THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
1136–1149.
The departure of the Empress was followed by a time of comparative
quiet; but it was the quiet of exhaustion, not of rest. In the twelve
years which had passed away since King Henry’s death all his work
seemed to have been utterly undone. Every vestige of law and authority,
order and peace, had been swept away by the torrent of destruction
which in those twelve years had overwhelmed the whole country. When
at last the waves began to subside, one ark of refuge was found to
have escaped the general desolation; one vessel alone had been able to
outride the storm. The state was a wreck; the Church remained.
The pilot of the sacred bark, during the first seven years of Stephen’s
reign, had been the king’s brother Henry, bishop of Winchester. The
youngest child of Stephen-Henry and Adela of Blois, devoted by his
mother to the religious life, had been brought up in the famous abbey
of Cluny; thence, in 1126, he was summoned by his uncle the king of
England to become abbot of one of the most ancient and illustrious
monasteries in Britain, that of Glastonbury; and three years later the
young abbot--he cannot have been more than twenty-eight--was raised to
the bishopric of Winchester.[1007] His rapid advancement was no doubt
owing to the personal favour of his uncle; but none the less did it
place in the important see of Winchester a prelate as different in
temper as in origin from the crowd of low-born secular clerks who then
filled the ranks of the English episcopate. Steeped in ecclesiastical
and monastic traditions from his very cradle, Henry was before all
things a churchman and a monk. It was to him and to men like him that
the religious revival which sprang up in his uncle’s later years
naturally looked for the guidance which it could not find either in the
secular bishops or in the shy, irresolute primate; and the consequences
appeared as soon as the king was dead, when the helm of the state and
that of the Church--the one dropped by Roger of Salisbury, the other
never firmly grasped by William of Canterbury--were both at once taken
by the young bishop of Winchester. His personal influence sufficed to
ensure his brother’s election to the throne; the legatine commission
sent to him in 1139, overriding the claims of the new primate, made him
the acknowledged leader of the English Church, and, coinciding as it
did with the complete break-down of all secular government at Bishop
Roger’s fall, practically vested in him and in the clerical synods
which he convened the sole remnant of deliberative and legislative
authority throughout the kingdom. Clergy and people followed him like
a flock of sheep; yet he was never really trusted by either of the two
political parties, because he never really belonged to either. His own
political ideal was independent of all party considerations. It was the
ideal of the ecclesiastical statesman in the strictest sense: to insure
the well-being of the state by securing the rights and privileges and
enforcing the discipline of the Church. In his eyes the whole machinery
of secular government, including the sovereign, existed solely for that
one end, and he carried out his theory to its logical result in the
synods which deposed Stephen and Matilda each in turn, as each in turn
broke the compact with the Church which had raised them to the throne.
Of the use to be made in later days of the precedent thus created he
and his brother-clergy never dreamed; they are, however, entitled to
the credit of having been the only branch of the body-politic which
made an organized effort to rescue England from the chaos into which
she had fallen. The failure of their efforts hitherto was due partly
to the overwhelming force of circumstances, partly to the character
of Henry himself. His temper was like that of the uncle whose name he
bore--the calm, imperturbable Norman temper which neither interest
nor passion could throw off its balance or off its guard; and with
the Norman coolness he had also the Norman tenacity, fearlessness and
strength of will. But although the main elements of his nature were
thus derived from his mother’s ancestors, he had not altogether escaped
the doom of his father’s house. He was free from the worst defect of
his race, their fatal unsteadiness of purpose; but he had his full
share of their rashness, their self-will, and their peculiar mental
short-sightedness. His policy really had a definite and a noble end,
but his endeavours to compass that end were little more than a series
of bold experiments. Moreover, his conception of the end itself was
out of harmony with the requirements of the time. Churchman as he was
to the core, his churchmanship was almost as unlike that of the rising
generation, trained up under the influence of the new religious orders,
as the downright worldliness of the Salisbury school with which some
of them were, though most unjustly, half inclined to confound him. He
belonged to a type of ecclesiastical statesmen, or rather political
churchmen, who did not shrink from arraying the Church militant in the
spoils of earthly triumph, and would fain elevate her above the world
in outward pomp and majesty no less than in inward purity and holiness.
This was the school of which Cluny had been, ever since the days of
Gregory VII., the citadel and stronghold; and Henry was thus attached
to it by all the associations of his youth as well as by his own
natural disposition. But in the second quarter of the twelfth century
this Cluniac school was losing its hold upon the finer and loftier
spirits of the time, and the influence of Cluny was beginning to pale
before the purer radiance diffused from S. Bernard’s “bright valley,”
Clairvaux.
[1007] Joh. Glaston. (Hearne), pp. 165, 166.
Henry’s legatine commission, too, which was a chief source of his
strength, was really a source of moral and spiritual weakness to the
English Church; for it set him over the head of the man who ought to
have been her representative and leader, and placed in the hands of a
mere diocesan bishop all, and more than all, the power and authority
which belonged of right to the primate of all Britain.[1008] Until
very recent times the English Church had been, by an unwritten but
perfectly well-established privilege of immemorial antiquity, exempt
from all legatine control; papal envoys were admitted only for special
purposes, and exercised no authority within the province of the
“transmarine Pope”--the primate of all Britain. In technical language,
the archbishop of Canterbury, as successor of S. Augustine, was by
virtue of his office _legatus natus_ of the Holy See, and therefore
not subject to the jurisdiction of a _legatus a latere_. During the
reign of Henry I. three attempts had been made to break through this
venerable tradition; on the third occasion, in 1125, the outrageous
behaviour of the legate John of Crema roused Archbishop William to go
and protest at Rome, whence he returned clothed in his own person with
the functions of _legatus a latere_.[1009] This commission, granted by
Honorius II., was renewed by Innocent,[1010] and William thus retained
it until his death. When that event occurred Henry of Winchester must
have felt himself, and must have been generally felt throughout the
country, to be almost naturally marked out for William’s successor.
It seems, indeed, that he was actually elected to the vacant primacy.
