should have been contemporaries, and both have written chronicles of their times. If Diceto may not claim the honoured title of historian, as a monkish chronicler he holds, from his Imagines Historia and his Abbreviatio Chronicorum, a high position in his class. The long and confidential letters concerning the affairs of the Church, and his relation to the King of England and the King of France show the high respect attached to his wisdom and experience. Like most of the Clergy, Diceto seems to have been overawed by the greatness, or felt sympathy with the lofty churchmanship, of Becket. He heard with satisfaction that Bishop Foliot, though disposed to defy and hold as null and void the ban of the Archbishop, had listened to wiser advice, perhaps his own (he was not yet Dean, but was a Canon of S. Paul's), and kept aloof from the public services in the Cathedral. Diceto was but a doubtful Hildebrandine. He rather deprecated the great measure of Gregory VII.—the prohibition of Marriage to the Clergy. He condemned especially the license and encouragement given to the laity to repudiate and despise the Sacraments administered by married ecclesiastics. The Sacraments, he held, had an inherent and inextinguishable virtue, which they did not lose by passing through unworthy hands. They received their mysterious power from the Holy Ghost, and could neither be enhanced by the holiness, nor impaired by the wickedness, of the ministering priest. Few of the Clergy, he said, practised continence; some feigned it for the sake of gain or vainglory; many accumulated on the sin of uncleanness, perjury and promiscuous adultery! But, worst of all, the laity were tempted to rebel against the Clergy, and to throw off all spiritual subjection. The Holy Sacraments, he proceeds, were frightfully profaned; Diceto, apud Twysden, pp. 435, 436. 8 CHAP. CHAP. II. 38 ARRAIGNMENT OF WILLIAM DE LONGCHAMP. marriages celebrated by married priests not held good; tithes paid to such priests wantonly burned. I cannot but suspect that the opinions of the good Dean were in some degree influenced by the state of his own chapter. There is little doubt that the focaria, so shamefully and cruelly mishandled and imprisoned by the London populace, were, some at least the wives, assuredly the hearthwarmers, of the Canons of S. Paul's. On one of the great events, witnessed by the Cathedral, as Diceto describes it with other chroniclers," on the 8th October, 1191 (King Richard was in the Holy Land), Prince John, the Archbishop of Rouen, all the Bishops, London, we may presume, among them, met in the nave of S. Paul's, and arraigned William de Longchamp, the Chancellor and Bishop of Ely, of many atrocious and tyrannous crimes, especially ill usage of the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Durham. The Cathedral, we may suppose, was chosen as the proper tribunal for the accusation of an ecclesiastic on account of offences, not only against laymen but against high ecclesiastics. During the reign of Richard I. there were terrible tumults in the city of London. It was a strife between the rich and the poor. The poor complained of the unjust and unequal distribution of certain burthens, whether of taxation by the crown or the municipality, or the obligation to discharge certain onerous offices. William Fitz Osbert was the demagogue of the day. Paul's Cross was the rostrum from whence he poured forth his inflammatory harangues. He is said to have risen up against the dignity of the Crown, and to have administered unlawful oaths to his followers. The Cathedral was invaded by the rioters; the sacred Benedictus Abbas. Diceto. Hoveden. The last gives a curious letter of the Bishop of Lichfield, which terribly darkens the crimes of the Chancellor. Compare Lingard. services frequently disturbed by seditious cries, clamours, and tumults. Fitz Osbert seized the tower of a church, belonging to the Archbishop, probably S. Mary-le-Bow, (still a peculiar of Canterbury), and stood out an obstinate siege. Being heavily pressed he set fire to the church, dedicated to the Virgin. The holy building was burned to the ground, an awful warning to the neighbouring Cathedral. Fitz Osbert was dragged out of the ruins, conveyed to the Tower, and, as a terror to the rest, drawn naked through the City, and burned alive in chains with some of his followers. The poor were obliged to give hostages for their peaceable conduct, and the City and Cathedral were at rest. Paul's Cross was silent for many years. Radulph de Diceto built the Deanery of S. Paul's, inhabited after him by many men of letters: before the Reformation by the admirable Colet, who may compensate for many names; after the