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Cornell University Ubrary DA 670.V64L7
Victoria history,,of the co^^^^^^^^
3 1924 028 099 426 ....-
The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028099426
Xlbe Dtctotta Ibtstortg of the Counties of lEnolanb
EDITED BY WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
VOLUME 11
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE VOLUMES I AND II EDITED BY WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A., VOLUMES III, IV, AND V EDITED BY WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A., and REV. W. O. MASSINGBERD, M.A.
THE
VICTORIA HISTORY
OF THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND
LINCOLNSHIRE
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY LIMITED
This History is issued to 'Subscribers only By Archibald Constable & Company Limited and printed by Eyre & Spottiswoode H.M. Printers of London
INSCRIBED
TO THE MEMORY OF
HER LATE MAJESTY
QUEEN VICTORIA
\
WHO GRACIOUSLY GAVE
THE TITLE TO AND
ACCEPTED THE
DEDICATION OF
THIS HISTORY
THE
VICTORIA HISTORY
OF THE COUNTY OF
LINCOLN
EDITED BY
WILLIAM PAGE, F.S.A.
VOLUME TWO
LONDON JAMES STREET
HAYMARKET 1906
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Dedication . . . . .
Contents . . . . .
List of Illustrations
Editorial Note . . . .
Ecclesiastical History (To a.d. 1600) .
„ „ (From A.D. 1600)
Religious Houses : —
Introduction
Lincoln Cathedral
Monastery of Ikanho
Monastery of Barrow
Abbey of Bardney
Abbey of Partney
Abbey of Crowland
Cell of St. Pega
Abbey of Stow .
Priory of Spalding
Priory of Belvoir
Priory of St. Leonard, Stamford
Priory of Freiston
Priory of Deeping
Priory of St. Mary Magdalene, Lincoln
Cell of Sandtoft
Cell of ' Henes '
Priory of Stainfield
Abbey of Humberston
Abbey of Kirkstead
Abbey of Louth Park
Abbey of Revesby
Abbey of Vaudey
Abbey of Swineshead
Priory of Stixwould
Priory of Heynings
Priory of Nuncotham
Priory of Legbourne
Priory of Greenfield
Priory of Gokewell
Priory of Fosse
Priory of Axholme
Abbey of Grimsby or Wellow
Priory of Hyrst
Abbey of Thornton
PACE V
ix xiii
XV
By Miss M. M. C. Calthrop .... By Miss S. Melhuish
By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Community
By Miss Phyllis Wragge, Oxford Honours School of
Modern History ..... By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Community
By Miss Rose Graham, F.R.Hist.S. By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints'
By Miss Rose Graham, F.R.Hist.S. By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints'
Community
Community
I
78
80
96
97
97
1 04
105
118
118
118
12+ 127 128 129
129
130 130 131 '33 135 138 141
■43 145 146 149 151 153 iSS 156
IS7 158 i6i 163 163
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Religious Houses {continued) : —
Priory of Thornholm
Priory of Nocton Park
Priory of Torksey
Priory of Elsham
Priory of Kyme
Priory of Markby
Priory of Newstead by Stamford
Abbey of Bourne
Priory of St. Leonard, Grimsby
Priory of Sempringham
Priory of Haverholme
Priory of St. Catherine outside Lincoln
Priory of BuUington
Priory of Alvingham
Priory of Sixhills
Priory of North Ormsby, or Nun
Ormsby
Priory of Catley
Priory of Tunstall
Priory of Newstead-on-Ancholme
Priory of St. Saviour, Bridgend in Horbling ....
Abbey of Newhouse or Newsham
Abbey of Barlings
Abbey of Hagnaby
Abbey of Tupholme .
Abbey of Newbo
Priory of Orford
Commandery of Maltby by Louth
Commandery of Skirbeck .
Commandery of Lincoln
Preceptory of Willoughton .
Preceptory of Eagle .
Preceptory of Aslackby
Preceptory of South Witham
Preceptory of Temple Bruer
Austin Friars of Boston
Black Friars of Boston
Grey Friars of Boston
White Friars of Boston
Grey Friars of Grantham
Austin Friars of Grimsby
Grey Friars of Grimsby
Austin Friars of Lincoln
Black Friars of Lincoln
Grey Friars of Lincoln
White Friars of Lincoln
Friars of the Sack, of Lincoln
By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Community
By Miss Rose Graham, F.R.Hist.S.
By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Commun
ity
By A. G. Little, M.A.
1 66 i68
I 70 171 172
'74 176 177 179 179 187
188 191 192 194
195 196
197 197
198 199 202 205 206 207 209 209 210 210 210 211 211 212 212 213 214 21S 216 217 218 219 219 220
222
224 225
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Religious Houses {continued) : —
Austin Friars of Stamford .
Black Friars of Stamford
Grey Friars of Stamford
White Friars of Stamford .
Friars of the Sack, of Stamford
Hospital of Holy Innocents with- out Lincoln
Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, Partney
Hospital of Boothby Pagnell
Hospital of Glanford Bridge, or Wrawby
Hospital of St. Giles without Lincoln
Hospital of Mere
Hospital of St. John Baptist with out Boston ...
Hospital of St. Leonard without the Castle of Lincoln
Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene. Lincoln
Hospital of Grimsby .
Hospital of Louth
Hospital of Spalding
Hospital of St. Bartholomew with out Lincoln
Hospital of St. John Baptist and St. Thomas the Martyr on Stamford Bridge .
Hospital of St. Giles, Stamford
Hospital of All Saints', Stamford
Hospital of Walcot
Hospital of Langworth
Hospital of Thornton
Hospital of Holbeach
Hospital called Spittal on the Street
Hospital of Grantham
College of Spilsby
Cantilupe College
College of Tattershall
College of Thornton
Priory of Covenham
Priory of Burwell
Priory of Minting
Priory of Wilsford
Priory of Haugham
Priory of Willoughton
Priory of Bonby
Priory of Wenghale
Priory of Great Limber
By A. G. Little, M.A.
225 226 227 229 230
By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Community . 230
232 232
232
233 233
233
233
234 234 234 234
234
234 234 234 235 235 235 235
23s 235
236
236
237 237
238 238
239 240 240 241 241 241 242
XI
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TWO
Religious Houses {continued) : — Priory of Long Bennington Priory of Hough Priory of Cammeringham Priory of West Ravendale Priory of North Hylceham
Political History
Social and Economic History
Table of Population, 1801-1901
Industries : —
Introduction . . . .
Deep Sea Fisheries and Fish Docks
Mines and Quarries Agricultural Implement Manu- facturers Agriculture Forestry Schools
Sport Ancient and Modern Fox Hunting
The Brocklesby Hunt The Burton Hunt The Blankney Hunt The Southwold Hunt Mr. Ewbank's Hunt The Belvoir Hunt
The Marquess of Exeter'i Hunt . Harriers and Beagles Otter Hounds Racing Polo Shooting Wild Fowling Coursing . Angling . Golf Athletics
By the Sister Elspeth of All Saints' Communi'Ly
By C. H. Vellacott, B A. .
By the Rev. W. O. Massingberd, M.A.
By Geo. S. Minchin
By the Rev. W. O. Massingberd, M.A. By Miss Ethel M. Hew^itt .
By G. E. Collins .... By the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A. By A. F. Leach, M.A., F.S.A. Edited by E. D. Cuming By G. E. Collins
By the Rt. Hon. Lord Monson, and G. E By G. E. Collins
By CuTHBERT Bradley .
By the Rev. J. F. Quirk, M.A
By Henry Sharp
By J. W. Bourne .
By R. Mason
By W. T. Warrener
By J. E. Fowler Dixon
Collins
242 242
243 243 244 245 293 356
381
388 393
394
397 417 421
493 493
499
502 503 505 505
505 506 506 506 Sn Sii S14 518
519
525 528
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PACK
Lincoln. By William Hyde .......... frontispiece
Ecclesiastical Map of Lincolnshire ......... between 78, 79
Seals of the Bishops and the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln . . full page plate facing 42
Seals of Lincolnshire Religious Houses
Pl="el „ „ ,04
Plate II „ „ ,86
EDITORIAL NOTE
The editor desires to express his great indebtedness to the Rev. W. O. Massingberd, M.A., for his constant advice and assistance w^hile passing this volume through the press. From his great knowledge of local history much important material has been added and small errors which would have escaped the attention of anyone less skilled in the topography of Lincolnshire have been corrected. The editor has also to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. J. Horace Round, M.A., LL.D., who has kindly read some of the proofs and made many valuable suggestions, and of Mr. Maurice H. Footman, who has given notes regarding the Industries of the county.
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
THE conjecture that '■Adelfius episcopus, de civitate Colonia Londinensium,' summoned with the bishops of York and London to attend the Council of Aries in 3 1 4/ may be an error of the scribe for Colonia Lindemium has been held to indicate the existence of a bishop of Lin- coln as far back as this remote period. There is nothing, however, beyond the mere surmise to connect this county with the Romano-British church and no proof that Christianity existed in Lincolnshire till the seventh century. Bede has described in graphic language the manner in which the conversion of Lindsey, or the northern and largest division of Lincolnshire, was brought about in the earlier part of that century.' On the mar- riage of Ethelburga of Kent, granddaughter of the royal convert of St. Augustine, in 625 to Edwin, the yet unconverted king of Northumbria, Paulinus, originally despatched by Pope Gregory in 601 to strengthen the earlier Kentish mission, was chosen to accompany the princess as chaplain and spiritual guide. Full of missionary zeal the bishop ' penetrated into outlying portions of the northern kingdom, and crossing the Humber came into Lindsey, then by virture of conquest under Northumbrian sway. Advancing as far as the Roman town of Lincoln, he there gained as the first- fruits of the Church in this district Blaecca the governor, who himself was baptized with his whole house.* Bede records that the ' stone church of beautiful workmanship ' built by Paulinus in the town of Lincoln was still standing in his day though the roof had fallen.' Nor was this the only visit paid by Paulinus to this district. According to the account of one
■ Labbe, Sacr. Concil. ii, 477. Mr. Haverfield says with regard to this : — ' Three British bishops arc said to have attended the Council of Aries, Eborius, ' de civitate Eboracensi ' ; Restitutus, ' de civitate Londinensi'; Adelfius, ' de civitate colorvia Londinensium '; also a 'Presbyter,' Sacerdos, and a ' Deacon,' Arminius. There is an obvious error in the third entry, ' Londinium ' vi^as not a ' colonia ' (municipality), and ' Londinensium ' merely repeats the preceding ' Londinensi.' The easiest emendation is to read ' Lind- ensium'; 'Lindun ' or Lincoln was a ' colonia,' and was flourishing in the fourth century, and the confusion between ' Lindensium ' and ' Londinensium ' would not be difficult to a careless scribe. Another alternative would be to.suppose ' Londinensium ' an error for ' Camulodunensium,' the municipality or 'colonia ' which is now Colchester. That is textually a more violent change, but makes equally good sense. On the other hand, the common view that we should read 'Legionensium ' and suppose Caerleon to be meant is inadmissible. Caerlon was from first to last a fortress and not a ' colonia,' and its military character makes it a most unlikely centre for Christianity, about 3 14. So far as I know, all the MSS. read 'Londinensium' except one, which omits that word. If that were the right reading, namely ' de civitate colonia ' simply, the reference would be to Colchester. The relative value of the different MSS. which contain this list of bishops is not, I believe, quite settled, but as far as is known at present, the inclusion of ' Londinensium ' has the better authority.'
' The early ecclesiastical history of this district is rendered more complicated by the fact that it did not constitute a kingdom in itself, but occupied the position of a border province and bone of contention between the powerful kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, falling under the sway, now of one, now of the other.
' Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. ii. cap. ix. Before starting he received consecration as bishop of the prospective Church in Northumbria at the hands of Justus of Canterbury. Ibid.
* Ibid. cap. xvi.
' In this same church, generally identified with that of St. Paul's-in-the-Bail, churches at that time being frequently named after their founders, Honorius was consecrated by Paulinus to Canterbury on the death of Justus. Ibid.
2 I I
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
Deda, abbot of Partney,^ the apostle of Lindsey appeared at another time with his royal convert Edwin on the banks of the Trent and baptized a great multitude in its waters.* An ancient eye-witness of the scene who himself received baptism on this occasion thus describes the bishop, ' tall of stature, a little stooping, his hair black, his visage meagre, his nose very slender and aquiline, his aspect both venerable and majestic' To Northumbria therefore Lindsey owes its conversion and its first Christian Church, and through the teaching of Paulinus is linked with the Roman school ;' yet in spite of political fluctuations which brought it into temporary subjection to the northern kingdom, the province recognized mainly Mercian rule, and from the date of the conversion of Mercia was placed under Mercian bishops, whose see was established at Lichfield and whose traditions were of the Irish or Scottish school.*
Of the work or influence in Lindsey of the earlier Mercian bishops nothing is recorded till the time of Ceadda, commonly known as St. Chad, 669 to 672.
The first mention of church organization in Lincolnshire occurs in con- nexion with King Wulphere, who gave to his new bishop the land of fifty families at a place called ' Ad Baruae ' or ' at the wood ' generally identified with Barrow on Humber ; ' the object of the grant being to found a monastery and thus provide a mission centre on an outlying border of the vast diocese. Traces of this foundation still remained in Bede's time, but the house was swept away during the Danish ravages of the ninth century and never rebuilt.
The rule of Chad's successor Wynfrid was brief, as he was deposed by archbishop Theodore in 675 ' for some disobedience,' his offence probably con- sisting in a refusal to allow his diocese to be sub-divided as had been suggested
* One of the first monastic establishments in Lindsey.
* Ibid. The place is given by Bede as ' near the city called in the English tongue Tiouulfingacaestir,' generally identified with Torksey, an important burgh in Domesday; the actual spot for the baptism has more recently been fixed in the parish of Marton and opposite to Littleborough, a little to the south of Gains- borough. See Ear/y Traces of Christianity in North Lines. Line. Arch. Soc. xix, 320.
' ' The conversion of England was accomplished principally, if not entirely, by monks either of the Roman or of the Irish school.' Stubbs, Chron. and Mem. ofRic. I. (Rolls Sen), Introd. ii, xiii.
* Strong evidence of the feeling of the inhabitants of Lindsey against their annexation to Northumbria is shown in the attitude of the monks of Bardney towards Oswald, king and martyr, who re-conquered this district after it had fallen to Mercia on the death of Edwin in 633. After the death of Oswald in battle fighting against the heathen power of Mercia (Bede, Eecl. Hist. lib. iii, cap. vii), his niece Osthryda, who by her marriage with Ethelred of Mercia for a time united the warring dynasties, desired to bestow on the monastery of Bardney, which she and her husband much loved, the remains of her sainted uncle, then regarded as a martyr to the cause of the faith. But the monks of Bardney refused to admit the waggon when it arrived before the gate of the monastery with its sacred burden, alleging that Oswald though a holy man had en- deavoured to establish an alien yoke over them, and the relics were left outside in the open air with only the shelter of a tent to cover them. During the night, however, miraculous proof was afforded of the king's sanctity. A pillar of light reaching up to heaven, which was seen by all the inhabitants of Lindsey, stood over the waggon, and in the morning the monks, convinced, intreated that the holy relics might be deposited among them. They were accordingly washed and placed in a shrine, over which was suspended a banner of purple and gold symbolical of the royalty of the saint. (Ibid, iii, cap. xi.) Many were the miracles reported to be performed there, but during the Danish invasion, which swept away Christian evidences in the county the relics were carried off and deposited at Gloucester. The murder of Queen Osthryda by the nobles of Lindsey (Ibid. lib. v, cap. xxiv. and Floren. Wigom. i, 45) is another proof of the dislike in the district to Northumbrian rule. Ethelred, like many another Mercian prince, resigned his kingdom in 704 and retired to the abbey of Bardney, of which he died abbot in 716. Ibid, i, 46-9.
' Local tradition here still preserves the name of St. Chad. In 971 King Edgar made a grant to JEthelwold, bishop of Winchester, of land at Barrow on Humber to be assigned to the monastery of Peter- borough, in his deed recalling that it had formerly been in the possession of St. Chad before it was wasted by the Danes. Cart. Saxon, iii, 566.
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
by the council of ' Hereutford.' The bishop returned to his former home in the monastery at Barrow, where he died ' in all holy conversation.'^
Saintliness of life and the study of sacred learning flourished in that halcyon period succeeding the conversion of England, the old dreamed dreams, the young saw visions. William of Malmesbury, contrasting the state of the nation in that primitive age with the period which succeeded before the Conquest, exclaims ' What shall I say then of bishops, hermits, abbots ? Does not the whole island blaze with such numerous relics of its natives, that you can scarce pass through a village of any importance but you hear the name of some new saint ? And of how many of them the memory has perished for want of record !'* Lincolnshire, however, still preserves the memory of many who have bequeathed their names to the county and whose fame has not yet departed : Etheldreda, the virgin queen of Northumbria, whose flight across Lincolnshire to her island home at Ely, legend has connected not only with the little church at West Halton, dedicated in her honour,' but with the minster at Stow, which tradition presents to us as the mother church of Lindsey ;* St. Higbald or Hybald, whose name, not to be forgotten in the early annals of this district, though we know little of his history ,° is retained in the dedication of three churches in North Lincolnshire* and in that of the church of Ashby-de-la-Launde, near Sleaford, while further south we have the great names of St. Botolph and St. Guthlac.
This southern district beyond Witham was originally held by that tribe of the northern Gyrvii which occupied north Cambridgeshire and North- amptonshire. It is probable that from its geographical position and political affinities this part of Linconshire was at an early period more closely identified with the kingdom of the East Angles, with whom it embraced Christianity, than with Mercia under whose sway it eventually fell. Thus it has been noted that in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the foundation of the monastery at Icanho in 654 by St. Botolph^ is associated with the death in the same year of Anna, the devout king of East Anglia and the father of St. Etheldreda.
' Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. iv, cap. vi. ' Gesta Regum. ii, 417.
' The queen in her flight from Coldinghara to evade the pursuit of her husband reached the northern shores of the Humber. Aided by favouring winds she crossed the channel and arrived safely at Winteringham, where the great north road touches the Humber. From this place, accompanied by her maidens, Sewara and Sewenna, she fled on to a village near, almost surrounded by marshes. Here, in return for the hospitality of the inhabitants among whom she sojourned for some days, she caused a rude church to be built, the site of which is said to be occupied by the present church of West Halton, dedicated to St. Etheldreda. Thomas of Ely, Jngl. Sacr. i, 598.
* Continuing her journey, the queen, so runs the story, being weary lay down with her companions to rest in a shady place. On awaking she found that to increase the shade the dried up ashen staff which she had planted in the ground at her head had clothed itself with fresh bark and pushed out leaves and branches eventually becoming the largest ash tree in Lindsey. A church being built in after days in honour of the Virgin Mary on the spot where the queen had rested, the former designation of St. Etheldreda Stow, or the resting place of St. Etheldreda, was changed to St. Mary Stow. Ibid, i, 599.
' Bede speab of Higbald as abbot of a religious house in Lindsey, ' a man of great holiness and self- restraint,' the tutor of Swidbert who accompanied Willibrod on his mission to the Frisians, and a friend of Egbert, the Irish monk, who described to him the manner of the passing of St. Chad from this world. Eccl. Hist. lib. iv, cap. iii, v, ix.
* The three churches dedicated to him are Hibaldstow itself, Manton, and Scawby close by. His name remains in his • stow,' probably his missionary station.
' Aug. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 5 1 . According to the life given by Mabillon and attributed to Folcard, abbot of Thorney soon after the Conquest, Botolph was by birth an Englishman who was sent with his brother Adulph to receive religious training in Germany, where both became monks. Adulph is said to have become bishop of Utrecht, but Botolph returned to his native land and received the offer of a site for the establishment of a religious house.
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
On its conversion the Mercian kingdom sprung immediately into the front rank of Christian powers with a well organized diocese of which the Fen country formed a border province. The connexion, however, between this district and East Anglia was not quickly lost and its almost inaccessible situation, buried deep in the marshes of the fens, presented many attractions to those royal and noble exiles, who sought refuge from the storms of state and perplexities of existence. Here in 699 came the princely youth Guthlac, type of the striving, wistful spirit of his age, attracting pilgrims of all degrees to his island sanctuary by the report of his piety and austerity. On the par- tition of the Mercian diocese^ by Theodore in 680 this district came under the bishop whose see was established at Leicester, but the final separation from the mother diocese of Lichfield was not fully accomplished till the year
737- . . ^
The northern division of the county, to return to Lindsey, first obtained
a bishop of its own in 678. In that year, Ecgfrid of Northumbria " proceeded by the advice of Archbishop Theodore to sub-divide the huge diodese presided over by Wilfrid of York, and having subdued Mercia, and driven out Wulphere, he set up a new and separate bishopric for the province of Lindsey, and caused Eadhed to be consecrated its first bishop.' Bishop Saxulf retired from Lindsey, but retained Mercia and the Middle Angles under his superintend- ence. The rule of Eadhed was cut short in the following year when the Mercian king Ethelred again wrested Lindsey from Northumbria.* North Lincolnshire nevertheless continued a succession of bishops of its own, and Ethelwin ' of the English nobility ' was consecrated to the deserted see in 680.^ The bishop was of a family already well connected in these parts, his brother Aldwine being abbot of Partney, and his sister ./Ethelheld the venerable abbess of a neighbouring monastery.* He fixed his see at ' Sidnacester ' ^ and ' long ruled the diocese worthily.' °
Bede records the names of Eadgar the third bishop, and of Cyneberht, who died in 732,' and was succeeded by Alwig, consecrated by Archbishop Tatwin in 733.'° Alwig was present at the council of Clovesho in 747, and signed as episcopus Lindissae provintiae}^ On his death in 750 he was followed by Eadulf, his deacon,^*" who in turn was succeeded in 767 by Ceolwulf, in whose time the see of Sidnacester was placed under the primacy established for a brief period at Lichfield by the council of Cealchyth in 787." His successor Eadulf, consecrated in 796, was present at the council of Clovesho in 803, which put an end to the Mercian archbishopric.^* Berhtred, conse-
' Stubbs considers it conclusirely fixed that the northern fens came under the superintendence of Mercian bishops from the time of the conversion of Mercia by the fact that St. Guthlac received the rite of ordination from Bishop Headda of Lichfield. ' Foundation and Early Fasti of Peterborough ' v/r^i. Joum. rviii, p. 107
" The baffled husband of St. Ethcldreda.
' Bede, Ecd. Hist. lib. iv, cap. xii ; Vita mifridi. Hist. ofCh. of York (Rolls Ser.), cap. xx.
' Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. iv, cap. xii.
' Ibid. He is said to have received instruction while resident in Ireland, at that time the favourite resort of godliness and learning. Ibid. lib. iii, cap. xxvii.
