resentation of
his hat and coat of arms affixed to a pier by the door. The difference
in style between the two transepts shows that on the north to be of
somewhat earlier date, though it was probably not left untouched by
the restorers. The poet Gower founded a chantry in the Chapel of St.
John Baptist, in the north aisle, where he was eventually buried, and
where daily masses were said for the repose of his soul before the
Reformation. His monument was transferred to the south transept during
the "repairs and beautifications" of 1832, but is now restored to its
original place over the poet's remains in the fifth bay (from the
west), of the north aisle of the nave. The chapel and chantry have
unfortunately disappeared.

In 1469 the stone roof of the old nave fell down. The accident has
been attributed to the removal, in the reign of Richard II, of the
flying buttresses by which the vault was originally supported, as is
still the case with the choir walls. Another roof of groined oak was
soon substituted, as less likely to suffer from its own weight. That
it was not a specially light structure, however, may be inferred from
the massive bosses preserved from it, and now to be seen on the floor
of the north transept.

[Illustration: FORMER WESTERN DOORWAY.
_From Moss and Nightingale's "History"_ (1817-18).]

The crowning piece of work, which very shortly preceded the ruin
brought about by the Dissolution, was set upon the Priory Church by
Bishop Fox in 1520, in the magnificent altar-screen, which through all
its mutilations has borne witness to his work in his favourite device
of the "Pelican in her piety," and the humorous allusion to his name,
in the figure of a man chasing a fox, among its sculptured ornaments.
The west end of the church was considerably altered, and a new western
doorway inserted, with a six-light window above it, at about the same
time; when also the upper stages of the tower were erected. The
window is said to have been altered for the worse in the seventeenth
century, and in its last phase the whole facade presented what Mr.
Dollman describes as "a heterogeneous mass of masonry and brickwork,"
not worth preserving when the modern restoration was taken in hand.
The flying buttresses have been reproduced in the new nave, and the
chief doorway placed in the south-west corner, which the architect was
led to believe was its original position.

It is generally admitted that by the sixteenth cen