[A.D. 676-688.] Putta, the first Saxon bishop, received no great wealth with the church of Hereford. He was, says Bede, “more careful about ecclesiastical than secular matters.” During his rule here he taught, “wherever he was asked,” the chants of the Church,—those ancient Gregorian tones which Augustine had introduced at Canterbury, and which Archbishop Theodorus was now carefully disseminating throughout England.
The permanent establishment of Hereford as the place of an episcopal see was also the work of Archbishop Theodore, who after the Council at Hertford (A.D. 673) divided the great diocese of Mercia, as he had done that of East Anglia, into several bishoprics. (See Lichfield, Pt. II.) Of the bishops of Hereford between (688-1012) Putta and Æthelstan little is recorded beyond their names. Cuthbert (736-740) is an exception. In the latter year he was translated to Canterbury. (See that Cathedral, Pt. II.) It was during his archiepiscopate that the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were ordered to be universally taught in English.
[A.D. 1012-1056.] Æthelstan, (“vir magnæ sanctitatis,” according to Florence of Worcester,) rebuilt his cathedral from the foundations. He was blind for thirteen years before his death; and the affairs of his diocese were administered by Tremerig, Bishop of St. David’s. In 1055, the year before Bishop Æthelstan’s death, the town of Hereford (Herefordport as it is called in the Saxon Chronicle[44]) was harried by a large body of Irish and Welsh, under Ælfgar, the exiled Earl of Mercia. “They burned the town,” says the Chronicle; “and the great mynstre which the venerable Bishop Æthelstan had before caused to be built, that they plundered, and bereaved of relics and of vestments, and of all things; and slew the folk, and led some away[45].” In the following year Bishop Æthelstan died, and was buried in this desolated church.
The great treasure of Æthelstan’s minster was the body of St. Ethelbert, King of East Anglia; whose head, says the Saxon Chronicle, was “stricken off by the command of Offa, King of the Mercians, A.D. 792.” This is the only notice of Ethelbert in the Chronicle; and Florence of Worcester is almost as brief. We know nothing of the real history of Ethelbert. Later accounts asserted that he was murdered at Sutton’s Walls, a chief palace of the Mercian kings, about eight miles from Hereford, where he had gone at the invitation of Offa, who had offered him the hand of his daughter Elfrida. His body was secretly interred at Marden, close to Sutton’s Walls. Three nights afterwards, Ethelbert appeared to a certain Brithfrid, and telling him where he had been buried, ordered him to remove his body to the “chapel of Our Lady at Fernlege,”—generally supposed, but without much authority, to have been on the site of the existing cathedral of Hereford. Brithfrid obeyed; and the translation took place, not without the occurrence of miracles on the way. Many others followed. The murdered king of the East Angles was recognised as a saint; and a sumptuous monument was raised over his remains by Offa, in token of his penitence. Bishop Æthelstan translated the relics into his new “minster,” which was dedicated to St. Ethelbert. His festival was duly celebrated until the Reformation. A fine Early English church, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Ethelbert, remains at Marden, where the body was first interred.
[A.D. 1056.] Leofgar, “Earl Harold’s mass-priest,” succeeded Æthelstan. “He,” says the Chronicle, “wore his kenepas (headpiece?) in his priesthood, until he was a bishop; he forsook his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his spear and to his sword, after his bishophood, and so went in the force against Griffith the Welsh king; and he was there slain, and his priests with him, and Ælfnoth the shire-reeve, and many good men with them, and the others fled away. This was eight nights before Midsummer[46].” After Leofgar’s death the see remained vacant for four years, during which it was under the rule of Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester.
[A.D. 1061-1079.] Walter of Lorraine, chaplain of Queen Edith, was consecrated at Rome by Pope Nicholas II. (He had accompanied Bishop Ealdred of Worcester to Rome, on his elevation to the see of York.) Bishop Walter was a prelate of questionable sanctity, if the story told of him by William of Malmesbury is not an invention of his enemies.
[A.D. 1079-1095.] Robert de Losing, like his predecessor a native of Lorraine, is said to have been one of the most learned of the bishops consecrated by Lanfranc. Bishop Robert found his cathedral in ruins. It had apparently remained uncared for during the troubled times of the Conquest, and it had been partly burnt, as we have seen, by the Welshmen under Earl Ælfgar. The Bishop rebuilt it, taking for his model the church of Aachen, (Aix la Chapelle,) founded by Charlemagne. The existing choir (see Pt. I. § II.) has been regarded as part of Bishop Robert’s work.
Remigius of Lincoln, who had also been rebuilding his cathedral, had fixed the day for its dedication, and invited Bishop Robert of Hereford to be present. He refused to undertake the journey, however, saying, according to William of Malmesbury, that the stars assured him the dedication would not take place in the lifetime of Remigius; who died, in fact, the day before that appointed. Bishop Robert is said by Malmesbury to have received a forewarning of his own death from St. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, with whom he had lived in the closest friendship. When Wulfstan was on his death-bed, Robert was absent with the King. His friend, says the Chronicler, appeared to him in a dream, and directed him to hasten to Worcester if he wished to see him once more. Bishop Robert set out at once, but whilst resting at Cricklade he was again visited by Wulfstan, who said, “Thou hast done what was possible, but in vain, for I have now departed. Thou, however, shalt not remain here long; and as a token that I speak true, thou shalt to-morrow receive a gift from me.” Accordingly, the Prior of Worcester, where Robert arrived the next day, presented him with a cope lined with lamb-skins, which St. Wulfstan had been in the habit of wearing on his journeys. The Bishop recognised the token, and returning to Hereford died there in the following June, (1095). St. Wulfstan’s death occurred in January.
[A.D. 1096, trans. to York 1101.] Gerard, nephew of Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester, and Chancellor under the Conqueror and William II. On his translation to York, Roger Lardarius was nominated to the see of Hereford by the King, Henry I. He died before he could be consecrated. Reinhelm was then chosen, and received the temporalities as bishop-elect from the King, by the delivery of the ring and pastoral staff. Anselm (see Canterbury, Pt. II.) refused to consecrate the bishops who had been thus invested; and Reinhelm accordingly restored the temporalities to the King, who, enraged by his submission to the Archbishop, banished him from the court.
[A.D. 1107-1115.] Reinhelm, the Queen’s Chancellor, was, however, consecrated by Anselm in 1107, after the King had conceded the main points in dispute, and the Archbishop had returned from his exile. (See Canterbury, Pt. II.) Reinhelm is commemorated in an obituary of the Canons of Hereford, as “fundator ecclesiæ S. Ethelberti;” and it has accordingly been considered that he completed the church begun by Robert de Losing. But of this there is no direct proof.