Bishop Roger, who held the see from 1102 to 1139, and crowned the mighty mound of the Devizes and the strong knoll of Sherborne with their celebrated works in masonry, is likely enough to have completed the inner shell above as well as the city wall below. He is further said to have walled in the borough and extra-parochial district outside the city, covering, with it, above 72 acres. He at first supported Stephen, but had to surrender the castle, which was taken and retaken, and finally much injured. Maud created Patrick, son of Edward de Sarisburie, Earl of Salisbury, and probably invested him with the government of the castle. He died 1167. In 1154, when the castle was held by Henry II., it was in ruins. Henry, in the early years of his reign, authorised payment (as appears in the Pipe-roll) for the constable, porters, and watchmen of the castle, and for buildings at the prison; and in 23 Henry II. £61 was spent in repairs there. In 1164–5, when the Liber Niger of the Exchequer was compiled, the bishop was lord of the manor, and under him were thirty-three knights under the old feoffment, and three under the new. Earl Patrick held two knights’ fees, and a third by the tenure of guarding the castle.
So long as the bishops held the castle, either independently or for the Crown, the position of the cathedral was sufficiently secure, but when lay castellans took their place, and were men powerful enough to ill-treat their neighbours, the clergy began to suffer, and to make the most of the natural disadvantages of so high and exposed a situation. They suffered “ob insolentiam militis et ob penuriam aquæ.” Peter of Blois, himself a canon, says, “Est ibi defectus aquæ.” The wind was high, water was dear, and the soldiery held the gates even of the city ward, and went so far as to threaten the buildings from their ramparts above, and even to shut out the ecclesiastics when returning in procession to their homes. The church was “castro comitis vicina,” and the vicinity was unpleasant.
Under Bishop Herbert le Poer, who succeeded in 1194, these disputes reached their height, and he decided to remove the cathedral to a spot of ground near the confluence of the Wily and the Nadder with the Avon, rather above a mile distant. Merefield, a marshy spot but with an excellent foundation, was granted by Richard I. for the site of the new church. Bishop Herbert died in 1219, but his successor and natural (germanus) brother, Richard le Poer, obtained from Honorius III. the bull necessary for the translation, in which the causes for it are set forth. They are the dangerous position, as regarded the castle, of the houses of the clergy; the exposure, the wind being at times so high that the clergy could not hear one another’s voices in the choir, and which produced continual need for repairs; and finally the scarcity of water, only to be obtained at a great cost and with the castellan’s leave. This latter objection may have been exaggerated, for, besides the well in the castle, there were, says Leland, four wells in the outer ward, and at this time there are two not very deep wells in gardens not very much below the cathedral level. No doubt, however, the removal was called for:
Quid domini domus in castro, nisi fœderis arca
In templa Baalim? Carcer uterque locus.
Est ibi defectus aquæ, sed copia cretæ,
Sævit ibi ventus, sed philomela silet.
Early in 1219 the new cathedral was founded. It was forty years building, and was consecrated in 1258.
Rex largitur opes, fere præsul opem, lapicidæ
Dant operam; tribus hic est opus, at stet opus.