Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/135

1017-1067 Stigand is said to have crowned Harold, but the authors of the Flores Historiarum say that on the day King Edward was buried Harold extorted an oath of fealty from the nobles, and placed the crown on his own head. After the Battle of Hastings, and the total defeat of Harold, Stigand appears to have quickly submitted to the Conqueror, and it is curious, but a fact, that he was present at the coronation, and assisted the Archbishop of York to crown him.

Later, in 1070, various crimes were laid to his charge: seizing the Archbishopric during the lifetime of Robert; stealing his pallium and receiving one from a schismatical Pope; being a Pluralist by holding Winchester with Canterbury; as well as various homicides. He was deprived and imprisoned at Winchester till his death on February 22, 1072, and was buried at the Abbey of St. Swithin there.

It was during the calamities attendant on the Norman invasion that Edmer, the future historian of Christ Church Cathedral and its Archbishops, was at the Monastery School and witnessed the final disaster involving the total destruction of the venerable Romano-Saxon Church and the domestic buildings of the monastery in one common and complete ruin.

"While misfortunes," says Edmer, "fell thick upon all parts of England, it happened that the City of Canterbury was set on fire by the carelessness of some individuals, and that the rising flames caught the Mother Church thereof. How can I tell it? The whole was consumed and nearly all the monastic offices that appertained to it, as well as the Church of the Blessed John the Baptist, where as aforesaid, the remains of the Archbishops were buried. The exact nature and amount of the damage no man can tell. But its extent may be estimated from the fact, that the devouring flames consumed nearly all that was there preserved most precious, whether in ornaments of gold, of silver, or of other materials, or in sacred or profane books. Those things that could be replaced were therefore the less to be regretted; but a mighty and interminable grief oppressed this Church, because the privileges granted by the Popes of Rome, and by the Kings and Princes of this Kingdom, all carefully sealed and collected together, by which they and theirs were bound to defend and uphold the Church for ever, were now reduced to ashes. Copies of these documents were sought for, and collected from every place where such things were preserved; but their bulls and seals were irrecoverably destroyed with the Church in which they had been deposited."

In 1067, the year after the Conquest, William the Norman paid a 97