Flambard’s oppression falls most directly on the greatest estates. All this exactly falls in with those phrases in our authorities which speak of Flambard as the spoiler of the rich, the plunderer of the inheritances of other men. It also bears out what I have said already,[946] that there is no evidence to show that Rufus was a direct oppressor of the native English as such. No special oppression of the native English. The subtle devices of tyranny of which we have just spoken directly concerned those only who were the King’s tenants-in-chief. That is to say, they touched a class of estates which were far more largely in Norman than in English hands. Most likely, even in that reign, a numerical majority of the King’s tenants-in-chief would have been found to be of English blood. But such a majority would have been chiefly made up of the very smallest members of the class; the greater landowners, those whose wrongs, under such a system, would be, if not heavier, at least more conspicuous, were mainly the conquerors of Senlac or their sons. It was a form of oppression which would strike men as specially falling upon the rich. A special meaning is thus given to phrases which might otherwise be thought to be merely those common formulæ which, in speaking of any evil which affects all classes, join rich and poor together. The devices of Flambard were specially aimed at the rich. Indirect oppression of other classes. The great mass of the English people, and that large class of Normans who held their lands, not straight of the king but of some intermediate lord, were touched by them only when the lords who suffered by Flambard’s exactions tried to make good their own losses by exactions of the same kind on their own tenants. Dealings of the tenants-in-chief with their under-tenants. That they did so is shown by the reforming charter of Henry. When he promises to deal fairly and lawfully by his barons and his other men in the matters of relief and marriage, he demands that his barons shall deal fairly and lawfully by their men in the like cases.[947] But in the first instance it was mainly the rich, mainly the Normans, whom the feudal devices of Flambard touched. Strange submission of the nobles. And it is not the least strange thing in these times to see a race of warlike and high-spirited nobles, conquerors or sons of conquerors, submit to so galling a yoke, a yoke which must have been all the more galling when we think of the origin and position of the man by whom it was devised. Position of the king’s clerks. We cannot think that the king’s clerks were ever a popular body with any class, high or low, native or foreign. Their position appealed to no sentiment of any kind, military, religious, or national; their rule rather implied the treading under foot of all such sentiments. The military tenants must have looked on them with the dislike which men of the sword, specially in such an age, are apt to look on the rule of men of the pen. In the eyes of strict churchmen they must have passed for ungodly scorners of the decencies of their order. To the mass of the people they must have seemed foreign extortioners, and nothing more. They represented the power of the king, and nothing else. In some states of things the power of the king, even of a despotic king, may be welcomed as the representative of law against force. The reign of unlaw. But under Rufus the power of the king was before all things the representative of unlaw. Yet though all murmured, all submitted. General submission. The son of the poor priest of the Bessin, clothed with a power purely official, lorded it over all classes and orders. Earls, prelates, and people, were alike held down by the guide and minister of the royal will.
Position of Rufus favourable for his schemes. One cause of this general submission is doubtless to be found in the immediate circumstances of the time. The alliance of the King and the English people had for the moment broken the power of the Norman nobles. The ecclesiastical estate was left without a head by the death of Lanfranc. The popular estate was left without a head, as soon as the King turned away from the people who had given him his crown, and broke all the promises that he had made to them. There was no power of combination; the great days when nobles, clergy, and commons, could join together against the king, as three orders in one nation, were yet far distant. Each class had to bear its own grievances as it could; no class could get any help from any other class; and the King’s picked mercenaries, kept at the expense of all classes, were stronger than any one class by itself. Effect on national unity. Yet we cannot doubt that even the rule of Rufus and Flambard did something towards the great work of founding national unity. All the inhabitants of the land, if they had nothing else in common, had common grievances and a common oppressor. For a moment we can believe that the English people would feel a certain pleasure in seeing the men who had once conquered them and whom they had more lately conquered, brought under the yoke, and under such a yoke as that of Flambard. But such a feeling would be short-lived compared with the far deeper feeling of common grievances and common enmities.
