Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/81

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ST PLEGMUND

him. But Formosus had desired that the filling up of the vacant English sees should be expedited as early as in 904, and again in the following year, which was the date of the letter mentioned in the Leofric Missal, and evidently started the story.

Plegmund died at an advanced age on August 2, 914, and was buried in the Church of St. John, where his remains rested until the fire of 1067. On the rebuilding of the Cathedral by Lanfranc, the remains were probably placed in a vault in the north transept; but after the attempts to steal the bones of Archbishop Breogwine in 1121, the monks removed them to the altar of St. Gregory in the southernmost apse of the south-east transept, where they were placed behind the altar.

St. Plegmund's name does not occur in the extant Canterbury Kalendars, but it is given in the Canterbury Martyrology[1] on August 2.

The Chronicle of John Stone, who was a monk of Christ Church in the time of Prior Molash (1427-1437), tells us that there was an image of Archbishop Plegmund, together with one of St. Odo and twelve others, placed in the choir of the Cathedral in his day. These were probably all removed under the Injunctions of Edward VI in 1547.

  1. Brit. Mus., Arundel MS. 68.

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