salisbury spire and the distant city come with the welcome surprise of a promised land after these bleak downs. even three miles away the unenclosed wilds are done, and we drop continuously from three mile hill, down, down, down to the lowlands on a smooth and uninterrupted road, to where the trees and the houses can be distinguished, nestling around and below the graceful cathedral, a long way yet ahead. it is coming thus with that needle-pointed spire, so long and so prominently in view, that the story of its having been built to its extraordinary height of 404 feet for the purpose of guiding the strayed footsteps of travellers across the solitudes of salisbury plain may readily be believed.

salisbury wears a bland and cheerful appearance, and has an air of modernity that quite belies its age. few places in england have so well-ascertained an{166} origin. we can fix the very year, six hundred and eighty years ago, when it began to be, and yet, although there is the cathedral to prove its age, with the poultry cross, and very many ancient houses happily still standing, it has a general air of anything but medi?valism. this curious feeling that strikes every visitor is really owing to the generous and well-ordered plan on which the city was originally laid out; broad streets being planned in geometrical precision, and the blocks of houses built in regular squares.

that phenomenally simple-minded person, tom pinch, thought salisbury ‘a very desperate sort of place; an exceedingly wild and dissipated city’—a view of it which is not shared by any one else. i wish i could tell you to which inn it was that he resorted to have dinner, and to await the arrival of martin. a coaching inn, of course, for martin came by coach from london. but whether it was the ‘white hart,’ or the ‘three swans’ (which, alas! is no longer an inn), or the ‘king’s arms,’ or the ‘george,’ is more than i or any one else can determine.

new sarum

salisbury is by no means desperate or dissipated, even though it be market-day, and although itinerant cutlery vendors may still sell seven-bladed knives, with never a cut among them, to the unwary. it is true that mr. thomas hardy has given us, in on the western circuit, a picture of blazing orgies at melchester fair, with steam-trumpeting merry-go-rounds, glamour and glitter, glancing young women no better than they ought to be, and an amorous young barrister much worse than he should have{167} been; and it is true that by ‘melchester’ this fair city of salisbury is meant; but you can conjure up no very accurate picture of this ancient place from those pages. the real salisbury is extremely urbane and polished, decorous and well-ordered. it is graceful and sunny, and has, in fact, all the sweetness of medi?valism without its sternness, and affords a thorough contrast with winchester, which frowns upon you where salisbury smiles. one need not waver from one’s allegiance to winchester to admit so much.

salisbury is still known in official documents as ‘new sarum.’ it is, nevertheless, of a quite respectable antiquity, its newness dating from that day, 28th april 1220, when bishop poore laid the foundation-stone of the still existing cathedral. there are romantic incidents in the exodus from old sarum on its windy height upon the downs, a mile and a half away, to these ‘rich champaign fields and fertile valleys, abounding with the fruits of the earth, and watered by living streams,’ in this ‘sink of salisbury plain,’ where the bourne, the wylye, the avon, and the nadder flow in innumerable runlets through the meads.

old sarum was old indeed. its history strikes rootlets deep down into the unknown. a natural hillock upon the wild downs, its defensible position rendered it a camp for the earliest aboriginal tribes, who, always at war with one another, lived for safety’s sake in such bleak and inhospitable places when they would much rather be hunting and enjoying life generally in the sheltered wooded vales{168} and fertile plains. these tribes heaped up the first artificial earthworks that ever strengthened this historic hill, and they were succeeded during the long march of those dim centuries by romans, saxons, and danes. the romans, with their unerring military instinct, saw the importance of the hill, and added to the simple defences they found there. they called the place sorbiodunum, and made it a great strategic station. the saxons strengthened the fortifications in their turn, and at the time of the norman conquest a city had grown up under the shelter of the citadel.

in its deserted state to-day, the site of old sarum vividly recalls the appearance presented by an extinct volcano, the conical hill rising from the downs with the suddenness of an upheaval, and the area enclosed within the concentric rings of banks and ditches forming a hollow space similar to a crater. the total area enclosed within these fortifications is about 28 acres. within this space was comprised that ancient city, and in its very centre, overlooking everything else, and encompassed by a circular fosse and bank, 100 feet in height, stood the citadel. the site of this castle is now overgrown with dense thickets of shrubs and brambles; the fragments of its flint and rubble walls, 12 feet thick, and some remaining portions of its gateways affording evidence of its old-time strength.

old sarum

within this city, enclosed for centuries by the ring-fence of these fortifications, stood the cathedral, in a position just below the castle ward. its exact site and size (although not a fragment of it is{169} standing) were discovered in the summer of 1834. that portion of the vanished city had been laid down as pasture, and the drought of that year revealed the plan of the cathedral, in a distinct brown outline upon the grass. this building, completed in 1092 by bishop osmund, furnished the stone in later years for the spire of salisbury cathedral and for the walls of the close, in which, by st. anne’s gate, many sculptured fragments of these relics from old sarum may yet be seen.

a variety of circumstances brought about the removal of the cathedral from old sarum. water was lacking on that height, and winds raged so furiously around it that the monks could not hear the priests say mass; and, worse than all, during the papal interdict, the king, in revenge for many ecclesiastical annoyances, transferred the custody of the castle of old sarum from the bishops to his own creatures, who locked the monks out of their monastery and church on one occasion when they had gone on some religious procession. when the monks returned, they found entrance denied them, and were forced to remain in the open air during the whole of a frosty winter night. there was no end to the hardships which those men of wrath brought upon the church. no wonder that peter of blois cried out, ‘what has the house of the lord to do with castles? it is the ark of the covenant in the temple of baalim. let us in god’s name descend into the plain.’

the removal decided upon, it remained to choose a site. tradition tells us that the virgin mary appeared{170} to bishop poore in a vision, and told him to build the church on a spot called merryfield; and has it that the site was chosen by the fall of an arrow shot from the ramparts of old sarum. if that was the case, there must have been something miraculous in that shot, for the place where salisbury cathedral is built is a mile and a half away from those ramparts. but perhaps the bishop or the legends used the long bow in a very special sense.

the cathedral was completed in sixty years, receiving its final consecration in 1260; but the great spire was not finished until a hundred years later. the city was an affair of rapid growth, receiving a charter of incorporation seven years after being founded. seventeen years later, bishop bingham dealt a final blow at the now utterly ruined city of old sarum by diverting the old roman road to the west from its course through old sarum, bemerton, and wilton, and making a highway running directly to new sarum, and crossing the avon by the new bridge which he had built at harnham. old sarum could by this time make little or no resistance, for it was deserted, save for a few who could not bring themselves to leave the home of their forefathers. wilton, however, which was a thriving town, bitterly resented this diversion of the roads, and petitioned against it, but without avail. from that date wilton’s decline set in, and the rise of new sarum progressed at an even greater speed. a clothing trade sprang up and prospered, and many royal visits gave the citizens an air of importance. they waxed rich and arrogant, and were eternally{171}

the martyrs

image unavailable: salisbury cathedral (after constable, r.a.).

salisbury cathedral (after constable, r.a.).

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quarrelling with the bishops, one of whom they murdered in the turbulent times that prevailed during jack cade’s rebellion. bishop ayscough was that unfortunate prelate. he had cautiously retired to edington, but a furious body of salisbury malcontents marched out across the plain, and dragging him from the altar of the church, where he was saying mass, took him to an adjacent hill-top, and slew him with the utmost barbarity. it was for the benefit of these unruly citizens that one of jack cade’s quarters was consigned from london to salisbury and elevated there on a pole, as a preliminary warning. full punishment followed a little later.