A long legal discussion followed, in which Bishop William and Lanfranc were the chief speakers. Some points were merely verbal. Much turned on the construction of the word bishopric. The Bishop of Durham asked to be restored to his bishopric. Lanfranc answered that he had not been disseized of it.[259] In the course of this dispute one or two facts of interest come out. Hostile dealings of the Bishop’s own men. It appears from the Bishop’s complaint that some of the chief men of the patrimony of Saint Cuthberht had made their way to the meeting at Salisbury, and that not as their bishop’s friends. They, his own liegemen, had abjured him; they held the lands of the bishopric in fief of the King; they had made war upon him by the King’s orders, and were now sitting as his judges.[260] The Bishop called on to “do right.” But the main point was that the Bishop should, before matters went any further, do right to the King, that is, acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court.[261] This demand the Bishop tried to evade by every means; but it was firmly pressed both by Lanfranc and by the lay members of the Court. These last seem to act in close concert with the Primate, and the ecclesiastical writer brings out in a lively way the energy of their way of speaking.[262] In answer to them the Bishop spake words which amounted to a casting aside of all the earlier jurisprudence of England, but which were only a natural inference from that act of the Conqueror which had severed the jurisdictions which ancient English custom had joined together. He denies the authority of the Court. He told the barons of the realm and the other laymen who were present that with them he had nothing to do, that he altogether refused their jurisdiction; he demanded, that, if the King and the Bishops allowed them to be present, they should at least not speak against him.[263] Growth of the new doctrines. The doctrine of ecclesiastical privilege had indeed grown, since, six and thirty years before, the people of England, gathered beneath the walls of London, had declared a traitorous archbishop to be deprived and outlawed, and had by their own act set another in his place. Position of Lanfranc and Bishop William. Yet the position of William of Saint-Calais was more consistent than the position of Lanfranc. William of Saint-Calais wholly denied the right of laymen to judge a bishop; Lanfranc, the assertor of that right, had been placed in his see on the very ground that the deposition of Robert and the election of Stigand were both invalid, as being merely acts of the secular power. Still, however logical might be the Bishop’s argument, his claims were practically new, either in English or in Norman ears. If they had ever been heard of before, it had been only for a moment from the lips of Odo. And we may mark again that, though the words of William of Saint-Calais would have won him favour with Hildebrand, they won him no favour with Lanfranc. Lanfranc represented the traditions of the Conqueror, and in the days of the Conqueror, all things, divine and human, had depended on the Conqueror’s nod.[264]
The King speaks. At this stage the King speaks for the first time, and, in this first speech the words of William the Red are mild enough. He had hoped, he said, that the Bishop would have first made answer to the charges which had been brought against him, and he wondered that he had taken any other course. But the charge had not yet been formally made. Roger Bigod demands that the charge be read. Amid the Bishop’s protests about the rights of his order, this somewhat important point was pressed by one of his fellow-rebels. This was Roger the Bigod, he who from the castle of Norwich had done such harm in the eastern lands, but who now appears as an adviser of the king against whom he had been fighting a few months before. Let the charge, he said, be brought in due form, and let the Bishop be tried according to it.[265] After more protests from the Bishop, the charge was made by Hugh of Beaumont.[266] The charge formally brought. It contained a full statement of the Bishop’s treason and desertion, as already described,[267] and the time is said to have been when the King’s enemies came against him, and when his own men, Bishop Odo, Earl Roger, and many others, strove to take away his crown and kingdom.[268] It is demanded that, on this charge and on any other charges that the King may afterwards bring, the Bishop shall abide by the sentence of the King’s court. We have this statement only in the version of Bishop William himself or of a local partisan. Its probable truth. Yet there is no reason to doubt that it is a fair representation of the formal charge which was brought in the King’s court. That charge brings out quite enough of overt acts of treason to justify even the strong words of the Peterborough Chronicler.[269] With the secret counsels of the rebels during Lent it does not deal; what share Bishop William had had in them might be hard to make out by legal proof, and the charge is quite enough for the King’s purpose without them. But it brings out this special aggravation of the Bishop’s guilt, that, after the rebellion had broken out, after military operations had begun, the Bishop was still at the King’s side, counselling action while he was himself plotting desertion. The flight of Bishop William, as we have already told it, really reads not unlike the flight of Cornbury and Churchill just six centuries later; and it would be pressing the judgement of charity a long way to plead in his behalf the doctrine that in revolutions men live fast.[270] Points not dwelled on. We may notice also that nothing is said about the Bishop’s harryings in Northern England. They might, according to the custom of the time, be almost taken as implied in the fact of his rebellion; or they might be among the other charges which the King had ready to bring forward if he thought good.
