ou did'st die, dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury.'"

One of the reasons most frequently alleged for the abandonment of Old
Sarum was its lack of water; but if it was deemed unadvisable to
acknowledge the political and administrative reasons which really
decided the change, it is just possible that the superfluity of water
was found useful as a plausible explanation of the removal on hygienic
grounds; or it may even be that the whole story of the scarcity of
water at Old Sarum was a later invention to excuse its unwelcome
abundance in the new locality. Bishop Douglas is credited with the
saying, "Salisbury is the sink of Wiltshire plain, the close is the
sink of Salisbury, and the bishop's palace the sink of the close."
Certainly the site lacks the natural dignity of position such an
edifice demands, and which Lincoln, Durham, Ely, and many another
English cathedral, show was frequently deemed essential. Thomas
Fuller, who occupied a stall at Salisbury, has written, "The most
curious and cavilling eye can desire nothing in this edifice except an
ascent, seeing such as address themselves hither can hardly say with
David, 'I will go up to the house of the Lord.'"

The temporary chapel of wood, commenced on the Monday after Easter in
1219, must have been a modest structure, since on the next Trinity
Sunday the Bishop celebrated mass, and the same day consecrated a
cemetery there.

In the MS. by William de Wanda, precentor and afterwards dean of
Sarum, preserved in the Cathedral Library, we have a record of the
very first ceremonies connected with the Cathedral, which being
probably trustworthy in the main is so curiously interesting in
itself, that it deserves quoting freely, from the version given by
Francis Price, clerk of the works to the Cathedral, and author of a
very interesting monograph upon it, published in the latter part of
the last century. We find that in the year A.D. 1220, on the
day of St. Vitalis the Martyr, being the fourth of the calends of May
(which was the twenty-eighth of April), the foundations were laid by
Bishop Richard Poore. "On the day appointed for the purpose the bishop
came with great devotion, few earls or barons of the county, but a
great multitude of the common people coming in from all parts; and
when divine service had been performed, and the Holy Spirit invoked,
the said bishop, putting off his shoes, went in procession with the
clergy of the church to the place of foundation sin