the date of this is indicated in Bishop Basset's letter
of 1255.

Hence the nave and transepts were restored after the transitional
Norman style, and vaulting shafts added in the fully developed Early
English style, while the window tracery and other details of the
isolated north aisles of the transepts were Geometrical. The four
piers supporting the central tower were of a later date; but surely
there must have been others, though less massive, before, otherwise it
is difficult to understand how the tower and spire were supported.

Dugdale gives only two monuments in the nave. Thomas Kemp, who died
bishop, reposed under the penultimate arch in the north side, in a
chapel enclosed by a screen and railings. The second was that of Sir
John Beauchamp, who died in 1358, and whose monument was under the
eastern arch on the south side. Somehow the populace entertained the
idea that this latter was the burial place of Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester, uncle to Henry VI., who was murdered in 1447 and buried at
St. Alban's. The adjacent part of the south aisle was called Duke
Humphrey's Walk: and the tomb seems to have been a sanctuary. At
dinner-time, needy people who lacked both the means to purchase a meal
and friends to provide them with one, and who chanced to loiter about
this sanctuary, were said _to dine with Duke Humphrey_, and the phrase
was equivalent to having no dinner at all.

[Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.
_After Hollar._]

=The Choir.=--As our ancestors looked eastward from under the central
tower, both aisles of the choir were completely hidden from view by
the height of the blank wall. The choir screen in the centre was of
less altitude, had four niches for statues on either side, and a fine
Pointed doorway in the centre of three orders of arches. The plates
are of a date too late to show any rood. Entering through this door
was the choir of twelve bays. Stephen Wren implies that the whole of
this magnificent member was completed by 1240;[46] but much of the
architecture belonged to a somewhat later date, and the prints are
corroborated by numerous documents.[47] The extension eastward on the
site of Old St. Faith's must have almost amounted to a rebuilding.
Where did this extension begin, and where did the choir of 1240 end?
Wren noticed that the intercolumnar spacing was less irregular to the
east. Mr. Longman points out that the clustered pillars towards the
west differed from the others, as d