^ This establishment at Skendleby appears to have been a double monastery, i.e. for men and women presided over by an abbess, after the example of Whitby. On the occasion of one of her visits to Bardney Queen Osthryda bestowed on her friend the abbess who came to visit her some of the sacred dust of St. Oswald enclosed in a casket. Ibid. lib. iii, cap. xi.
' Generally, but without direct evidence, identified with Stow. ' Ibid. lib. iii, cap. xxvii.
' Ibid. lib. iv. cap. xii. '" Sim. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. 100.
" Birch, Cart. Saxon, i, 250. " Sim. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. to.
" Wilkins, Concil. i, 152. " Ibid. 166, 167.
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
crated by Archbishop Ceolnoth in 838,^ is the last name that occurs before that dark and gloomy period of the Danish invasion sets in, during which the episcopal succession in Lindsey vanishes, to re-appear but for a time before it merges in that of the see of Dorchester, w^hich had existed side by side v^^ith it for nearly 300 years. Established as the see of Leicester, in 680 as we have already seen, its first bishop Cuthwine was consecrated in the same year.^ From 692 to 705 the diocese was administered by the exiled Wilfrid of York,' and in the latter year was again united with the mother see of Lichfield under Bishop Headda,* On the death of Bishop Aldwine in 737 it was finally separated from Lichfield, and presided over by a succession of prelates, beginning with Totta or Torhthelm, Eadberht, Unwona, Werenberht, Hrcthun, Aldred, Ceolred, Alcheard, Ceolwulf, Winsige, Oskytel, translated to York in 958, and Leofwine, who filled up the gap in the episcopal succession of Lindsey by the union of the two sees.' As bishop of Lindsey he signed acts in 953 and 965 ; his successor Sigeferth did the same in 997 and 1004,' but only the bare title remained, all reality of episcopal rule in Lindsey had passed away even as the name was destined to do.' Nor did Leicester itself long survive the sister see. Leofwine, having accomplished their union, was driven by ever- increasing pressure from the Danes to fall back on Dorchester, the original seat of the West-Saxon bishopric, now transferred to Winchester, and this place continued from that time to be the head of the diocese until it was transferred to Lincoln after the Conquest.
The Danish invasion was regarded by the thoughtful of that age as the punishment of Heaven incurred by the sins of a corrupt and enfeebled nation who having lost the fervour of their early faith, had laid themselves open to attack from without. In the primitive days of the church, says Roger of Wendover, ' religion shone with so bright a light that kings and queens, princes and dukes, earls, barons and churchmen alike inflamed with desire of the heavenly kingdom became monks, recluses, voluntary exiles, forsaking all to follow their Lord ; but a time succeeded when virtue became so feeble among them that none could find their equal in treachery and fraud, nothing was unknown among them save piety and justice, wherefore as a punishment God sent upon them nations cruel and pagan who spared neither the sex of women nor the age of infancy.' * To the Danes this district held out peculiar attrac- tions in the prospect of rich plunder offered by the monasteries of the Fen country. Previous attacks, however, were but a prelude to the ' thorough ' performance of 869—70, which desolated Lindsey, reduced the monastery of Bardney to ruins, and left its hundred monks slaughtered amid the ashes of their home. Kesteven next followed ; the gallant stand made against the slaughtering army by Earl Algar and his little band of patriots proved but a temporary check, the enemy did not stay their hand till the work of ruin
' Wharton, Angl. StKr. i, 79. ' Ibid, i, 424 ; Fkrett. Wigprn. i, 242.
' Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. Angl. 5. * Wharton, Angl. Sacr. i, 427-8.
' Flonn. Wigorn. i, 242. ' Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. Angl. 28, 31.
' Roger of Wendover, writing at the close of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, records the death of Eadulf I, bishop of Lindsey, and the succession of Ceowulf, adding, ' where these bishops had their episcopal seat is altogether unknown.' Flores Hut. (Engl. Hist. Soc), i, 237.
* Ibid. 281. Learning, so marked a feature of an earlier century, had become so decayed that Alfred jn his Preface to Gregory's Pastoral, states that few priests on this side the Humber could understand the Common Service of the Church, and he knew none south of the Thames who could turn an ordinary piece of Latin into English. Will, of Malmes. Gesta Regum, ii, 417.
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
had been accomplished. Not a church was left standing, nor a religious house spared throughout the county. To the south at Crowland the only survivor was a lad who is said by tradition to have carried the tidings of the fate of his house. ^
After the peace concluded by Alfred in 888, this district, definitely ceded to the Danes, formed an important part of the Danelagh. The bishop's see retreated to Dorchester on Thames, for Lindsey, occupied by men of Danish origin, was now no place for a Christian bishop. The revival of monasticism under Edgar played but little part in Lincolnshire. Of those early foundations in this county destroyed by the Danes, Crowland was not rebuilt till 966 ; Bardney was a post-Conquest restoration ; the history of Barrow as a religious house with its associations with St. Chad ceased from this time ; of the re- building of Stow by Eadnoth, the ' good bishop ' of Dorchester, more will be said later,' Under Canute, church life again sprang into existence, the parish churches in Lincolnshire, so numerous in the time of Domesday, were pro- bably largely built during his reign, and that of Edward the Confessor. Canute, we are told, desired to raise commemorative churches on the scene of his former battle fields, but his thoughts turned chiefly, as was most natural, to the fen country with its great monasteries of Ely and Ramsey, where slept the brave who had fallen at Maldon and Assandun.' Of the immediate successors of Bishop Leofwine of Dorchester we hear little beyond their con- nexion with Ramsey and Ely. Eadnoth, or Aelfnoth, appended his signature to the charter of the foundation of Ramsey by Edgar in 974,* and the men of Kesteven, with Aescwige their bishop, were present at the consecration of the church in 991.' Aelfhelm, consecrated in 1002, was succeeded in 1006 by Eadnoth, the first abbot of Ramsey," who, after the murder of Alphege by the Danes in 10 12, with Alfhun of London received the body of the archbishop and gave it burial in St. Paul's, London.^ Four years later the bishop himself fell by the side of Edmund Ironside at Assandun, whither he had gone ' to pray for the English army.' * His body was carried to Ely and buried in the church, the many miracles reported to be wrought there exciting envious comment from the rival establishment at Ramsey.' Aethelric, consecrated in 1 016, came also from Ramsey, and was buried before the high altar on his death in 1034.^° Through the favour of Canute he was able to procure many grants and privileges for his community, his gifts and good deeds being
' Ingulph (Gale), p. 22.
' ' Very few of the religious houses which perished during the Danish wars ever rose again from their ashes. The cathedral and city monasteries were almost the only exceptions ' ; Stubbs, Chron. and Mem. of Ric. I. (Rolls Ser.), Introd. i, xviii.
' Freeman, Norman Conquest, i, 487-8. ' dart. Rames. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 58.
' Chron. Abbat. Rams. (Rolls Ser.), 93. ' Ibid. 115. ' Ibid.
' Ibid. 118 ; Chart. Rames. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 172. Abbot Wulfsius of Ramsey was another churchman who fell on that occasion in 1016.
' The chronicler of Ramsey gives the story of the forcible detention of the body by the monks of Ely as it was being brought home for burial at Ramsey, the home of his boyhood, according to the bishop's own desire. The bearers tarried a night at Ely on the way, and being weary slept soundly, but, as they thought, safely. In the morning, however, the body was gone, and they were told that their hosts considered they had a greater claim to it, for Eadnoth was their bishop and they intended to keep him {Chron. Rames. [Rolls Ser.], 1 18-19). T^^ ^'y chronicle adds the edifying particular that that 'holy man' Aelfgar, bishop of Elmham, who had retired from his see to Ely, managed the trick by making the watchers drunk (ibid. Preface, p. xxxv). Such devices were not uncommon in those days, especially in such hard-drinking districts, and were regarded as meritorious rather than otherwise. Bishop Aethelric is said to have obtained the promise of a grant of land from a Dane when in his cups which he forced him to adhere to when sober. '" Chart. Abbat. Rames. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 173.
6
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
acknowledged by the chronicler of Ramsey to have amply compensated for the bell which he helped to crack by his bad ringing when a scholar of the abbey.^ Eadnoth III, known as 'the good bishop' of Dorchester, succeeded in 1034; like his predecessor he came from Ramsey, and was high in favour with Canute. Besides large grants to the abbey where he died in 1049, he restored the minster at Stow so long left in ruins. This may be noted as constituting the only mention we get of Lindsey during the rule of bishops, whose sphere of interest seems entirely confined to the southern district.
On the death of Eadnoth in 1050 ' King Edward,' says the chronicler, • gave the bishopric to Ulf, his priest, and ill bestowed it, for he performed nothing bishoplike therein, so that it shames us now to tell more.'' The new bishop owed his appointment to the blind partiality of the Confessor for Normans, and managed to retain it by bribes, for he showed himself so unfit for the post on being sent to Rome to receive confirmation ' that they were very near breaking his staff' and cancelling the appointment * if he had not given the greater treasures.' * This worthless occupant of the see held it but for a brief span ; with Robert of Canterbury and other foreign favourites he took refuge in flight on the triumphant return of Earls Godwin and Harold in 1052.* Wulfwig, a Saxon, after some delay was appointed to the deserted bishopric, and with Leofwine of Lichfield sought consecration over seas in consequence of well-founded scruples as to the canonical position of Stigand of Canterbury. During his rule he established a college of secular priests at Stow on the plan of St. Paul's Cathedral, being assisted in his scheme by the generous gifts and benefactions of the Lady Godiva, in conjunction with her husband Earl Leofric of Mercia.' Wulwig was the last bishop of Dorchester before the Conquest, and his death on 6 December, 1067, created the first gap in the ranks of the episcopacy since that great event.
The ecclesiastical configuration of the county in the eleventh century may fairly be gathered from a glance at the Domesday Survey of 1086. In Lincolnshire, already parcelled out under the parochial system into local areas, each with its parish church, and presumably its parish priest, the number of churches mentioned has been estimated at 222,' and as a return of churches was not specifically within the scope of the Survey, this did not in all proba- bility represent the total number in existence. The paucity of Lincolnshire religious foundations is explained by the fact that the monastic system swept away by the Danes did not fully revive till the days of Henry I and Stephen.'' Among the ninety-two tenants in chief, including the thegns, are recorded the names of six prelates : the archbishop of York, the bishops of Durham, Bayeux, Salisbury and Coutances, as well as the bishop of Lincoln ; of four
' Chnn.Rames (Rolls Ser.), 126, 146.
' ji.S. Ciroft. (Rolls Ser.), 140-2. ' Ibid. 143.
* Archbishop and bishop, when the tidings came of the return of the exiles, mounted their horses and rode through the streets out of the east gate of London, hacking down all who barred their progress. Making their way to the coast at Walton-on-Naze they came on a ' crazy ship,' and so betook themselves over sea. Ibid. 132.
' See copy of agreement between the bishop and the earl and his wife under Eynsham ; Dugdale, Mott. iii. No. iii, p. 14.
' Sir H. Ellis, Introd. to Domesda'^, i, 286. The largest number returned for any county, except Norfolk with 243, and Suffolk with 364. Ibid. 287.
' Till that time the few houses of Norman foundation appear to have been erected as cells to foreign houses.
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
religious houses : the abbeys of Peterborough, Westminster, Ramsey and Crowland ; and of one ecclesiastic, Osbern the priest. Besides these tenants in chief other religious bodies are named as under-tenants : the abbey of St. Karileph in Maine, holding land under the bishop of Durham in Covenham and Skidbrook : ^ the canons of Lincoln holding in demesne of the manor of Welton under the bishop, and jointly with the bishop in Redbourne:^ the abbot of St. Germain, Selby, holding in Crowle under Geoffrey de Wirce : * the monks of St. Sever, Avranches,* under-tenants of Hugh de Abrincis in Hougham. ' Thorold the abbot ' held land in ' Hochtune ' or Houghton in Spittlegate, Grantham, under Colegrim the Saxon thane.'
To the period immediately succeeding the Norman Conquest the diocese of Lincoln owes the enormous development and improvement in its organiza- tion and administration which, welding in a compact whole the disconnected elements that had hitherto composed its vast area, advanced it into the front rank as one of the best governed sees in England. On the death of Wulfwig, the Conqueror proceeded to fill up the vacancy thus created in the see of Dor- chester with one of his own Norman ecclesiastics, his choice falling on
' Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 430. In the later Roll of Lindsey the monks of Covenham, a cell founded by the Conqueror at the instance of the bishop of Durham, are returned as tenants in chief in Covenham.
' Again in the later roll the canons have become tenants in chief of 1 4 carucates of land in Welton, Riseholme and Willingham.
^ The holdings recorded in 1086 may also be compared with the return of landowners in Lindsey made in the time of Henry I. The archbishop of York, besides his fief in Lindsey, amounting in the twelfth century roll to 35 carucates 4^ bovates (R. E. C. Waters, Roll of Landowners in parts of Lindsey temp. Hen. I, 10), held manors at Dowsby, Billingborough, Horbling, North and South Witham, Billinghay and Lavington in the Kesteven division of the county {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 339-40). The bishop of Durham, whose estates in Lindsey are returned in the roll as amounting to 56 carucates 4-^ bovates (Waters, op. cit. p. 10), held manors also at Kirkby Green, Great Gonerby, Pickworth, Kelby in Haydor, and Evcdon in Kesteven {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 340—1). The estates of the bishop of Bayeux were already in the king's hand at the time of the Survey (ibid, i, 342). The bishop of Salisbury had no holding in Lindsey, and is therefore not entered on the roll. The Conqueror bestowed on him lands at Grantham (which had previously been held by Queen Editha as a royal borough, and was thus claimed by the Conqueror) belonging to St. Wolfran's church there, with which he endowed two prebends in his own cathedral church of Salisbury. (See under Salisbury, Chart, of Foundation, Dugd. Mon. viii, 1 294.) The estates of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances lay in Canwick and Bracebridge, outside Lindsey {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 343 d.). He was implicated in the conspiracy of Bishop Odo in favour of Robert of Normandy, and died in 1094. The bishop of Lincoln, besides large estates in Lindsey, amounting in the roll to 130 carucates 6 bovates, (Waters, op. cit. p. 10), held manors in Dunsby, Ringstone in Rippingale, Carlby, Corby, Sleaford, Lobthorpe, Leasingham, Silk Willoughby and Hougham in Kesteven, Gosberton and Cheal near Gosberton, in Holland, with numerous other sokes and berewicks {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 344-5). The abbey of Peter- borough's lands lay chiefly in North Lindsey, and the monks held manors besides at Thurlby near Bourne, Holywell, Osgodby and Walcot by Folkingham, Donnington and Witham on the Hill, with other sokes and berewicks {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 345-6). Westminster Abbey held the manor of Doddington near Lincoln with the bcrewick of Thorpe on the Hill (ibid, i, 346). The abbey of Ramsey held manors in Quarrington and Threckingham (ibid.), granted to them by one Jol in 105 1, and confirmed by the Confessor (See under Ramsey, Nos. ii, ix, Dugdale, Mo». ii, 555, 559). To the south of the county St. Guthlac's, Crowland, held I carucate of land with the manor of Holbeach and Whaplode, the berewick of Spalding, where the monks had forsaken their cell by reason of the cruel oppression of Ivo de Tallibois {Ingulph [Gale], 94), the manors of Langtoft and Baston, the manor of Dowdyke in Sutterton with berewicks in Drayton and Algarkirk, and i bovate in Burtoft {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 3461^. At the time of the Survey the abbey held the Lindsey manor of Bucknall, but is not entered among Lindsey landowners in the later roll. Ingulph, in his chronicle, gives the interesting particular that his house obtained favour with the commissioners who completed the Survey, and they were induced not to set down the full value of its possessions {Ingulph [Gale], 79). The estate of Osbern the priest in the manors of Faldingworth and Binbrook {Dom. Bk. [Rec. Com.], i, 366 d.) had in the reign of Henry I descended to his son William de Torriant, who held the sheriffs office, like his father previously (Waters, op. cit. p. 14).
* A house founded by Hugh, earl of Chester, about 1035.
' Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 370</. In the Lindsey Roll of Henry I we also find mention of St. Mary's Abbey, York ; St. Katharine's, Lincoln, a Gilbertine house founded in the suburbs ; St. Mary's Cathedral Lincoln ; Spalding Priory, which had then been granted by Ivo de Tallibois as a cell to St. Nicholas of Anglers ; Covenham Priory ; and Wighale or Werghale Priory in South Kelsey.
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Remigius or Remy, almoner of Fecamp. The wisdom of the selection was fully justified by results, but the circumstances said to have prompted the appointment have ever been regarded as a blot on the fame of one of Lincoln's greatest bishops/
Having firmly established his own position^ Remigius proceeded to devise various schemes for the improvement of Dorchester as the episcopal seat, in- cluding the erection of a cathedral there,' till the decision of the council held at Windsor in 1072 ordaining that bishops should fix their seats in cities and not in villages* enabled him to take that momentous step in the removal of the see to Lincoln, which a preliminary trial of Dorchester, ' villa exilis et in- frequens,' must have convinced him would be necessary for the efficient administration of the diocese. The actual date when this transference took place is much disputed,^ the Domesday Survey, which notes the fact of its accomplishment under Lincoln," omits all reference under Dorchester (Oxon) to the church so recently the head of the diocese. But whatever the date, here at Lincoln, a city at that time, says William of Malmesbury, ' emporium hominum terra marique venientium,' on the hill already occupied by the Conqueror's castle, having obtained by purchase the grant of a site already partly consecrated by the earlier church of St. Mary Magdalene,^ the bishop laid the foundations of the first cathedral of Lincoln, in the stately language of the chronicler, ' he built a church to the virgin of virgins, strong as the place was strong, beautiful as the place was beautiful, that it might be as pleasing to the servants of God, as according to the necessity of the time it should be invincible to their enemies.'* Like more than one Norman bishop' Remigius, though himself a monk, seems to have had a somewhat qualified regard for monasticism, and in connexion with his new cathedral, dedicated to
' William of Malmesbury says that he received the bishopric as the price of the help he afforded to William at the battle of Hastings (G«/<J Po»/i/C [Rolls Ser.] 312). Eadmer states that he bought the see {Hist. Nov. [Rolls Ser.], p. 11). Giraldus says that he was elected, as nominally were all William's bishops, and offers no explanation of the statement of John de Schalby, from whom he derived most of his sources for the Vita S. Remigii, that it was obtained 'ob certam causam.' Girald. Cambr. vii, 14 ; App. E. p. 193.
' While on a visit to Rome in 107 1 the bishop was suspended by the Pope on a double charge of having bought the appointment, and of having received consecration at the hands of Stigand. He was reinstated at the intercession of Lanfranc, to whom he then made profession of canonical obedience. Will, of Malmes. Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 66 ; Cott. MS. Cleop. E. i.
^ Will, of Malmes. Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), p. 312.
* Ibid. Gesta Regum. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 352.
' Matt. Paris. Hist. Minor. (Rolls Ser.), iii, «. 3 ; Girald. Cambr. O/. (Rolls Ser.) vii, App. E. 1 94.
' ' In qua nunc est episcopatus ' Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 336. The authors of the Diocesan Hist, of Line. (pp. 47—8), have placed it between 1072, when Remigius signed at the council of Windsor as bishop of Dorchester (Wilkins, Concil. i, 324), and 1075, when at the council of London he attested his signature as 'Lincolniensis episcopus' (Ibid. p. 364). As Lincoln is not mentioned at the later council among the sees yet to be trans- ferred, the inference would be that the change had already taken place.
' Hen. of Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (Rolls. Ser.), 212. The parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene had their church in the nave of the cathedral and were entitled to have their children baptized in the cathedral font, and their dead buried in the cemetery of the cathedral (Girald. Cambr. Op., John de Schalby, App. E. vii, pp. 194-5), till two centuries later when Bishop Sutton built a chapel for them on a site which he had procured outside the cathedral. Ibid. p. 209.
° Hen. of Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 212. The royal charter of the Conqueror, confirming the transference of the see to Lincoln ' by the authority and counsel of Alexander the Pope, and Lanfranc the Archbishop,' bestowed on the church his two manors of Welton and Sleaford, the three churches of Kirton, Caister and Wellingore with their lands and tithes, and the two churches in Lincoln of St. Lawrence and St. Martin ; the king fiirther confirmed to the bishop the manor of Leicester, the gift of Earl Waltheof, and the manor of Woburn, which the king had bestowed with the pastoral staff, as well as the four churches of Bedford, Leighton, Buckingham, and Aylesbury, previously held by the bishops of Dorchester. Dugdale, Mon. under Lincoln, viii. No. iii, p. 1 270.
' Samson, bishop of Worcester (1096-1112), much displeased his own chapter and the monastic order generally by replacing secular canons at Westbury. Green, Hist, and Antiq. of Wore. p. 182.
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A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
the Virgin Mary, 'virgini virginum,' he established a community of secular canons constituted after the model of the church of Rouen/ with twenty- one canonries, to each of which he allotted a share or prebend of the estates of the church as an endowment.'' On the other hand he re-built the secular college at Stow, established by his predecessor "Wulfwig and fallen to decay, and re-organized it as a house of Benedictine monks under the rule of Abbot Columbanus,* The re-building of Bardney, which for two centuries had lain in ruins, has also been attributed to him, but was more properly the work of Gilbert de Gant between the years 1086 and 1089.*
The transfer of the see to a stronger base was not effected without diffi- culty and the encounter of strong opposition on the part of Thomas of York, who claimed Lindsey as subject to the northern primacy and regarded the step as a usurpation of his rights,^ The claim was abandoned temporarily in con- ' sequence of the decision in 1072 of the Council of Windsor to whom the question had been referred by the pope,' but was not finally disposed of till the next reign. The bishop's other scheme for the better administration of the diocese was necessitated generally by the Conqueror's great measure separating the secular from the ecclesiastical courts, but he appears to have been the first prelate to inaugurate the new development. He divided the diocese up into districts, over each of which he placed an official, known before the Conquest as the bishop's deputy, his archdeacon or ' eye,''' who now under the new order of things became a territorial officer with definite functions, holding courts and presiding over an area for which he was made personally responsible to the bishop. The seven archdeaconries thus created, corresponding roughly with the counties within the area of the diocese, were Lincoln, Buckingham, Bedford, Leicester, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Oxford.' The archdeaconry of Stow was established later, and the date of its creation is very uncertain.' The establishment of rural deaneries following the hundred is also assigned to this period, and mention is made of them in
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Sen), vii, 19.
* Ibid.
' Will, of Malmes. Gesta Ponttf. (Rolls Ser.), 312. See Dugdale, Mon. under Eynsham, iii, Nos. vii, viii, pp. 14, 15.
