Tales of English Minsters: Hereford

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

Then the victorious hoard of savages, for they were little else, swept on, straight to the Cathedral, where they knew that the holy vessels, at least, and the ornaments on the altar, would be of gold or silver.

But if they thought that they could obtain these easily they were mistaken, for they had not reckoned on the kind of men with whom they had to deal. For the brave priests determined to defend their church to the last, and shut and barricaded the doors in their faces; and, although at last they were overcome and the church looted, it was not until seven of their number lay dead in the great Western doorway.

A scene of wild confusion followed, and when the wild invaders marched away again there was nothing left of the little city or of the great church which Æthelstan had restored with so much labour and pride but a few smouldering ruins.

Among other things, King Ethelbert’s shrine was destroyed, and, although we hope that his bones were taken care of, and buried somewhere in the church, or else burned up altogether, we cannot tell for certain what became of them.

Now, if there is one thing which we admire more than another about the grand old builders of the Middle Ages, it is their perseverance.

They would spend a hundred years over the planning and building of a church, when one man died another taking his place; and when—as happened here, and many times elsewhere—the church was destroyed, either by accident or design, they lost no time in useless lamentations, but just patiently began to build it up again, trusting that in the future a time would come when their work would be prized and taken care of, as it deserved to be.

So we find that in a very few years the work was begun once more from the beginning, this time by a Norman Bishop, named Robert de Losinga; and we are glad to know that his work remains, for if we go into the Cathedral we can see part of it still standing, for it was under his directions that parts of the choir and of the south transept were built.

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HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: SCREEN.