Joseph Armitage Robinson

“ Archdeacons have no power in prebends over canons or their clerks or parishioners: for the canons themselves are archdeacons in their own prebends, and they must present their clerks to the dean for orders, and the dean must present them to the bishop. Hence it is plain that it is quite contrary to our customs that priests or clerks of canons should be summoners or apparitors to archdeacons, since they owe them no kind of subjection: but the churches and chapels which are in our diocese, whether on our own estates or not, are entirely free from the vexation and servitude of archdeacons. ”

“ When we insert the knife of criticism we shall discover that many pages of Hearne's careful edition are filled with inventions of a later date, which must no longer be allowed to blot the reputation of the great historian. It is fortunate for us that the so-called third edition of the Gesta Regum contains large insertions which run word for word with passages in the De Antiquitate; so that, if we accept the view that this edition was made by the author himself between the years 1135 and 1140, a valuable instrument of criticism is at once placed in our hands. ”

“ But with eminent ability and indomitable courage they succeeded in identifying their cause with that of the papal jurisdiction in England, and showed by the sufferings which they wittingly drew upon themselves that they would die sooner than yield. They were confronted by an archbishop, pious, austere, and as unyielding as themselves, supported by the entire episcopate, a few names only excepted; and they had to deal with a subtle king, who held himself in the background at first, but presently declared that he would sooner lose his crown than see the monks victorious. ”

“ Innocent III, who never let an opportunity pass, saw his way to make the election of the primate of all England a matter to be settled between the pope and the monks of Canterbury. To the English people this was intolerable. The great justiciar, Geoffrey fitz Peter, who diligently sought peace, rose nevertheless at a critical moment and carried all the barons with him in refusing to counsel the king to forgo the proviso 'saving the royal rights and liberties'. Under any other king the nation must have won. ”

“ I venture to submit that in this great insertion into the Gesta Regum, when we have replaced a single passage, we have the genuine form of the first part of the De Antiquitate. And I would ask any scholar who inclines to question this verdict to set himself the task of translating into English the first few sections of the book as it stands. He will find that his pen runs easily enough as he renders the dull and unidiomatic Latin of the later writers, but that he will have to pause and think before he can do justice to the cultivated and ambitious style of the great historian. ”

“ In Sicily they sought to ruin me by offers of bishoprics: you take the opposite course, and after cheating me of more than one prebend, you have supplanted me also in the provostship. God spare you from the fate of the Sicilians: for I wish you no harm.'
We shall see that the provostship of Chartres, on which Peter seems to have had some kind of claim, was again to escape him to his intense chagrin: meanwhile he left France for Normandy, and betook himself once more, as we have already observed, to Rotrou, the archbishop of Rouen. ”

“ The great abbey of Glastonbury lay in his new diocese. As the archbishop was the abbot of the monks of his cathedral church of Canterbury, and as Winchester, Worcester, and Bath itself had a like arrangement, why should Savary not be the abbot of Glastonbury and make that also a cathedral church? There would be no more quarrels then between bishop and abbot, and the bishop of Bath and Glastonbury would be a great prelate indeed. So the emperor made the king agree to this new proposal. ”

“ Happily there is a business side to the rhapsody which may provide a clue. The isle of Glastonbury, Mother of the Saints, the Second Rome, had in virtue of this precious charter privileges of indulgence to offer to her pilgrims, worthy of her high antiquity and her divine consecration. Ten years—some said thirty—gained by St Phagan and St Deruvian from Pope Eleutherus; twelve more gained by St Patrick from Pope Celestine: while for those who made the toilsome ascent of the Tor St Phagan and St Deruvian had gained thirty more. ”

“ In the service of Archbishop Baldwin Peter of Blois was destined to play a prominent part in an ecclesiastical struggle, which but for the loss of Jerusalem, the death of the pope, and the death of the king might even have brought about the severance of the Church of England from the papacy. It was only the monks of a single monastery who were fighting to preserve privileges of exemption to which they had in fact no longstanding claim. ”

“ But it has become the fashion to throw aside William of Malmesbury's Enquiry into the Antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury as a careless piece of work hastily put together to flatter the vanity of the Glastonbury monks when, for some reason which remains obscure to us, the great historian had for a time taken up his abode in their house. ”

