An interesting note is given by Haddan and Stubbs[[61]] which calls attention to the signature of one Mancant, a bishop, to a charter of 932 to which also Bishop Conan’s name is appended. The learned editors rightly conjecture that Mancant was a Cornish bishop (Mancant, or more correctly Maucant). Coeval Cornish bishops are just what we should expect to find in the tenth century no less than in the sixth.

Quite the most valuable extant document of Cornish Christianity, however, is the List of Manumissions on the Bodmin Gospels which dates from the year 942 and carries us almost to the middle of the eleventh century. From this precious manuscript we gather that there were during that period the following bishops in, or connected with, Cornwall: (1) Athelgea[rd] possibly bishop of Crediton, (2) Comoere contemporary with Edgar (958-975), (3) Wulfsige of a slightly subsequent date, (4) Burthwold mentioned in Cnut’s charter and described by William of Malmesbury as uncle of Living or Lyfing the penultimate bishop of Crediton. Charters also disclose two additional bishops: Ealdred (993-997) and Aethelred (1001). Of these Comoere, Wulfsige and Ealdred are identified by Mr. Haddan with Bodmin and Burthwold with St. Germans. Comoere’s name is Celtic; the rest of the names are Saxon. But the important point is that they are all, except possibly the first, contemporary with, though not identical with, bishops of Crediton, in other words, some measure of independence continued to exist between the Saxon see and the see or sees of Cornwall. There is nothing to show that, before the days of Wulfsige (967), i.e. until within 80 years of Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, the greater part of Cornwall was not Celtic both in religion and language. The change of ecclesiastical organisation was made at a period much later than is commonly supposed.[[62]]

The charter of King Aethelred to Bishop Ealdred (994) seems to point to a period of transition. He gives to Bishop Ealdred episcopal jurisdiction in the province of Cornwall that it (the province?) may be free and subject to him and his successors, “that he may govern and rule his diocese (parochiam) in the same way as other bishops who are in his realm, both the monastery (locus) and the domain (regimen) of St. Petrock being under the control of him and his successors.” If the English conception of diocesan jurisdiction had been generally known and allowed in Cornwall there would have been no need to require the stipulations contained in the concluding paragraph. Ealdred was to administer the see of St. Petrock on English lines. History does not tell us what was, in the meanwhile, happening at St. Germans; but twenty-four years later (in 1018) we meet with a grant of lands, in Landrake and Tiniel, by King Cnut to Burhwold bishop of St. Germans; the Landrake lands were to be held by the bishop during his life and after his death they were to be held for the good of the souls of him and the King. The Tiniel lands were to be used as the bishop thought fit. It is interesting to note that these lands were not annexed to the bishopric but continued to be held by the prior of St. Germans until the dissolution of the priory in the sixteenth century.

At the time of Cnut’s grant Cornwall had practically lost its independence both civil and ecclesiastical. All the witnesses of his charter, twenty-seven in number, bear Saxon names.

Burhwold died in or about A.D. 1043. Lyfing his nephew, who had become bishop of Crediton in 1027, was, in pursuance of an arrangement made long before between him and King Cnut, allowed to hold both sees. On Lyfing’s death, in the third year of the Confessor’s reign (1046), Leofric the King’s chaplain was appointed to the united bishopric (episcopatum Cridionensis ecclesiae atque Cornubiensis provinciae) and the see transferred to Exeter. Papal sanction was obtained for the transaction three years afterwards.

By his charter of ratification, dated 1050, Edward the Confessor transfers the Cornish diocese which had formerly been assigned to a bishop’s see (episcopali solio) in memory of Blessed German and in veneration of Petrock, this, with all parishes, lands, etc., he transfers to St. Peter in the city of Exeter. The absence of clear definition in the last paragraph is sufficiently obvious: no clearer definition was possible. There had been hitherto no Cornish diocese in the English and Roman acceptation of the word. There had been bishops both at Bodmin and at St. Germans within living memory holding lands and exercising jurisdiction, but the monastic tie was still probably stronger than the diocesan.

Yet it was obviously important, now that Exeter was to be the seat of ecclesiastical government for the two counties, that ample provision should be made for the great bishop who was to occupy it. Exeter lacked lands, books and almost every church ornament; so stated Pope Leo in his letter to King Edward. Accordingly the King not only gave to it lands of his own but he provided for the transfer of all that could under any reasonable pretext be claimed for its support. In effect, he made it possible for the Exeter bishopric to derive nearly one-half of its entire revenue from Cornish monastic lands. But the endowment of the see of Exeter requires a chapter to itself.

VI
EVOLUTION OF THE DIOCESAN-BISHOPRIC FROM THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL

The Roman and, consequently, the Saxon conception of episcopal government was territorial and diocesan; the Celtic conception was tribal and monastic. An ecclesiastical system based upon tribal and monastic principles, recognising no supreme central authority, can afford to dispense with clearly defined boundaries. At the same time a monastic, no less than a tribal organisation, requires a centre of its own, towards which its activities may converge, and from which its influences may radiate.