inserted on either side of it. A similar window seems once to have existed in the corresponding aisle of the north-east transept, where John of Sheppey, who was prior under bishop Hamo of Hythe, afterwards founded a chantry at the altar there.

In 1343, during the episcopate of Hamo of Hythe, "the bishop caused the new steeple of the church of Rochester to be carried up higher with stones and timbers, and to be covered with lead. He also placed in the same four new bells whose names are Dunstan, Paulinus, Ithamar, and Lanfranc."‡

So far as can be gathered from old prints and engravings the tower had already been carried up high enough to receive the four main roofs against it, and this stage seems to have been ornamented with an arcade of tall trefoiled arches.

* "Anno regni regis Edwardi [III.] xvj (1342) Episcopus Refectorium. Dormitorum. et alios defectus in ecclesia sumptibus suis pro majori parte fecit reparare." Cott. MS. Faustina B. 5, f. 88b; and Wharton, Anglia Sacra, i. 375. My friend Mr. C. R. Peers suggests that possibly the contrast between Christianity and Judaism is continued here, and that the two lower figures, both of which have veiled heads, are Jewish doctors, and the two upper, with bare heads, Christian doctors.

"Anno regni regis Edwardi [III.] xviij (1343) Episcopus tunc Campanile novum ecclesie Roffensis petris atque lignis alcius fecit levare et illud plumbo cooperire. necnon et quatuor campanas novas in eodem ponere. quorum [sic] nomina sunt hec. Dunstanus. Paulinus. Ithamarus. atque Lamfrancus." Cott. MS. Faustina B. 5, f. 89; and Wharton, Anglia Sacra, i. 375.

Bishop Hamo now added an upper story, capped by a wooden spire covered with lead. Both appear to have undergone extensive renewal (see post), but the main lines of the steeple were retained until 1826, when Mr. Cottingham took down the spire, and cased and otherwise altered the tower into its present form. As the tower was known as " six-bell steeple in 1545,* there must have been placed in it, besides the four new bells given by the bishop, two others, perhaps those that formerly hung in the south tower.

The next work in point of date was the raising of the outer wall of the north aisle of the quire to form a clerestory, and the erection of a new stone vault of four bays with longitudinal, transverse, diagonal, and wall ribs, with carved bosses. Of the four windows of the clerestory the first is of two lights with quatrefoil above, the others of three lights, of two patterns, with late-Decorated tracery. Of about the same period are the three-light windows, with slender tracery verging on Perpendicular, that are inserted in the side walls of the presbytery in place of the plainer early-English lights. These and the sedilia were probably put in during the episcopate of Thomas Brinton, 1373—1389.

During the fifteenth century various alterations were made in the nave. In the north aisle the first five Norman windows were replaced by larger pointed ones of early-Perpendicular character, of two lights with a sexfoil in the head. In the sixth bay was also inserted a doorway with a square-headed window over it, also of two lights. The windows in the south aisle are poor modern things, and it is impossible to say what they have succeeded.

Still later the Norman clerestory of the nave, which from the bulging and declination of the existing walls had evidently been for some time in a dangerous state, was taken down and rebuilt in the new manner, and a large eight-light window inserted in the Norman front.

Professor Willis, in his notes already referred to, accurately describes the nave clerestory as "a late work, consisting of a flat wall with four-centred windows of the plainest and meanest character, the same in number as the pier arches

* See Thorpe, Custumale Roffense, 174.

