DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6886#0174
m HISTORY OF
diligence had translated from the Greeks. They were zealots in their religion;
and wherever they had conquered, which they did with amazing rapidity, they
erected mosques and caravanseras in haste, which obliged them to adopt another
way of building; for they built their mosques round, disliking the christian way
of crosses: the old quarries, whence the ancients took the large marbles for whole
columns and architraves, were neglected, and they thought both impertinent.
Their carriages were by camels: their buildings therefore were fitted for
small stones, and columns of their own fancy of many pieces; and their arches
were pointed without key-stones, which they thought too heavy. The reasons
were the same in our northern climates, abounding in freestone, but wanting mar-
ble. The crusades gave us an idea of this form; after which King Henry built this
church, not by a model well digested at first, for I think the chapels without the
aisles were an after-thought; the buttresses between the chapels remaining being
useless, if they had been raised together with them; and the king having opened
the east end for St. Mary's chapel, he thought to make more chapels for sepulture,
which was acceptable to the monks after licence was obtained from Rome to
bury in churches, a custom not in use before.
The king's intention was certainly to make up the cross only to the westward,
for thus far it is of a different manner than the rest more westward, built after his
time, as the pillars and spandrils of the arches shew. / am apt to think that the king
did not live to complete his intention*, nor to reach four intercolumns west of the
tower : the walls of this part might possibly be carried up in his time; but the
* " Iste Ilenricus rex inchoavit novam fabricam ecclesiae Westmonasleriensis, sed non perfecit,"
are the words of William Rishanger, who succeeded Matthew Paris in the office of historiographer
of the abbey of St. Alban's, and continued his history. The king died in the year 1272, and Fabian,
from whom Fox and Stowe have obtained their information, reports, that in 1285 the new work of the
Church of Westminster was fully finished and completed to the end of the choir.
diligence had translated from the Greeks. They were zealots in their religion;
and wherever they had conquered, which they did with amazing rapidity, they
erected mosques and caravanseras in haste, which obliged them to adopt another
way of building; for they built their mosques round, disliking the christian way
of crosses: the old quarries, whence the ancients took the large marbles for whole
columns and architraves, were neglected, and they thought both impertinent.
Their carriages were by camels: their buildings therefore were fitted for
small stones, and columns of their own fancy of many pieces; and their arches
were pointed without key-stones, which they thought too heavy. The reasons
were the same in our northern climates, abounding in freestone, but wanting mar-
ble. The crusades gave us an idea of this form; after which King Henry built this
church, not by a model well digested at first, for I think the chapels without the
aisles were an after-thought; the buttresses between the chapels remaining being
useless, if they had been raised together with them; and the king having opened
the east end for St. Mary's chapel, he thought to make more chapels for sepulture,
which was acceptable to the monks after licence was obtained from Rome to
bury in churches, a custom not in use before.
The king's intention was certainly to make up the cross only to the westward,
for thus far it is of a different manner than the rest more westward, built after his
time, as the pillars and spandrils of the arches shew. / am apt to think that the king
did not live to complete his intention*, nor to reach four intercolumns west of the
tower : the walls of this part might possibly be carried up in his time; but the
* " Iste Ilenricus rex inchoavit novam fabricam ecclesiae Westmonasleriensis, sed non perfecit,"
are the words of William Rishanger, who succeeded Matthew Paris in the office of historiographer
of the abbey of St. Alban's, and continued his history. The king died in the year 1272, and Fabian,
from whom Fox and Stowe have obtained their information, reports, that in 1285 the new work of the
Church of Westminster was fully finished and completed to the end of the choir.