Indeed, it is said that fish tails were hung
to their habits as they went through the city and that in consequence
the people of the diocese of Rochester were ever after born with
tails, and were thus known as caudati or caudiferi, while upon the
Continent this beastly appellation was even till our fathers' time
applied to all English people.
What the Cathedral suffered in the centuries between its foundation
and the Norman Conquest, we shall never rightly know. That it was
ravaged, burnt and sacked by the Danes is certain and it seems even at
the time of the Norman Conquest to have scarcely recovered itself.
Indeed, Pepys, who was in Rochester in 1661, tells us that he found
the western doors of the church still "covered with the skins of
Danes." Nor did it fare much better when Odo of Bayeaux was lord. But
when Gundulph, the associate of the good and great Lanfranc, became
bishop in 1077, the Cathedral was almost entirely re-established and
the Priory which served it rebuilt. Gundulph, however, would have
nothing to do with the seculars who had hitherto served the great
church.
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