2. The four eastern bays of the nave and its aisles. Some of these may belong to the first period, though later than the choir: they are more advanced in the foliage, and teem with grotesque birds and beasts. Some, however, of the caps in these bays are of quite different character (p. [80]); they contain genre subjects of perfectly naturalistic treatment, very different to the St. Edmund of the north porch capital, but exactly similar to the figure caps of the transepts. They must therefore have been carved later than the death of Saint William Bytton.
3. The western bays of the nave. These, which are of much less interest, belong to the period of Jocelin's reconstruction (1220-1242). They are characteristic examples of rich stiff-leaf foliage, freer than that of the earlier work, but much less varied and without either human figures or grotesques.
4. On the eastern range of transept piers. These would seem also to come within Jocelin's period, with the exception of the third pier of the south transept.
5. On the western range of transept piers (p. [89]), with which must be classed those later caps already referred to in the nave under group 2. Their date is settled by the fact that they abound in unmistakable representations of the toothache. Now Saint William Bytton died in 1274, and his tomb became immediately famous for cures of this malady. In 1286 the chapter decided to repair the old work, no doubt because the offerings at his tomb had brought money to the church; this part of the church had been damaged ever since the fall of the tholus in 1248. The caps must therefore have been carved during the episcopate of Burnell (1275-1292). Mr Irvine, indeed, suggests that the figure of the woman taking a thorn ("bur") from her foot may contain a reference to Bishop Burnell. The undercroft passage, with its curious corbels and bosses, was probably also a part of the old work then completed, as it contains one "toothache" head. Although the introduction of such finished figure-subjects into the capitals suggests this lateness of date, they are still completely Early English in style, and a great gulf is fixed between them and the Decorated caps of the chapter-house begun by Burnell's successor, William de Marchia (1293-1302).
The Font is of peculiar interest as the one surviving relic of Bishop Robert's Norman church. Whether it also stood in the still earlier Saxon church is still an open question: it is as likely to be of pre-Norman as of Norman date, and the fact that whatever ornament there may have been in the spandrels of its shallow arcades has been hacked off, makes conjecture unsafe. Its unusual position in the south transept may be due to the Bishop Giso's quasi-conventual buildings on the south of the church, which would have made this transept the most common entrance to the cathedral at the time of the Conquest. A Jacobean cover rests upon the font, and with it forms a charming combination of pre-Gothic and post-Gothic Romanesque design.