The Bishop’s answer. The formal charge was thus laid before the Court, and it was for the Bishop to make his answer. It was the same as before. Hugh of Beaumont might say what he chose;[271] only according to his own ideas of canonical rule would he answer. By this time the wrath of the lay members of the Assembly was waxing hot; Wrath of the lay members. they assailed the Bishop, some, we are told, with arguments, some with revilings.[272] At this stage Bishop William found a friend where we should hardly have looked for one. Speech of Bishop Geoffrey on behalf of William. The brigand Bishop of Coutances, already changed from a rebel into a loyal subject, was there among the great men of the realm. England knew him, not as a prelate of the Church, but as one of the greatest of her land-owners; but now, like Odo, he speaks as a bishop. He appeals to the Archbishops at least to give a hearing to Bishop William’s objection. They, the bishops and abbots, ought no longer to sit there; they ought to withdraw, taking with them some lay assessors, to discuss the point raised by the Bishop of Durham, whether he ought not to be restored to his bishopric before he is called on to plead.[273] Answer of Lanfranc. Again the great ecclesiastical statesman is inclined to scorn, almost to mock, the scruples of lesser men. Canonical subtleties might disturb the conscience of a bishop who had a few months before headed a band of robbers; but the lawyer of Pavia, the teacher of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the Abbot of Saint Stephen’s, the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea, had learned, in his long experience, that, as changes of vestments did not greatly matter, so changes of place and procedure did not greatly matter either. As Lanfranc had told Bishop William that they could judge perfectly well in the clothes which they then had on, so now he tells Bishop Geoffrey that they can judge perfectly well in the place and company in which they were now sitting. The Bishop goes out. There was no need to rise; let the Bishop of Durham and his men go out, and the rest of the Court, clergy and laity alike, would judge what was right to be done.[274] The Bishop warned the Court to act according to the canons, and to let no one judge who might not canonically judge a bishop. Lanfranc calmly, but vaguely, assured him that justice would be done.[275] Defiance of Hugh of Beaumont. Hugh of Beaumont told him more plainly, “If I may not to-day judge you and your order, you and your order shall never afterwards judge me.”[276] With one more protest, one more declaration that he would disown any judgement which was not strictly canonical,[277] Bishop William and his followers left the hall of meeting.
Debate in the Bishop’s absence. Our only narrative of these debates, the narrative of Bishop William himself or of some one writing under his inspiration, complains of the long delay before the Bishop was allowed to come back, and gives a description, one which reads like satire, of the assembly which stayed to debate the preliminary point of law. Constitution of the Court. There was the King, with the bishops and earls, the sheriffs and the lesser reeves, with the King’s huntsmen and other officials.[278] The great officers of state, Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, had not yet risen to their full importance; still it is odd to find them, as they would seem to be, thrust in, after the manner of an et cetera, after, it may be, Osgeat the reeve and Croc the huntsman.[279] But anyhow, in this purely official assembly, we may surely see the Theningmannagemót gradually changing into the Curia Regis.[280] The Court, however constituted, debated in the Bishop’s absence on the point of the law which he had raised. The Bishop comes back. On his return, his own Metropolitan, Thomas of York, announced to him the decision of the Assembly. Till he acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Court, the King was not bound to restore anything that had been taken from him. Debate on the word fief. We seem to hear the voice of Flambard, when, in announcing this decision, Thomas makes use of the word fief, which had not hitherto been heard in the discussion.[281] Bishop William catches in vain at the novelty; Archbishop Thomas declines all verbal discussion; whether it is called bishopric or fief, nothing is to be restored till the jurisdiction of the court is acknowledged.[282] Thus baffled, Bishop William has only to fall back on his old protests, his old demand for the counsel of his brother bishops. Lanfranc meets him as a lawyer; the bishops are his judges, and therefore cannot be his counsel.[283] The King now steps in; the Bishop may take counsel with his own men, but he shall have no counsel from any man of his.[284] The Bishop’s seven men. The Bishop answers that, in the seven men whom he has with him—clearly the same seven of whom we have twice heard already—he will find but little help against the power and learning of the whole realm which he sees arrayed against him.[285] He goes out the second time. But he gets no further help; he withdraws the second time for consultation, but it is only with the seven men of his own following.
