ho held it from 1058 to 1078. The eight
previous bishops are more or less well known, and in the admirable
"Diocesan History" and in the "Fasti Ecclesiae Sarisburiensis," both by
the late Rev. W.H. Jones, there is much interesting detail of the
earlier rulers of the diocese now called Salisbury.

=Herman=, by birth a Fleming, was one of the ecclesiastics brought
over by Edward the Confessor. His record is unmarked by events that
left lasting results. He made a bold but fruitless attempt to annex
the Abbey of Malmesbury. During his time, as an old writer quaintly
phrases it, "it is agreed by all authors, both printed and in
manuscript, that there was not yet any cathedral, church, or chapter,
either within or without the King's Castle [of Old Sarum], but only a
chapel and a dean." Later authorities, however, assign to him the
commencement, at least, of a cathedral. In Benson and Hatcher's
"Wiltshire," we find it has been conjectured that Herman, on removing
his see to Sarum, found there a chapel and a dean, and that in
exchange for this building he transferred the two cathedrals of
Sherborne and Sunning to the Dean to whose peculiar jurisdiction they
have since belonged; other evidence, however, points to the church
having been begun and finished by Osmund, his successor, whose own
words in the charter of foundation run: "I have built the church at
Sarum and constituted canons therein." An epistle of Gregory IX. to
the bishops of Bath and Wells states that, "Osmund of pious memory had
employed great care as well in temporals as in spirituals, so that he
had magnificently builded the said church from its foundations and
enriched it with books, treasures, ... and lands from his own
property." Herman, like other English bishops who were his
fellow-natives Leofric at Exeter, and Giso at Wells, was not deprived
of his see after the Conquest; but in 1075, in obedience to the decree
of the Council of London that bishops' sees should be removed from
obscure to more important places, he chose the hill of Sarum. His
remains are said to have been transferred to a tomb in the present
cathedral, but later antiquarians decline to endorse the tradition.

=Osmund=, who is believed to have been the nephew of William the
Conqueror, was son of Henry, Count of Seez, in Normandy; he was
created Earl of Wiltshire soon after the Conquest, before he became an
ecclesiastic; Camden speaks of him as the "Earl of Dorset." As the
author of the "Co