Ealdred rebuilds

and conse

and appoints Wulfstan Abbot. 1058.

Ealdred restores

the see of

to Her

CHAP. X. ment lasted for more than thirty-six years, but his local reputation is not good, as he is charged with wasting the property of the monastery. Meanwhile the bounty of Ealdred rebuilt the church of Saint Peter from its foundacrates the tions, and it now stood ready for consecration. Abbot church, Eadric most opportunely died at this time, so that Ealdred was able at once to furnish his new minster with a new chief ruler. He consecrated the church, and bestowed the abbatial benediction on Wulfstan, a monk of his own church of Worcester, on whom, by the King's licence, he conferred the vacant office. It was just at this time that Bishop Hermann came back from Saint Omer. Ealdred, charged with the care of three dioceses, restored that of Ramsbury Wiltshire, the poorest and least distinguished, to its former mann, and Owner.1 But there seems reason to believe that any loss of pilgrimage revenue which Ealdred thus incurred was made up by the to Jerusa annexation to his see of several lordships belonging to the church of Gloucester.2 The diocese of Worcester was no doubt entrusted to the care of Ethelwig ;3 of any arrangements for the benefit of Hereford we hear nothing. Ealdred then undertook a journey which no English Bishop had ever before undertaken, which indeed we have not heard of as undertaken by any eminent Englishman of that generation, except by the repentant Swegen. Duke Robert of Normandy and Count Fulk of Anjou had visited the tomb of Christ, but Cnut and Harold had not gone further than the threshold of the Apostles. But Ealdred now undertook the longer journey; he passed through Hungary,5 a country which the negotiations for the return of the Ætheling had

makes the

lem.

4

1 Fl. Wig. 1058. See above, p. 406.
3 See above, p. 371.

2 See Appendix NN.

After the consecration at Gloucester, says the Worcester Chronicler (1058), "swa ferde to Hierusalem, mid swilcan weordscipe swa nan oðer ne dyde ætforan him ;""quod nullus," adds Florence, " archiepiscoporum vel episcoporum Angliæ eatenus dinoscitur fecisse."

EALDRED'S PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM.

437

doubtless opened to English imaginations, and at last CHAP. X. reached the holy goal of his pilgrimage. He went, we are told, with such worship as none had ever gone before him; his devotion was edifying and his gifts were splendid. A chalice of gold, of five marks weight, and of wondrous workmanship, was the offering of the renowned English Prelate at the most sacred spot on earth.1

of events

tion of

The next year is one singularly barren of English events. Barrenness The Chronicles literally record nothing of greater im- in the year portance than the fact that the steeple of Peterborough 1059. minster was hallowed. The zeal and bounty of Abbot Leofric3 was busily at work. And from other sources all that is to be learned is the appointment of a new Abbot of Evesham. That appointment however was in some respects a remarkable one. Abbot Mannig, the architect, Resignapainter, and general proficient in the arts, had been Abbot smitten by paralysis, and had resigned his office. however in honour for seven years longer, and was said, on the same day and hour as King Eadward. [His death. His successor was Ethelwig, the monk who acted for Ealdred when absent from his diocese, and who was now Provost of the monastery of Evesham. As in the case of Wulfstan at Gloucester, we hear nothing distinctly of any capitular election. The retiring Abbot seems to nominate his successor. Pleading his sickness as an excuse for not

of Eves

He lived Mannig died, so it ham.

1 Chron. Wig. "And hine sylfne þær Gode betæhte, and wurðlic lac eac geoffrode to ures Drihtenes byrgene, þæt was an gylden calic, on fif marcon swide wundorlices geworces." The chronicler, just as at the time of the mission to Köln, clearly rejoices in the splendour and bounty of his own Bishop.

2 Oddly enough, it is the Worcester and not the Peterborough Chronicler who records this purely local fact; "on pisan gere was se stypel gehalgad æt Burh on xvi. kal. Novemb."

3 See above, p. 348.

See Appendix 00.

5 Chron. Mon. Evesham. p. 87. "Nunc sub eo jure præpositi totius abbatiæ hujus curam agebat."

1059.

Jan. 5, 1066.]

Abbot.
April 23,

CHAP. X. coming personally, he sends certain monks and laymen to Ethelwig the King, recommending Ethelwig for the Abbacy. The King approves, and, by his order, Ealdred gives the abbatial benediction to Ethelwig at Gloucester in the Easter Gemót holden in that city. Of the new Prelate we shall hear again more than once.

1059.

Deposition

of Pope Benedict; its effect on the position of Stigand.

1059.

Harold's

minster at

conse.

crated.

May 3, 1060.