* Ibid. The bishop's signature appears on the charter of its refoundation. Dugdale, Mon. under Bard- ney, No. ii, p. 629.
' The claim so long put forward by York to the see of Lindsey was not without some shadow of reason. The bishopric of Lindsey was created at a time when the province by a political fluctuation formed part of the kingdom of Northumbria, and for this reason it might fairly be claimed as a sec carved out of the Northumbrian diocese on its sub-division. The neighbouring county of Nottingham was until quite recent years included under the northern primacy. Giraldus speaks of the transfer to Lincoln as a step which prac- tically secured the acquisition of this district to the see of Dorchester and the province of Canterbury. Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, cap. iv.
^ Wilkins, Concil. i, 324. The council definitely upheld the supremacy of Canterbury over York, and fixed the limits of the latter province to the district north of the Lichfield diocese on the west, and to the Humber on the east.
' ' The first person who occurs as archdeacon,' says Stubbs, ' is Wulfred who became archbishop of Can- terbury in 805, and who is so given in a charter of his predecessor. The office of the deacon or bishop's officer of Bede's period is purely ministerial.' Const. Hist. \, 267, note 3.
»Hen. of Hunt. De Contemptu Mundi (Rolls Ser.), p. 312. Henry also gives the names of the various archdeacons, and of some of their successors. Richard was the first archdeacon of Lincoln and after him came William of Bayeux, and Robert the Younger, ' of all the archdeacons in England he was the richest.'
' The first mention of an archdeacon of the West Riding, as that part was then called in the Lindsey Roll temp. Hen. I, occurs in 11 38. Dioc. Hist, of Lincoln (S.P.C.K.), p. 51.
10
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
the councils of 1 1 08, 1 195, and 1200,' but the date when their territorial limits were fixed is uncertain.^
Nor did Remigius confine his attention only to schemes of organization and administration ; he endeavoured by all means within his power to raise the moral tone of his flock, then at a very low ebb according to Giraldus/ a very unreliable authority, however. He traversed the whole district, preaching and teaching ' from end to end,' penetrating into every quarter, and did not cease until he had as far as was possible eradicated the enormities of his flock and 'as a good pastor and not a hireling having uprooted vices had set virtues in their place.'* The author of the Vita S. Remigii enlarges on his piety, humility, and above all his charity, and says that alone among the English bishops of that period he showed himself ' the defender of orphans, the sustainer of the afflicted.'' In weighing the character of Remigius much depends on the point of view from which he is judged. The claims to sanctity preferred for him by later writers are based, as all modern critics seem agreed, on very insuffi- cient grounds, but his claim to gratitude and respect as a warm-hearted and active prelate rests on a very sure foundation. He falls below the standard that humanity upholds ever for the saint, but rises in estimation as a statesman and organizer whenever the critical test is applied to his work. There is something of significance in the fate which obliged him to have recourse at the close of his career to the means he had employed at its outset. Being opposed ° in his desire to see the dedication of the great cathedral as the seal of his life work, Remigius obtained from the unworthy Rufus, at the price of a timely bribe, a mandate ordering the magnates and bishops of the kingdom to assemble for the ceremony.^ By bribery Remigius had secured the position which years of strenuous and devoted work had made good, and now by bribery he endeavoured, and more excusably, to secure the accom- plishment of his last desire. The day for the ceremony to take place was fixed for 9 May, 1092, all preparations were completed, the guests had assembled,* but he who should have been the centre figure on the occasion lay cold in death having passed away three days previously,* leaving the
' London, I lo8 (Wilkins, Concil. i. 388) ; York, 1 195 (ibid. p. 502) ; and London, 1200 (ibid. p. 505).
' Many [rural] deans are mentioned in charters belonging to the cathedral, and dating about i zoo, but in no case do- they seem to have territorial designations except ' the deans of the city of Lincoln.' Sometimes, a little later, they are called deans of the place where they lived. Thus ' William the dean of Redbourne,' vicar of Redbourne, became vicar of Hibaldstovir, 1223, and is still called 'William the dean.' See Hist. Notes con- cerning the Deanery of Corringham, by the Rev. C. Moor.
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 20. ' They would sell,' says Giraldus, * their sons to slavery and their daughters to prostitution. Perjury, adultery, and incest they counted as little, promiscuity and illegiti- macy even as nothing.'
* Ibid, vii, p. 20.
' Ibid. p. 15, 'He was short of stature,' says Henry of Huntingdon, commenting on the contrast afforded by his insignificant exterior and powerful personality, 'but great of heart, swarthy in complexion, but comely in deeds.' Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 212 ; Will, of Malmes. Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 313.
' By the archbishop of York, who still regarded Lincoln as standing within his jurisdiction.
' Roger de Hoveden (Rolls Ser.), i, 145.
* Save one, Robert of Hereford, the friend of Wulfstan the saintly bishop of Worcester, who, con- vinced by a study of the stars that the dedication would not take place in the lifetime of Remigius, remained at home. Will, of Malmes. Gesta Pontif. (Rolls Ser.), 165.
' Florence of Worcester, Simon of Durham, and Roger de Hoveden state that the consecration was fixed for 9 May, and that Remigius died two days before. Diceto says he died two days before the consecration which was fixed for 10 May. William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon state that he died one day before that fixed for the consecration, but do not give dates, and Giraldus says he died on 6 May, being Ascension Day, and also the day of St. John ' ante portam Latinam,' or four days before the consecration. Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 21.
II
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
concourse to bury him hastily and disperse, the cathedral to be consecrated by his successor. With many great and endearing qualities Remigius yet missed the grace of sanctity, as his cathedral spite of all his efforts lacked the glory of its dedication.
The twelfth-century bishops who succeeded Remigius bring before us men of secular aim and character, whose weight and ability left their mark on the history of the country but did little for the advancement of religious life within the diocese. Robert Bloet, chancellor of Rufus, was not appointed till his illness at Gloucester, in Lent, 1093, drove the rapacious king to fill up those vacant sees whose revenues he had been plundering;^ even then the bishop's consecration was delayed for another year.' The unfavourable reports of Bloet circulated by later chroniclers, and mainly based on the earlier account of William de Malmesbury,' can generally be traced back to the umbrage given by the bishop to various parties in the state. The removal of the monks from Stow to Eynsham and the annexa- tion of the manor to the episcopal see * roused the enmity of the monastic party, while the separation and erection of Ely into a new and independent diocese, offended a large section who regarded a bishop's see as a lay fee to be handed down intact to successors, though the change can hardly with fairness be charged to Bloet, as it appears to have been brought about ' by the will and violence of the king.' ' However unjustly earned, his reputation until recent years years has found permanent record in the derisive effigy on the west front of Lincoln Cathedral known as the ' Swineherd of Stow.* Probably the most correct impression of Bloet may be gathered from the account of Henry of Huntingdon, his archdeacon, to whom we owe a vivid picture of the pomp and magnificence attending the court of one of the wealthiest prelates in England.'^ The archdeacon gives us an anecdote which reveals unmistakably the mind and temper of one described as ' the father of the fatherless and the delight of his own friends,' who yet ' overmuch loved and cherished this world.' * The bishop had resigned the chancellorship on his promotion to Lincoln, but was justiciar under Henry I, and in the later part of his life was much harassed by the machinations of a justiciar of inferior rank and standing and by fines imposed on him by the king. On one occasion, the archdeacon being seated by him at table, the bishop was observed to shed tears, and on inquiry being made as to the reason said, ' Formerly those waiting on me were wont to be dressed in rich apparel, but now, owing to the fines imposed by the king whose favour I have sought, they are
' A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 196. Lincoln on the death of Remigius had been handed over to Ralph Flambard, Rufus's evil genius. Ann. Man. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 37.
' Owing to the continued opposition of Thomas of York, who now claimed the right to consecrate bishops of Lincoln as belonging to the northern primacy, recourse was had to the usual bribe and the king thereupon summoned Anselm to Hastings, where Bloet's consecration took place in the chapel of St. Mary within the castle, 12 February, 1094. The archbishop of York was eventually brought to relinquish his claim and to receive as compensation rights of patronage over the abbeys of St. Germain, Selby, and St. Oswald of Gloucester. Dugdale, Mot. vi, 1271. Under Lincoln, No. v. '
3 Considerably modified in a later edition of the Gesta Ponttficum Anglorum, but forming the basis of the attacks of Knighton and others.
* Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 32. Matters were not smoothed by the prominent part taken by Bloet in a petition to the king on the part of the bishops praying that a secular might be appointed to Can- terbury, and not a regular clergy. A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 218.
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 32.
^ Represented blowing a horn. Dimock, Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, Pref. xxvi.
' De Contemptu Mundi (Rolls Ser.), 299. « Ibid. pp. 299-300.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
clad only in lambswool. To comfort and reassure him the archdeacon repeated words of praise that the king had applied to him in his absence. ' Ah,' sighed the other, ' the king praises no man unless he has first a mind to ruin him.' ^
On Bloet's death,^ or, in the words of the author of De Contemptu Mundi, when he had ' left the dreams of this deceitful world and awakened to the true and everlasting verities,' a candidate for promotion stood ready to the king's hand, and the Eastertide following, 1123, Henry I, 'for love of the bishop,' bestowed the vacant see on the nephew of his justiciar the famous Roger of Salisbury.'
It is not surprising to find that Alexander the Magnificent * presents no contrast to the prevailing type of mundane prelate of which his uncle Roger of Salisbury is so striking an example. The chief events of his episcopate occur in connexion with the civil wars of Stephen's reign, in which the city of Lincoln played so prominent a part. Notwithstanding his oath of fidelity to the empress, the bishop appears to have had no scruple in follow- ing the example of his uncle and transferring his allegiance to Stephen on the death of Henry.' It was the king's hasty and ill-advised action against the bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln which turned the scale of fortune against him. The crisis of affairs came in this manner : the Normans, and Norman ecclesiastics in particular, were great builders ; Alexander shared the taste of his age to the full, but the passion, which in his predecessors had found an outlet in the erection and beautifying of the house of God, in him as in most of his contemporaries sought expression in the raising of military works and fortresses. ' Every powerful man made his castles,' says the chronicler, ' they filled the land full of castles.' ° And in the nineteen terrible years of Stephen's reign, when want and famine stalked through the land and oppression and extortion ruled the people, the part played by the bishops seems little better than that of other freebooting barons, for they built castles ' quod tamen non erat opus episcoporum,' stored them with arms and provisions, and filled them with soldiers and archers;^ ' devils ' the Anglo- Saxon chronicler calls them,' who tortured and cruelly entreated the people of the land.' A check came at last in the growing jealousy of the lay barons and the suspicions they contrived to arouse in Stephen. At the Council of Oxford on 24 June, 1139, the bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln were on some excuse seized and thrown into prison until they should have com- plied with the order to surrender their castles." Stephen, to hasten submission
' De Contemptu Mundi (Rolls Ser.), 300.
''It befel,' says the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (Rolls Ser. 217—18), *on a Wednesday, January 10, 1093, that the king was riding in his deer-fold, and the Bishop Roger of Salisbury on one side of him and the Bishop Robert Bloet on the other; and they were there riding and talking. Then the bishop of Lincoln sank down and said to the king, " Lord king, I am dying." And the king alighted down from his horse and lifted him between his arms and caused him to be borne to his inn ; and he was then forthwith dead.'
' Ibid. 2 1 9.
* Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Sen), 33. So named by the greedy officials of the Roman court on account of his profuse liberality. Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 253.
' Gesta Stephani (Rolls Ser.), i, 57; iii, 149; Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Jngl. (Rolls Ser.), 260. « A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 231.
' The charge is specially made against the bishop of Salisbury and his two nephews, Alexander of Lincoln and Nigel of Ely. Gesta Stephani (Rolls Ser.), iii, 46.
* A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 231. ' Gesta Stephani (Rolls Ser.), iii, loi.
'" Their treatment was most villainous : Roger was thrust into a cow-house, and the bishop of Lincoln who in addition was charged with inciting his men to an affray with the followers of the count of Brittany, was confined in a 'vile shed.' Fhren. fVigorn. (Engl. Hist. Soc), ii, 107 ; WUl. of Malmesbury, Hist. NovelJ. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 548.
13
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
and after securing the bishop of Salisbury's fortress, dragged the unfortunate Alexander to Newark-on-Trent, and promised him that he should not taste of food until the castle there had been placed in his hands. The castles of Sleaford and Banbury followed the fall of Newark,^ and Alexander was left to reflect sorrowfully on the admonitions put forward by the council that bishops should devote themselves to the weUare of their flocks rather than to the building of castles.* As a set off, we are told, to these military erections the bishop founded the monasteries of Louth Park and Haverholme (Lines.), Thame (Oxon.), and the house of Austin canons at Dorchester. The brief account of him given by Giraldus states, however, that he not only con- tinued the gift of an annual mantle to the king begun by Bloet, but used the funds of his own church to build these monasteries, thus ' robbing one altar to clothe another.' '
For the remainder of his episcopate Alexander appears to have been content to remain quietly in the background. The next mention of him occurs on the eve of the battle of Lincoln, 2 January, 1141,* from which Stephen in his turn was carried off a prisoner, the town sacked, and the citizens slaughtered." Towards the close of his life he began to restore the cathedral, which had been much mutilated in a previous fire. The work was carried out in such a manner as to render the church ' more beautiful than before and second to none in the realm.' ' In 1 147 the bishop started again for foreign parts, and was honourably received by the pope at Auxerre, but during this visit he contracted the low fever which brought on his death after his return in 1 148.^
It is impossible to review the period occupied by the episcopate of Alexander, and see the part played by this county in the events of Stephen's reign without being struck by that curious phenomenon, the revival of monasticism in the midst of that dark and troubled episode in English history. Yet the incongruity, strange as it may appear, was probably the natural out- come of that sad time ; ' men said openly,' says the chronicler, ' that Christ and his saints slept,' * but it is at such times that the devout raise their eyes in the expectation of a happier day for which they would even now prepare.
It may be recalled that the first mention of an archdeacon of the ' West Riding,' or Stow, occurs during the episcopate of Alexander, and it has been conjectured that he founded it.*
Robert de Chesney, ' cujus cognomen est de Quercito,' ^° who succeeded to Alexander, is said to have been elected by the common voice of the church of Lincoln." Though still a young man the new bishop as archdeacon of Leicester had acquired a reputation for virtues not universally attributed to youth, or characteristic of his predecessors, ' great humility and simpHcity.' ^^
' J. S. Chrm. (Rolls Ser.), 230; Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), z66.
* Floren. Wigom. (Engl. Hist. Soc), ii, 116, 216.
» Gesta Stefhani (Rolls Ser ), i, 37 ; Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 33. The annual charge with which Bloet saddled his church was finally redeemed by Bishop Hugh in 1194 by the payment of a large sum of money. Magna Vita S. Hugonis (Rolls Ser.), 183-7 ; Roger de Hoveden, Chron. (Rolls Serl iii ^ol
* Hen. of Hunt. H«/.^»^/. (Rolls Ser.), 271. *• » ^"-^ "i, 3°3- ' Ord. Vital. (Bohn Antiq. Lib.), iv, 2 ; Will, of Malmes. Hist. Novell. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 570.
' The walls were vaulted with a stone vault in a fashion hitherto unknown to England. Hen of Hunt Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 278-9 ; Roger de Hoveden, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 208.
' Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Angl (Rolls Ser.), 250. « A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser) 231
' Dioc. Hist, of Line. (S. P. C. K.), 51. '« Hen. of Hunt. Hist. Angl (Rolls Ser ^ 28,
" Ralph de Diceto, Abbrev. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 258. » Ibid. ' ''
14
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The great event of his rule, the ever memorable struggle between Henry I and Becket, served however to bring out his cardinal defects, a failure to grasp the importance of spiritual claims and the absence of a lofty conception of duty. Henry II, acting upon the advice given him early in the conflict by Ernulf of Lisieux to detach some of the bishops from the archbishop's party and thus break up the solid wall of support on which Becket was relying, summoned to him at Gloucester the three whom he considered most pliant, Roger of York, Robert of Hereford, and Chesney of Lincoln, and induced them to desert to his side.* The advice tendered by this ' man of simplicity and less discretion ' at the Council of Northampton in October, 1 1 64, shows an almost irritating lack of comprehension of the issues at stake. ' It is clear,' he remarked, ' that the life of this man and his blood are sought after, and it comes to this, that he must yield either the archbishopric or his life, and what use his archbishopric is to be to him if he lose his life I do not see.' During the interview which the king allowed the bishops to have with their metropolitan on the last day of the council in order that they might induce him to yield, Robert of Lincoln is said to have ' wept con- tinuously.' ' He was sent by the king to the Roman court to complain of Becket's conduct,' but did not live to see the final tragedy ; ' a man of great humility ' he passed away to the Lord on 29 December, 11 66.*
The death of Chesney was followed by an interval of nearly seventeen years in which the church of Lincoln was practically without a pastor.' The appointment of Geoffrey Plantagenet, natural son of Henry II, in 1173, was merely a device to enable the king to retain the bishopric while apparently yielding to remonstrances from Rome." Geoffrey held the arch- deaconry of Lincoln at the time of his ' election,' but was barely twenty years of age nor yet in priest's orders,^ and there seems to have been no intention that he should proceed to consecration or act the part of more than nominal head.' This semblance however ended in 1 1 8 1 , f or on being brought to the point either to be ordained or resign his office, Geoffrey to his credit chose the latter alternative and wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury declaring his intention of resigning, fearing ' to impose on my youth a burden too heavy even for those of elder years.' A similar letter to the canons of Lincoln, renouncing all rights of his election, followed, and the formal resig- nation of the see was publicly announced at Marlborough, on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1182.'
' Materials for Life of Becket (Rolls Ser.) ; Will, of Cant, i, 14 ; Edto. Grim, ii, 377 ; Anonym, iv, 30. ' Gervase of Cant. (Rolls Ser.), i, 183 ; Materials for Life of Becket (Rolls Ser.), ii, 327 ; iii, 65 ;
iv, 3H-
^ Jnn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 381. * Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii.
' Jnn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 33. ' Epist. {Materials for Life of Becket), [Rolls Ser.], vi, 460.
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 363.
' William de Newburgh rather unfairly charges the young man with being content to delay consecration as long as he could enjoy the fruits of his benefice, ' knowing not how to feed the Lord's sheep though apt at fleecing them.' Gesta Stephani (Rolls Ser), i, 154.
' Bened. Abbas, Gi»//a Hen. Sec. (Rolls Sen), i, 271-2. GeofFrey'schief title to respect and consideration lies in the loyalty he manifested towards his father, in marked contrast to the behaviour of Henry's other children. On the rebellion of the sons abroad in 1172, followed by the rising of the disaffected barons in the north, Geoffrey rallied the men of Lincolnshire round him, and mustering his tenants seized the castle of Roger de Mowbray at Kinnardsferry in the isle of Axholme, joined forces with the archbishop of York, and forced the king of Scots to retire northwards. He then, the rebellion crushed, met his father at Huntingdon where he was greeted with words of grateful recognition from the king, ' base born have my other children showed themselves to me, this one alone has proved himself my very son.'
15
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
The next occupant of the see spent so short a time at Lincoln that his connexion with the diocese can be described only as a brief episode. Walter de Coutances had been employed by Henry II in various embassies, and held at different times the offices of chancellor and seal-bearer {archisigillarius) to the king.^ He was consecrated to Lincoln by the archbishop of Canterbury at Angers, 3 July, 1183, having previously received ordination as a priest at the hands of John, bishop of Evreux.* He did not visit his diocese till the following December, but was then received by the clergy and people ' cum hymnis et canticis.' His advent indeed did much to allay the feeling of general un- easiness, which found expression in the prophecy that there should never again be a bishop of Lincoln, but his stay was of too short duration to effect much more. The bishop, promoted the following year to the archbishopric of Rouen,* hesitated long, we are told, between the pre-eminence of Rouen and the wealth of Lincoln, but counsels of ambition finally prevailed.* His con- nexion with this diocese ceased with his enthronement at Rouen, 24 May, 1 185, after a rule lasting only one year, eleven weeks and five days.' It is interesting to note how close up to this time was the connexion of the Church of England with the continent, so that no incongruity was observed in an exchange which gave a Walter de Coutances to Rouen and secured a St. Hugh of Grenoble to Lincoln.
With the next occupant of the see the diocese entered on a fresh phase and inaugurated a type of pastor hitherto almost unknown to it. Under the successors of Remigius, who had striven to emulate the power and magnifi- cence of temporal princes, the see had become not merely one of the largest but one of the richest in England, but till we come to Hugh of Grenoble, there is little evidence of care on the part of bishops for the spiritual welfare of their flocks. The view taken by contemporary writers of the moral and religious condition of the church in the twelfth century is a very gloomy one, and as the severest strictures on the clergy of that period come from the pen of two writers,' who had special means of local information as to this district, it may be inferred that this county was no exception to the general rule. The bishops at that time, characterized roundly by Giraldus as 'hirelings and not true shepherds,'^ are represented as unscrupulous in the extortion of fees, shameless in diverting to themselves all the secular offices they could lay their hands on, indifferent on whom they bestowed benefices, and, according to the archdeacon, directly responsible for the low state of the beneficed clergy by their neglect to examine candidates presented to them for ordination and to make inquiry into their general fitness.* As for the archdeacons, so associated had they become with every sort of oppression and robbery that Giraldus remarks, the very name of archdeacon sounded like ' archdevil ' in the
' Ralph de Diceto, T'maginej Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 367 ; ii, 4, 14.
' Bened. Abbas, Gesta Hen. Sec. (Rolls Ser.), i, 299, 304-7.
' Roger de Hoveden, droit. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 284. ' Gej/a Stepkani (Rojds Ser.), i, 236.
* Ralph de Diceto, Tmapnes Hut. (Rolls. Ser.), ii, 21, 33.
° Giraldus Cambrensis, archdeacon of St. David's, who during the time spent in study at Lincoln towards the close of the century wrote the Lives of the Bishops of Lincoln and his famous treatise, ' Gemma Ecclesiastica ' giving a lively picture of the English as well as of the Welsh clergy to whom it was specifically addressed. Walter de Mapes, the well known satirist of the twelfth century, held at one time the office of precentor of the cathedral, and in 1 196 was made archdeacon of Oxford. He addressed himself par- ticularly to the vices of the monastic orders.
' Speculum Eccl. Op. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 3 1 2.
' Gemma Eccl. Op. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 294, 300, 334.