There was however a difficulty which proved to be insuperable. The
translation of a bishop from one see to another could only be effected
by a special license from the Pope; and in this case the license was
apparently refused.[1011] Driven thus to seek elsewhere for a primate,
Stephen, or it may be Stephen’s wiser queen, sought him in the home
of Lanfranc and Anselm, and brought over a third abbot of Bec to walk
in the steps and sit on the throne of his sainted predecessors at
Canterbury.[1012] Theobald came of a good Norman family, and was well
reported of for learning, virtue and piety;[1013] further than that,
the world as yet knew nothing of him; it was therefore not unnatural,
though it was distinctly unfortunate, that when Pope Innocent II.
determined to appoint a resident legate in England he appointed Henry
instead of Theobald.
[1008] See on this Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._,
vol. ii. p. 53); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384; and
Will. Newb. l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43).
[1009] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 84; Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 381, 382.
[1010] In 1132, it seems. See Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c.
7 (Hardy, p. 699).
[1011] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 908.
[1012] Queen Matilda’s share in the appointment seems distinctly
implied in _Vita Theobaldi_ (Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i.), p.
337; Chron. Becc. a. 1137 (_ib._ p. 207).
[1013] See _Vita Theobaldi_ (as above), pp. 337–339; Chron.
Becc. (_ibid._), p. 207.
For several years the archbishop bore his supersession quietly. His
political sympathies appear to have always inclined to the side of the
Empress, but his conduct shewed no trace of party spirit; no personal
jealousy on his part ever thwarted Henry’s attempts at pacification.
He doubtless felt that he could afford to wait; for his metropolitical
rights, though kept in abeyance for a time, were inalienable and
independent of all outward accidents, while the legatine authority
was drawn solely from the commission of an individual Pope, and a
change either of persons or of policy at Rome might at any moment
reduce Henry of Winchester to the rank of a mere suffragan bishop.
Henry himself was so conscious of this danger that he began to urge
upon his patron Innocent a project for raising the see of Winchester
to metropolitical rank and furnishing it with two (or, according
to another account, seven) suffragan sees, to be carved out of the
southern part of the province of Canterbury. This wild scheme was so
far endorsed by Innocent that he actually sent Henry a pall, the emblem
of archiepiscopal dignity, in 1142; so, at least, the story ran.[1014]
As yet, however, the matter rested wholly between legate and Pope; if
the archbishop knew anything of their plots against him, he was wise
enough to let them plot undisturbed. Instead of trying to fish in the
troubled waters of the present, he was looking to the open sea of the
future and meditating how best to prepare himself, his Church and his
adopted country for the voyage which lay before them. While the legate
was making and unmaking sovereigns and plotting a revolution in the
Anglican hierarchy, the primate was quietly gathering into his own
household the choicest spirits of the time, drawing around him a group
of earnest, deep-thinking students, of highly-cultured, large-minded,
dispassionate politicians; in a word, making his palace the seminary
and the training-college, the refuge and the home, of a new generation
of English scholars and English statesmen.
[1014] Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
53); R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 255.
Foremost among them stood Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket,
ex-port-reeve of London. Troubles had fallen heavy upon Gilbert and his
wife since the days when from their comfortable home in Cheapside their
boy rode forth to his school at Merton or to his hawking excursions
with Richer de l’Aigle. A series of disastrous fires had brought them
down from affluence almost to poverty[1015] and compelled them to
take their son away from school at an earlier age than the mother,
at least, would have desired. She watched over his studies with the
deepest interest and care,[1016] and it was probably her influence
and good management which, after an interval of idleness at home,
sent him off again to study for a short time in Paris.[1017] The boy
learned quickly and easily, as he did everything to which he chose to
put his hand and give his mind; but his heart was set upon riding and
hawking and the sports and occupations of active life, far more than
upon the book-learning to which he devoted himself chiefly for the
sake of pleasing his mother; and when she died, in his twenty-second
year,[1018] his studies came to an end. Her death broke up the home;
Gilbert, worn out with age and grief, was powerless to guide or help
his son; and Thomas soon found it impossible to make their scanty
means sufficient to maintain them both.[1019] Irksome as the work must
have been to such a temper as his, he took a situation as clerk in
the counting-house of a kinsman, Osbern Huitdeniers, or “Eightpenny”
as we might perhaps call him now.[1020] Osbern was a wealthy man,
enjoying great consideration both in the city and at court;[1021]
at this time--just after the outbreak of the civil war--he seems to
have been one of the sheriffs of London, for we are told that Thomas
himself held a subordinate civic post as clerk and accountant to those
functionaries.[1022] For two or three years, the years of the personal
struggle between Stephen and Matilda, Thomas endured the drudgery of
the office as best he might,[1023] till at length a more congenial
position was offered him, first in the household of his old friend
Richer de l’Aigle[1024] and then in that of Archbishop Theobald. When
the war-storm had partly subsided and the primate was beginning to
organize his plans, some of his clerks who had been guests at the
little house in Cheapside in its prosperous days remembered the bright
boy whom they had often noticed there, and determined to enlist him
in their own ranks. One of them, known to us only by his nickname of
“Baille-hache” or the “Hatchet,” undertook to persuade the young man
himself;[1025] two others, Baldwin the archdeacon and Eustace his
brother, commended him and his father to the primate. It chanced that
Gilbert, though he had been domiciled at Rouen before his emigration
to England, was a native of Thierceville, close to the Bec-Herlouin. A
chat with Thomas’s father over old times and old names around Bec made
its former abbot all the more disposed to welcome Thomas himself, when
he rode out to Harrow and let his friend Baille-hache present him to
the archbishop.[1026] Before many months had passed he was admitted
to the innermost circle of Theobald’s confidential counsellors. That
circle consisted of three young men--John of Canterbury, Roger of
Pont-l’Evêque and Thomas of London. Without consulting one or other of
these three the archbishop rarely did anything;[1027] and in matters of
special difficulty or delicacy he relied mainly upon Thomas.[1028]
[1015] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 8, 9; E. Grim (Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 359; Will. Cant. (_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3.
[1016] Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 8.
[1017] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 14. The _Thomas
Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 21–25, has a curious and pretty
legend of his stay in Paris.
[1018] Will. Cant. and Anon. I. as above. This brings Rohesia’s
death to a date between December 21, 1138, and December 21,
1139; for although Mr. Magnusson (Preface to _Thomas Saga_,
vol. ii. pp. c, ci) declares that Thomas was born “not as
stated [T.,” _i.e._ _Thomas Saga_, “i. 12] in 1117, but in
1118,” his own chronological argument infallibly leads to just
the opposite conclusion.
