LAN- bishop having a good opinion of them for their spirit and Abp. Cant. resolution, winked at their encroaching humour, and gave them farther marks of his esteem. Leobine happened to envy one Liulf, a noble Saxon, who was very much in the bishop's favour, one of the judges in his courts, and by whose advice he was governed in most things relating to the bench. This Liulf, so remarkable for his knowledge and probity, was assassinated by Gilebert at Leobine's instigaDunelm. de tion. The bishop was very much troubled at the hearing of ad An. 1080. it, and offered Liulf's relations to prosecute the melefactor, Malmsb.de and bring him to his trial. By the way, this Leobine pretif. 1. 3. fol. tended himself mightily outraged by Liulf, and by this Gest. Reg. Gest. Pon 158. means persuaded Gilebert to march at the head of some forces against him, which he accordingly did, and besetting the house, dispatched that noble person, and almost all his family. The Northumbrians were so enraged at this barbarity that the trial of Leobine would not satisfy them. They looked upon the bishop as a party in the crime, because he entertained both the murderers in his palace with the same countenance as formerly. Having this ill opinion of the bishop, they refused the forms of justice, and grew mad and mutinous. Gilebert, who was in the church with the bishop, being willing to preserve his master's life, though at the loss of his own, went out to the mob, and was immediately stabbed the bishop, who ventured himself the same way, had the same fate; as for Leobine, he refused to come out of the church till they set it on fire, and then the people Dunelm. et took their full revenge, and hewed him in pieces. The king being informed of this violence, sent down his brother Odo, bishop of Baieux, with a considerable force, and thus the Northumbrians were severely chastised, and a miserable ravage made in the country. Malmsb. ib. In the year 1083, there happened a tragical quarrel between the monks of Glassenbury and Thurstin their abbot. This Thurstin had been a monk at Caen in Normandy, and was preferred to Glassenbury by the king's favour; but was a person of very slender conduct and abilities: however, he resolved to show himself a governor, and amongst other instances of mismanagement, he attempted to throw out the Gregorian office, and introduce a manner of singing lately invented by one William, a monk of Fescamp in Normandy. WILLIAM I. Besides this innovation, he held the monks to their rule with unusual rigour; made them retrench in their diet, and K. of Eng. embezzled the treasure of the house. This mismanagement occasioned great expostulation and misunderstanding, and at last they came from words to blows. And the abbot bringing in a party of soldiers into the monastery, killed three monks that had taken sanctuary under the altar, and wounded eighteen more. The monks finding themselves thus barbarously attacked, stood upon their defence, and snatching up benches and candlesticks, wounded some of the soldiers. The news of this riot coming to the court, they were brought upon their trial before the king, and here by the sentence of the court, the abbot was sent back to Normandy, and the monks removed from their house. The next year, or thereabouts, Hugo de Orivalle, bishop of London, departed this life. He was preferred to that see by the nomination of king William in the year 1075. He had the reputation of a person of great abilities; for which reason the Conqueror joined him in commission with Aldred, archbishop of York, who with the assistance of twelve of the most sufficient, and best qualified in each county, were ordered to make search for a body of the old laws of England, called St. Edward the Confessor's Laws: these they were ordered to set down in writing from the report of the twelve men above-mentioned, who were all sworn to give in a true account. Brompton, Chron. p. 978. Malmsb. de Rudburn p. 259. Odo's character from To return to Odo; this prelate was the Conqueror's tif. 1. 2. fol. brother by the mother's side, and made earl of Kent by him. 134. Gulielmus Pictaviensis gives him a great character: repre- Hist. Angl. Sacr. pars 1. sents him as a person very well qualified for Church and secular business: that he managed his diocese of Baieux to great commendation; and that when he was a young man, his understanding was improved to the ripeness of old Pictavienage; that he was very serviceable to the public upon all oc- sis. casions, and a great ornament to his country; that in the synods he appeared a good divine; and when property and civil right was in question, he delivered himself with great learning and elocution. As for largeness of mind, and hospitable reception, there was scarce his equal in all France. He was likewise very useful at a council of war, though he declined the fighting part upon the score of his character. 254. Pictaviensis Gest. Gulielmi Ducis, p. 209. Inter Historiæ Normannorum Scriptores. LANFRANC, He followed his brother's fortune, and attended him in his Abp. Cant. expedition into England, and always continued very firm to his interest. Thus far, Pictaviensis, who served under the Conqueror in the field, and afterwards took orders, and officiated in his chapel. A. D. 1085. Ordericus Vitalis, who was born in the Conqueror's reign, does not give so favourable a representation of Odo, but reports him as a person of an unbounded ambition; but it may be this abatement of character may only affect the latter part of his life. This historian relates, that when the see of Rome was void by the death of Hildebrand, some Romans, that pretended to astrology, gave out that one Odo would succeed Gregory in the papacy. Odo, bishop of Baieux, and earl of Kent, being informed of this prediction, began to undervalue his present dignities and grasp at Odo endeav- the popedom. To make this project practicable, he sent ours to gain his agents to Rome immediately, purchased a palace there, the popedom. furnished it in a magnificent manner, and bribed the great men at Rome to appear for him at the election. And now, conceiving his design well laid, he engaged Hugh, earl of Chester, and the greatest part of his principal tenants, to attend him into Italy, and assist him in the undertaking. These Normans receiving large promises from the bishop, and being desirous of seeing foreign countries, engaged to put themselves in a military equipage and go along with him: and concluding they should have a large share in his favour and successes, they designed to sell their estates, and take Ordericus leave of England. Vitalis Ec cles. Hist. 647. King William being advertised of this preparation, was 1. 