16
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
popular ear,^ The rural clergy and parish priests, harassed by the rapacity of greedy officials, resorted in like manner to the most doubtful expedients in order to supplement their scanty stipends and scrape up a living.^ Examples of their dense ignorance and illiteracy furnish Giraldus with some of his most amusing anecdotes, while the practice of keeping '■focaria ' if we are to believe him, and the later constitutions of Wells and Grosteste confirm the report, had become almost universal in spite of repeated canons enforcing the celibacy of the clergy.*
Such we may suppose was the general state of the diocese on whose direction Hugh entered in 1186.* He lost no time in attacking some of its crying abuses, and in the very first year of his consecration published a set of synodal decrees which incidentally confirm many of the charges brought against the clergy/ The biographer of the bishops of Lincoln, after setting forth St. Hugh's singular immunity from covetousness and simony, states that inhis virtues he stood alone among the bishops." In spite of many outside demands, his activity concentrated itself mainly on the work of his huge diocese. It has been pointed out that he avoided when he could being mixed up in purely secular matters,^ and that the many stories related of him occur mostly ' while the bishop is riding hither and thither ' engaged in the pastoral execution of his office." Two points to which he particularly directed his attention were the consecra- tion of churches and the holding of confirmations. He endeavoured to restore the reverent administration of the latter rite by refusing to confirm from on horseback, as appears then to have been very general. Many instances are recorded of his unwearying devotion in the care of the sick and the reverent burial of the dead.' With the object of restoring the ancient custom of the
' Gemma Eccl. Op. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 325.
' The archdeacon devotes much time to exposing many of their devices for the object of gain : the multiplication of Gospels, the sale of masses, the exaction of fees for obits, trading on the superstitious credulity of the ignorant by encouraging the multiplication of anniversaries and tricennaries, degrading the service of the Holy Eucharist into a source of pecuniary profit to themselves. Gemma Eccl. Op. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 130,137,281.
^ Speculum Eccl. Op. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 211. Marriage of the clergy is shown to have been common by many early Lincoln charters (cf Mr. Massingberd's papers in Assoc. Arch. Soc. Rep.). Henry I nullified all the efforts of the bishops to enforce the observance of the canon in 1 1 29 by allowing the clergy to retain their wives on payment of a large sum of money on the plea that it was an ancient custom. The amount which he got for this exemption shows how common was the nature of the offence (Matt. Paris, Hisl. Minor [Rolls Ser.], i, 242). During the interdict John vented his spite against the clergy by seizing their 'focaria' and holding them up to ransom (ibid, ii, 1 11). That it still lingered is shown by the fact that it was made the subject of a special inquiry by Bishop Grosteste. Grosseteste Epist. (Rolls Ser.), 3 1 7.
* The contempt of the proud and wealthy canons of Lincoln on the king's nomination of an obscure individual like the prior of the Carthusian house of Witham (Somers.) was rapidly changed to astonishment when Hugh refused the honour they deemed too high for him on the ground that the election had been forced, and was therefore uncanonical. This objection they proceeded at once to remove by a second and unanimous choice, but even then Hugh declined to leave Witham until the consent of h !s superior, the prior of the Grande Chartreuse, had been obtained. Bened. Abbas, Gesta. Hen. Sec. (Rolls. Ser.), i, 345, 346; Magna Vita S. Hugo. (RoUs Ser.), 104.
' That gifts should be neither offered nor received for the purpose of hastening or obtaining the process of justice. That priest-vicars should neither ask nor give anything for their offices. That archdeacons and their officials should not presume to suspend or excommunicate any church or ecclesiastic without due trial. That the celebration of masses should not be inflicted as a penance on any layman or any person not in holy orders. That anniversaries and tricennaries and fixed masses should not be celebrated for temporary gain. That no one should be admitted to the priestly office until proof had been offered that he was canonically ordained by the archbishop of Canterbury ox one of his suffragans. That all holding ecclesiastical benefices should wear the tonsure and ecclesiastical crown. That no clerk should sue another clerk in a secular court for an ecclesiastical cause. Bened. Abbas, Gesta Hen. Sec. (Rolls Ser.), i, 357. From the absence of comment we may infer that Hugh made no violent stand against the ' clerici uxorati ' of his day.
* Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 42. ' Dimock, Pref. to Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), xxxii. ' Pref. to Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, Ixiv. 'Ibid, vii, 98-9, 102, 107, 175.
2 17 3
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
annual pentecostal visit of the faithful to Lincoln, as the mother-church of the diocese, he instructed his archdeacons to summon the rural deans and the clergy to recall to their parishioners the duty of sending a representative from every house to Lincoln to make their annual offerings.^ He took pains to admit worthy men only to the benefices in his diocese'' as w^ell as to the stalls in his cathedral.* It w^as a pleasant and thoughtful custom of his to invite the parish priest to dine with him wherever he might be stopping in the course of his travels.*
One can refer but briefly to the part played by Hugh in the political and ecclesiastical game of his day, strictly subordinated as it was to his immediate work in the diocese. If Henry II had expected by the promotion of a simple monk to gain a tool willing to adapt himself to his master's schemes, he was speedily undeceived. In Hugh, whose chief characteristic seems to have been a hatred of oppression and extortion rampant in all classes," the spiritual fervour and personal abnegation of the true ascetic were mixed with the keen worldly wisdom and happy tact of the trained man of the world. These qualities, somewhat rare in combination, were called into requisition not long after his promotion. For the bishop being brought up against the iniquitous game laws of the period proceeded to excommunicate no less a person than the king's chief forester for some act of oppression," indignantly declined to soothe the royal anger by acceding to a request for a vacant prebend to be given to a court favourite,'^ and on being summoned to meet Henry at Woodstock managed to induce the angry monarch by good- humoured and fearless address to hear his reasons and finally approve his actions.* This was not the only occasion in his career where ready wit and a fine courage preserved Hugh from what seemed to promise absolute destruction. As he had not feared to oppose the exactions of the father, he was fearless in withstanding the demands of the son. The daring declaration that the church of Lincoln was only bound to perform military service within the limits of the realm of England,' with which Hugh stood
■ Pref. to Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), App. E, 200. ' Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), 121-4, 246-7.
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), App. E, 200. * Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), 2+2-3.
' On the very day of his enthronement he refused to pay the archdeacon of Canterbury the perquisites he was accustomed to exact for installing a bishop. At the same time he was the reverse of mean in his orders for the entertainment to be supplied at his installation feast. Three hundred deer were to be taken from his park at Stow, and ' if that should not be sufficient take more ' he added, the words becoming a standing joke at court (ibid. 1 14-15).
* Ibid. lib. iii, cap. iv. The fact that this official, after receiving public chastisement for his offence became one of the bishop's staunch friends, shows the charm that Hugh possessed with all his severity
'Ibid. 126.
' Ibid. cap. X. On his arrival at Woodstock the bishop found Henry with his court seated in a wood- land glade. By the king's orders no notice was taken of his approach, no one returned his salutation or offered to make place for him. Undaunted, however, Hugh laid his hand on the shoulder of the lord nearest the king, forced himself into the circle, and sat down silent as the rest. Henry, after a time, seeing that he could make nothing at a game of silence with a Carthusian, but with looks of evident displeasure, called for needle and thread and began to mend a finger-stall on a wounded finger. The bishop perceiving that speech was now possible, turned to the king and said pleasantly, ' Now, how like you are to your kinsfolk of Falaise ! ' Henry burst out laughing at this, to say the least, uncourtier-like reference to William the Conqueror's connexion through his mother with the thread-and-needle inhabitants of the Norman town, and then proceeded to explain the nature of the joke to the astonished court.
' The proposals put forward at the Council of Oxford, December, 1197, were that the barons, among whom were included the bishops, should maintain a force of 300 knights to aid the king in his foreign wars Roger de Hoveden {Chron. [Rolls Ser.], iv, 40) and Giraldus Cambrensis {Op. [Rolls Ser.], vii, 103) state erroneously that Hugh stood alone in opposing this demand which was supported by the archbishop of Canterbury, his example in refusing was followed by Herbert of Salisbury {Magna Vita [Rolls Ser.] lib v cap. v). ' '
18
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
out against the impositions of Richard I at Oxford, has been described as ' a landmark in constitutional history, the first clear case of refusal of a money grant demanded directly by the crown.' ^ As on a previous occasion the bishop's coolness and courage in the interview which followed with his sovereign brought the incident, as far as the direct issue was concerned, to a happy conclusion.^
A sketch of the bishop would be incomplete that did not touch on the more tender and intimate side of his character ; ^ his love of children who also loved him ; * his friendship with bird and beast, recalling familiar stories of saints of the Latin and Celtic races ; ' his care for the sick * and compassion for the bereaved ; ' the Jews claimed him as a protector * and criminals turned to him for succour.' Himself an ascetic of restricted diet and simple habits, he yet clothed his household well, kept a good table,^" promoted mirth,
' Stubbs, P/r/. to Roger de Hoveden (Rolls Ser.), iv, xci.
' The bishop, on an order being issued for the confiscation of his property, crossed the sea and went straight to Richard whom he found hearing mass in his chapel at Roche d'Andeli. Hugh made his salutation to the king on entering, and receiving no reponse said, ' Kiss me, my lord king.' Richard turned his head away, his eyes blazing with fury, whereupon Hugh, seizing him by the vest and shaking him, said, ' You owe me a kiss, for I have come from far to see you.' The king, declining the embrace, said in a surly manner, ' No, you have not deserved that I should kiss you.' ' Nay, but I have deserved ; you must kiss me,' replied the bishop, shaking him more vigorously. Finding there was nothing else to be done Richard yielded, and the bishop addressed himself devoutly to his prayers. At the close of the service the king taking the pax from the archbishop presented it himself to Hugh. Before leaving the king on the occasion of this visit it was suggested that Hugh should be the bearer of letters to England demanding an aid from the barons. This mission he declined, and Richard in consequence refused to see him again, desiring him to return to his church with the blessing of God and give the king the benefit of his prayers [Magna Vita [Rolls Ser.], lib. V, cap. V, vi).
' The universal respect for his judgement is shown in the number of times he was selected to arbitrate in delicate and difficult cases (Roger de Hoveden, Chron. [Rolls Ser.], iii, 279, 287, 305-6). The terror of his anathema was so great that it was regarded as amounting practically to a sentence of death {Magna Vita [Rolls Ser.], 251, 263). The instances given of death following his anathema include the parties palming off a supposititious child (ibid. 173, 176), a forester (ibid. 1 78), an adulterous bride of Oxford (ibid. 181), and the invaders of a Yorkshire benefice (ibid. 1 8 3).
* Ibid. lib. iii, cap. xiv.
' This friendship with the animal world was characteristic of Hugh throughout his career. At the Grande Chartreuse the little birds and squirrels he had tamed would come to his cell at the hour of supper and share his meal, getting up on the table and eating from the dish or his hand (Girald. Cambr. Op. [Rolls Ser.], vii, 92). A little bird called a ' burneta ' was his special pet at Witham (ibid. 93). The story of the wild swan of Stow that appeared on the day of Hugh's enthronement at Lincoln, and made friends with him on his arrival at his manorial residence, is too well known to need repetition. The bird constituted itself the bishop's guardian when asleep, and would drive away all intruders who sought to approach him. The neighbours were warned beforehand of the bishop's arrival by the strange and expectant behaviour of his bird friend (ibid. 73-6). In nearly all pictorial representations of St. Hugh he is accompanied by his famous swan.
' Hugh devoted special attention to the poor lepers in his diocese, not only in the bestowal of alms but in personal tendance. Rehearsing examples of our Lord's kindness to the wretched and afflicted he would visit them frequently and even take up a lodging with them. A story is told that his chancellor once remarked in reproof of his custom of kissing the lepers he met, ' Martin [referring to the saint] by his kiss healed the leper,' to which Hugh replied, ' Martin by his kiss indeed brought health to the leper in body, but the leper by his kiss to me restores health to my soul' (Girald. Cambr. Op. [Rolls Ser.], vii, 107—8 ; Magna Vita [Rolls Ser.], 162-5).
' On one occasion he remitted to a poor woman the payment of the heriot on the death of her husband, saying, ' This poor woman had two who worked for her. Death has taken from her the one, and shall we deprive her of the other ? ' Another time he forgave the son of a knight the relief that should have been paid on his father's death (Girald. Cambr. Op. [Rolls Ser.], vii, 96-7).
° Perhaps the most touching tribute paid to Hugh was the grief displayed by the Jew community at his funeral ; weeping and wailing they followed their friend's body, ' declaring he indeed had been a great servant of the Lord.' Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), 373.
' As he was passing through the territory of the abbey of St. Albans on his way to Normandy in the spring of 1 1 29, he met a thief on his way to the gallows who threw himself at the bishop's feet and implored his mercy. Hugh immediately released the man from the officers of justice declaring that a bishop could himself exercise the Church's right of sanctuary (ibid. 277-8).
'° Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 106. He was fond of saying to those about him, ' Eat well and drink well and serve God well.'
19
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
and enjoyed a fair jest.^ The current superstitions of the age found no sympathiser in him, indeed the attitude he displayed towards alleged miracles was singularly in advance of current thought and opinion.' In the midst of an active career he never lost his love of the monastic retirement he had quitted for a larger stage. It was his habit to retire once a year to Witham, where a cell was always reserved for him, and to remain there for a month or two at a time, laying aside all state and becoming again the simple monk, conforming to the rules of his order and undertaking its menial duties.^ In the last year of his life it was granted to him to revisit the scenes of his boyhood and earlier manhood. Having kept the Easter of 1 200 at Stow,* he crossed over in May to Normandy at John's special request to negotiate the ratification of a treaty with the king of France.^ An ardent desire for rest seems then to have seized on Hugh, but he was too valuable a man to be lightly laid aside and the pope was deaf to his entreaties to be allowed to lay down the burden of office ;* nevertheless the time was near at hand. His mission completed, he turned his face homewards to Grenoble, where he was received with deep reverence, and had the pleasure of greeting members of his own family ; ^ but the return journey was rendered painful through illness and low fever aggravated by weakening remedies. London was reached with difficulty, and on arriving at his house, the Old Temple, 1 8 September, he took to the bed from which he was not destined to rise.' He lingered on, suffering intense pain and weak- ness, his last hours troubled by previsions of the evil coming upon the church and nation, until 17 November, when his prayer for rest was finally granted and the bishop yielded up his righteous soul.' His body was conveyed by stages to Lincoln, where it was met by such a throng as had never before been seen in the city." Borne on the shoulders of the noblest in the realm, King John, who was present, not disdaining to aid, the corpse of the sainted bishop was carried into the choir of his cathedral and placed in view of the crowds who flocked to adore and make offerings." The actual ceremony of the interment took place the following day, when Hugh was buried near the altar of St. John Baptist on the north side of the church.'^
The death of Hugh was followed by a vacancy in the see which lasted more than two years in consequence of the refusal of the chapter to forego their right of free election and accept a nominee of John." The persistence of the canons at last gained the day, and they were permitted, in the summer of 1203, to elect William of Blois, who was accordingly consecrated on
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 68 ; Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), 138. • Ibid. 97, 245, 248.
' Ibid. 193-4, 199, 217-38. His fellow monks remarked that he seemed to take as much delight in the washing of pots and pans as in handling the sacred chalice.
• Ibid. 120. ' Ibid. 299. « Ibid.
' Ibid. 311-19. * Ibid. 325-6. » Ibid. 331, 345.
"> There were present the king of England, three archbishops, nine bishops, and all the great lords of the kingdom (Girald. Cambr. Op. [Rolls Ser.], vii, 1 14-15).
" Ibid. ; Magna Vita (Rolls Ser.), 371, 377-8.
" The worship of Hugh as a saint dates from the time of his death. In 1 2 1 9 Honorius III ordered an inquiry to be made into the validity of the alleged miracles wrought by him, and as a result a bull for the canonization of ' the most blessed and glorious Hugh bishop of Lincoln,' was issued on 1 7 Feb. the following year.
" John visited Lincoln in January, 120 1, and made an unsuccessful attempt to force an appointment on the canons (Roger de Hoveden, Chron. [Rolls Ser.], iv. 156). The author of the Magna Vita (p. 234) incidentally reveals the name of the king's nominee, Roger bishop of St. Andrews, a brother of the earl of Leicester.
20
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
St, Bartholomew's Day.^ The new bishop was no stranger to the diocese, as he had held the office of precentor to the cathedral since 1196,^ but his rule was brief, for he died on the vigil of the Ascension, May, 1206.^ Shortly before his death we are told the prior of Dunstable received an order to visit all the religious houses within the diocese with the exception of the Templars, Hospitallers, Cistercians, and Premonstratensians.* One act of Bishop William's should not be forgotten, as it heralded the greater work of his successor: the ordination of a vicarage at Redbourne, 1203-6, the church of which was held by the abbey of Selby/ It was probably one of the earliest vicarages established in Lincolnshire.'
Another vacancy of more than three years followed the bishop's death, while John plundered the revenues of the see/ The promulgation of the pope's ban in 1208, following his dispute with the king, found the unfortunate diocese with no head to stand between it and John's fury, and taking advantage of the fact the king issued letters patent to the clergy and laity of the diocese of Lincoln stating that from the Monday before Easter next he had committed to William de Cornhill, archdeacon of Huntingdon, and to Gerard de Camville the lands and possessions of all abbots and priors, religious men, and all clerks, who should refuse to celebrate divine offices from that date, and they should be regardful to them as to the king's bailiffs.*
By promoting Hugh, archdeacon of Wells, the brother of Jocelin bishop of Bath and Wells,' to Lincoln the following year John doubtless congratulated himself on gaining another adherent in the episcopal ranks, but his hopes proved illusory. The bishop obtained permission to receive consecration at the hands of the archbishop of Rouen, but no sooner got abroad than he went straight to Langton archbishop of Canterbury, and was consecrated by him at Melun, 20 December, 1209." This action of course cut him off from England ; the king again seized on the temporalities which he had restored, and the bishop remained abroad till the royal charter of submission, dated 13 May, 12 13, enabled him to return with the exiled primate, and promised him restitution to the amount of jQjS'~' ^°'' ^^^ wasted revenues of the see." Eventually 15,000 marks were paid by way of compensation to the diocese ^* out of a large sum assessed on the royal revenue.
It was not till after his final return to England on the restoration of peace in 1217,^' that Bishop Hugh was able to carry into final execution the
' Jnn. Mon (Rolls Ser.) ii, 255 ; Matt. Paris, Hist. Minor. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 100.
' Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, App. E. 202 and note.
' jinn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 257 ; iv, 394. * Ibid, iii, 29. ' Rev. C. Moor, Hist, of Redbourne, p. 1 2.
* The earliest in England is said to have been established by St. Hugh at Swinford (Leics.) in 1 200. Cutts, Hist, of Parishes.
' The patent rolls of this period show to what extent the king exercised his right to present to the cathedral prebends during a vacancy (Pat. 8 John, m. 4 ; 9 John, m. 2, 3, 5, 6 ; 10 John, m. 4, 5). Shortly after the bishop's death John issued letters patent addressed to all in the diocese exhorting those who had previously contributed towards the construction of the church of Lincoln to complete their good work by establishing a collection among themselves and forming a society on the lines of St. Mary's Guild organized by Bishop Hugh for the benefit of the fabric (ibid. 7 John, m. i). * Ibid. 9 John, m. 2.
9 One of the three bishops who remained steadfast to John's cause in the dispute.
^ Wendover, f /»r« Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 51, 54 ; Matt. Paris, Chron. Magna, (Rolls Ser.), ii, 520-8.
" Ibid. 342-3 ; Wendover, F/ores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 70-3. " Pat. 15 John, m. 7.
" Though Hugh sided with John at Runnymede, in gratitude it may be for various proofs of the king's restored favour after his first return in 1213, he became identified with the Barons' cause on John's death. He was abroad when the decisive battle of ' Lincoln Fair ' put an end to the hopes of the French allies, but was compelled on his return to pay 1,000 marks aJ opus Domini Papae in order to regain his see and 100 marks more to obtain favour of the legate. Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), ii, 590 ; iii, 32.
21
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
scheme which rendered his rule of such incalculable benefit to the diocese : the ordination of vicarages in connexion with those churches whose tithes had become alienated to monastic foundations. Preparations for the great work had been going quietly forward under the direction of his official, Reginald de Chester, during the enforced absence of the bishop in parts beyond the sea, and the ' Liber Antiquus de Ordinationibus Vicararium ' of Hugh de Wells, drawn up about the year 1218, records the establishment of nearly 300 vicarages in the whole diocese, more than half that number belonging to this county.^ In order to appreciate fully the nature of this reform it is necessary to recall the changes that had taken place in the position of parish churches during the last century. Up to the Norman Conquest it had been the custom for the advowson of the church to accom- pany the possession of the manor, but the monastic revival which followed
' When we compare the 174 vicarages belonging to the episcopate of Hugh de Wells with the 200 returned in the taxatio of Pope Nicholas at the close of the thirteenth century, exclusive of the churches prebendal to the cathedral chapter, we see how largely this great work was due to the energy and perseverance of the predecessor of Grosteste.
The churches in the following list are grouped according to their appropriation to the different religious foundations, as recorded in the 'Liber Antiquus ' : — To the Ben. abbey of Crowland : Langtoft. To the Ben. abbey of Humberston : Humberston, Holton le Clay, Waithe. To the Ben. nunnery of Foss : Willingham- by-Stow. To the Ben. nunnery of Stainfield : Stainfield, Apley, Martin near Horncastle, Maidenwell, Waddingworth. To Belvoir, cell of St. Albans : Aubourn, Tallington. To Freiston, cell of St. Mary's, York : Freiston, Burton Penwardine, Butterwick, Claxby-by-Well. To the Cist, nunnery of Heyninges or Hevening : Upton. To the Cist, nunnery of Nuncotham : Burgh-on-Bain, moiety of Croxton, moiety of Keelby, Cuxwold. To the Cist, nunnery of Legbourne : Legbourne, Farlesthorpe, moiety of Hallington, Somercotes St. Mary, moiety of Saltfleetby. To the Cist, nunnery of Greenfield : Greenfield, Aby. To the Cist, nunnery of Stixwould : Honington, Hundleby, Lenton, Thorpe. To the Premonstratensian abbey of Barlings : Scothorn. To the Prem. abbey of Newhouse or Newsham : moiety of Brocklesby, Glentworth, Habrough, East Halton, Killingholme, Kirmington, Saxilby-cum-Ingleby. To the Prem. abbey of Tupholme : moiety of Brocklesby, ' Burreth,' Market Stainton, Middle Rasen, Ranby. To the Gilb. priory of Sempringham : Sempringham, Marton, Newton-upon-Trent, Kirkby-la-Thorpe, Billingborough, Birthorpe. To the Gilb. priory of Alvingham : Cawthorpe, Cockerington St. Mary with Alvingham, Cockerington St. Leonard, Keddington, Stainton-le-Vale. To the Gilb. priory of BuUington : BuUington, Burgh le Marsh, Friskney, moiety of Hackthorn, Langton by Wragby, West Torrington, Winthorpe. To the Gilb. priory of Catley : Billinghay, Digby. To the Gilb. priory of Haverholme : portion of Anwick, moiety of Dorrington. To the Gilb. priory of Nunormsby : North Ormsby, Fotherby, Grimoldby, Little Grimsby, Utterby, South Elkington. To the Gilb. priory of Sixhills : Sixle (Sixhills), Cadeby, Ludford Magna, Market or South Rasen, Saleby, Tealby, North Willingham, South Wykeham, West Wykeham. To the Gilb. priory of St. Katharine extra Lincoln : Alford, Bracebridge, Canwick. To the Austin Canons of the abbey of Grimsby or Wellow : Grimsby St. James, Cabourne, Clee, Tetney. To the Austin Canons of the abbey of Bourn : Bourn, Barholm, Morton, Stow-in-Ness, Bitchfield. To the Austin Canons of the priory of Elsham . Elsham, Kirkby-cum-Osgodby. To the Austin Canons of the priory of South Kyme : Croft, Calceby, Metheringham, Osbournby, Swarby, Thorpe. To the Austin Canons of the priory of Markby : Bilsby, Huttoft, Markby. To the Austin Canons of the priory of Nocton : Cawkwell. To the Austin Canons of the abbey of Thornton : Thornton Curtis, Barrow, Grasby, Ulceby, Worlaby. To the Austin Canons of the priory of Thornholme : Appleby, Cadney, South Ferriby, Messingham, Orby, Raventhorpe, Risby. To the Austin Canons of the priory of Torksey : Torksey St. Mary, Reston. To the Knights Templars : Ashby de la Launde, Eagle, Gainsborough All Saints, Goulceby, Rowston, Swinderby, Thorpe-in- the- Fallows, moiety of Willoughton.