[1019] E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. ii.), p. 359.
[1020] “Tandem civi vice tabellionis adhæsit,” Will. Cant.
(_ib._ vol. i.), p. 3. “Ad quendam Lundrensem, cognatum
suum,” Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 8. “Osbernus Octo-nummi
cognomine,” E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 361. “Osbern
Witdeniers,” Garnier (Hippeau), p. 9. In the Pipe Roll 31
Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 146, among the London accounts, one of
the sureties for the debts of Hugh Cordele is “Osbertus viii
denarii”--clearly the same man.
[1021] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.
[1022] “Reversus” [sc. Thomas a Parisiis], “receptus est in
partem sollicitudinis reipublicæ Londoniensis, et vicecomitum
clericus et rationalis effectus.” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 14.
[1023] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.
[1024] _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 31. It is not very
clear whether Thomas’s stay with Richer should come after or
before his stay with Osbern, which the Saga omits altogether.
[1025] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 10; E. Grim (Robertson, _Becket_,
vol. ii.), p. 361; Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 9. None of
them name the man; but he is clearly the one who ultimately
introduced Thomas to the primate; and we know his nickname from
the sneer of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque; Garnier (as above); E.
Grim (as above), p. 362; Anon. I. (as above), p. 10.
[1026] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.),
p. 15. “Thierrici-villa” is interpreted by M. Hippeau
(Garnier, _Vie de S. Thomas_, introd. p. xxiv) “Probablement
Thierceville, canton de Montfort, département de l’Eure.”
[1027] Will. Cant. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. i.), p. 4.
[1028] There is a curious and amusing account of their mutual
relations in _Thomas Saga_ (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 37.
He had secured his services at the right moment; for the long impending
crisis between himself and the legate was now fast drawing near. In
purely secular politics Theobald had hitherto been content to follow
Henry’s lead; on a question of ecclesiastical politics they had now
come to a distinct severance. Archbishop Thurstan of York had died
in February 1140;[1029] in January 1141 William, treasurer of the
see, was appointed in his stead, and received the investiture of the
temporalities from Stephen in the camp before Lincoln.[1030] The
appointment had somewhat the look of a court job; for William was a
nephew of the king and the legate;[1031] he had been brought up in
wealth, luxury and idleness, and although of amiable and blameless
character, was obviously not the man for such a post as the northern
primacy. A minority of the York chapter therefore, supported by many
of the most respected clergy of the province, chief among whom was
Abbot Richard of Fountains, protested against the election as having
been procured by undue influence, in the form of bribery on William’s
own part and intimidation on that of William of Aumale, earl of York,
acting on behalf of the king and the legate; and this view was shared
by the southern primate. The legate, apparently shrinking from the
responsibility of consecrating his nephew by his own sole authority
(for Theobald absolutely refused to assist him), let the matter rest
during the remainder of that troubled year and then sent the elect of
York to plead his own cause at Rome. In Lent 1143 the Pope gave his
decision: “If Dean William of York can swear that the chapter did not
receive through the earl of Aumale a command from the king to elect his
nephew: and if the archbishop-elect himself can swear that he did not
seek his election by bribery:--then let him be consecrated.” A council
met at Winchester in September to receive the two oaths and witness
the consecration. The dean of York, however, was unable to attend;
he had been elected to the bishopric of Durham, and was absorbed in
struggling for the possession of his see with an intruder named William
Cumin, who had been placed there by the king of Scots. The partizans
of the archbishop-elect, foreseeing some obstacle of this kind, had
procured the addition to the Pope’s decree of a saving clause whereby
they were permitted to substitute “some other approved person” for the
dean: such, at least, was their account of the matter. Ralf, bishop of
Orkney, and two abbots therefore took the required oath in the place of
William of Durham, and William of York was consecrated by his uncle the
legate, three days before Michaelmas 1143.[1032] Theobald still refused
his assent to the whole proceeding.[1033]
[1029] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 130.
[1030] _Ib._ pp. 133, 134.
[1031] Apparently a son of their sister Emma by her marriage
with a certain Count Herbert. See Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149
and note _v_.
[1032] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 139, 142–146. See also Thos.
Stubbs (Twysden, _X. Scriptt._), col. 1721, and Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 123.
[1033] Gerv. Cant. as above.
Henry was triumphant; but it was his last triumph. On that very day a
new Pope, Celestine II., was chosen in place of Innocent, who had died
two days before. The legatine commission expired with the Pope who
had granted it; the bishop of Winchester became again a mere suffragan
of Canterbury, and Theobald suddenly found himself primate in fact as
well as in name. Everything now depended on the dispositions of the new
Pope. Accordingly, early in November both Theobald and Henry set out
for Rome.[1034] The latter soon learned that his journey was useless;
Celestine was “a favourer of the Angevins”;[1035] and when Theobald
and his confidant Thomas arrived at Rome they found no difficulty
in persuading the Pope to transfer the legatine commission from the
bishop of Winchester to the primate.[1036] Henry consoled himself by
turning aside to Cluny and spending a quiet winter in the home of his
boyhood. Next spring came another change; Celestine died on March 9,
1144, and was succeeded by Lucius II. To Lucius Henry went, and in his
eyes he found at least so much favour that he was acquitted of sundry
charges brought against him by emissaries from Anjou. But the legation
was apparently left altogether in abeyance; if it was not renewed to
Theobald--a point which is not quite clear--it was at any rate not
restored to Henry.[1037]
[1034] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43). Cf.
Ann. Waverl. a. 1143 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 229).
[1035] “Alumpnus Andegavensium.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 146.
[1036] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.
[1037] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 146, 147.
