was steeped in poverty; it is charged also
with lack of zeal. Arnost, a monk of Bec, succeeded Siward, but he died
within a year. A bishop had now to be chosen who would be competent to
cope with the poverty and deficiencies of the see, and to carry through
remedial measures. At last Lanfranc appointed Gundulf, of whose great
capacity he had personal knowledge. Want of money at first stood in the
way of reforms; but, with the archbishop's help, much of the alienated
property of the see was recovered, and the substitution of regular for
secular clergy was undertaken. In 1082 a priory was established with
twenty monks of the Order of St. Benedict, a number which grew to sixty
before Gundulf's death. It was necessary, now, that a new church should
be built, for the old one was not only, as has been said, very
dilapidated, but also, probably, too small for the new establishment.

One of Gundulf's first undertakings seems to have been the erection,
about 150 feet to the east of the Saxon cathedral, of the strong tower
bearing his name. Ruins of this are still to be seen on the north side
of the choir (see p. 52). It was about the year 1080 that he began his
church. The plan was cruciform, but not of the usual northern type. The
eastern arm was six bays long, and had aisles of the same length as the
presbytery; its four easternmost bays stood on an undercroft, of which a
portion still remains in the present crypt. The excavations there, in
1881, uncovering the old foundations, proved that the shape of this end
of the church used to be rectangular and not apsidal. It had been
concluded that its form was such, but on less positive grounds, thirty
years before. The whole arm was 76 feet long by 60 wide, and from its
end there was a small rectangular projection, constructed, probably, for
the relics of St. Paulinus, which Gundulf, or, according to another
account, Lanfranc, transported from the older church. In this
prolongation we seem to have a germ of those that gave us afterwards the
Lady Chapels of Lichfield, Westminster, Gloucester, and elsewhere. This
small excrescence, chapel it can scarcely be called, probably did not
rise very high, as room had to be left above it for the east window,
which, with the clerestory, was needed to light the presbytery. The
latter, like the choir of the present cathedral and like that of St.
Alban's, had its aisles divided from it by solid walls.

To the west of the six bays of the eastern a