Lancaster, executed by Edward Il in 1322, attracted an enthusiastic cult in St Paul's until the king angrily had his remains removed. These shrines were nearly always in the choir or sanctuary, which were barred from the rest of the cathedral by massive iron gates. They were only opened at stated times, when the public was admitted in groups on payment of a fee. Otherwise they never got beyond the nave. Indeed, it is hard to see the cathedrals as serving Christians as a whole. They were built essentially for the clergy and the upper-class, and to some extent for well-to-do townsmen. The choir-arm was a chapel reserved exclusively for the canons in a secular cathedral, or the convent in a monastic one. The laity had no part in the services, and indeed when they stood in the nave (which had no benches or chairs), the high altar would be obscured by the screen or pulpitum. Sometimes no nave was built at all, as at Beauvais. Usually, it formed a vast vestibule for the choir, used for professional purposes. It was not intended for lay worship except where, as in a few cathedrals, building it had involved knocking down a parish church. Then an altar would be set up and function. But most naves were big, empty and dirty places, not elaborately decorated like the ‘clerical part of the building. Often they were used for trade. In 1554, under ‘Bloody’ Mary, the City of London Corporation forbade anyone to use the nave of St Paul's as a short cut to carry casks of beer, or loads of fruit and fish, from the river to the markets. In some cases the public could get into the transepts. More often these and other parts of the cathedral were filled up by chantry chapels, paid for from the wills of wealthy people for the saying of daily masses for their souls, and to which only the donors’ families were admitted. Chapels gradually occupied all the empty space, together with extra altars for the saying of masses for the dead ~ these, too, had to be paid for. From the fourteenth century, in fact, the cathedrals became an accumulation of chapels and altars under one roof for the endless round of soul-masses for lay and ecclesiastical benefactors. Even by the beginning of the thirteenth century, before commemorative masses became popular, Durham had accumulated over 7,000 a year; later they were reckoned in tens of thousands. From the thirteenth century, too, dates the practice of burying wealthy laymen and ecclesiastics within the fabric. Hitherto it had been rare, except for founders; even the early kings and queens of Kent were buried outside in the grounds of St Augustine's, Canterbury. Then, in 740, the papacy decreed that archbishops might be buried within their cathedral, and thereafter the rule was broadened until from about 1250 it was a matter of cash ~ thus the rich and well-born cluttered up the interior. Over this ocular assertion of the fact that money might count in the next world, as well as in this, soared the dramatic battlements of the edifice, the needs of stone architecture - stone progressively replaced timber - to a large extent dictating shape, while size became, as it were, an arrogant assertion of the power and distinctiveness of the clerical class, and of their lay benefactors whose bones were housed below. Vaingloriousness led to length in England (the nave St Paul's was 589 feet long; Winchester 526), and height in France (beginning with Notre Dame, c. 1165, at 110 feet, then leaping up with each successive cathedral in the Isle de France - Chartres 114, Reims 125, Amiens 140, and culminating in Beauvais, 154). When, in the sixteenth century, relics were discredited and masses for the dead forbidden in northern Europe, the cathedrals lost much of their purpose; the radical reformers were puzzled what to do with them. No wonder; an analysis of the building, growth and functioning of the cathedrals explains many of the reasons why the Reformation occurred. ‘Mechanical Christianity’ as we may call it, was accordingly conducted, in the towns, primarily for the respectable’ citizen, and more particularly for the well-to-do benefactor. What about the country? The overwhelming majority of parish churches, as such documents as Doomsday Book indicate, were privately owned and expected to make a profit. Whether the peasantry were well served by priests depended very largely on the fertility of the soil and the general level of prosperity. Priests tended to concentrate in the towns or the wealthier country districts. In theory, every adult was expected to know the basic elements of the faith. An early Carelingian decrees laid down: ‘Let all men be compelled to learn the Creed and the Lord's 65