Peterborough dates from the revival of Christianity among the Saxons; destroyed by the Danes A.D. 870, rebuilt by Edgar in 970, it was attacked and plundered by Saxon insurgents from the fens under Hereward the Wake, in the time of William the Conqueror.  At the dissolution of religious houses under Henry VIII., Peterborough was one of the most magnificent abbeys, and, having been selected as the seat of one of the new bishoprics, the buildings were preserved entire.  In the civil wars, the Lady Chapel and several conventual buildings were pulled down and the materials sold.  At present the cathedral is a regular cruciform structure of Norman character, remarkable for the solidity of its construction.

It was commenced 1117, by John de Saiz, a Norman.  The chancel was finished, A.D. 1140, by Abbot Martin de Vecti.  The great transept and a portion of the central tower were built by Abbot William de Vaudeville, A.D. 1160 to 1175, and the nave by Abbot Benedict 1177-1193.  The fitting up of the choir is of woodwork richly carved.  The greater number of the monuments, shrines, and chantry chapels, were destroyed by the Parliamentary troops.  Two queens lie buried here, Catherine of Aragon and Mary of Scotland, without elegy or epitaph, monument or tombstone.

The Cathedral viewed, nothing remains to detain the traveller in this peculiarly stupid city.  Within a pleasant ride of five miles lies Milton House, the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam.

* * * * *

Stamford.—­Although Stamford is not upon this line of railway, travellers passing near should not fail to visit so ancient and interesting a town.  Few English boroughs can trace back more distinctly their antiquity.  Six churches still remain of the fifteen which, beside many conventual buildings, formerly adorned it.  For Stamford was one of the towns which, had not the Reformation intervened, would have been swallowed up by the ever hungry ecclesiastical maw.  Stamford awakens many historic recollections.  It has a place in Domesday Book, being there styled Stanford:  King Stephen had an interview there with Ranulph, Earl of Chester.  In 1190, the Jews of Stamford were plundered and slain by the recruits proceeding to the crusades; and, ten years afterwards, when Edward I. expelled the Jews from England, “their synagogue and noble library at Stamford were profaned and sold.”  Many of the books were purchased by Gregory of Huntingdon, a monk of Ramsey Abbey, a diligent student of ancient languages; and thus the result of much learning, collected in Spain and Italy, and handed down from the times when the Jews and Arabs almost alone cultivated literature as well as commerce, was sown in England, the last of European kingdoms to become distinguished in letters.  Stamford was the refuge of Oxford students on the occasion of disturbances in 1333.  It was taken by the Lancastrian army of the North under Queen Margaret in 1461, and given up to plunder; and, in 1462, when thirty thousand Lincolnshire men marched, under the command of Sir Robert Wells, against Edward IV., under the walls of Stamford they were defeated, and, flying, left their coats behind.  But the latest battles of Stamford have been between Whig and Tory, and even these have ceased.