THE NORMANS IN DORSET. 123 



industry in the middle ages ; and this must have enriched 

 the landowners and monasteries to such a degree, and led 

 to such an increase of population, that the old Romanesque 

 buildings were found to be too small, as well as out of keeping 

 with the magnificent ideas and showy fashions of the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. So down came the old 

 naves of Milton and Sherborne, Cerne and Abbots bury, 

 Maiden Newton and Dorchester, to make room for bigger 

 and finer things. 



But to return to Norman times. There are no figures in 

 English history better known to us than the great ecclesi- 

 astics of the days of the Williams, Henrys, and Stephen ; 

 Lanfranc, Anselm, Gundulf, Walkelin, St. Osmund. And 

 amongst the foremost of them in point of greatness (if not 

 of saintliness), ranks our Bishop Roger of Caen, Bishop of 

 Sarum and Abbot of Sherborne brought to Royal favour 

 (so a malicious but possibly true story goes) by the rapidity 

 with which he said Mass who certainly supplied the 

 necessary stimulus to the building operations in this county 

 and diocese. Not content with the rebuilding of his Cathedral 

 Church, he appears to have walled in the whole city on the 

 hill. He built the castle at Sherborne, another at Devizes. 

 Sherborne Abbey Church gives us a good sample of his style. 

 How Bishop Roger's work struck a contemporary may be 

 seen in the pages of William of Malmesbury : 



He erected extensive buildings at vast cost, and with surpassing beauty ; 

 the courses of stone being so exactly laid that the joint deceives the eye, 

 and leads it to imagine that the whole wall is composed of a single block-" 

 And again, " with unrivalled magnificence he erected splendid mansions 011 

 all his estates ; in merely maintaining which his successors toil in vain." 



With regard to Sherborne, we might wish that the Bishop 

 had spared Aldhelm's venerable cathedral, of which nothing 

 now remains but that humble doorway in the west front. 

 But in such days of enthusiasm and hard work we cannot 

 wonder that Bishop Roger, who had brought from Caen the 



