KING STEPHEN’S ATTACK ON THE BISHOPS (1139).
Source.—William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., pp. 547–555. (Rolls Series.)
In the year 1139 after the Incarnation of our Lord, the venom of malice, which king Stephen’s heart had long been fostering, at length burst forth openly. Rumours were spreading about England that earl Robert was on the eve of coming from Normandy with his sister;[37] and in expectation thereof many were disaffected towards the king, not only in will but in deed, whereupon he repaired his losses by wronging others. Many were seized at court against the king’s honour, on mere suspicion of supporting the opposite party, and forced to surrender their castles and submit to whatsoever conditions he chose. There were at that time in England two exceeding powerful bishops, Roger of Salisbury, and his brother’s son, Alexander of Lincoln. Alexander had built the castle of Newark, for the defence and honour of the bishopric, as he said. Roger, who wished to display magnificence in the building of castles, had erected more imposing fortifications at Sherborne and Devizes, covering a large area of ground with his buildings. He had begun a castle at Malmesbury in the churchyard itself, hardly a stone’s throw from the principal church. The castle of Salisbury, though it was the king’s own property, had passed into his keeping by grant of king Henry, and had been surrounded with a wall. Some of the powerful laity, stirred to envy that they should be surpassed by clerks in their wealth of heaped-up treasure and the size of their towns, cherished in their hearts a sullen jealousy. So they poured their discontents into the king’s ear, urging that it would all unquestionably turn to the king’s destruction, since, as soon as the empress came, they would welcome their lady by surrendering their castles, drawn to her by the memory of her father’s favours; they must therefore be at once forestalled and constrained to yield up their fortresses.... The king, though too favourably inclined to these advisers, for some time pretended not to listen to their attractive proposals, easing the bitterness of postponement either by his regard for the holy office of the bishops, or, as I incline to think, by his fear of the odium involved. In the end he only put off the execution of the policy thus urged upon him until the first favourable opportunity. That arose in the following manner.
A council of the nobility was held at Oxford on 24 June, which the prelates aforesaid attended. The bishop of Salisbury was most unwilling to go. I heard him say: “By my Lady St. Mary, I know not why, but I have no liking for this journey. This I know, that I shall be of as much use in the court as a foal in a battle.” For so his heart foreboded ills to come. Fortune, as it turned out, seemed to favour the king’s desires; a riot arose between the men of the bishops and the men of Alan, count of Brittany, over a claim to quarters; the end was melancholy, for the men of the bishop of Salisbury, who were then sitting at table, left their meal unfinished and jumped up to fight. The affair was settled with curses first and swords afterwards. The retainers of Alan were driven off, his nephew barely escaping alive, while the bishops’ party did not secure a bloodless victory, many being wounded and one knight killed. The king seized the opportunity and ordered the original instigators to summon the bishops to satisfy his court for their retainers’ breach of the king’s peace; the satisfaction demanded was the delivery of the keys of their castles as pledges of their good faith. They were ready to give satisfaction, but hesitated to surrender the castles, whereupon he commanded that they should be closely confined, to prevent their departure. So he took them to Devizes, bishop Roger unbound, but the chancellor, his nephew (or more than his nephew), in fetters; his object was to take the castle, which had been built at a great and almost incalculable cost, not for the glory of the church, as the prelate himself alleged, but, in sober truth, to its detriment. Upon investment, the castles of Salisbury, Sherborne and Malmesbury were surrendered to the king; Devizes itself was given up after three days, bishop Roger voluntarily imposing abstinence upon himself, that by his personal suffering he might induce the bishop of Ely, who held the castle, to yield.[38] Alexander, the bishop of Lincoln, gave way also without more ado, purchasing his delivery by the surrender of the castles of Newark and Sleaford.
This action of the king was widely discussed from opposite standpoints. Some said that the bishops were rightly dispossessed of their castles, because they had defied the canons in erecting them; they ought to be preachers of the gospel of peace, not builders of houses that might harbour the authors of evil. This view was urged and further amplified by the arguments of Hugh, archbishop of Rouen, who stoutly championed the king with all his eloquence. Others said the contrary, and this party had the support of Henry, bishop of Winchester, legate in England of the apostolic see, brother of king Stephen.... “If bishops,” he said, “in any wise forsake the way of justice, the canons, not the king, must be their judge; they ought to have been deprived of no possession without a public ecclesiastical council; the king had acted not from zeal for righteousness, but for his own private benefit, since he had not given the castles back to the churches, at whose charges and on whose lands they had been built, but had delivered them to laymen, and those by no means favourable to religion.” He urged these considerations in the king’s presence both privately and publicly, pressing him to deliver and make restitution to the prelates, but his labour was wasted, his plea ignored. Wherefore, determined to exert the force of the canons, he summoned his brother instantly to appear before the council which was to be holden on 29 August at Winchester.
