Welsh Journals

sermon" preached to them in the cathedral, but also of the canons "slombringe necligence towarde the preferment of Gods worde". Small wonder then, that it was his firm and reiterated intention to move the cathedral to Carmarthen not only for the better administration of the diocese, away from St Davids, "lurkynge in a desolate corner", but also in order to break the hold of superstition, which he felt the canons to be encouraging. And not only that, but the "over sumptuous expenses that the canons have interprysed in reedifyenge the body of theyr cathedrall church" would, he felt, consume the "small resydew of the church treasure remayninge in their custody, without any profytable effecte, savinge to norysh clatteringe conventycles of barbarous rurall persons In other words, as late as 1538, the canons were still engaged in the work of refurbishing their cathedral; and Barlow, by referring to "the body of the cathedral" seems to be speaking of the nave. As I have shown, there is a series of documents emanating from Chancery in a suit brought by Thomas Stradling, nephew and executor of William Stradling, chancellor of St Davids from 1511-39, and master of the fabric for the reparation of the cathedral. Stradling had laid out £ 90.6s.8d of his own money for this work, over and above the revenues afforded him by the chapter. He had not been reimbursed; nor had his nephew as late as 1542. The reason that the work had to be undertaken was that the church was ruinous. This may be an exaggeration, but I have now had sight of another document, in the Public Record Office, classified as part of Chancery Town Depositions (C 24: 6 34 Henry VIII). It ha clearly become detached from the Stradling suit, and preserves depositions taken in favour of Stradling against Andrew Whitmay (archdeacon of St Davids, 1529-?47). A certain William Griffith deposed that in 1539 he had carried a letter from Thomas Stradling, then at St Davids, to Whitmay at Gloucester to get from him six pounds owned to William Stradling and laid out on behalf of Whitmay in "buyldyng the ruff" (roof) of the church of St Davids. Others, it must be noted had also tried unsuccessfully to get the six pounds from Whitmay in 1538-9. Thus, Barlow was right: the canons were rebuilding the nave in 1538; and were over-reaching themselves in the process. The unique ceiling, which reveals the presence of renaissance motifs in the pendants, dolphins and human figures, as well as the typical late mediaeval green man, was being completed just as Barlow was most determined to sow the seeds of the reformation by removing the cathedral from St Davids, in order to free it from the contaminat- ion of late medieval belief and practice. This attempt at removal was part of Barlow's wider plan to reform and modernise the diocese. In his own way, he was true to his beliefs in his determination not only to free the cathedral of 1 Evans, St Davids Cathedral, p 79. 2 E A Lewis, Early Chancery Proceedings concerning Wales, (Cardiff 1937), p 269.