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The series of Bayeaux, covering two hundred and thirty thousand cases of diphtheria, chiefly from hospitals and hence of the severest type, showing that the death-rate had been reduced from over fifty-five per cent to below sixteen per cent already, and that this decrease was still continuing, will serve as a fair sample.

Indeed, Pepys, who was in Rochester in 1661, tells us that he found the western doors of the church still "covered with the skins of Danes." Nor did it fare much better when Odo of Bayeaux was lord. But when Gundulph, the associate of the good and great Lanfranc, became bishop in 1077, the Cathedral was almost entirely re-established and the Priory which served it rebuilt.

Indeed, the place became famous and appears in the Bayeaux tapestry, in the very first picture, where we see "Harold and his Knights riding towards Bosham" to embark for Normandy. Bosham, indeed, was one of Harold's manors, his father, according to the legend, having acquired it by a trick. Da mihi basium, says Earl Godwin to the Archbishop Aethelnoth, thus claiming to have received Bosham.

Of its fate after the Battle of Hastings we know little, but it submitted without resistance and came into the hands of that Odo of Bayeaux who gave so much trouble to William Rufus. It is now that we see Rochester suddenly appear in its true greatness.