Appropriated to religious bodies outside the county : — To the abbey of Selby (Yorks) : Crowle, Redbourne, To the nunnery of St. Michael, Stamford (Northants) : Stamford All Saints, Stamford St. Martin, Corby, Thurlby. To the abbey of Welbeck (Notts.) : Coates-by-Stow. To the priory of Malton (Yorks): Ancaster, Winterton. To the priory of Bridlington (Yorks) : Baumber, Eden, Wltham. To the priory of Butley (Suffolk) : Bicker. To the priory of Drax (Yorks) : Swinstead. To the priory of Norton (Cheshire) : Burton Slather! To the priory of Royston or de Cruce Roesiae (Herts) : Owersby. To the priory of Shelford (Notts.) : Rauceby, Leasingham. To the priory of Thurgarton (Notts.) : Kirkby East, Scopwick, Timberland. To the abbey of Waltham (Essex) : Wrangle. To the abbey of ' Thorre ' : Burwell, ' Richabroc'
The following were appropriated to foreign houses :— To the abbey of St. Nich. Angiers, moiety of Willoughton. To the abbey of Beauport, Brittany : West Ravendale. To the abbey of Blanchland : Cam- meringham. To the abbey of St. Evroult : Marston. To the abbey of St. Fromond, France : Bonby. To the alien priory of Minting (cell to Lyre, Norm.) : Minting. To the alien priory of Hough (cell to St. Mary's Cherburgh): Hough-on-the-Hill. To the alien priory of Spalding (cell to the abbey of Angiers, Norm.) : Spalding, Alkborough.
22
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
the coming of the Normans introduced a practice whereby lay patrons bestowed the presentation and aUenated the tithes of churches to monastic bodies, and as a consequence incumbents, who in Saxon times enjoyed the position of ' rectors,' sank in the twelfth century to the position of curates, removable at the pleasure of the monastery, and forced to accept whatever remuneration the monks might choose to allow. Not only may much of the clerical poverty in that century be traced back to this cause, but it had frequently the pernicious effect of withdrawing a church out of the bishop's control, and of leaving the parishioners at the mercy of rectors who might or might not remember the paramount importance of the spiritual needs of the people. Various attempts had been made to remedy this evil,^ which was not finally abolished till the Council of Westminster in 1200 directed that every vicar should be instituted by the bishop, to whom he should be responsible for the care of the people, and that he should be provided with a sufficient competence out of the issues of the church. The average amount of the vicar's income was fixed by Hugh de Wells at about a third of the total profits, made up of the small tithes and the altarage of the church, in addition to a competent manse. The rector usually took the great tithe, i.e. the tithe of corn ; and the burdens incidental to an ecclesiastical benefice, such as synodals and the archdeacon's fees, were designed to be borne by rector and vicar in proportion to their respective portions.*" The Council of Oxford in 1222 decreed that the stipend of a vicar should be no less than five marks, except in Wales,^ and thus laid down the principle of providing a sufficient income apart from the actual value of the benefice.
The religious bodies deeply resented the bishop's action, and the monkish chroniclers of the day refer to him as ' the persecutor of monks, the hammer {malleus) of canons and all the religious'; but, while he carried out his scheme of reform in the teeth of opposition,* instances occur of his upholding the rights of the monks against outside invasion. In 1228 he excommunicated the burgesses of Dunstable for with- drawing their offerings from the priory,'' and in the following year interfered on behalf of Spalding, cell to the Norman abbey of Anglers, annulling the appointment of a prior by the earl of Chester and Lincoln, the patron, and upholding the election of the sub-prior and monks." The bishops of Lincoln showed themselves at all times wisely alive to the source of evil arising from foreign cells within the diocese lying outside their jurisdic- tion, and independent of all but the very lax control of the parent house
1 The Council of Westminster (or London) held under Anselm in 1 102, decreed that monks should not accept churches without the sanction of the bishop, or take so large a share of the profits as to impoverish the priests ministering therein (Wilkins, Condi, i, 383). The Lateran Council of 11 79 forbade the religious to receive tithes from the laity without the consent of the ordinary and empowered bishops to make proper provision for vicars, who should not be removable at or their stipends dependent on the will of the monastic rectors. Labb6, ^acr. Concil. xxii, 455.
' The Council of Westminster likewise decreed that the archbishop in visiting should not exceed a train of forty or fifty horses, the bishop twenty or thirty, the archdeacon should be content with five or seven, and rural deans should not exceed two. Wilkins, Concil. i, 505.
' Ibid. 587.
* The prior of Bridlington was cited to appear before the bishop to exhibit his title to the church of Edenham, and to show what exemption he could claim that vicarages should not be ordained in his churches R. of Hugh de Wells (Cant, and York. Soc), pt. ii, 116); in 1220 the monks of Dunstable were forced to establish vicarages in connexion with five churches held by them ' in proprios mus.' jinn. Man. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 59.
' Ibid, iii, no. ' Inst, of Hugh de Wells, anno 21.
23
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
abroad.^ The temperate letter of Bishop Grosteste to the abbot and convent of Fleury acquainting them with the fact that he had dismissed from their cell at Minting two monks guilty of grave immorality, and given to secular amusements, hunting, archery, and the like, sets forth the evil of sending persons of unproved character to a foreign cell away from strict supervision and control.'
The articles of inquiry issued by Wells on the occasion of a visitation of the whole of the diocese are probably the first ever published by a mediaeval bishop, and throw considerable light on the condition of the parochial clergy at that time.^
The special difficulty with which Hugh and his successors were con- fronted was the indifference of all patrons alike as to the character and fitness of the candidates they presented for ordination. The institutions of this period record instances of the bishop's refusal to admit persons of notorious ignorance and unfitness to benefices, and illustrate a practice then very general, for a chaplain or substitute to be appointed immediately on the admission of an incumbent who held the living in name only and had been granted leave of absence for the purpose of study, &c. Hugh de Scalby and Richard de Farlesthorpe presented respectively to the churches of Cold Hanworth and Bilsby were wholly rejected on account of their illiteracy ; * Robert Malebise was admitted on the presentation of his father to the charge of the church of Mavis Enderby, subject to being examined in letters at the octave of Easter next, and then instituted if found sufficient, otherwise the patron must make another presentation.' A chaplain was appointed in 1 2 1 9 to act for five years as custos of the church of Langton, to which Eustace, a clerk, ' who is under age,' had been presented,^ while Richard, a sub-deacon, presented by his father, Ralph Fitz-Simon, to the church of Ketsby in 1223, was sent immediately on his institution to the schools to study Latin. ^
' Houses of the Cluniac order are an instance of this. Lincolnshire, curiously enough, had no foundations of this order, certainly the most unpopular in England, but in Northamptonshire complaints were constantly made of interference on the part of the bishop of Lincoln in their affairs. In 1231 Gregory IX ordered certain judges to investigate the complaint of the prior and convent of La CharitI of ' grievous injuries ' on the part of the bishop of Lincoln in endeavouring to impose his authority on the priory of Coventry against that claimed by the prior of La Chariti {Cal. of Papal L. 1-126). The same complaint w^as lodged against Bishop Grosteste in 1248 in regard to the priory of Nevs^port Pagnel (ibid. 257), and in 1290 against Bishop Sutton for attempting to visit the same house (ibid. 521). Houses of the Cluniac order were always tempting to an energetic ordinary for, except in the case of nuns, his jurisdiction though limited and always disputed was never actually defined.
' Epist. R. Grosseteste (Rolls Ser.), 166, 319.
' The points raised by these inquiries, fifty in number, relate briefly to the ' enormous illiteracy ' of the clergy, their moral condition, the prevalence of marriage or concubinage among parish priests, the hereditary succession of priests' sons to their fathers' benefices, poverty among the clergy, whether adequate sustentation is provided for the vicar of an appropriated church by the rector, whether any church has been pulled down in obedience to the Council of Oxford which decreed that no church should be used that had not been consecrated, the abuse of the multiplication of masses, the celebration of anniversaries and tricennaries for pecuniary profit, the commutation of penances for money, the holding of secular offices by ecclesiastical persons, want of reverence for sacred places, as shown by games and sports held in churchyards, markets and plays in the church, the removal of superaltars to grind colours on, the scot-ales and drinking bouts mentioned by Giraldus as a frequent cause of stumbling to the clergy {Op. [Rolls Ser.], ii, Dist. ii, cap. xix), were also for- bidden. One curious inquiry may be specially noted, ' Does any priest use vinegar in the celebration of the Eucharist ? ' An interesting reference is made by the way to the sports and relaxations of the people, their jousts with large wooden battering rams raised on wheels in imitation of the tournaments of the knights, the annual Whitsuntide procession to the mother church, when each parish made a point of contending for precedence with the banner, and brawls, resulting not infrequently in bloodshed, and even death ensued Wilkins, Concil. i, 627-8. '
* R. of Hugh de Wells (Cant, and York Soc), pt. ii, 81, loi. =■ Ibid ot i lo
«R. of Inst. Wells. 'Ibid. '
24
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
A letter, written by Grosteste soon after his election, describes his indignation when a monk presented to the bishop for institution a candidate dressed in scarlet and ornamented with jewels, ' with the habit and bearing of a layman, or rather a soldier,' who on examination proved himself wholly illiterate, and showed himself in Grosteste's own words ' more fitted to be the slayer of souls than their keeper.' ^ On another occasion the bishop excused himself for refusing to admit to a benefice a boy still in his Ovid (adhuc ad ovidium epistolarum palmam porrigens),^ while in the case of Thomas, a son of Lord Ferrers, presented by his father to the living of Rand though much too young and not in holy orders, Grosteste wrote to the legate begging him to use his influence that another presentation might be made, or if the young man were appointed that a vicar might be provided, provision being made for Thomas out of the issues of the benefice.'
The choice of the chapter on the death of Wells, February, 1235,'' secured to the church of Lincoln the honour of association with one of the greatest names in the annals of the English Church. The rule of Robert Grosteste, 1235 to 1253, happened at a most critical period in the Church's history, and focuses in a remarkable manner that revulsion of feeling, that growing atti- tude of revolt against the exactions and oppressions of the papacy which we find reflected in the pages of Matthew of Paris. Starting his career with the most exalted idea of the reverence due to the pope as head of the church, asking to be allowed to do some bodily task as proof of his devotion,' wel- coming the papal legate, collecting the pope's tallages,' vindicating to the king his supreme claim and striving to renew in Henry's mind that glow of early gratitude which had prompted former professions of affection to the Roman see,'' the loyalty of Grosteste which survived the ' shameful convention ' of 1 240 ^ only broke down when he could ignore proofs of the venality of Rome no longer. It was characteristic of the man that he did not hesitate once the scales were torn from his eyes, once he was convinced that gold could indeed do everything at the Roman court,^ to denounce its abuses, to raise his voice to proclaim the scandal and degradation of its methods.^" The great servant of the papacy returned to England in 1250 to spend the remaining years of his life in determined opposition to mandates from Rome, which culminated in a flat refusal to admit the pope's nephew and nominee, Frederick de Lavagna, to a canonry of Lincoln and established his fame for ever as the
' Ej>ist. R. Gmseteste (Rolls Ser.), 440.
' Ibid. 63. 'Ibid. I, 31.
* The bishop in his will dated Stow Park, June, 1 233, bequeathed 100 marks to the fabric of the cathedral, as well as 100 marb towards his funeral expenses and for the altar near his burial place. To his successor he bequeathed all the hewn timber on the episcopal estate, with liberty to redeem the same for the sum of 50 marks. Among the religious houses to whom he left bequests it is noticeable that those of the Austin Canons figure largely, none of the Gilbertines are mentioned, and of the Cistercians only the abbey of Louth Park. See the will of Hugh de WeUs, Girald. Camb. Op. (Rolls Ser.), App. G. 223-3 i.
' Epist. R. Grosseteste (Rolls Ser.), xxxv.
* Ibid. cxix. ' Ibid, cxvii.
' The pope in accordance with an arrangement to give English benefices to Romans in return for their support in his struggle with the emperor wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury in 1 240, desiring them to keep the 300 benefices which should next become vacant open for these foreigners. Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), iv, 32.
' The exclamation let fall by Grosteste in 1250, on finding that the gold offered by the religious orders had won over the pope to their side was 'O pecunia, pecunia, quantum potes praecipue in curia Roman a.' Ibid. V, 97.
'" In the sermon delivered by him before the Papal court. Brown, Fasciculus, ii, 250.
2 25 4
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
champion of the rights of the national church.^ And as later he set himself against papal encroachments, so early in his career we find him opposing royal infringements of the rights of the church, protesting soon after his con- secration against the appointment of ecclesiastics to secular offices and the arraignment of clerks before secular courts," begging the legate to interfere in the appointment of the abbot of Crowland as an itinerant judge,* and refusing to admit Robert Passelewe, the forest judge, to the church of St. Peter's, Northampton.* In 1252 he took the lead in resisting the king's demand for a clerical subsidy, which had been backed by a papal mandate, urging that now was the time to refuse before a precedent had been estab- lished, since ' twice makes a custom.'
The ceaseless activity and untiring energy which characterize Grostcste are abundantly displayed in his efforts for the reform of his huge diocese. His experience as archdeacon ' must have warned him of the necessity of adopting newer methods as well as of acquiring additional assistance in the carrying out of his plans. It was to the new religious orders within the church, whose advent in England had been so speedily followed by their appear- ance within the diocese,'' that he turned for help and co-operation, and whose example he trusted might rouse the clergy to a renewed sense of their respon- sibilities.' We have his own account of how he set about the business of what he called his new and unaccustomed proceedings :
I, as soon as I was made bishop, considered myself to be the overseer and pastor of souls, and therefore I held it necessary, lest the blood of the sheep should be required at my hand in the strict Judgment, to visit the sheep committed to me with diligence as the Scripture orders and commands. Wherefore, at the commencement of my episcopate, I began to go round through the several archdeaconries, and in the archdeaconries through the several rural deaneries, causing the clergy to be called together on a certain day and place, and the people to be warned that in the same day and place they should be present with the children to be con- firmed, and in order to hear the Word of God and to confess. When clergy and people were assembled I myself was accustomed to preach the Word of God to the clergy, and some friar, either Preacher or Minorite, to the people ; at the same time four friars were employed in hearing confessions and enjoining penances ; and when the children had been confirmed,
' Luard in discussing the tradition that the bishop died excommnnicate dismisses the authorities as more than doubtful. Epist. R. Gnsseteste (Rolls Ser.), Pref. Ixxxi, note i. Matthew describes the animosity of the pope as so bitter that he gave orders for the body of the bishop to be cast out of the church. Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), V, 429.
* Epist. R. Gnsseteste (Rolls Ser.), Ixxii, 205. ' Ibid. 262.
* Ibid, cxxiv, 348. In his letter to the king Grosteste defines his ideal of the sacerdotal and kingly powers.
' Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 325-6.
^ He held the archdeaconry of Wilts 1 2 14 and 1220, the archdeaconry of Northampton with the prebend ofEmpingham in 1 22 1, and subsequently exchanged this for the archdeaconry of Leicester and rectory of St. Margaret's in 1225. Eventually, after a severe illness, he resigned all his preferments except his prebend in Lincoln. Epist. R. Grosseteste (Rolls Ser.), 45.
' The Dominicans or Friars Preachers arriving in England in 1221 established their first house in this country at Oxford, and other houses at Lincoln, Stamford and Boston (Dugdale, Mon. vi, 1486-7). The Franciscans or Minorites reached this country three years later and quickly made their way to Oxford where they settled themselves before the Feast of All Saints, 1224, receiving a cordial welcome from the Dominicans who had preceded them. From here they spread to Northampton and Lincoln, eventually establishing houses at Stamford, Grantham, Boston and Grimsby. Grosteste in 1224 was appointed their first rector at Oxford. De Adventu Minorum (Rolls Ser.), i, 36.
» The bishop wrote immediately on his consecration to the Provincial of the Friars Preachers asking that Friar John de St. Giles and Geoffrey de Clive might be allowed to stay with him, they were « to sustain his infirmity, to bear his weakness, to uphold him when wavering, to encourage him when in despair, to correct that which is evil in himself and his people, to confirm that which is good.' Similarly he wrote to beg the assistance of the friars minors urging the need of his vast diocese, which he described as ' the widest and most densely populated in England.' Epist. R. Grosseteste (Rolls Ser.), 60, 134.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
on that and the following day, I and my clerks gave our attention to inquiries, corrections and reformations, such as belong to the office of inquiry. In my first circuit of this sort, some came to me to find fault with these proceedings, saying, ' My lord, you are doing a new and unaccustomed thing.' To whom I answered, 'Every new thing which instructs and advances a man is a blessed new thing.' ^
The bishop in the course of this visitation, which was resumed at intervals throughout the whole of his rule, wrote to his archdeacons prohibiting abuses, such as the sale of goods within consecrated ground, drinking bouts, the excesses attending vigils and funeral feasts, the performance of plays, games, or sports in churches or churchyards, the unseemly proceedings frequently attending parish processions, the celebration of private marriages, the extor- tion of fees for the sacraments. The dean and chapter of Lincoln were ordered to put a stop to the celebration of the Feast of Fools on the Feast of the Circumcision ; and quaintly intermixed with these general directions is an order to the clergy bidding them warn mothers and nurses against taking small children into bed with them, a practice then, as now, constantly attended with loss of infant life.'
There were few abuses current at that time which Grosteste did not set himself to reform, and the result of his inquiries bears out the complaints of Adam de Marisco of the degeneracy and corruption of the times (hits diebus damnatissimis) , and of the difficulty of finding fit clergy.' The bishop in his efforts to enforce the canon against married clergy was constantly baffled by the slackness and supineness of his officials, if not by their actual connivance ; in a letter to his archdeacons, commenting severely on the parish clergy for their non-observance of canonical hours and their absorption in more than doubtful pleasures, he refers to the practice then evidently general of keeping ' focaria,' adding that, though unknown to him when he caused special inquiry to be made, yet that it must have been within the knowledge of his officials whose duty it was by their deans and beadles {bedellos) to exercise constant vigilance.* The ' Constitutions ' which Grosteste circulated throughout his diocese in obedience to the council held in London, 1237, ordered the removal of all married clergy from their benefices,* and the Annals of Dunstable tell us that the bishop in the course of his visitation suspended many rectors, admitted others to purgation, and from others took bonds that they should in future observe continency or forfeit rank and benefice.' Up to the last the bishop continued his fight against these irregularities, and in 1251 Matthew Paris describes him as removing from their benefices those whom he found incontinent or of bad reputation,^ but laxity in this matter died hard if it died out at all. In 1239 Richard de Beckingham was presented to a moiety of the church at East Keal which Roger, a married clerk, had held, saving to the said Roger the annual sum of three marks,' and in 1377 the revenues of the church of Thorpe-on-the-Hill were ordered to be sequestered on account of the marriage of the rector, who appears to have had the ceremony publicly performed in the church of Sleaford.' A document of the time of Edward I proves that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries four
' Wharton, Angl. Sacr. ii, 347, trans, by G. G. Perry ; Lift and Times of Grosseteste, 87.
' Epist. R. Gmsetcte (Rolls Ser.), 71. 72, 118. ' Monum. Francisc. (Rolls Sen), i, 144.
• Efist. R. Gmseteste (Rolls Ser.), cvii, 317. ' Ibid.
* Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 147. ' C/>ron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 237. " Line. Epis. Reg. Inst, of Grosteste. ' Ibid. Memo, of Bokyngham.
27
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
successive rectors of Leake and Leverton were married and being in possession of the advowson handed on in every case but the last the living to their sons.^ That the clergy merely accepted the general standard in these matters is evident from the consternation roused by the bishop's investigation into the morals of all within his diocese both high and low, the matter creating so grave a scandal that the king's authority was invoked to put a stop to it.^
Over the monasteries in his diocese also Grosteste exercised a very severe measure of vigilance, forcing on the monks the ordination of vicarages in all benefices within their possession and opposing the practice of letting livings to farm.' The dread of his visitation was so intense that guilty members fled before his approach, nor did he hesitate, as we have observed, to return profligate brethren of alien cells to their parent houses, requesting superiors to send only men of approved character to outlying dependencies. If his treatment of the nunneries appears rather more than drastic, yet we have to recollect that the account of his submitting nuns to the indignity of personal examination comes from a monk, and a monk of St. Albans,* while the after reputation of nuns within the diocese suggests that severity was not uncalled for.
The long and bitter dispute with the chapter of Lincoln touching the bishop's right to visit them broke out in 1239 ; its continuance occasioned much scandal at the time, even in the minds of Grosteste's own friends, and the method of its termination did not redound to the entire credit of either side.^ It seems rather a curious anomaly to find Grosteste, who suffered no exemption from his authority as diocesan, foremost in opposing the arch- bishop's claim to hold a visitation in his diocese as metropolitan* ; other instances, however, are not wanting of a similar refusal on the part of suffragans.' Returning in the autumn of 1245 from the Council of Lyons, where he sat as one of the representatives of the English hierarchy, the bishop proceeded early the following year to take advantage of the powers conferred on him by his victory to initiate a visitation of the chapter wherein he encountered no further serious opposition. The various other disputes in which the bishop engaged, though they added to his prestige and illustrate the position held by him at this time, do not, with one exception,' directly concern this county.
