[150] Anglia Sacra, i. 569. "Sepultus in presbyterio ecclesiæ Wellensis inter gradus chori et summum altare in tumbâ de alabastro, cui imago supponitur valde conforma figuræ illius."
[151] Godwin, p. 302. "His body was buried before the high altar under a goodly monument of Alabaster, compassed about with grates of yron. About a 60 yeeres since (for what cause I know not) it was remooved to the North side of the presbytery, but lost his grates by the way."
[152] Somersetshire Archæological Proceedings, xii. 19. "In 1318 receivers were appointed for the tenths, given in aid of the new campanile, and for the oblations to Saint William.... In 1321 we find a grant from the clergy of the Deanery of Taunton in aid of the roofing of the new campanile," meaning, not improbably, a wooden spire. By Saint William is meant Bishop William of March; see p. 107.
[153] Ib., 21. "In 1337 a convocation was summoned to consider, among other matters, the raising of money by the non-residents for paying a debt of 200 li. incurred for the restoration of the greatest part of the fabric. In 1338 another Convocation was summoned, because the church of Wells is so enormously fractured and deformed ('enormiter confracta ... totaliter confracte et enormiter deformate'), that its structure can only be repaired, and with sufficient promptitude, by the common counsel and assistance of its members." This evidently means, as the Professor explains it, the damage done by the weight of the new tower, and the props which we now see are evidently the result of the repairs then ordered.
[154] The likeness had struck myself independently, but I see that Professor Willis (p. 22) quotes the same name as applied by Leland to the props of the same kind afterwards inserted under the central tower at Glastonbury.
[155] Anglia Sacra, i. 570. "Iste ad constructionem occidentalis turris in parte australi Wellensis ecclesiæ duas partes expensarum apposuit; ac pro vitro occidentalis fenestræ ejusdem ecclesiæ centum marcas persolvit; duasque magnas campanas in dictâ turri australi pendentes fieri fecit propriis sumptibus." Godwin (302) adds to the account of the bells, "The bigest of which being cast fower times since I was of this church, now at last serveth for the greatest of a ring, the goodliest for that number (being but five) (I thinke) in England."
[156] Godwin, 304. "It is supposed he was a great benefactor and contributor toward the building of the North-west tower at the West ende of the Church, which his armes fixed upon divers places of the same doo partly shew."
[157] "He built our Library over the Cloysters," says Godwin, in his account of Bubwith, p. 304. But I do not see how this is to be reconciled with what he says in the next page; "He [Beckington] built (as to me at least wise seemeth) the East side of the cloyster."
[158] There are others of the kind, the west front of Exeter for instance, where I suppose that most people would allow that the shape is positively unsightly. The earliest English instance I know of was the Romanesque west front of Malmesbury Abbey. It is now in ruins, owing to the fall of the western tower which was afterwards added. But it is easy to make out that the oldest front had a blank wall between turrets, instead of either towers or the natural endings of the aisles without towers.
[159] This arrangement gives the church of Wells and Rouen a sort of western transept. There is also a western transept at Lincoln and at Peterborough, but it is formed in a different way by a projection beyond the towers.