DEATH OF BISHOP LYFING.

that power of speech in the exercise of which he had so often stood side by side with his illustrious friend. The other Chronicles merely record his death; the Worcester writer adds the speaking title, "Lyfing the eloquent." 1

83

CHAP. VII.

1046-1072.

moves the see to

The great mass of preferment held by Lyfing did not Leofric, Bishop of pass undivided to a single successor. The Bishopricks of Crediton 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. Four years after his appointment, he followed He rethe example of Ealdhun of Durham in removing his episcopal see to a new site. He did not however, like Exeter. Ealdhun, create at once a church and a city;5 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, 6 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 whose fatal presence had caused that great misfortune still

4

1 "Lyfing se wordsnotera biscop." On the description of Lyfing's and other Bishopricks see Appendix M.

Flor. Wig. 1046."Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox Cridiatunensis et Cornubiensis datus est præsulatus."

3 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 b. "Lefricus apud Lotharingos altus et doctus."

4 See vol. i. p. 290.

Ib. p. 291.

• Will. Malms. u. s. He again speaks of Ethelstan's walls. vol. i. pp. 307 et seqq.

7 See vol. i. p. 315.

See

1050.

1067.

CHAP. VII. lived. The first years of Emma in England beheld the 1003-1050. 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 Swegen 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 He subjects 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,

his Canons

gang.

1 On this personal installation see Appendix I.

2 See the whole subject fully illustrated by Professor Stubbs in the Preface to the De Inventione, p. ix. et seqq. See also his note to Mosheim, ii. 47. Rioher (iii. 24) gives an account of the changes introduced by Archbishop Adalbero (c. 969) in his church of Rheims, which seems to have brought in a still stricter discipline than that of Leofric at Exeter or Gisa at Wells. Adalbero had been a member of the church of Metz. Amongst other things the Institutes of Saint Augustine were to be read daily. Here we get the first glimmer of Austin Canons.

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

and bound to a strict obedience to their Bishop or other CHAP VII. ecclesiastical superior. Still they were not monks; they 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.2 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 The early career of the famous Ealdred, who

to come.

1 Cap. 53.

"Ut Canonici cucullos monachorum non induant."

See Stubbs, De Inventione, p. x.

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 oeconomum ab episcopo constitutum, qui eis diatim necessaria victui, annuatim amictui commoda suggerat."

York