CHAP. VI. THEOBALD. Theobald, third Archbishop from Abbey of Bec.-Became Subprior, Prior, and Abbot of Bec. - Party Spirit in the Church of Normandy.-Archbishop of Rouen opposed to Theobald.-Reconciliation of the Abbot and Archbishop effected by Peter of Clugni. Theobald invited to England by Stephen and his Queen.— Power of Barons. Weakness of King. - Mushroom Earls. Miserable Condition of the Country.- Anarchy in Church.-Two Popes in Rome. - Stephen chooses Innocent.-Henry of Blois.— Legate Alberic. — Papal Aggression.—Synod of Westminster.—Manœuvres of King and Queen.-Theobald elected Primate.-Henry of Blois Pope's Legate.-I. Archbishop's Household. His Court the Resort of the Learned.-John of Salisbury.-Thomas Becket. Description of Becket. Study of Civil Law introduced.-Legal Profession introduced. - Prosecution of the Bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and Lincoln. King summoned by Henry of Blois to a Council. Stephen represented by Aubrey de Vere. - Archbishop of Rouen King's Counsel. Vacarius introduces Study of Civil Law at Oxford. Silenced by Stephen.-Study of Law fully established.-Theobald sends Becket to Italy to study Canon Law. — The Decretum.—The forged Decretals.-II. Theobald's ecclesiastical Government.Pope claims Sovereignty over the whole Church. — Rapid Succession of Popes.-Theobald obtains Legatine Commission. -Papal Policy with regard to Legates. - Attempt to convert Winchester into a Metropolitan See. Same Attempt with respect to St. David's. Both Attempts fail.- Council of Rheims.-Theobald attends in Defence of the King. — William of York. - Theobald * Authorities-Gervas; Vita Theobaldi, Arch. Quinti Abbatis Becc.; Chron. Bec.; Henry of Huntingdon; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novellæ; William of Newburgh; John of Hexham. VI. Theobald. 11391161. exiled. Albigenses, Waldenses, Publicans.-First Persecution.III. Theobald's political Conduct.-Loyal to Stephen, but resolute to obtain Succession to the Crown for Henry Fitz-Empress. Siege of Winchester.- Contemporary Account.-Theobald refuses to crown Eustace.-Head of the Angevin Party. - Crowns Henry II. and Queen. Recommends Becket as King's Chancellor.-Dissatisfied with Becket's Conduct. — Letters in his last Illness to the King and to Becket. - Consecration of Bishop of Lichfield in Primate's private Chapel. — Theobald's last Will.—His Death. He was The year CHAP. THEOBALD was the third archbishop supplied to the Church of England by the celebrated Abbey of Bec. born in Normandy of a respectable family.* of his birth is not known, nor can we assign the exact date of the commencement of his claustral life. He arrived at Bec in the time of Abbot William, and therefore at some period between 1093 and 1124. He was appointed prior in 1127; and ten years afterwards he was elected abbot, being the successor of Boso, whose name has already occurred. The Norman Church was in a very divided state, and controversies were frequent and bitter. A controversy arose between the new abbot and the Archbishop of Rouen. The archbishop impugned the election because it had taken place without his previous knowledge. Through the intervention of the venerable Audoen, Bishop of Evreux, the Archbishop of Rouen at length confirmed the election. Then a new controversy arose for fourteen months the archbishop deferred giving the bene "Ortu Normannus et circa Tierrici villam."-Vit. S. Thoma Fitz-Steph. Opp. Becket, i. 185. From this place the family originally came, to which circumstance we may probably trace the patronage which the archbishop extended to Thomas à Becket whilst a young man. Crispinus speaks of Theobald as vir genere clarus." Robert de Monte, ad ann. 1136, mentions him as a noble excellent person. He had a brother Walter, whom he made Archdeacon of Canterbury, and afterwards bishop of Rochester. diction to the abbot elect, because he demanded a profession of obedience, which, on the ground of the demand being unprecedented, Theobald refused to make. This controversy was connected with the struggle, which had now commenced on the part of the abbots, to render their monasteries independent of the bishops. It was at length settled by the intervention of Peter, the celebrated Abbot of Clugni, who persuaded Theobald to make a verbal profession, and the archbishop not to require a written one.