below them, but awkwardly arranged, so that no one window stands above the centre of a pier arch, each being more or less to the west of it." The new clerestory, unlike its Norman predecessor, has no wall passage. With the old clerestory the Norman pinnacle on the north-west angle of the nave was taken down and a plain octagonal turret set up in its stead,* and the flat Norman ceiling and its outer roof were replaced by an open timber roof, also nearly flat. These new works were no doubt largely assisted by bequests of two of the bishops, and other pious folk. Thus bishop John Langedon, by his will dated 2nd March 1433-4, left £20 "ad reparacionem tecti navis ecclesie nostre Roffensis."+ Thomas Brown, bishop of Norwich, but of Rochester from May 1435 to September 1436, by his will dated 28th October 1455, also left £20" ad fabricam navis ecclesie cathedralis Ruffensis . . . Proviso quod opere fabrice hujusmodi aliquod memoriale fiat per sculpturas armorum meorum et nominis mei. Ita quod intuentes magis alliciantur ad orandum pro me."‡ There are no traces of the good bishop's arms, but they may have been painted on the shields carried by the angels carved on the roof corbels, which now bear the Elizabethan arms of the city. Among other bequests are also the following:

1444. Thomas Glover alias Tanner, of Strode :

"ad dimidiam fenestram in corpore ecclesie Cathedralis Roffensis de novo vitriandam. xxx." (i. 31.) §

1449. John Bamburgh:

To be buried in the cathedral church.

"ad fabricam unius fenestre in navi ecclesie Cathedralis Roffensis. lx"." (i. 87.)

1452. John Pylmore:

To be buried in the cathedral church.

"fabrice unius fenestre in eadem ecclesia. xls." (ii. 14.)

*This interesting piece of architectural history, an example of fifteenthcentury restoration, was destroyed during the recent "restoration" of the west front (despite the protests of the late Mr. Granville Leveson Gower, V.P.S.A., and the writer) in order that it might be replaced by a nineteenth-century mockery of the Norman pinnacle it had superseded.

† Reg. Chichele, i. f. 462.

Reg. Stafford, f. 132.

§ These and other references to extracts from wills relate to the volumes, now removed to Somerset House, of the Will Registers of the Consistory Court of Rochester. I am indebted for most of such extracts to my friend Mr. Leland L. Duncan, F.S.A.

Mr. Denne also quotes a sentence passed in 1447 upon a vicar of Lamberhurst, in the consistory court, for gross misconduct, "quod processionaliter eat in eccl. cath. et unam fenestram faciat vitriari sumptibus suis," etc.*

Another fifteenth-century alteration was the substitution of a wide window of nine lights, with a transom, for the three upper lancets of the east front, and the addition of a low screen of stone, pierced with quatrefoils, in front of it to guard the clerestory wall-passage. This window was destroyed by Sir G. Gilbert Scott, who "restored" the three lancets, and the quatrefoil screen was then placed in front of the west window, but it has since been taken down and deposited with other lumber in the crypt.

The last addition made to the already singular ground plan of the church was the building on to the west side of the south transept of a late-Perpendicular quire of three bays. It was intended to have been covered with a fan-vault of six compartments carried by two central columns, but that part of the design was never carried out. It opens into the transept by a wide arch with massive jamb shafts, but towards the aisle there are three tall arches, like windows without tracery, with the lower parts closed by stone screens. The windows are each of three lights with a transom, and traceried heads of somewhat curious pattern. This extension has in modern times been called the Lady Chapel, but, as will presently be shewn, the south transept was actually the chapel of Our Lady, and this was added to form a quire to it. An earlier claim that this was the infirmary chapel, which was also dedicated in honour of Our Lady, was made from lack of knowledge of the uses and position of the monastic infirmitorium or infirmaria.

In the accounts of William Freselle, prior, for 1512-13 is a payment of 30s., "Johanni Birche kerver ultra vj xiij iiijd sibi solutos ultimo anno pro complanacione nove capelle et pro factura desse in capella Domini Prioris."+ The nova

* "Memorials of the Cathedral Church of Rochester," by the Rev. Samuel Denne, M.A. and F.S.A., in Thorpe, Custumale Roffense, 178, note [p].

The originals of this and some other account rolls are at present mislaid, but transcripts of them exist among the Thorpe MSS. in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, whence the above extract is taken (MS. 178-7.)