Other forms of exaction. For the yoke of Flambard was one which, in different ways, pressed on all classes. If the native English, and the less wealthy men generally, were less directly touched by his feudal legislation than those who ranked above them, Flambard had no mind to let poor men, or native Englishmen, or any other class of men, go scot free. Working of the old laws. If his new devices pressed mainly on the great, he knew how to use the old forms of law so as to press on great and small alike. No one was too high, no one was too low, for the ministers of the King’s Exchequer to keep their eyes on him. No source of profit was deemed too small or too mean, if the coffers of a “Driving” of the Gemóts. chivalrous king could be filled by it. If Flambard sought to seize upon every man’s heritage, he also drave all the King’s gemóts over all England. We have no details; but it is easy to see how the ancient assemblies, and the judicial and administrative business which was done in them, might be turned into instruments of extortion. We have seen that the worst criminals could win their pardon by a bribe,[948] and means might easily be found, by false charges and by various tricks of the law, for wringing money out of the innocent as well as the guilty. Witness of Henry’s charter. We may again turn to Henry’s charter. It is a very speaking clause which forgives all “pleas” and debts due to his brother, except certain classes of them which were held to be due of lawful right.[949] In the days of Rufus and Flambard the presumption was that a demand made on behalf of the crown was unlawful.
Dealings with church property. But there is one form of the exactions of the Red King which, for obvious reasons, stands forth before all others in the pages of the writers of the time. When the King would be the heir of every man, he was fully minded to be the heir of the clerk or the monk as well as of the layman. And Flambard, priest and chaplain as he was, had no mind to sacrifice the interests of his master to the interests of his order. By his suggestion William began early in his reign, as soon as the influence of Lanfranc was withdrawn, to make himself in a special way the heir of deceased bishops and abbots. These great spiritual lords were among the chief land-owners of the kingdom. The kings therefore naturally claimed to have a voice in their appointment. Appointment and investiture of bishops and abbots. They invested the new prelate with his ring and staff; and this right, so fiercely denied to the successor of Augustus, was exercised without dispute by the successor of Cerdic and Rolf.[950] The new prelate received, by the king’s writ, as a grant from the king, the temporal possessions which were attached to the spiritual office.[951] We have seen that this action on the part of the king by no means wholly shut out action either on the part of the local ecclesiastical body or on the part of the great council of the kingdom.[952] Grant of the temporalities by the king. But it was from the king personally that the newly chosen or newly nominated prelate received the actual investiture of his office and its temporalities. The temporalities with which he was invested might have their special Church lands become fiefs. rights and privileges; but at least they were not exempt from the three burthens which no land could escape, among which was the duty of providing men for military service in case of need.[953] As feudal ideas grew, the inference was easy that lands granted by the king and charged with military service were a fief held of the king by a military tenure. We have seen signs of change in that direction in the days of the Conqueror;[954] in the days of Rufus the doctrine was fully established, and it was pushed to its logical results by the lawyer-like ingenuity of Flambard. Flambard’s inferences. If the lands held by a bishop or abbot were a fief held by military tenure, they must be liable to the same accidents as other fiefs of the same kind. Analogy between lay and ecclesiastical fiefs. When a bishop or abbot died, or otherwise vacated his office, the result was the same as when the lay holder of a fief died without leaving an heir of full age. There was the fief; but there was no one ready to perform the duties with which it was charged. The fief must therefore fall back to the lord till it should be granted afresh to some one who could discharge those duties. The king thus, in the words of the Chronicler, became the heir of the deceased bishop or abbot, even more thoroughly than he became the heir of the deceased baron or other lay tenant-in-chief. For in the latter case, except when the late holder’s family became extinct by his death, there was always some one person who had by all law and custom a right above all other men to succeed him. The son or other natural successor might be constrained