DEATH OF BISHOP LYFING. 83 his death; the Worcester writer adds the speaking title, CHAP. VII. "Lyfing the eloquent." 1046-1072. moves the The great mass of preferment held by Lyfing did not Leofric, pass undivided to a single successor. The Bishopricks of Crediton Bishop of Devonshire and Cornwall remained united, as they have or Exeter. done ever since. They were conferred on the King's Chancellor, Leofric, who is described as a Briton, that is, doubtless, a native of the Cornish portion of his diocese.2 His name however shows that he was of English, or at least of Anglicized, descent. But in feeling he was neither British nor English; as Hermann was a Lotharingian by birth, Leofric was equally a Lotharingian by education.3 Four years after his appointment, he followed He rethe example of Ealdhun of Durham in removing his see to episcopal see to a new site. He did not however, like Exeter. Ealdhun, create at once a church and a city; he rather forestalled the practice of Prelates later in the century by transferring his throne to the greatest town of his diocese. The humbler Crediton had to yield its episcopal rank to the great city of the West, the city which Æthelstan had fortified as a cherished bulwark of his realm," the city whose valiant burghers had beaten back the Dane in his full might, and which had fallen into his hands only when the Norman traitor was set to guard its walls. She 1 "Lyfing se wordsnotera biscop." He adds, "he hæfde iii. biscoprice an on Defenascire, and on Cornwalon, and on Wigracestre." So Florence calls him "Hwicciorum, Domnaniæ, et Cornubiæ præsul." In the Peterborough Chronicle he is "biscop on Defenascire," which the Canterbury Chronicler, using the language of his own age, turns into "biscop of Exceastre." 2 Flor. Wig. 1046. "Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox Cridiatunensis et Cornubiensis datus est præsulatus." 9 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 b. "Lefricus apud Lotharingos altus et doctus." See vol. i. p. 320. 5 See vol. i. p. 353. Will. Malms. u. s. He again speaks of Æthelstan's walls. See vol. i. pp. 337-340. 7 See vol. i. pp. 345, 346. 1050. 1067. CHAP. VII. Whose fatal presence had caused that great misfortune still 1003-1050. lived. The first years of Emma in England beheld the capture and desolation of her noble morning-gift. Her last years saw the restored city become the spiritual capital of the great western peninsula. And, within the life-time of many who saw that day, Exeter was again to stand a siege at the hands of a foreign King, and again to show forth the contrast between citizens as valiant as those who drove Swend from before their walls and captains as incompetent or as treacherous as Hugh the Churl. The church of Saint Peter in Exeter now became the cathedral church of the western diocese, and there Leofric was solemnly enthroned in his episcopal chair by the saintly King and his virgin wife.1 Hitherto the church had been Hesubjects occupied by nuns. They were now removed, and the to the rule chapter of the Bishop was formed of secular Canons. of Chrode- Leofric however required them to conform to the stricter discipline which he had learned in Lotharingia. The rule of Chrodegang of Metz, the model rule of secular Canons, though it did not impose monastic vows, yet imposed on those who conformed to it much of the strictness of monastic discipline. The clerks who submitted to it were severed, hardly less than actual monks, from all the ordinary habits of domestic life. They were condemned to the common table and the common dormitory; every detail of their life was regulated by a series of minute ordinances; they were cut off from lay, and especially from female, society, and bound to a strict obedience to their Bishop or other his Canons gang. 1 Such a personal installation seems to be the meaning of the description in the foundation charter of the new see of Exeter, in Cod. Dipl. iv. 118. The Charter is doubtful, but it may probably be trusted for a fact of this kind. Cf. Will. Malms. iii. 300. 2 See the whole subject fully illustrated by Professor Stubbs in the Preface to the De Inventione, p. ix. et seqq. The rule of Chrodegang will be found at length in D'Achery's Spicilegium, i. 565 et seqq. CHANGES OF BISHOP LEOFRIC AT EXETER. 85 ecclesiastical superior. Still they were not monks; they CHAP. VII. were even strictly forbidden to wear the monastic garb,1 and the pastoral duties of baptism, preaching, and hearing confession were strictly enforced upon them. In accordance with the precepts of Chrodegang, the Canons of Exeter were required to eat in a common hall and to sleep in a common dormitory. Their temporal concerns were managed by an officer, who provided them with daily food, and with a yearly change of raiment. This sort of discipline never found favour in England. All who were not actual monks clave earnestly to the usage of separate houses, in which they were often solaced by the company of wives and children. Every earlier and later attempt to introduce the Lotharingian rule in England utterly failed. Leofric's discipline seems to have lasted somewhat longer than commonly happened in the like cases. Vestiges of the severer rule still remained at Exeter in the next century, but even then the purity of ancient discipline had greatly fallen off.3 Abbot of Worcester, Arch One of the sees vacated by the death of Lyfing thus Ealdred, fell to the lot of a zealous ecclesiastical reformer, but a man Tavistock, who plays no important part in the general history of the Bishop of time. The fate of Lyfing's other Bishoprick was widely 1046; different. It was bestowed on a Prelate who, without ever bishop of displaying any very great qualities, played a prominent, 1061-1069. and on the whole not a dishonourable, part for many years to come. The early career of the famous Ealdred, who now succeeded Lyfing in the see of Worcester, had led him 1 Cap. 53. 