164 Bishops of Old Sarum. 
primate of English birth and undoubted canonical position.1 Twice, 
at least, he was sent to Rome “on the king’s errand.” This 
notice, slight as it appears, is important, for it marks the com- 
mencement of that habit of constant reference to the papal see 
which more than once led to important results in England. It was 
not indeed until the reign of the Conqueror that that custom was, so 
to speak, an established one. As one of our greatest living historians 
has said— In making England part of the great Western Common- 
wealth, of which Rome was still the head, William bent our necks 
beneath the yoke of Rome, the yoke no longer of her Cxsar, but of 
her Pontiff. That yoke, pressed upon us by the first Prince of Gaul 
who won a footing in England, was thrown off by the last Prince of 
England who won a footing in Gaul.” ? 
Herman seems to have had in his diocese of Old Sarum the help 
of a suffragan, who is described as Rothulf (or Ralph), a Norwegian 
bishop, who was a kinsman of Edward the Confessor. At all 
events, in 1050, the king bestowed the abbaey of Abingdon on 
“ Bishop Rothulf, his kinsman.” * His predecessor as abbot, Siward 
by name, had been consecrated as coadjutor to Archbishop Eadsige, 
in 1044. 
It is customary to speak of a plain coffin-fashioned tomb of Purbeck 
marble, now lying near the west end of the Cathedral on the south 
side, as that which once covered the remains of Bishop Herman, 
and as having been brought with them from Old Sarum.* I do not 
recollect. ever to have seen any record of Herman’s burial-place, and 
I should have conjectured it was more likely to have been at Sher- 
borne, where he lived for many years, than at Old Sarum. Certainly 
William de Wanda, in his account of the translation of the bodies 
of former bishops to the new Cathedral, in 1225, makes no mention 
whatever of that of Bishop Herman. 
1 Freeman’s ‘* Norman Conquest,” iv., 348. 
2 Freeman’s ‘‘ Norman Conquest,” yv., 651. 
3 He was Abbot of Abingdon, 1050—1052. Stubbs’ Reg. Sacr., p. 143. See 
also History of Abingdon Mon. (Angl. Sacr.), i., 167. 
* See Dodsworth’s Salisbury Cathedral, p. 188, 
