dinary English
building, and belonging to a style on the whole fifty years earlier"
than the west front, as Professor Willis said, who gave it a name of
its own, and called it the Somerset style. Thus the theory came to be
that two bodies of masons had been employed--an ordinary English
company for the front, and a local Somerset company for the nave,
transepts and choir, who worked in a local variation of the prevalent
Early English style. In this way, an attempt was made to overcome the
difficulty of attributing to Jocelin work which Mr Willis had himself
pronounced to be "only a little removed from the early Norman style."
Mr Freeman, too, had allowed that the north porch might be earlier
than Jocelin; and, long before, Britton had said that there would be
little hesitation in ascribing the church to the transitional period
of Henry II. (1154-89) on architectural evidence, were it not for
Godwin's assertion, that Jocelin had entirely pulled down the old
church and built a fresh one.

But now we have got behind Godwin, and have found from contemporary
evidence that Bishop Reginald commenced the present church. Thus we
are able to divide the Early English work into no less than four
periods, (1) The three western arches of the choir, with the four
western bays of its aisles, the transepts, and the four eastern bays
of the nave, which are Reginald's work (1174-1191), and so early as to
be still in a state of transition from the Norman. It is a unique
example of transitional building, and Willis calls it "an improved
Norman, worked with considerable lightness and richness, but
distinguished from the Early English by greater massiveness and
severity." The characteristics of this late twelfth-century work are
bold round mouldings, square abaci, capitals, some with traces of the
classical volute, others interwoven with fanciful imagery that reminds
us of the Norman work of Glastonbury; while in the north porch, which
must be the earliest of all, we even find the zig-zag Norman moulding.
(2) The rest of the nave, which was finished in Jocelin's time--that
is to say, in the first half of the thirteenth century--preserves the
main characteristics of the earlier work, though the flowing
sculptured foliage becomes more naturalistic, and lacks the quaint
intermingling of figure subjects. (3) The west front, which is
Jocelin's work, and alone can claim to be of pure Early English style.
(4) The chapter-house crypt, which is so la