THE LOTHARINGIAN PRELATES.

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Englishmen had hitherto been strangers. Still something was gained, when, on the death of Brihtwold, a Lotharingian, instead of a French, successor was procured, in the person of Hermann, one of the King's Chaplains.1 A slight counterpoise was thus gained to the influence of the Norman Bishop of London. But at the next great ecclesiastical vacancy the patriotic party were more successful. In the course of the next year (1046) England lost one of her truest worthies; the great Earl lost one who had been his right hand man in so many crises of his life, in so many labours for the welfare of his country. Lyfing, the patriot Bishop of Worcester, died in March in the following year. Originally a monk of Winchester, he was first raised to the Abbacy of Tavistock. While still holding that office, he had been the companion of Cnut in his Roman pilgrimage, and had been the bearer of the great King's famous letter to his English subjects.2 The consummate prudence which he had displayed in that and in other commissions had procured his appointment to the Bishoprick of Crediton or Devonshire. With that see the Bishoprick of Cornwall had been finally united during his episcopate. With that double see he had held, according to a vicious use not uncommon at the time, the Bishoprick of Worcester in plurality. In this high position he had steadily adhered to the cause of the great Earl through all the storms of the days of Harold and Harthacnut, and he had had a share second only to that of Godwine himself in the work of placing Eadward upon the throne. Either his plurality of benefices had given, as it reasonably might, offence to strict assertors of ecclesiastical rule," or, what is at least as likely, the patriotic career of Lyfing had made him, like Godwine himself, a mark for Norman slander alike in life and death. His end, we are told, was accompanied by strange portents, which were however quite as capable of a favourable as of an unfavourable interpretation. But his memory was loved and cherished in the places where he was best known. Long after the Norman Conquest,

1 See Appendix I. and L.

2 Fl. Wig. 1031; Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 b.

3 "Vir prudentissimus Livingus," says Florence (1031); "Omnibus quæ injuncta fuerant, sapienter et mirifice ante adventum Regis consummatis," says William.

4 Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. 145 b. Cf. Gest. Regg. iii. 300.

5 See vol. i. p. 501. There is a curious notice of Lyfing's plurality of Bishopricks in a deed in Cod. Dipl. vi. 195. It is a conveyance of lands to Sherborne Minster made in a Scirgemót of Devonshire under the presidency of Earl Godwine. Lyfing is one of the witnesses, and he is described

the name of the Prelate whose body rested in their minster still lived in the hearts and on the mouths of the monks of Tavistock.1 And the simple entry of a Chronicler who had doubtless heard him with his own ears bears witness to 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."

3

The great mass of preferment held by Lyfing did not pass undivided to a single successor. The Bishopricks of Devonshire and Cornwall remained united, as they have 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. His name however shews 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 (1050), he followed the example of Ealdhun of Durham in removing his episcopal see to a new site. He did not however, like 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, 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 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 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

6

LEOFRIC BISHOP Of Exeter.

55

episcopal chair by the saintly King and his virgin wife.1 Hitherto the church had been occupied by nuns. They were now removed, and the Chapter of the Bishop was formed of secular Canons. 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.2 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 ecclesiastical superior. Still they were not monks; they were even strictly forbidden to wear the monastic garb, 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.

5

One of the sees vacated by the death of Lyfing thus fell to the lot of a zealous ecclesiastical reformer, but a man who plays no important

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. Richer (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.

part in the general history of the time. The fate of Lyfing's other Bishoprick was widely different. It was bestowed on a Prelate who, without ever displaying any very great qualities, played a prominent, 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 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,1 had risen from its ashes, and it now proved a nursery of 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, as one who could reconcile the bitterest enemies. 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.

3

We shall find the new Bishop of Worcester appearing a few years later in arms against the Welsh, to whose incursions the southern part of his diocese lay open. But as yet it was only his powers of persuasion and peace-making which he was called upon to exercise in that quarter. It 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 over-lord.

1 See vol. i. p. 199.

2 The name of Ealdred will be found 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."

4 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 as described in the last note, and with the fact that he played a prominent part in a later recon