II. Hospitallers, were not to open an interdicted church more HENRY than once a year, and then not to bury any corpse in it. It K. of Eng. seems the Templars likewise presumed too far upon the privilege of their order, broke through the discipline of the Church, and encroached upon the jurisdiction of the bishops. Farther, those that plundered shipwrecked persons were to be excommunicated. To prevent procurations from being over-burthensome to the diocese, archbishops are not to exceed forty or fifty horse in their retinue; bishops are not to be attended with above thirty in their visitation; legates are stinted to twenty-five; and archdeacons were not to travel with more than seven. The exercises of tilting and tournament being oftentimes dangerous, and attended with great inconveniences, those trials of manhood were forbidden; and if any person happened to be mortally wounded in such encounters, though he might be restored to communion upon his request, he was not to be allowed Christian burial. Every cathedral was to furnish a schoolmaster to teach the poor gratis. Bishops and other ecclesiasticks were not to be compelled to take their trial in secular courts. Laymen are likewise forbidden to make grants of tithes to laymen. No clerk was to frequent a nunnery without a clear and justifiable excuse; he that did not forbear such liberties upon admonition from his bishop was to lose his prefer ment. Hoveden, Concil. tom. This year, Roger, bishop of Worcester, son to the famous 332. Robert, earl of Glocester, departed this life. Giraldus Matt. Paris, Hist. Angl. Cambrensis commends him for a prelate of extraordinary p. 137. piety, and a good governor; and particularly that he was 10. p. 1507. very careful to prefer people according to their merit, and et deinc. not led away by any partiality to his relations, in which commendable quality he followed the precedent of archbishop Becket. King Henry sent him ambassador to pope Alexander, to purge him of the imputation of being concerned in Becket's death. He died at Tours, on the 9th of August, at his return from Rome, where, as some affirm, he assisted at the Lateran council. 391. Angl. Sacr. part 1. p. Chronic. Towards the latter end of August, Lewis, king of France, 476. part 2. landed at Dover, in order to visit archbishop Becket's tomb. p. 428. He was met at that town by the king of England. They made a very pompous entry into Canterbury, and were re RICH ARD, ceived with extraordinary solemnity. The king of France, Abp. Cant. after having prayed and fasted at Becket's tomb two or three days, offered a gold cup, and settled an annual pension of a hundred muids of wine, in honour of his memory; and to state the value of this devotional respect, we are to observe, that a French muid or modius contains thirty-six sexaries or gallons, and answers the proportion of our Gervas. col. English barrel. 1457. A. D. 1180. King Ed ward's laws The next year, the king constituted Ralph Glanville, justiciary of England. This learned judge drew up a body of the English laws, most of which were in use in the Saxon times, and afterwards confirmed by the Conqueror. For William I., by the advice of his barons, summoned the confirmed. Saxons of condition, and such as understood the customs and laws of the realm, in the fourth year of his reign. Twelve of these men were chosen out of every county; when they came to court, they took an oath to give in a true state of the constitution, without addition, concealment, or any prevarication whatsoever. Hoveden sets down the Hoveden, draught at large. But since the laws relating to the Church are the same with those of Edward the Confessor, I shall ad An. 1066. waive the repetition, and refer the reader to that reign. fol. 342 et Geoffrey, elect of Lin Geoffrey, the king's natural son, elect of Lincoln, had recoln, resigns ceived the revenues of the bishoprick about seven years without being consecrated. This being complained of as an indefensible practice, the pope sent an order to the archbishop of Canterbury not to admit of any farther excuses, but to press Geoffrey to this alternative; either to qualify himself immediately, and complete his character, or else to resign his election. Geoffrey thus straitened, and having a modest opinion of his own abilities, chose rather to relinquish the preferment than undertake an employment too big for his management. He therefore had a resignation drawn up cords, num. in form, and sent it to the archbishop of Canterbury; a copy of which was likewise directed to the chapter of Lincoln, to desire them to give him a discharge. See Re 27. The charters Roger, abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, who had of exemption of St. Au- contested so hard for the exemption of his house, was, at gustine's, last, obliged to produce his evidence. It seems the pope Canterbury, most proba- had ordered him to give this satisfaction. He was very unfeit. willing to come to this test; neither was he at all impolitick bly counter II. in his backwardness; for, as Gervase of Canterbury informs HENRY us, the two charters he produced, one of which he pretended K. of Eng. was king Ethelbert's and the other archbishop Augustine's, these two charters, I say, had both strong marks of forgery upon them. The first of them, as Gervase continues, appeared rased and interlined; the other had a modern face, and was very unlike the age to which it pretended. The learned sir Henry Spelman argues against the genuineness of these charters, from the metal form and impression upon the seal, from the figure and character of the inscrip- A. D. 1181. tion, from the style and phraseology, and from the manner of the date; not to mention that the conveyance of privileges Spelman, by instruments in writing, was not thus early in use among 1. p. 122 et the Saxon kings. Concil. vol. deinc. This year, Roger, archbishop of York, finding himself The death of Roger, under a distemper which was likely to prove mortal, sent for archbishop several abbots and parish priests of his province, and made of York. them a sort of executors for distributing his estate among the poor. He sent five hundred pounds, for this use, to the archbishop of Rheims, and the same proportion of charity to