Saint Osmund

Osmund (died 3 December 1099), Count of Sées, was a Norman noble and clergyman. Following the Norman conquest of England, he served as Lord Chancellor (c. 1070–1078) and as the second bishop of Salisbury, or Old Sarum. Osmund, a native of Normandy, accompanied William, Duke of Normandy to England, and was made Chancellor of the realm about 1070. He was employed in many civil transactions and was engaged as one of the Chief Commissioners for drawing up the Domesday Book. Osmund became bishop of Salisbury by authority of Pope Gregory VII, and was consecrated by Archbishop Lanfranc around 3 June 1078. His diocese comprised the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, and Berkshire, having absorbed the former bishoprics of Sherborne and Ramsbury under its incumbent Herman at the 1075 Council of London. In his Acts of the English Bishops, William of Malmesbury describes medieval Salisbury as a fortress rather than a city, placed on a high hill, surrounded by a massive wall. Peter of Blois later referred to the castle and church as "the ark of God shut up in the temple of Baal." Henry I's biographer C. Warren Hollister suggests the possibility that Osmund was in part responsible for Henry's education; Henry was consistently in the bishop's company during his formative years, around 1080 to 1086. In 1086 Osmund was present at the Great Gemot held at Old Sarum when the Domesday Book was accepted and the great landowners swore fealty to the sovereign. Osmund died on the night of 3 December 1099, and was succeeded, after the see had been vacant for eight years, by Roger of Salisbury, a statesman and counsellor of Henry I. His remains were buried at Old Sarum, translated to New Salisbury on 23 July 1457, and deposited in the Lady Chapel, where his sumptuous shrine was destroyed under Henry VIII. A flat slab with the simple inscription MXCIX has lain in various parts of the cathedral. In 1644 it was in the middle of the Lady Chapel.