at Westminster had been rebuilt by him, and he desired that his bones should be laid there, in the grave formerly occupied by Edward the Confessor. The remains of that saintly king had been removed by Henry, and placed in a golden shrine.
As the body of the king was about to be lowered into the grave, the barons who were present placed their hands in turn upon it, and took an oath of allegiance to Edward, then absent in the Holy Land. Henry III. died at the age of sixty-five years, during fifty-six of which he had worn the crown. A few words only are needed to sum up the character of this prince as it is presented to us in contemporary records. He was certainly not without good qualities, which would probably have been more conspicuous in a humbler sphere of life. He was, as had been said of one of his predecessors, rather a monk than a king; he was humane, generous, true to his friends, but he was guided in the choice of those friends rather by his own inclinations than by any regard for the public good, or to the characters of the persons whom he so distinguished. He was remarkable for weaknesses rather than for vices; but in the case of one placed in the seat of authority, it may be considered that such weaknesses are not less than vicious, and may be productive of more serious injury to the governed than positive vices. Few men who have occupied the English throne have rendered themselves so thoroughly contemptible in the eyes of all men as did Henry III. During the whole of his long reign, from the regency of the Earl of Pembroke to the assumption of power by the Earl of Leicester, Henry was a king only in name, and in those instances where he exercised the royal authority, he did so for purposes of exaction and extortion of money from his oppressed subjects.
CHAPTER LVII.
Architecture of the Thirteenth Century.
The history of Architecture is the history of change, sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden, but always change. People and nations change; new ideas spring up among them; new wants are created, and Architecture has to minister to those wants. A necessity arises and has to be met; this suggests a new idea, which, carried out, leads to still further changes. The direction being once given, new forms of beauty are elicited, which are eagerly followed out, until at length scarcely a trace remains of the form from which they sprung. This was pre-eminently the case with Gothic Architecture. The necessity arose from the vaulting of spaces of unequal sides; the Norman semi-circular arch could not meet this difficulty; and it could only be met by using a semicircular arch for the longer side, and a pointed one for the shorter. The pointed arch was thus introduced, and it was soon seen that it offered great facilities for construction, and also for beauty of form. A change was thus commenced which ended only with the entire disuse of the semicircular arch, and the establishment of what we now call Gothic Architecture. This has been divided into three distinct styles, answering to certain periods of time, as below:—
Early English, or 13th century, extending from the commencement of the reign of John to the close of that of Henry III.
Decorated, or 14th century, from the commencement of Edward I. to the end of Edward III.
Perpendicular, or 15th century, from the commencement of Edward II. to the end of Henry VII.
The latter part of each of these periods was one of transition, and therefore the terms 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries must only be taken in a general sense.
In the last chapter on architecture, we slightly traced the gradual transitions from the heavy masses of the pure Norman buildings, to the comparatively light ones which succeeded; but it will be necessary here to enlarge a little more on the subject. The change commenced in the latter part of the reign of Henry II., and continued to increase partly through that of Richard I., when towards the end of his reign it gradually emerged into the succeeding style; the heavy Norman architecture gradually gave way, a greater lightness and loftiness were introduced in the piers, the capitals were richly covered with foliage more closely resembling the Corinthian form, the angles of the abacus were frequently cut off, the mouldings lost much of their Norman character, and the tooth ornament, which is so characteristic of the next style, began to be introduced. The pointed arch was used along with the round one, both in pier arches and in windows and doors, and throughout this period we find a mixture of the two styles, the new growing, as it were, gradually from the ruins of the old, until in the commencement of the thirteenth century, or the beginning of the reign of John, it rose in all its purity, and the cumbrous Norman entirely disappeared. Of the buildings of the Transition period, the following may be mentioned. Canterbury Cathedral (1175 to 1184), alluded to before as the most valuable, in showing the gradual change from one style to the other. The round portico of the Temple Church, London[1] (1185), which displays many of the characteristics of both styles, the pointed arch being used for the piers, but the round arch for the clerestory windows and arcades. The hall of the castle of Oakham, now used as the County Hall, displays in its capitals and corbels some of the finest sculpture we possess of this period. Oxford Cathedral is of this date, and exhibits a curious example of the alternate use of the pointed and round-headed arch, in the windows, and for the support of the central tower. Rothwell Church, Northamptonshire, is also of this date, the west door of which is a good example of a pointed arch with Norman ornaments, while the capitals of the shafts display more of the character of the Early English.
In the buildings of this transition there is frequently much picturesque beauty, the sculptures are executed with great freedom and variety of design, and the details of the two styles harmonise well together. The abandonment of Norman forms and the adoption of the new ones was so gradual, that we can scarcely determine when the new style begins, for we see in the earlier examples of Early English some Norman feature or other occasionally remaining, but about the beginning of the thirteenth century these seem to have entirely disappeared.
THE EARLY ENGLISH STYLE.
The style which succeeded the transition was named by Beckman the Early English Style, and by that name it is commonly known. Many of the finest buildings we have are in this style; most of our cathedrals have portions of it, and one at least, Salisbury, is built entirely in it.
- ↑ See page 295.
