Page images
PDF
EPUB

BISHOP HERMANN'S ATTEMPT ON MALMESBURY.

2

269

before promised to use her influence on his behalf, whenever the wished for opportunity should occur.1 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 a rival who was doubtless a thorn in his side. He would forsake Ramsbury, with its poor income and lack of clerks, and fix his throne in the rich and famous minster which boasted of the buryingplace of Æthelstan.3 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 reasonably fear that the Lotharingian Prelate might seek to reconstruct the foundation of his newly-made cathedral church according to the canonical pattern of his own country. The rule of Chrodegang, which to the Canons of Wells and Exeter 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.

1 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. p. 183. "Episcopum Schireburnensem cujus episcopatum suo uniendum antiquis Edgitha Reginæ promissis operiebatur."

2 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. 39-42.

3 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.

I have spoken above (p. 55) 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.

5 Will Malms. Gest. Pont. 182. "Excellentis prudentiæ monachi, audito quid in curiâ actum, quid justitiæ subreptum 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

As the natural 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,1 before any formal step had been taken to put him in possession of the Abbey,2 the grant was revoked, and the church of Malmesbury was allowed to retain its ancient constitution.3

The speed with which this business was dispatched shows 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 chapter-house at Malmesbury. One can hardly doubt that this affair took place in the Christmas Gemót (1055-1056) in which the Peace of Billingsley was confirmed and Elfgar reinstated in his Earldom.

The part played by Harold in this matter should also be noticed. Harold was no special lover of monks; the 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

put back to a time before Godwine's death, as it is fixed to 1055 by the witness of Florence.

1 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 182. "Id Rex pro simplicitate, cui pronior quam prudentiæ semper erat, legitime concedendum ratus, tertio abhinc die dissoluit."

66

deducunt. Facile id fuit viris summis amplissimâ auctoritate præditis, quibus et caussa rectitudo et Regis facilitas suffragaretur. Ita Hermannus, necdum plane initiatus, expulsus est."

See above, p. 41. See also the story in the Abingdon History, i. 457, 473, where the monks of Abingdon recover the 2 Ib. Antequam Hermannus in re vel possession of Leckhampstead through the saisitione inviscaretur." interference of Harold, having, it would seem (see 458-9), vainly appealed to Godwine.

3 Ib. p. 183. "Illi [Godwine and Harold, or, more truly, Harold only], rei indignâ novitate permoti, Regem adeunt, et a sententiâ

HERMANN'S SCHEME HINDERED BY HAROLD.

271 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.

The remainder of the story is curious. Hermann, displeased at being thus balked when he thought himself so near success, gave up, or at least forsook, his Bishoprick, crossed the sea, and assumed the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer.1 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 more presented itself to his mind, when the see of Sherborne became vacant by the death of Bishop Elfwold. He returned to England, he pleaded his cause with the King, and found no opposition from the Earl.3 No appointment to the chair of Ramsbury had been made during 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. 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 (1058) became Bishop of the united sees. He held them for 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."

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

5

[blocks in formation]

2

The year of Bishop Leofgar's unlucky attempt to win fame as a warrior was marked (August 31, 1056) by the death of Earl Odda, the King's kinsman. He had been set over the western shires of Godwine's Earldom during the year of his banishment,1 and since his return he had probably held, under the superiority of Leofric, the Earldom of the whole or part of the whole land of the Hwiccas. His unpatriotic conduct in the evil days seems, even in the eyes of our most patriotic chroniclers, to have been fully atoned for by his personal virtues and by the favour which he showed to monasteries. He is accordingly sent out of the world with a splendid panegyric.3 Before his death he was admitted a monk by his diocesan Ealdred,* who might thus, by bringing so goodly a sheep into the monastic fold, atone for having himself forsaken the cloister for the cares of government and warfare. He died at Deerhurst, under the shadow of the minster of his own building, but his own burial-place was at Pershore, another of the many Abbeys of a land which, next to the Eastern fens, was the richest district of England in monasteries of early date. In the course of the same year, Ethelric, Bishop of Durham, the successor of the simoniacal Eadred, resigned his see and again became a monk of Peterborough, in which monastery he had spent his youth. He was, through the influence of Tostig, succeeded in his Bishoprick by his brother alike in the flesh and in monastic

5

1 See above, p. 104. 2 See Appendix G. 3 Flor. Wig. 1056. "Ecclesiarum amator, pauperum recreator, viduarum et pupillorum defensor, oppressorum subventor, virginitatis custos, comes Agelwinus, id est Odda." Cf. above, p. 104.

