Before descending to the Crypt we may remark that the Interior must have fully emphasised the sense of majestic beauty produced by the Exterior. The long perspective eastward from the West Door, flanked on either side by the arcading and terminating with a glimpse of the rose window over the choir screen, as depicted in Dugdale, leaves nothing to be desired.
The Crypt or Shrouds.—The crypt was underneath the eight eastern bays of the choir, and was about 170 feet in length.[48] The entrance was from the churchyard on the north side, and the gloom was lit up by basement windows both at the sides and east end. An additional row of piers down the centre supported the choir pavement above; and the whole undercroft may best be described as of eight arches in length and four in breadth, the arches springing from engaged columns and the vaulting quadripartite.
The mouldings of the clustered columns were plain rounds and hollows, and everything throughout appears to have been uniform and of the same date. The four western bays, rather more than half, formed the parish church of St. Faith; the eastern part the Jesus Chapel, which, after the suppression of the Guild, was added to St. Faith's. These two parts were separated by a wooden screen, and over the door was an image of Jesus, and underneath the inscription:
"Jesus our God and Saviour
To us and ours be Gouernour."
These remarks about the Jesus Chapel, be it noted, date only from the reign of Henry VI., by whom the Guild was incorporated, and the members of which held high festival on the days of the Transfiguration and of the Name of Jesus.
At the south-west corner of St. Faith's, but outside, was the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, and near this were the three Chapels of St. Anne, St. Sebastian, and St. Radegund. Dugdale gives a list of sixteen of the more noted tombs. They include that of William Lyly, the first master of Colet's famous foundation. Had his bones not been disturbed by Wren's workmen, they could still have been found underneath the arcading due south-west from Dean Milman's tomb.[49] To Lyly's memory his son George, Prebendary of Cantlers, also placed a tablet in the nave above.
Having mentioned our last chapel and altar, it may here be added that the records enumerate not less than twenty chapels and three dozen altars altogether. Besides the Guild of Jesus there were four others—All Souls', the Annunciation, St. Catherine's, and the Minstrels—and these do not seem to include the oldest of all, that founded by Ralph de Diceto in 1197, which met four times a year to celebrate the mass of the Holy Ghost. We now go on to the surrounding buildings.
THE PRECINCTS.
St. Gregory's, in reality part of the cathedral with the Lollards' Tower common to both, is mentioned as a parish church in early documents. Pulled down and rebuilt, in the plates of Hollar it appears as an uninteresting building, hiding from view the four west bays of the south aisle of the nave. After the Fire the parish was united for ecclesiastical purposes to St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, and both have since been by a further union annexed to St. Martin, Ludgate Hill. The Petty Canons were parsons or rectors—that is to say, the income of the benefice was devoted to their support, and so continued until their suppression as a corporation. The Bishop's Palace was to the north-west, and joined the tower. We know nothing of its architecture, and it is last mentioned in Inigo Jones' Report of 1631.
Pardon Church Haugh, or Pardonchirche Haw, on the north side and east of the palace, was not a church at all, and was situated probably in St. Gregory's parish. How the "Haw," or small enclosure, received its name is doubtful: there may have been some unrecorded connection with pardons or indulgences. Here Thomas à Becket's father, who was Portreeve, built his chapel, rebuilt by Dean Thomas Moore, whose executors added three chantries. The Haugh was environed by a cloister, and the tombs in this part traditionally exceeded, both in number and workmanship, those in the cathedral, but this is all we know about them. In the cloister was the picture of the Dance of Death. Death, represented by a skeleton, leading away all sorts and conditions of mankind, beginning with Pope and Emperor. The accompanying verse of Dean John Lydgate, monk of Bury (or his translation from the French), was as gruesome as the picture. Somewhere here the Petty Canons had their common hall. Near the cloister, and on the east side, was Walter Sheryngton's Library; and adjacent to the north-west corner of the neighbouring transept, his chapel with its two chantries. East of the Haugh and about opposite the north point of the transept, was the Charnel, a chapel with a warden and three chantries. Underneath was a crypt or vault for the decent reception of any bones that might be disinterred, and hence the name.