“ They moved the bishop's seat from the country to the town: they built new churches on an unexampled scale: they assigned part of the estates to the cathedral clergy, as prebends for individual canons and as a common fund to be divided among those who were actually in residence. An independent corporation was thus created, with a dean at the head as president of the chapter and ordinary of the church, a precentor to look after the services and the music, a chancellor to rule the schools and provide the books, and a treasurer to care for the vestments and other valuables. ”

“ Peter praises the bishop for thus caring for the clergy of Blois (clerus Blesensis) , who as a body have been scattered and proscribed: he must not however forget something else which he had promised, and which is Peter's own secret: 'You will give your voice the voice of power,' he says again; 'there will be no Yea and Nay with you.' He adds that his archbishop had bidden him write a memorial of the blessed Thomas; but happily he had found that John of Salisbury had done it. ”

“ The prebends were too small to attract men of distinction unless they could be held in plurality; and the king's business, far more than the archbishop's, continually drew off the abler canons. In 1215, the last year in which Richard Poore was dean, his reforms were embodied in a 'new constitution', which required that a fourth part of the canons, besides the quatuor personae, should always be in residence; if for reasonable cause (other than the admitted exemptions) a canon did not keep his turn, he was to pay one-fifth of the value of his prebend. ”

“ The Glastonbury charters offer several examples of the combination of two charters in a single document in the tenth century, perhaps for mere convenience of use in the courts of law. Fraud is a motive which seldom can be proved, though there are a few undoubted instances, where privileges are claimed or where legendary history called for corroboration. ”

“ The king had been outwitted by a better diplomatist than himself, and it would have been well if he had taken his defeat with a good grace. But when the monks at home confirmed the action of their envoys, his hand fell heavily upon them, and he taunted them with perjury, thereby admitting that he had tampered with the electors. To the pope he replied that he would have nothing to say to a man of whom he knew no more than that he had lived his life among his enemies in France. ”

“ It was probably between March and October of the year 1191 that Peter of Blois had a long and severe illness. At the close of it he wrote a letter of apology to the prior and monks of Canterbury for the part which he had taken against them (Ep. 233) . He throws the whole blame on the late king: 'He constrained and compelled me to act for the archbishop against you, yea, against God and my own self; and to toil for eight months in the Roman court at my own charges and in continual peril of my life. ”

“ In November 1180 the last Celtic archbishop of Dublin had passed away, and the king determined to take the opportunity thus offered of appointing in his place a faithful official of his own, one of his 'new men', and so creating a fresh power in the conquered territory which should counterbalance the Dower of his nobles. In September 1181 some of the Dublin clergy met the king at the abbey of Evesham, and John Cumin, 'his clerk and a member of his household', was given them as their new archbishop. ”

“ He set himself at once to recover some of the property rights of his see which his predecessor had alienated; and he obtained sanction for his acts from Lucius III. He then initiated a scheme which, as he claimed, and doubtless with some justice, had been contemplated by St Thomas and even long ago by St Anselm—the erection of a collegiate church in the suburbs of Canterbury. It was to be dedicated not only (as they had intended) to St Stephen, but now also to St Thomas as well; for the English martyr had as yet no church of his own in his native land. ”

“ Peter tells us that he himself left England with the king (Ep. 87) ; but it is probable that he soon returned. About this time he had got the deanery of Wolverhampton, a royal peculiar. Every one was getting appointments from the king, who sold everything to raise money for the Crusade. But the bigger things cost much, and Peter was too honest to pay anything at all: this may have been given to him as a solatium. He writes to Longchamp, the new chancellor, to implore his aid against the sheriff of Stafford, who was contravening the ancient privileges of the church of Wolverhampton. ”

“ On the day before William of St Faith the precentor of Wells—William of no faith ('Willelmus sine fide dictus') , as the monks called him in the letter which they wrote to their absent abbot—went to Glastonbury and obtained by violence the key of the gate. On Bishop Savary's arrival the monks appealed to the pope: but the bishop broke open the doors of the church, and 'having indecently arrayed the canons of Wells and other seculars in the vestments of the abbey' he entered in procession. Some eight 'traitor' monks met him, and the ceremony was performed. ”

“ But he also vigorously insists, pleading many and great authorities, that it is more fitting that an archdeacon should have only the status of a deacon. In the Roman church he had seen many men of distinction who never passed beyond the diaconate: the pope himself (Celestine III, 1191-8) had more than once told him that he had served as a deacon sixty-five years, before he was called to the pontificate. Peter might have instanced Thomas of Canterbury and John Cumin of Dublin as archdeacons of his own day who never sought the priesthood until they had been elected archbishops. ”