66

4 Ib. "Ab Aldredo Wigornensi episcopo, ante suum obitum, monachizatus." So Chronn. Ab. and Wig. 1056. "He was to munece gehadod ær his ende." 5 Fior. Wig. u. s. Apud Deorhyrste decessit, sed in monasterio Persoresni honorifice sepultus quiescit." So Chronn. Ab. and Wig. His lic lid on Perscoran." His brother Ælfric, for whose soul Deerhurst church was built (see above, p. 104), who died in 1053 (Fl. Wig. in anno), also died at Deerhurst and was buried at Pershore.

[ocr errors]

6 See vol. i. p. 353. According to the Worcester Chronicle under the years 1041 and 1073, and the Peterborough Chronicle under 1072, Æthelric was consecrated to York, and was unjustly deprived of the metropolitan see ("hit was mid unrihte

6

8

him of genumon "), on which he took Durham. Hugo Candidus, the Peterborough writer (ap. Sparke, 46), attributes his loss of the see of York to the natural dislike of the seculars to a monk; "facientibus quibusdam ex canonicis vel ex clericis, quia pene naturale est eis semper invidere monachis, quia monachus erat, noluerunt pati eum archiepiscopum esse." But what vacancy was there at York in 1041 or 1042 ? Hugh is loud in his praise, but Simeon of Durham (Hist. Dun. Eccl. iii. 9, X Scriptt. 34) has much to say against him, charging him with robbing his church. In the third year of his episcopate he was driven out, but was restored by Earl Siward, on the receipt of a bribe ("munere oblato"). Digging at Chester-le-street to build a stone church on the site of the old wooden one, he found a treasure, which he spent in building churches and repairing roads near Peterborough.

7 Flor. Wig.; Chronn. Wig. 1072, and Petrib. 1073; Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun. Eccl. iii. 9.

8 Sim. Dun. u. s.

RETURN OF ÆTHELING EADWARD.

1

273

profession, Ethelwine, another monk of the Golden Borough. Both brothers survived the Norman Conquest, and we shall see each of them, alike on the throne of Durham and in the cloister of Peterborough, become victims of the watchful jealousy of the Norman Conqueror.

The next year (1057) is conspicuously a year of deaths, and a year of deaths which affected the state of England far more deeply than the deaths of Earl Odda and Bishop Ethelric. The first recorded event of the year is the return of the Ætheling Eadward from Hungary.2 The mission of Ealdred had not failed through the death of the great prince to whom he was sent,3 and, three years after the reception of the English Bishop at Köln, the English Etheling, if English we may call him, set foot on the shores from which he had been sent into banishment as a helpless babe.* He now, at the age of forty-one, came for the first time to his native country, and he came in a character as nearly approaching to that of heir presumptive to the English Crown as the laws of our elective monarchy allowed. He came with his foreign wife and his children of foreign birth. And it can hardly fail but that he was himself, in speech and habits, not less foreign than the Norman favourites of the King, far more foreign than the men of kindred tongue whom Godwine and Harold were glad to encourage in opposition to them.5 The succession of such a prince, even less of an Englishman than the reigning King, promised but little good to the Kingdom. Still the succession of the Ætheling would have had one great advantage. It was hardly possible that the claims of William could be successfully pressed against him. A supposed

1 These two brother monks and Bishops remind one of the opening of the Ormulum;

"Nu, broperr Wallterr, broþerr min

Affterr þe flashess kinde;
And broperr min i Crisstenndom

Purrh fulluhht and þurrh troww pe;
And broperr min i Godess hus

3et o pe pride wise." Æthelwine, according to Simeon, had administered the Bishoprick of Durham under his brother.

2 Chronn. Wig. and Petrib. 1059. The former breaks out into song, and gives us good authority for the surname of Ironside;

"Se was Eadwerdes
Brodor sunu kynges
Eadmund cing
Irensîd was geclypod
For his snellscipe."

[blocks in formation]

Florence says, "Ut ei mandârat suus patruus Rex Eadwardus, de Ungariâ Angliam venit. Decreverat enim Rex illum post se regni hæredem constituere."

3 The death of the Emperor Henry the Third is recorded in the Abingdon Chronicle under 1056, under the name of Cona, that is, of course, Conrad. The mistake in the name is odd, but there is no need to have recourse to Mr. Thorpe's strange conjecture, A. S. Chronicles, ii. p. 159. The same error is found in the Chronicle of Lupus Protospatarius, Pertz, v. 59, where "Conus Rex Alemannorum" appears under the year 1046. The Peterborough Chronicle has a Latin entry with the true name "Henricus."

4 See vol. i. pp. 272, 277.

5 The tongues most familiar to Eadward would naturally be Magyar and HighDutch.

« PreviousContinue »