evil example of his superior) cried out, “Veni, Diabole, et insuffla ignem.”  Forthwith the flames rose, and reached to the roof, and spread through all the offices to the town.  The whole church was consumed, and the town as well, all the statues (or perhaps signa may mean the bells) were broken, and the fire continued burning in the tower for nine days.  On the ninth night a mighty wind arose and scattered the fire and burning fragments (carbones vivos) from the tower over the Abbot’s house, so that there was a fear that nothing would escape the devouring element.

The very next year John of Sais commenced the building of a new minster.  He laid the foundation on the 8th of March 1118.  Much work was probably necessary before a foundation stone could be laid; and Abbot John’s Chronicle, wherein it is said that the foundation of the new church at Burgh was laid, on the 12th of March, 1117, may be speaking of the actual commencement of the operations; and Candidus, who gives the later date, and who was present, may refer to a ceremonial laying of a stone, after the ground had been cleared and new designs prepared.  The church then begun is the minster we now see.  The works commenced, as we find almost universally the case, at the east end.  The choir is here terminated by an apse; and before the eastern addition was built in the fifteenth century, this apse, with the two lesser ones at the ends of the choir aisles, must have presented an appearance of much grandeur.

The Abbot who began the church did not live to see much progress made, as he died in 1125.  He is said to have worked hard at it, but how much was finished we do not know.  The next Abbot, after an interval of two years, was Henry of Anjou, a kinsman of King Henry I. He appears to have been a scandalous pluralist, restless and greedy, continually seeking and obtaining additional preferment, and as often being forced to resign.  He was not the man to prosecute such a work as was to be done at Burgh; “he lived even as a drone in a hive; as the drone eateth and draggeth forward to himself all that is brought near, even so did he."[8] It is likely that for eight years after the death of John de Sais nothing was done to advance the building.  But the Prior of S. Neots, Martin de Bee, who was appointed to succeed Henry, was continually employed in building about the monastery; and in particular he completed the presbytery of the church, and brought back the sacred relics, and the monks, on Saint Peter’s day into the new church, with great joy.  Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was present; but there was no service of consecration.  According to the Saxon Chronicle this took place in 1140; Abbot John says in 1143.