In this transept are monuments for--(north wall), Bishop STILLINGFLEET, (1689-1699,) “jam tibi, quicumque hæc leges, nisi et Europæ et literati orbis hospes es, ipse per se notus;” and (east wall), Bishop HOUGH, (1717-1743,) by ROUBILIAC. A full-length effigy of the Bishop reclines on the top of a sepulchre, upheld by a figure of Religion. The inscription gives due praise to the “unbounded charity, the courteous affability, and the engaging condescension” of the Bishop,--the “ever-memorable President of Magdalen College, Oxford, who providentially for this nation opposed the rage of Popish superstition and tyranny.” A small bas-relief below the effigy represents the President’s expulsion from Magdalen. There is also a tablet for Dean HOOK, (died 1828,) brother of the more celebrated Theodore Hook.
VII. A flight of steps, rendered necessary by the elevation of the crypt, which extends eastward from this point, ascends to the _choir-screen_, between the two eastern piers of the tower; an atrocious composition of lath and plaster, erected in 1812, and shortly, no doubt, to be removed. Some of the small figures in the frieze were taken from misereres in the choir, and will eventually be returned.
Passing beyond the screen, we enter the most interesting portion of the cathedral. The whole building, east of the tower, is far richer and better in detail than any part of the nave. The convent, in all probability, was receiving larger sums from the pilgrims to the shrine of St. Wulfstan during the thirteenth century, when the choir and the parts connected with it were built, than during the fourteenth, when the nave was erected. By that time the neighbouring churches of Hereford and Gloucester had each their great shrine[72], which must have attracted much of the wealth that would otherwise have found its way into the treasury of Worcester.
Bishop William of Blois is recorded as having “begun the new work of the front” in the year 1224. The plan of the new building involved a great extension of the cathedral eastward. Beyond the site of the crypt, the work was carried “to a length equal to double that of the Norman presbytery, (exclusive of the probable Lady-chapel of the latter,) and so adjusted as to place the central tower of the church exactly midway between the east and west extremities of the entire building[73].” Eastern transepts were also adopted. Professor Willis has been the first to shew the order in which, in all probability, this new work was erected. This is indicated by a difference in the moulding of the vaulting-ribs. “The transverse vault-ribs of the side aisles and centre of the work between the great tower and the small transepts (namely, the present choir) have a hollow mold in their soffits; and this is also the case