Earl Randle lived long enough to see the boy king Henry the Third dismiss his guardians and rule on his own account. Almost his last act was to refuse to allow the clergy of Cheshire to pay the tenth part of their incomes to the pope to aid him in his private wars. In 1232 he died, and was buried with his forefathers in the Abbey Church of Chester.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHURCHES OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The greatest churches which the Normans planned were on such a scale that they could not be finished in the lives of their designers. The work was carried on more or less continuously by the builders and architects who came after them. But, as time went on, various improvements were made in the art of building, and new fashions came into being, and the original plans had often to be altered to meet the growing needs of the day, or to allow the newest features of style to be introduced.
The interior of S. John's Church, Chester, will show you some of the changes of style which were taking place in the early part of the thirteenth century. The two rows of pointed arches over the circular headed arches of the nave tell us that by the time the massive Norman piers and arches were finished, an entirely different form of arch was coming into fashion.
The pointed arch was first used when Norman and Saxon had settled down peaceably side by side. From the fusing of the two nations, the English people grew in strength and power. Norman baron and Saxon peasant had combined to wrest from a wicked king the Great Charter of freedom for the English people. Hence the new style is appropriately called Early English.
The work of church building had often been interrupted. During the civil war of Stephen's reign, the building of churches was almost at a standstill; the Crusades, by drawing large numbers of people from the country, also checked the progress of the work. The raids of the Welsh often destroyed a half-built Cheshire church. But from the time of Magna Charta the erection of sacred buildings went forward apace, and was continued with even greater zeal and activity through the long reign of Henry the Third.
Ruins of S. John's, Chester
Change from Norman round arch to pointed arch
The pointed arch was the principal feature of the new style, which is, therefore, sometimes called the Pointed style. But we must look carefully at the shape and details before we can be quite sure that an arch belongs to this period of building.