to buy back the lands of the ancestor,[955] or, if a minor, he might be kept out of them till his time of wardship was over. Still even Flambard would have allowed that such a natural successor had, if he could pay the price demanded, a claim upon the land which was not shared by any one else. But on the lands of a deceased bishop or abbot no man, even of his own order, had any better claim than another till such a claim was created by election or nomination. Vacant prelacies held by the King. The king was the only heir; the lands and all the other property of the vacant office passed into his hands; and, as no election or nomination could hold good without his consent, it was in his power to prolong his possession as heir as long as he thought good. That is to say, by the new device of Flambard, when a bishop or abbot died, the king at once Power of prolonging the vacancy.entered on his lands, and kept them as long as the see or abbey remained vacant. And, as it rested with the king when the see or abbey should be filled, he could prolong the vacancy for any time that he thought good. And William Rufus commonly thought good to prolong the Sale of bishoprics and abbeys. vacancy till some one offered him such a price in ready money as made it worth his while to put an end to it.[956]
The result was that, in the words of the Chronicler, “God’s Church was brought low.”[957] The great ecclesiastical offices, as they fell vacant, were either kept vacant for the King’s profit, or else were sold for his profit to men who, by the very act of buying them, were shown to be unworthy to hold them.[958] Innovations of Rufus. We are distinctly told that this practice was an innovation of the days of Rufus, and that it was an innovation of which Flambard was the author.[959] The charge of simony, like all other charges of bribery and corruption, is often much easier to bring than to disprove; but it is not likely to be spoken of as a systematic practice, unless it undoubtedly happened in a good many cases. Earlier cases of simony. We have come across cases in our earlier history where it was at least suspected that ecclesiastical offices had been sold, or, what proves even more, that they were looked on as likely to be sold.[960] And that the practice was common among continental princes there can be little doubt. Not systematic before Rufus. But there is nothing to make us believe that it was at all systematic in England at any earlier time, and the Conqueror at all events was clear from all scandal of the kind. But the chain of reasoning devised by Flambard would make it as fair a source of profit for the king to take money on the grant of a bishopric as to take it on the grant of a lay fief. And there is no reason to doubt that Rufus systematically acted on this principle, and that, save at the moment of his temporary repentance, he seldom or never gave away a bishopric or abbey for nothing. The other point of the Treatment of vacant churches. charge, that bishoprics and abbeys were kept vacant while the king received the profits, was not a matter of surmise or suspicion, but a matter of fact open to all men. When a prelate died, one of the king’s clerks was sent to take down in writing a full account of all his possessions. All was taken into the king’s hands. Sometimes the king granted out the lands for money or on military tenure, in which case the new prelate, when one was appointed, might have some difficulty in getting them back.[961] In other cases the king kept the property in his own hands, letting it out at the highest rent that he could get, and, as his father did with the royal demesnes, at once making void his bargains if a higher price was offered.[962] In the case of the abbeys and of those churches of secular canons where the episcopal and capitular estates were not yet separated, the king took the whole property of the church, and allowed the monks or canons only a wretched pittance.[963] We have seen that, in one case where local gratitude has recorded that he did otherwise, it is marked as an exception to his usual practice.[964] Flambard the chief agent. And, in all these doings, Flambard, as he was the deviser of the system, was its chief administrator. The vacant prelacies were put under his management; he extorted, for his own profit and for the king’s, such sums both from the monks or clergy and from the tenants of the church lands that they all said that it was better to die than to live.[965]
