Osmund, 1078—1099. 167 
walls of the Cathedral. According to Robert of Gloucester, the 
damage done was very considerable, for speaking of the events of 
the fifth year of the reign of the Red King he says:— 
**So gret lytnynge was the vyfte yer, so that al to nogte 
The rof the Chyrch of Salesbury it broute 
Rygt evene the vyfte day that he yhalwed was.” * 
I am sorry to dissipate any pleasing illusions that take possession’ 
of men’s minds, especially when they form the subjects of a poet’s 
verses. Still I must own that I can hardly bring myself to believe 
that the outlines of the foundations which Hatcher and Bowles profess: 
to have traced after an unusually dry summer, in 1834, were those 
of Osmund’s Cathedral. I will give you presently my reasons for 
thinking that possibly there were ¢wo Cathedrals built during the 
one hundred and fifty years whilst the see was at Old Sarum, and 
that the outlines traced by the poet Bowles were those of the second 
of these buildings. For the large size—it must have been nearly 
300 feet from east to west, and about 550 across the transepts, since 
it is represented in the sketch given in Bowles’ Lacock as having 
been cruciform—seems to shut us out from the belief that it could 
have been Osmund’s Cathedral." We know that the early founders 
of Christian Churches were content with buildings of small size and 
very humble pretensions, nor did the custom of superseding them by 
large Churches become the fashion till a later period than the days 
of Herman, or Osmund. The many years—fifteen in all—that the 
first Cathedral was in building, may of course be urged against this 
view, still there are other reasons which I think are of sufficient 
weight to support it, and these I will place before you when J come 
’ to speak of one of Osmund’s successors. 
But Osmund did more than build a Cathedral : he formed a Cathe- 
dral ehapter, a body that, in those days, was not only a necessity but 
* Robert of Gloncester’s Chronicle (Hearne’s ed.) p. 416. 
1 Bowles’ Lacock, p. 363, See also an engraving in Hatcher and Benson’s 
Salisbury, p. 49. 
? As a proof of this I may mention S. Aldhelm’s. “ Ecclesiola,” at Bradford- 
on-Avon, the nave of which is only 25 feet long and 13 feet wide. The origi- 
nal cathedral at Llandaff was much the same size. See Freeman on Llandaff 
_ Cathedral, p. 46. 
