V. Tudor.—Things seem to have improved towards the end of the fifteenth century. Prior Gondebour painted the ceiling of the choir and the backs of the stalls; and to him are due the beautiful screens in the south transept chapel. He also built a grand barn with a magnificent roof of beams nearly two feet thick: much of it is still standing. The refectory also is due to him; it has a pretty pulpit for the reader, as at Beaulieu and Chester. The Gate Tower or Abbey Gate House was rebuilt in 1528.
VI. Renaissance.—Launcelot Salkeld, the last Prior and the first Dean of Carlisle, added the charming Renaissance screen on the north side of the tower.
VII. In the seventeenth century the western bays of the Norman nave were pulled down, during the Civil War, to provide materials for the repair of the city walls and guardhouses.
The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, Chester.
FROM SOUTH-EAST.
The cathedral of Chester had originally an establishment of Secular Canons (see Southwell and Wells.) Its patron saint was St. Werburgh, a kinswoman of St. Ethelreda of Ely. In the eleventh century it was refounded as a Benedictine monastery by that great noble Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, who ruled the Welsh Marshes with almost regal sway. Henry VIII. made it the seat of a bishopric, which, though but a part of the ancient Mercian diocese of Lichfield, extended northwards into Yorkshire and Westmorland. Nowadays the diocese and county of Chester are coextensive.