28 7Vanaactions of the 



into a drawing room, dining room, enh'ance hall, and the Bishop's 

 private rooms. The roof is supported by two ranges of wooden 

 pillars, with Norman capitals of wood. 



At the end of the Bishop's cloisters is the site of the old Chapter 

 house, which is said to have forme.l a most beautiful appendage to the 

 church. It was a decagon 40 feet in diameter, supported by a central 

 column, with a window on either side. Under each window in the 

 interior were five niches, in each of which was painted a portrait as 

 large as life. During the siege of Hereford by the Covenanters 

 under the Earl of >?evern, in 1045, Scudaniore, the Eoyalist Governor, 

 had the Chapter-house roof stripped of its lead covering to defend 

 the roof of the tower in the castle. From that time it rapidly fell 

 into decay, and at the present time nothing but the base remains. 

 The approach to the Chapter-house was through a square turreted 

 tower, which still remains, and goes by the name of the Lady Arbour. 

 The origin of this title is uncertain. It has, howev^er, been suggested 

 tliat just as it was common in medieval times to have an apartment 

 in houses called the " Lady's Bower," so this was called the bower of 

 our Lady, in honour of the Virgin Mary. Although, so far as I am 

 aware, there is no similar instance of such a structure elsewhere, 

 there is, in the Bristol Cathedral, at the south-east corner of the 

 upper cloister, a curious pseudo-gothic arch, which Canon Norris, 

 in his account of our Cathedral, conjectures to be remains of a 

 " Lady's Chapel " like the one at Hereford. 



In the library, which is situated over the Cantilupe aisle, there are 

 about 2,000 volumes, of which between 200 and 300 are MSS. The 

 oldest of these is an Anglo-Saxon copy of the four gospels, be- 

 queathed by Athelstane, the last Saxon Bishop of this See. There 

 is also a Bull of Innocent IV., promulgated in consequence of some 

 of the clergy of the Church refusing to contribute towards the repairs. 

 The library also iormerly contained the celebrated Hereford missal, 

 which has lately been transferred to the British Museum. It is one 

 of the rarest and most valuable of old English documents which we 

 possess. The history of its discovery is very curious. It was found 

 in 1858 lying open on the floor in an old liouse in Bristol, among 

 some hundreds of other books which had belonged to the English 

 Franciscans, and which had been brought by them to England from 

 their convent in Belgium, during the troubles of the first French 

 revolution. It was printed in the year 1502, at the famous Eouen press. 



The list of the clergy connected with this church is singularly 

 barren of names of any permanent historical interest. Richard 

 Swinfield, however, who was Bishop of Hereford 1289-1316, left a 

 roll of his household expenses, which has come down to us and was 

 printed a few years ago by the Camden Society. It is interesting as 

 being the earliest extant picture of English domestic life. How this 

 prelate lived will appear from the following list of articles provided 

 for his dinner, Christmas Day, 1289 : there were i^rovided a boar, ten 

 oxen, eight porkers, sixty fowl, thirteen fat deer, and SOO eggs. 