This year however was by no means an unimportant one in English history. It was now that, as all our Chronicles so carefully note, the intruding Benedict was deposed, and Nicolas succeeded to the Papacy. The revolution at Rome was followed by a revolution of feeling in England. The recognition of Stigand lasted no longer than the temporary recognition of Benedict. When the Pontiff from whom he had received his pallium sank to the position of an Antipope and schismatic, the English Primate sank again to the anomalous position in which he had before stood. His ministrations were again avoided, even in the quarter which one would have least expected to find affected by such scruples. Earl Harold himself, when he needed the performance of a great ecclesiastical ceremony, now shrank from having it performed by the hands of the Primate who in all political matters was his friend and fellow-worker.

For we have now reached the date of an event which Waltham closely binds together the ecclesiastical and the secular history of the time. It was in the year following the expulsion of Benedict that Earl Harold brought to perfection the minster which he had doubtless for some time been engaged in rearing on his East-Saxon lordship of Waltham. Whether any portion of the fabric still existing is the work of its great founder is a matter of antiquarian controversy on which I will not here enlarge. But whether the existing nave, or any part of it, be Harold's work or not, the historic interest of that memorable spot remains in either case the same. As we go on we shall see

HAROLD'S FOUNDATION AT WALTHAM.

stood.

439

Waltham win for itself an abiding fame as the last resting- CHAP. X. place of its great founder; at present we have to look to the foundation itself as a most remarkable witness to that founder's wisdom as well as his bounty. The importance Nature and importance of the foundation of Waltham in forming an estimate, both of the founof Harold's personal character and of the ecclesiastical dation generally position of England at the time, has been altogether misunderslurred over through inattention to the real character of the foundation. Every writer of English history, as far as I know, has wholly misrepresented its nature. It is constantly spoken of as an Abbey, and its inhabitants as monks.2 Waltham and its founder thus get mixed up with the vulgar crowd of monastic foundations, the creation in many cases of a real and enlightened piety, but in many cases also of mere superstition or mere fashion. The great ecclesiastical foundation of Earl Harold was something widely different. Harold did not found an Abbey ; Change of Waltham did not become a religious house till Henry the by Henry Second, liberal of another man's purse, destroyed Harold's the Second. foundation by way of doing honour to the new Martyr of Canterbury. Harold founded a Dean and secular Canons; these King Henry drove out, and put. in an Abbot and Austin Canons in their place. Harold's foundation, in short, was an enlargement of the original small foundation of Tofig the Proud. Tofig had built a church for the reception of the miraculous crucifix which had been found at Lutegarsbury, and had made an endowment for two priests only. The Holy Rood of Waltham became an object of popular worship and pilgrimage, and probably the small settlement originally founded by Tofig in the middle of the forest was already growing into a considerable town. The estate of Tofig at Waltham had been lost by his son

1 See above, p. 41.

2 On the foundation of Waltham see Appendix PP.

3 See vol. i. p. 524.

foundation

1177-1184.

son of Tofig

and his

son Esegar.

of Waltham

CHAP. X. Æthelstan,1 and was confiscated to the Crown. I have Athelstan already suggested that Æthelstan, the son of a Danish father, may not improbably have been one of the party which opposed the election of Eadward, and most of whose members suffered more or less on that account.2 But the royal disfavour which fell on Æthelstan did not extend to his son Esegar, who held the office of Staller from a very early period of Eadward's reign till the Norman invasion.3 Acquisition But the lordship of Waltham was granted by the King to by Harold, his brother-in-law Earl Harold, with whom it evidently became a favourite dwelling-place. The Earl now rebuilt He rebuilds the small church of Tofig on a larger and more splendid scale, no doubt calling to his aid all the resources which were supplied by the great contemporary developement of architecture in Normandy. One who so diligently noted all that was going on in contemporary Gaul would doubtless keep his eye on such matters also. When the church was built, he enriched it with precious gifts and relics of all kinds, some of which he had himself brought personally He founds from Rome on his pilgrimage. Lastly, he increased the the College. number of clergy attached to the church from two to a much larger number, a Dean and twelve Canons, besides several inferior officers. He richly endowed them with lands, and contemplated larger endowments still.

theChurch.

Nature of

his foundation.

4

This is something very different from the foundation of a monastery. Harold finds that a church on his estate has become the seat of a popular worship; he therefore rebuilds

1 De Inv. c. 14. There is something strange in the statement of the Waltham writer that Ethelstan did not succeed to all his father's estates, but only to those attached to the stallership. 2 See above, p. 63.

De Inv. c. 14. "Adelstanus, pater Esegari qui stalre inventus est in Angliæ conquisitione a Normannis." Esegar, the Ansgardus of Guy of Amiens, was Staller as early as 1044, and Sheriff of Middlesex. See vol. iii. p. 730. He signs many charters, among others the Waltham charter of 1062 (Cod. Dipl. iv. 159), with the title of "regiæ procurator aulæ," equivalent, according to Professor Stubbs, to "dapifer." See his note to De Inv. c. 14. See Appendix MM.