The tide which had borne both Henry and Stephen to their triumph was in
truth now rising far above their heads. The religious movement of which
Henry had once seemed destined to become a leader had gone sweeping on
till it left him far behind. It was the one element of national life
whose growth, instead of being checked, seems to have been actually
fostered by the anarchy. The only bright pages in the story of those
“nineteen winters” are the pages in the _Monasticon Anglicanum_ which
tell of the progress and the work of the new religious orders, and shew
us how, while knights and barons, king and Empress, were turning the
fairest regions of England into a wilderness, Templars and Hospitaliers
were setting up their priories, Austin canons were directing schools
and serving hospitals, and the sons of S. Bernard were making the very
desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The vigour of the movement
shewed itself in the diversity of forms which it assumed. Most of them
were offshoots of the Order of S. Augustine. The Augustinian schools
were the best in England; the “Black Canons” excelled as teachers;
they excelled yet more as nurses and guardians of the poor. One of the
most attractive features of the time is the great number of hospices,
hospitals, or almshouses as we should call them now, established for
the reception and maintenance of the aged, the needy and the infirm.
Such were the two famous houses of S. Giles, Cripplegate, and S.
Bartholomew, Smithfield; such was the Hospital of S. Katharine near
the Tower, founded in 1148 by Stephen’s queen Matilda, and served by
the canons of Holy Trinity at Aldgate, to whom the younger “good Queen
Maude” was almost as devoted a friend as her aunt and namesake had
been. Such, too, was another foundation whose white church, nestling
amid a clump of trees in the meadows through which the little blue
Itchen goes winding down to the sea, is the only unmutilated remnant
that Winchester still retains of the handiwork of her legate-bishop
Henry. There, before he built his own fortified house, Henry founded
for thirteen poor old men the Hospital of the Holy Cross; and there,
while the dwelling which he made so strong for himself has perished,
the “Almshouse of noble Poverty” still stands--the hospital indeed
rebuilt by a later bishop to whom it owes its poetical name, but the
church unaltered since its founder’s days--a lasting memorial of that
better, spiritual side of his character which the world least saw and
least believed in. Another class of hospitals was destined for the
reception of poor travellers, especially pilgrims. Such had been, in
far-off Palestine, the original purpose of two societies of pious
laymen which had now made their way back into Europe and even into
England in the shape of two great military orders, the Hospitaliers
or Knights of S. John and the Templars. They, too, lived by the rule
of S. Austin. Another offshoot of the Augustinian order consisted of
the White Canons or Premonstratensians (so called from their first
establishment at Prémontré in the diocese of Laon), for whom, in
the midst of the civil war, Peter de Gousla endowed a priory at
Newhouse in Lincolnshire, while his wife founded a house at Brodholm
in Nottinghamshire for sisters of the same order.[1038] “What shall
we think,” exclaims an inmate of one of the great Augustinian houses
of Yorkshire, William of Newburgh,--“what shall we think of all these
religious places which in King Stephen’s time began more abundantly
to arise and to flourish, but that they are God’s castles, wherein
the servants of the true Anointed King do keep watch, and His young
soldiers are exercised in warfare against spiritual evil? For indeed
at that time, when the royal authority had lost all vigour, the mighty
men of the realm, and whosoever was able, were all building castles
either for their own protection or for their neighbours’ hurt; and thus
while through King Stephen’s weakness, or rather through the malice of
the Devil, who is ever a nourisher of strife, evils were swarming and
abundant, there did yet more abound and more gloriously shine forth the
wise and salutary providence of the Almighty King, Who at that very
time did the more mightily confound the king of pride by raising up for
Himself such fortresses as beseemed the King of Peace. For in the short
while that Stephen reigned, or rather bore the title of king, there
arose in England many more dwellings of the servants and handmaids
of God than had arisen there in the course of the whole previous
century.”[1039]
[1038] The Augustinian houses are in Dugdale’s _Monast. Angl._,
vol. vi. pt. 1; the hospitals, the military orders and the
Premonstratensians in vol. vi. pt. 2.
[1039] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 15 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 53).
It is significant that this enthusiastic outburst of the
historian-canon of Newburgh is called forth by the contemplation not of
his own order, but of three great Cistercian houses, Byland, Rievaux
and Fountains. Buried in their lonely wildernesses, the Cistercians
seem at first glance to have been intent only on saving their own
souls, taking no part in the regeneration of society at large. But the
truth is far otherwise. While the other orders were--if we may venture
to take up the suggestive figure employed by William of Newburgh--the
working, fighting rank and file of the spiritual army, the White Monks
were at once its sentinels, its guides and its commanding officers;
they kept watch and ward over its organization and its safety, they
pointed the way wherein it should go, they directed its energies and
inspired its action. For the never-ending crusade of the Church against
the world had at this time found its leader in a simple Cistercian
monk, who never was Pope, nor legate, nor archbishop, nor even official
head of his own order--who was simply abbot of Clairvaux--yet who, by
the irresistible, unconscious influence of a pure mind and a single
aim, had brought all Christendom to his feet. It was to the “Bright
Valley,” to Clairvaux, that men looked from the most distant lands for
light amid the darkness; it was to S. Bernard that all instinctively
turned for counsel and for guidance. The story of S. Gilbert of
Sempringham may serve for an example. The father of Gilbert was a
Norman holding property in Lincolnshire in the time of Henry I.; his
mother was a woman of Old-English descent. The boy ran away from school
and made his escape to France; there he repented of his idleness, threw
himself zealously into the pursuit of letters, and after some years
came home to set up in his native place a school for boys and girls.
He taught them a great deal more than mere book-learning; his purity,
sweetness and fervour won the very hearts and souls of all who came
under his influence; and there was something in his lofty yet tender
nature which made him seem peculiarly fitted for a spiritual director
of women. Seven maidens first devoted themselves to the religious life
under his guidance; others soon followed their example; several men did
the like. A double monastery thus grew up at Sempringham, under the
protection of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, in the earliest years of
Stephen’s reign. For some time it continued subject to no other rule
than its founder’s own will. He saw, however, the necessity for a more
lasting basis of organization; instead of trying to devise one himself,
he applied to the general chapter of Cîteaux and besought them to take
charge of his little flock. They, however, refused; since Gilbert had
been inspired to found a new religious society, they would not presume
to interfere with his mission; he must draw up a rule for his own
spiritual children. He ended by working out his scheme into a composite
institution which aimed at combining the excellencies of all earlier
rules, but in which the Cistercian element strongly predominated. The
Gilbertine priories, when fully constituted, consisted of four orders
of persons: canons, who followed the rule of S. Austin; lay-brethren,
nuns and lay-sisters, all bound by the rule of Cîteaux; while the whole
community was held together by certain additional regulations specially
devised by the founder. The new order spread rapidly through eastern
England; and before S. Gilbert’s own life reached its close, he had the
satisfaction of seeing his spiritual children take a highly honourable
part in the great ecclesiastical struggle of which the foremost
champion and victim was S. Thomas of Canterbury.[1040]
[1040] On the Gilbertines and their founder see Dugdale,
_Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. 2, pp. iii*–lix*; and Will.
