The pope the uneasi ness of his station. THEO- his countryman Johannes Sarisburiensis paid him a visit, BALD, and that his holiness, being almost overset with his affairs, Abp. Cant. made his complaint to him. It seems, this clergyman was fully convinced that the pope did not complain without reason; for, upon another occasion, he makes no scruple to affirm, that to make a man pope is to make him one of the most complains of unhappy of all mankind; that if there were no other grounds of disquiet, one must sink by the very fatigue of business, and by being perpetually at the wheel; that this Adrian confessed to him, that all the hardships of his former life were mere diversion to the misfortunes of the popedom; that he looked upon St. Peter's chair as the most uneasy seat in the world: that he thought his crown and mitre were clapped burning upon his head, and had their lustre only from the heat of the furnace; that he heartily wished he had either never travelled out of England, or been buried in the obscurity of St. Rufus's cloister; that he had always been uneasy in moving upon an ascent; that his promotions had been a plague to him, and that his misfortunes conJohannes stantly rose in proportion to the height of his station. Sarisbur. Polycrat. 1. 8. c. 23. 364. By these expostulations the pope seems to have been a man of great conscience and integrity; however, his indulgence to king Henry looks somewhat unintelligible, and, at the best, shews him to have been none of the securest guides for the direction of practice. The case was this: Geoffrey Plantagenet, late earl of Anjou, had issue three sons by Maud the empress, Henry, Geoffrey, and William. This prince, being sensible that upon his death, his own dominions would descend of course to his eldest son, Henry, and that the duchy of Normandy and kingdom of England would likewise fall to him in right of his mother. Upon this view, the earl being willing to make a provision for the younger brothers, devised his own dominions of Anjou to his second son, Geoffrey. And to make the settlement the more firm, he took an oath of the bishops and nobility that were present, not to suffer his corpse to be buried till his son Henry had sworn not to set aside any part of his father's A. D. 1156. will. Henry, upon the news of his father's death, came to attend his funeral; but when the oath was tendered him, he refused for some time to swear to a writing unseen, and bind himself to the performance of conditions with which he was II. penses with king Hen ry's oath. Alford, An not pre-acquainted. However, when he was pressed with HENRY the scandal of letting his father lie unburied, he took the K. of Eng. oath, though with great reluctance. When his father was buried the will was broken open and read; and though the contents displeased him, he concealed his resentments till a better opportunity. But after his accession to the throne He dishe is said, upon his complaint to the pope that the oath was forced upon him, to have been favoured with a dispensation. But which way is the necessity proved? Was he in danger of duress or assassination? Nothing of this is pretended. 1156. NubrigenHowever, if this had been the case, a man had much better sis, 1. 2. c. 7. part with his liberty, or his life, than trifle with the attributes of God, destroy the greatest securities of trust, and be guilty of a breach of faith in an instance of the highest solemnity. Were the matter of this oath unlawful, the disengagement had been intelligible. But in promising not to alter the disposition of his father's will, he only ran the risk of suffering in his right, and swore to nothing but what was in his power to make good. However, Alford is resolved to bring necessity into the case, and then lays down this loose doctrine from Nubrigensis, that oaths extorted are by no Ibid. means obligatory. Though, after all, by his necessity he can mean nothing more than convenience. Besides, if king Henry's oath was void, as Alford supposes, what occasion was there for the pope's dispensation? For a dispensation supposes the law in force, the continuance of an engagement, and that a man lies under a penalty in case of nonperformance. But where the obligation is untied already, a dispensation is perfectly superfluous. But farther, if the oath continued in full force, it is hard to imagine which way the pope could release it. Had the pope been the only legatee in the will, he might have relinquished his right; and thus, the matter of the oath being taken away, the obligation would have ceased of course. But since the promise was made to another party, it was not in the pope's power to dispose of their property. Besides, since God Almighty was made, as it were, a guarantee for the promise, and appealed to for the sincerity of the engagement, which way can any man pretend to dispense with so solemn an obligation, without the greatest dishonour to the divine majesty ? THEO- I must not omit, that this king, at his coming to the Abp. Cant. crown, confirmed his grandfather Henry I.'s charter to the See Re cords, num. 22. A contest between the bishop of Chichester and the ab bot of Bat tle. clergy and laity. About this time there happened a warm dispute between A. D. 1157. Hilary, bishop of Chichester, and Walter, abbot of Battle. The bishop summoned the abbot to his diocesan synod at Chichester, and pressed on him all other points of duty and deference prescribed by the canons. He claimed likewise, both by ancient custom and in virtue of his episcopal jurisdiction, to be entertained in the abbey and the manors belonging to it in his visitations. On the other side, the abbot pleaded the charter of William the Conqueror for his exemption; setting forth withal, that this charter was drawn up by the advice of the then prelates of Canterbury and Chichester, &c., and signed by them. When the Conqueror's charter was afterwards read at Lambeth, before the archbishop, the chancellor of England, the parties, and other great men, and they came to this clause, "Quod ecclesia (scilicet de bello) libera sit omnino ab omni subjectione episcoporum, sicut ecclesia Christi Cantuariæ," the audience was extremely shocked, and