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Alotes on the Heraldry of Salisbury Cathedral. 
By the Rev. E, E. Dorutne. 
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[Read at the Salisbury Meeting of the Society, 1896.] 
WAN presenting to the notice of your Society a few observations 
<2 on the heraldry of Salisbury Cathedral, I must begin by 
confessing that our cathedral is not a church rich in heraldic 
ornamentation. In fact, architecturally speaking, and so far as the 
_ actual fabric of the church is concerned, it is completely devoid of 
heraldry. Compare this cathedral with such a church as Sherborne 
_ Abbey, and you will understand what I mean when I say that the 
structure is absolutely unheraldic. And the reason of this absence of 
heraldry in the architecture of our church is not far to seek. Planché 
lays it down as a fundamental fact that heraldry appears as a science 
at the commencement of the thirteenth century. Now Salisbury 
- Cathedral was begun in 1220, and was substantially finished in 1266, 
so that even by the time the building was completed heraldry would 
only just be beginning to assume the position to which it gradually 
_ attained as a well ordered and intelligible science. But, in the other 
ease, heraldry had come to be recognised as an essential part of the 
nation’s economy when Sherborne Abbey was left, practically as 
_we know it now, after the great re-building by Abbots Bradford 
and Ramsam in the fifteenth century. Until the end of Henry 
IITs reign heraldry was only in process of assuming a definite and 
systematic character. And if it is objected that the architecture of 
Westminster Abbey—a church built contemporaneously with 
Salisbury Cathedral and finished only a few years later—is rich in 
heraldic adornment, the poverty of the Salisbury builders might be 
suggested as a further reason for our church’s lack of heraldry. 
The deans of the building period placed on record the difficulty 
which they experienced in obtaining funds for the prosecution of 
the work, and it is not altogether unreasonable to suppose that the 
