The President's Address. 



7 



return of the Saxon this religions house was rebuilt in stone by 

 Editha, wife of the Confessor. In 1066 Wilton was considered to 

 be the first and most valuable of the Royal boroughs, and its con- 

 tributions to the Norman Conqueror appear to have been more than 

 double those which it yielded in the time of the Confessor. In the 

 disturbed years which followed the Conquest Wilton suffered, and 

 the Abbey had often to contribute largely to satisfy the extortionate 

 demands of the Normans. In the reign of Stephen the Empress 

 Maud sojourned at Wilton in regal state, till her royal husband 

 arrived there with a large force to convert the Monastery into a 

 place of military defence, to restrain the excursions of the garrison 

 at Salisbury. But while the fortifications were yet in progress, the 

 Salisbury people, under the Earl of Gloucester, invested and took 

 the place, and the King fled. I am sorry to find from the old 

 chronicle that the people of Salisbury behaved very rudely on this 

 occasion, for they sacked the Monastery, set fire to the town, and 

 walked off with all the plate and valuables, together with the per- 

 sonal baggage of the monarch. Wilton appears, however, to have 

 survived this bad behaviour, and, not having proved quite successful 

 in war, to have betaken herself to the arts of peace, although the 

 military spirit of the age tinctured even her sports. The glowing 

 accounts of the conflicts on the plains of Syria, in which, without 

 doubt, some of the citizens were bearing their part, stimulated them 

 to keep up the pomp and pageantry of war, if not the reality. In 

 the year 1194 a tournament was held in the vicinity of the town, 

 which appears to have given infinite satisfaction alike to peasant 

 and to peer. Thirty-five years later wc find the town of New 

 Sarum springing up around the " holy pile " which was gradually 

 expanding to beauty in the Ci Ladys Mead/' and unfortunately for 

 the trade of Wilton its merchants adopted the new city as offering 

 a more expanding market for their wares. This appears to have 

 aroused the jealousy of the people of Wilton, and caused them to 

 adopt the very novel method of sending their bailiffs to waylay these 

 merchants and to compel them to expose their merchandize for sale 

 in the market of Wilton. Such a state of things could not last 

 without remonstrance, more particularly as when the merchants 