The result of their secret debate suggests that Bishop William in truth took counsel with no one but himself. Surely no seven men of English or Norman birth could have been found to suggest the course which William of Saint-Calais now took. For he came back to utter words which must have sounded strange indeed either in English or in Norman ears. He comes back and appeals to Rome. “The judgement which has here been given I reject, because it is made against the canons and against our law; nor was I canonically summoned; but I stand here compelled by the force of the King’s army, and despoiled of my bishopric, beyond the bounds of my province, in the absence of all my comprovincial bishops. I am compelled to plead my cause in a lay assembly; and my enemies, who refuse me their counsel and speech and the kiss of peace, laying aside the things which I have said, judge me of things which I have not said; and they are at once accusers and judges; and I find it forbidden in our law to admit such a judgement as I in my folly was willing to admit.[286] The Archbishop of Canterbury and my own Primate ought, out of regard for God and our order, to save me of their good will from this encroachment. Because then, through the King’s enmity, I see you all against me, I appeal to the Apostolic See of Rome, to the Holy Church, and to the Blessed Peter and his Vicar, that he may take order for a just sentence in my affair; for to his disposition the ancient authority of the Apostles and their successors and of the canons reserves the greater ecclesiastical causes and the judgement of bishops.”[287]
Character of the appeal. Such an appeal as this was indeed going to the root of the matter. It was laying down the rule against which Englishmen had yet to strive for more than four hundred years. William of Saint-Calais not only declared that there were causes with which no English tribunal was competent to deal, but he laid down that among such causes were to be reckoned all judgements where any bishop—if not every priest—was an accused party. Bishop William could not even claim that, as one charged with an ecclesiastical offence, he had a right to appeal to the highest ecclesiastical judge. Even such a claim as this was a novelty either in Normandy or in England; but William of Saint-Calais was not charged with any ecclesiastical offence. Except so far as the indictment involved the charge of perjury, that debateable ground of the two jurisdictions, the offence laid to the Bishop’s charge was a purely temporal one, that of treason against his lord the King. So arraigned, he refuses the judgement of the King of the English and his Witan, and appeals from them to the Bishop of Rome. He justifies his appeal by referring to some law other than the law of England, some special law of his own order, by which, he alleges, he is forbidden to submit to any such judgements as that of the national assembly of the realm of which he is a subject. We again instinctively ask, how would William the Great have dealt with such an appeal, if any man had been so hardy as to make it in his hearing? But we again see how the ecclesiastical system which William the Great had brought in was one which needed his own mighty hand to guide.[288] He was indeed, in all causes and over all persons, ecclesiastical and temporal, within his dominions supreme. But the moment he himself was gone, that great supremacy seems to have fallen in pieces. Arguments of Lanfranc. Lanfranc himself, steadily as he maintains the royal authority throughout the dispute, seems to shrink from boldly grappling with the Bishop’s claim. Some lesser fallacies we are not surprised to find passed over. The daring statement that the sole right of the Bishop of Rome to judge other bishops was established by the Apostles may perhaps have seemed less strange even to Lanfranc than it does to us. William’s comprovincials. But Lanfranc must have smiled, and Thomas of York must have smiled yet more, at the Bishop of Durham’s grotesque complaint that he was deprived of the help of his comprovincial bishops.[289] It was a vain hope indeed, if he thought that King Malcolm would allow him the comfort of any brotherly counsel from Glasgow or Saint Andrews. But the real point is that Lanfranc seems to avoid giving any direct answer to Bishop William’s claim to appeal to a court beyond the sea. Instead of stoutly denying the right of any English subject to appeal to any foreign power from the judgement of the highest court in England, he falls back into Bishop William’s own subtleties about “fief” and “bishopric;” and he appeals to the case of Odo, where it was only the Earl and not the Bishop who was dealt with.[290] The verbal question goes on, till the Bishop declares that he has no skill to dispute against the wisdom of Lanfranc; he has been driven to appeal to the apostolic see, and he wishes to have the leave of the King and the Archbishop to go to the see to which he has appealed.[291] The Bishop goes out the third time. A third time does he, at Lanfranc’s bidding, leave the hall while this question is debated by the King and his council. On his return the final sentence is pronounced by the mouth of Hugh of Beaumont. He comes back, and sentence is pronounced.As the Bishop has refused to answer the charges brought against him by the King, as he invites the King to a tribunal at Rome, the Bishop’s fief is declared forfeited by the judgement of the King’s court and the barons. It really says a good deal for the long-suffering of the prelates and barons, and of the Red King himself, He renews his appeal. that Bishop William again ventured to make his appeal in more offensive terms than before. He is ready, in any place where justice reigns and not violence, to purge himself of all charges of crime and perjury. He will prove in the Roman Church that the judgement which has just been pronounced is false and unjust.[292] Hugh of Beaumont is driven to a retort; “I and my companions are ready to confirm our judgement in this court.” The Bishop again declares that he will enter into no pleadings in that court. Let him speak never so well, his words are perverted by the King’s partisans. They have no respect for the apostolic authority, and, even after he has made his appeal, they load him with an unjust judgement. He will go to Rome to seek the help of God and of Saint Peter.[293]