7. p. 646, sensible his kingdom would receive prejudice by exporting so much treasure, and by losing the service of so many Normans of figure. To prevent this inconvenience, he resolved to give a check to his brother's designs. To this purpose he sailed with all expedition from Normandy into England, and met his brother unexpectedly in the Isle of Wight, where this prelate was ready to embark for France with a very splendid equipage. The king putting a stop to the voyage, summoned the great men to his court, and delivered himself to them to this purpose: A. D. 1085. "He acquainted them that, the affairs of Normandy requiring his appearing in person, he trusted his brother Odo WILLIAM I. with the administration in England; that he had met with unexpected rebellions and great disturbances in Normandy, K. of Eng. but, by the blessing of God, had brought his affairs there to a happy conclusion. That during his stay in that duchy, his brother, the bishop of Baieux, had very much misbehaved himself in England, oppressed the subjects in an unprecedented manner, and robbed the churches of their estates settled upon them by his predecessors. And as for the forces, says he, which I left to defend the country against the Danes and Irish, he has endeavoured to debauch them from my service, and carry them into Italy, without so much as acquainting me with it. I am extremely troubled for this disorderly management, and especially for the damage the Church of God has suffered; the Church, I say, whom all the Christian princes before me have been so solicitous to cherish and protect.--And, notwithstanding we have so many pious precedents of the munificence of the Saxon kings to direct our imitation, my brother, who had the government of the whole kingdom put into his hands, has harassed the Church, oppressed the poor, spirited away my troops with chimerical expectations, and by his arbitrary exactions has impoverished the whole kingdom, and put it out of order. I desire, therefore, you would give me your advice, and direct me in the measures to be taken upon this important occasion. When the king perceived the nobility were afraid of Odo's greatness, and declined the delivering their opinion, he told them, "No man's quality ought to be a protection for his crimes; and that no single person was to be spared to the prejudice of the public." And having said this, he ordered them to apprehend his brother, and keep him in safe custody, for fear of farther disturbance. And when none of them would venture to lay hands upon a bishop, the king seized him himself. Odo insisted upon his being a Odo is arclergyman, and that no bishop ought to be tried by any per- king, and son but the pope. The king replied, he did not seize him imprisoned as bishop of Baieux, but as earl of Kent; that under that dy. last distinction he was subject to his courts of justice, and that he expected an account of the management of his commission. Odo being thus seized, was transported into Nor rested by the in Norman LANFRANC, Abp. Cant. Orderic. Vital. ibid. 255. mandy, and imprisoned in the castle of Rouën during the king's life. About this time the order of the Carthusians was founded by Bruno, born at Cologne, and canon of Rheims. This person, with six of his companions, retired to the solitude of Chartreuse in Dauphiné, assigned him by Hugh, bishop of Grenoble. It has been commonly reported, that this retirement of Bruno was occasioned by a prodigy in Notredame church in Paris, where the body of a famous doctor, called Diocre, raised his head from the bier at his burial, and cried out, "that he was arraigned, tried, and condemned by the just judgment of God." This story, notwithstanding the commonness of it, is probably a mistake: for Bruno himself, in a letter which he wrote from his monastery to Raoul le Verd, a dignitary of the Church of Rheims, presses him to turn monk, to make good their vow at Rheims; but says nothing of this prodigy, which, had it been true, would have been a powerful motive for the performance of his promise. Guibert, in the life of Bruno, relates that after the death of Gervase, archbishop of Rheims, one Manasses procured that see by simony; and to secure himself in his ill-gotten preferment, raised a company of guards, who attended him at every motion. That Bruno being much disturbed at this disorder, went off from Rheims with some of the clerks of the cathedral, and retired to a desert in Dauphiné. Farther, Peter, of Clugni, called the Venerable, mentioning the order of the Carthusians, instituted in his time by Bruno and his companions, relates, that these hermits were persuaded to renounce the world, by observing the irregularities of several monks, who lived in a scandalous neglect of their profession: but this Peter is altogether silent about the prodigy of the man raised from the dead, notwithstanding he had acquainted the reader in his preface that his design was to write an account of all the miracles he was certainly informed of. The Carthusians' rule obliges them to great self-denial and severity. They wear sackcloth next to them; never eat flesh; fast on Fridays, with bread and water. They generally eat alone in their cells, excepting upon some particular holidays. They are bound to almost perpetual |
