North Wilts.
_Alterius Orbis Papa_ (Vol. iii., p. 497.).--The origin of this title
is, I think, still open to explanation, and in offering one which I find
recorded in Lambard's _Perambulation of Kent_, 1596, pp. 80, 81. I trust
the quaint but interesting style of that learned antiquary and historian
will be a sufficient excuse to your readers for its insertion at length
_verbatim et literatim_:
"The whole Province of this Bishopricke of Canterbury, was at the
first divided by Theodorus (the seventh Bishop) into five Dioceses
only: howbeit, in processe of time it grew to twentie and one,
besides itselfe, leaving to Yorke (which by the first institution
should have had as many as it) but Durham, Carleil, and Chester
only. And whereas by the same ordinance of Gregorie, neither of
these Archbishops ought to be inferiour to other, save onely in
respect of the priority of their consecration, Lanfranc (thinking
it good reason that he should make a conquest of the English
clergie, since his maister, King William, had vanquished the whole
nation), contended at Windsor with Thomas Norman (Archbishop of
Yorke) for the primacie, and there (by judgement before Hugo, the
Pope's Legate) recovered it from him: so that ever since the one
is called _Totius Angliæ primas_, and the other _Angliæ primas_,
without any further addition. Of which judgement, one (forsooth)
hath yielded this great reason: that even as the Kentish people,
by an auncient prerogative of manhood, do challenge the first
front in each battel, from the Inhabitants of other countries; so
the Archbishop of their Shyre, ought by good congruence to be
preferred before the rest of the Bishops of the whole Realme.
Moreover, whereas before time, the place of this Archbishop in the
generall Councell was to sit next to the Bishop of Sainct
Ruffines, Anselmus, the successor of this Lanfranc (for recompence
of the good service that hee had done, in ruffling against
Priests' wives, and resisting the King for the investiture of
clerks) was by Pope Urbane endowed with this accession of honour,
that he and his Successours should from thencefoorth have place in
all generall councels, at the Pope's right foote, who then said
withall. 'Includamus hunc in orbe nostro, tanquam alterius orbis
Papam.'"