and about Bishop Dubric, who crowned the King at Cirencester, and married him to Guinevere his wife.
Part of those wonderful stories is purely legendary, but part is true, for it is believed that King Arthur was a real person, and so were many of his Knights.
Bishop Dubric, or Dubricus, certainly was a real person, for we know that he was Bishop of Cærffawydd, and it is said that it was Sir Geraint, the Knight who married Enid, and rode with her, in her old faded dress, to Court, who built the first little church here, where the Bishop had his chair or ‘stool.’
Be this as it may, it is certain that there was a tiny little Cathedral here, long before the other English Cathedrals were thought of, for you know that a church is a Cathedral, no matter how small it is, if it has a Bishop’s official chair inside it. And it is probable that this little Cathedral was built of wood, and roofed with reeds or wattles.
THE QUEEN HANDS THE DRUGGED CUP TO ETHELBERT. Page 20.
It must have been rebuilt, or at least repaired, once or twice during the centuries that followed, but we know very little about its history until we come to the year A.D. 794, when a terrible event happened which led to a larger and more stately church being erected, this time of stone.
If you have read the story of St. Albans Cathedral,[1] you will know what this event was; but I will try to tell you more fully about it here, for although it is very sad, it gives us a true picture of what even the life of Kings was, in these dark and troublous ages.
The name of the King who reigned over East Anglia—that is, the land of the ‘North folk’ and the ‘South folk,’ or, as we call it, Norfolk and Suffolk—in these days was Ethelbert, and he had an only son, Ethelbert the Ætheling.
This Ethelbert was such a goodly youth, so tall and straight and handsome, so skilled in all manner of knightly exercises, and so kind to the poor and needy, that all his father’s subjects adored him.