Professor Willis's conjecture represents the largest or most liberal interpretation yet placed by any antiquary upon the passage from Leland—which, it may be said, is the only known contemporary evidence of this work of the last two Abbots.
Parker,[4] who reviewed the whole subject of the plan in his work for the Somerset Archæological Society (see his article in their Proceedings for 1880), does not support Willis's conclusions, inclining rather to the view that the Edgar Chapel was in the south transept, to the east of the nave, but it is within the writer's knowledge that Professor Freeman believed that the original quire, which, before Monington's addition of a fifth and sixth bay, must have been shorter by some 39 feet, was furnished with a large eastern chapel, probably a Lady-chapel, and that this may have been of quite considerable dimensions and even co-extensive in total length with the plan as given by Willis. But this view does not appear to have gone farther than a mere expression of opinion verbally given at a meeting in the Abbey, and the writer only heard it quoted as a reminiscence some time after the discovery of the Edgar Chapel.
It appears to have been put forward as an explanation of the curious diagram given in Phelps's Somerset, where a plan of the church is published, showing in dotted lines a short projection at the point where Willis shows his chapel, and this is given a semicircular or apsidal end.[5] Phelps calls this the "Lady's Chapel." And in the corner of the same sheet this author gives another long rectangular diagram, again with a semicircular end, which Warner, who reproduces the plan, calls the "Chapel according to its original dimensions." The apse being the constant feature, these additional dimensions would be to the west, and would answer to the difference in the former and the latter dimensions of the quire which Monington lengthened in 1344-5. And it will be clear that some such reasoning may have guided Parker or Freeman to the tentative conclusion mentioned, and have assisted Willis to form his definite theory of a slight prominence in the central chapel of the later retro-quire.
Among the documents which have been recovered whose period is that of the immediate post-Reformation, is one which would have been readily accessible to Willis and others, and which is preserved by Phelps and copied by Warner in his Glastonbury, published in the twenties of the last century. This is a transcript of a report made to Queen Elizabeth by a Commissioner, who was sent to make an inventory of the Abbey buildings, and he gives a series of measurements of the principal parts of the monastery, including the Abbey Church, as to which he says:
"The great church in the Aby was in length 594 as followeth:
The Chapter House, in length, 90 foot.
The Quier, in length, 159 foot; in breadth, 75 foot.
The bodie of the Church, in length, 228 foot.
The Joseph's chapell, in length, 117 foot."
In the seventeenth century we have the bare statements of Hollar and of Hearne, that the total length of the Abbey Church was 580 feet.
All the measures given by the Elizabethan Commissioner are very excessive, and perhaps for that reason, as well as for the confusion of idea suggested by the association of the Chapter-House measure with those of the Church, they have been rejected, or not regarded, by modern antiquaries. In like manner the bare statement of Hollar and Hearne, being without any description of what buildings were to be included in their measure, has not been taken into account.
Professor Willis's review of the probabilities of the plan of the east end seemed conclusive as regards the existence of five chapels in a row on the east wall of the retro-quire, for the construction he places upon William Wyrcestre's description must be admitted to be most reasonable, fortified as it is by the record of Wild's plan (1813), in which the bases of two piers with fragments of wall attached and running eastward are shown in precisely the position required as partitions for the forming of the three central chapels of the five.
These piers had evidently been recently discovered, and are figured in Britton's Architectural Antiquaries, vol. iv., p. 195. But all trace of them has been cleared away, and, as Willis himself says (op. cit., p. 42):
"Unfortunately, the practice in respect to these ruins until the beginning of this century and later was always to remove not merely the wrought stones, but also to eradicate the foundations. And although the remains have been for many years protected from this kind of destruction, THERE IS NO HOPE LEFT OF RECOVERING ANY DETAILS OF PLAN BY EXCAVATIONS." (Capitals mine.—F.B.B.)