by Harold and the other nobles as the heir to his throne, laid open the kingdom to adventurers from every coast. The difficulties that awaited it demanded a vigour both of body and mind that was not to be looked for in the young Ethling. The Saxon Chronicle asserts, that even the Confessor himself had settled the crown upon Harold; and never was selection, with whomsoever it rested, better justified by the personal character of the man. Even the jealousy of those who might have been fair competitors with him for the elevation gave way to the paramount call of the country, and the sense of his pre-eminent abilities to maintain its cause. Least of all were any petty jealousies likely to divide the Anglo-Saxon Clergy. The preparations in Normandy had assumed the character of a crusade *. The banner of the Pope floated in the midst of the host. William, whose zeal in the cause of the corporal presence has been already noticed, avowedly sought " tantum ditionem suam et gloriam augere, quantum ritus Christianos partibus in illis corrigere." Those who had no inclination to receive their faith from the dictation of the Norman flocked to the side of Harold, and among them not a few of those who fell at Hastings were ecclesiastics.

non

The Primate appears to have been in London when the Conqueror, leaving his main army intrenched at Pevensey, made an excursion along the coast, acquired possession of Dover, into which he threw a garrison, and received the submission of the affrighted citizens of Canterbury. Upon no people, indeed, had the slaughter at Hastings fallen more heavily than upon the men of Kent. Harold, who had left a victorious army in the North, had depended almost entirely upon the hasty levies of the adjoining counties, for the little band with which he rushed into battle with the invader. All who were capable of bearing arms in Kent were in that fatal field. Syred was left among its dead; and its survivors were without a leader. William, however, seems to have been disappointed in the expectation of the people flocking to his standard; and returning to Hastings, awaited a reinforcement from Normandy before he advanced into the heart of the country.

It is remarkable that the Saxon Chronicle ascribes the election of the child Edgar to the throne of his ancestors to Aldred, Archbishop of York, and the Corporation of London. Stigand† seems to have felt that the crisis demanded manhood, and not to have participated in these ill-advised counsels. The Earls Edwin and Morcar proffered their aid; but it came tardily in, for they had challenged the perilous eminence for themselves, and were not atoned, as in the election of Harold, by a sense of the wisdom of the choice. No combined operations seem to have been concerted: and when William, after a circuitous march by Winchester, where the royal treasury fell into his hands, crossed the Thames at Wallingford and advanced to Berkhampstead, the only obstruction he encountered was from the judicious measures of the Abbot of St. Alban's, who felled the woods across his route. The Churchman remarked, with truth, that, "had others done their duty as well, the Conqueror would never have advanced so far." At that point, however, he was met by Aldred and the young King, by the citizens and the Earls, who "submitted for need, when the most harm was done." The plunder and violence of the army, however, kept alive the intimidation; and he was crowned at Westminster by Aldred, and by Geoffroy, Bishop of Coutances, who had accompanied him, with so little show of free election, that the flames which his troops had kindled were raging round the church during the hurried consecration, and only a few Priests remained to witness it. "Stigandus viro tam cruento et alieni juris invasori, manus imponere recusavit." (Chron. T. Wikes.) The Primate was not a man to despair of the liberties of his country, and to be borne along by the majority to the feet of the NorWhen outnumbered in the council, he withdrew to his diocese. He found the spirit of resistance already revived by the tyranny of the garrison of Dover; and when the Conqueror advanced into Kent, from London, in the confidence which his recent success had excited, the force of the county was rallied under the command of Stigand, and of Egelsin, Abbot of St. Augustine's, and prepared, at any rate, to treat with arms in their hands. They took post in the woody defiles on his route, and had the good fortune to get William himself into their power; a transient success which they improved, by extorting from him the confirmation of their ancient usages as the condition of their allegiance.

man.

It is not easy to comprehend upon what principle the authority for this relation is impeached. That it is derived solely from the provincial Chronicle of Spot, is an extraordinary objection on the part of its impugners, of whom Somner, who stands at their head, laments the disappearance of the works of that chronicler, saying, he should perchance have brought his Antiquities of Canterbury to more perfection, could he have recovered a copy of them. There are, indeed, few circumstances in the history of the period so well authenticated*, viz. by the faint traces which remain to this day in the customs of Kent: and it is remarkable that the subsequent attempt of the citizens of Exeter to retain their ancient laws, when they transferred their allegiance, was steadily resisted by the Conqueror. "Non est mihi moris ad hanc conditionem habere subjectos," was the language of the Norman; but his person was not then in their power.

To the intrepidity, which the Primate had thus manifested, is also to be ascribed the precaution of the Conqueror in requiring him to accompany him when he revisited Normandy in the following spring. Stigand had rendered himself peculiarly an object of apprehension; and it seems probable that Egelsin also was among the number distinguished by William's jealousy. He had well merited the precaution; which in no respect appears of Ethelnoth, Abbot of Glastonbury, whither the Conqueror had not penetrated before he returned to Normandy, and who certainly would not have been designated by Ordericus Vitalis as "Cantuariensem Satrapem." A trifling error in the name is far more likely, and that the "Egelnodum quoque" of the monk of Saint Evroult refers to Egelsin.

