England of My Heart : Spring

by Edward Hutton

St Richard was not only a popular hero and saint both before and after his death, to him and his shrine is due very much that is most lovely in the Cathedral, and it was he who really reformed the chapter there.

Chichester had always been served by a dean and chapter of secular canons. The canons were originally, of course, resident, but the chapter had always been poorly endowed, and as time went on residence was actually discouraged. Perhaps then arose the canon's vicars who represented the canons and chanted in choir. The vicars choral were, however, not incorporated until 1465; they were assisted by ten or twelve boy choristers, whose chief business it was, I suppose, to sing the Lady-Mass in prick-song. Beside this company of canons, vicars and choristers directly serving the cathedral, a number of chaplains served the various altars and chantries within it, which at the Dissolution numbered fifteen. St Richard not only reorganised the cathedral staff, but also established the "use" of Chichester, which he ordered to be followed throughout the diocese. This "use" was followed until 1444, when, by order of the archbishop, that of Sarum, was established.

With the Reformation, of course, everything but the Cathedral itself and the form of its administration and government was swept away. Nor was it long before even what Henry and Elizabeth had spared was demolished. In 1643 Chichester was besieged by Waller and taken after ten days. His soldiers, we read, "pulled down the idolatrous images from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, "Harke! how the organs goe"; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls." Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see how much loveliness remains.

No cathedral, I think, and certainly no lesser church in England is so completely representative of the whole history of our architecture as is Chichester. In Salisbury we have the most uniform building in our island, in Chichester the most various, for it possesses work in every style, from the time of the Saxons to that of Sir Gilbert Scott.

It was Bishop Ralph who before 1108 built the church we know, and completed it save upon the west front, where only the lower parts of the south-western tower are Norman. But work earlier than his, Saxon work, may be seen in the south aisle of the choir, where there are two carved stones representing Christ with Martha and Mary and the Raising of Lazarus. Bishop Ralph's church was badly damaged by fire in 1114, and it would seem that the four western bays of the nave date from the following rebuilding and restoration. Then in 1187 the Cathedral was burnt again, and Bishop Seffrid vaulted it for the first time—till then only the aisles had been vaulted—building great buttresses to support this and re-erecting the inner arcade of the clerestory. Apparently the apse and ambulatory which till then had closed the great church, on the east had been destroyed in the fire. At any rate Bishop Seffrid replaced them with the exquisite retro-choir we have, and square eastern chapels. He did the same with the old apses of the transepts, and he recased the choir with Caen stone, using Purbeck very freely and with beautiful effect. All this work is very late Transitional, the very last of the Norman or Romanesque.

Then in the thirteenth century, which was to see St Richard Bishop of Chichester, the beautiful south porch was built, a pure Early English work, the north porch almost as lovely and of the same date, and later the sacristy beside the south porch. In St Richard's own day the south- west tower was built as we see it. The Norman tower over the crossing was destroyed and a lighter one built in its place as we see, and the galilee was set up before the western doors. Then, too, the chapels were built out from the nave aisles, upon the north those of St Thomas, St Anna, and St Edmund, upon the south, those of St George and St Clement, things unique in England, and all largely works of the second half of the thirteenth century and the early Decorated style, which indeed give to the Cathedral, with its dark Norman nave, all its charm, its variety and delight.

Not much later than this transformation of the nave, though the nave itself was not touched, was the rebuilding or rather the lengthening and transformation of the Lady Chapel. Fundamentally this beautiful Decorated chapel is a Norman work, transformed into a Transitional one, to be glorified and transfigured in the very end of the thirteenth century, and now spoilt as we see. All this was done either by St Richard himself, or with the money gathered at his shrine.

In the first half of the fourteenth century little would appear to have been built, save that certain beautiful windows, as that in the end of the south aisle of the choir and that in the south transept, with Bishop Langton's tomb beneath it, were inserted, and the fine stalls were built in the choir.

In the Perpendicular period the detached campanile was erected to the north-west and the Cathedral was crowned by the great spire, a noble work lost to us in our own time and replaced by the copy of Sir Gilbert Scott. Later still, in the sixteenth century, a great stone screen, now destroyed, was erected across the church, with chantries, and the cloister was built. There, over a doorway on the south, is a shield, with the arms of Henry VII., and two figures kneeling before the Blessed Virgin, attended by an angel holding a rose.

A few tombs of interest or beauty, which the Puritans failed to destroy, remain to this great Catholic building. These are the tombs of St Richard, of which I have spoken, in the north transept against the choir, the restored Arundel Chantry and tomb of Richard Fitzalan in the north aisle of the nave, and the exquisite Decorated tomb in the chapel of St John Baptist at the eastern end of this aisle; little beside.