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Burnet of Sarum said, the bishop of London was the last man who ought to complain of that sermon; for if the doctrine it contained was not good, he did not know what defence his lordship could make for his appearing in arms at Nottingham.

My Lord of Sarum in his reply ventured to tell the world, that the gentleman who had writ against him, meaning Dr Atterbury, was one upon whom he had conferred great obligations; which was a very generous Christian contrivance of charging his adversary with ingratitude.

He was preceptor to Prince George, afterwards King George III., who used to visit him at Farnham Castle. In the early part of his episcopate he had a namesake on the bench, John Thomas, formerly Dean of Peterborough, who was made Bishop of Lincoln in 1744, and of Sarum in 1761; and during the latter part another namesake, John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester from 1775 to 1793.

It was he who commenced the Cathedral of Salisbury, where it now stands, removing it from the now deserted site of Old Sarum. Robert had not added much to the tranquillity of the country by releasing his uncle, the turbulent old Bishop Odo, who was continually raising quarrels between him and William.

Before the bill was formed on these resolutions, petitions arrived from Liverpool and Bath, to the same purport as those of Bristol and Sarum: while on the other hand, a remonstrance was presented by a great number of the malt-distillers of the city and suburbs of London, alleging, that it having been deemed expedient to prohibit the distilling of spirits from any sort of grain, to the twenty-fourth day of December then instant, some of the petitioners had entirely ceased to carry on the business of distilling, while others, merely with a view to preserve their customers, the compound distillers, and employ some of their servants, horses, and utensils, had submitted to carry on the distillation of spirits from molasses and sugars under great disadvantages, in full hope that the restraint would cease at the expiration of the limited time, or at least when the necessity which occasioned that restraint should be removed; that it was with great concern they observed a bill would be brought in for protracting the said prohibition, at a time when the price of all manner of grain, and particularly of wheat and barley, was considerably reduced, and, as they humbly conceived, at a reasonable medium.

Of what avail could it be to inform the police or organise search-parties, knowing what I knew only too well? However, I did put Gulliver in communication with the head-office in Sarum, and everything possible was done. We explored a circuit of six miles about Wishford; every fold of the hills, every spinney, every hedgerow was thoroughly examined.

The constitution that Burke called upon men to worship was the constitution which made the Duke of Bedford powerful, that gave no representation to Manchester and a member to Old Sarum, which enacted the game laws and left upon the statute-book a penal code which hardly yielded to the noble attack of Romilly.

But so it was; and the consequence followed that Old Sarum, with all its grand recollections, is but a collection of mounds and hollows, as much a tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great city, Nineveh. Old Sarum is now best remembered by its long-surviving privilege, as a borough, of sending two members to Parliament.

"No doubt she hath already, as Sarum born. See that Goodwife Hall, the white smith's wife, and her following have the best of harbouring," he added to his silver-chained steward. "You are a Dacre of Whitburn," he added to Grisell. "Your father has not taken sides with Dacre of Gilsland and the Percies."

Every stone, every hill on these Plains could tell a wonderful story. After the Romans came the Saxons, and good King Alfred was not unknown to these Plains while he was moulding his Kingdom and driving out the Danes. The Norman Conqueror then came and took Sarum as one of his strongholds. And it is admirably suited for defence even to-day.