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124 ANNUAL REGISTER

each side.  By the key I mean the whole roof, as the key placed in the middle seems to close and strengthen the parts on each side.  This was the employment of the second year.

In the third year, he placed two pillars on each side, the two last of which he decorated with marble columns; and, because the choir and the crosses were there to meet, he made them the principal.  on them key-stones being placed, and an arch turned, from the great tower as far as the before-mentioned pillars, that is, as far as the cross, he introduced in the lower cloyster several marble columns; above which he made another eloyster of different materials, and upper windows; after that, three keys of a great arch, namely, from the lower to the crosses: all which seemed to us, and to every one, inimitable, and in the highest degree praiseworthy. 

Thus the third year ended, and the fourth began; in the summer of which, beginning at the cross, he erected ten pillars, that is, five on each side. Adorning the two first, opposite to the two others, with marble columns, he made them the principal. On those ten he placed arches and vaults. Both the cloyfters and the upper window being finished, while he was preparing his machines for turning the great arch, at the beginning of the finest year, the scaffold on a sudden gave away, and he came to the ground from the height of the crown of the upper arch, which is fifty feet. Being grieveoufly bruifed, he was utterly unable to attend to the work. No one but himself received the least hurt. Either the vengeance of God, of the envy of the devil, wreaked itself on him alone. Aster William being thus hurt, enrufted the completion of the work to a certain ingenious monk who was overseer of the brought masons; which occasioned him much envy and ill-will. The architect, nevertheless, lying in bed, gave orders what was first, and what last, to be done. A roof, therefore, was made between the four principal pillars; at the key of which roof the choir and the crosses seem, in a manner, to meet, Two roofs also, one of each side, were made before winter; but the weather, being extremely riany, would not suffer more to be done. In the fourth year there was an eclipse of the fun on the 6th of September, at six o'clock, a few months before the architect's accident. At length, finding no benefit from the skill and attention of his surgeons, he gave up the work, and, crossing the sea, went home to France. 

In the summer of the fifth year, another William, an Englishman, succeeded the first William in the cure of the work; a man of a diminutive stature, but in various ways extremely ingenious and honest. He finished both the north and the fourth cross, and turned the roof which is over the high altar, which, when everything was prepared could not be done the year before, on account of the rains. At the east end, also, he laid the foundation of the chapel of the Holy Trinity, where St. Thomas first solemnized mass, and used to indulge himself in tears and prayers, in the undercroft of which he had been so many years buried, where God, through this merits, wrought many miracles, where rich and poor, kings and princes, worshipped him, from where the found of his praise went forth into all the world. In digging this foundation, Master William was obliged to take out the bones of several holy monks, which being carefully collected, were re-interred in a large trench, in the angle between the chapel and the infirmary towards the fourth. This done, and the foundation of the outer wall being made extremely strong of stone and mortar, he built the wall of the undercroft as high as the bases of the windows. this was the business of the fifth year, and the beginning of the sixth; but the spring of this now approaching, and the season of working being at hand, the monks were inflamed with a most eager desire to prepare the choir, so that they might enter it at the next Easter. The architect used his utnost efforts to fulfill the wishes of the convent. he also built the three altars of the chancel. He carefully prepared a place of test for St. Dunstan* and St. Elphege. A wooden wall, too, for keeping out the weather was placed across the est-end, between the last pillars but one, containing three windows. They were desirous to enter the choir (though with great labour and too much haste it was scarce prepared) on Easter-eve. But because everything that was to be done on that sabbath-day, could not, on account of that solemnity, be fully done in a proper, decent manner, it was necessary that the holy fathers our patrons, St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, the fellow-exiles of the monks, should be removed before that day into the new choir. Prior Alan, therefore, taking with him nine brethren of the church on whom he could rely, left there should be any distrubance or inconvenience, went one night to the tombs  of the saints, and locking the doors of the church, gave directions to take down  the shrine which surrounded them. The monks and the servants of the church, in obedience of the commands of the prior, took down that structure, opened the stone coffins of those faints, and took out their relics, and carried them into the vestry. Taking out also investments in which they were wrapped, by length of time in a great measure decayed, they converted them with more decent palls, and bound them with linen girdles. The faints thus prepared were carried to their altars, and placed in wooden coffins, inclosed in head. The coffins, also, strongly bound with iron hoops, were secured with ston tombs,foldered in molten lead. Queen Ediva, also who, after the fire, was placed under the altar of the Holy Cross, was in like manner carried into the vestry. These things were transfected on the Thursday before Easter, namely,  on the 17the of April.

Next day, when this tranflatio

Dunstan died in 988.
Elphege was stoned to death by the Danes at Greenwhich, in 1012. 
In Henry the VIIth's reign (1508) five hundred and twenty years after Dunstan's death, on a pretence that he lay on Glastonbury, Archibishop Eearham had his tomb opened, and his body was found just as Gervase here described it. His skull was then fet in silver, and reserved as a relic. The tomb was taken down at the Refornation.

The mother of King Eadrid.