The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is located in the city of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The Anglican parish in the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador was founded in 1699 in response to a petition drafted by the Anglican townsfolk of St. John's and sent to Henry Compton, Bishop of London. In this petition, the people also requested help in the rebuilding of their church, which had been destroyed, along with the rest of the city, in 1696 by the French under the command of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. During the centuries, at least six wooden churches stood on or near this site; each was destroyed by military operations during the various wars between the French and the British. The British finally won control of eastern North America. History Construction of the first stone church was begun in 1843 under the direction of Aubrey Spencer, the first Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda. Little progress was made on this relatively modest edifice beyond the laying of a cornerstone before Spencer resigned due to ill health. The present cathedral was begun in 1847 by Edward Feild, the second Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda. Feild commissioned plans from a leading Gothic Revival architect, George Gilbert Scott, who envisioned a more impressive cruciform structure, with varied ornamentation in the 12th-century English style. The nave, built between 1847 and 1850, served as the entire cathedral church for 35 years. Scott's assistant, architect William Hay, oversaw the nave's construction. In the City of Hamilton, in Pembroke Parish (where St. John's Church was already the parish church), Bermuda, a chapel-of-ease (designed by James Cranston of Oxford in 1844 and completed in 1869) named Trinity Church was also erected, with an adjacent Bishop's Lodge. This was destroyed by arson in 1884 and William Hay, who had been consulted on the construction of Trinity Church in 1848-1849 and again in 1862, was hired in 1885 with his partner, George Henderson, to design the current structure, which was completed in 1905 and became the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity when the Bishop of Bermuda was established as separate from the Bishop of Newfoundland in 1919). Construction on the choir and transept section did not commence until 1880 and was completed in September 1885, under the direction of James Butler Knill Kelly. The additions to the nave gave the cathedral the shape of a Latin cross.