8 THIRD ANNUAL MEETING. 
that the west front could not have been built by 
Joceline Trotman. The reverend gentleman proceeded 
at some length to point out the grounds on which he came 
to an opposite conclusion. 
Ist. That he had not seen any consecration deed of the 
Bishop’s, and did not know where such was to be found, 
but that the Liber Albus No. 2, favored as he supposed, his 
theory ; the date of the consecration of the church is there 
stated to be October 23, 1239 ; and if the church was not 
finished at the time of its consecration, there is no reason 
to suppose that the Bishop left off building as soon as it 
was consecrated. 
2nd. A document in the Liber Albus No. 2, (and also 
in Wilkins,) which bore date the year of Joceline’s death, 
(he believed A.D. 1342,) two years and half or more after the 
consecration, the purport of which is to assign revenues to 
the ministering priests, to his mind clearly spoke of this 
assignment of revenue as his last necessary act, in regard 
to his cathedral, after having completed all else that was 
required for the due celebration of divine worship, &e. 
which would hardly have been said, if he had left the west 
front a large blank, only protected from the air by some 
temporary construction. 
3rd. The Canon of Wells, and also Godwin, both 
favoured his idea (in passages which he gave) that the west 
front, or rather all west of the choir, was the particular 
portion which bishop Trotman cared to build. 
4th. The style of the architecture, by Mr. Willis’s 
own confession, gave no token of late construction. 
öth. If Bishop Joceline did not build the west front, the 
only person who could have built it, must have been one of 
the Buttons, as an inscription thereon (of which he pre- 
sented a rubbing,) seemed to indicate. 
