CHAP. IX. had no means of support to look to except the insufficient revenues of his Bishoprick. He had, it appears, been long looking forward to annexing, after the manner of the time, a second Bishoprick to his own. As Leofric had united the Bishopricks of Cornwall and Devonshire, so Hermann hoped to unite those of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, whenever the episcopal chair of Sherborne should become vacant. Hermann, as the mission with which he had been entrusted shows,2 stood high in royal favour, and the Lady Eadgyth had long before promised to use her influence on his behalf, whenever the wished for opportunity should occur.3 But another means of increasing the episcopal wealth of Ramsbury now presented itself. The Abbot of Malmesbury was dead. Though the monasteries had not yet reached their full measure of exemption from episcopal control, we may be sure that the Bishops had already begun to look with jealousy on those heads of great monastic houses who had gradually grown up into rival Prelates within their own dioceses. Hermann at Ramsbury felt towards the Abbey of Malmesbury much as in after days his countryman Savaric at Wells felt towards the Abbey of Glastonbury. Here was a good opportunity at once for raising his Bishoprick to a proper standard of temporal income and for getting rid of 1 Will. Malms. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. "Antecessores suos indigenas fuisse; se alienigenam nullo parentum compendio vitam quo sustentet habere." Hermann however had a nephew, who, as he is described as an Englishman, was doubtless a sister's son, who was made a knight by William, and held lands of his uncle's church. This comes from Domesday 66, where of two Englishmen ("duo Angli") who held certain lands of the church of Salisbury, we read that "unus ex eis est miles jussu Regis, et nepos fuit Hermanni episcopi." 2 See above, p. 114. 3 Will. Malms. u. s. Episcopum Schireburnensem.. cujus episcopatum suo uniendum antiquis Edgithæ Reginæ promissis operiebatur." On the history of Savaric and his designs on Glastonbury, see the History of Adam of Domersham in Anglia Sacra, i. 578, and Mr. J. R. Green and Professor Stubbs in the Somersetshire Archæological Proceedings for 1863, pp. 39-43. BISHOP HERMANN'S ATTEMPT ON MALMESBURY. 403 He would CHAP. IX. a rival who was doubtless a thorn in his side. forsake Ramsbury, with its poor income and lack of clerks, and fix his throne in the rich and famous minster which boasted of the burying-place of Æthelstan.1 He laid his scheme before the King, who approved of it; he went away from the royal presence already in expectation Bishop of Malmesbury. But two parties interested in the matter had not been consulted, the monks of Malmesbury and the Earl of the West-Saxons. The monks were certain to feel the keenest dislike to any such union. They might Relation of Bishops reasonably fear that the Lotharingian Prelate might seek and to reconstruct the foundation of his newly made cathedral Monks. church according to the canonical pattern of his own country. The rule of Chrodegang, which to the Canons of Wells and Exeter 2 seemed to be an insufferable approach to monastic austerity, would seem to the monks of Malmesbury to be a no less insufferable approach to secular laxity. Or, even if the Bishop allowed the church to retain its ancient monastic constitution, the monks would have no desire for any such close connexion with the Bishoprick. They doubtless, as the monks of Glastonbury did afterwards, greatly preferred a separate Abbot of their own. The monks of Malmesbury therefore betook themselves to the common helper of the oppressed, and laid their grievances at the feet of Earl Harold. As the natural 3 1 Fl. Wig. 1055. "Offensus qui ei sedem episcopalem transferre de villâ quæ Reamnesbyrig dicitur ad abbatiam Malmesbyriensem Rex nollet concedere." There is nothing in this short notice inconsistent with the fuller account given by William of Malmesbury. 2 I have spoken above (p. 84) of the changes made by Leofric at Exeter, and I shall have to speak in my next Chapter of the like changes made by Gisa at Wells. Will. Malms. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. "Excellentis prudentiæ monachi, audito quid in curiâ actum, quid justitiæ surreptum esset, ad Comitem Godwinum ejusque filium summâ celeritate contendunt." William is here mistaken in mentioning Godwine, who of course was dead. The story cannot be put back to a time before Godwine's death, as it is fixed to 1055 by the witness of Florence. CHAP. IX. protector of all men, monks and otherwise, within his Earldom, Harold pleaded their cause before the King. Within three days after the original concession to Hermann, before any formal step had been taken to put him in possession of the Abbey, the grant was revoked, and the church of Malmesbury was allowed to retain its ancient constitution.3 Manifest action of The speed with which this business was dispatched shows the Witan. that it must have been transacted at a meeting of the Witan held at no great distance from Malmesbury. Such a change as the transfer of a Bishop's see from one church to another could certainly not have been made or contemplated without the consent of the national Assembly. And for the monks to hear the news, to debate, to obtain Harold's help, and for Harold to plead for them, and all within three days, shows that the whole took place while the Witan were actually in session. Among the places where Gemóts were usually held the nearest to Malmesbury is Gloucester, the usual scene of the Christmas Assembly. The monks, or a body of them large enough to act in the name of the house, may perhaps have been themselves present there, and they may have determined on their course without going home to Malmesbury. But the distance between Malmesbury and Gloucester is not too great to have allowed the business, at a moment of such emergency, to have been discussed within the three days both in the Gemót at Gloucester and in the chapterhouse at Malmesbury. One can hardly doubt that this 1 Will. Malms. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. "Id Rex pro simplicitate, cui pronior quam prudentiæ semper erat, legitime concedendum ratus, tertio abhinc die dissoluit." 2 Ib. 66 Antequam Hermannus in re vel saisitione inviscaretur." 3 Ib. "Illi [Godwine and Harold, or, more truly, Harold only], rei indignâ novitate permoti, Regem adeunt, et a sententiâ deducunt; facile id fuit viris summis amplissimâ auctoritate præditis, quibus et caussæ rectitudo, et Regis facilitas suffragaretur. Ita Hermannus, necdum plane initiatus, expulsus est." HERMANN'S SCHEME HINDERED BY HAROLD. 405 affair took place in the Christmas Gemót in which the. CHAP. IX. Peace of Billingsley was confirmed and Elfgar reinstated Christmas, in his Earldom. 1055. action in The part played by Harold in this matter should also Harold's be noticed. Harold was no special lover of monks; the the matter. chief objects of his own more discerning bounty were the secular clergy. But he was no enemy to the monastic orders; he was ready to do justice to monks as well as to other men; he had, as we have seen in more than one case, approved and suggested the favours shown to religious houses by others; he had even, once at least, appeared as a monastic benefactor himself. In any case the brethren of Malmesbury were a society of Englishmen who were threatened with the violation of an ancient right through what clearly was a piece of somewhat hasty legislation. To step in on their behalf was an act in no way unworthy of the great Earl, and it was quite in harmony with his usual moderate and conciliatory policy. becomes a Saint The remainder of the story is curious. Hermann, dis- Hermann pleased at being thus balked when he thought himself so monk at near success, gave up, or at least forsook, his Bishoprick, Omer. crossed the sea, and assumed the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer. But the fire so suddenly kindled soon burned out; Hermann chafed under the fetters of monastic discipline, and wished to be again in the world. After three years, his earlier scheme once 1 See above, p. 41. See also the story in the Abingdon History, i. 457, 473, where the monks of Abingdon recover the possession of Leckhampstead through the interference of Harold, having, it would seem (see 458-9), vainly appealed to Godwine. 2 Fl. Wig. 1055. "Episcopatum dimisit, marique transfretato, apud Sanctum Bertinum monachicum habitum suscepit, ibique in ipso monasterio tribus annis mansit." Saint Omer, it must be remembered, was at this time Flemish, and Flanders, and lands south of Flanders, were still largely Teutonic. 3 William of Malmesbury (Scriptt. p. Bed. 142) makes himself merry over the grievances of a Bishop who had turned monk in a momentary fit CHAP. IX. more presented itself to his mind, when the see of Sherborne became vacant by the death of Bishop Elfwold. Hermann He returned to England, he pleaded his cause with the unites King, and found no opposition from the Earl. No apRamsbury pointment to the chair of Ramsbury had been made during returns and and Sher borne. 1058. Hermann's absence; the administration of the diocese was entrusted to the indefatigable Bishop Ealdred, who thus had the care of three separate flocks, at Worcester, at Hereford, and in Wiltshire.2 Perhaps Hermann was looked on as still being Bishop, and the promise of the Lady with regard to the union of the sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne was held to be still binding. At all events, on Hermann's return, Ealdred gave up the Wiltshire Bishoprick, and Hermann became Bishop of the united sees. He held them for Died 1078. twenty years longer; he survived the Conquest twelve years, and he lived to merge the old diocesan names of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, of Ramsbury and Sherborne, in a name drawn from an altogether new seat of episcopal authority, the waterless hill of the elder Salisbury.4 Death of Earl Odda. 1056. 3 The year of Bishop Leofgar's unlucky attempt to win fame as a warrior was marked by the death of Earl Odda, the King's kinsman. He had been set over the western of pique; "Sed ut fere fit talibus, repentino illo impetu relligionis frigescente, indies in Angliam reditum meditabatur. Figebat [Pigebat?] hominem assuetum obsequiis, innutritum deliciis, carere delinimentis quæ ab ineunte fuerat expertus ætate." 1 William, strangely confounding his dates, fancies that Godwine died during Hermann's absence at Saint Omer, and that Hermann was more likely to gain his point after Godwine's death. He is followed by R. Higden, XV Scriptt. ii. 281, the passage so oddly perverted by Thierry. See above, p. 343. 2 See Flor. Wig. 1058. 3 William of Malmesbury continues to jeer at him to the last; "Accepit ergo Hermannus Schireburnensem episcopatum integrum cum tribus pagis, Edwardo Rege dante, vivacitateque suâ datoris annos transcendens ad Willielmi tempora duravit." The three "pagi" are the three shires of which the united diocese was formed, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire. See Appendix M. See vol. i. p. 318. Will. Malms. Scriptt. p. Bed. 142. |
