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remains in either case the same. As we go on we shall see Waltham win for itself an abiding fame as the last resting-place of its great founder; at present we have to look to the foundation itself as a most remarkable witness to that founder's wisdom as well as his bounty.1 The importance of the foundation of Waltham in forming an estimate, both of Harold's personal character and of the ecclesiastical position of England at the time, has been altogether slurred over through inattention to the real character of the foundation. Every writer of English history, as far as I know, has wholly misrepresented its nature. It is constantly spoken of as an Abbey, and its inhabitants as monks.2 Waltham and its founder thus get mixed up with the vulgar crowd of monastic foundations, the creation in many cases of a real and enlightened piety, but in many cases also of mere superstition or mere fashion. The great ecclesiastical foundation of Earl Harold was something widely different. Harold did not found an Abbey; Waltham did not become a religious house till Henry the Second, liberal of another man's purse, destroyed Harold's foundation by way of doing honour to the new Martyr of Canterbury. Harold founded a Dean and secular Canons; these King Henry drove out, and put in an Abbot and Austin Canons in their place (1177-1184). Harold's foundation, in short, was an enlargement of the original small foundation of Tofig the Proud.3 Tofig had built a church for the reception of the miraculous crucifix which had been found at Lutegarsbury, and had made an endowment for two priests only. The Holy Rood of Waltham became an object of popular worship and pilgrimage, and probably the small settlement originally founded by Tofig in the middle of the forest was already growing into a considerable town. The estate of Tofig at Waltham had been lost by his son Æthelstan, and was confiscated to the Crown. I have already suggested that Æthelstan, the son of a Danish father, may not improbably have been one of the party which opposed the election of Eadward, and most of whose members suffered more or less on that account.5 But the royal disfavour which fell on Ethelstan did not extend to his son Esegar, who held the office of Staller from a very early period of Eadward's reign till the Norman invasion. But the lordship of Waltham was granted

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HAROLD'S FOUNDATION AT WALTHAM.

295 by the King to his brother-in-law Earl Harold, with whom it evidently became a favourite dwelling-place. The Earl now rebuilt the small church of Tofig on a larger and more splendid scale, no doubt calling to his aid all the resources which were supplied by the great contemporary developement of architecture in Normandy. One who so diligently noted all that was going on in contemporary Gaul would doubtless keep his eye on such matters also. When the church was built, he enriched it with precious gifts and relics of all kinds, some of which he had himself brought personally from Rome on his pilgrimage.1 Lastly, he increased the number of clergy attached to the church from two to a much larger number, a Dean and twelve Canons, besides several inferior officers. He richly endowed them with lands, and contemplated larger endowments still.

This is something very different from the foundation of a monastery. Harold finds that a church on his estate has become the seat of a popular worship; he therefore rebuilds the fabric and increases the number of its ministers. The order of his proceedings is very clearly traced out in the royal charter by which the foundation was confirmed two years later. The founder of a monastery first got together his monks, and gave them some temporary dwelling; the church and the other buildings then grew up gradually. The church of a monastery exists for the sake of the monks, but in a secular foundation the canons or other clergy may be said to exist for the sake of the church. So at Waltham, Harold first rebuilt the church; he then secured to it the elder endowment of Tofig; he had it consecrated, and enriched it with relics and other gifts; last of all, after the consecration, he set about his plan for increasing the number of clergy attached to it.2 Tofig's two priests of course were still there to discharge the duties of the place in the meanwhile. And the clergy whom Harold placed in his newly founded minster were not monks, but secular priests, each man living on his own prebend, and some of them, it would seem, married. Education also occupied a prominent place in the magnificent and enlightened scheme of the great Earl. The Chancellor or Lecturer for the word Schoolmaster conveys too humble an idea-filled a dignified place in the College, and the office was bestowed by the founder on a distinguished man from a foreign land. We have seen throughout that, stout English patriot as Harold was, he was never hindered by any narrow insular prejudice from seeking merit wherever he could find it. Harold had seen something of the world; he had visited both France and Italy; but it was not from any land of altogether foreign speech that he sought for coadjutors in his great 1 See Appendix MM. 2 See Appendix PP.

the title of "regiæ procurator aulæ," equivalent, according to Professor Stubbs, to dapifer." See his note to De Inv. c. 14.

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work. As in the case of so many appointments of Prelates, so now, in appointing an important officer in his own College, Harold, when he looked beyond our own island, looked in the first place to those lands of kindred Teutonic speech where ecclesiastical discipline was said to be most strictly administered.1 As Elfred had brought over Grimbald and John the Old-Saxon, so now Harold brought over Adelhard, a native of Lüttich who had studied at Utrecht, to be the head of the educational department of his foundation, and to be his general adviser in the whole work. He came over to England, he became a Canon and Lecturer at Waltham, and, using his genuine Teutonic liberty, he handed on his office to his son.2

The truth is, as we have already seen several indications, that Harold, so far from being an ordinary founder of a monastery, was a deliberate and enlightened patron of the secular clergy. He is described in the foundation-charter of his College as their special and active friend. The old struggle which had been going on from the days of Dunstan was going on still, and it went on long after. Harold, like the elder Eadward in his foundation at Winchester, like Æthelstan in his foundation at Milton, preferred the seculars, the more practically useful class, the class less removed from ordinary human and national feelings. In his eyes even a married priest was not a monster of vice. To make such a choice in the monastic reign of Eadward, when the King on his throne was well nigh himself a monk, was worthy of Harold's lofty and independent spirit; it was another proof of his steady and clear-sighted patriotism. In truth, of the two great foundations of this reign, Earl Harold's College at Waltham stands in distinct opposition, almost in distinct rivalry, to King Eadward's Abbey at Westminster. And it is not unlikely that Harold's preference for the secular clergy may have had some share in bringing upon him the obloquy which he undergoes at the hands of so many ecclesiastical writers. It was not only the perjurer, the usurper, but the man whose hand was closed against the monk and open to the married priest, who won the hate of Norman and monastic writers. With the coming of the Normans the monks finally triumphed. Monasticism, in one form or another, was triumphant for some ages. Harold's own foundation was perverted from his original design; his secular priests were driven out to make room for those whom the fashion of the age looked on as holier than they. At last the tide turned; men of piety and munificence learned that the monks had got enough, and from the fourteenth century onwards, the bounty of founders again took the same direction which it had taken under Æthelstan and Harold. Colleges, educational 1 See above, p. 248. diately succeeded his father, as Æthelric appears as Childmaster in 1066. 3 See Appendix PP,

