About this time the monks resolved to have a central tower and to rebuild the nave. While all this work was going on, the church was desecrated by the troops of Simon de Montfort. A chronicler relates that
“They entered the church of St. Andrew on the day on which the Lord hung on the cross for sinners. Armed knights on their horses, coursing around the altars, dragged away with impious hands some who fled for refuge thither, the gold and silver and other precious things being with violence carried off thence. The buildings were turned into horses’ stables, and everywhere filled with the dung of animals and the defilement of dead bodies.”
In 1343 the central tower was completed by Bishop Hamo de Hythe, who hung in its wooden spire four bells, named Dunstan, Paulinus, Ythamar and Lanfranc. Bishop Hamo is said to have reconstructed in alabaster and marble the shrines of Paulinus and Ythamar. To the middle of the Fourteenth Century belongs also the beautiful doorway leading into the Chapter-House and Library.
In the Fifteenth Century, the clerestory and vaulting of the north-choir-aisle were finished and Perpendicular windows were placed in the nave aisles. The great west window was inserted about 1470, and the whole of the Norman clerestory was taken off and a new clerestory and a new wooden roof were put up. The northern pinnacle of the west gable was also rebuilt. About 1490, the Lady-Chapel was erected in the corner between the south transept and the nave.
In 1540 the Cathedral surrendered to the King; and became known as the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1558 the body of Cardinal Pole rested here one night on its way to Canterbury. An eyewitness speaks of
“the funeral pompe which trulie was great and answerable both to his birth and calling, with store of burning torches and mourning weedes. At what time his coffin, being brought into the church, was covered with a cloth of black velvet, with a great cross of white satten over all the length and bredth of the same, in the midst of which cross his Cardinal’s hat was placed.”
The church suffered from the Puritans in 1642.
Samuel Pepys speaks of repairs in 1661. More were made in 1742-43. In 1749, the steeple was rebuilt. A new organ was acquired in 1791; and at the close of the Eighteenth Century the upper part of Gundulf’s tower was taken down.
Throughout the Nineteenth Century repairs and restorations were constantly made. The glass chiefly consists of memorials to heroes of the wars of the Nineteenth Century.
The best approach is from the High Street through the College Gate, which marks the entrance to the Precincts, or Green Church Haw. This is also known as Chertseys, or Cemetery Gate, which lovers of Dickens remember as Jasper’s Gateway; for Cloisterham of Edwin Drood is Rochester. The Deanery Gate dating from the reign of Edward III. was formerly the Sacristy Gate. The Priors’ Gate dates from the Fourteenth Century.