Up to this time the King has taken only a secondary part in the lively dispute which has been going on in his presence. We have listened chiefly to the pithy sayings of Lanfranc and to the official utterances of Hugh of Beaumont. Speeches of the King. But now Rufus himself steps in as a chief speaker, and that certainly in a characteristic strain. His patience had borne a good deal, but it was now beginning to give way. The King’s short and pointed sentences, uttered, we must remember, with a fierce look and a stammering tongue, are a marked contrast to the long-turned periods and legal subtleties of the Bishop. He now steps into the dispute from a very practical side; “My will is that you give me up your castle, as you will not abide by the sentence of my court.”[294] More distinctions, more protests, more appeals to Rome, only stir up the Red King to the use of his familiar oath; “By the face of Lucca, you shall never go out of my hands till I have your castle.”[295] The Bishop was now fairly in the mouth of the lion; yet he again goes through the whole story of his wrongs and his innocence, with some particulars which we have not hitherto heard. When his possessions were seized by the King’s officers, though a hundred of his own knights looked on, no resistance had been offered to the King’s will.[296] He had now nothing left but his episcopal city; if the King wished to take that, he would offer no resistance, save by the power of God. He would only warn him, on behalf of God and Saint Peter and his Vicar the Pope, not to take it. He would give hostages and sureties that, while he went to Rome, his own men should keep the castle, and that, if the King wished, they should keep it for his service.[297] The King again spoke; “Be sure, Bishop, that you shall never go to Durham, nor shall your men hold Durham, nor shall you escape my hands, unless you freely give up the castle to me.”[298] The Bishop appeals to Counts Odo and Alan. The Bishop now for once says not a word about canonical rights; he appeals, more shortly and more prudently, to the plighted faith of the two Counts who had promised that he should go back to Durham. But Lanfranc argues that the Bishop has forfeited his safe-conduct, and that, if he refuses to give up the castle, the King may rightly arrest him.[299] Cries of the lay members. At this hint the lay members of the Assembly joined in with one voice, the foremost among them being that Randolf Peverel of whose possessions and supposed kindred we have had elsewhere to speak.[300] “Take him,” was the cry, “take him; for that old gaoler speaks well.”[301] But at this stage the Bishop finds friends in the Counts whose faith had been pledged to his safe-conduct. Intervention of Count Alan. Count Alan formally states the terms of the agreement, and prays the King—Odo and Roger joining with him in the prayer—that he may not be forced to belie his faith, as otherwise the King should have no further service from him.[302] But in Lanfranc’s view the second of the two cases which were contemplated in the agreement had taken place. The King was not bound to let the Bishop go back to Durham; all that he was now bound to do was to give him ships and a safe-conduct out of the realm.[303] The dispute goes on in the usual style. The Bishop appeals yet again. The Bishop continues his appeal to Rome; he again invokes what he calls specially the Christian law, pointing, it would seem, to a volume in his own hand;[304] while Lanfranc asserts the authority of the King’s court.[305] The King then steps in with one of his short speeches; “You may say what you will, but you shall not escape my hands, unless you first give up the castle to me.”[306] The Bishop then makes a shorter protest than usual, the drift of which seems to be that he is ready to suffer any loss rather than be personally arrested.[307] The final sentence. The sentence of the Court is now finally passed. A day is fixed by which the Bishop’s men should leave the city of Durham and the King’s men take possession of it instead.[308]
The judgement of the Assembly had thus formally gone against the claims of the Bishop of Durham; but his The Bishop asks for an allowance.resources were not at an end. Defeated on all points of law, he makes an appeal to the King’s generosity. Will his lord the King, he now prays, leave him something from his bishopric on which he may at least be able to live? Lanfranc again answers; “Shall you go to Rome, Answer of Lanfranc.to the King’s hurt and to the dishonour of all of us, and shall the King leave lands to you? Stay in his land, and he will give back to you all your bishopric, except the city, on the one condition that you do right to him in his court by the judgement of his barons.”[309] Bishop William, almost parodying the words of a much earlier appeal to Rome, says that he has appealed to the Apostolic See, and to the Apostolic See he will go.