1088.

About this time, Roger de Montgomery, who with a large and powerful body of Barons supported the pretensions of Robert duke of Normandy, destroyed the town of Cambridge with fire and sword.

1092.

In or before this year Hugolina, the wife of Picot, sheriff of the County, was taken so dangerously ill at Cambridge that she was given over by the King's physicians, and other medical men, who were called to her assistance. Upon this she vowed to God and St. Giles (whom she looked on as her peculiar patron), that, if she recovered, she would establish a house of religious, and dedicate the same to God and St. Giles. To this vow her husband assented. Three days afterwards she perfectly recovered. Upon which, she and her husband, after consulting St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln (in whose diocese Cambridge was then situate), built a church to the honour of St. Giles, with convenient apartments, near the Castle of Cambridge, in which they placed six Canons regular, under the superintendence of one Galfrid, canon of Huntingdon, a very religious man. Picot gave to this society the churches of St. Giles, Cambridge, [Guilden] Morden, with the chapel of Redreth, Tadlow, Bourn, with the chapel of the Castle and the chapel of Caldecot, Comberton, Madingley, Rampton, Harston, and Hinxton.