England of My Heart : Spring eBook

Chichester had always been served by a dean and chapter of secular canons.  The canons were originally, of course, resident, but the chapter had always been poorly endowed, and as time went on residence was actually discouraged.  Perhaps then arose the canon’s vicars who represented the canons and chanted in choir.  The vicars choral were, however, not incorporated until 1465; they were assisted by ten or twelve boy choristers, whose chief business it was, I suppose, to sing the Lady-Mass in prick-song.  Beside this company of canons, vicars and choristers directly serving the cathedral, a number of chaplains served the various altars and chantries within it, which at the Dissolution numbered fifteen.  St Richard not only reorganised the cathedral staff, but also established the “use” of Chichester, which he ordered to be followed throughout the diocese.  This “use” was followed until 1444, when, by order of the archbishop, that of Sarum, was established.

With the Reformation, of course, everything but the Cathedral itself and the form of its administration and government was swept away.  Nor was it long before even what Henry and Elizabeth had spared was demolished.  In 1643 Chichester was besieged by Waller and taken after ten days.  His soldiers, we read, “pulled down the idolatrous images from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, “Harke! how the organs goe”; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls.”  Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see how much loveliness remains.

No cathedral, I think, and certainly no lesser church in England is so completely representative of the whole history of our architecture as is Chichester.  In Salisbury we have the most uniform building in our island, in Chichester the most various, for it possesses work in every style, from the time of the Saxons to that of Sir Gilbert Scott.

It was Bishop Ralph who before 1108 built the church we know, and completed it save upon the west front, where only the lower parts of the south-western tower are Norman.  But work earlier than his, Saxon work, may be seen in the south aisle of the choir, where there are two carved stones representing Christ with Martha and Mary and the Raising of Lazarus.  Bishop Ralph’s church was badly damaged by fire in 1114, and it would seem that the four western bays of the nave date from the following rebuilding and restoration.  Then in 1187 the Cathedral was burnt again, and Bishop Seffrid vaulted it for the first time—­till then only the aisles had been vaulted—­building great buttresses to support this and re-erecting the inner arcade of the clerestory.  Apparently the apse and ambulatory which till then had closed the great church, on the east had been destroyed in the fire.  At any rate Bishop Seffrid replaced them with the exquisite retro-choir we have, and square eastern chapels.  He did the same with the old apses of the transepts, and he recased the choir with Caen stone, using Purbeck very freely and with beautiful effect.  All this work is very late Transitional, the very last of the Norman or Romanesque.