Newb., l. i. c. 16 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 54, 55).
One sees in this story how instinctively the religious reformers of the
day went to Cîteaux for a model and a guide; and one sees, too, how
little the Cistercians were as yet inclined to abuse their influence by
reaping where they had not sown. The extraordinary position of Bernard
himself was not of his own seeking; the “care of all the churches” came
upon him whether he would or not; as one of his biographers expresses
it, all Christendom looked upon him as a divinely-appointed Moses of
whom the ordained hierarchy and even the supreme pontiff himself were
but subordinate mouthpieces and representatives.[1041] Like their
prototype in the Old Testament, the Aarons of the time did not always
understand the policy or appreciate the aims of their inspired brother,
and the spiritual party in the Church sometimes found its worst
stumbling-block within the walls of the Lateran. Year by year, however,
its influence grew and spread, till on the death of Pope Lucius II. in
February 1145 a Cistercian, Bernard abbot of S. Anastasius at Rome,
was raised to the chair of S. Peter by the name of Eugene III. With
him the anti-Bernardine party had no chance of a moment’s hearing;
threats, flatteries or bribes were all alike thrown away upon a pontiff
whose glory and whose strength lay in having no will of his own, in
being simply the voice which proclaimed and the hand which executed
the thoughts of his greater namesake at Clairvaux. “They say I am
Pope, not you!” wrote S. Bernard to him,[1042] half playfully, half
in gentle reproach, and Eugene gloried in the saying. A new departure
in the policy of the Roman see was marked by the fulfilment of one of
Bernard’s most cherished schemes, the preaching of a new crusade for
the deliverance of the Holy Land, whence an imploring cry for help
came from the widowed Queen Melisenda--for King Fulk of Anjou had been
cut off suddenly in the midst of his labours, and his realm, left to
the rule of a woman and a child, was rapidly falling a prey to the
Infidels.[1043] At Vézelay, on Easter-day 1146, the young King Louis of
France took the cross from S. Bernard’s own hands amid a scene of the
wildest enthusiasm. The Emperor Conrad soon followed his example, and
at Pentecost 1147 the expedition set out.
[1041] Ern. Bonneval, _Vita S. Bernardi_, l. ii. c. 4 (_S.
Bern. Opp._, ed. Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1102).
[1042] S. Bernard. Ep. ccxxxix (_Opp._, Mabillon, vol. 1. col.
235).
[1043] On Fulk’s reign in Palestine see Will. Tyr., ll. xiv.
and xv. The exact date of his death is doubtful; Will. Tyr.,
l. xv. c. 27, and l. xvi. c. 2, gives it as November 13,
1142, and says that Baldwin II. was crowned on the following
Christmas-day. But in l. xvi. c. 4 he says that Edessa was lost
in the interval between Fulk’s death and his son’s coronation,
and it is known from other sources that Edessa was taken by the
Infidels on Christmas-night 1144. Moreover there is in Paoli’s
_Codice Dipl. del S. Mil. Ord. Gerosol._, vol. i. p. 29, a
charter of Melisenda dated “1149, Indictione xii.,” which she
calls the fifth year of her son’s reign. The Chronn. S. Albin.
and S. Serg. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 35, 146), Chron. Turon.
Magn. (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, p. 134), Chron. Namnet.
(_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 558) and Ric. Poitiers
(_ib._ p. 415) all date Fulk’s death 1143; the Chron. S. Flor.
Salm. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 191) places it in 1141, but
couples it with the death of Pope Innocent, which certainly
occurred in 1143. Fulk’s end was characteristic, being caused
by his own impetuosity. He was thrown from his horse in dashing
too hastily after a hare started by some children, as he was
riding with Melisenda outside the walls of Acre (Will. Tyr.,
l. xv. c. 27). See the peculiar philosophizing of the Tours
chronicler thereon (Salmon, as above).
As far as its direct object was concerned, this second crusade failed
completely; yet it had not been projected in vain. As said a friend
and biographer of S. Bernard: “If it was God’s will thereby to deliver,
not the bodies of many eastern folk from the bondage of the heathen,
but the souls of many western folk from the bondage of sin, who shall
dare to ask why He has thus done?”[1044] If the movement did nothing
for Palestine, it did something for England. Torn and exhausted with
her internal divisions, she could take no part in it as a state; but
nowhere was it more readily joined by individual volunteers. The
preaching of the Crusade was a spark which kindled into flame, in the
heart of more than one of the troublers of the land, the smouldering
embers of a capacity for better things; it was a trumpet-call
which roused more than one brave knight to forsake the miserable
party-strife with which perhaps in his secret soul he had long been
growing disgusted, and fling into a better cause the energies which
he had been wasting upon his country’s ruin.[1045] But the movement
did more for England than this. It brought to light among the English
people a spirit whose existence at such a time could otherwise hardly
have been suspected. The one success of the Crusade was achieved by
a little independent squadron of one hundred and sixty-four ships
which sailed from Dartmouth on May 23, six days before the feast of
the Ascension, 1147. The expedition consisted of Germans, Flemings
and Englishmen, the latter being the most numerous. Nearly all were
men of low degree; they had no commander-in-chief; each nationality
chose its own leader. The “men of the Empire”--a body of Low-Germans
who, for some unknown reason, chose to be independent of the great
Imperial host--followed Count Arnold of Aerschot, who seems to have
been the only person of rank in the whole assemblage; the Flemings and
the men of Queen Matilda’s county of Boulogne were led by Christian of
Gistelles. The English grouped themselves according to the districts of
their birth under the guidance of four marshals; Hervey of Glanville
led the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of Dover[1046] commanded
the ships of Kent; a man named Andrew was chief of the Londoners; and
a miscellaneous contingent from other parts of the country was headed
by Saher de Arcelles. The whole company bound themselves by vows
almost as stringent as those of a religious order; they were pledged
to eschew all fine clothes and personal indulgences, and to help and
avenge one another in all things as sworn brethren; each ship had its
own chaplain and its regular services, as if it were a parish; every
man confessed and communicated once a week; and for the enforcement
of all these rules two men were elected out of every thousand to form
a body of sworn judges[1047] who should administer the common funds
and assist the marshals in maintaining order. These warrior-pilgrims,
sailing down the western coast of the Spanish peninsula on their way
to the Mediterranean Sea, touched at Oporto; at the entreaty of the
Portuguese King Alfonso and his people they exchanged their intended
crusade in Holy Land for one which was perhaps more useful--a campaign
for the deliverance of Christian Portugal from its Moorish oppressors.
