THE SAXON CATHEDRAL AT CANTERBURY
The Archbishop then appealed to the enemy to save the people, but he was seized, bound and dragged to the churchyard to see the Cathedral in flames, and to witness the defenceless people who had taken refuge in the church, driven forth by the falling of the boiling lead and flames; some were immediately murdered, some thrown back into the flames, others thrown headlong from the walls of the city, etc., etc.
Amidst all these horrors, Godwin the Bishop of Rochester and the Abbess Leofrond, the Mother-Superior of St. Mildred's Nunnery which was probably established in Canterbury at this time, were both taken prisoners, with an innumerable crowd of both sexes.
After that, the Cathedral was stripped and burned; and the whole population decimated, so that nine were slain and the tenth saved; the number of those saved amounted to four monks, and eighty men. The city was plundered and wholly burnt, the Archbishop was dragged to the Fleet and taken to Greenwich, where he remained in prison for seven months; and in order to be compelled to ransom himself was tortured.
It is refreshing to read in the Flores Historiarum[1] that, amidst all these calamities, "the anger of the Divine Mercy so raged against these Infidels that it destroyed two thousand of them by the most excrutiating and fearful torments of the bowels." If we can trust the writers of the Chronicle, this must have been caused by an outbreak of malignant cholera, possibly the first on record in this country.
The Saxon Chronicle, under date 1012, goes on to state that all the oldest Councillors of England, clergy and laity, went to London about Easter to collect a tribute of £48,000 to buy off the Danes; and that on Saturday, the day before Low Sunday, the thirteenth day before the Kalends of May (April 19) because the Archbishop would not promise them any ransom and forbade any man to do so for him, they were stirred against him and having drunk much wine they took him to their hustings and shamefully killed him by overwhelming him with the bones and horns of oxen. A certain Dane, Thrum by name, when he saw the Archbishop smitten down, dashed his axe into his head, and so transformed the Archbishop, who was confessing Christ with all constancy to the last, into a glorious martyr, and sent his exulting soul to Heaven.
- ↑ Rolls Series.
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