Although Dorchester is now only a village, it derives its origin from a period so remote that it is lost in the mist of ages. It was probably a British village under the name Cair Dauri, the camp on the waters; and coins of Cunobelin, or Cassivellaunus, have been found in good preservation. Bede mentions it as a Roman station, and Richard of Cirencester marks it as such in the xviii. Iter, under the name Durocina. Its bishopric was founded by Birinus, the apostle of the West Saxons; and the present bishoprics of Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Bath and Wells, Worcester and Hereford, were successively taken from it, after which it still extended from the Thames to the Humber. Suffering grievously from the ravages of the Danes, it became a small town, and it suffered again grievously at the Conquest, when the inhabited houses were reduced by the Norman ravages from 172 to 100, and perhaps the inhabitants were reduced in proportion. In consequence, Remigius, the first Norman bishop, removed the see to Lincoln, because Dorchester, on account of its size and small population, did not suit his ideas, as John of Brompton observes. From this period its decline was rapid, in spite of its famous abbey, which Remigius partially erected with the stones from the bishop’s palace. viii Anglo-Saxon Literature. In the age of Bede, the eighth century, Britain was distinguished for its learning; but the Danish invasions caused the rapid decline of its renown. The churches and monasteries, where alone learning flourished, and which were the only libraries and schools, were the first objects of the hatred of the ferocious pagans; and, in consequence, when Alfred came to the throne, as he tells us in his own words—“South of the Humber there were few priests who could understand the meaning of their common prayers, or translate a line of Latin into English; so few, that in Wessex there was not one.” Alfred set himself diligently to work to correct this evil. Nearly all the books in existence in England were in Latin, and it was a “great” library which contained fifty copies of these. There was a great objection to the use of the vernacular in the Holy Scriptures, as tending to degrade them by its uncouth jargon; but the Venerable Bede had rendered the Gospel of St. John into the Anglo-Saxon, together with other extracts from holy Scripture; and there were versions of the Psalter in the vulgar tongue, very rude and uncouth; for ancient translators generally imagined a translation could only be faithful which placed all the words of the vulgar tongue in the same relative positions as the corresponding words in the original. An Anglo-Saxon translation upon this plan is extant.