* In the year 1138, Theobald was invited to England, by King Stephen and his Queen Matilda. England was, at this period and during the whole reign of Stephen, reduced to a state of anarchy, as nearly as is possible in a kingdom which has not absolutely relapsed into barbarism. The number of castles gradually erected, during this reign, amounted to eleven hundred and fifteen. In each castle the baron reigned as a sovereign. He coined his own money; he dictated laws to his dependents; he had the power of life and death; he carried on war with his neighbours. With very few exceptions, the eleven hundred and fifteen petty kings were tyrants. Stephen was only a baron on a larger scale. He possessed, on his coming to the throne, considerable sums of ready money, hoarded by his wise predecessor. While the money lasted, he was able to maintain something like order, by the importation and employment of mercenary soldiers. But these funds were at length exhausted. To obtain the semblance of a court, and to present a more imposing front to the rebellious or disorderly barons, Stephen created Chron. Bec. Vita Theob., in Appendix to Lanfranc, ed. Migne, p. 733. † Mat. Paris, ad ann. 1153. CHAP. VI. Theobald. 1139 1161. CHAP. VI. Theobald. 1139. 1161. earls.* Until this time, although there had been earls in England, the title designated a functionary. Each earl or count had charge of a county, from which he derived his emoluments. These mushroom earls of Stephen's creation were merely titular; but their appointments were lucrative to themselves, and oppressive to the people. They were invested with their dignity by the girding on of a sword, called the sword of the particular county from which they derived their title; and although they had no jurisdiction in it, yet they received the grant of a third penny of the pleas of the county. This doubtless made the appointment unpopular, and occasioned their suppression in the next reign. They paid high for their rank, but the fund so raised was only a temporary relief; and, when the treasury was exhausted, the mercenaries, clamouring for pay, only added to the accumulation of misery under which the country groaned. The soldiers of the lawless barons plundered the wretched inhabitants of the districts near the castles. The country vavasours, if they were reputed men of wealth, were seized and tortured, until exorbitant ransoms were paid for their liberation. The royal troops, instead of affording them protection, were seeking remuneration for services, which they did not render, by depopulating remoter villages, where they perpetrated every species of barbarity. The land was sterile, where, in the late reign, the harvest was abundant; famines were frequent, and the unfortunate people learned to look upon starvation as, by no means, the worst kind of death to which they were exposed.‡ * William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. lib. i. ad ann. 1138. Sir Harris Nicolas, Historical Peerage, p. 50. They probably paid high, for according to Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, when Hugh de Puisac, Bishop of Durham, purchased the earldom for his see from Richard I., he paid the King 11,000l.; but this was an earldom possessed of palatine authority. William of Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. ad ann. 1140. CHAP. VI. Theobald. 1161. The anarchy extended to the Church. Among these depredators, ready for any violence--to commit murder, or worse atrocities were to be seen many of the clergy, 1139 though, as an old writer says, they were clerks only in name.* Through the mistaken policy of the Conqueror, which had separated the ecclesiastical from the civil jurisdiction, these flagitious clerks were not amenable to the secular courts; and the bishops were too busily employed in self-defence, and in military occupations, to attend to the discipline of the Church, or to render the Church censures more than a brutum fulmen. Christianity must have ceased to exist, if it had not been for the monasteries. It is to be remarked that, if, in the reign of Stephen, the castles were numerous, there were, in this reign, more religious houses erected than at any preceding time. Thither the miserable could fly for comfort, the timid for protection, and the learned for leisure. The larger cities also maintained their independence; and, as we shall presently have occasion to show, the commercial aristocracy of England held already as important a position in the country, as that which it now occupies. One ecclesiastic rises above the rest. Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, a grandson of the Conqueror, was brother to Stephen. The founder of the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, was a man of much munificence and of many virtues. But in the early part of his career, his virtues were obscured by his inordinate ambition. He comes before us chiefly as a politician and a soldier. We have already alluded to the sovereign power exercised by the lords of the greater castles; and the episcopal palaces of the see of Winchester at Farnham, Taunton, Merton, Waltham and Downton, were fortified into castles by Henry * Grim, 34; William of Newburgh, ii. 16. |