698 The Dean of Canterbury 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 25, 1898. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, Treasurer and Vice-President, 

 in tlie Chair. 



The Very Key. the Dean of Canterbury, D.D. F.E.S. 



Canterbury Cathedral. 



(Abstract.) 



The Friday Evening Lecture was delivered by the Very Eev. the 

 Dean of Canterbury, who, at the request of the President, took as his 

 subject " Canterbury Cathedral." After speaking of the difficulty of 

 steering between the Scylla and Charybdis of saying too little or too 

 much in dealing with the story of a cathedral which had been closely 

 connected with the history of England for thirteen centuries, the 

 lecturer touched, first, on points of interest connected with Mercery 

 Lane and Christchurch Gate, and the ancient and famous King's 

 School. He spoke of the many styles of architecture still visible in 

 the cathedral — Roman and Saxon, Early and Late Norman, Decorated, 

 Early and Late Perpendicular, and modern — which mark the chauges 

 of a thousand years. To show how completely the cloisters are, as 

 Professor Willis called them, " a perfect museum of mediaeval archi- 

 tecture," he showed a slide and photograph of the Martyrdom door, 

 where Edward I. was married to Margaret of France. The Norman 

 door, by which Becket entered, was superseded by the Early English 

 triple arcade of 1290, overlaid about 1400 by the fan-shaped shafts 

 and groins of Prior Chillenden, into which has been inserted the 

 Perpendicular door of Archbishop Morton, about 1490. He then 

 gave a very rapid sketch of the main events in the history of the 

 structure, which was burnt down (by the Danes) in 1011, and again 

 burnt down in 1067 and 1174, amid the wild emotion of the people, 

 described \)y Gervase, who witnessed it. After describing how it was 

 rebuilt by William of Sens and William the Englishman, and the 

 later additions of Archbishops Simon of Sudbury, Arundel, Courtier, 

 and Morton, he spoke of the cloisters, and described the daily life of 

 a mediaeval monk, the hardships of which sufficed to account for the 

 immense size of the infirmary, of which the ruins still remain. As 

 an illustration of some of the memorable scenes for which the 

 cathedral is famous, Dr. Farrar rapidly described, from original 

 sources, the circumstances which attended the murder of Becket. 

 This was illustrated by a reproduction of the ancient painting, now 

 mainly obliterated, on the tomb of Henry IV. After alluding to the 

 Becket pilgrims and tLc relics, and the famous visits of various 