The practice a new one. These doings on the part of Rufus are by the writers of the time put in marked contrast with the practice of earlier kings, and especially with the practice of his own father. As the old and inborn kings had done nothing of the kind, so neither had the Conqueror from beyond sea. The olden practice. In their days, when an abbot or bishop died, his spiritual superior, the bishop of the diocese or the archbishop of the province, administered the estates of his church during the vacancy, bestowing the income to pious and charitable uses, and handing the estates over to the new prelate on his appointment.[966] In later legal language, the guardian of the spiritualties was also the guardian of the temporalities. Tenure in frank-almoign. Bishoprics and abbeys were dealt with as smaller preferments have always been dealt with, as holdings in frank-almoign. The novelty lay, not in receiving the bishopric or abbey from the king, but in receiving it on the terms of a lay fief. Odo Abbot of Chertsey resigns, 1092. One prelate, Odo Abbot of Chertsey, the Norman successor of the English Wulfwold,[967] resigned his post rather than hold it on such terms.[968] For the rest of the reign of Rufus the estates of the abbey were left in the hands of Flambard. Restored by Henry, 1100. One of the earliest among the reforms of Henry and Anselm was the restoration of Odo.[969]
Vacancies longer in abbeys than in bishoprics. If we look more minutely into the chronology of this reign, it will appear that these long vacancies were more usual in the case of the abbeys than in that of the bishoprics. At the time of William’s death he had in his hands, besides the archbishopric of the absent Anselm, the two bishoprics of Winchester and Salisbury and eleven abbeys.[970] Walkelin dies. Jan. 3, 1098. Of these Winchester had been vacant rather more than two years and a half, Salisbury had been vacant only eight months. Osmund dies. Dec. 3, 1099. And the bishoprics which were filled in his reign had mostly been vacant one, two, or at most three years, shorter times than bishoprics were often kept vacant in much later times.[971] The reason for the difference seems clear. Differences between bishoprics and abbeys. The bishoprics, when they were filled, commonly went to the king’s clerks, to Flambard himself and his fellows. The great temporal position of a bishopric was acceptable to men of this class, and they found in the king’s service the means of making up a purse such as would tempt the king to end the vacancy in their favour[972] . A bishopric was therefore likely to be filled, unworthily filled doubtless, but still filled, before any very long time had passed. The abbeys, on the other hand, would have small attractions for the king’s servants, who in fact, as secular clerks, could not hold them. And the men for whom such a post would have attractions, the monks of the vacant abbey or the abbots or priors of lesser houses, would not have the same means as the king’s servants of making up a purse. The abbeys therefore were likely to remain vacant longer than the bishoprics. When they were filled, it was not without simony, or at least not without a payment of some kind to the King. Case of Peterborough. 1098. For it is rather harsh to apply the word simony to the payment by which the monks of Peterborough bought of the King the right to choose an abbot freely—a free congé d’élire in short, without any letter missive.[973] Another thing may be noticed. The bishops appointed at this time all bear Norman names; Normans were the most likely men to English abbots. find their way into the King’s chapel and chancery. But the abbots are still not uncommonly English.[974] Rufus, who welcomed brave mercenaries from any quarter, also welcomed bribes from any quarter, with little of narrow prejudice for or against particular nations. An English monk was as likely as his Norman fellow to have, by some means quite inconsistent with his rule, scraped together money enough to purchase preferment. And when a body of monks bought the right of free election, they were likely to choose an Englishman rather than a stranger. At all times the kings interfered less with the elections to abbeys than they did with the elections to bishoprics.[975] And, if there is any truth, even as a legendary illustration, in a tale which is told both of Rufus and of other kings, there were moments when the Red King could prefer a practical joke to a bribe. Story of the appointment to an unnamed abbey. An abbey—the name is not given—is vacant; two of its monks come to the King, trying to outbid one another in offers of money for the vacant office. A third brother has come with them, and the King asks what he will give. He answers that he will not give anything; he has simply come to receive the new abbot, whoever he may be, and to take him home with all honour. Rufus at once bestows the abbey on him, as the only one of the party worthy of it.[976] The tale is not impossible; had it been placed in Normandy and not in England, we might have even said that it was not unlikely. For we shall see, as we go on, that, from whatever cause, Rufus dealt with ecclesiastical matters in Normandy in a different spirit from that in which he dealt with them in England.
