Great English earthquake

August 11, 1089

A rare tremor shook much of southern England, rattling churches and knocking stones from towers. Chroniclers recorded it with apocalyptic dread. Structural damage was modest but the shock fed ongoing anxieties about William Rufus's quarrelsome reign and the uncertain fate of the unburied Pope Gregory in distant Salerno. Medieval seismologists now estimate the quake at roughly magnitude five, centered somewhere beneath the English Channel.