The Moors who occupied Lisbon were starved into surrender by a four
months’ blockade; the crusaders entered the city in triumph; in the
hour of temptation English discipline proved strong enough to control
German greed,[1048] and renouncing all share in the fruit of their
victory these single-hearted soldiers of the Cross made over the future
capital of Portugal to its Christian sovereign and went home rejoicing
that they, a few poor men of lowly birth and no reputation, had been
counted worthy to strike a successful blow for the Faith, while its
royal and imperial champions at the head of their countless hosts met
with nothing but disaster and disgrace.[1049]
[1044] Geoff. Clairvaux, _Vita S. Bern._, l. iii. c. 4 (_S.
Bern. Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1120).
[1045] See, in particular, the cases of William of Cricklade
and Philip of Gloucester, _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 111,
119, 120.
[1046] “Dorobernensis,” Osbern. _De Expugn. Lyxbon._ (prefixed
to _Itinerarium Regis Ricardi_, Stubbs), p. cxliv. This ought
to mean Canterbury; but is not Dover more likely in this case?
[1047] “Qui judices et conjurati dicerentur.” Osbern (Stubbs,
_Itin. Reg. Ric._), p. cxliv.
[1048] The characteristic way in which the Germans and the
English acted when they got into the city should be noticed in
Osbern (Stubbs, _Itin. Reg. Ric._), pp. clxviii.–clxxx.
[1049] Osbern (Stubbs, _Itin. Reg. Ric._), pp. clxxxi,
clxxxii. See also a letter in Martène and Durand, _Ampliss.
Coll._, vol. i. cols. 800–802; another in Pertz, _Mon. Germ.
Hist._, vol. xvii. p. 27; and Hen. Hunt. l. viii. c. 27
(Arnold, p. 281).
There was no need to despair of a country whose middle and lower
classes could still produce men capable of an exploit such as this.
When a spontaneous gathering of poor yeomen, common sailors and obscure
citizens could reveal such a spirit, it was plain that all England
wanted to rescue her from her misery was a competent leader. S.
Bernard, watching over the fortunes of the English Church through the
eyes of his brethren at Fountains and Rievaux, had seen this already;
and he saw, too, that it was vain to look for such a leader in either
the king or the king-maker, Henry of Winchester. Before the Church of
England could rescue the state, she must be freed from the political
entanglements into which she had been dragged by Henry’s impetuosity,
and enabled to resume a position of spiritual independence under her
rightful leader, the archbishop of Canterbury. With this view the whole
Cistercian order in England, supported and directed by S. Bernard,
had set their faces against William Fitz-Herbert’s appointment to
the see of York, as an attempt of king and legate to override the
constitutional rights of the southern primate and of the Church as a
whole. “The bishop of Winchester and the archbishop of York do not walk
in the same spirit with the archbishop of Canterbury, but go their own
way in opposition to him; and this comes from the old quarrel about
the legation”--thus Bernard summed up the case.[1050] Moreover the
saving clause whereby William of Durham was allowed to swear by proxy
in behalf of his namesake appears to have been interpolated by the
latter’s friends into the Papal decree; for “One William has not sworn,
yet the other is archbishop”[1051] was the burthen of S. Bernard’s
cry to the Pope; and when in 1144 a cardinal-legate, Hicmar, came to
England with a pall for William of York, he promised Bernard not to
give it till he should have received the oath from the bishop of Durham
in person.[1052]
[1050] In a letter to Eugene III., S. Bern. Ep. ccxxxviii.
(_Opp._ Mabillon, vol. i. col. 234).
[1051] S. Bern. Epp. ccxxxv.–ccxxxvi., both to Celestine II.
(as above, cols. 229–231).
[1052] S. Bern. Ep. ccclx. (as above, cols. 324, 325)--to
Abbot William of Rievaux. See also Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149,
and, for date, note _u_, _ibid._
Neither prelate took any notice of Hicmar’s presence; but when he was
recalled by the death of Pope Lucius and the accession of Eugene,
the archbishop of York suddenly perceived what a blunder he had
made, and hurried to Rome in quest of the pall about which he had
hitherto been so indifferent. Instead of giving it, Eugene suspended
him from all episcopal functions till such time as William of Durham
should have taken the oath required by the sentence of Pope Innocent.
The archbishop hereupon retired to Sicily and took up his abode
there with his fellow-countryman the chancellor, Robert of Selby or
Salisbury,[1053] under the protection of King Roger. As Roger was
then at bitter feud with the Church, this step was not likely to
mend William’s ecclesiastical reputation. His cause, bad from the
first and made worse by his own carelessness, was presently ruined
by his friends. The leaders of the opposition to him in England were
the abbots of Rievaux and Fountains; the latter, Henry Murdac, was a
native of Yorkshire who in Archbishop Thurstan’s time had given up
houses and lands, home and kindred, to go out to Clairvaux at the
call of S. Bernard. In 1135 he was sent thence to found the abbey of
Vauclair;[1054] in 1143 he was appointed to succeed Abbot Richard II.
