THE LATE GOTHIC STYLE C. I25O-C, IfOO
ness not inferior to that of the Catalans. Yet they succeeded—and
here we are faced with the same problem as in die contemporary
German churches—in combining this practical, matter-of-fact spirit
with a sense of mystery and an almost oriental effusion of ornament.
Standing at the west end of the nave one can hardly think of the
supreme economy with which this effect of exuberance has been
attained. The fan-vault in particular helps, wherever it is used, to
create an atmosphere of heavy luxuriance. Yet it is an eminently
rational vault, a technician's invention, one is inclined to surmise.
It originated from the vault designs of chapter-houses and their
development into the palm-like spread of bunches of ribs towards a
heavily bossed ridge-rib in the choir (early I4th century) and then
the nave of Exeter. That had been the spatial imagination of the
Decorated at its boldest moment. Then the Perpendicular came in
and systematised and solidified it all, again first at Gloucester, in
the east walk of the cloisters (1357-77). By giving all ribs the
same length, the same distance from each other and the same
curvature, and by applying the ubiquitous panelling to the span-
drels, the palm-vault of Exeter is converted into the fan-vault of
Gloucester.
This system the king's masons used at Cambridge, men who,
although at this advanced hour in the development of medixval
architecture they are sometimes already mentioned with their names
in documents as surveyors of works and directors of works, were
still by training and experience in the same category as Villard de
Honnecourt and the masters of the English and French cathedrals.
But as members of the king's household they now very gradually
began to advance into-the status of civil servants. This develop-
ment went on into the I7th century. Not until then were the
royal architects in France and also in England primarily civil
servants.
In the I4th century a man such as Henry Yevele (died 1400)
appears more as the successful London mason and contractor and
distinguished member of his city guild than as a royal architect in
the modern sense. We find his name coupled in one document with
Chaucer's, in another with Dick Whittington's. So we imagine him
in his stately fur-linfed robes (which incidentally were part of his
salary from the king) in his house by St. Magnus, London Bridge,
or one of his two manor-houses in Kent. Of work by him, the
masonry on Westminster Hall (1394-1402) survives. Such men,
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