3 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 b. "Canonicos statuit qui, contra morem Anglorum, ad formam Lotharingorum uno triclinio comederent, uno cubiculo cubitarent. Transmissa est hujuscemodi regula ad posteros, quamvis pro luxu temporum nonnullâ jam ex parte deciderit, habentque clerici œconomum ab episcopo constitutum, qui eis diatim necessaria victui, annuatim amictui commoda suggerat." York 997. of Ealdred. CHAP. VII. through nearly the same stages as that of his predecessor. Like him, he had been a monk at Winchester; like him, he had been thence called to the government of one of the great monasteries of the West. The Abbey of Tavistock, destroyed by Danish invaders in the reign of Ethelred,' had risen from its ashes, and it now proved a nursery of Character Prelates like Lyfing and Ealdred. The new Bishop was a man of ability and energy. He exhibits, like Harold, the better form of the increasing connexion between England and the continent. As an ambassador at the Imperial court, as a pilgrim at Rome and Jerusalem, he probably saw more of the world than any contemporary Englishman. He was renowned as a peacemaker, one who could reconcile the bitterest enemies.3 But he was also somewhat of a time-server, and, in common with so many other Prelates of his time, he did not escape the charge of simony. This charge is one which it is easy to bring and often hard to answer, but the frequency with which it is brought shows that the crime itself was a familiar one. Like many other churchmen of his time, Ealdred did not scruple to bear arms both in domestic and in foreign warfare, but his campaigns were, to say the least, not specially glorious. His most enduring title to remembrance is that it fell to his lot to place, within a single year, the Crown of England on the brow, first of Harold and then of William, and to die of sorrow at the sight of his church and city brought to ruin by the mutual contentions of Normans, Englishmen, and Danes. See vol. i. p. 353. 2 The name of Ealdred will be constantly recurring in our history for the next twenty-three years. His general life and character are described by William of Malmesbury, De Gest Pont. 154, and Thomas Stubbs, Gest. Pont. Eb. X Scriptt. 1700 et seqq. 3 T. Stubbs, u. s. "Iste apud Regem Edwardum tantæ erat auctoritatis, ut cum eo mortales inimicos reconciliaret et de inimicissimis amicissimos faceret." EALDRED BISHOP OF WORCESTER. ap Lly conciled 1046. 87 We shall find the new Bishop of Worcester appearing a CHAP. VII. few years later in arms against the Welsh, to whose incur- Gruffydd sions the southern part of his diocese lay open. But as welyn reyet it was only his powers of persuasion and peacemaking with the which he was called upon to exercise in that quarter. It King. was probably by Ealdred's intervention that a reconciliation was now brought about between the famous King of North Wales, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn,' and his English overlord. Gruffydd's immediate neighbour to the east was Swegen, Expedition whose anomalous Earldom took in the border shires of and GrufGloucester and Hereford. Gruffydd accordingly gave fydd hostages, and accompanied Swegen in an expedition against Gruffydd the other Gruffydd, the son of Rhydderch, the King of RhydSouth Wales. On his triumphant return Swegen was guilty of an act which embittered the remainder of his days, a breach of the laws of morality which the ecclesiastical feelings of the time clothed with tenfold guilt. He sent for Eadgifu, Abbess of Leominster, kept her The reconciliation of Gruffydd appears from his acting immediately afterwards in concert with Earl Swegen. That Ealdred brought about this present reconciliation is not distinctly stated, but it quite falls in with his general character, and with the fact that he played a prominent part in a later reconciliation between Eadward and Gruffydd. The success of Ealdred in reconciling both Swegen and Gruffydd to the King is specially commented on by Thomas Stubbs, the biographer of the Archbishops of York (X Scriptt. 1701). Now Stubbs wrote more than three hundred years after the time; still he is not a romancer like Bromton or Knighton, but a really honest and careful writer, and he doubtless had access to materials which are now lost or unprinted. He may indeed refer to the later reconciliation in 1056, but the combination of the names of Swegen and Gruffydd might lead us to think that he was speaking of some event at this time. 2 Chron. Ab. 1046. "Her on bysum geare for Swegn eorl into Wealan, and Griffin se Norþerna cyng forð mid him, and him man gislode." In Ann. Camb. 1046 we read, "Seditio magna orta fuit inter Grifud filium Lewelin et Grifud filium Riderch." Or possibly the expedition may be that recorded under the next year, when Gruffydd ap Llywelyn ravaged all South Wales in revenge for the treacherous slaughter of one hundred and forty of his nobles. In any case the two independent accounts exactly fit in to one another. of Swegen against ap derch. 1046. |