The great veneration in which the Britons held these temples of the
Druids is much accentuated by an incident during the second occupation
of Britain by the Romans. Suetonius Paulinus, one of their greatest
generals, thought that by destroying the temple at the island of
Anglesea he would shake the faith of the Britons in their priests, and
gain thereby a speedier conquest, much in the same way as when Clive in
India knocked down Dupleix's column to undermine the French influence
over the natives. In the latter case history has assured us of the
ultimate fulfilment of hopes, and it was the same with Paulinus in 61,
only on his return to the mainland he all but suffered a reverse from an
unexpected rising of Britons under Boadicea. Nevertheless, the power of
the Druids was irretrievably broken by the slaughter of their order and
the felling of the groves at Anglesea, as Paulinus had foreseen. What
the object and origin of these remains at Stonehenge were, still serve
as an interesting matter for controversy. Competent authorities, like
Geoffrey of Monmouth, Polydore Vergil, and in the eighteenth century Dr.
Stukely, arrived more or less at the same conclusions. The first named
said that Stonehenge was a sepulchral monument erected by Aurelius
Ambrosius, who, according to a tradition, was thus led by the counsel of
Merlin to commemorate the slaughter of 500 Britons by Hengist, the Saxon
chief, about the year 450 A.D. Polydore Vergil confined himself to the
statement that it was the ancient temple of the Britons in which the
Druids officiated, whilst Dr. Stukely asserted that the Britons here
held their annual meetings at which laws were passed and justice
administered. He was also fortunate enough to discover the "cursus," in
1723, in its vicinity. Perhaps it may be thought that Stonehenge is out
of place in this account of Salisbury; but in leaving it out it would be
as much as to doubt the genuineness of any one's visit to this ancient
cathedral city if he had not also seen the Druidical remains.
In the neighbourhood of Old Sarum, Cynric won a victory over the Britons
in the year 552. Though it steadily increased in importance, little
worthy of notice occurred there till the close of the tenth century. At
the small town of Wilton, which is almost three miles distant from
Salisbury, the seat of the Diocese was originally established in the
first years of the tenth century, and remained under the superintendence
of eleven succeeding bishops. The last one of them was Hermannus. On his
accession to the See of Sherborne--an ancient and interesting town of
Dorsetshire--he annexed it to the Bishopric of Wilton. He thereupon
founded, for these united sees, a cathedral church at Old Sarum. This
effort of his was afterwards completed by Osmund, who accompanied
William the Conqueror to England, and was by him appointed bishop. A
matter of sixty years prior to the Norman invasion Old Sarum had fallen
a victim in 1003 to the fury of Sweyn, the King of Denmark. This was in
accordance with a vow of retaliation he had made when he learnt of
the murder of his sister in the general massacre of the Danes, which had
taken place the year before. This unhappy period, when many other
counties besides Wiltshire suffered extensively, was during the reign of
Ethelred the Unready.
[Illustration: SALISBURY