and works.

Norman conquest the will of the king was the determining power in the appointment of bishops. After making all allowance for legendary embellishments, there can His character be no doubt that Wulfstan was a man of apostolic zeal, and if he had not great learning he had good sense and practical ability. Under his administration the number of monks attached to the cathedral at Worcester was increased and the revenues were enlarged. He followed the fashion of the Norman bishops in removing the church of his predecessor, St. Oswald, and erecting another of grander proportions in its place, of which the crypt-a structure of remarkable lightness and beauty-has survived to the present day unaltered. When the new church was finished, and the demolition of the old one was begun, Wulfstan was observed to weep, and when his companions remonstrated with him for not rejoicing at the completion of so noble a work, he replied that their forefathers had been content with less stately buildings, because to them every place was a church in which they could offer themselves as a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto God. "We, on the contrary," he continued, are diligent in piling up buildings made of stone, but are too negligent of those living temples which are the souls of men."

He himself was emphatically a preacher of righteousness. He laboured with patient zeal to put down an infamous traffic in slaves which prevailed at Bristol. For this purpose he repeatedly visited the town, sojourning there sometimes as long as three months, and preaching earnestly every Sunday, until at last his efforts were crowned with success, and Bristol became, in its purity from the vice of slave-trading, a pattern to other English ports.

of Durham.

Æthelric, the deposed Bishop of Durham, was succeeded in 1071 by Walcher, a Lotharingian. He was consecrated at Winchester by Thomas, Archbishop of York. Walcher, Bp. Eadgyth, the widow of Eadward the Confessor, who witnessed the ceremony, was reminded by his ruddy countenance, his tall stature, and his white hair, of the deceased king, and is said to have exclaimed, "Here we have a goodly martyr." The tragic end of the bishop was held to be the fulfilment of her prediction. Personally he was a good man, and monasticism, which had been extinct in Northumbria

II

WALCHER, Bishop of DURHAM

41

since the Danish invasions, revived under his administration. The abbeys of Jarrow, Wearmouth, and Whitby arose from their ruins, and the foundation was laid of a house at York which afterwards became the Abbey of St. Mary without the walls. Walcher is said to have intended to remove the canons from his cathedral church in favour of monks, and if his duty had been confined to episcopal work he would probably have Icarried this and other measures of reform into effect. But unfortunately, after the execution of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, on suspicion of treason in 1076, the custody of the earldom was committed to the bishop; and the government of such a turbulent region demanded qualities in which he was entirely deficient. He confided the principal management of affairs to a relation named Gilbert. Gilbert and other agents murdered, out of jealousy, an English thegn, Liulf, who was held in great esteem by the bishop and all people for his piety and uprightness. The bishop, however, did not punish the murderers or cease to employ them. The people therefore demanded a general gemot, which was held at Gateshead. The bishop and his creatures, who dared not face it, occupied the church and parleyed with the assembly outside through messengers, until the patience of the people was exhausted and a cry arose : "Short rede, good rede, slay ye the bishop."

Thereupon a massacre began of persons in the crowd who were supposed to be friendly to the bishop. One by one his agents came out of the church, and at last the bishop himself, in the hope of appeasing the multi- Walcher, tude, but it was too late; they were all hacked

Murder o

1080.

to pieces. The mangled body of Walcher was rescued by the monks of Jarrow and carried to Durham, where it was buried in the chapter house. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was sent to punish the inhabitants of the earldom for this outrage, which he did with merciless severity. As his own personal spoil he carried away a pastoral staff of costly material and rare workmanship.

AUTHORITIES.-Opera Lanfranci, ed. by Giles, together with the Vita Lanfranci by Milo Crispin; Eadmer's Hist. Nov.; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pont., Gervase of Canterbury (Rolls series). Lanfranc, Sa vie, son enseignment, sa politique, by J. de Crozal, a very good modern monograph.

Also Charma, Notice Biographique; Freeman, Norm. Conq. vols. iii. and iv.; Bp. Stubbs, Const. Hist. vol. i. pp. 281-288, 347; Hook, Lives of Archbishops, vol. ii. For the trial on Penenden Heath, Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 334. For the dispute with Archbishop Thomas from the York side, T. Stubbs and Hugh the Chanter, ap. Historians of York (Rolls series). For the life of Wulfstan, Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 541 and vol. ii. p. 241, and notices in Flor. of Worcester.

CHAPTER III

THE PRIMACY OF LANFRANC

English abbots

deposed.

ENGLISH abbots having less political influence than the bishops were not so systematically deposed in favour of Normans : nevertheless on one pretext or another a considerable number were removed. Lanfranc and William generally appointed men of proved ability and high character to take their place. The condition of many of the houses was, as we have seen, very unsatisfactory, and it was necessary to put them under strong rulers. The administration of a foreigner who was also a reformer must often have been very distasteful, and in some instances where new customs and discipline were forced upon the monks without tact or consideration a sharp contest ensued. Such was the case at the great Abbey of Glastonbury. On the deposition of the Abbot Æthelnoth, Thurstan, a monk from St. Stephen's at Caen was appointed. The monks received him respectfully, and promised a loyal obedience if he would deal Revolt at gently with them. Thurstan, on the contrary, dealt harshly with them, insisting on arbitrary alterations in the services, especially, it is said, on a new method of chanting invented by a certain William of Fécamp. The brethren offered a stubborn resistance to these innovations. Thurstan one day called his bodyguard of Norman archers into the chapter house to frighten or coerce the offenders. The monks fled hither and thither: some of them sought refuge in the church, fastening the doors behind them, and clustering round the altar, but the archers burst in, ascended to the triforium, and thence shot upon the crowd below. Three monks were slain and eighteen wounded, their blood streamed down from the

Glastonbury.

altar steps to the floor of the choir: the holy rood itself was pierced with arrows.

The sequel illustrates the care which the Conqueror took to do justice. The monks appealed to him, and their cause was heard and tried before him. Thurstan was deprived of his office and sent back to Caen in disgrace. But the monks were not entirely absolved from blame; the majority were dismissed and placed under the charge of various bishops and abbots to be detained in some kind of confinement. The subsequent conduct of Thurstan proved him to be an unscrupulous as well as violent man, for after the death of the Conqueror he obtained restoration to his office from William Rufus by the influence of some of his relations, and the yet more potent aid of a bribe of five hundred pounds of silver. The great Abbey of St. Albans fared better than Glastonbury. The office of abbot fell vacant in 1072, whether by the death or deposition of the English abbot Fritheric is uncertain; and Lanfranc appointed his nephew Paul, to whom he was very much attached. Some persons indeed maintained that Paul was a son of the primate, nor is it impossible that Lanfranc may have been married before he became a monk. Paul, like Thurstan, was brought from St. Stephen's house at Caen. He proved himself to be a very capable, as well as munificent prelate. He reformed the discipline, and improved the revenues of his house, and erected that vast and stern fabric upon which we still gaze with admiration and awe, notwithstanding the cruel disfigurements of the modern restorer. The bricks of Roman Verulam supplied the principal material for the building, and Lanfranc himself contributed 1000 marks to the work. St. Alban's, we are told, was his favourite abbey, and he aimed at making it a model house, like Bec, or St. Stephen's at Caen.

Paul, Abbot

of St. Albans.

Although Paul was not cruel or insolent to the living monks, he treated the dead with indignity, demolishing the tombs of his English predecessors, many of whom were held in great veneration on account of their piety or high rank. Paul pronounced them to be ignorant barbarians, unworthy of respect; but notwithstanding this spiteful treatment of the honoured dead, he does not seem to have been on bad terms with his English neighbours. Ligulf, a wealthy Thane, and