of Fountains, who had died at Clairvaux while on his way to attend
the general chapter of his order at Cîteaux.[1055] Henry Murdac went
back to his native land charged with an implied commission to make
Fountains an English Clairvaux and himself an English representative
of S. Bernard, and he fulfilled his charge with true Cistercian zeal
and fidelity.[1056] As soon as William’s suspension became known, his
friends attributed it to the influence of Murdac, whom they sought to
punish by making an armed raid upon his abbey. Plunder, of course,
they got little or none in a freshly-reformed Cistercian house;[1057]
so, after a hurried and unsuccessful search for Murdac himself, they
set the place on fire. Every stone of it perished except the church,
which escaped as by miracle; and the abbot escaped with it, for he
had been lying all the while, unnoticed by the passion-blinded eyes
of his foes, prostrate in prayer before the high altar. The energy of
the monks and the sympathy of their neighbours soon enabled Fountains
to rise from its ashes more glorious than before;[1058] but William’s
day of grace was at once brought to a close by this outrage. At a
council held in Paris in the spring of 1147, the abbot of Fountains
and a deputation from the chapter of York once more formally presented
to the Pope their charges against their primate, and Eugene deposed
William from his episcopal office.[1059] On the eve of S. James the
chapter of York, with the two suffragan bishops of the province--Durham
and Carlisle--met in obedience to a papal mandate for the election of
a new archbishop. The choice of the majority fell upon Henry Murdac.
From Clairvaux, whither he had gone after the council, the abbot of
Fountains was summoned to the papal court at Trier, and there, on the
octave of S. Andrew, he received his consecration and his pall both at
once from Pope Eugene’s own hand.[1060]
[1053] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 150–152. Robert was “oriundus in
Angliâ, scilicet in Salesbiâ.” Mr. Raine renders this Selby;
Twysden made it Salisbury; Bishop Stubbs (_Lect. on Mediev. and
Mod. Hist._, p. 133), leaves the question undecided.
[1054] On the earlier life of Henry Murdac see Dixon and Raine,
_Fasti Ebor._, pp. 210–213; and Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_,
vol. i. p. 84, note 3.
[1055] Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. pp. 78, 81–83.
S. Bern. Epp. cccxx, cccxxi (_Opp._ Mabillon, vol. i. cols.
297, 298).
[1056] Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. pp. 84, 85.
[1057] “Ferentes secum spolia, parum quidem pecuniæ, sed
plurimum dampnationis.” Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i.
p. 102.
[1058] _Ib._ pp. 101, 102.
[1059] On the council of Paris see Labbe, _Concilia_ (Cossart),
vol. xxi., cols. 709, 710. As to the date, it appears from
Jaffé (_Regesta Pontif. Rom._, pp. 626, 627) that Eugene
reached Paris before Easter (April 20) and was there till June
11; so the council must fall in the interval. On William’s
deposition see Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. “Hoc
concilio” ought, by all logical and grammatical rules, to mean
the council of Reims, held in March 1148, and of which Gervase
has just been speaking. Accordingly most of his commentators
(including the editors of the Fountains and Hexham books, and
the compilers of the _Fasti Eboracenses_) say that William was
deposed at the council of Reims; and then, as his successor was
undoubtedly consecrated in December 1147, they are obliged to
antedate the council of Reims by a year. But Gervase himself
says, almost in the same breath, that the deposition took place
in _Paris_. He has confused the two councils; see Pagi’s note
to Baronius, _Annales_, vol. xix. pp. 7, 8; and cf. Joh. Hexh.
(Raine), p. 154.
[1060] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 154, 155. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
vol. i. p. 135. Walbran, _Memor. of Fountains_, vol. i. p. 103.
Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 56). The _Hist.
Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 518) says
Henry was consecrated at Auxerre, but this is incompatible with
dates.
The subsequent conduct of Stephen and Henry of Winchester proved
that their aim in securing the occupation of the northern primacy
had been rightly understood by Eugene and Bernard. They had staked
everything upon the success of their scheme, and when it failed not
only the king but even the once cool and sagacious bishop completely
lost his head. Upon William himself the papal sentence had the very
opposite effect; it woke him from his dreams of easy dignity and
worldly pride; from that moment the idle, showy, self-indulgent young
ecclesiastic changed into an humble saint, and when he came home next
year it was not to renew the strife but to turn away from the world
and possess his soul in patience.[1061] But his uncles would not hear
of submission; Henry took him to live in his own house, and there
persisted in ostentatiously treating him with all the honours due to
the archbishop of York;[1062] and when in the summer of 1148 the new
archbishop also came back to England, Stephen demanded sworn security
for his fidelity before he would let him set foot in the country.[1063]
The citizens of York, instigated by the treasurer of the see, Hugh of
Puiset, who like William was a nephew of the king, shut their gates
in their primate’s face; he withdrew to Ripon, laid his diocese under
interdict and excommunicated Hugh; but Hugh, strong in the support of
his uncles, defied the interdict and was even impudent enough to return
the excommunication.[1064]
[1061] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 154.
[1062] _Ibid._ Will. Newb. as above.
[1063] _Ibid._ Oddly enough, this York affair is almost the
only one in which William rather inclines to take the part of
the king.
[1064] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 158.
In the southern province matters had come to a still more dangerous
crisis. Early in 1148 all the English bishops were summoned by the Pope
to a council which was to meet at Reims on Mid-Lent Sunday. Three of
them--Hereford, Chichester and Norwich--were sent by Stephen himself;
but when the archbishop of Canterbury made the usual application for
leave to quit the country, the king refused, set a watch at every
port to stop his egress, and at his brother Henry’s instigation swore
that if Theobald did go he should be banished on his return. Theobald
however had made up his mind to go at any cost; he slipped away in an
old broken boat with only two companions--Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and
Thomas of London, the latter of whom had now been for several years
the most trusted medium of intercommunication between the primate and
the court of Rome. The daring voyagers reached their journey’s end in
safety, and Theobald was triumphantly presented to the council by the
Pope as one who had swum rather than sailed across the Channel for
the sake of his duty to the Church.[1065] The bishops who had failed
to attend were all suspended, Henry of Winchester being specially
mentioned by name. His brother, however,--the good count of Blois
who seems to have been at once the scapegoat and the peacemaker for
all the sins of his family, and who was held in the deepest esteem
by both Eugene and Bernard--made intercession on his behalf, and
obtained a relaxation of the sentence against him on condition of
his coming to Rome within six months.[1066] As for the king, Eugene
would have excommunicated him at once; but for him the other Theobald
stepped forward as mediator, like Anselm in a somewhat similar case,
and procured him a respite of three months.[1067] The intercessor’s
reward was the threatened sentence of banishment, issued as soon
as he returned to Canterbury. He withdrew into France and appealed
to the Pope, while Stephen seized the temporalities of the see and
began playing the part of the Red King on a small scale. Eugene
wrote to all the English bishops, severally and in a body, bidding
them summon the king to restore the primate at once, lay all his
dominions under interdict if he refused, and tell him that he should
certainly be excommunicated by the Pope on Michaelmas day. The bishops
however were all on the court-side; the interdict, duly published by
Theobald, was unheeded save in his own diocese; and the king remained
obstinate.[1068] But his wiser queen, aided by William of Ypres, who,
however he may have sinned against others, was unquestionably Stephen’s
truest friend, made an effort to restore peace; and at their request
Theobald removed to St. Omer, as being a more accessible place for
negotiation than his French retreat.[1069]
[1065] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
p. 519; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. Both accounts
seem to be derived from a letter of S. Thomas (Ep. ccl.,
Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 57, 58). Thomas’s presence at
the council is distinctly stated in _Hist. Pontif._ (as above),
p. 522, and so is that of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque.
