calling the style of "additions and rebuilding" in the later 16th and earlier 17th centuries "often much debased". Perpendicular followed the Decorated Gothic (or Second Pointed) style and preceded the arrival of Renaissance elements in Tudor and Elizabethan architecture. As a Late Gothic style contemporary with Flamboyant in France and elsewhere in Europe, the heyday of Perpendicular is traditionally dated from 1377 until 1547, or from the beginning of the reign of Richard II to the beginning the reign of Edward VI. Though the style rarely appeared on the European continent, it was dominant in England until the mid-16th century. History In 1906 William Lethaby, Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, proposed that the origin of the Perpendicular style was to be found not in 14th-century Gloucester, as was traditionally argued, but in London, where the court of the House of Plantagenet was based at Westminster Palace beside Westminster Abbey. The cathedral of London, the episcopal see of the third-most senior bishop in the Church of England, was then Old St Paul's Cathedral. According to the architectural historian John Harvey, the octagonal chapter house of St Paul's, built about 1332 by William Ramsey for the cathedral canons, was the earliest example of Perpendicular Gothic. Alec Clifton-Taylor agreed that St Paul's chapter house and St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster Palace predate the early Perpendicular work at Gloucester. In the early 21st century the outline of the foundations of the chapter house was made visible in the redeveloped south churchyard of the present 17th-century cathedral. The chapter house at St Paul's was built under the direction of William de Ramsey, who had worked on earlier phases of the still-unfinished St Stephens's Chapel. Ramsey extended the stone mullions of the windows downwards on the walls. At the top of each window he made a four-centred arch which became a distinctive feature of Perpendicular. Along with rest of Old St Paul's, the chapter house was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Elements of early Perpendicular are also known from St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster Palace, a palatine chapel built by King Edward I following the model of Sainte-Chapelle at the Palais de la Cité in medieval Paris. It was built in phases over a long period, from 1292 until 1348, though today only the crypt still exists. The architect of the early building was Michael of Canterbury, followed in 1323