[248] Ransom.
[249] Song of Solomon, ii. 5, 8.
[250] Whence his pain.
[251] Prosperity.
[252] It is easy to quote a long list of quasi-married bishops and dignitaries of this period. The last two bishops of Elmham, Stigand and Ethelmar, appointed by the saintly and ascetic Edward the Confessor, were married men; so was Herbert, the first bishop of the same see (removed to Norwich), appointed by the Conqueror, and perhaps the second William (1086), and Edward (1121). Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln (1094), had a son Simon, whom he made Dean of that Cathedral. Roger of Salisbury (1107) was married. Robert Lymesey, of Chester (1086-1117), left a daughter settled with her husband, Noel, on the see lands near Eccleshall; and Hugh, Dean of Derby in this episcopate, was married. Roger of Lichfield (1121) was a married man; he put his son Richard into the Archdeaconry of Coventry, and he was afterwards promoted to the see (1161). Three Bishops of Durham were married men, viz. Ralph Flambard (1099), Geoffrey Rufus (1133), and the famous Hugh Puiset (1153); the wife of the latter was a lady of the Percy family. Several Archbishops of York were the sons of married clergymen.
There is an extant letter from Thomas, the first Norman Archbishop of York, in which he complains that his canons were married men. The Canons of Durham turned out by Bishop William of S. Carilef (1081) were all married men, so were some of those turned out of Rochester Cathedral by Bishop Gundulf; one of them, Ægelric, who had retired to the Benefice of Chatham, on his wife’s death obtained her burial by the monks of the Cathedral in the most honourable manner (S.P.C.K., “Rochester,” p. 50).
[253] At a visitation of Lincoln Cathedral by Bishop Bokingham, 1363-1398, it appeared that almost all the cathedral clergy disobeyed the canons (S.P.C.K., “Lincoln,” p. 84). A statute of the Chapter of Bath and Wells, in 1323, forbade any canon who had a concubine [wife] before his appointment to meet her except in the presence of discreet witnesses. So late as 1520 the Vicar-General had occasion to admonish the dean to correct one of the canons for keeping a concubine [wife] in his house of residence. The use of the ugly word by which the canons described these persons was not indefensible; the old laws of Imperial Rome recognized a kind of marriage with an inferior wife as respectable, it went so far at one time as to require unmarried proconsuls to take such a wife with them to their province, and this was not to prevent them from making afterwards a legal marriage. For example, St. Helena was first the concubine of Constantius, and he afterwards raised her to the higher dignity of his wife, and Constantine, their son, raised her to the dignity of empress.
[254] In 1221 and the following years, the pope issued mandates to the English bishops bidding them deprive married clerks (“Papal Letters,” vol. i. pp. 79, 84, 86, 90, Rolls Series).
[255] See also Roger of Wendover under 1225, ii. 287, Rolls Series.
[256] This is an allusion to another canon which made it illegal for a man to separate from his wife in order to enter into a religious order requiring a vow of celibacy, without his wife’s consent.