“ In the spring of 669, Benedict had returned from Rome in company with Theodore the new archbishop, who retained him at Canterbury for two years in charge of St Augustine's abbey. If Glastonbury fell vacant about that time, by the death of the British abbot Bregored, we may well believe that, on the advice of Theodore and Benedict Biscop, the king may have appointed such a man as Beorhtwald, whom Bede describes as learned in the Scriptures and very highly trained alike in ecclesiastical and monastic discipline. [8] The position of Glastonbury would be exceptionally difficult. ”

“ The intervening period includes Peter's year of adventure in the Sicilian court, the most curious and exciting incident of his whole career.
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, founded in the eleventh century by the heroic sons of Tancred de Hauteville, was now at the height of its prosperity. It included the Southern States of Italy—Calabria, Apulia, and the principality of Naples. Under Roger II and William I it had become one of the strongest and best administered of existing kingdoms, exercising great influence not only in the West but also in the East. ”

“ The account which William of Malmesbury, in the great insertion in the third edition of his Gesta Regum, has given us of the earliest history of Glastonbury is exceedingly cautious. 'Annals of good authority' tell of missionaries sent into Britain by Pope Eleutherus at the request of K. Lucius. Their names we do not know, but tradition assures us that they built the Old Church of St Mary at Glastonbury. There are indeed writings which take it back still further to actual disciples of Christ: and this is not impossible ”

“ The king's excommunication followed.
At this point we lose sight of Jocelin. His brother Hugh was sent by the king to receive consecration at the hands of the archbishop of Rouen. But he went to Stephen de Langton, and was consecrated by him at Melun on 20 Dec. 1209. The king immediately seized on the estates of the bishopric of Lincoln. We may suppose that Jocelin left the country about this time. The king's excommunication had changed the situation: the last hope of a peaceful settlement was gone. Excommunication must fall on his own head, if he dared serve the king any longer. ”

“ You want to gain by my absence rather than to profit by my presence. The fine of one-fifth is monstrous, when I cannot possibly reside. This was not the meaning of the constitution of Osmund and of Jocelin: they wanted to bring into residence the holders of the larger prebends, who could afford to build houses at Salisbury. I appeal against this exaction to the legate.' The legate doubtless was, as indeed one MS asserts, Peter's own lord and master, Hubert Walter the archbishop. ”

“ What relation this Hugh was to the two episcopal brothers does not appear, but there is reason to think that Nicholas of Wells, whose house adjoined that which Hugh gave with Bishop Jocelin's consent to be a canonical house, was Bishop Jocelin's son, born no doubt before his father became a bishop. For we have the charter [23] by which Nicholas had already given his own house at Wells 'ante magnam portam canonicorum' [24] to be permanently a canonical house; and in it he addresses the bishop as 'venerabili patri meo J. dei gracia Bathonie episcopo'. ”

“ William of Malmesbury identifies the 'Beoruuard' of the pyramid with 'Berwaldus', who, he tells us later, succeeded Abbot Hemgisl and ruled the abbey from 705 till 712. If he is right in his conjecture that the pyramid contained the bones of the persons named thereon, the absence of Beorhtwald and Hemgisl, Beorwald's predecessors, will be explained by the fact that the former became archbishop and was buried in St Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury, while the latter rested, as he tells us presently, in the Old Church itself. ”

“ When we come to Hemgisl's successor, Abbot Beorhwald, we have for the first time the advantage of evidence from outside, not derived from Glastonbury charters or traditions. About the year 710 some trouble in Wessex led to the meeting of a council of ecclesiastics, who finally sent a trusty messenger to Beorhtwald, the archbishop of Canterbury, to seek his approval of their action. ”

“ The monks now raised again their lamentable cry. The king, several of the bishops, and various monasteries and chapters petitioned the pope to restore the abbey to its ancient independence; and we are glad to have a letter from Dean Alexander and the canons of Wells, of whom Jocelin the future bishop was one, assuring the pope that Bishop Savary's scheme, however well-intentioned on the part of those who had carried it through, had proved a disastrous failure. ”

“ Glastonbury necessarily came under English abbots with the Benedictine rule; but it never ceased to be a centre of Celtic pilgrimage, and as a temple of reconciliation it must have played no small part in the blending of the two races. Under Ina the great Wessex diocese was divided, and Aldhelm, the learned abbot of Malmesbury, who had corresponded with K. Geraint on the debated subject of the date of Easter, became the first bishop of the new diocese 'west of Selwood'. ”