As has been said, the choir of the minster remained unusually small for so important a church. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were periods of great activity in church building, and many of the Norman architects planned their works on a vast scale. With the examples of Durham, Winchester, and St. Albans before them, it was natural that the archbishops of the Metropolitan Church of York should be dissatisfied with the size of their own choir. It fell to the lot of Roger, the rival of Thomas à Becket, to rebuild it. The date of his nave is approximately 1154-1181. The remains of his work in the crypt show that it was in the latest style of Norman architecture and considerably influenced by Flambard's work at Durham, with channeled and fluted pillars. The detail appears to have been richer and later in character even than Flambard's. The outer wall of the crypt shows the dimensions of this choir. It was square at the end, and had flanking towers--two bays from the east--which served as transepts inside. The eastern transepts of the present choir still keep the position and tradition of these towers. The aisle probably ran round the east end as at Romsey and Byland. The two bays east of the tower were wider than the others. Roger, it should be said, had been Archdeacon of Canterbury, and he was therefore well acquainted with the "glorious Choir of Conrad" built by Anselm. There is much in the planning of his work to show that he was influenced by the example of Conrad's choir.
[Illustration: The Minster (from an Old Print).]
At the end of the twelfth century the minster was utterly unlike the present building. Except in the crypt, and in certain parts of the nave and tower not visible to the casual observer, there are no vestiges of the work of the earlier builders. There is now no Norman work to be seen in the minster itself, and in 1200, nave, choir, transepts, and towers were all Norman. Of these the transepts appear to have been the poorest part. They were probably short, and had no aisles. The nave also was of rude Early Norman character. The Early English architects having determined, probably, to rebuild the nave and transepts, made a beginning with the transepts about 1230. Roger's choir, only finished about fifty years before, no doubt seemed to them grand enough. The transepts were built on a totally different scale to the rest of the church as it then stood. They were both longer and broader, and they had aisles on each side of them. No doubt the object of this was to get a standard for the ultimate rebuilding of the nave. The greater width of these transepts made it difficult to join their aisles with those of the nave and choir, and were the cause of a curious and daring expedient, which will be described in the architectural account of the building. The south transept was the first to be rebuilt. It is the work of Walter de Gray, archbishop from 1216 to 1265, who was buried under an arch of his own building, in a tomb which still remains the most beautiful, perhaps, in the minster. The north transept seems to have been begun as soon as the south was finished; it is said to have been the work of John Romeyn, or the Roman, an Italian, and the treasurer of York. Walter de Gray probably also had a large part in the building of them. These transepts are the earliest part of the existing minster. John Romeyn also built an Early English central tower in place of Thomas's Early Norman tower. It remained for John Romeyn the younger, son of the treasurer, and archbishop from 1286 to 1296, to begin the rebuilding of the nave. It was planned on a far larger scale than the old nave, and was wider even than the Early English transepts. The old nave had been 83 feet wide, the transepts were 95, and the new nave 103. The difference in width between the transepts and the new nave is in the aisles. The plan of the transepts had no influence on the plan of the nave. The large triforium, small clerestory, and moderate-sized main arches give way to a large clerestory, large main arches, and practically non-existent triforium. These are unusual proportions in English Churches of that period. At Ely, Westminster, Beverley, and many other places, the proportions of Norman or Early English work influenced those of the later Decorated and Perpendicular.