and devotion, and was, at his earnest
request, admitted to their spiritual fellowship. And truly nowhere in
kingdom or duchy had he a more loyal subject than the chronicler who
knew so well what a work it was to bring some approach to peace and
order into a land torn in pieces by noble brigands. Hopes of this kind,
hopes of any immediate memory of the days of Orderic or of days before
Orderic are not fated to be gratified; but we have done well to come to
Saint-Evroul none the less.

The ruined church offers us much to see and study. The only thing that
suggests itself as a possible memorial of Orderic's day is the
foundation of the apse. But as it is only a foundation and not a crypt,
there is no need to think that he ever saw it. The apse itself has
fallen; but traces enough are left to show that inside at least it was
polygonal. But it was an apse of the old simple pattern, without
surrounding aisles and chapels. It could not have been there when the
young novice from Shropshire came to Saint-Evroul. It may have been
built in the latter part of his long sojourn. And the stumps of the
great round pillars of the choir are most likely of the same date. The
use of such pillars is a fashion English rather than Norman; but it is
hard to believe that the "tenellus exsul" from Ettingsham brought with
him any architectural tastes. The choir was of some length, and its
length was broken by an apsidal chapel on each side, pointing north and
south, so as to form a kind of small eastern transept. But the greater
part of what is left is very fine work of the thirteenth century,
finished at the west end in the fourteenth. The pillars and arches of
the nave are broken down, leaving only stumps; but enough is left at the
west end and at the crossing to show the design. Clustering shafts
surrounded a central pillar; the mouldings of the arches are, as often
happens in Normandy, as well and deeply cut as they would be in England.
Above the arcade was a tall clerestory, seemingly without any triforium
or with the triforium thrown into the clerestory. Altogether there is
about enough left to suggest the memory of Glastonbury, though
Saint-Evroul is certainly not on the scale of Glastonbury, even without
the western church. The west front must have been very remarkable. The
first impression on approaching from outside is that two western towers
stood out in front of the nave, as at Holyrood, or as the single towers
at Dunkeld and Brechin