Norwich

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAFTER V. THE CENTURY AFTER THE FOUNDATION. When Bishop Herbert died, King Henry was in Normandy. For three years he had been away from England, and no English bishops had been appointed in his absence. Robert de Limesey had died in 1117, but the see of Lichfield was left without its chief pastor. Norwich...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAFTER V. THE CENTURY AFTER THE FOUNDATION. When Bishop Herbert died, King Henry was in Normandy. For three years he had been away from England, and no English bishops had been appointed in his absence. Robert de Limesey had died in 1117, but the see of Lichfield was left without its chief pastor. Norwich was vacant. Still the king made no sign, and the bad precedent of his brother's reign seemed to be ruling once again. In the spring of 1120, Geoffrey de Clive of Hereford died, and Hereford was without its bishop, the king still absent. In the autumn of that same year the weary French war came to an end, and Henry turned his face homewards. By the dreadful calamity of the White Ship foundering he was left childless. Early in the following year two of the vacant bishoprics were filled up?Hereford, in January, by Richard, a clerk of the signet, or member of the exchequer or chancery; Lichfield, in March, by the appointment of Robert Peeke, one of the royal chaplains. Still Norwich was unsupplied. Practically, the regent during the king's absence was Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the great representative of the secular or statesman school of Churchman, the man to whose genius both the Norman andEnglish exchequer owed their organisation, the uncompromising opponent of the monks and of everything that tended to increase the power and influence of the monastic bodies. The great priory of Norwich was a new foundation; it had flourished marvellously under Bishop Herbert, it was prospering still. Bishop Roger would not have another monk-bishop in East Anglia, but it seems as if he hesitated before he recommended to the king the man upon whom he- had fixed his eye. The bishop of Salisbury had, as his archdeacon, Everard de Montgomery, a son of Roger, Lord of Belesme, by Adel...