2 See Appendix L. Peter however, the son of Adelhard, could not have imme

CONSECRATION OF WALTHAM MINSTER.

297

and otherwise, in the Universities and out of them, again rose alongside of those monastic institutions which had now thoroughly fallen from their first love. In short, the foundation of Waltham, instead of being simply slurred over as a monastic foundation of the ordinary kind, well deserves to be dwelt upon, both as marking an æra in our ecclesiastical history, and also as bearing the most speaking witness to the real character of its illustrious founder. The care and thoughtfulness, as well as the munificence, displayed in every detail of the institution, the zeal for the advancement of learning as well as for mere ecclesiastical splendour, the liberal patronage of even foreign merit, all unite to throw a deep interest round Earl Harold's minster, and they would of themselves be enough to win him a high place among the worthies of England. No wonder then that this noble foundation became in a peculiar manner identified with its founder; no wonder that it was to Waltham that he went for prayer and meditation in the great crisis of his life, that it was at Waltham that his body found its last resting-place, that at Waltham his memory still lived, fresh and cherished, while elsewhere calumny had fixed itself upon his glorious name. No wonder too that the local relic became a centre of national reverence; that the object of Harold's devotion became the badge and rallying-point of English național life; that the "Holy Rood"—the Holy Rood of Waltham-became the battle-cry of England, the shout which urged her sons to victory at Stamfordbridge, and which still rose to heaven, as long as an English arm had life, in that last battle where England and her King were overthrown.

At what time the foundation of Waltham was begun is not recorded, but the church was finished and consecrated in the year 1060, the ceremony being performed on the appropriate day of the Invention of the Cross (May 3). The minster was hallowed in the presence of King Eadward and the Lady Eadgyth, and of most of the chief men of the land, clerical and lay. But the chief actor in that day's rite was neither the Bishop of the diocese nor the Metropolitan of the province. As Wulfstan had been brought from York to consecrate Cnut's minster on Assandun,1 so this time also a Northern Primate came to consecrate Harold's minster at Waltham. Stigand was now again in all orthodox eyes an usurper and a schismatic.2 Either this feeling had extended itself to the mind of Harold himself, or else he found it prudent to yield to the prejudices of others. Stigand was not called upon to officiate at the hallowing of his friend's great creation. It is not likely that William, the Bishop of the diocese, was excluded on account of his Norman birth, as we find

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no traces of any such jealousy of him at other times. The occasion was doubtless looked on as one of such dignity as to call for the ministrations of a Prelate of the highest rank. The new minster of Waltham, with its pillars fresh from the mason's hand, and its altars blazing with the gorgeous gifts of its founder, was hallowed in all due form by Cynesige, Archbishop of York.

The church was thus completed and consecrated; but Harold seems to have taken two years longer fully to arrange the details of his foundation, and to settle the exact extent of the lands which were to form its endowment. At the end of that time (1062) the royal charter which has been already quoted confirmed all the gifts and arrangements of the founder.

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The Prelate who had played the most important part in the great ceremony at Waltham did not long survive that event. Shortly before the close of the year (Dec. 22, 1060) Archbishop Cynesige died at York, and was buried at Peterborough. We read that his successor was appointed on Christmas-day.2 Now the appointment would regularly be made in the Witenagemót, and the Witenagemót would, according to the custom of this reign, be holding its Christmas sitting at Gloucester. Such speed would have been impossible if the Witan had not been actually in session when the vacancy occurred. The absence of Cynesige is of course explained by his mortal illness. But his successor was on the spot, and he was no doubt on the alert to take care of his own interests. Ealdred, the Bishop of the diocese in which the Assembly was held, was raised to the metropolitan see which had been so often held together with that of Worcester. deed, Ealdred himself, who had not scrupled to hold three Bishopricks at once, for a while followed the vicious example of his predecessors and retained the two sees in plurality. His successor in the see of Worcester was not appointed till two years later. But the church of Hereford, which Ealdred had administered for the last four years, now received a pastor of its own. That Bishoprick was given to Walter, a Lotharingian by birth, and a Chaplain of the Lady Eadgyth.3 Either in this year or very early in the next died Duduc, the Saxon Bishop of Somersetshire, who had sat at Wells ever since the days of Cnut. His see was given to another Lotharingian, Gisa, a Chaplain of the King. These appointments, taken in connexion with Harold's own appointment of Adelhard in his College at Waltham, must be carefully noticed. The influence of Harold, and with it the close

1 Chronn. Wig. and Petrib. 1060; Flor. Wig. 1060; Hugo Candidus (Sparke, 45). This last writer is loud in Cynesige's praise, and records his gifts to Peterborough, which the Lady Eadgyth took away.

2 Fl. Wig. 1060. See Appendix I.
3 See Appendix L.

In 1060, according to the Worcester Chronicle and Florence; in 1061, according to the Peterborough Chronicle.

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