“For though a man in their mynster a masse wolde heren,
His sight shal so be set on sundrye werkes,
The penons and the pornels and poyntes of sheldes
Withdrawen his devotion and dusken his heart.”
Piers Ploughman’s Vision.
[72] The chapter-houses attached to the cathedrals of York, Salisbury, and Wells, are octagonal; those of Hereford and Lincoln, decagonal; Lichfield, polygonal; Worcester is circular. All these were built by secular canons.
[73] There are only two exceptions hitherto observed: that of the Benedictine Abbey of Westminster, which is polygonal, and that of Thornton Abbey, of regular canons, which is octagonal.
[74] And at Norwich it appears to have had an eastern apse. See ground-plan in Mr. Mackenzie E. C. Walcott’s “Church and Conventual Arrangement,” p. 85.
[75] Piers Ploughman describes the chapter-house of a Benedictine convent:—
“There was the chapter-house, wrought as a great church,
Carved and covered and quaintly entayled [sculptured];
With seemly selure [ceiling] y-set aloft,
As a parliament house y-painted about.”
[76] In the “Vision of Piers Ploughman” one of the characters complains that if he commits any fault—
“They do me fast fridays to bread and water,
And am challenged in the chapitel-house as I a child were;”
and he is punished in a childish way, which is too plainly spoken to bear quotation.