Salisbury Wiltshire United Kingdom

Cynric (who is either the son or grandson of Saxon prince Cerdic of Wessex) succeeds to the Wessex kingship in 554.

Cerdic is today regarded as the ancestor of all subsequent Kings of Wessex.

Cynric is said to have captured the fort at Old Sarum in this year after repulsing an attack by the Britons across the Fosse Way, a Roman road that links Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) in southwest England to Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) in Lincolnshire, via Ilchester (Lindinis), Bath (Aquae Sulis), Cirencester (Corinium) and Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum).

William summons his tenants-in-chief and "landowning men of any account" to Salisbury in August 1068. where they swear allegiance to him and to be faithful against all other men.

The oath, known as the Otah of Salisbury, is demanded at a time of crisis when the Conqueror is facing revolt and invasion.

There seems little doubt that it is intended as a practical assurance and reminder rather than as a constitutional statement.

The Oath of Salisbury refers to an event in August 1086 when William I of England summons his tenants-in-chief and "landowning men of any account" to Salisbury, where they swear allegiance to him and to be faithful against all other men.

The oath is demanded at a time of crisis when the Conqueror is facing revolt and invasion.

There seems little doubt that it is intended as a practical assurance and reminder rather than as a constitutional statement.

Salisbury (also called Old Sarum, after an early Iron Age fortification north of the present city) located about eighty miles (one hundred thirty kilometers kilometers) southwest of London in Wiltshire, on the River Avon, had become a bishopric in 1075.

Although the actual city of Salisbury will not established until 1220, there has been a settlement in the area since prehistory.

There is evidence of Neolithic settlement on the hilltop of Old Sarum, which became a hill fort in the Iron Age.

The Romans called this fort "Sorviodunum" and may also have occupied the fort.

The Saxons established themselves there called it "Searesbyrig" and the Normans built a castle or "Seresberi".

After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, William the Conqueror had used Old Sarum as a base of operations.

Sarum is described as a fortress rather than a city, placed on a high hill, surrounded by a massive wall.

William had moved the bishopric from the Anglo-Saxon Sherborne Cathedral to Old Sarum, appointing his nephew, Osmund de Sees, as his chancellor and Bishop of Salisbury.

Osmund has had the first cathedral at Old Sarum built, completed in 1092.

By 1086, in the Domesday Book, it is called "Salesberie".

A council of nobles and bishops held at Clarendon Palace passes the Constitutions of Clarendon, which creates a compromise between Church and state in the Kingdom of England.

Promulgated in 1164, the Consitutions specify the extent of state control over the church and the clergy and the competence of church courts.

Becket, severely pressured by Henry, at first submits, but later recants, leading to a fierce verbal battle and Becket’s exile to France.

Churchmen and nobles appeal to Pope Alexander III to moderate the intransigent stance taken by both sides.

Henry II had inherited the throne of a troubled kingdom.

The Crusades, a military endeavor that keeps noble landowners away from their castles for years at a time, are in full swing.

Unoccupied and unclaimed land invites squatters; since there is no central recording office for real property in England at this time, and sorting out who owns what fief is entrusted to human memory, disputes arise when aristocrats return, or died thousands of miles from home.

Another, even more serious problem requiring royal action had been the aftermath of the disastrous civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda.

The two competing factions had hired mercenary soldiers, and when there was no one left to pay them, many of them took up robbery and other forms of violence as a profession.

Crime had followed the breakdown of local authority.

The quarrel between the King and the Empress had created more property troubles; as communities were divided, both factions were happy to reward their supporters with the lands of the local opponents.

Finally, there is the long-standing difficulty involving the Church, which will culminate in the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The problem for the King is that the Church acts like an imperium in imperio, a "kingdom within a kingdom", only partially subject to Henry's laws if at all.

The Church operates its own court system, which answers not to Henry but to the Pope; it is a large landowner and a powerful vested interest.

Henry wishes to establish a system of justice that will enlarge the power of the Crown at the expense of the clergy.

Henry has therefore founded various assizes, known respectively as the assize of novel disseisin, of mort d'ancestor, and of darrein presentment.

The most popular one becomes the assize of novel disseisin, which in Law French means something close to the "assize of recent dispossession".

Those who had been recently put out of their lands could recover the beneficial use of them by resort to this assize, which led to a then innovative method of trial.

Twelve "sword-girt" knights of the locality are summoned to determine, upon their own knowledge, who is entitled to the property.

This innovative method of proceeding, the origin of the civil petit jury at common law, is aimed at the chaos introduced into property rights by crusade and civil war.

Under the Assize of Clarendon, issued in 1166, Henry initiates a procedure by which jurors are commanded to appear before a royal judge and relate any knowledge they have of crimes or criminals in a given area.

This the beginning of the transformation of English law from such systems for deciding the prevailing party in a case as trial by ordeal or trial by battle to an evidentiary model, in which evidence and inspection is made by laymen.

This act greatly fosters the methods that will eventually be known in common law countries as trial by jury.

Construction begins in 1220 on Salisbury Cathedral, planned in the clear and austere Early English Gothic style.

One of the few churches of the age built on a previously unoccupied site, the episcopal see that it is intended to house had previously been located at Sherborne and is now at Old Sarum.

Also intended to house a monastic community, the dual function dictates the large size of the planned church and the presence of two transepts.

The plan of the cathedral takes the form of a double, or Greek, cross.

Salisbury Cathedral, begun in about 1220, is virtually complete by 1266, save for the tower and spire over the crossing.

The monastic buildings, including the octagonal chapter house, are constructed slightly later.

Because the cathedral has been built in only thirty-eight years, it has a single consistent architectural style, the so-called Early English Gothic.

English in plan, as is the linear emphasis of the decoration, the church’s broad facade is apparently based on French Romanesque architecture.

The builders, who have given Salisbury significantly greater window area than the roughly contemporary Lincoln Cathedral, display an apparent familiarity with French Gothic architecture.

The narrow, pointed lancet windows and square eastern end are typical of the Early English Gothic style.

The tower and spire over the crossing of Salisbury Cathedral are completed around 1380.

The verge (or crown wheel) escapement is the earliest known type of escapement: the mechanism in a mechanical clock that controls its rate by advancing the gear train at regular intervals or 'ticks'.

Its origin is unknown it has been suggested that the verge was introduced to Europe from China.

The first hard evidence of the verge escapement dates from early fourteenth-century Europe, where its invention had led to the development of the first all-mechanical clocks.

The earliest clock known to be mechanical had been built in Padua in 1335 by Jacopo de Dondi; perhaps the earliest existing drawing of a verge escapement is that detailing the Astrarium, an astronomical clock created by de Dondi’s son Giovanni, built in 1364 in Padua.

Another example of the innovative verge escapement mechanism drives an ornate clock at Salisbury, constructed in 1396.

The verge escapement will be used in virtually all clocks and watches for four hundred years until, in the wave of seventeenth century horological innovation following the pendulum, it will be replaced by better escapements.