Reformation, by Alexander Nowell, Donne, Sancroft, who rebuilt the mansion after the fire, Stillingfleet, Tillotson, W. Sherlock, Butler, Secker, Newton, Van Mildert, Copleston. As a lover of letters, I might perhaps, without presumption, add another name. The episcopate of Richard de Ely was nearly commensurate with the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion.2 Bishop Richard conferred on the school of S. Paul's the tithes of his manors of Fulham and Horsey. The man of letters patronised men of letters. He appointed the celebrated Peter of Blois, Archdeacon of London. A barren honour! for Peter writes to the Pope that he must learn to live, 'like a dragon,' on wind. Though London had 40,000 inhabitants and 120 churches, he could obtain neither tithes, 1 Diceto, Hoveden, and the other chroniclers. Lingard has well described the riot. 2 King Richard, 1189-1199. Richard of Ely, 1189-1198. CHAP. CHAP. II. first-fruits, nor offerings.3 The episcopate of Richard de Ely was on the whole as peaceful as the reign of King Richard was warlike and adventurous. His successor, a Norman, WILLIAM DE SANTA MARIA, was cast on darker and more troubled times in Church and State, the reign of King John. William de Santa Maria was appointed by Richard just before his death. He had been Canon of York, Dean of S. Martin's in London, and Canon of S. Paul's. The first years of his episcopate passed smoothly on. In 1208 Bishop William was summoned to read the Papal Interdict against the whole realm of England. He obeyed the mandate, and London with the rest of the kingdom heard the fearful office, which closed all the churches of the land to the devout worshippers, and deprived them of the prayers, the masses, all the spiritual blessings and privileges of the Church. Infants lay unbaptized, except with some hasty and imperfect ceremony. Joyless marriages were hurriedly performed in the church porch; the dying yearned in vain for anointment with the blessed oil and for the Holy Eucharist; the dead were buried in unconsecrated ground. We long for some contemporary account of the effect on the public mind, of the workings on the heart of the individual Christian, produced by that sudden and total abruption, as it seemed to be, of all intercourse between the soul of man and the divine Ruler or the merciful Redeemer. In London, then comparatively a narrow and noiseless city, how oppressive, how terrible the silence, when day after day the bells of S. Paul's ceased to toll, as they were wont to do, for the frequent service; and the few citizens passed by, or pressed in vain, against the sullenly and inexorably closed doors of the silent church. Unfortunately from sorrow or from awe, or from some other Petri Blesens. Epistolæ 149. Wharton, in vitâ. 41 CHAP. BISHOP WILLIAM DE SANTA MARIA. cause, it may have been his age, our pious Dean of S. Paul's breaks off his chronicle before the interdict, and so do almost all the other annalists of the day." 6 But though the interdict was thus remorselessly laid on the realm, the whole guiltless and unoffending realm, over the one guilty rebel against the Church, with a strange and capricious delay, hung, threatening but unuttered, the personal ban. The godless John alone remained unsmitten, untouched. The Bishop of London, who, without resistance, had pronounced the fatal ban against his whole diocese, against the citizens of London, had fears or conscientious scruples about the sentence against the King. Bishop William de Santa Maria went into self-inflicted exile on the Continent for five years. But neither his scruples nor his self-banishment prevailed against the vengeance of the King. He and his brother Bishops, Ely and Worcester, it is said, had dared to remonstrate against the stubborn obstinacy of John. On their flight the King in his fury began a fierce persecution of Clergy. The sheriffs were ordered to confiscate all the revenues of refractory Bishops and abbeys. The clergy might go and complain to their protector, the Pope.' No doubt the estates of the Bishop of London, with the rest, were seized into the King's hands. We are informed that the demolition of the Bishop's castle at Stortford was specially commanded. The barns of the Clergy were shut up; their contents confiscated to the treasury. The concubines of the Clergy were exposed to every insult and ill-usage. So Radulph de Diceto was living, according to Newcourt, in 1210; but his history closes with the accession of King John. Other chroniclers, as Dr. Lingard observes, come to an end at the same time-Brompton, Hoveden, &c. • Newcourt (Repertorium), a writer who is in general careful about his authorities, writes: This our Bishop 7 A.D. 1209. |