170 Bishops of Old Sarum. 
Thurstan (A.D. 1083) attempted to thrust it on the monks of 
Glastonbury. On their strenuously resisting the attempt tumult 
and bloodshed ensued, armed soldiers driving the monks from the 
ehapter and slaying many of them in the Church.'!' On account of 
this outrage the attention of Osmund, then not only Bishop of 
Sarum but Chancellor of England (A.D. 1085), is said to have been 
drawn to the variety of ritual used in the different Churches.? Hence 
on the occasion of the vpening of his new Cathedral he resolved to 
revise all the service-books. Collecting together a body of clergy 
learned and skilled in chanting, he carefully remodelled the existing 
offices,? and the Usr or Sarum was wholly or partially adopted in 
various parts of England, especially in the south. 
One characteristic feature in Osmund was reverence for the 
memory of St. Aldhelm, the holy man who some three hundred years 
before presided over the large diocese out of which his own had been 
taken. Osmund was thus a successor of St. Aldhelm; and what 
wonder, that with so much in his own character of a similar hue he 
should be a devotee of that remarkable man? In his own diocese 
there was everything to remind him of Aldhelm’s self-denying 
labours, and to stimulate him to follow in Aldhelm’s footsteps. 
There was Malmesbary over which Aldhelm had so long presided as 
abbot—Bradford where he had founded a little Church, an ece/esio/a, 
happily still remaining to us—Bishopstrow, the scene no doubt of 
some of his missionary labours, taking its name from its early bishop, 
its Church still dedicated to him—Doulting, hard at hand, in the 
little wooden Church of which he peacefully breathed forth his Vune 
Dimittis. Hence no sooner was Osmund consecrated than we find 
him officiating at the translation of Aldhelm’s remains to a fitting 
shrine at Malmesbury, and helping, together with Archbishop 
Lanfranc, to obtain his canonization, or admission into the calendar 
1See Simeon of Durham (Decem Scriptores col, 212) and Anglo Sax. Chron. 
sub unno. 1083, 
2 Palmer’s ‘‘ Origines Liturg.,”” pp. 186, seq. 
8 «* His composuit librum ordinalem ecclesiastici officii quem consuetudina- 
rium yvocant, quo fere tota nunc (c. A.D. 1200) Anglia, Wallia, et Hibernia 
utitur.” Brompton’s Chron. col, 977, 
ee 
