master
builders--Robert, whose work is entirely gone, and Reginald, whose
work remains. He did not, as Godwin led us to suppose, pull down and
rebuild the whole church. But he loyally carried on the work of his
predecessor, and he executed the great work which has been always
rightly attributed to him, the present west front; this he joined to
Reginald's unfinished nave by building the three western bays in
strict accordance with the earlier style. The front belongs to the
fully-developed Early English style in which Salisbury is built,
agreeing exactly with the date of the consecration of the church by
Jocelin in 1239,--as was pointed out by Professor Willis, who was
puzzled by the great difference in its style from that of the nave,
which was then thought to belong to the same period. We know that
Jocelin was a frequent visitor to Salisbury while Bishop Poore was
building it; and thus all the lines of evidence combine to support the
unshaken tradition that Jocelin was the author of the west front.

A month before his death in 1242, Jocelin de Wells put forth a charter
for the increased endowment of the cathedral staff; and it was because
of a few chance words in the preamble that he came to be credited with
the construction of the whole. Having found the church in danger of
ruin, runs the passage, by reason of its age _aedificare coepimus et
ampliare--in qua adeo profecimus--quod ipsam consecravimus_. This,
which need mean nothing more than extensive building operations, is
the sole foundation for the tradition that Jocelin pulled down the old
church and built a new one.

The condition of the church at the end of the thirteenth century is
thus described by Professor Freeman[2]:

"By the end of the thirteenth century we may look upon the church of
Wells as at last finished. It still lacked much of that perfection of
outline which now belongs to it, and which the next age was finally to
give to it. Many among that matchless group of surrounding buildings
which give Wells its chief charm, had not yet arisen. The church
itself, with its unfinished towers, must have had a dwarfed and
stunted look from every point. The Lady Chapel had not yet been
reared, with its apse alike to contrast with the great window of the
square presbytery above it, and to group in harmony with the more
lofty chapter-house of its own form. The cloister was still of wood.
The palace was still undefended by wall or moat. The Vicars' Close and
it