SYNOD OF RHEIMS.

Mainz.

Abbots.

113

and the Abbots Wulfric of Saint Augustine's and Elfwine CHAP. VII, of Ramsey, whom King Eadward had sent to bring him word of all that should be done for the good of Christendom.1 It does not appear that any English Prelates were Synod of present at the synod which Leo held soon after at Mainz; 2 but the two Italian synods which were held soon after were, as we shall see, connected in a singular manner with English affairs. There seems to have been about Deaths of Bishops this time a kind of mortality among the English Prelates. and Among those who died was the Abbot of Westminster or Thorney, the humbler foundation which was soon to give way to the great creation of the reigning King. He bore the name of Wulfnoth, a name which suggests the likelihood of kindred with the house of Godwine. Another was Oswiu, the Abbot of the other Thorney in the fen land, the neighbour of Peterborough and Crowland. This Siward year too died Siward the Coadjutor-Archbishop, and Ead- Eadsige sige again resumed his functions for the short remainder resumes of his life.3 Eadnoth too, the good Bishop of Dor- Primacy. chester, the builder of Stow-in-Lindesey, died this year, Eadnoth of and his death offered a magnificent bait to Norman am- Dorchester bition and greediness. The great Bishoprick stretching succeeds. from the Thames to the Humber, was conferred by the 1049. King on one of his Norman chaplains, who however bore the Scandinavian name of Ulf. As to the utter unfitness of this man for such an office there is an universal consent among our authorities. The King, even the holy Eadward, did evil in appointing him; the new Prelate

4

1 Chron. Petrib. 1046. "Eadward cyng sende þider Dudoce [the Abbots only and not Dudoc are mentioned by the Worcester Chronicle, 1050] . . þæt hi sceolden þam cynge cydan hwæt þær to Christendome gecoren

* Lambert, 1050 (see above, p. 99). Herm. Contr. 1050.

See above, p. 68.

* Chron. Ab. 1049. "Fordferde Eadnoð se goda biscop on Oxnafordscire." The same words seem to have dropped out of the Worcester Chronicle.

dies, and

the

1049.

dies; Ulf

CHAP. VII. did nought bishoplike; it were shame to tell more of his deeds.1

Witenagemót of London. Midlent, 1050.

of the Fleet.

The year which followed was one of great note in ecclesiastical history. In England the first event recorded is the usual meeting of the Witan in London at Midlent. The proceedings of this Gemót, like those of many others about this time, give us a glimpse of that real, though very imperfect, parliamentary life which was then growing up in England, and which the Norman Conquest threw Reduction back for many generations. Then, as now, there were economists pressing for the reduction of the public expenditure, and what we should now call the Navy Estimates were chosen as being no doubt a popular subject for attack. The narrative of the naval events of the last year shows that, on special occasions, naval contingents were called for, according to the old law,2 from various parts of the Kingdom, but that the King still kept a small naval force in constant pay. This force had, under Cnut and Harold, consisted of sixteen ships; it seems now to have consisted only of fourteen. The experience of the last year showed that England was still open to attack from the West; but the great fear, fear of invasion from the North, had now quite passed away. It seemed therefore to be a favourable moment for further reductions. By the authority of this Gemót nine ships were accordingly paid off, the crews receiving a year's pay, and the standing force was cut down to six. It was in this same assembly that Swegen

1 Chron. Ab. 1049. "Eadwerd cing geaf Ulfe his preoste þæt biscoprice, and hit yfele beteah." Chron. Wig. 1050. "Ac he was syddan of adryfon, forban be he ne gefremede naht biscoplices þæron, swa þæt us sceamað hit nu mare to tellanne." Flor. Wig. "Regis capellanus Ulfus genere Nortmannus."

3 See vol. i. p. 570.

2 See vol. i. p. 368. Chron. Petrib. 1047. "Her on bisum geare was mycel gemót on Lundene to midfestene, and man sette ut ix. litsmanna scipa, and fif belifan wið æftan." The Abingdon Chronicle, 1049, to much the same

REDUCTION OF THE FLEET.

lawed.

115

was inlawed, that is, his outlawry was reversed, by the CHAP. VII. intercession of Bishop Ealdred. That Prelate, as we have Swegen inseen, seems to have gone over to Flanders, and to have brought Swegen back with him.2

Ealdred

Rome.

But Ealdred had soon to set forth on a longer Mission of journey. He and the Lotharingian Bishop Hermann and Herwere now sent to Rome on the King's errand.3 What mann to that errand was we learn only from legendary writers and doubtful charters, but, as their accounts completely fit in with the authentic history, we need not scruple to accept their general outline. The King had in his youth The King's vow of pilvowed a pilgrimage to Rome, and the non-fulfilment grimage to of this vow lay heavy on his conscience. It probably Rome. lay heavier still when he saw so many of his subjects of all ranks, led by the fashionable enthusiasm of the time, making both the pilgrimage to Rome and also the more distant pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A broken vow was a crime; still Eadward had enough of political sense and right feeling left to see that his absence from his Kingdom at such a time as the present would be a criminal forsaking of his kingly duty. The Great Cnut might

account as that just quoted, adds the words, "and se cyng heom behet xii. monað gyld."

