Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy

by Charles W. David

The anonymous tract De Iniusta Vexatione Willelmi Episcopi Primi[2] is worthy of more attention and of a more critical study than it has yet received.[3] Since it gives the only detailed account which we possess of the dispute between William Rufus and William of Saint-Calais, bishop of Durham, and of the trial of the latter before the curia regis at Salisbury upon a charge of treason in connection with the rebellion of 1088, final judgment as to the bishop’s guilt or innocence must in large measure depend upon a just estimate of its value. Freeman was very reluctant to recognize its high authority as compared with his favorite ‘southern writers,’ the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, Florence of Worcester, and William of Malmesbury;[4] but his distrust appears to be unwarranted.

The tract is manifestly made up of two distinct parts: (1) the main body of an original libellus, concerned exclusively with the bishop’s ‘vexation,’ and beginning (p. 171), “Rex Willelmus iunior dissaisivit Dunelmensem episcopum,” and ending (p. 194), “rex permisit episcopo transitum”; and (2) introductory and concluding chapters, which contain a brief sketch of the bishop’s career before and after his unfortunate quarrel with the king and his expulsion from the realm. The joints at which the separate narratives are pieced together are apparent upon the most cursory examination. Not only is there a striking contrast between the detailed and documentary treatment found in the body of the libellus and the bare summaries which make up the introductory and concluding paragraphs, but the reader is actually warned of the transition in the last sentence of the introduction by the phrase (p. 171), “quam rem sequens libellus manifestat ex ordine.” The two parts of the tract are evidently derived from different sources and written at different times by different authors.

The libellus properly so called, i.e., the central portion of the tract, is a narrative well supplied with documents; it has all the appearance of being contemporary and by an eyewitness, and is manifestly a source of the greatest value for the facts with which it deals. Liebermann, with his unrivalled knowledge of mediaeval English legal materials, has declared that there is no ground for doubting its authenticity;[5] and Professor G. B. Adams, who also finds abundant internal evidence of its genuineness, points out, as an indication that it was written by an eyewitness in the company of Bishop William, the fact that no attempt is made to tell what went on within the curia while the bishop and his supporters were outside; and further, he considers it more “objective and impartial” than Eadmer’s better known account of the trial of Anselm before the council of Rockingham.[6] The author, it may be conjectured, was a monk of Durham who stood in somewhat the same favored position among the intimates of Bishop William as that occupied by Eadmer with regard to Anselm; and while we know nothing of his personality, it is perhaps worth remarking in passing that he may very well be the ‘certain monk’ (quendam suum monachum) who acts on at least two occasions as the bishop’s messenger (pp. 172, 175). The account in the earlier instance is so intimate and personal as strongly to support this hypothesis: “Ipsum quoque monachum episcopi, qui de rege redibat, accepit et equum suum ei occidit; postea peditem abire permisit.”

The introduction and the conclusion of the tract, on the other hand, are not a first-hand narrative; and fortunately we possess the source from which they are derived. The introduction (pp. 170 f.), dealing with the bishop’s career prior to 1088, contains nothing which is not told with much greater fulness in the opening chapters of the fourth book of the Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae of Simeon of Durham.[7] It is in fact a mere summary of those chapters; and while the author is no servile copyist, he evidently had no other source of information. It seems safe to conclude, therefore, that he was not identical with the author of the original libellus. Judged by style and method, the conclusion of the tract (pp. 194 f.) appears to be by the same author as the introduction. It, too, is clearly an abridgment of certain chapters of the Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae,[8] though with this notable difference from the introduction, that it contains some matter not to be found in the Historia, e.g., the statement that the exiled bishop was intrusted by the duke with the administration of all Normandy, and the notices of the expedition of William Rufus against King Malcolm in 1091, and of the presence of the Scottish king at the laying of the first stones in the foundation of the new cathedral at Durham in 1093. Apparently, for these more recent events, the writer was drawing upon his own first-hand knowledge. The date at which the introductory and concluding chapters were appended to the original Durham libellus cannot be fixed with exactness. The reference to Anselm as “sanctae memoriae” (p. 195) shows that they were written after his death in 1109;[9] and since, as will appear below, they in turn were used in the Historia Regum, which is commonly attributed to Simeon of Durham, the terminus ad quem cannot be placed much later than 1129.[10]

The relationship between the above mentioned additions to the Durham libellus and the Historia Regum may be displayed by the following quotations.

The introduction to the Durham tract closes with the following sentence (p. 171):

… sed orta inter regem et primates Angliae magna dissensione, episcopus [i.e., William of Durham] ab invidis circumventus usque ad expulsionem iram regis pertulit, quam rem sequens libellus manifestat ex ordine;

and the conclusion opens as follows (pp. 194 f.):

Anno sui episcopatus octavo expulsus est ab Anglia, sed a Roberto fratre regis, comite Normannorum, honorifice susceptus, totius Normanniae curam suscepit. Tertio autem anno, repacificatus regi, recepit episcopatum suum, ipso rege cum fratre suo totoque Angliae exercitu, cum Scotiam contra Malcolmum tenderent, eum in sedem suam restituentibus, ipsa videlicet die qua inde pulsus fuerat. Tertio Idus Septembris, secundo anno suae reversionis, ecclesiam veterem, quam Aldunus quondam episcopus construxerat, a fundamentis destruxit.