several of them declared aloud, that this privilege was point-blank against the canons, and particularly the archbishop was so dissatisfied, that he moved this clause of the charter might be pronounced void; but they came to no resolution at this meeting. Afterwards the cause was brought before the king at Colchester, many of the lords, spiritual and temporal, being present. And here Hilary pleaded for himself, and urged, that God our Saviour had settled two distinct independent governments upon earth, the spiritual and the temporal; that the first was intrusted to St. Peter, the rest of the apostles, and their successors; that it was not in the power of the state to annul a divine commission, or deprive the Church of an authority thus settled upon her; that the jurisdiction of a bishop over his diocese was no grant from the crown, and therefore could not be revoked by it. This was the substance of the bishop's argument. The king was not pleased with this defence, and charged the bishop with intrenching upon his prerogative. The bishop made a very respectful reply, and purged himself from that imputation; but the Spelman, Concil. vol. 2. p. 53. et deinc. ad 58. record being defective, how the controversy was settled is HENRY uncertain. II. drew's About two years afterward, Robert, bishop of St. Andrew's, The bishop departed this life. He has the commendation of a very of St. Anworthy prelate. He founded the priory of St. Andrew's, death, 1159. and procured the city the privileges of a royal borough. 347. He was buried in the church of St. Reule, the cathedral being not yet built. Spotswood, Hist. book About this time two Scotchmen of character for learning, 2. p. 35. flourished; Ricardus de Sancto Victore, a canon regular of the order of St. Augustine, and David, a priest. This David travelled into Germany, and was pitched upon by the emperor, Henry V., to attend him in his march into Italy, against pope Paschal. He wrote the history of this expedition, and likewise a treatise, De Regno Scotorum, both which are lost. Ricardus was a professor of divinity at Paris, in the abbey of St. Victor. He had the reputation of a great philosopher, and wrote several learned tracts, as appears by his epitaph. The titles of his books may be Ibid. seen in Bale. After the death of bishop Robert, Walthemius, abbot of Melrose, was importuned to succeed him; but he declined the promotion, and excused himself, by saying, that since he had retired from the contagion of the world, he would not run the risk of miscarrying in a publick employment. Upon this refusal, the abbot of Kelso was elected, and consecrated by William, bishop of Murray. Ibid. Nubri c. 9. This year, pope Adrian IV. died of a quinsey, and was not Baron. ad choked with a fly, as Urspergensis reports it. The cardi- An. 1159. nals could not agree about his successor; one part of them gensis. 1. 2. choosing Roland, or Alexander III., the other, Octavian, a Baron Annoble Roman, who went by the name of Victor IV. This nal. ad An. double election occasioned a schism in the Church of Rome, A. D. 1159. which lasted eight years. 1159. A schism in the Church Annal. f. Archbishop King Henry being in Normandy when this breach hap- of Rome. pened, Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, wrote him a Hoveden, letter in behalf of Alexander. In this letter he acquaints the 281. king, that "the Gallican Church had disclaimed Octavian, Theobald's and owned his competitor; that as far as it appeared, they had letter to the king in beadhered to the right side: it being notoriously evident, that half of pope Alexander was a person of a more unblemished character; Alexander. THEO BALD, Abp. Cant. Johannes Nubrigens. 1. 2. c. 9. the same with the Nubrig. 1.2. c. 13. Spelman. Concil. vol. 2. p. 59. of better conduct in business; of more learning and elocution; and, which is more to the point, he was generally reported by those who had been upon the spot, to have been duly elected. And notwithstanding he had heard from neither of them, either by nuncio, or letters, he assures the king all the English would declare for Alexander, provided they had the encouragement of his highness's consent." He lets him know farther, he was informed, the emperor solicited his highness for Octavian's interest: and here he conjures him not to gratify any mortal man, to the prejudice of the Church or his own conscience. And after having suggested several arguments in favour of Alexander, he puts him in mind, in the conclusion, that before he came to a resolution in so weighty a matter, it would be requisite for him to summon a synod, and not to determine about the Church without the advice of the clergy. This point seems to have been already settled according to the archbishop's desire; for king Henry, probably before this time, had convened a synod in Normandy about this affair. Alexander and Octavian had each of them agents at this meeting; and after the cause had been argued by both parties, the king and synod declared for Alexander. About this time England was disturbed by the preaching Sir Henry of foreign hereticks, called Publicans. The heresy appeared Spelman makes them first in Gascoigne, though from what person is uncertain. From hence the erroneous doctrine spread through a great Waldenses. many provinces of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany: they gained ground, as Nubrigensis reports, by the remissness of the Church discipline. He represents them as a company of ignorant rusticks: and though their understandings were very gross and unimproved, yet their obstinacy and selfopinion was such, that the convincing them by argument and retrieving them from their mistake, was next to an impossibility. The historian adds, that this was the first time that England was pestered with hereticks, since the Saxons settled here. These publican hereticks were about thirty of both sexes. At their first arrival they concealed their heterodoxy, and pretended other business: they were headed by one Gerhard, whose delusions they seemed to follow by implicit belief. This Gerhard was the only person among them, that had some little learning; as for the rest, they |
