t of the choir, and inserted a new clerestory, in the then
fashionable style, in place of the original. He also made a considerable
alteration in the chancel by substituting a square east-end for the
circular apse, part of which was taken down and used as building
material for the innovation. But de Walden's work was cut short by his
death, when he had scarcely held the See of London for two years, and
was buried in his Chapel at St. Bartholomew's, instead of in the
Cathedral Church like most of his predecessors.

The Lady Chapel, with the crypt beneath it, dates from about 1410, when
also the central tower was probably rebuilt, and decorative additions
were made to the Founder's tomb, in the shape of a canopy and panelling.
In the first part of the next century Prior Bolton (1505-32) inserted
the Oriel window on the southern side of the choir-triforium and the
doorway in the south ambulatory, both of which bear his sculptured
rebus--a _bolt_, or arrow, driven through a _tun_. In 1539 his
successor, Robert Fuller, the last of the Augustinian Priors,
surrendered the entire property to Henry VIII, in compliance with the
Act of Dissolution, its value having been already ascertained in the
twenty-sixth year of the King's reign. The exact figures are given by
Dugdale as follows:

Summa totalis hujus monasterii. L773 0_s._ 13/4_d._
" " reprisarum L79 10_s._ 31/2_d._
---------------------------
Et remanet clare L693 9_s._ 101/4_d._
---------------------------

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHOIR
_From a print of 1822_
_T. H. Shepherd del. Howlett sc._]

For many years before the dissolution of the monasteries the system on
which they rested had been gradually undermined by the spread of the
Reformation, accompanied by a growing conviction that the religious
communities had not only outlived their usefulness, and to a great
extent departed from the high standard of their founders, but that their
enormous wealth had given them an influence far beyond that of any other
institution, or combination of institutions, in the kingdom, and brought
them into formidable rivalry with the State itself--the more dangerous
in proportion to their devoted adherence to the Papacy, with which the
State was in collision. By whatever unworthy motives Henry VII