unwearied Leo held another synod at Vercelli. Here the theological controversy was again raised, and Lanfranc again shone forth as the irresistible smiter of heresy. Berengar was finally condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to the elder teaching of John Scotus, and his protests that those who rejected John Scotus rejected Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the Fathers of the Church.1 These disputes, renowned in the Church at large, are wholly passed over by our insular Chroniclers. To them the famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have been memorable only as showing the Roman Court in what was apparently a new relation towards the prelacy of England. Before the assembled Fathers came the newly appointed Bishop of Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would seem, for consecration or confirmation. His unfitness for his post was manifest; he was found incapable of going through the ordinary service of the Church. The Synod was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the staff which, according to the ceremonial of those times, he had already received from the King. But the influence which was already allpowerful at Rome saved him. He kept his Bishoprick; but he kept it only at the cost of a lavish expenditure of treasure, of which we may be sure that none found its way into the private coffers of Leo.2 It was in this same year that Macbeth made that mysterious bestowal of alms or bribes at Rome from which some have inferred a personal pilgrimage on the part of the Scottish usurper. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that one who seems to us hardly more real than the creations of Grecian tragedy may have personally appeared at Rome or at Vercelli, that he may have shown his pious indignation at the heresies of the Canon of Tours, or have felt his soul moved within him at the incapacity of the Bishop of Dorchester. A personal meeting between Leo, Lanfranc, Ealdred, and Macbeth would form no unimpressive scene in the hands of those who may venture on liberties with the men of far-gone times which to the historian are forbidden. 3 Ealdred and Hermann thus came back from Rome with the ROBERT ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 77 wished-for dispensation for the King, and Ulf came back from Vercelli to hold the great see of Mid-England, and to rule it in his unbishoplike fashion for a little time. But before long a still greater ecclesiastical preferment became vacant. Eadsige, who had so lately resumed his archiepiscopal functions, died before the end of the year.1 The day of complete triumph for the Norman monks and chaplains who surrounded Eadward now seemed to have come. A Frenchman might now sit on the throne of Augustine. Patriotic Englishmen were of course in equal measure alarmed, and among them none more so than those who were most immediately concerned, the Chapter of the metropolitan church. The monks of Christ Church met, and made what is called a canonical election. In the eye of English law such a process was a mere petition to the King and his Witan for the appointment of the man of their choice. That choice fell on a member of their own body, their selection of whom showed that seclusion from the world had not made them incapable of a happy union of the dove and the serpent. There was in their house a monk, Elfric by name, who had been brought up in the monastery from his childhood, and who enjoyed the love of the whole society. Notwithstanding his monastic education, he was held to be specially skilled in the affairs of the world. And he had a further merit as likely as any of the others to weigh either with an English Chapter or with an English Witenagemót; he was a near kinsman of Earl Godwine.3 The monks petitioned the Earl, the natural patron of a corporation within his government, to use his influence to obtain the King's confirmation of their choice. Godwine was doubtless nothing loth to avail himself of so honourable an opportunity to promote an Englishman and a kinsman. But his influence was crumbling away. Four years before he had been able to obtain the confirmation of Siward as Eadsige's coadjutor; he was now unable to obtain the confirmation of Ælfric, or of any other man of native birth, as Eadsige's successor. The saintly King paid no regard to the canonical election of the Convent, and in the Midlent Witenagemót of the next year (1051), the Archbishoprick of Canterbury was bestowed on the King's French favourite, Robert, Bishop of London. The national party however prevailed so far as to secure an English successor to the see which Robert vacated. Spearhafoc, Abbot of