The events leading up to Grosteste's memorable rupture with Innocent IV. occurred early in 1250. Finding that many benefices and ecclesiastical possessions had come into the hands of the religious by fraudulent means, the bishop cited all monastic holders of benefices to appear before him first at Stamford, secondly at Leicester, and thirdly at Oxford, bringing with them
' Line. Dioc. Mag.]in. 1902. ' Matt. Paris, Cinn. Majora (Rolls Ser.), iv, 579.
' This was a device whereby an absentee rector contracted with a third party, mostly a religious body, to perform the spiritual part of the work in connexion with a living for as cheap a rate as he could' contrive to get. The chronicler of Dunstable complains of the difficulty the monks had to get the bishop to allow them to keep the churches they held at farm. Jnn. Mon. (Rolls. Ser.), iii, 148.
* Matt. Paris Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.) v, 227. ' Luard, Epist. R. Gnsseteste (Rolls Ser.), Pref. Ixii
' Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 225.
' GifFard of Worcester is a case in point. He was energetic in claiming the right to visit all houses within his diocese, and equally determined in opposing the metropolitan visitation of Peckham. Wore. Epis Reg. Giffard (Wore. Hist. Soc), p. 540. • f •
» The exception was his quarrel with the monastery of Bardney which embroiled him with the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury, and resulted in his excommunication by that body. Matt. Paris Chron Maiora (Rolls Ser.), iv, 245-8. ' ' ■'
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
the charters of their founders, papal privileges, &c., papal letters having been secured for the purpose of revoking all usurpations the title to which could not be proved.^ An outcry was naturally raised, and the Templars, Hospitallers and others appealed immediately to the pope claiming exemption. Grosteste started at once for Lyons, to find that he had been forestalled, the gold of the Templars, which, according to Matthew Paris, furnished an argument the papal curia could least resist, having wrested judgement against him.^ He lingered on at Lyons, delivered his final word in the famous sermon before the papal court, and then returned to battle for the remainder of his life with those whom he had come to regard as the enemies of the church. The concession of Innocent IV, authorizing him to ordain vicarages in the parish churches held by the religious, and to increase the stipends of the vicars, failed to win back his allegiance.* In 125 1 he was temporarily suspended for refusing to admit an Italian to a rich benefice in his diocese on the score of his ignorance of the language ; * Matthew Paris states that at this time the bishop hated papal nominees ' as the poison of serpents,' and said that if he delivered the cure of souls to them he ' should be even as Satan.' ^ An inquiry instituted by him into the incomes of alien clerks beneficed in England reported that these amounted to 70,000 marks, or more than three times the amount of the royal revenue.* In the last year of his life the bishop attended Parliament held in London in April, and took part in the excommunication of all violaters of Magna Charta.^ It seems a fitting close to the life of so eminent an upholder of national liberty, and the friend of the patriotic earl of Leicester,* that one of his last acts should be an order for the excommunication of all the enemies of this liberty, to be repeated in every church throughout his diocese.' As he lay dying at Buckden words of burning denunciation and exhortation fell from the bishop's lips and thrilled his hearers ;" he passed away on 9 October, 1253, leaving behind him an imperishable record of abiding honour.
To the influence of Grosteste in the century following his death may be attributed the prominent part taken by this county in putting forward plans of reform, and in opposing the extortionate demands of king and pope. The freedom of election enjoyed by the cathedral chapter during the whole of the thirteenth century is revealed in the fact that from William of Blois, in 1203, to John Dalderby, in 1300, every bishop of Lincoln at the time of his election held some appointment or office in the cathedral. On the death of Grosteste the chapter foiled an attempt on the part of the king to induce them to accept that clerical swindler of his order, the bishop of Hereford," and proceeded to elect their dean, Henry de Lexington, to the vacant post. In 1255 the beneficed clergy of the archdeaconry of Lincoln made bold to
' Matt. Paris, CAron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 96. « Ibid. 98.
' A previous attempt made by him to induce all beneficed persons to take priests' orders failed through the intervention of the pope. Ibid, v, 279.
* Ibid. V, 237. Grosteste's objection to these papal nominees was based, however, on higher grounds than that of their ignorance of the language, and he stated clearly on another occasion that he objected to the pope's nephews because all they sought was temporal promotion. Monum. Francisc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 64.
' Matt. Paris, Chnn. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v. 257. ' Ibid. 355. ' Ibid. 343.
* The sons of Simon de Montfort were placed under the charge of Grosteste. Monum. Francisc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 63, 1 10.
' Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 372, 395, 400.
'" Ibid. 400-7. " Peter d'Alqueblanche.
29
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
protest against being taxed without their consent having been obtained ;' the grievances presented at the convocation held at Merton in 1258 to consider the evil condition of the church were based on a report drawn up by the late bishop, with a summary of the privileges of the clergy compiled by his instructions.* On the outbreak of hostilities in 1 260 Bishop Gravesend threw himself on the popular side, suffering suspension and exile in the cause of freedom and reform after the defeat of Evesham.' Bishop Sutton, in 1296, supported the clergy in their refusal to pay the subsidy demanded by the king, and with Archbishop Winchelsea was condemned to confiscation of goods and property.* John Dalderby, still upholding the tradition of active resistance to oppressive measures, ordered his archdeacons in 1302 to threaten with excommunication the collectors of the tax imposed by Edward I in the course of the Parliament held at Lincoln in the previous year, and pronounced sentence of ecclesiastical censure against such of the clergy as should comply.' All these instances of a consistent policy on the part of successive bishops of Lincoln may be traced back to the lasting effect of Grosteste's struggle.
The rule of Henry Lexington (1254-8) was short and uneventful, save for the remarkable incident of little St. Hugh in 1258.' Modern criticism has sufficiently disposed of the charge against the Jews of the murder of a little Christian boy, and the story is too well known to require repetition.''^ It gave, however, at the time the rein to that fanatical hatred of which the Jews were so frequently the victims, and from which the saintly Hugh of Grenoble on one occasion rescued them.* It is to be regretted that the successors of Hugh and Grosteste, who in the midst of their preoccupation had found time to devote care and attention to the proper treatment of the alien community,' showed none of their spirit, and that the voice of the bishop was on this occasion conspicuous only by its absence.
Richard Gravesend, who succeeded to Lexington in 1258, would probably in less troublous times have left more mark on the diocese. ' No one,' says the chronicler, ' could regard him as a nonentity or useless person,'"* but the barons' wars, which occupied much of his rule, left him with scant leisure for the care of the diocese." Nevertheless he followed the footsteps of Grosteste so far as to summon all religious bodies within his diocese to produce evidence of their title to ecclesiastical property," and early in 1267, between the date of his suspension for siding with the disaffected barons," and
' Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), i, 360. Representation of the lower clergy now for the first time appearing in convocation.
' Ibid. 422-5. ' Ibid, iii, 240 ; iv, 181.
• Ibid, iii, 407. His friends, we are told, came forward and arranged that the sheriff of Lincoln should make a levy on a fifth of his property. Hemingburgh (Engl. Hist. Soc), 1-54, 109.
' Those who complied through fear he soon after absolved. Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalderby.
' Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 516-19, 546, 552 ; Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), i, 340, 348 ; ii, 346.
7 J. Jacobs, Jewish Ideals, 193-224.
' This was the occasion of the riot at Northampton in connexion with the superstitious worship of a robber who had met with a well-deserved fate while carrying off plunder from the Tews at Stamford. Fita S Hum (Rolls Ser.), 167, 348. ^'
' Grosteste's letter to the countess of Winchester on the subject comes with greater force, for it recognizes clearly the case against the Jews in their dealings with Christians apart from religious prejudice. Epist. (Rolls Ser.), 33. '^ '
" Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Ser.), v, 719.
" Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 221, 223 ; iv, 123. " Ibid, iv, 133. » Ibid, iii, 240 ; iv, i8i.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
that of his actual exile abroad, was busy exercising jurisdiction over monasteries within the diocese but outside this county.* It is difficult to say how long he remained abroad ; complaints at last were made of the banishment of the bishops,' and to these representations Gravesend added an argument of even greater force, he gave the pope a large sum of money and obtained his discharge before the other prelates.' He took up on his return the active care of the diocese, which in his absence had been ' nobly ' and wisely ruled by John de Maydenstone, the dean, to whose custody it had been committed,* but his health some years after broke down, and in 1275 the archbishop of Canterbury granted him a coadjutor." The bishop appears to have exercised much vigilance over the churches in his diocese held by the monks. In the last year of his life he was ordered by Peckham to desist from troubling his people by sequestrating benefices and extorting money under pretext of vacancy,* and this may refer to his action in ejecting the religious from livings which they held at farm on the death of the rectors and putting in his own clerks, lest the rectorial rights should be seized.'^ The bishop probably was more gratefully remembered for his benefactions to the cathedral church of Lincoln,* where he was buried on his death, 13 December, 1 279.
We must note about this time the improvement effected in the administration of the diocese by the arrangement respecting the custody and management of the see during a vacancy.' The composition between the primate and the chapter of Lincoln in 1261 provided that all episcopal jurisdiction during a vacancy should be committed to an official chosen by the archbishop out of three or four canons presented to him by the chapter, and that this official should be responsible to the archbishop for the collection of the fees, out of which he should receive a certain amount by way of his expenses. To the dean of Lincoln, however, was secured absolute jurisdiction over the city and suburbs of Lincoln, as well as over the prebendal churches belonging to the community and over certain religious houses and hospitals of the bishop's patronage. He was also empowered to visit two religious houses within each archdeaconry in the diocese, and it was lawful for him and the chapter to call on any bishop to ordain to any office in the cathedral in the absence of the primate, who, however, should perform that office if he were holding an ordination within the city or diocese."
With the spiritual decline of the monasteries and the practical restric- tions imposed on religious endowments on a large scale by the Statute of Mortmain, the pious donor of this period sought in the endowment of chantries a more convenient outlet for his devotional feelings than he could find in the erection of monasteries. In a chapel attached to an existing church he would endow a priest or number of priests to pray for his soul,
1 Jnn. Mon. (Rolls Ser), iv, 208-13. * Ruhanger (Rolls Ser.), 55.
' jinn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 247 ; iv, 181. ' Ibid, iii, 247. ' Ibid. 248.
• Reg. of Peckham (Rolls Ser.), i, 70. ' Jnn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 133.
' He acquired for the see the patronage of the churches of Sutton, Aylesby, Greetham and Little Bytham, increased the allowance of the canons, and established a permanent choir of twelve singing boys, who Avith their master were assigned a competent living out of the church of Ashby Puerorum and out of certain other churches. Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, App. H. 326.
' This exceedingly vexed question had on the death of Grosteste in 1 2 5 3 led to a violent dispute between the primate and the cathedral chapter, in the course of which the latter were excommunicated, ^att. Paris, Chnn. Majora (Rolls Ser.), vi, 264-5.
'"Wilicins, ConciLi, 756.
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A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
the souls of his family, and all the faithful departed. The thirteenth cen- tury marks an important addition to the ranks of the beneficed clergy in the person of these chantry priests, who, as time went on and the erection of these memorial chapels or chantries became more general, might be found in every church of any size side by side with the parish priest. In addition to the chantry priests must be mentioned the parochial chaplains, introduced by the spread and growth of chapels dependent on the parish church,^ whose ranks in turn were supplemented by the private chaplains officiating in the oratories of rich laymen ; ^ while apart from these and in frequent com- petition with them, came the friars whom the patronage of Grosteste seems to have attracted in almost overwhelming numbers to the diocese, and who at the beginning of the next century appear to be holding most of the offices of public penitentiars as well as of confessors to the nunneries.*
Oliver Sutton * inaugurated the first year of his accession by the opening of the Angel Choir at Lincoln and the translation of the relics of St. Hugh to the golden shrine that had been prepared for their reception. The expenses of the entertainment accompanying the magnificent ceremony, which was honoured by the presence of the king and queen and other magnates of the realm, were borne by Thomas Beck, who on the same day, 6 October, 1280, was consecrated to the see of St. David's.^ Ten years later Oliver Sutton was called on to assist at a less joyous ceremony, the funeral of the queen, who died at Harby, near Lincoln but in Nottingham- shire,' 28 November, 1290, and whose body after being carried to Lincoln was thence conveyed by slow stages to Westminster for burial, memorial crosses at Grantham and Stamford within the county marking the route of the funeral procession. An entry in the bishop's register of that date asks for the prayers of the faithful in the diocese for the soul of the late queen. ^ Her memory was long preserved in a chantry founded in the church of Harby, which existed up to the time of the Reformation.*
Sutton's bulky registers are evidence of the energy and diligence with which he devoted himself to the diocese. Old abuses continued to crop up. In 1 29 1, after a recent visitation of the deanery of Holland, the bishop wrote to the rural dean commenting on the ' bigamous and married clerks,'
' These dependent chapels were the cause of most of the ecclesiastical disputes in the succeeding century by reason of their alleged usurpation of parochial rights ; occasionally they would be further endowed and were formally erected into parish churches, but in many instances after the Black Death they became so impoverished as to be unable to support their former chaplains, and sank into disuse.
' An instance of the private chapel or oratory occurs in 1237-8, during the rule of Bishop Grosteste, when licence was granted to Robert Bry, knt., by consent of the abbot and convent of Crowland as patrons, and of the rector of the church of Whaplode, to maintain a chapel within his court there. (Add. MS. 6950, fol. 70). This is an early instance. Oratories were granted in large numbers a little later, as may be seen from the episcopal registers.
' In 1301 so many friars were presented to the bishop for the office of confessor that he complained, and said that in the diocese of Canterbury the archbishop only licensed six, seven, or eight at the most. He reminded the Friars Preachers, to whom he was speaking, that the Minorites were very numerous in the diocese, and that the Austin and Carmelite friars were also licensed to hear confessions ; finally the bishop licensed as many as fifty, 'which' he remarked 'ought to be sufficient.' Line. Epis. Ree Memo of Dalderby, fol. 19. r 5 •
* The bishop, a member of the well-known Lexington family, was elected on the refusal of Fulk Lovel, archdeacon of Colchester, to accept office. Jnn. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 284. He was the third dean of Lincoln raised in succession to the episcopal throne.
' For particulars of the feasting, in which the citizens of Lincoln freely participated, see Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, App. F. 220.
« Walsingham, flwA Jngl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 139.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Sutton, fol. 32. » Ibid. Memo, of Smith, fol. 148.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
whom he found ministering side by side with priests at the altar. He addressed remonstrances to the rural deans both of Holland and Christianity (Lincoln) on the neglected condition of churchyards within their deaneries. Pigs, he said, should not be turned into burial grounds, nor cemeteries made a dumping ground for the refuse of citizens. The practice of holding markets and fairs within the precincts of the church still lingered on in country places, in spite of the stringent prohibitions of Wells and Grosteste and the efforts of Sutton and his successors.^ In 1300 the inhabitants of Grimsby were threatened with excommunication for holding their market on a Sunday.^ Exhortations for the rebuilding and repair of parish churches, the enclosure of churchyards, with warnings to the laity not to withhold their offerings,^ swell the registers of this period. Frequent entries of indulgences for those contributing to the needs of hospitals and the poorer nunneries indicate no lack of objects for the alms of the charitably disposed. The building of bridges appears to have been another subject of appeal. The number of those licensed to beg alms in the diocese increased so enormously in the next century that in 1334 the bishop was moved to revoke all former licences, ' as there are so many going about the diocese unlawfully begging.'* The multi- plication of licences for the reconciliation of churches confirms a general impression as to the lawlessness and violence of the times. In 1291 the bishop obtained a special dispensation from the pope that ' whereas churches and cemeteries in the diocese of Lincoln are often violated by effusion of blood, &c., and the diocese is so diffused, it is a difficult and serious matter to go always to reconcile them, they may be reconciled by special commission to a priest with water blessed by the bishop, without prejudice, however, to the ordination requiring it to be done by bishops.' °
The close of the thirteenth century is marked by that assessment of church property known as the ' Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV,' which served as a basis for all ecclesiastical taxation till the reign of Henry VIII. According to the compilation of 1 291, the county of Lincoln was divided into two archdeaconries and twenty-nine deaneries, the archdeaconry of Lincoln containing twenty-three deaneries, that of Stow only four, an inequality which was not readjusted till recent years. The total number of churches returned under the different deaneries amounts to 595 : of these 100 are entered as vicarages, and 100 more as vicarages whose yearly value did not exceed six marks.* The spiritualities of the two archdeaconries are given at jTi 1,657 ^7-^*' ^"'^ *^^ ^""^ raised on the taxation of the see amounted to >r 1,000.'' The bishop's benefactions to his cathedral church,
' Dalderby in 1 302 wrote to forbid the market in the church of Ingoldmells (ibid. Memo, of Dalderby, fol. 34). Gynwell in 1360 issued a general prohibition against the selling of wares and the holding of sports and games in churches or churchyards (ibid. Memo, of Gynwell, fol. 132). In Bokyngham's rule the prior of Holland [Brigge] was denounced for holding a market in a church ; and an order in 1392 forbad the selling of merchandize within the conventual church of Stainfield. Ibid. Memo, of Bokyngham, fols. 126, 387.
' Ibid. Memo, of Dalderby, fol. 21.
5 The rural dean of Holland was directed about the year 1 29 1, to explain to the parishioners ofMoulton that they should not remove the candles placed round the bier when a corpse was carried into the church for burial, but should leave them according to ancient custom for the church and its ministers. Ibid. Memo, of Sutton, fol. 189.
* Ibid. Memo, of Burghersh, fol. 269. ' Hutton, Ext. from Line. Reg. Add. MS. 6951, fol. 28.
° These figures are exclusive of those churches entered as prebendal to the cathedral and as appropriated to its community, which would add some thirty-seven more to the total return.
' ?ope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 56, 62, 76, 77.
2 33 5
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
his virtues, freedom from avarice, kindness as a landlord, receive enthusiastic comment from John Schalby,^ who admits nevertheless that in one point Sutton failed — as co-collector of the subsidy he allowed the prebendal churches of the cathedral to be overtaxed,^ a mistake, adds his biographer, of which he repented ' vehemently ' before his death, which occurred 1 3 November, 1 299.
John Dalderby (1300—20) furnishes another example of a bishop whose virtues, if they failed to procure him the meed of formal canonization, yet afforded him the recognition of a local saint. Like his predecessor, to whom in other respects he bore but slight resemblance, he gave of his best to the diocese, and beyond opposing the royal demand for a subsidy put forward by the Parliament held at Lincoln in January, 1301,' held himself aloof from the political events of his day.*
At this time English nuns had acquired a very unenviable reputation for themselves at the Roman court on account of the laxity of their rule and wandering habits." The pope, to put a stop to the scandal, wrote in 1299 to the archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans, ordering them to have all religious women within their dioceses shut up and not allowed to leave their cells. Dalderby at once set about visiting the different nunneries to explain the new statute and enforce its observance.' The bishop's register affords us no specific instances of opposition in Lincolnshire to stricter regulations such as we read of in connexion with other parts of the diocese,'' but Agnes de Flixthorpe, the apostate nun of St. Michael's, Stamford, whose story makes such painful reading, belonged to a community just over the Lincoln- shire border,* and laxity of rule was unhappily not unknown within this county also. The bishop, in 1301, commissioned the rector of Brothertonto visit the houses of nuns when he should esteem it necessary, ' as many of them refuse to obey the statute of Pope Boniface for their enclosure, and go out of their monasteries into cities and other public places, mixing with the world, and even consorting with men.' ' The harsh measures resorted to in the case of obstinate runaways, or even suspects, seem to have been regarded generally as reasonable and necessary precautions and to have been adopted indifferently in the case of an erring brother or sister. A monk of Bardney stated in the course of a visitation in 1 3 1 1 that the abbot ' moved by anger ' had caused him to be placed in confinement in a dark place, his feet fastened by an iron chain to a post, ' and so lived all that time in great misery.' The man appealed and was eventually released, but it is evident that the treatment was regarded as in no way exceptional.^"
' The biographer of the bishops of Lincoln was himself a canon of Lincoln and acted as registrar to Sutton for eighteen years. Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, App. E. 208, 210.
" The bishop's appointment as collector made him very unpopular. The chronicler of Osney wails over the new ' taxers,' who, he declared, were worse than the old. Ann. Mm. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 333. The clergy of the archdeaconry of Stow also presented a petition to Parliament on the ground that they were over assessed. Pari. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 314.
' Edward I was the guest of the bishop at his manor of Nettleham while this Parliament lasted.
'He was not among the seven bishops appointed ' ordainers ' in 1 3 10 {Par/. Writs. [Rec. Com.] ii, div. i, 43). Proctors represented him at the Parliament held at Carlisle in 1306. Pari. R (Rec ComT i, 188-9 '
' Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 83. « Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalderby, fol. 9.
'Notably in Buckinghamshire. The nuns of Little Marlow absolutely declined to abide by the provisions of the statute.
» This poor lady, who was probably out of her mind, after repeated attempts to escape was ordered to be confined in a stone chamber with a chain attached to each leg.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo of Dalderby, fol. i^d. '» Ibid. fol. 215^.
34
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
An important incident in Dalderby's rule was the trial and condemnation of the Templars, the bishop being one of the commissioners appointed by the pope in 1308 to try the accused knights in England.^ It is very doubtful if Dalderby believed the charges brought against the doomed order, at any rate he avoided when he could taking part in the trials that ensued and took no further action after holding a private examination at Lincoln.^ The bishop's opinion, however, did not save the unfortunate knights, who were found guilty of many of the charges and condemned by the convocation of Canterbury to confinement in different monasteries with varying degrees of penance. The archbishop's letter to his suffragan of Lincoln, assigning a Templar to each of the following houses within the diocese, Peterborough, Ramsey, North Ormsby, Croxton, St. Albans, Woburn, Crowland, Spalding, Sempringham, Kirkstead, Revesby, Leicester, Thornton, Barlings, St. Andrew's Northampton, Swineshead, and Wardon, enters into minute particulars as to diet, and the degree of freedom to be allowed to each prisoner.' The custodians of the confiscated goods of the order were ordered to pay for the board of each knight at the rate of 4^/. daily, but the refusal of St. Andrew's, Northampton, to admit the penitent sent to them* shows how unpleasing the charge was to the monasteries burdened already with loans for the Scotch war and the imposition of royal boarders. Considerable estates were held by the Templars in this county in connexion with their preceptories or commanderies at Aslackby, Temple Bruer near Lincoln, Eagle, Willoughton, and South Witham, all of which passed eventually into the hands of their rivals, the Hospitallers.^
The Premonstratensian houses of this diocese were well represented in the long but successful resistance made by the English provincials of the order about this time to the demands of the mother house. The abbot general, Adam de Crecy, striving to renew the payment of the ancient apport which had recently fallen into abeyance,* summoned the English abbots in 1310 to attend the next general meeting at Premontre and bring all arrears of the tax with them. The superiors of fourteen houses ^ accordingly met and deputed the abbots of Langdon and Sulby to attend the meeting and explain the position of affairs. The general chapter, refusing however to listen to the representations of their proctors, proceeded to pass sentence of condemnation against all houses of the English order, threatening them with excommunication in the event of the money not being forthcoming by Easter.* A general chapter of the English province summoned by the two abbots met at Lincoln on i December, 1 3 1 o, and fortified with a renewed royal prohibition of foreign imposts decided to carry on the resistance to Premontre and appeal to Rome. This meeting, which took place in the church of the Friars of the Sack at Lincoln, fixed another meeting at Barlings Abbey for the purpose of producing copies of the necessary documents for the appeal, and here on 20 January, 1310-11
• Wilkins, ConcU. i, 329. ' Ibid.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalberby, fol. 194.