1 Chron. Ab. 1050 (the chronology of this Chronicle is utterly confused); "and man geinlagode Swegen Eorl."

2 See above, p. 108.

3 Chron. Ab. 1049. "On þæs cinges ærende."

* See the charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 173, and the accounts in Æthelred of Rievaux, 379. Estorie de S. Edward, 65 et seqq.

5 Besides the many exalted persons who followed the example of Cnut, some of whose pilgrimages are of historical importance, the prevalence of the fashion is shown by its incidental mention in more than one charter. Thus in Cod. Dipl. iv. 140 we find the mention of the Roman pilgrimage of a Lincolnshire Thegn whose name of Anskill or Anscytel witnesses to his Danish origin. (The charter may be quoted for such a point as this, though there is clearly something wrong in the signature of "Wulfwinus Lincolniensis episcopus.") And at p. 141 we find "Leofgyva femina Lundonica" (a holder of property in Lincolnshire) dying on her way to Jerusalem.

CHAP. VII. venture on such a journey; his eye could see and his hand could act from Rome or Norway or any other part of the world. But the personal presence of Eadward was the only check by which peace could be for a moment preserved between the true sons of the soil, and the strangers who were eating into its vitals. The King laid his case Bishops to before his Witan; the unanimous voice of the Assembly

Eadward

sends the

obtain a

dispensa

tion.

1050.

of Rome.

LANFRANC.

forbade him to forsake his post; the legend adds that the Witan farther counselled him to satisfy his conscience by obtaining a Papal dispensation from his vow. This was the King's errand on which Ealdred and Hermann were sent to attend the great synod1 held this year at Rome. They made good speed with their journey; starting at The Synod Midlent, they reached the Holy City on Easter Eve.2 In that synod they stood face to face with a man then known only as a profound scholar and theologian, the bulwark of orthodoxy and the pattern of every monastic virtue, but who was, in years to come, to hold a higher place in the English hierarchy, and to leave behind him a far greater name in English history, than either of the English Prelates whose blessing he may now have humbly craved. In that synod of Rome the doctrines of Berengar of Tours were debated by the assembled Fathers, and the foremost champion of the faith to which Rome still cleaves was Lanfranc of Pavia. Suspected of complicity with the heretic, he produced the famous letter in which Berengar had maintained the Eucharist to be a mere figure of the Body of Christ.3 How far Ealdred or Hermann took part in these theological debates we know not; but they are said to have successfully accomplished their own errand.

1 Chron. Petrib. 1047. "On bysum ilcan geare was se myccla sinod on Rome"-like our own "mycel gemót" just before.

2 Ib.

Hi comon byder on Easter æfen."

3 Vita Lanfr. c. 10. ap. Giles, i. 288. Will. Malms. iii. 284. Sig. Gemb. 1051. See Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 24.

EADWARD'S MESSAGE TO ROME.

117

Vercelli.

of Dorches

The King's vow of pilgrimage was dispensed with, on CHAP. VII. condition of the rebuilding and endowment on a grander scale of that renowned West Minster whose name was to be inseparably bound together with that of the sainted King.1 Before the year was out the unwearied Leo held Synod of another synod at Vercelli. Here the theological contro- Confirmaversy was again raised, and Lanfranc again shone forth as tion of Ulf the irresistible smiter of heresy. Berengar was finally ter. condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to the elder teaching of John Scotus, and his protests that those who rejected John Scotus rejected Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the Fathers of the Church. These disputes, renowned in the Church at large, are wholly passed over by our insular Chroniclers. To them the famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have been memorable only as showing the Roman Court in what was apparently a new relation towards the Prelacy of England. Before the assembled Fathers came the newly appointed Bishop of Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would seem, for consecration or confirmation. His unfitness for his post was manifest; he was found incapable of going through the ordinary service of the Church. The Synod was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the staff which, according to the ceremonial of those times, he had already received from the King. But the influence which was already all-powerful at Rome saved him. He retained his Bishoprick; but only at the cost of a lavish expenditure of treasure, of which we may be sure that no portion found its way into the private

1 Æthel. Riev. ap. X Scriptt. 381. If the letter there given be genuine, the dispensation was granted by the authority of the synod as well as of the Pope. Eadward was either to build a new or restore an old monastery of Saint Peter; "aut novum construas aut vetustum augeas et emendes." Cf. the French Life, 1601 et seqq., where the Bishops are both quartered on wrong sees, Ealdred prematurely at York, Hermann at Winchester. The story does not occur in the contemporary Life, p. 417.

2 See the first letter in Dr. Giles' collection, p. 17.