nd 1593.

[Illustration: PLAN OF PIER.]

On the second pier on the north side is an inscription to the memory of
Sir John Mandeville, who was born at St. Albans early in the fourteenth
century, and educated at the monastery school. He studied medicine and
set out in 1322 for his famous travels, professing, in the account which
he published in French in 1357 in Paris, to have visited not only every
part of the south of Europe, but many parts of Asia, even China. It is
not known where he was buried, whether in England or abroad, and the
statement of the Latin inscription on this pillar that he was buried in
this church cannot be regarded as more trustworthy than most of the
statements in the book of travels.

[Illustration: ARCADE ON NORTH SIDE OF NAVE.]

[Illustration: EASTERN PART OF NORTH SIDE OF NAVE.]

The first four bays on this side are thirteenth-century work. The
junction of this with the earlier Norman work is of the most curious
character: the Norman pier was cut off level, a short distance below the
impost, and on the top of this three courses of the Early English pier
were laid. Why the Early English pier was not carried down to the
ground, in a way similar to that, in which the easternmost Early English
pier on the south side is carried, we cannot tell. It has been
conjectured that some special sanctity attached to the statue which
stood on the bracket, which may still be seen on the western face of
this pier. It will be noticed how plain is the plan of the Norman piers
(see illustration, p. 37). They have no capital, only a projecting
course of brickwork from which the arch springs. The two easternmost
piers, however, were altered at some time (see illustration, p. 39), and
a rough kind of capital formed by cutting away the pier below. The
Norman piers were first covered with plaster, and then painted both on
their western and southern faces, and when the white-wash with which
they had been covered in post-Reformation days was removed in 1862, the
frescoes were discovered in a more or less perfect condition. All those
on the western faces with one exception, represent the same subject, the
Crucifixion, with a second subject below. No doubt against these piers
altars used to stand, and these frescoes served, as we should say, as
painted reredoses or altarpieces.

The subjects are as follows, beginning at the west of the Norman arcade:

First pier, west face. Christ on the Cross, crowned; the Virgin