When Alphege was archbishop, in the year 1011, the Danes attacked the city, sacked it, slaughtered the citizens, the while the monks sought refuge in the church. The archbishop went forth to utter an appeal to the marauders, who however, turning a deaf ear to his entreaties for mercy, seized and bound him: “Then these children of Satan piled barrels one upon another, and set them on fire, designing thus to burn the roof. Already the heat of the flames began to melt the lead, which ran down inside.” Driven from their sanctuary, the wretched monks went out to their death, only four of them escaping. Alphege was carried away to prison and to torture, and, after seven months, was put to death at Greenwich. Years after, the saint’s body was restored to his own church. Fire without the sword wrought havoc in 1067, when “the devouring flames consumed nearly all that was there preserved most precious, whether in ornaments of gold, of silver, or of other materials, or in sacred and profane books.” Three years later when Lanfranc, Abbot of Caen, became archbishop, he found himself without a cathedral, and set to with vigour to restore the monastery and the church. In seven years he had raised a fair, new edifice upon the site of the wrecked building. “But before this work began, he commanded that the bodies of the saints, which were buried in the eastern part of the church, should be removed to the western part, where the oratory of the blessed Virgin Mary stood. Wherefore, after a three days’ fast, the bodies of those most precious priests of the Lord, Dunstan and Alphege were raised, and in the presence of an innumerable multitude, conveyed to their destined place of interment, and there decently buried. To which I, Edmer, [Illustration: THE SOUTH SIDE OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Showing South-West Transept, St Anselm’s Tower, and South-East Transept] can bear witness, for I was then a boy at the school.” Under the high altar of the old church the relics of St Wilfrid were found, and eventually buried to the north of the altar in the new building. Here may be quoted another story told us by Edmer: “In our own time, it happened to one of the elder brethren of the church, Alfroin by name, who filled the office of sacrist, that he, on the night of the festival of St Wilfrid, was resting in a certain lofty place in the church, outside the choir, and before an altar, above which, at that time, the relics of the blessed Wilfrid were deposited in a shrine. There, as he lay between sleeping and waking, he saw the church filled with light, and angelic persons performing the service, and beheld those whose duty it was to read or sing, ascend the cochlea or winding-stair, and ask a blessing before the altar and body of the blessed man, which done, they straightway descended, returned, and resumed the usual office of the church with all solemnity.”