lustration: A PAPAL LEGATE.
_From the Decretals of Boniface VIII. British Museum_, 23923.]

In the Bodleian Library there is an inventory of these relics, amongst
them part of the wood of the cross, a stone of the Holy Sepulchre, a
stone from the spot of the Ascension, and some bones of the eleven
thousand virgins of Cologne.

The high altar was renewed in 1309 under an indented covenant between
Bishop Baldock and a citizen named Richard Pickerill. "A beautiful
tablet was set thereon, variously adorned with many precious stones
and enamelled work; as also with divers images of metal; which tablet
stood betwixt two columns, within a frame of wood to cover it, richly
set out with curious pictures, the charge whereof amounted to two
hundred marks."

Dugdale also tells of "a picture of St. Paul, richly painted, and
placed in a beautiful tabernacle of wood on the right hand of the high
altar _in anno_ 1398, the price of its workmanship amounting to 12_l._
16_s._"

Quoting from a MS. of Matthew of Westminster, he gives the dimensions
of the church, in the course of which he says the length was 690 feet.
This is undoubtedly wrong, as Wren showed. I take the measurements
from Mr. Gilbertson's admirable little handbook, who, with some
modifications, has taken them from Longman's _Three Cathedrals_.

Breadth 104 ft.
Height of Nave roof to ridge of vaulting 93 ft.
" Choir 101 ft. 3 in.
" Lady Chapel 98 ft. 6 in.
" Tower from the ground 285 ft.
" Spire from parapet of tower 204 ft.
" Spire from the ground 489 ft.
Length of church (excluding Inigo Jones's porch) 586 ft.

Wren (_Parentalia_) thinks this estimate of the spire height too
great; he reckons it at 460 feet.

The cathedral resembled in general outline that of Salisbury, but it
was a hundred feet longer, and the spire was sixty or eighty feet
higher. The tower was open internally as far as the base of the spire,
and was probably more beautiful both inside and out than that of any
other English cathedral. The spire was a structure of timber covered
with lead. In Mr. Longman's _Three Cathedrals_ are some beautiful
engravings after a series of drawings by Mr. E.B. Ferrey, reproducing
the old building. There is one curious mistake: he has not given at
the base of