THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF
WELLS
A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC
AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
EPISCOPAL SEE
BY THE REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A.
WITH FORTY-SIX
ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899
First Published October 1898
Second Edition revised October 1899
W.H. WHITE AND CO. LTD.
RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH
GENERAL PREFACE
This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitorsto the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustratedguide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writerhas been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledgeand scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæologyand History, and yet not too technical in language for the useof an ordinary visitor or tourist.
To specify all the authorities which have been made use ofin each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. Butamongst the general sources of information which have beenalmost invariably found useful are:—(1) the great countyhistories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogyand local records, is generally recognised; (2) thenumerous papers by experts which appear from time totime in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and ArchæologicalSocieties; (3) the important documents made accessible inthe series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-knownworks of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals;and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to theCathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to whichthe reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail,especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees.
GLEESON WHITE,
E.F. STRANGE,
Editors of the Series
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The writer about cathedrals nowadays is one who, reapingwhere he has not sown, and gathering where he has notstrawed, is indebted for most that he says to the patientlabours of other and wiser men. Nowhere does one feel thismore than at Wells. The admirable Somerset ArchæologicalSociety has gone on accumulating information about thecathedral for more years than the present writer has lived.Professor Freeman produced twenty-eight years ago, in his"History of the Cathedral Church of Wells," a little bookwhich has since been a model for all works of the kind, andof which one can still say that no one can understand all thatis contained in the word "cathedral" unless he has read it.Yet since that book was written much fresh material has beendiscovered, and the theories then held as to the building ofthe cathedral have been in great measure disproved. ToCanon C.M. Church, in his "Chapters in the Early Historyof Wells," and his papers read before the Somerset Society, weare indebted for most valuable statements of the new historicaldiscoveries, and to his untiring kindness I am myself beholdento a greater extent than I can express.
Wells so abounds in interesting detail, that the exigencies ofspace have made it necessary to c