most beautiful examples we possess.

The city of Exeter does not appear to have been divided into parishes until the year 1222, in pursuance then no doubt of Archbishop Langton's Constitution of the same year. The Cathedral itself was first constituted a parish by being placed under the charge of a single dignitary, the dean, by Bishop Briwere, in 1225.

Four years after he ascended the throne in 1042, Edward the Confessor gave the united bishopric of Crediton and Cornwall to his chaplain, Leofric, who, observing that Crediton was an open town, difficult to fortify against the Danish raiders, obtained from Pope Leo IX permission to remove the episcopal see to Exeter, when the Benedictine minster of St. Mary and St. Peter became the cathedral church of the diocese.

Although no part of this church remains, an ancient seal of the Cathedral is of special interest as showing some of the architectural features of the Saxon church. It depicts the west front with two towers, the northern square and the southern circular, the latter surmounted by a cross, and pierced by three round openings in the walls. There are two porches, one in the centre the other in the north tower, and the walls show indications of characteristic Saxon masonry. On the central roof is a large flêche or turret of two stages carrying a weathercock on a very tall shaft.

Of the succeeding church the only contemporary pictorial representations we have are those on early, and somewhat imperfect, seals dating from the end of the eleventh century. The first has a church with cresting of fleurs-de-lis on a hipped and tiled roof, two gable crosses, flanking pinnacles, an arcaded clerestory, and a double door with ornamental hinges, on each side of which is a quatrefoil opening. The second seal shows an arcaded building standing on a stone plinth of four courses, and flanked by towers with conical roofs and ball finials. The roof is surmounted by a large fleur-de-lis, and exhibits an unusual form of tiling. A third seal (1194-1206) shows the west front of the Cathedral with two western towers and a central porch, and a large roof turret. Another view of the west front occurs on the seal of the Archdeacon's official, 1267, and in this example there are three pointed towers, the central one carrying a cross, the others being capped with flag vanes. In the doorway stands a figure of the official. The two Norman transeptal towers still standing give the Cathedral a unique appearance, this arrangement being found nowhere else in England, save at the highly interesting and not far distant Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary.

Having thus briefly sketched from pictorial evidence the architectural characteristics of the predecessors of the present Cathedral, we may begin our tour of the building. Exeter is known as a Cathedral of the Old Foundation, as in pre-Reformation days it was served by secular canons, and as such it was not refounded by Henry VIII; so that there has been no break in the continuity of its ecclesiastical history since its original institution in the days of Leofric. With the exception of Carlisle, which was served before the Reformation by Augustinian or Austin canons, all the cathedrals of the Old Foundation were served by secular canons. It must be remembered that although nearly the whole of the architectural merit of the Cathedral lies in the interior, and particularly in the magnificent stone vaulting of the roof, which is the high-water mark of vaulting on a large scale in England, there are several portions of the exterior that are worth noting. Externally the great defect of the building is the low elevation of the body, and the want of a central tower to counteract the heavy effect produced by solid square towers at each transept.

The west front, with its low, embattled screen of figures, is not a very happy architectural composition, and is not to be compared to the west fronts of Lincoln and Peterborough, where the figure sculpture is earlier and better executed than at Exeter. The one redeeming feature of an otherwise unimposing west front, is the Decorated tracery of the great window, now filled with modern, and not very satisfactory, glass in memory of Archbishop Temple, who was Bishop of Exeter from 1869 to 1885.