William de Longchamp, his great rival, grandson of a Norman peasant, bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, seizes on Lincoln by force, lives like a prince, has an escort of a thousand horsemen, adds to the fortifications of the Tower of London and stands a siege in it. He is obliged to give himself up to Hugh de Nunant, another bishop; he escapes disguised as a woman; he is recognised, imprisoned in a cellar, and exiled; he then excommunicates his enemies. Fortune smiles on him once more and he is reinstated in his functions.
Geoffrey Plantagenet, a natural son of Henry II., the only child who remained always faithful to the old king, had once thought he would reach the crown, but was obliged to content himself with becoming archbishop of York. As such, he scorned to ally himself either with Longchamp or with Puiset, and made war on both impartially. Longchamp forbids him to leave France; nevertheless Geoffrey lands at Dover, the castle of which was held by Richenda, sister of the Chancellor. He mounts on horseback and gallops towards the priory of St. Martin; Richenda sends after him, and one of the lady's men was putting his hand on the horse's bridle, when our lord the archbishop, shod with iron, gave a violent kick to the enemy's steed, and tore his belly open; the beast reared, and the prelate, freeing himself, reached the priory. There he is under watch for four days, after which he is dragged from the very altar, and taken to the castle of Dover. At last he is liberated, and installed in York; he immediately commences to fight with his own clergy; he enters the cathedral when vespers are half over; he interrupts the service, and begins it over again; the indignant treasurer has the tapers put out, and the archbishop continues his psalm-singing in the dark. He excommunicates his neighbour Hugh de Puiset, who is little concerned by it; he causes the chalices used by the bishop of Durham to be destroyed as profaned.
Hugh de Puiset, who was still riding about, though attacked by the disease that was finally to carry him off, dies full of years in 1195, after a reign of forty-three years. He had had several children by different women: one of them, Henri de Puiset, joined the Crusade; another, Hugh, remained French, and became Chancellor to King Louis VII.[230]
These warlike habits are only attenuated by degrees. In 1323 Edward II. writes to Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Durham, reproaching a noble like him for not defending his bishopric any better against the Scotch than if he were a mutterer of prayers like his predecessor. Command is laid upon bishop Louis to take arms and go and camp on the frontier. In the second half of the same century, Henry le Despencer, bishop of Norwich, hacks the peasants to pieces, during the great rising, and makes war in Flanders for the benefit of one of the two popes.
Side by side with these warriors shine administrators, men of learning, saints, all important and influential personages in their way. Such are, for example, Lanfranc, of Pavia, late abbot of St. Stephen at Caen, who, as archbishop of Canterbury, reorganised the Church of England; Anselm of Aosta, late abbot of Bec, also an archbishop, canonised at the Renaissance, the discoverer of the famous "ontological" proof of the existence of God, a paradoxical proof the inanity of which it was reserved for St. Thomas Aquinas to demonstrate; Gilbert Foliot, a Frenchman, bishop of London, celebrated for his science, a strong supporter of Henry II.; Thomas Becket, of Norman descent, archbishop and saint, whose quarrel with Henry II. divided England, and almost divided Christendom too; Hugh, bishop of Lincoln under the same king, of French origin, and who was also canonised; Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, who contributed as much as any of the barons to the granting of the Great Charter, and presided over the Council of London, in 1218, where it was solemnly confirmed[231]; Robert Grosseteste,[232] famous for his learning and holiness, his theological treatises, his sermons, his commentaries on Boethius and Aristotle, his taste for the divine art of music, which according to him "drives away devils." Warriors or saints, all these leaders of men keep, in their difficulties, their eyes turned towards Rome, and towards the head of the Latin Church.
II.
At the same time as the monasteries, and under the shadow of their walls, schools and libraries multiplied. The Latin education of the nation is resumed with an energy and perseverance hitherto unknown, and this time there will be no relapse into ignorance; protected by the French conquest, the Latin conquest is now definitive.
Not only are religious books in Latin, psalters, missals and decretals copied and collected in monasteries, but also the ancient classics. They are liked, they are known by heart, quoted in writings, and even in conversation. An English chronicler of the twelfth century declares he would blush to compile annals after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons; this barbarous manner is to be avoided; he will use Roman salt as a condiment: "et exarata barbarice romano sale condire."[233] Another, of the same period, has the classic ideal so much before his eyes that he makes William deliver, on the day of Hastings, a speech beginning: "O mortalium validissimi!"[234]
A prelate who had been the tutor of the heir to the throne, and died bishop palatine of Durham, Richard de Bury,[235] collects books with a passion equal to that which will be later displayed at the court of the Medici. He has emissaries who travel all over England, France, and Italy to secure manuscripts for him; with a book one can obtain anything from him; the abbot of St. Albans, as a propitiatory offering sends him a Terence, a Virgil, and a Quinctilian. His bedchamber is so encumbered with books that one can hardly move in it.[236] Towards the end of his life, never having had but one passion, he undertook to describe it, and, retired into his manor of Auckland, he wrote in Latin prose his "Philobiblon."[237] In this short treatise he defends books, Greek and Roman antiquity, poetry, too, with touching emotion; he is seized with indignation when he thinks of the crimes of high treason against manuscripts, daily committed by pupils who in spring dry flowers in their books; and of the ingratitude of wicked clerks, who admit into the library dogs, or falcons, or worse still, a two-legged animal, "bestia bipedalis," more dangerous "than the basilisk, or aspic," who, discovering the volumes "insufficiently concealed by the protecting web of a dead spider," condemns them to be sold, and converted for her own use into silken hoods and furred gowns.[238] Eve's descendants continue, thinks the bishop, to wrongfully meddle with the tree of knowledge.