ives a view
of the north facade of the church. Ede, writing in 1684, said that
"above fifty years" before one-third part of the north-west tower had
fallen from top to bottom; yet this illustration shows that same tower
complete. This affords an opportunity of comparing portions of the two
towers. The upper part of each is shown to finish on top with a
battlement parapet. It is evidence in itself that during the fifteenth
century certain alterations had been effected in them both at this
part. But this print must have been made from an original which had
been executed quite twenty years earlier--for King's drawing, issued
in 1656, shows the north-west tower already partly destroyed; so it is
necessary to conclude that the drawing for the "Monasticon" was done
before 1656, but after 1610, when Speed's map, or bird's-eye view, of
the city was brought out.

Praecentor Walcott has supposed that the two towers in Chichester
referred to in the "Annals of Dunstable" as having fallen during the
year 1210 were the two at the west end.

[Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL, ABOUT 1650.]

But taking Sir Christopher Wren's report with the discovery made by
Mr. Sharpe in 1853, quoted by Professor Willis, it would seem rather
that those two towers were the original central tower and that at the
south-west angle of the west front.

Wren in writing of the tower at the north-west, which had fallen about
1630-1640, said that it had not been built at the same date nor in the
same manner as the other then remaining to the south of the same
front. The upper part of the central tower itself had been built
perhaps during the second quarter of the fourteenth century or even
earlier. Consequently it seems probable that the two towers which fell
in 1210 were the original twelfth-century central tower and that of
the same date to the south of the west front. In Speed's map of 1610
both the western towers are represented as having small spires.

Hollar's print in the "Monasticon" shows what appear to be some
fifteenth-century buttresses to the north-west tower; but in
excavating for the foundations of the new north-west tower, now
completed, no traces of any projecting buttresses were discovered, so
it may be that it was the original twelfth-century tower which fell
about 1630, and the peculiar character of its masonry suggested the
remark to Wren when he said it so distinctly differed from its
companion.

Towards the close of the seventeen