CI APLET, a small ornament cut into olives, beads, ; a sort of fillet.
ClIAPTER-lIOITSE (from capita/um), a place belonging to a cathedral, or collegiate church, wherein the assemblies of the clergy were held.
The greater number of chapter-houses were connected with the cloisters of the church to which they belonged, by which means they were approached from the church ; but, at Wells, York, and Lichfield, they are adjacent to the north transept, in the first case being considerably elevated above the level of the church ; they are seldom found westward of the tran sept. The earlier of these edifices, dating of the ele% emit and twelfth centuries, are in plan iutrallelogramic, termina ting sometimes toward the east in a semicircle, as at 1)111.h:tin Cathedral ; at later periods we find them octangular or polygonal, while that of Worcester is circular internally. with ten sides on the exterior. In elevation the walls are supported by buttresses—that of Lincoln with flying buttresses—with one or more windows between each pair, the whole covered in the later instances, with a very high-pitched gathering from each side of the building, and terminating in a point at its apex. Below the windows, in the interior, runs a continuous seat or bench-table, backed with a series of niches or arcades, and at the east end, facing the entrance, stand three stone seats, usually of greater elevation than the rest, appropriated to the superior members of the chapter.
The ceiling is more frequently vaulted. Among the earlier specimens may be enumerated Durham, probably the oldest, parallelogramic, with circular east end ; Gloucester, Bristol, Oxford, Chester, Canterbury, and Exeter, all of which are rectangular. The first variation seems to have been at Worcester, which is circular within and decagonal without ; the vaulting of the interior hieing supported by a central pillar and brackets in the side-walls. Of the remainder, Lincoln has ten sides, the vaulting supported by a central column and flying buttresses, which last appendage forms its peculiarity ; Wells, Lichfield, Salisbury. and York, only eight sides, the vaulting sustained, as in the previous examples, that of York only excepted, where the vaulting is carried across the building in a single span of' forty-seven feet. Wells chapter-house is erected over a crypt, a pecu liarity which it shares with that of Westminster; that of Lichfield, although octangular, has two of its opposite sides of longer dimensions than the others, in which respect it is perfectly unique; while that of Salisbury is perhaps of all specimens the most beautiful.
The subjoined LIST OF CHAPTER—HOUSES IN ENGLAND, (from Britton's valuable works,) may be found useful.