ne of the chief glories of the church.

[6] See p. 112.

In the painted decoration of the choir walls, with its alternate lions
and fleurs-de-lis,--which Sir Gilbert Scott partly saved and partly
renewed,--we have probably a contemporary allusion to and commemoration
of, the victories won by our countrymen in France in Edward III.'s
reign. Rochester lay on the main route to the Continent and is sure to
have seen much of the soldiers who passed to and fro. In 1360 there is a
record of the passage of John II. on his way back to his own land. He
had, it will be remembered, been defeated by the Black Prince at
Poictiers in 1356, and brought as a prisoner to England until
arrangements should be made for his ransom. It was on the 2nd of July
that he went through the town, and, ere he left it, made an offering of
sixty crowns at the Church of St. Andrew.

The oratory that was constructed in 1327, and other attempted
arrangements, did not settle the differences between the monks and the
parishioners of St. Nicholas. These were only finally ended by the
erection of a new church, for the use of the latter, in the cemetery
called the Green Church Haw, on the north side of the cathedral. The
people were still allowed to pass within the north side of the cathedral
in their processions, and the Perpendicular doorway which exists, walled
up, towards the west end of the north aisle wall, was inserted for their
passage. The right that the mayor and corporation of the city still
retain of entering the cathedral in their robes and with their maces,
etc., borne before them, by the great west door, seems to be a relic of
the old parochial use of the nave.

Later in the fifteenth century the clerestory and vaulting of the north
choir aisle were finished, and Perpendicular windows were inserted in
the nave aisles. Then, about 1470, the great west window was inserted,
and the nave clerestory, together with the northern pinnacle of the west
gable, rebuilt. It was in 1490, or thereabouts, apparently, that the
Perpendicular builders carried out their last important work: the
erection of the so-called Lady Chapel, in the corner between the south
transept and the nave. This seems to be really an extension of the Lady
Chapel in the south transept (where the altar to the Blessed Virgin
Mary has been already mentioned), to be a nave to this rather than a
chapel itself.

There is now nothing very important to record until we come to the time,
w