We had a lonely
walk, and about two miles from Salisbury saw to the right the outline of
a small hill which turned out to be Old Sarum, a name that figured on
the mileposts for many miles round Salisbury, being the ancient and
Roman name for that city. Old cities tend to be on hills, for defence,
but modern equivalents occur in the valley below, representative of
peace conditions and easy travelling for commercial purposes. It was
now, however, only a lofty grass mound, conical in shape and about a
hundred feet high. It was of great antiquity, for round about it stood
at one time one of the most important cities in the south of England,
after the prehistoric age the Sorbiodunum of the Romans, and the
Sarisberie of the Domesday Book. Cynric captured it by a victory over
the Britons in 552, and in 960 Edgar held a Council there. Sweyn and the
Danes pillaged and burnt it in 1003, and afterwards Editha, the Queen of
Edward the Confessor, established a convent of nuns there. It was made
an Episcopal See in 1072, and twenty years afterwards Bishop Osmond, a
kinsman of William the Conqueror, completed the building of the
cathedral. It was in 1076 that William, as the closing act of his
Conquest, reviewed his victorious army in the plain below; and in 1086,
a year before his death, he assembled there all the chief landowners in
the realm to swear that "whose men soever they were they would be
faithful to him against all other men," by which "England was ever
afterwards an individual kingdom.
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