Abingdon, a man famous for his skill in the goldsmith's craft,5 was named to the see of London by the King's writ under his seal.1 The Abbacy of Abingdon was given to a man whose description raises our curiosity; he was one Rudolf, described as a kinsman of King Eadward and as a Bishop in Norway.2 For a native Northman to have been a kinsman of the son of Æthelred and Emma is hardly possible, unless the common ancestor was to be looked for so far back as the days before the settlement of Rolf. A Norman is hardly likely to have desired or obtained preferment in so unpromising a land; but it is highly probable that Cnut, who appointed several Englishmen to Bishopricks in Denmark, may have made use of a see in Norway either to reward or to remove some remote and unrecorded member of the English royal family. It is therefore not unlikely that Rudolf may have been an Englishman.3 He was an aged man and weary of his office. The hand of Harold Hardrada pressed heavily on the Church. Pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre as he was, he is charged with destroying ecclesiastical buildings, and even with sending Christian men to martyrdom.1 Rudolf sought and found a place of more quiet, if of somewhat less honour, in the dominions of his kinsman. The monks of Abingdon received him, not very willingly, it would seem, but they were won over by the prospect that the old man would not live very long, and by the King's promise that at the next vacancy free election should be allowed. Presently (July 27, 1051) the new Archbishop Robert came back from Rome with his pallium; he was enthroned in the metropolitan church, and soon hastened to the royal presence. Spearhafoc, the Bishop-elect of London, came with the royal writ, and demanded consecration from his Metropolitan. Robert refused, saying that the Pope had forbidden him to consecrate Spearhafoc.” like the rare names of Carl and Lothar (Hlohære). See vol. i. P. 206. Rege civitati Lundonensi [civitatis Lundonensis?] eodem prædictæ pactionis anno, in episcopatum promotus, dum auri gemmarumque electarum pro coronâ imperiali cudendâ, Regis ejusdem assignatione receptam haberet copiam." Was Saint Eadward's favour purchased by the materials of an earthly crown? 1 Chron. Petrib. 1048. Mid þæs cinges gewrite and insegle." See above. p. 43. 2 Rudolf's kindred to the King is as serted more positively in the local Chronicle just quoted than in the local History (463); "İnde Rodulfum quemdam longævum abbatis loco ponendum Rex transmisit, qui episcopatum apud Norweiam gentem diu moderans, et tandem ab hujusmodi fasce privatum se agere malens, ad Regem ipsum suum, ut ferebatur, cognatum venit; a quo et susceptus est." 3 Rudolf, in any of its forms, is not an usual English name, but it might occur, 4 Adam Brem. iii. 16. "Rex Haraldus crudelitate suâ omnes tyrannorum excessit furores. Multæ ecclesiæ per illum virum dirutæ, multi Christiani ab illo per supplicia sunt necati... Itaque multis imperans nationibus, propter avaritiam et crudelitatem suam omnibus erat invisus." He goes on to give a full account of Harold's dealings with the Archbishop of Trondhjem. 5 Hist. Mon. Ab. 463. See Appendix I. Rudolf survived only two years. 6 Chron. Petrib. 1048. pæs sylfan Lentenes he for to Rome æfter his pallium Da com se arcebiscop fram Rome ane dæge ær Scs Petrus mæsse æfene, and gesæt his arcebiscopstol at Xpes cyrcean on Scs Petrus mæssedæg, and sona pœs to pam cyng gewande." 66 7 The Peterborough Chronicle (1048) is here again very graphic; "Da com Sparha SPEARHAFOC REFUSED CONSECRATION. 79 Things had come to such a pass that an Englishman, appointed to an English office by the King and his Witan, was to be kept out of its full possession by one foreigner acting at the alleged bidding of another. There were times when the Roman See showed itself a real refuge for the oppressed, and, as far as good intentions went, so it doubtless was in the days of good Pope Leo. But Englishmen now needed protection against no man except against the foreign favourites of their own King, and it was on behalf of those foreign favourites, and against Englishmen, that these stretches of Papal authority were now made. The unworthy Ulf was allowed, by the power of bribes, to retain his see-for he was a stranger. Spearhafoc, on what ground we know not-except so far as his English birth was doubtless a crime in the eyes of Robert-was refused the rite which alone could put him into full possession of his office. A second demand was again made by the Bishop-elect, and consecration was again refused by the Norman Archbishop.1 Spearhafoc, rejected, unconsecrated, nevertheless went to Saint Paul's, and took