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Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century much harm was done to the cathedral by the zeal of Bishop Bisse, one of those irritating people who mean well but act abominably. He spent much, both on the palace and the cathedral, employing in the alterations of the former the stones of the chapter-house, which had been doubtless much injured but not irreparably so.
They were some of the numerous frequenters of San Marco, who had come to visit the Prior, and having heard that he was in attendance on the dying Brother in the chapter-house, had awaited him here. Romola was dimly conscious of footsteps and rustling forms moving aside: she heard the voice of Fra Girolamo saying, in a low tone, "Our brother is departed;" she felt a hand laid on her arm.
The monks obeyed, and the Company was provided with certain rooms, in which they assembled many times with the gracious leave of those fathers, who received them sometimes even in their own chapter-house with much courtesy.
The chambers beneath this on the ground floor should be carefully inspected. In succession, from L. to R., are sacristy, lighted by a broken rose window and containing a painted piscina and aumbry; treasury; chapter-house, partly vaulted and entered from the quadrangle by a beautiful E.E. doorway; library and staircase to dormitory; a passage; entrance to monastic common room.
After reading the excuse of the latter, Henry uttered an angry oath, declaring he would deprive him of his vote in the chapter-house, banish him from his stall, and mulct him a hundred marks, to be paid at Saint George's altar, when Will Sommers, who was permitted to be present, whispered in his ear that the offender was kept away by the devices of Wolsey, because he was known to be friendly to the divorce, and to the interests of the lady Anne.
Then, much comforted by his naive orisons he enjoyed the sleep of youth and health until the entrance of the lay brother with the bread and small beer, which served as breakfast, in the morning. The Abbey court sat in the chapter-house at the canonical hour of tierce, which was nine in the forenoon.
The present vestibule was certainly built after the chapter-house, and the exterior parapet mouldings of the chapter-house may be seen within the vestibule, showing that it was almost an afterthought. Over the doorway leading into the vestibule is a pattern of blind tracery. Here, and on many portions of the roof and walls of the vestibule, are traces of old paintings.
They include an octagonal chapter-house, fifty-eight feet in diameter and fifty-two feet high, which has been restored in memory of a recent bishop at a cost of $260,000. The restoration has enriched the house with magnificent sculptures representing Old-Testament history, and the restoration of the cathedral is also progressing.
All the inequalities of ground within the great quadrangle of the cloisters looked like ponds, and the various water-spouts from the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, continuing to jet forth streams into the court below, the ambulatories were soon filled ankle-deep, and even the lower apartments, on which they opened, invaded.
No fox-hunter, recounting his last day's sport, could be more animated than I have seen the worthy parson, when relating his search after a curious document, which he had traced from library to library, until he fairly unearthed it in the dusty chapter-house of a cathedral.
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