cious stones and the relics of divers saints in honour of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and the service of the new church; afterwards the
King went down with many of his nobles to the Bishop's palace and were
entertained. On the Friday following Hubert de Burgh offered his
"texte after John, gilt with gold and having precious stones and
relics of divers saints."

"On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice
Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and
there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a
ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup of the weight of ten marks;
and when the mass was celebrated the King told the dean that he would
have that stone which he had offered and the gold of the ring applied
to adorn the text which the justice had before given; and then the
justice caused the text which he had given to be brought and offered
with great devotion on the altar."

On the 10th of January, 1226, William Longespee, Earl of Salisbury,
returned from Gascoigne, where he had resided twelve months with
Richard, the King's brother, for the defence of Bordeaux (after three
months on the channel between the Isle of Rhe and the coast of
Cornwall, owing to the tempestuous weather, that so long delayed his
landing), "and the said Earl came that day after nine o'clock to
Sarum, where he was received with great joy, with a procession for the
new fabric." The scandalous account of his death (as given by Stow),
which occurred at the castle of Old Sarum, on the 7th of March in the
same year, and the part played in the transaction by Hubert de Burgh
cannot be told here, beyond the fact that the justice was strongly
suspected of poisoning him. On the 8th of March, at the same hour of
the day on which he had been received with great joy, he was brought
to New Sarum with many tears and lamentations, and honourably buried
in the new church of the Blessed Virgin. Matthew Paris gravely records
that at his funeral, despite gusts of wind and rain, the candles
furnished a continual light the whole of the way. Of all secular
figures connected with this cathedral his is perhaps the most
prominent, nor is his fame merely local. He was active in public
affairs during the reign of King John, and one of the noticeable
heroes in an expedition to the Holy Land in 1220, when, at the battle
of Damietta, Matthew Paris tells us, he resisted the shock of the
infidels like a wall. He fought bot