ras 
5 NG aint 
Osmund, 1078—1099, 173 
mutilated. Another, William of Aldrie, also closely connected with 
the king—the chronicler calls him compater—was condemned to 
be scourged at every Church at Sarum, and then to be hanged. 
William de Aldrie protested his innocence to the last, and, as it 
would appear, to the satisfaction of the bishop, but no efforts could 
save him. The bishop received him to his last confession, and 
“ then, commending his soul to God, sprinkled him with holy water, 
and so departed.” 
William of Malmesbury, in summing up Osmund’s character, says, 
that he was “so pre-eminent for chastity that common fame would 
itself blush to speak otherwise than truthfully concerning his virtue. 
Stern he might appear towards penitents, but not more severe to 
them than to himself. Free from ambition, he neither sought others’ 
wealth, nor wasted his own imprudently.” ! 
Osmund died December 3rd, 1099, his last days having been at- 
tended with much suffering, endured with much patience.? Three 
hundred years afterwards, due enquiry having been first made, he 
was admitted into the calendar of saints. In the convocation of 
prelates and clergy in St. Paul’s, in 1481, the festival of St. Osmund 
was directed to be kept.2 A document relating to the canonization 
of Osmund was discovered in the Cathedral muniment room a short 
time ago. Some careful hand had made a copy of it in the fifteenth 
century, and it is included in a MS. volume of documents relating 
to Salisbury, just now in my possession, an account of which, though 
far from accurate, was given in one of the reports of the Historical 
Manuscripts Commision.* 
A flat stone with the simple date MXCIX upon it, is said once 
to have covered Osmund’s remains, and to have been brought with 
’ Castitate preeminens ; de cujus virtute mentiri erubesceret fame volubilitas. 
Unde fiebat ut penitentibus asperior equo videretur, dum quod in se non 
inveniret in aliis durius vindicaret. Ambitionis immunis, sua stulte non 
perdere, aliena non querere.” Gest. Pont., 184, 
2“Quseque mundiali labe contracta creditur patientia sua luisse, dinturno 
morbo ante mortem tabefactus.” Gest. Pont , 185. 
$ Wilkins’ Concil, iii., 613. 
* Report i., pp. 90—95, 