[310] Lanfranc retorts; “If you go to Rome without the King’s leave, we will tell him what he ought to do with your bishopric.” Bishop William answers in a long speech, renewing his protests of innocence and his offers of purgation, and setting forth the services which he claimed to have done for the King at Dover, Hastings, and London. The Bishop many times makes his prayer, and the King as often refuses. Then Lanfranc counsels him to throw himself wholly on the King’s mercy; if he will do so, he himself will plead for him at the King’s feet. But the Bishop still goes on about the authority of the canons and the honour of the Church; he will earnestly pray for the King’s mercy, but he will accept no uncanonical judgement. The King’s offers. The King then makes a new proposal; “Let the Bishop give me sureties that he will do nought to my hurt on this side the sea, and that neither my brother nor any of my brother’s men shall keep the ships which I shall provide to my damage or against the will of their crews.”[311] It certainly was demanding a good deal to expect Bishop William to go surety for either the will or the power of Duke Robert to do or to hinder anything. The Bishop pleads that the Counts pledged their faith that he should not be obliged to enter into any agreement except the one which had been made at Durham. The King and Ralph Paganel. And the Sheriff of Yorkshire, Ralph Paganel, the same who had been the spoiler of the Bishop’s goods, bears witness that his claim was a just one.[312] By this time the wrath of the Red King was gradually kindling; he turns on the Sheriff with some sharpness; “Hold your peace; for no surety will I endure to lose my ships; but if the Bishop will give this surety which I ask, I will ask for no other.”[313] The Bishop falls back on his old plea; he will enter into no agreement save that into which he entered with the Counts. The King again swears by the face of Lucca that the Bishop shall not cross the sea that year, unless he gives the required surety for the ships.[314] The Bishop then protests that, rather than be arrested, he will give the surety and more than the surety which is demanded; but he calls all men to witness that he does this unwillingly and through fear of arrest.[315] He gives the surety, and another stage in the long debate ends.
Question of the safe-conduct. A new point, happily the last, was raised when the Bishop, having given the required surety, asked for ships and a safe-conduct. The King says that he shall have them as soon as the castle of Durham is in the King’s power; till then, he shall have no safe-conduct, but shall stay at Wilton.[316] He again meekly protests; he will endure the wrong against which he has no means of striving.[317] Then a man of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances steps in with a new count. Charges against the Bishop’s men. The men who held the Bishop of Durham’s castle had—before the Bishop came to the King’s court; therefore, it might be inferred, with his knowledge—taken two hundred beasts belonging to the Bishop of Coutances which were under the King’s safe-conduct. Bishop Geoffrey had surely seen more than two hundred beasts brought into Bristol as the spoil of loyal men in Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire; but he is careful to exact the redress of his own loss from his brother bishop and rebel. The men of the Bishop of Durham had refused to pay the price of the beasts; they refused even when Walter of Eyncourt—we have met him in Lincolnshire[318]—bade them do so in the King’s name; he William, the man of Bishop Geoffrey, demands that the price be paid to his lord.[319] The King puts it to the barons whether he can implead the Bishop on this charge also.[320] Interposition of Lanfranc on behalf of the Bishop. Lanfranc, for the first time helping his brother prelate, rules that this cannot be done. Bishop William cannot be impleaded any further, because he now holds nothing of the King—the surrender of the castle of Durham is thus held to be already made—and is entitled to the King’s safe-conduct.[321] The Bishop to leave England. The Assembly now breaks up for the day; the Bishop is to choose the haven from which he will sail, and to make known his choice on the morrow.
The next day the Court again comes together. The Bishop of Durham asks Count Alan to find him a haven and ships at Southampton. Conditions of the Bishop’s sailing. The King steps in; “Know well, Bishop, that you shall never cross the channel till I have your castle”—adding, with a remembrance of the doings of another prelate at Rochester—“for the Bishop of Bayeux made me smart with that kind of thing.”[322] If the castle of Durham was in the King’s hands by the fixed day, the fourteenth day of November, the Bishop should have the ships and the safe-conduct without further delay. November 21,1088. The King then bids Count Alan and the Sheriff Gilbert[323] to give the Bishop at Southampton such ships as might be needful for his voyage seven days after the day fixed for the surrender of the castle. November 14. Meanwhile, on the appointed day, the castle of Durham was received into the King’s hands by Ivo Taillebois and Erneis of Burun—names with which we have long been familiar.[324] They disseized the Bishop of his church and castle and all his land; but they gave to the Bishop’s men a writ under the King’s seal, promising the most perfect safety to the Bishop and his men through all England and in their voyage.[325] And, according to the most obvious meaning of the narrative, Heppo, the King’s balistarius—a man of whom, like Ivo Taillebois, we have heard in Lincolnshire—was put into their hands as surety for the observance of the safe-conduct.