' The bishop was peremptory, however, and on a second refusal ordered the excommunication of the prior and all the chief officers of the priory to be published in all the churches of the deanery. Ibid. fol. 195,
' Dugdale, Mon. v'l, 801-5.
° In obedience to the prohibition of foreign payment passed by the Parliament held at Carlisle in 1 306. Par/. R. (Rec. Com.) i, 2 1 7.
' Of the fourteen, six were in this diocese, Newhouse, Barlings, Hagnaby and Neubo in this county, Croxton in Leicestershire and Lavenden in Bucks.
' Collect. Anglo-Premon. (R. Hist. Soc.) i, Nos. 2, 3, 4.
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A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
within a certain room called the abbot's ' new chamber ' three proctors were elected to negotiate the business at the Roman court, two of whom were canons of Barlings and Croxton.^ The matter dragged on till 13 16, the English abbots receiving repeated sentences of excommunication, but peace was finally restored by an agreement in that year which placed the victory practically in the hands of the provincials.'
The last years of Dalderby's life were spent in retirement at Stow," the report of the austerities practised by him adding much to his reputation for sanctity. The petition for his canonization, presented in 1327 by Edward II and supported by letters from many of the bishops, met with a refusal from the pope but did not lessen the devotion paid to him in his own cathedral city, to the church of which he had made considerable benefactions.*
The abuse of papal provision in this country was now thoroughly estab- lished. The rich prebends of Lincoln continued throughout Dalderby's rule to fall a prey to the usurpation of the Roman court,' and in the appointment of his successor we find that the see itself was not destined to escape. On the bishop's death in 1320, the choice of the chapter first fell on their dean, Henry de Mansfield ;' he declined the office and they elected their chancellor Anthony Bek. In the meantime other plans were afoot, the powerful Lord Badlesmere, then visiting the papal court at Avignon on a political mission, urged the pope to bestow the vacant see on his nephew. The appeal rein- forced by letters from Edward 11^ and backed by bribes was successful, Henry Burghersh, a young man in his twenty-ninth year and consequently under the canonical age, was provided and the election of Bek unceremoni- ously set aside.*
The claims of the new bishop to remembrance are mainly based on the part he played, and that hardly a creditable one, in the events that closed the reign of Edward II, and in connexion with the responsible position held by him under Edward III.' His eventful career as a political bishop possesses many points of interest but hardly allowed of his spending much time in the diocese,
' Collect. Angh-Premon. (R. Hist. Soc), i, Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12.
' The settlement arranged that English abbots instead of making the yearly journey to Premontre might be represented at the general chapter by special visitors. The abbot general might visit English houses yearly if he pleased, but should only receive the discharge of his personal expenses on these occasions, and only necessary collections, and such as had been passed by the general chapter and the amount approved by the visitors, should be made from houses of the English province. Ibid. No. 30.
^ In 1 3 1 5 he appointed Henry Hemingworth, sub-dean of the cathedral, his coadjutor, to do all acts which did not strictly pertain to the episcopal office, and in the following year excused his non-attendance at the Parliament held at Lincoln, January, 1 3 16, on the ground of ill-health. Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalderby.
* Notably to the priest vicars. To the see he added the patronage of two churches, the church of South Ferriby being one. Another of his acts was the union of the church of All Saints, Lincoln, with that of St. Mary Magdalen. Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.) vii, App. E. 212-13.
* Dr. Hutton's extracts from the registers of Lincoln include a long list of provisions beginning with the first year of Dalderby (Harl. MS. 6951, fols. 46-52). The pope at that time claimed the right to nominate on the death of any holder to perferment at the Roman court. On 23 March, 1306, Reymund de la Goth, a Roman cardinal and dean of St. Paul's, was provided to the deanery of Lincoln, the pope conceding on his death in 13 10, that ' the new dean may be elected' (Ibid. fol. 54). This Reymund de la Goth seems to have held the deaneries of St. Paul's, Lincoln, York, Salisbury, and St. Martin le Grand {Cal of Papal Reg. ii, 38). We find the pope providing to the priory of Huntingdon in 1301 and in 1320 to the archdeaconry of Bedford (ibid, ii, 37, 205). Bliss, Extracts from Papal Registers, gives icores of other foreigners provided.
» Girald. Cambr. Op. (Rolls Ser.), vii, 215. ' Rymer, Toed, iii, 814, 820.
* Ibid. 833 ; Murirauth, Cont. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 31
' Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 173, 180, 198, 227.
36
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
the administration of which was carried on fairly energetically in his absence.' Simon de Islip, canon of Lincoln and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, acted as his vicar-general, but many of the licences granted by the bishop are made out in the name of his chaplain John de Longespeye, archdeacon of Stow in 1334 and described as the vicar-general of the bishop 'in remotis agentis' in that year.' The frequency of licences to study and to let benefices to farm noted in his register probably did much to encourage the practice of non-residence among the clergy now becoming so general. In the course of a visitation of the archdeaconries of Huntingdon, Leicester, Bedford, Lincoln, and Stow in I 3 1 6 it was found that nearly all the deaneries of the Lincoln archdeaconry had been farmed out." An order was made for the deans to be proceeded against, and both Dalderby and Burghersh issued mandates against non- residents, but in the case of the latter certainly, the frequent permission accorded to the clergy to leave their cures for the purposes of study or pil- grimage must have rendered the effect of the standing orders against non- residence practically nugatory.
The chapter of Lincoln by their choice of Thomas Bek on the death of Burghersh in 1 340 * probably desired to make amends for the former slight to his cousin, Anthony, now bishop of Durham. Their election seemed likely to be again annulled, but a rumour reaching the bishop-elect that the pope had reserved the appointment he hurried off to Avignon to negotiate the affair personally. The matter was kept in suspense for a year and a half,^ but confirmation, doubtless at considerable cost, having been obtained from Clement VI on his accession to the pontificate,' the bishop was able to be consecrated in July, 1 342. His episcopate, which only lasted five years, was, however, of comparative unimportance to the diocese.
The rule of Gynwell (1347 to 1362) was overshadowed by that terrible visitation of the fourteenth century known as the Black Death, which hung like an ever-threatening cloud over the remainder of the century and the effects of which it is difficult fully to estimate. The memoranda of the bishop do not begin till 1350, and we are indebted to Henry Knighton, canon of Leicester, for an account of the most terrible year of the plague and of the means taken by the bishop to relieve the distress that prevailed. ' At that time,' he says (in 1348), 'a lamentable pest penetrated into those parts nearest the sea by Southampton, came to Bristol, and there died of it as it were alL the healthy folk of the town, taken away by sudden death, for few people kept their beds more than two or three days and some only half a day before death came to them at the setting of the sun ' . . . ' The bishop of Lincoln,' on the approach of the disease, ' then sent throughout the whole of his diocese and gave general power to all and singular his priests both regular and secular to hear confessions and to absolve all with the full authority of the bishop
' An entry in his register records the fact that the bishop visited the deanery of Holland in 1322, and that a certain John Toupe. of Algaricirk was afterwards excommunicated for collecting a large body of armed laymen, and endeavouring to thwart the bishop from exercising his office. Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Burghersh, fol. 66.
' Mutton's Extracts, Harl. MS. 6951, fol. 81 d. ' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Dalderby, fol. 311.
* Walsingham, who records the bishop's death at Ghent while on a political mission, refers to his- cupidity and avarice, and says that after his death his spirit, doomed to walk up and down his park at Tyng- hurst which he had enclosed to the injury of the poor, appeared to one of his followers and besought him ta go to the canons of Lincoln and ask them to make restitution for these former wrongs, for which he was now undergoing retribution. Hiii. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 255.
' Murimuth, Cont. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 120-1. ^ Ibid. 222.
.^7
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
save in case of debt, in which case if a man were able he should give satisfaction while he lived, or it should be given by his friends from his goods after his death. Similarly the pope granted full remission of sins to every one in danger of death who had obtained absolution once and he allowed this faculty to last until Easter next, and each one was licensed to choose his own confessor.'^ In Lincolnshire the disease, which had ravaged the western and southern counties during the autumn and spring of 1348 and 1349 did not appear till the summer of 1349, and then fell with heavy brunt on the county. It has been ascertained that, against the average number of thirty or forty yearly institutions in the archdeaconry of Lincoln, the last half of 1349 shows 302 ; the average number in the archdeaconry of Stow being only six, the last six months of the year give fifty-nine.'' The parts of Holland, it is said, fared better than Kesteven or Lindsey, of the towns Stamford suffered most, losing six incumbents as against two in Lincoln with its fifty churches. Nor were the secular clergy the only sufferers;* the chronicler of Louth Park Abbey records the death of the abbot and many monks,* the superiors of Thornholm and Foss were also among the regulars swept away. The temporal decline of the religious orders is generally dated from this cataclysm ; the effect of the pestilence, accompanied by mortality among the cattle and followed by a scarcity of labour owing to the number of agricultural labourers who died, was increasingly felt by the landowning classes,^ notably the monks, who were unable to get their lands cultivated, whose houses and buildings collapsed through want of habitation, and who were obliged to submit to a large reduction in the rents of their tenants.*
Among the local clergy the loss in their ranks operated much in the same way as in those of the labourers. ' So great,' says Knighton, ' was the scarcity of priests that many churches were desolate, being without divine offices. Hardly could a chaplain be got under £10 or 10 marks to minister in any church, and where before a chaplain could be had for 4 or 5 marks, or 2 marks with board, so numerous were priests before the pestilence, now scarce any would accept a vicarage of £20 or 20 marks. But in a short time there came crowding into orders a multitude of those whose wives had died in the plague, of whom many were illiterate, only able to read after a fashion, and not able to understand what they read.' ^ As Parliament sought by arbitrary acts to put down the demands of the labourers, the archbishops,
' Knighton, Leic. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 6i.
' Mr. Massingberd in his article on the Black Death and the Lincolnshire clergy, from which these figures are taken, states that the institutions for the first half of that fatal year are evidence of a small number of deaths among the clergy {Line. Dioc. Mag. Sept. 1904, p. 137). The number of deaths recorded rises from fifteen m June to sixty in July, eighty-nine in August, and falls from sixty-one in September to twenty- nine in November and only thirteen in December. Ibid.
' The institution books at Lincoln show that in the plague year the dean, precentor, treasurer, three archdeacons, and fourteen prebendaries died, and probably the sub-dean. In the deanery of Corringham fourteen incumbents died, including three vicars of Redbourne, and two rectors of Southorpe. (Rev. C. Moor Hist. Notes on the Deanery of Corringham, p. 30.) The Papal Registers give permission to bishops to ordain married men in the emergency.
* Chron. de Parco Ludo. (Line. Rec. Soc.) pp. 38-9.
" Bp. Gynwell in 1352 petitioned the pope that the appropriation of three or four more benefices might be granted to him, the reason bemg given that his rents were greatly diminished on account of ' the epidemic in this realm and especially in this county.' Cal. of Papal Pet. i, 228.
° In the case of nunneries especially it is generally noticeable that great poverty is accompanied by a laxity of rule, the nuns being forced by circumstances to accept inmates of a lower standard.
' Leic. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 63.
38
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
not to be behindhand, gave orders to keep down the stipends of the clergy.* The people, whose distress at the bad times was much increased by the heavy taxation involved by the French wars, cried out against the greed of the clergy whom they accused of trying to evade all share in national taxation, but in spite of Archbishop Islip's denunciation of their ' insatiable rapacity * it should be remembered that the unfortunate clergy not only shared in the general loss of income by the diminution of their tithes, but were increasingly ground down under the never-ending demands of the papal curia,* and by the rampant abuse of provision and reservation still going on. From the registers of the bishops of Lincoln for the next hundred years we learn of a number of churches or moieties of churches being united on account of the fall in their endowments and the depopulation of country places which followed in the wake of the Great Pestilence.' The period which ensued was a forcing ground for the form of religious activity which marked the close of the fourteenth and heralded the opening of the fifteenth century.
The later years of Gynwell's rule were of little moment to the diocese. The bishop appears to have enjoyed no small share of the pope's favour, and was successful in obtaining from him an exemption from the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury* with whom his relations were not always of the pleasantest.' On Gynwell's death in 1362 the pope, in accordance with the usual practice, provided to the see John Bokyngham, dean of Lichfield, who at the time of his promotion held the archdeaconry of Northampton and the rectory of Olney (Bucks).
' Archbishop Islip in 1353 ordained that a priest's salary should not exceed 7 marb, while a stipendiary should be content with 5 (Wilkins, Concil. iii, 30). In 1362 the salary of a priest with cure of souls^ was fixed at 6 marks, without cure of souls at 5 (ibid, iii, 50). In 1398 Sudbury ordered that a chaplain's stipend should be limited to 7 marks or 3 marks with board, a priest's should not exceed 8 marks or 4. marks with board (ibid, iii, 135).
' Walsingham mentions that the archbishop's demand of a subsidy from the provincial clergy in 1 395 backed up by a papal bull met with great opposition, ' especially in Lincolnshire.' Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.),, ii. 208.
' During the rule of Bokyngham (1363-96) were united the two rectories of Bag Enderby (Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Bokyngham, fol. 299), the rectories ofWyham andCaeby (fol. 322), the church of West Wykeham with the church of Ludford(fol.446). Bishop Repyngdon authorized the union of the church of St. Albin Spridlington with the church of St. Hilary, and directed in 141 7 that the former church should be pulled down and the materials used for the repair of St. Hilary's (ibid. Memo, of Repyngdon, fols. 151, 171, 1781/.). In 1434 Bishop Gray allowed the parishioners of Bardney to pull down their parish church ' which is notoriously old and manifestly decayed ' and to build another on a fresh site which he directed the abbey of Bardney to give- (ibid. Memo, of Gray, fol. 166). In the same year the parish churches of All Saints and St. Martin's, Stamford, were united (ibid. fol. 172). During the rule of Alnwick the moieties of Fulletby church were united on account of poverty and lack of labourers, and the moieties of Theddlethorpe church devastated by inundations and pestilence, &c. ; the patron of the churches of Buslingthorpe and Firsby petitioned for their union on account of the poverty of their revenues, ' and as the world always gets worse and worse it is not likely tithes will increase' (ibid. Memo, of Alnwick, fols. 23, 53, 70). In 1450 the churches of Fordington and Ulceby were united and the churches of Hawerby and Beesby, the stones of Beesby church to be used in repairing the church of Hawerby (ibid. Memo., of Lumley, fols. 25, 26). Under Bishop Chadworth the moieties of Grayingham church were united owing to paucity of population, the churches of Hameringham and ' Dunsthorpe,' the revenues of the latter church not amounting to one-eighth of a chaplain's salary, and in Lincoln the church of St. Peter ad Fontem was united to the monk's cell of St. Mary Magdalene, near Lincoln,, on account of the falling of the church to the ground and there being no parishioners to build it up (ibid. Memo, of Chadworth, fols. 7, 78, 81). The bishop ordered an inquiry in 1467 into the poverty of the vicarages of Dorrington and Alford (ibid. fol. 85 d).
* Cal. of Papal Pet. i, 137, 210, 227; Cal. of Papal L. iii, 489.
' In the course of a dispute between the bishop and the university of Oxford the archbishop, Islip,, formerly canon of Lincoln, went so far as to lay the town of Banbury where the bishop was residing under an interdict.
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A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
The episcopate of the new bishop, as we are reminded by an early entry in his register,^ embraced a period rendered memorable by the rise of that great religious movement identified with the name of John WyclifF. Originating as an attack on the secularisation of the church and its departure from the primitive ideals of apostolic poverty, the movement gathered strength from the popular demand for reform that rose up at the end of the centuiy, and finally attacked the very basis itself of the Catholic sacrament of the altar. The policy of the bishops, and among them of Bokyngham, appears at first to have been to ignore as far as was possible the new views so rapidly gaining ground, but with the promotion of Courtney to Canter- bury in 1 38 1 this policy of inaction had to be dropped, for the primate addressed circular letters to his sujffiragans ordering them to take active measures to put down heresies.' In accordance with these instructions William de Swinderby, a noted and most violent upholder of Lollard opinions, who was attracting crowds to his preaching in the chapel of St. John, Leicester, was suspended and cited to appear before the bishop to answer for his views.* At first the preacher took no notice of the citation beyond moving from his former spot and setting up his pulpit between two mill- stones standing in the highway next the chapel. Here he called the people to him, and in defiance of the prohibition preached many times, saying that *he both could and would preach in the king's highway in spite of the bishop's teeth.' * In response, however, to a second citation Swinderby made his appearance before the bishop's commissioners at Lincoln,' where an examination of the opinions and beliefs professed by him proved ' that he had justly merited to become food idv fire.' His life, however, was spared at the intercession of the duke of Lancaster, who happened to be present at that time at Lincoln, and who induced the bishop to accept a formal recantation as a sufficient penalty. To Stephen de Syreham, vicar of Barrow, seques- trator of the bishop, was committed the duty of seeing the sentence which condemned the Lollard to make public abjuration of all his errors in eight churches ° of the diocese carried out.'' With his recantation in 1382 Swinderby's connexion with this diocese ends ; whether he adhered to the terms of his sentence it is impossible to say,* but his influence in Leicester from this time died away, and according to Knighton he fled away by night to Coventry, where within a short time he was held in even greater honour by the disafi^ected, and proved as great a pest to the bishop and clergy as he had done at Leicester ; finally he was driven away elsewhere.' His prose-
' Leave to absent himself for a year for the purposes of study was granted to John Wydiff in 1363 (Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Bokyngham, fols. 7, 56). The great reformer held at that time the rectory of Fillingham in Lincolnshire.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Bokyngham, fol. 237. An earlier entry in the bishop's register ordered the denunciation of ' John Balle ' to be read in all the churches. This firebrand of the age is described as ' a certain man of malign and furibund mind, wandering about in divers places leading a lugubrious and dissolute life, assuming without authority the office of preaching, promulgating heresies and schisms, seducing simple minds and sowing strife and discord.' Ibid. fol. 93.
' Ibid. fol. 240. * Knighton, Leic. Chnn. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192.
' The bishop deputed three friars to examine him — a minor, a preacher and an Austin friar.
* Beginning with the cathedral of Lincoln and going on to seven churches in the county of Leicester.
' Knighton, Leic. Chnn. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 193-7.
' In addition to renouncing all former errors the preacher was required to promise that he would never again preach within the diocese without first obtaining the consent of the diocesan. Ibid. 196
'Ibid. 198.
40
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
cution was the most active and determined step against the Lollards taken by Bokyngham.
It is curious to note that, in spite of the general prevalence of Lollardy throughout the diocese, that John WyclifF had been beneficed in this county and held the rectory of Lutterw^orth in Leicestershire at the time of his death,^ that John of Gaunt the great political supporter of the new^ ideas was close at hand, and that Oxford was at this time seething with the new learning, in this county itself we find and continue to find a remarkable absence of anything like notorious cases of Lollardy ; no names are conspicuous in Lincolnshire for their support of the movement, and the few cases of disaffection recorded are of comparatively small interest. In 1383, following the active suppression of heresy at Oxford and the trial of Swinderby,John Coryngham, vicar of Doddington, was ordered to abjure and do penance for his heretical opinions consisting mainly of a denial of the Real Presence and of the right of apostolic authority.' Nor can we attribute this rather singular immunity in the case of Lincolnshire to slackness on the part of Bokyngham and his successors, for in 1388 active measures were taken in Northampton to stamp out heresy, a county reported in the bishop's register to be much affected by Lollardy.* During the rule of the next bishop persecutions remained practically in abeyance, and in parts of the diocese other than Lincolnshire heresy gained enormous ground during the respite thus afforded.
The appointment of Henry Beaufort, a young man of not more than twenty-three years of age, furnishes a flagrant instance of the abuse of papal provision to benefices and sees in England. The pope did not even wait for the death of Bokyngham, but under the pretext that the bishop was too old and too feeble to undertake the charge of his diocese translated him to the see of Lichfield in 1397 in order to make way for the promotion of the son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, the trend of public affairs warning him that it would be well to reconcile the anti- clerical party in England headed by the great duke. The aged bishop, who had occupied the see for thirty-five years, disdained to accept another of less importance, and prepared to end his days among the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury, where death shortly afterwards came to him.* Of the short rule of Beaufort (1398 to 1404) little need be said, he was one of those secular bishops against whom a public protest was made at that time by the presentation of a bill in Parliament praying that bishops should be compelled to remain within their dioceses to carry out the duties of their office instead of spending their time at court.' In 1403, after the accession of his half-brother Henry IV, Beaufort was appointed chancellor, and his promotion the following year to Winchester severed his connexion with this diocese.
The connexion of Beaufort's successor with the history of the great religious movement in England, and especially at Oxford, goes as far back as
' A note in the Papal Registers (iv, 193) under date 26 December, 1372, states that WyclifF had lately been provided by the pope with a canonry of Lincoln with reservation of a prebend.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Bokyngham, fol. 270. ' Ibid. fol. 355.
* Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 228.
° Fori. R. (Rec. Com.), iii, 339, 407. This was the bill for which Thomas Haxey was made respon- sible and condemned to death as a traitor ; he claimed the benefit of clergy, and was afterwards pardoned. At the time the bill was presented, January 1396-7, Haxey held among other preferments the prebend of Scamblesby in Lincoln. Le Neve, Fasti Ecel. Angl. ii, 203.
