rings at St. William's tomb. The word "choir" must here, of
course, be used in its more restricted sense, meaning the choir proper,
as distinct from its transept and the presbytery. Even then to say
absolutely that he rebuilt it is to go too far, for the walls dividing
it from its aisles are still in the main of Norman construction, though
they have Early English facings and decorations, and additions of this
later period to their upper parts. The original intention of the
architect had apparently been to change into arcades these solid walls,
but, if so, he abandoned it. When the work on the choir walls was
finished, some re-modelling of its aisles was soon carried out,
buttresses being built within them to withstand the thrust of the new
vaulting of the central part. In William de Hoo's work at this time we
must include the arches across the western ends of the choir aisles,
with the one bay of the transept clerestory over the northern of them,
and possibly also the choir arch, with the piers that carry it. It
seems, however, that these piers were only finally freed from the Norman
nave arcade, and completed, as we now have them, to be the eastern pair
of supports to the central tower, by Richard de Eastgate about twenty
years later. It is recorded that the new work had been roofed and leaded
by the sacrist Radulfus de Ros and the prior Helias. The new choir was
first used in 1227, when the monks made their solemn entry into it, and
the works, that have been described above, must have been finished at
that date. Some fittings, probably originally inserted at this early
period, still remain, viz., the eastern side of the pulpitum and some
woodwork preserved in the present stalls. Richard de Wendover, Bishop
of Rochester, and Richard, Bishop of Bangor, dedicated the church, or
rather its new portions, but it was not until 1240 that the ceremony
took place.

We must now go back a few years in order to mention the great losses
that the cathedral sustained in 1215. In that year King John besieged
and captured Rochester Castle, stoutly held against him by William de
Albinet and other powerful barons. Then, Edmund de Hadenham tells us,
the church was so plundered that there was not a pyx left "in which
the body of the Lord might rest upon the altar." At such a time the
offerings at St. William's tomb, which have been alluded to above, were
especially needed and especially acceptable.

Within the first half of the thirteenth