Again, however, came the ruthless Northman, and destroyed church after church throughout the entire course of his desolating march. No former incursion probably had been so fatal to architecture as that of Sweyn. Its very success, however, brought its own cure; for his son Canute, being allowed to succeed to the English throne, not only became Christian, but devoted himself with exemplary piety to repairing the devastations which the sacrilege of his father and himself had perpetrated. He not only repented, but brought forth fruits meet for repentance; so that the last half-century of the history of the pre-Norman England, is replete with accounts of the restoration and building of churches. The foregoing notices are sufficient to show that throughout the continuance of the pre-Norman English Church buildings were constantly being erected of considerable dimensions and sometimes of great intricacy, and even of some degree of splendour of design; and that the more important of these were uniformly of stone, though the humbler ones were often of timber. It further shows that the architectural style of these buildings, as well as the internal arrangement of the churches, was intended to be an imitation of the Roman buildings of the same period. We will now proceed to inquire into the existence and character of any remains of buildings of this period. Of the important structures, I may say at once that nothing remains; the ambitious character of the Norman builders having led them to reconstruct on a larger scale all the cathedrals and great monastic churches, excepting, indeed, that _one_ which they found in course of re-erection at Westminster, and which was designed in their own style.