2 41 6
A HISTORY OF LINCOLNSHIRE
the year 1382, when the name of Philip Repyngdon was associated with those of Nicholas Herford and John Ashton as leaders of the party whose support of the Wycliffite doctrines was convulsing the university.^ Having gone up to Oxford to take his degree, Repyngdon was appointed by the chancellor of the university, Robert Rugge, another favourer of Lollard opinion, to preach before the university at St. Frideswide's on Corpus Christi Day 1382." The interference of Archbishop Courtney, who at that time had resolved to stamp out these heretical opinions, was for the moment unsuccessful, and the sermon was preached. But the archbishop, stirred up by the friars, the champions of the ancient faith, determined that the matter should not end here. Rugge was summoned before convocation and being admonished to correct abuses at Oxford was in consequence obliged to suspend Repyngdon and Herford from preaching.' They appealed to the duke of Lancaster but were directed to submit themselves ta the archbishop. In the meantime a provincial council of which the bishop of Lincoln was a member assembled in May at the Black Friars, London, and condemned the twenty-four conclusions extracted from the works of WyclifF and banished the reformer from the university.* Repyngdon, Herford, and Ashton, refused to subscribe to the conclusions of the council, were remanded for further examination and finally condemned as heretics.^ Courtney remained inexorable and in November, yielding to the pressure put upon him, Repyngdon at a synod held at St. Frideswide's, Oxford, made a full and complete renunciation of his errors. ' Thus,' in the words of John Foxe, the martyrologist, ' the said Rampyngton was discharged who after- wards was made bishop of Lincoln and became at length the most bitter and extreme persecutor of this side of all the other bishops within the realm.' ® The year following his abjuration Repyngdon became abbot of Leicester, and in 1397 was made chancellor of the university; on the recommendation, probably, of Henry IV, to whom he had acted as chaplain and confessor,^ he was provided to the see of Lincoln on the promotion of Beaufort to Winchester in 1404.^
In spite of the increase of LoUardy, which continued to spread in defiance of the means taken to check its growth,' the account of religious persecution in the fifteenth century establishes the fact that serious disaffection was con- fined mostly to the south of the diocese, and more particularly to the valley of the Thames.^" In 141 9 an entry in Repyngdon's register records that two
' The future bishop's first acquaintance with the new views was gained at the time he was an inmate of the abbey of St. Maiy de Pratis near Leicester.
' Fasciculi Zizan. (Rolls Ser.), 297-9. In the above account the preacher is said to have excited the people to rebellion and to the spoliation of churches.
'Ibid. 304, 310. Mbid. 272-86. » Ibid. 289, 290.
* Foxe, Acts and Mon. iii, 46. Repeated reference is made to Repyngdon's persecution of his former co-religionists by William Thorpe in his trial before Arundel in 1407, while the adjuration to follow the example ' of how great clerks the bishop of Lincoln, Herford and Purvey ' show how prized was the conversion of the quondam Wycliffite by the orthodox party in the church. Ibid. pp. 257-8, 279.
' Wood, Fasti, p. 35.
^ The temporalities of the see were restored the following March, 1405. Rymer, Foed. viii, 392.
' In January, 141 3, the archdeacons of the Lincoln diocese were ordered, in accordance with provisions lately framed in convocation, to inquire into cases of heresy or suspicion, and in the following month the dean and canons were cited to appear before the bishop on suspicion of heresy. Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Repyngdon, fols. 83, 85.
'" Buckinghamshire furnishing more cases of obstinate heresy than any other part of the diocese F C H Sari/. 'Eccl. Hist.' 1,291. / / f .^. .
42
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Alexander (1123-114S)
Hugh of Grenoble (i 186-1200)
Philip Repyngdon (1405-1419)
William ue Lessington or Lexington Dean of Lincoln (1263-1272)
Lincoln Chapter (end of I2th Century) Lincoln Chapter (14TH Century)
Seals of the Bishops and the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
priests were ordered to do penance in the cathedral of Lincoln for aiding and communicating with Sir John Bonde, a pretended chaplain accused of being a heretic and Lollard.^ A commission was appointed during the same rule to examine the books of John Baggeworth, vicar of Wilsford, upon suspicion of heresy, such books as were found heretical — and the presence of books in English at that time was regarded as full of menace — to be proclaimed in the church on a Sunday or feast day and then publicly burnt, and the vicar to be committed to prison pending judgment, ' lest he should infect the flock.' ^ The prosecution of William Smith, chaplain of Corby, for heretical error, practically closes the list of cases in this county.* In another form, however, of ' heretical error,' Lincolnshire was not lacking, and the numerous instances recorded of witchcraft and necromancy indicate that clergy and people were deeply sunk in superstition. In 1378 William de Langton, clerk, confessed to having resorted to the use of magic art, and was condemned to do public penance in the market place of Lincoln.* In January, 1406, Henry IV, referring to the current report of their prevalence in the diocese of Lincoln, ordered the bishop to examine and cause all magicians, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers, &c., to be arrested and imprisoned.' Yet another instance in 1442 records that Thomas Poldyck or Holdyck of Sutton in Holland, having abjured his former crimes of magic and witchcraft, relapsed and in process of being taken before the bishop was rescued by certain persons unknown, whose excommunication was next ordered to be read in the church of Boston." But while beneath the main stream ran this undercurrent of heretical sympathy, latent if not actively expressed, we may still note the movement of church life and aspiration. The devotion of the pious continued to find an outlet in the endowment of chantry chapels, and in 14 19 Bishop Repyngdon issued a mandate to the archdeacon of Lincoln and rural dean of Christianity, for the restoration of the ancient procession from the church of Wigford in the suburbs to the cathedral or mother church of Lincoln on certain feasts, lamenting the carelessness and torpor which allowed such sacred customs to fall into disuse.''
Richard Flemyng, appointed to the see on Repyngdon's resignation in 141 9,* was consecrated at Florence, 28 April, 1420.' Like his predecessor, his early opinions are hardly recognizable in the official acts of his later life ;'^° attending the council of Siena in 1423 as the English representative, he won the approval of the pope by professing his ardent intention of stamping out heresy, and certainly the not-to-be-forgotten act of his life was his execution of the earlier order of the Council of Constance for the exhumation of John WyclifFs bones, which he caused to be dug up, burnt, and thrown into the
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Repyngdon, fol. 117.
' Ibid. fols. 137, 142. ' Ibid. fol. 162 J.
* Ibid. Memo, of Bokyngham, fol. 159. ' Rymer, Foeti. viii, 427.
* Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Alnwick, fols. 41, 761/. ' Wilkins, Condi, iii, 396.
' The reasons for Repyngdon's resignation are extremely vague, and depend mainly on inference. In 1408 he was made a cardinal by Gregory XII in return for the bishop's support of his pontificate. The creation with others was cancelled by the Council of Pisa which deposed Gregory the following year. It is probable that the difficulties of holding a cardinalate and an English bishopric together led Repyngdon to resign his see.
' Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. Angl. 86.
'" He distinguished himself at Oxford, where he held the office of proctor of the university, by his support of Lollard opinions, and was the subject of extremely scornful comment in a mandate of Brundel to the chancellor of the university, ordering members not to be led into defending these ' said damnable conclusions.' Wilkins, Concil. iii, 327.
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River Swift.^ Another of the bishop's acts designed with the object of checking the growth of heresy was the foundation of Lincoln College, Oxford, which he did not live to see completed.' Flemyng's zeal was probably felt by Martin V to call for some special mark of favour ; unfortunately, the device adopted had the effect of nearly terminating the bishop's career. The archbishopric of York falling vacant on the bishop's return from the council of 1423, the pope wrote to the dean and chapter refusing to admit their previous election of Morgan of Worcester, and signifying his ' provision ' of the bishop of Lincoln to the vacant see. The ministers of Henry VI, who had already signified the royal assent to Morgan's election, were highly incensed by the pope's action, and threatened Flemyng with the penalties of the Statute of Praemunire should he dare to accept of the appointment. The bishop found himself in a very awkward position ; on the one hand was the government, on the other the pope, both sides refusing to give way and insisting on his compliance with conflicting orders ; in the end, by a rather discreditable shuffle, he was allowed to remain at Lincoln by the farce of a re-translation from York by the pope.*
The religious houses of the diocese were diligently visited both by Flemyng and his successors Gray and Alnwick. The general nature of the injunctions issued to religious houses relating to food, dress, divine offices, prohibitions against keeping hunting dogs, &c., indicate that in many cases the inmates were fast losing the spiritual side of their profession. In 1436 Alnwick published a mandate for a general visitation owing to a report of a wrongful application of their revenues,* and the prior of Torksey was suspended from his rule on account of his bad and neglectful management ^ in the course of the inquiries subsequently instituted. The quarrels of the dean and chapter of Lincoln, which had lasted throughout the rules of Flemyng and Gray, were settled by the ruling of Bishop Alnwick, and confirmed by Parliament in 1439,° but even after the publication of the bishop's laudum the dean, whose aim appears to have been to secure complete ascendency and the first place in the cathedral church even when the bishop was present,^ was not satisfied, and declined to be bound by the new book of statutes drawn up with the express object of avoiding all future causes of dissension. A prolonged contest, in which Dean Mackworth was suspended and finally excommunicated, ensued, in the midst of which the bishop died.'
The rule of William Gray, who followed Flemyng in 1 43 i ,* was too short to be productive of much result. It is interesting to note that he was translated from London to Lincoln, the largeness of the revenue at that time accruing to the bishopric of Lincoln doubtless compensating for any loss of dignity incurred by resigning the see of the capital. In Bekynton's Cor- respondence there is a letter of Eugenius IV to Gray reproaching him for having filled up the archdeaconry of Northampton, an appointment claimed by the pope on the ground that it had previously been held by a cardinal ; the bishop, however, decHned to give way, and stuck to his appointment of
' Fuller, Church Hist. (ed. Brewer), ii, 424.
' Godwin, De Praesulibus (1743), i, 297. a Ibid.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Alnwick, fol. 32. ° Ibid fol to
« Ibid. fols. 8-20 ; Pari. R. (Rec. Com.), iii. 10.
' T. Gascoigne, Loci e libro veritatum (Rogers), 153.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Alnwick, fols. 50, ^dd. 70. ' Rymer, Toed, x, 495.
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his relative, another William Gray, afterwards bishop of Ely.^ The action of the pope in 1 440 shows the state of degradation to which the papacy and the church had sunk at this period. According to Thomas Gascoigne —
In that year Eugenius IV published mighty indulgences throughout Christendom and the collector of the pope in England who received the money for the letters of indulgence granted was Master Peter de Monte, a proud Lombard, who on leaving England with enormous sums collected by the sale of the Papal indulgences swore by the Body of Christ in the presence of Master Vincent Clement that Pope Eugenius should never have the money that had been collected unless he should first send him bulls appointing him archbishop of Milan ... In England some bought letters of indulgence and of the power to absolve in all cases for two-pence, and some for a pot of ale and some for a foul act of sin ; and some had baskets full of letters of indulgence to be sold throughout the country to those who would buy and the names of those who bought were caused to be inscribed on the letters granted and some said ' Now is Rome come to our door.' And some cared not about doing evil, thinking they could easily obtain pardon and grace by the pope's concession, and Alfonso king of Arragon said to the pope ' Now is the Church of Rome become a real wanton for she sells herself to whosoever asks for money.' ^
Bishop Alnwick, translated to Lincoln in succession to Gray in 1436, presents a very favourable example of a fifteenth-century bishop. He owed his preferments to court favour, and while occupying the see of Norwich, to which he had been ' provided ' in 1426, was appointed confessor to Henry VI; his influence with the young king was probably greatly responsible for that important work of Henry VI, the foundation of the king's college at Eton within the diocese of Lincoln in 1440.' In the midst of the chorus of complaints against the bishops for their supineness and attention to merely secular matters,* it is pleasant to find instances in the bishop's register of his care for the spiritual needs of his flock. In May, 1444, he ordered the abbot of Wellow, near Grimsby, to withdraw a canon of that house from the cure of the parish church of Clee, and to replace him by a suitable secular priest, ' there being great danger to souls in the wandering of religious men from their cloisters.' ° Another entry records that Sir William Tyrwhitt, patron of the church of Buslingthorpe, was ordered to make another pre- sentation as John Bakhous last presented by him ' proves on examination to be so intolerable.' ' The episcopal registers of this period contain frequent entries recording the alteration of the dedication day of parish churches. An order was issued in 15 19 for the dedication festival of all churches occurring in harvest time to be celebrated on 3 October.^
The connexion of Marmaduke Lumley, successively bishop of Carlisle and Lincoln, with this diocese was little more than formal. Letters preserved in the ' Bekynton Correspondence ' give an account of Henry VI's endeavour to get Lumley, then bishop of Carlisle, translated to the see of London in 1448. The attempt was unsuccessful, but the pope promised to promote the king's nominee on the next possible occasion,* which occurred on the death
' Corresp. of Bekynton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 251.
' Loci e libro veritatum (Rogers), 124. " Corresp. of Bekynton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 270-93.
* In 1447 Bishop Pecocke of Chichester preached his famous sermon at St. Paul's Cross, defending the practice of bishops in not preaching and in engaging themselves away from their dioceses, the result of which was to draw on himself the attacks of both parties in the Church, the orthodox and those agitating for reform. Repressor of over much blaming of the Clergy (Rolls Ser.), ii, 615.
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Alnwick, fol, 44 d.
^ Ibid. fol. 44. ' Ibid. Memo, of Atwater, fol. 67.
' The pope very properly pointed out that he must abide by the king's first recommendation of Thomas Kemp. Corresp. of Bekynton (Rolls Ser.) i, 156-9.
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of Alnwick in December, 1449. The new bishop had scant opportunity to enjoy his new appointment ; he died at London, in the year of his trans- lation and was not even buried in the cathedral to which he was still a stranger.^
John Chadworth, consecrated in 1452,' occupied a position midway between the political bishops who preceded and followed him. His rule embraced the troublous period of the Wars of the Roses, but, whether actuated by motives of prudence or that he had too much on his hands already in exterminating heresy, he withdrew as far as possible from taking part in politics, and there is little to indicate in which direction his sympathies lay. He was elected by the chapter on the recommendation of Henry VI, and the king wrote to the pope to secure his confirmation. As a matter of fact the pope had already provided to the see in the person of that William Gray previously mentioned as archdeacon of Northampton, but he acquiesced in the present arrangement, and the chapter of Lincoln on this occasion regained that right of free election of which they had been deprived for a period of 150 years. As Chadworth was deputed in the absence of the chancellor, George, archbishop of York, to declare the cause of the opening of Parliament 3 June, 1467,' he must have been successful in winning the confidence of the Yorkist party. In the relentless persecution of Lollards and heretics which marks this rule, and which was so fiercely carried out in other counties belonging to this diocese, notably in Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire again fails to present any case of note ; whatever leaven of sympathy with heterodox opinion may have existed, and probably did exist, it did not rise above the surface of ordinary life and practice.* A mandate addressed to the bishop in 1 547, the same year which saw the trial and condemnation of Pecocke for heresy,' ordered all heretical books within the diocese to be burnt, special mention being made of the English translation of the Scriptures, and of the works of the bishop of Chichester.*
The important offices of state held by the two ecclesiastics who in turn occupied the see, left them but scant leisure to look personally after the diocese. Thomas Rotherham (1472—80) was made keeper of the Privy Seal in 1467,^ bishop of Rochester the year following, and translated to Lincoln in 1472 on the death of Chadworth. In 1474 he was raised to the chancel- lorship, and in 1480, on the king's recommendation, translated by Sixtus IV to the primacy of York.' John Russell, who succeeded Rotherham as keeper of the Privy Seal in 1 474,* was translated from Rochester to Lincoln on the trans- ference of Rotherham to York ; he served under Richard III and Henry VH,^" but appears to have fallen under suspicion shortly before the defeat of Richard III, as he was deprived of the seal in July 1485." The bishop was employed by Henry VII in various embassies,'^ and his diocese saw little of
' Godwin, De Praesulibus (1743), i, 298. ' Rymer, Foed. xi, 309.
' Pari. R. (Rec. Com.), v, 571.
* Chadworth's register (fol. 47) records one small exception. John Potter of Asgarby in 1458 purged himself of offence for absenting himself from divine service and for refusing to take holy water. ' The bishop of Lincoln was one of the prelates appointed to try Pecocke.
^ Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Chadworth, fol. 34. ' Pat. 7 Edw. IV.
» Pat. 10 Edw. IV, pt. i, m. 3. ' Rymer, Foed. xi, 491.
'" He also assisted at the funeral of Edward IV in 1483, and ' sensyd the corps' as it was carried for burial from Westminster to Windsor. Letters, etc. of Ric. Ill and Hen. VII (Rolls Ser.), i, 5, 7, 9.
" Rymer, Foed. xii, i6o. " Letters, etc. of Ric. Ill and Hen. VII (Rolls Ser.), i, 509-16.
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him. In 1481 he spent a week at Crowland Abbey while engaged in settling the appropriation of the church of Brinkhurst or Eton to the abbey of Peterborough.^ His death occurred 30 December, 1494.
William Smith, translated to Lincoln in January, 1496, is generally remembered as the founder of Brasenose College, Oxford.* Previous to his translation from Lichfield he held a position on the Council of Wales, and in 1 50 1 became president of Wales, an office which lasted till his death, and involved, at least during the lifetime of Prince Arthur, constant attendance at Ludlow.' The bishop managed, however, with keen secular occupations to combine a certain amount of active diocesan administration, and sundry matters in the diocese requiring reform received attention at his hands. The visitation of the cathedral in 1506 and consequent injunctions brought to light a very melancholy state of affairs. The papal licences exhibited by the dean, enabling him to hold a deanery at the age of sixteen and to be ordained priest before the age of twenty-three, show how rampant had become the abuses of papal privilege, while with regard to the fabric of the cathedral, com- plaints were made that the servants of the dean and resident canons were in the pleasing habit of making the roof and windows a target for their arrows, and it was in so ruinous a condition that the bishop authorized an appeal for public contributions.* Like his predecessor Bishop Smith felt the necessity of stamping out heresy and error, which was much on the increase in the southern district of his diocese. A rather contradictory impression is con- veyed as to his methods of ' persuasion,' one account charging him with the cruel treatment of one Thomas Chase of Amersham, who after confinement in the bishop's prison of Little Ease was ' cruelly strangled and pressed to death,' while another account allows
this William Smith, although he was somewhat eager and sharp against the poor simple flock of Christ's servants, under whom some were burned, many abjured, a great number molested . . . yet divers he sent quietly home without punishment or penance, bidding them go home and live as good Christian men should do. And many who were enjoined penance before, he did release.^
The bishop besides engaging in various public schemes for good, foremost among which was the foundation of Brasenose College, showed remarkable kindness to the members of his family ; his readiness to promote his nephews and other kinsmen drew from his biographer Churton the remark that Lincoln cathedral was 'peopled with persons of the name of William Smith.' «
The short occupancy of the see of Lincoln by the famous Wolsey, on the death of Smith early in 1 5 1 4, was a mere incident in a career that at that time seemed destined to carry all before it. The deanery of Lincoln, which the great pluralist had held since February, 1508-9, was equally a
' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Russell, fol. 24 d.
' In an earlier capacity as keeper of the hanaper in the chancery Smith is mentioned as responsible for sums for the custody of two daughters of Edward IV. Clerical preferment followed this lucrative position, and in 1487 he was presented as king's chaplain to the living of Great Grimsby. Pat. 2 Hen. VII, pt. ii, m. 8.
' The February following his translation the bishop appointed James Whytstons to act as vicar- general during his absence from the diocese with the prince. Hutton, Ext. from Line. Reg. Add. MS. 6953, fol. 31.
* Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Smith. ' Foxe, Acts and Mm. iv, 1 24, 2 1 9.
' Churton, Lives of Smith and Sutton. Three nephews of that name were archdeacons of Lincoln, Northampton, and Stow. Le Neve, Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii.
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drop in the ocean of his other preferments.^ He was provided to the see by Leo VI,* and consecrated 26 March, 15 14, but resigned in the autumn for the archbishopric of York, which the death of Cardinal Bainbridge in July of that year had vacated.
If, however, the connexion of this famous man with Lincoln was little more than formal, his influence was largely responsible for the appointment of two of his successors : William Atwater and John Longlands, con- temporaries of Wolsey at Magdalen, Oxford, owed their rapid promotion in the church to the friendship formed with him at the university. Atwater, who succeeded on the translation of Wolsey, could vie indeed with the cardinal in the number of his preferments.' He had previously held the chancellorship of Lincoln, but resigned it two years before his appointment to the bishopric.
The chief event of Atwater's rule was the visitation of the monasteries in his diocese, which began in April, 151 8, and was not finished till the end of July. The condition of affairs disclosed was not on the whole very satis- factory. Besides frequent instances of bad management, failure to keep accounts, neglect of divine service, the reception of secular persons within the cloister, a few cases of even a worse nature are noted. The injunctions issued in the next rule by Bishop Longlands to many of the religious houses show no amelioration in their state. Writing to the dean of Lincoln for the visitation of the cathedral, he urges him ' to take order among your prebendaries for the building and maintenance of their churches and correc- tions there to be done,' adding ' that if ye will not I must and will supply the duty.' ' I assure you now there is more misliving committed within the jurisdiction of my prebends than in much part of my diocese besides.' Referring to the decrease in the number of residentiaries in the cathedral the bishop insists that the four dignitaries of ' my church ' ought to have residence there, and in place of the treasurer ' who hath of long season been absent from the church ' appoints Mr. Richard Parker.* The injunctions issued in 1531 to the prioress and nuns of Nun Cotham are a lamentable revelation of the depth of degradation to which a community could fall.
Of the character of John Longlands who succeeded to Atwater, it is difficult to speak with precision. He occupied a position midway between the old and the new ; zealous in the persecution of heresy and of all those whose views were being permeated by the works of Luther and other German reformers,^ he seems to have had no scruple in lending himself to the drastic changes initiated by Henry VHI, including the royal supremacy and the destruction and spoliation of the monasteries. Earlier still he lent himself to the schemes of Wolsey for the furtherance of
1 At the time of his promotion to Lincoln, Wolsey held among other preferments the deanery of York the deanery of Hereford, and the precentorship of St. Paul's.
^ L. and P. Hen. VIII, i, 4722-3.
' He is said to have held as many as twelve preferments.
'' Line. Epis. Reg. Memo, of Longlands.
' See Longlands' letters to Wolsey expressive of a desire to take strong measures against the'i'r spread at Oxford (i. and P. Hen. VIII, iv, 993). In the absence of any register containing an account of the persecutions in his diocese during his rule, we must accept Foxe's description of him as ' bloody and cruel ' in hie persecutions {Jets and Mon.'vr, 219). In the first year of his rule the king issued a royal mandate ordering all mayors and other oificials to assist the bishop of Lincoln in executing justice upon heretics • of whom there are no small number in his diocese' {L. and P. Hen. VIII, iii, pt. ii, 1592). The bishop was frequently employed in trying cases that occurred in the London diocese.
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
his college, and his attempts to get money out of the abbot of Peterborough and the prior of Spalding ^ can only be described as barefaced blackmail.
As Henry VIII's confessor and spiritual director, an office which Lon glands held for upwards of twenty years, the bishop has often been charged