THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.
After Hollar.[ToList]
The Choir.—As our ancestors looked eastward from under the central tower, both aisles of the choir were completely hidden from view by the height of the blank wall. The choir screen in the centre was of less altitude, had four niches for statues on either side, and a fine Pointed doorway in the centre of three orders of arches. The plates are of a date too late to show any rood. Entering through this door was the choir of twelve bays. Stephen Wren implies that the whole of this magnificent member was completed by 1240;[46] but much of the architecture belonged to a somewhat later date, and the prints are corroborated by numerous documents.[47] The extension eastward on the site of Old St. Faith's must have almost amounted to a rebuilding. Where did this extension begin, and where did the choir of 1240 end? Wren noticed that the intercolumnar spacing was less irregular to the east. Mr. Longman points out that the clustered pillars towards the west differed from the others, as did their capitals and the triforium arcading, while the fifth arch-space was greater than all the rest. Here we have the original east end.
Westward, the square fronts of the pillars were left bare; eastward they were covered with clustered shafts, and the springers which supported the vaulting were continued to the ground. Westward, moreover, the triforium arcading differed from that to the east, and was occasionally even left blank.
There remains, however, this peculiarity, that according to the prints the main aisle windows were uniform throughout, and with Geometrical tracery. The vaulting differed from the nave in this, that the diagonals, where they met the longitudinal rib, had bosses, and three single cross ribs alternated instead of one. The longitudinal rib was again unbroken throughout.
That part of the Choir devoted to public worship was limited to the first seven bays, of which the three to the east were on a higher level. The stalls of the dignitaries extended four bays, and shut out the aisles. On the north side the organ occupied the third bay, and on the south the bishop's cathedral throne, as now, was at the end. The Chapel of St. Mary, or Lady Chapel, was east of the presbytery at the extreme end, with St. George's to the north and St. Dunstan's south; and the whole of the space outside the presbytery—north, south, east—was taken up by some of those monuments which contributed so much to the beauty and interest of the interior, and they even encroached inside. Dugdale gives some seventy to eighty. Between the altar and the Lady Chapel was St. Erkenwald's noted and richly decorated shrine, and the tombs of Bishop Braybroke and Dean Nowell. Hard by in the north aisle slept John of Gaunt under his magnificent canopy; and supporter of Wycliffe though he was, his tomb was rifled and defiled during the Commonwealth. Near at hand was the monument of Sebba, King of the East Saxons—a convert of Erkenwald, from whom he received the cowl. In the disgraceful chaos after the Fire, the body of Sebba, says Dugdale "was found curiously enbalmed in sweet odours and clothed in rich robes." Here also could be read the unflattering epitaph over the monument of Ethelred the Unready; and hard by the tomb of John of Gaunt, in December, 1641, the corpse of another Fleming by birth was interred. Sir Anthony Van Dyck had spent the last nine years of his life in England at the invitation of Charles, and this great pupil of Rubens was probably the last buried in the choir before the Civil War. The Lady Chapel contained a wooden tablet to Sir Philip Sidney, with the inscription:
"England, Netherlands, the Heavens and the Arts,
The Souldiers and the World, have made six parts
Of noble Sidney; for none will suppose
That a small heap of stones can Sidney enclose.
His body hath England, for she it bred;
Netherlands his blood, in her defence shed;
The Heavens have his soule, the Arts his fame,
All Souldiers the grief, the World his good name."
Another wooden tablet in the north aisle was to the memory of his father-in-law, the statesman Walsingham; and numerous other statesmen, nobles, divines, and lawyers were buried, or at least remembered. We can but regret that these are now things of the past, and gone, with the exception of the effigy of Dean Donne—as remarkable as the man himself—and a few mutilated remains. Even Colet's is gone.