Walkelin collected all the men he could, and within the given time
removed the whole forest. The king, passing its site, cried: "Am I
bewitched? or have I taken leave of my senses?" But the bishop, when he
heard of his anger, pleaded to be allowed to resign the see if he might
but keep the chaplaincy and the king's favour. At this William relented,
saying: "I was as much too liberal in my grant as you were too greedy in
availing yourself of it" (Willis). In 1093 the new church was formally
consecrated, and on April 8, "in the presence of almost all the bishops
and abbots of England, the monks came with the highest exultation and
glory from the old minster to the new one: on the Feast of S. Swithun
they went in procession from the new minster to the old one and brought
thence S. Swithun's shrine and placed it with honour in the new
buildings; and on the following day Bishop Walkelin's men first began to
pull down the old minster, and before the end of the year they
demolished the whole of it, with the exception of one apse and the high
altar." When the old high altar was pulled down, we are told, "the
relics of many saints were found." The cathedral, as Walkelin designed
it, was for the most part so strong that its core and much of its actual
work remains to this day; but the central tower lacked the stability of
the rest, for on October 7, 1107, during the vacancy which occurred
after Walkelin's death, it fell. The monkish chroniclers attributed the
fall to the fact that William Rufus, "who all his life had been profane
and sensual and had expired without the Christian viaticum" (Rudborne),
was interred beneath it in 1100. William of Malmesbury, however, with a
degree of incredulity rare in his days, says it may have been that it
would have fallen in any case "through imperfect construction." He
describes the burial thus:--"A few countrymen conveyed the body, placed
on a cart, to the cathedral of Winchester, the blood dripping from it
all the way. Here it was committed to the ground within the tower,
attended by many of the nobility, but lamented by few. The next year the
tower fell; though I forbear to mention the different opinions on this
subject, lest I should seem to assent too readily to unsupported
trifles."

After Walkelin's death the history of the building is lost sight of for
some time, owing to the continual disturbances which all England was
undergoing. With De Lucy's accession, however, in 1189, considerabl