More important even than the architecture is the ancient glass. Canterbury and York are the great treasure-houses of stained-glass: Canterbury for early thirteenth-century glass, York for fourteenth-century glass. The student should take with him to Canterbury Mr. Lewis Day’s work on Stained Glass. Three of the windows in the Trinity chapel illustrate the miracles of St. Thomas. On the north side, in the lower group of the eastern window, is the story of a child (1) who falls into the Medway, (2) the other boys tell his parents, (3) the body is drawn out of the water, cætera desunt. In the next group is the story of a boy who was brought to life by a draught of water mixed with the saint’s blood. But the father omitted to pay the offerings promised to the saint. In the central medallion another son lies dead, struck by the sword of St. Thomas, who is seen through the ceiling. In another group a woman is being flagellated by way of penance. Two other windows describe miracles of healing: in a medallion in the lower part of the western window a madman comes up, “amens accedit,” beaten with sticks and bound; in the next he is cured, “sanus recedit.” In one is the only representation extant of the later shrine; the martyr, in a mauve vestment, appears in a vision to Benedict below. On the shrine is the box, as described by Erasmus, which contained the archbishop’s sudary. In the east window of the corona is portrayed Christ’s Passion; in the two windows of the north aisle are types and antitypes from the Old and New Testaments; among them the three Magi, all asleep in one bed. The circular window in the north-east transept also contains the original glass; and many fragments are seen elsewhere.
SOUTH OF CHOIR
III. Lancet.—For this period (1190-1245) there is nothing to show except the north wall of the Cloister, and a lovely doorway in the south-east corner of the Cloister, cruelly hacked about by the vandals who built the cloister-vault.
IV. To the Geometrical period (1245-1315) belongs the Chapter-house up to the sills of the windows, and the screens north and south of the choir. A fine window with Kentish tracery was inserted in St. Anselm’s chapel.
V. Of Curvilinear work (1315-1360) there is no trace except some diaper-work in the choir, which may have adorned the shrine of St. Dunstan, who was buried at the south end of the high altar.
EAST TRANSEPT.
VI. Perpendicular (1360-1485).—At length Canterbury woke up, and removed Lanfranc’s nave and transept, which must have looked shockingly low and mean for the last two hundred years in juxtaposition with the stately choir. The new nave, built between 1379 and 1400, is very fine, but somehow no one seems to be a very ardent admirer of it. Its proportions are not good: Winchester nave is about the same height, but is 70 feet longer; York choir is loftier, and is 25 feet longer. But the gravest fault is in the internal elevation. The architect has recognised the value of tallness of pier-arch; but to get this exceptional height of pier and arch, he has sacrificed not only triforium, but clerestory as well. It is fatal to a Gothic design to minimise the clerestory. The choirs of Gloucester, Norwich, Cirencester, are the types to be followed; not the naves of Southwell or Lichfield.
To this period belong also the Black Prince’s chantry, and the screens and reredos of the Lady chapel, all in the crypt; the upper part of the chapter-house, from which all aspect of antiquity has recently been removed; the cloisters; St. Michael’s, or the Warrior’s chapel, which replaced the eastern apse of Lanfranc’s southern transept, and which has a complicated lierne vault similar in character to that of the north transept of Gloucester cathedral; the tomb and chantry of Henry IV., with fan-vaulting, 1433; the western screen at the entrance of the choir; the south-west tower; Deans’ chapel (Lady chapel), which replaced the eastern apse of Lanfranc’s northern transept (1450), and which has fan-vaulting.