The violence of the Normans, which had been ill-restrained even in the presence of William, knew no bounds in his absence. The recognition of laws from which the people had looked for security, became utterly nugatory under a despotic soldiery, whose licentiousness seems rather to have been encouraged than checked by the King's Lieutenants. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, in despite of his function, appears to have had as little respect for the possessions of the Church, as the military displayed for the persons and property of individuals; and the discontents and insurrections which broke out in every part of the country afforded the Conqueror a plea for casting off all appearance of conciliation. Stigand returned with the King from Normandy; but the exterior courtesy which he experienced ("multa calliditate favit," says Ordericus Vitalis) could ill conceal the storm which was gathering over his head, and the explosion of which seems to have been protracted only by the contest which, at that time, subsisted even for the chair of St. Peter. He took an early opportunity of leaving the court, and, accompanied by Ecfric, the gallant Abbot of St. Alban's, joined the patriotic band that had rallied round the unsubdued Hereward in the Isle of Ely. The character of the Primate is displayed even in this resolution. The Ethling, in dismay, had winged his flight to Scotland; the Abbot of St. Augustine's had taken the precaution of conveying the treasury of his house with him to Denmark; but the sole hope of the Anglo-Saxons rested on the courage and conduct of Hereward, and on the strength of the position he maintained, and Stigand was found at his side. In the year 1070, however, he came forward to confront, at once, the resentment of William and of the Papal See. The former was contented to divide the odium of persecution, and the latter well pleased to re-assert its jurisdiction over the English Hierarchy. Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sion, presided in the capacity of legate, at a council held at Winchester; and the offences of Stigand against the chair of St. Peter were, at any rate, valid charges before a tribunal so constituted. At what stage of the proceedings the Primate made his appeal does not appear; but as William protested that he was far from harbouring any animosity, and as a true son of the Church committed the cause to the Pope's authority, he was lured from his retreat to assert the independence of the English Church; for he could entertain little expectation of averting his own deprivation. That he had been contented to use the ragged pall of the Ex-primate Robert for six years; that he had received one at length from the Anti-Pope Benedict, were sufficient proofs that he had not entered by the door into his fold; but the aggravation of simony, in the latter charge, is disproved by the admission of the former. Unconcerned, as he manifestly was, at the appearance of separation from the Church of Rome, it is not very likely that he should have been induced to purchase the recognition of a competitor by corrupt means: on the contrary, there can be no doubt but that Benedict would have been well pleased to gain so powerful an accession to his party as the Anglo-Saxon Hierarchy, by so cheap a proffer. Want of learning does not appear to have been an imputation solemnly brought forward at the council; and as it constituted a charge

in the subsequent proceedings against others, it is not unreasonable to infer that he has been unjustly aspersed in that respect by historians. When a verdict is preconcerted, however, it is of little avail that charges are invalidated or substantiated; the council proceeded to his deprivation; and the tender mercies of William did not preclude the precaution of a rigorous imprisonment, from which the degraded Primate escaped only by death; which he is charged with having accelerated by -resolutely refusing all sustenance: a secret of his prison-house which it is not necessary to believe implicitly upon the report of his keepers. The death of Cato was glorious only in the ignorance of Christianity; and though the resistance which Stigand had opposed to the assumptions of Rome does not necessarily infer, in all respects, a clearer insight into the Gospel than was characteristic of the age, it must be unsuspected testimony upon which we would be induced to impute to him the charge of self-destruction, even in despair of the liberties of his country.

The blow having thus fallen upon him "cujus inter Anglos auctoritas erat summa," the Legate proceeded in successive councils to remodel the Church by the removal of all natives from its dignities. In thus lending himself to the views of the Conqueror, he seems, however, to have overstept his commission, since, not only are many admitted to have been deprived "quos nulla evidenta causa, nec concilia, nec leges seculi damnabant;" but among them the venerable Wulstan was, with better judgment, (unless indeed we admit the miraculous interposition in his favour,) reinstated in his see of Worcester by Lanfranc; and the learned Agelric, Bishop of Selsey, was directed to be restored by the Pope himself. These evidences were hardly wanting to prove that the proceedings against the Anglo-Saxon clergy were altogether arbitrary; but, manifest as is the acrimony with which the monkish chronielers speak of them, it is strange how little suspicion seems to have been excited of their veracity. The slanderous tale has been repeated from age to age, and we have been taught to hail the genius of Lanfranc, which was employed in the support of transubstantiation, and the tyranny of the Norman which riveted the supremacy of Rome upon the English Church, as the commencement of an æra of light; and to wrong the memory of those who struggled to assert the liberty which, after succeeding centuries of the most debasing superstition, we praise God for having restored to ourselves.

Lanfranc, Abbot of St. Stephen's, at Caën, had already rejected the

: * Fœdera. Edit. 1816. It is probable that he was actually restored, being frequently spoken of as Bishop of Chichester, whither the see was removed in the interval of his deprivatiou. Parker also gives an extract, ex libro Consti'tutionum Ecclesiæ Wigorn, which seems to refer to his restoration. "Anno 1076. Concilium apud Winton, in qua fratris nostri Ailrici Cicest. quondam Episc. causa canonice definita, et at certum finem perducta est." The Pope's letter, first published in the Fœdera, as above, appears not to have fallen under the eye of Godwyn, or of Richardson his annotator; and the proceedings of the above council have consequently been confounded, without adverting to dates, with that in which he was deprived.