the archbishop of Rouën, and other bishops in Normandy. He likewise sent considerable sums to the archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans, to relieve the indigent of that province. And thus, after he had disposed of all his effects to charitable uses, he removed from his country seat to York, where he died upon the 1st of December, after he had sat seven-and-twenty years. Nubrigensis gives him the character of a person of learning and elocution, and one that understood the world very well; but as to those things which concerned his function and the government of the Church, he was not altogether so unexceptionable. By the way, the archbishop was no friend to the monasteries, which seems to have given this historian a prejudice against him. When the king heard of the archbishop's death, he ordered his officers to enquire in whose hands his effects lay, and make seizure of them. These men being informed that Hugh, bishop of Durham, had received five hundred marks of the archbishop's money, they made their demand. The bishop told them he had disposed of it to the blind, the lame, the dumb, and other indigent people, according to the arch- Hoveden, bishop's order, and that he would never endeavour to re- Nubrigens. Hoveden, 350. Nubrigens. Annal. fol. 1. 3. c. 5. fol. 351. RICH ARD, cover it. The king, displeased with this answer, seized the Abp. Cant. castle of Durham, and distressed the bishop in several other instances. Upon the death of this archbishop the see continued vacant ten years. The death of Johannes His charac ter. 392. To this year we may add the death of Johannes SarisbuSarisburi riensis, so called from his being born at Salisbury. His ensis. genius, and the improvements of his education, were extraordinary; insomuch that he was reckoned a man of the first class for languages and all sorts of learning, and was the ornament of the age he lived in. The popes Eugenius III. Adrian IV., and Alexander III., had a particular regard for him; and archbishop Becket made him one of his most intimate friends. He followed the fortune of this prelate in his exile, and no offers of preferment from the court could tempt him to leave him. After the death of Becket he was made bishop of Chartres, in the province of Sens. His conduct was remarkably regular, and he was no less admirable in his life than in his learning. He had a great share of courage with the rest of his good qualities, and assumed a noble freedom in his reproofs on persons of the highest station. Where he thought the interest of virtue and religion concerned, no regard of quality or friendship could bribe or overawe him. He wrote the Polycraticon, or de Nugis Curialium; a collection of letters, and several other tracts, too long to mention; some historians assign his death to the Pits de Il- next year. lustr. Angl. This year pope Alexander died, and was succeeded by Cave's Hist. Lucius III. Script. Liter. part 1. About this time, Arnulphus, bishop of Lisieux in Normandy, who had formerly employed his pen and his interest for king Henry against archbishop Becket, fell under the disfavour of that prince. It seems this discountenance was such that it put him to some difficulty, whether he should resign his bishoprick, or stand the shock of the court. Being thus unresolved, he wrote into England to Petrus Petrus Ble-Blesensis for his advice. Blesensis sent him his opinion with great honesty and freedom. ter to the I shall mention some bishop of part of it. First, he puts the bishop in mind that his Lisieux about reage and the declension of his strength might go some way signing his in the excuse of his retirement; that there were precedents for this practice in antiquity. That when a pre sensis's let see. II. late was worn out with age and infirmity, he used to be HENRY relieved with an assistant: thus St. Augustine was made K. of Eng. Valerius's coadjutor in the see of Hippo. "But if you put into port," says he, "to avoid a court storm, if the displeasure of your prince, or any other disturbance, prevails with you to quit and throw up your government, such motives are by no means reputable. To sink under difficulties, and retire from the face of danger, is an argument of a coward, and by no means agrees with the firmness and fortitude of your character: besides, if excess of caution, and infirmity of thought, should make you give way, your very retirement would be a burthen to you. The consideration of your weakness and irresolution would afflict you, and you would never be able to bear up against your own recollection. In short, never desert your post upon the single score of hardship; but if you are solicitous about your prince's favour, a moderate share of application and observance will easily recover it. nal. tom. 4. "But if you are conscious of coming into your bishoprick by any indefensible methods, it will be most advisable for you to resign, and not to retain any advantage unfairly gained." Alford AnThis prelate resigned his see soon after, though, as pars poster. Hoveden reports, not altogether upon the motives of Petrus P. 309. Blesensis. He was succeeded by the treasurer of York, preferred thither by king Henry. Hoveden, fol. 350. A. D. 1182. Upon the death of Walter, bishop of Rochester, Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, entered upon the manors and estates of that see, the barony of that bishoprick being held Chronic. of the church of Canterbury. Gervas. col. 1462. 1464. held his ba archbishop Ralph, the chief minister, sent the archbishop an order The bishop to desist, and not to seize the temporalities of the see of of Rochester Rochester without the king's leave. Upon this dispute, rony of the commissioners were dispatched to the king in Normandy, of Canterwho returned with this answer; that the archbishop of Can-bury. terbury, according to ancient custom, might lawfully enter Ibid. upon the revenues of the see of Rochester in a vacancy, and dispose of the bishoprick to what person he thought fit. This contest being over, the archbishop made Gualleran, archdeacon of Baïeux, bishop of Rochester. He was chosen in the chapter-house of Rochester, whereas, by ancient Ibid. col. usage, the election ought to have been made at Canterbury: 1468-9. |