[1066] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 520. Cf. Gilb. Foliot,
Ep. lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 92).
[1067] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 519.
[1068] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
pp. 530, 532.
[1069] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 135.
Matilda of Boulogne doubtless saw what Theobald must have known full
well, that the quarrel involved a great deal more than strictly
ecclesiastical questions. The issue which the ordeal of battle had
failed to decide was on its trial now in a different form and before
another tribunal. The most curious symptom of this feeling, perhaps,
was the action of Brian Fitz-Count, who, after having been for years
Matilda’s most devoted and most successful champion in the field,
suddenly exchanged the sword for the pen and brought out a defence
of his Lady’s rights in the shape of a little treatise which gained
the approval of one of the cleverest men and greatest scholars of the
time, Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester.[1070] Geoffrey Plantagenet,
with his Angevin quickness, was the first openly to proclaim the true
position of affairs by sending to Stephen, through Bishop Miles of
Térouanne, a formal challenge to give up his ill-gotten realm and
submit to an investigation of his claims before the papal court.
Stephen retorted by a counter-challenge, calling upon Geoffrey to give
up his equally ill-gotten duchy before he would agree to any further
proceeding in the matter.[1071] Geoffrey took him at his word, but
in a way which he was far from desiring. He did give up the duchy of
Normandy, by making it over to his own son, Henry Fitz-Empress.[1072]
[1070] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 94–102).
[1071] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 531.
[1072] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1149 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 36).
But the story of Gilbert Foliot’s consecration shews that the
cession must really have taken place in 1148.
The crisis was now close at hand; Stephen was at last face to face with
his true rival. He appears to have consented, as if in desperation, to
the proposed trial at Rome. It seems at first glance as if the envoys
whom he sent to represent him there must indeed have been driven to
their wits’ end for an argument in his behalf when they raked up again
a scandal which S. Anselm had laid to rest half a century ago, as to
the validity of the marriage between Matilda’s father and mother.[1073]
Yet such was the argument publicly put forth by many voices against
the legality of her claims to the crown; and though one account of the
proceedings states that her adversaries were triumphantly confuted by
Bishop Ulger of Angers,[1074] another, written by an eye-witness whose
own opinions were wholly in her favour, declares that her advocates
answered never a word.[1075] The trial seems to have ended without any
decision;[1076] it was however quickly followed by a very significant
event. The witness just referred to was Gilbert Foliot, a Cluniac monk
who since 1139 had been abbot of Gloucester, and whose reputation for
learning, wisdom and holiness had secured to him the confidence of the
primate and the consideration of all parties alike in Church and state.
He had reluctantly and after some delay obeyed Theobald’s summons to
join him at the papal court; once there, he seems to have flung all
his energies into the organization of the new policy of which Theobald
was to be the leader.[1077] During the session of the council at Reims
the bishop of Hereford died.[1078] The Pope at once appointed Gilbert
Foliot vicar of the diocese;[1079] in September he was consecrated by
Theobald at St. Omer, with the consent and approval of the young duke
of the Normans, given on the express condition that he should do homage
for the temporalities of his see to the duke and not to the king.
[1073] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 101). _Hist.
Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.), p. 543.
[1074] _Hist. Pontif._ (as above), p. 544.
[1075] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (as above).
[1076] From the way in which this trial is brought into the
_Hist. Pontif._, it would at first glance seem to have taken
place in 1151. But the presence of Bishops Ulger of Angers and
Roger of Chester, both of whom died in 1149, and the account of
the proceedings written by Gilbert Foliot to Brian Fitz-Count
clearly prove the true date to be 1148.
[1077] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. vi., vii., lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp.
13, 14, 92).
[1078] _Hist. Monast. S. Petr. Glocestr._ (Hart), vol. i. p. 18.
[1079] “G. gratiâ Dei abbas, et Herefordiensis ecclesiæ mandato
Domini Papæ vicarius,” runs the salutation of his Ep. lxxviii.
(Giles, vol. i. p. 93).
The very first thing Gilbert did was to break this promise;[1080] but
that Theobald should have consecrated such a man on such terms was
a sign of the times which Stephen could hardly fail to understand.
Theobald himself soon afterwards ventured back to England; crossing
from Gravelines, he landed at Gosford in the territories of Hugh Bigod,
by whom he was hospitably received; the bishops of London, Chichester
and Norwich, with several barons, came to meet him at Hugh’s castle
of Framlingham; the king was reconciled, the primate restored, the
interdict raised, and the suspended prelates, all save one, allowed to
resume their functions.[1081] The exception was Henry of Winchester,
who by neglecting to go to Rome within the prescribed six months
had necessarily fallen under the sentence pronounced against him by
Eugene at the council of Reims. Even to him, however, Theobald was
willing at Stephen’s request to hold out the hand of fellowship and
forgiveness.[1082] But Henry of Winchester’s days of king-making were
over. It was time for another Henry to appear upon the political scene,
to take his cause into his own hands and stand forth as the champion
of his own claims against the man who had supplanted him on his
grandfather’s throne.
[1080] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
pp. 532, 533.
[1081] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 136, 137.
[1082] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 152.