Sees vacant in 1092. At the point which we have reached in our general story, the time of the restoration of Carlisle, two English sees only were vacant. Two had been filled during the year of the Norman campaign, and both of them by prelates of some personal mark. Ralph Luffa Bishop of Chichester. 1091–1123. Ralph Luffa, Bishop of Chichester, holds a high place in the history of his own church, as the founder alike of the existing fabric and of the existing constitution of its chapter.[977] He bears altogether so good a character that he is not likely to have come to a bishopric in the way which was usual in the days of Rufus. Did the King give him his staff in some passing better moment, like that in which he gave the staff to the worthy abbot at the nameless monastery? But the other episcopal appointment of the same year was one of the usual kind, as far as the motive of the appointment went, though the person to whom the bishopric was given or sold was not one of the class who in this reign commonly profited by such transactions. Death of William Bishop of Thetford. 1091. Bishop William of Thetford, the successor of the unlearned Herfast,[978] died in the year of negotiations, the year of the peace with Robert and the peace with Malcolm.[979] His bishopric was not long kept vacant; before the end of the year the church of Thetford had a new pastor, and one who plays no small part in local history. Herbert Losinga. This was the famous Herbert Losinga,[980] who, if we may trust such accounts of him as we have, made so bad a beginning and so good an ending. Norman by birth, an immediate countryman of the Conqueror, as sprung from the land of Hiesmes, a man of learning and Prior of Fécamp. evident energy, he became a monk of Fécamp and prior of that great house.[981] Early in the reign of Rufus or in the last days of the Conqueror, Abbot of Ramsey. 1087. he was raised to the abbey of Ramsey, when the long and varied life of Æthelsige came to an end.[982] He buys the see of Thetford. He now, on Bishop William’s death, at once bought for himself the see of Thetford for one thousand pounds.[983] Before the end of the year he was consecrated by Archbishop Thomas of York, making his profession to a future Archbishop of Canterbury.[984] At the same time he also bought preferment for his father Robert, who, it must be supposed, had embraced the monastic life. Three years’ vacancy of New Minster. 1088–1091. The New Minster of Winchester had now been for three years, since the death of its last Abbot Ralph, in the hands of Flambard.[985] Herbert now bought the abbacy for his father.[986] Robert Losinga Abbot. 1091–1093. This twofold simony naturally gave great offence, and formed a fertile subject for the eloquence of the time, both in prose and verse.[987] The reign of the father was short; two years later Flambard again held the wardship of New Minster.[988] The career of the son in his East-Anglian bishopric was longer and more varied, and we shall come across him again in the course of our story. Herbert repents and receives his bishopric again from the Pope, c. 1093. At present it is only needful to say that Herbert very soon repented of the shameful way by which he had climbed into the sheepfold, that he went to Rome, that he gave up his ill-gotten bishopric into the hands of Pope Urban, and received his staff from him again in what was deemed to be a more regular way.[989] Herbert’s repentance was to his credit; and, as things stood at the moment, there was perhaps no better way of making amends. But the course which he took was not only one which was sure to bring on him the displeasure of the Red King; it was in the teeth of all the customs of William the Great and of the kings before him. A journey to Rome, without the royal licence, and seemingly taken by stealth,[990] the submission to a Pope whom the King had not acknowledged,[991] the surrender to any Pope of the staff which he had received from the King of the English, were all of them offences, and the last act Novelty of Herbert’s act. was distinctly a novelty. Ulf, Ealdred, Thomas, Remigius, had all been deprived of their staves and had received them again;[992] but no English prelate of those times had of his own act made the Pope his judge in such a matter. When the holy Wulfstan was threatened with deposition, he had, even in the legend, given back his staff, not to the Pope who ruled at Rome, but to the King who slept at Westminster.[993] No wonder then that the Red King was moved to anger by a slight to his authority which his father could not have overlooked, and which might have stirred the Confessor himself to one of his passing fits of wrath. The return of Herbert from Rome forms part of a striking group of events to which we shall presently come.
The two bishoprics of Chichester and Thetford were thus filled soon after they became vacant. Vacancy of Lincoln. 1092–1094. In the year after the consecration of Ralph and Herbert, a third see, as we have seen, fell vacant by the death of Remigius of Lincoln.[994] That see was not filled so speedily as Chichester and Thetford had been; still it did not remain vacant so long as some of the abbeys. But a longer vacancy befell, a lasting vacancy seemed designed to befall, the mother church of all of them. Vacancy of Canterbury. 1089–1093. All this while the metropolitan throne of Canterbury remained empty. No successor to Lanfranc was chosen or nominated; it was the fixed purpose of the Red King to make no nomination himself, to allow no choice on the part of the ecclesiastical electors. Here at least the doctrines of Randolf Flambard were to be carried out in their fulness. It is the state of ecclesiastical matters during this memorable vacancy, and the memorable nomination which at last ended it, which call for our main attention at this stage of our story.
§ 2. The Vacancy of the Primacy and the Appointment of Anselm.
1089–1093.