Jocelin's; for, although
the rest of the nave was completed by Jocelin, it was done in
accordance with Reginald's original plan.

It is of great importance to remember this fact, since until recently
the nave, with the other parts just mentioned, was attributed by
Professor Willis, Professor Freeman, and most authorities to Jocelin.
Willis, indeed, bowed to what was then thought to be documentary
evidence against his own judgment; for he declared the work to be of a
style much earlier than that of Jocelin's time (p. 73). Now we know
almost to a certainty that the bulk of the cathedral belongs neither
to the late Norman period of Robert, nor to the Early English of
Jocelin, but to the period just between the two, that of Reginald de
Bohun.

During the episcopate of Reginald's immediate successor Savaric
(1192-1205), something further may have been done to the nave. But
there was small opportunity for church building during this bishop's
wandering and litigious life; and all we know for certain is that,
owing no doubt to the civil war, the intolerable exactions of papal
legates, and the quarrel with Glastonbury, the cathedral church of
Wells had fallen into a state of dilapidation when Jocelin became
bishop in 1206; and that it remained in this condition till King John
was dead: for Jocelin was an exile abroad, the property of the see was
confiscated, and its income paid yearly into the king's purse.

From the year 1218, when the land was again at peace, and a profitable
arrangement had been come to with the monks of Glastonbury, Jocelin
devoted himself to the fabric and chapter of Wells, up to the year of
his death in 1242. Grants of money and of timber, which are extant,
show that by 1220 the work was recommenced, and that it was in
progress in 1225. By 1239 the church was sufficiently advanced to be
dedicated.

Jocelin and his brother Hugh (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) were
natives of the city they loved so well. They had both lived through
Reginald's episcopate--Jocelin as canon and Hugh as archdeacon of
Wells. After, when they rose to high positions as judges, and became
honourably rich, Hugh, who built much in Lincoln Cathedral, gave
largely of his great wealth to Jocelin for Wells, and Jocelin himself
spent all that he had upon the place where he had been brought up from
infancy.

Thus Jocelin was in a real sense a "maker of Wells." But he was not
the only maker, for he must share the honour with two other