146 PAPERS, ETC. 



that the towers of Bishop's Lydeard, St. James, Taunton, 

 Chewton, Huish Episcopi, Kingston, Staple Fitzpaine, 

 and partlcularly St. Mary's, Taunton, are in fact post- 

 Gothic buildings, inasmuch as the great principles of con- 

 struction are altogether neglected in their structure ; that 

 with St. Mary's all these faults are exaggerated ; but then, 

 he teils us, that to adduce what is beautiful frorn faulty 

 principles, requires an amount of talent which falls to the 

 lot of few. 



These rernarks help, I think, to separate St. Mary's frorn 

 all other Perpendicular towers in the county ; and though 

 they may prove it critically faulty, confirni an originality, 

 the general effect of which is magnificent, and which I 

 think may induce us to accept it as the work of a master 

 mind that had other important demands on its action. 



That Sir Reginald Bray was connected with the west 

 of England is proved by bis having settled at Barrington, 

 in Gloucestershire, where the male line of that branch 

 became extinct about 110 years since. And we learn by 

 his will that he had manors and lands in that county and 

 in Somersetshire. That there is no existing record that 

 may render it certain that Bray built St. Mary's Tower, 

 need not surprise us, as it would be difficult to name the 

 architect of many of the most important buildings of this 

 period. This is made evident by the most improbable 

 conjecture that Wolsey built the famous tower of Maudlin 

 College, Oxford, he being about two and twenty at the 

 time of its execution. Indeed, as Bray was High Steward 

 of Oxford during the reign of Henry VII, and that it is 

 proved by the mass that was said frorn the summit of that 

 tower every first of May, for the benefit of the soul of the 

 departed monarch, that he must in some way have been 

 its benefactor, and that as Bray is recorded to have built 