On the appointed day almost all the bishops of England, with Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury ... came to Winchester.... The bull of Pope Innocent was first read in the council, whereby from March 1, if I remember rightly, he had delegated part of his charge to the lord bishop of Winchester as his legate in England.... Next followed in the council the legate’s address in Latin, prepared for the learned, touching the disgraceful seizure of the bishops, of whom the bishop of Salisbury had been taken in the chamber of the court, and the bishop of Lincoln in his lodging, while the bishop of Ely, fearing a like fate, had escaped disaster by a hasty flight to Devizes; it was a scandalous crime that the king should have been so led astray, at the instigation of others, as to order violent hands to be laid on his men, especially bishops, in the peace of his court. To the king’s dishonour was added an offence against Heaven, to wit, that under the cloak of the bishops’ guilt, churches were robbed of their possessions. He was so indignant at the king’s outrage against God’s law, that he would rather himself suffer great inconvenience to his person and his possessions than that the episcopal dignity should be so basely humiliated. He had many times warned the king to make amends for his sin; and at last the king had consented to the summoning of a council. The archbishop and the rest should take counsel together as to necessary action; he would not fail in the execution of their advice either out of love for the king, his own brother, or out of fear of losing his possessions, or even of risking his life.
While he was gradually enlarging upon this theme, the king, confident in his own cause, sent earls to the council to ask why he had been summoned.... They were accompanied by one Aubrey de Vere, a man well versed in all kinds of legal causes.... The sum of his charges was as follows: bishop Roger had committed many offences against king Stephen; he had scarcely ever been to the court without riots being stirred up by his men, presuming on his power; as often at other times, so lately at Oxford they had assaulted the men and even the nephew of count Alan.... The bishop of Lincoln had instigated his men to riot, out of his old hatred against count Alan. The bishop of Salisbury secretly supported the king’s enemies and only disguised his treachery for the moment; the king had many unquestionable proofs of it, the chief being that he refused a single night’s lodging to Roger de Mortemer and the king’s knights led by him, when they were in mortal terror of the Bristol rebels. Everybody was saying that as soon as the Empress should have come, he would attach himself to her with his nephews and his castles. Therefore Roger was seized not as a bishop, but as the king’s servant, who had at once administered his affairs and received his wages. The king had not taken the castles by force, but both the bishops had voluntarily surrendered them to escape the accusation of the rioting which they had incited in the court. The king had found in the castles a small sum of money which was lawfully his, for bishop Roger had collected it in the time of king Henry, the king’s uncle and predecessor, from the rents due at the royal Exchequer. The bishop had willingly yielded up both money and castles, for fear of his offences against the king, and the king had no lack of witnesses thereto. For his part, the king was willing that his agreement with the bishops should remain unimpaired.
Bishop Roger exclaimed in reply that he had never been king Stephen’s minister, and had never received his wages. He threatened, moreover, in his anger, thinking shame to give way to his misfortunes, that if he could not obtain justice in that council for the property wrested from him, he would seek it in the hearing of a higher court....
So much was said on both sides, and at the king’s request the cause was adjourned to the next day, and then on the morrow postponed to the following day until the coming of the archbishop of Rouen. When he came and all were in suspense to hear his opinion, he said that he allowed that the bishops might have castles, if they could prove by the canons that they might rightfully hold them; but since they could not, it was the height of wickedness for them to fight against the canons. “Grant,” he said, “that they may lawfully have them; surely, in troubled times, it is the duty of the nobles, as among other nations, to hand over all the keys of their fortresses to the will of the king, who must make war for the peace of all. Therefore the whole argument of the bishops falls to the ground; either it is wrong according to the canons for them to have castles, or, if this be permitted by the king’s indulgence, they ought to hand over the keys, yielding to the necessity of the situation.”
To this the aforesaid pleader, Aubrey, added, that the king had been informed of the bishops’ intention, expressed among themselves, to send some of their number to Rome against the king. “And the king,” he said, “recommends that none of you venture to do it, for if anyone should leave England against his will and the dignity of the realm, he will perhaps find it less easy to return. Furthermore he himself, seeing himself aggrieved, appeals you at the court of Rome.”
The king’s despatch of this message, part warning, part threat, made his purpose obvious, and in consequence the council broke up, the king refusing to suffer canonical censure, and the bishops failing to execute their plans against him, and that for two reasons, first, because it would have been overbold to excommunicate a prince without the Pope’s knowledge, and second, because they heard, and some saw, swords unsheathed about them. The struggle was no mere word-play, but a matter of life and death. None the less, the legate and the archbishop did not refrain from pursuing their duty; they humbly knelt before the king in his chamber and prayed him to take pity on the church and on his own soul and reputation, and not to allow a schism to arise between state and church. He courteously rose, but, although he moderated his disapproval of their action, he made no effort to fulfil his good promises, following rather his evil advisers.