s first plan, no
doubt may safely be accredited to the influence of his journey to Rome,
and where he may have become familiar with what was the usual basilican
arrangement.

Herbert returned to England, penitent and forgiven for his sin, and it
is probable that the Pope had laid on him, as a penance, an injunction
to build churches and found religious houses, and that with the
remainder of his wealth he determined to transfer the see from Thetford
to Norwich and to build in the latter place his cathedral church. It
would also have been in compliance with the decree of Lanfranc's Synod.
The see was transferred on the 9th of April 1094, and Herbert was
consecrated on the same day by Thomas, Archbishop of York.

Norwich was then an important town; in the Middle Ages it ranked as the
second city in the kingdom. Its prosperity was chiefly due to its large
trade in wool. It is a moot point whether the town was ever a settlement
of the Romans, no traces of such occupation having ever been discovered.
The castle mound, no doubt, formed some part of the earthworks of an
earlier stronghold. The word Norwich is probably of Norse origin,
meaning the north village or the village on the North Creek
("_wic_"--_i.e._ a creek). The city stood on a tidal bay in 1004, in
which year the Danes under Sweyn completely devastated and ruined the
town in revenge for the massacre of their countrymen by Aethelred the
Unready two years before. So that the history of the town of Norwich, as
we now know it, may be said to have started directly after this.

The foundation-stone of the cathedral was laid in 1096; and upon it,
according to the _Registrum Primum_, the following inscription is said
to have been placed:--"In nomine patris et filii et spiritus Sancti Amen
Ego Herbertus Episcopus apposui istum lapidem." (In the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen, I, Herbert the
Bishop, have placed this stone.)

It was the custom of the Norman builders to start building from the
easternmost part of the church, as the more sacred part of the
structure, and then build westwards; so that probably this
foundation-stone, for which diligent search has been made in vain, was
in the eastmost wall of the original Norman Lady Chapel--in fact, the
_Registrum Primum_ describes how Herbert began the work "where is now
the chapel of the Blessed Mary." This chapel was demolished to make way
for the beautiful thirteenth-century Lady Chapel whi