coin of
AEdward the Confessor bears an inscription showing that it was struck
by Godred at Sarum.

From the time of St. Aldhelm, in 705, to that of Herman, in 1058,
there are no other facts of its secular history sufficiently pertinent
to our purpose to warrant their quotation here, as the record of the
place is so woven into the lives of its bishops, that the brief
summary of the ecclesiastics who held the see includes all we need of
the history of the city. In this kingdom within a kingdom, a cathedral
surrounded by a fortress, its inhabitants were naturally split into
factions; the soldiers and the clergy failed to agree, and in spite of
the document quoted below, there is little doubt that political rather
than climatic reasons led to the removal of the cathedral. Whether, as
some writers think, it was but an insignificant structure, it is
certainly recorded that the church erected by Osmund took fifteen
years to build. Five days after its consecration, on April 5th, 1092,
it was partially destroyed by a thunderstorm. We find in Robert of
Gloucester's "Chronicle" (Hearnes ed., p. 416) this allusion to the
disaster:

"So gret lytnynge was the vyfte yer, so that it al to nogte,
The rof the Church of Salesbury it broute
Rygt evene the vyfte day that he yhalwed was."

Whether the sentence in an old chronicler that Roger "made anew the
church of Sarum" means it was so seriously damaged by the lightning
that he actually rebuilt it, or merely that he restored it, is not
clear. Roger was the great architectural genius of his time, and from
the evidence of its ground plan, traced in the foundations revealed in
the singularly dry summer of 1834, it may be that the stately edifice,
270 feet long by 75 feet wide, on the plan of a Latin cross, was in
its last state not the work of Osmund. During the excavations at this
time, various fragments of stained glass and several keys were
discovered, also what was apparently the original grave of St. Osmund
before his body was moved to Sarum. An extract from Harrison's
"Description of Britain," prefixed to Hollinshed's "Chronicle" shows
clearly enough the principal events that produced the crisis which
doomed Old Sarum to desolation. "In the time of ciuile warres the
souldirs of the castell and chanons of Old Sarum fell at ods,
inasmuch that often after brawles they fell at last to sadde blowes.
It happened therefore in a rogation weeke that the cleargie going in
solemn