--What remains to be
told of its annals is little more than a series of dates touching the
erection of different parts of the building: these, however, are worth
preserving, so long as any portion of the noble church is permitted to
have existence, and so long as drawings and engravings continue to
perpetuate the remembrance of its details.
The choir and extremities of the transept, all of pointed architecture,
are supposed to have been rebuilt in 1278.--The Lady-Chapel was an
addition of the year 1326.--The abbey suffered materially during the
wars between England and France, in the reigns of our Henry IVth and
Henry Vth: its situation exposed it to be repeatedly pillaged by the
contending parties; and, were it not that the massy Norman architecture
sufficiently indicates the true date, and that we know our neighbors'
habit of applying large words to small matters, we might even infer that
it was then destroyed as effectually as it had been by Ironside: the
expression, "lamentabiliter desolata, diffracta et annihilata," could
scarcely convey any meaning short of utter ruin, except to the ears of
one who had been told that a religious edifice was actually _abime_
during the revolution, though he saw it at the same moment standing
before him, and apparently uninjured.
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