Winchester and Gloucester - of thousands of 'banker-marks' on indivi dual Stones, which allowed masons to be identified and their work counted and checked. The 1370 fabric roll of York notes: 'All their times and hours shall be revealed by a bill, ordained therefore’; they were to be at work ‘as early as they may see Skillfully by daylight and they shall stand there truly working all day, as long as they may see skillfully for the work.’ They got an hour at noon for a meal, and ‘all their times and hours shall be revealed by a bell ordained therefore’: a slacker was ‘chastised by abating of his payment’. This brief was laid down in 1344 atter a report to the chapter revealed negligence, idleness and indiscipline, in which everyone from the master-mason and master-carpenter down was involved. The maste r admitted he had lost control: the men were unruly and insubordinate; there had been strikes among the laborers; timber, stone, lime and cement had been stolen; and much expensive damage had been caused by carel essness and incompetence. The major cost items were wages, and the purchase and transportation of stone and timber. All this had to be paid for at market-prices. True, the crown sometimes helped by allowing bulk goods to travel without paying tolls. William |, a generous benefactor of the Church, gave Bisho p Walkeleyn of Winchester permission to cut as much timber in the Forest of Hempage as his men could remov e in four days and nights; he was furious when the bishop brought ‘an innumerable troop' and denud ed a large part of the forest. Such generosity became almost unknown in the later Middle Ages. Royal cash and resou rces went exClusively to foundations in the king's name - another example of the growing religious selfcenteredness. To build cathedrals meant raising enormous quantities of hard cash. Wealthy court bishops, like Stapl eton of Exeter, or Wykeham of Winchester, provided large sums themselves. But most of the money was raised by the sale of spiritual privileges. The thirteenth century choir-arm of St Paul's was financed by forty-day indulgences, sold all over the country, and even in Wales. The 1349-50 fabric roll of Exeter itemized a payment of eight shillings for a scribe to write out 800 indulgences for sale to contributors to the building fund. Money could also be raised by financial penances: the system was critically examined in a book published in 1450 by Thomas Gascoigne, the fiercely orthodox but reformist Chancellor of Oxford. He Says that in the desperate efforts to raise funds for York, largest and most expensive of all the English cathedrals, parishes were being ‘farmed out' to professional fund-raisers, who were taking a large cut of the proceeds. There were also straightforward begging-missions, run by guaestores, much used by York, and also open to abuse; and there were guilds of benefactors formed to raise regular sums - the members being compensated by privileges, exemptions, and so forth. The privileges, right to issue indulgences, and other Spiritual knick-knacks had to be obtained in Rome (or Avignon) and likewise paid for. So the wheels of the Church went round. Nothing was for nothing. Even so, money to build often ran out: it is the chief reason why the cathedrals took so long to complete: a century for the nave of Old St Paul's, 150 years for the nave of Westminster Abbey; major construction was going on at York from 1220-1475, over 250 years, and at Lichfield from 1195-1350. Anyway, what were cathedrals for? Originally they had been the only church of the diocese, or at any rate the only one where all the sacraments could be administered. Then they tended to become, in addition, shrines for valuable (and money-raising) relics. Thomas Becket posthumously paid for much of the rebuilding of Canterbury in the later Middle Ages. The body of Edward Il, brutally murdered, and in the eyes of many martyred, paid for the marvelous perpendicular choir at Gloucester Abbey. Among the most popular were Cuthbert at Durham, Etheldreda at Ely, William of Perth at Rochester, Swithun at Winchester and Wulfstan and Oswald at Worcester. A cathedral without a well-known saint was missing an important source of revenue; and for this reason efforts were made to secure from Rome the canonization of people buried within the fabric; but Rome had to be cajoled, and paid. Even so, there were shrines of many unofficial _ Saints whose status had never been regularized by Rome - Bishop Button at Wells, for instance, who cured toothache, and in York Archbishop Richard Scrope, executed as a rebel. Almost any royal or princely person who came to a tragic end was liable to be venerated, irrespective of his actual merits: thus Thomas, Earl of 64