began early in the sixteenth century to
make their appearance in this country, though as yet, except on tombs and
in wood-work, we observe few of those peculiar features introduced as
accessories in church architecture.

Hence many of our country churches, which were repaired or partly rebuilt
in the century succeeding the Reformation, exhibit the marks of the style
justly denominated DEBASED, to distinguish it from the former purer
styles. Depressed and nearly flat arched doorways, with shallow mouldings,
square-headed windows with perpendicular mullions and obtuse-pointed or
round-headed lights, without foliations, together with a general
clumsiness of construction, as compared with more ancient edifices, form
the predominating features in ecclesiastical buildings of this kind: and
in the reign of Charles the First an indiscriminate mixture of Debased
Gothic and Roman architecture prevailing, we lose sight of every true
feature of our ancient ecclesiastical styles, which were superseded by
that which sprang more immediately from the Antique, the Roman, or Italian
mode.

FOOTNOTES:

[3-*] Tempore, ut scimus, summo Tiberii Caesaris, &c.--GILDAS.

[4-*] Ruebant aedificia publica simul et privata, passim Sacerdotes inter
altaria trucibantur.--BEDE, Eccl. Hist. lib. i. c. xv.

[Illustration: Scutcheon from Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, circa A. D. 1450.]

CHAPTER I.

DEFINITION OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE; ITS ORIGIN, AND THE DIVISION OF IT INTO
STYLES.

Q. What is meant by the term "Gothic Architecture"?

A. Without entering into the derivation of the word "Gothic," it may
suffice to state that it is an expression sometimes used to denote in one
general term, and distinguish from the Antique, those peculiar modes or
styles in which most of our ecclesiastical and many of our domestic
edifices of the middle ages have been built. In a more confined sense, it
comprehends those styles only in which the pointed arch predominates, and
it is then often used to distinguish such from the more ancient
Anglo-Saxon and Norman styles.

Q. To what can the origin of this kind of architecture be traced?

A. To the classic orders in that state of degeneracy into which they had
fallen in the age of Constantine, and afterwards; and as the Romans, on
their voluntary abandonment of Britain in the fifth century, left many of
their temples and public edifices remaining, together with some Christian
churches, it was in rude imitat