Let us now praise famous men....
It was he that took thought for his people that they should not fall
And fortified the city against besieging.
Ecclesiasticus.
Great as has been the part played by kings in the history of our city, that played by bishops has been even greater still, and few among the makers of Winchester hold a more prominent or more honourable place than the great bishop who had succeeded to the see a few years before Henry I.’s death, Henry of Blois, brother of Stephen of Blois, now king of England, whose fortunes were to be closely linked during the two following reigns with those of our city.
A scheming statesman and an ardent churchman, he was to play a leading part in national affairs in the troublous times that were to follow—to direct his see for over forty years, and to leave indelible marks of his occupancy in the see and the city alike, of which St. Cross Hospital, Wolvesey ruins, the Cathedral font and portions of its fabric are but some of the most notable and most enduring.
And the times were troublous indeed. The White Ship tragedy had bereft not only the king of his heir, but the nation of a male claimant to the throne in the direct line, and all Henry’s influence was insufficient to secure the crown for his daughter Matilda, the widowed Empress of Germany. The feeling of the time was adverse to having a female as sovereign; and Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, actively championed by Bishop Henry, and strongly supported by the barons, bore down all active opposition.
But king though he was, Stephen’s personal position was very different from that of his Norman predecessors. Brave and frank, but personally easy-going, dependent, moreover, on the goodwill of the powerful interests which had placed him on the throne, his authority was weak and his hold on his subjects ineffective. Barons and bishops strengthened themselves against him, and an era of castle-building commenced, which was to usher in a period of more terrible oppression than the country has ever witnessed before or since, for, secure in their strongholds, the Norman barons fastened themselves on the defenceless countryfolk like vultures on their prey, and there was none to make them relax their hold. As the Chronicle says:
They filled the land with castles and they cruelly oppressed the wretched folk with castle works. When the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men. When took they the men who they thought any goods to have both by night and by day, churls and women, they cast them in prison for their gold and silver, and they tortured them with pains untellable—for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke—they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head and hanged fires upon their feet.... Many thousands they killed with hunger.... Then was corn dear and flesh, cheese and butter, for none there was in the land.... And they said openly that Christ slept and his saints.
Such was the anarchy, such the ruin, which weak rule had brought upon the realm.
Prominent among the castle-builders—though not among the oppressors—were certain of the bishops, and none more so than Bishop Henry. The bishop’s residence at Wolvesey, the ancient seat of Alfred and the Saxon kings, he converted into a strong Norman fortress, the ruins of which still stand, while at Merdon (near Hursley, some five miles from the city), at Bishop’s Waltham, and at Farnham, he reared fortresses also. Thus Winchester became remarkable in one respect—it had two fortress castles instead of one, a privilege it was later on to pay dearly for.
But Bishop Henry had other schemes too. Of royal birth, reared in the atmosphere of church ascendancy in the great and ambitious house of Cluny, and naturally masterful in temperament, he was aiming at higher rank and wider influence. Bishop of Winchester though he was, and Abbot of Glastonbury—for by special papal sanction he had been allowed to hold this valuable and influential office alike with his bishopric—there was still the archbishopric before him, and when in 1136 this fell vacant he seemed by every natural claim to be marked out for it; but Stephen had begun to feel his brother’s yoke growing heavy on him, and after some long delay Bishop Henry was passed by and Theobald, Abbot of Bec, appointed. Henry was deeply mortified; and though the Pope soon after appointed him as Papal Legate over Archbishop Theobald’s head, his wounded pride never forgot the affront it had received.
Disappointed of his hopes of Canterbury he worked hard to persuade the Pope to divide England into three provinces instead of two, with Winchester diocese as the third archbishopric; and though not actually successful in this, the Pope is said to have encouraged him in his project.