possession of the see which he held by the King's full and regular grant. No doubt he did not pretend to discharge any purely episcopal functions, but he kept possession of the see and its revenues, and probably exercised at least its temporal authority. This he did, the Chronicler significantly adds, all that summer and autumn.3 Before the year was out, the crisis had come, and had brought with it the momentary triumph of the strangers. One act more must be recorded before we come to the end of this portion of Eadward's reign. In a meeting of the Witan, seemingly that in which Robert, Spearhafoc, and Rudolf received their several appointments, the remaining five ships of the standing or mercenary naval force were paid off. The war-contribution or Heregyld was therefore no longer exacted. This tax had now been paid for thirtyeight years, ever since Thurkill and his fleet entered the service of foc abbod to him mid þæs cynges gewrite and insegle (see Appendix I); to pan pet he hine hadian sceolde to biscop into Lundene. pa widowed se arcebiscop, and cwæ pet se papa hit him forboden hæfde." 1 Chron. Petrib. The pithy narrative of this writer is cut much shorter by the Worcester Chronicler (1051), who is followed by Florence; "Spearhafoc... feng to pan biscoprice on Lundene, and hit was eft of him genumen ær he gehadod wäre.' Florence turns this into, " Antequam esset consecratus, a Rege Eadwardo est ejectus." Now the Chronicles do not at all imply that the refusal of Robert was in any way Ethelred.1 This impost had all along been felt to be a great burthen; we are told that it was paid before all other taxes, the other taxes themselves, it would seem, being looked upon as heavy.2 The glimpse which is thus given us of the financial system of the time is just enough to make us wish for fuller knowledge. We must remember that in a rude state of society any kind of taxation is apt to be looked on as a grievance. It requires a very considerable advance in political knowledge for a nation to feel that the power of the purse is the surest safeguard of freedom. But there must have been something specially hateful about this tax to account for the way in which it is spoken of by the contemporary Chroniclers, and for the hold which, as the legends show,3 it kept on the popular imagination. The holy King, we are told, in company with Earl Leofric, one day entered the treasury in which the money raised by the tax was collected; he there saw the Devil sitting and playing with the coin; warned by the sight, he at once remitted the tax. In this story the tax is called Danegeld, and as many of the sailors in the English service were likely to be Danes, the Heregyld seems to have been confounded with the Danegeld, and to have been popularly called by that name. The Danegeld was in strictness a payment made to buy off the ravages of Danish invaders, a practice of which we have seen instances enough and to spare in the days of Ethelred. But the tax now taken off was simply a war-tax for the maintenance of a fleet, a fleet whose crews may have been to a great extent Danes, but Danes who were not the enemies of England, but engaged in her service. The two ideas however easily ran into one another; it might be difficult to say under which head we ought to place some of the payments made both under Cnut and under Harthacnut. But the Heregyld, in its more innocent shape, would, according to modern ideas, be an impost absolutely necessary for the defence of the country. If the tax were taken off, no naval force would be retained, except the contingents of the shires, which could not in any case be very readily forthcoming. But, besides the general dislike to taxation of any kind, this particular tax was a painful and hateful badge of national disgrace. It was a memory of times 1 Chron. Wig. 1052. "On þan ylcan geare alêde Eadward cyng þæt heregyld þæt pelred cyng ær astealde; þæt was on þam nigon and þrittigoðan geare þæs þe he hit ongunnon hæfde." Flor. Wig. 1051. "Rex Eadwardus absolvit Anglos a gravi vectigali tricesimo octavo anno ex quo pater suus Rex Egelredus primitus id Danicis solidariis solvi mandârat." See vol. i. p. 239. The Heregyld is a tax for the maintenance of the here or standing army as distinguished from the fyrd or militia. 2 Chron. Wig. 1052. "pæt gyld gedrehte ealle Engla þeode on swa langum fyrste swa hit bufan her awriten is; dat was æfre ætforan oðrum gyldum þe man myslice geald, and men mid menigfealdlice drehte." 3 See Bromton, 942; Estoire de S..Ædward, 919 et seqq. Leofric is also Eadward's partner in another vision. Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 389; Bromton, 949. 4 See Appendix Q. |