LITMIR.BIZ

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the church of Wells itself, which hitherto it has been hard to distinguish from the general history of the Church in England. Duduc was the first Bishop who was not an Englishman; he was a Saxon. Of course there was a sense in which the Bishops before him might be called Saxons, that is West-Saxons, subjects of the King of the West-Saxons and probably in most cases themselves of West-Saxon blood. But Duduc was a Saxon from the Old-Saxon land in Germany, the old land of our fathers, and this is always the meaning of the word Saxon in the history of those times.19 This Bishop Duduc was in high favour both with King Cnut and afterwards with Eadward the Confessor. And his name at once brings us to a story which connects our church of Wells with the greatest Englishman of those days, though in a way which has brought undeserved obloquy on his name. I dare say some of you have read the tale of Harold's plundering the church of Wells, banishing the Bishop, bringing the Canons to beggary, and what not. However, I will read you the story as it stands in Collinson's "History of Somersetshire." He is speaking of the next Bishop Gisa, of whom I shall say more presently.

      "On his entry into his diocese, he found the estates of the church in a sad condition; for Harold earl of Wessex, having with his father, Godwin earl of Kent, been banished the kingdom, and deprived of all his estates in this county by King Edward, who bestowed them on the church of Wells, had in a piratical manner made a descent in these parts, raised contributions among his former tenants, spoiled the church of all its ornaments, driven away the canons, invaded their possessions, and converted them to his own use. Bishop Giso in vain expostulated with the King on this outrageous usage; but received from the Queen, who was Harold's sister, the manors of Mark and Mudgley, as a trifling compensation for the injuries which his bishoprick had sustained. Shortly after [after 1060] Harold was restored to King Edward's favour, and made his captain-general; upon which he in his turn procured the banishment of Giso, and when he came to the crown, resumed most of those estates of which he had been deprived. Bishop Giso continued in banishment till the death of Harold, and the advancement of the Conqueror to the throne, who in the second year of his reign restored all Harold's estates to the church of Wells, except some small parcels which had been conveyed to the monastery of Gloucester; in lieu of which he gave the manor and advowson of Yatton, and the manor of Winsham." ("History of Somersetshire," iii. 378.)

      Now all this, as is commonly the case with what we read in county histories and books of that class, is pure fiction, but it is very curious and instructive to see how the fiction arose. We can trace every step. Collinson improved on the account in Bishop Godwin's Catalogue of Bishops, which was written in the time of Elizabeth.20 Godwin improved on the Latin history of Wells, written by a Canon of Wells in the fifteenth century, which is one of our chief authorities on all local matters.21 The Canon of Wells, in his turn, improved on the original account given by Bishop Gisa, the person concerned. We have no account from Harold's side, but we have the contemporary version from the other side, and it certainly differs not a little from the version given by our worthy local antiquary. All about Harold's estates being granted to the church of Wells, all about his seizing the estates of the church, all about Gisa being banished and the Canons being driven away, is all pure invention, which has gradually grown up between Gisa's time and Collinson's. Gisa's own account, which is printed in Hunter's Ecclesiastical Documents, is to this effect.22 King Cnut had given to Duduc the two lordships of Banwell and Congresbury, not as a possession of his see, but as a private estate. These lands, together with some ornaments and relics, Duduc wished to leave to the see. But on his death Harold, the Earl of the district, took possession of them. This is the whole of the charge. Gisa does not accuse Harold of taking anything which had ever belonged to the see, but only of hindering Duduc's will in favour of the see from taking effect. We thus have Gisa's charge, but we have not Harold's answer. That answer, I conceive, would have been that, as Duduc was a foreigner dying without heirs, he had no power of making a will, but that his property went to the King or to the Earl as his representative. I cannot say for certain whether this would have been good law everywhere, but it certainly would have been good law in some places, and it at once suggests an intelligible explanation of Harold's conduct. But churchmen in those days always held that the Church was always to gain and never to lose, and we find other cases in which laymen who prosecuted legal claims against ecclesiastical bodies are called nearly as hard names as if they had robbed the Church by fraud or violence.23 Gisa does not say that he complained to the King or attempted any legal prosecution of the matter; but he made private appeals to Harold and threatened him with excommunication. You must remember that all this concerns only the moveable goods and the lands at Banwell and Congresbury, which, before Duduc's death, had never belonged either to Harold or to the church of Wells. With Winesham Harold had nothing to do; that lordship, Gisa says, was wrongly detained from the see by a man named Ælfsige. Gisa was never banished, and it so happens that the only writ of Harold's which we have is one addressed to Gisa, assuring him of his friendship and confirming him and his see in all their possessions.24 Gisa himself adds that Harold, after his election to the Crown, promised to restore the two lordships and to make other gifts as well. This he was hindered from doing by what Gisa calls God's judgement upon him, that is to say, by the Conquest of England.25

      Now this is a very remarkable story, as showing how tales grow, like snowballs rolled along the ground, and how dangerous it is to take things on trust from late and careless writers. You see at once how utterly different Gisa's own account of his own doings is from that in Collinson. The Canon of Wells and Bishop Godwin give the story in intermediate forms. I should strongly recommend those who are able to get at the books to compare all four accounts together. There cannot be a better example of the growth of a legend.

      This Bishop Gisa, who succeeded Duduc in the year 1060, was a remarkable man in our local history. Like Duduc, he was a foreigner. Like several other Bishops at that time, he came from Lotharingia or Lorraine. But you must remember that the name Lorraine then meant, not only Upper Lorraine which is now part of France, but Lower Lorraine, a great part of which is now part of the Kingdom of Belgium. Gisa in short was what we should now call a Belgian, and he probably spoke the old tongue of those parts, which is one of the tongues of the Continent which is most like our own. He complains that, when he came to his diocese, he found his church mean and its revenues small; so much so that the four or five canons who were there had to beg their bread.26 Of course I need not say that this is an exaggerated way of talking; but we may well believe that, like many a poor clergyman still, they were glad of any help that well-disposed people would give them. It is worth notice that another Bishop of the same time and of the same nation, Hermann, Bishop of the Wilsætas, complained that the revenues of his church at Ramsbury were so small that they could not maintain any monks or canons at all. Hermann mended matters in one way by getting the Bishoprick of Dorsetshire or Sherborne joined to that of Wiltshire and Berkshire, and in the end he moved his see to Salisbury, that is of course Old Sarum, whence it was afterwards again moved to the new city of that name.27 Gisa set to work to increase the revenues of his church by buying and begging in all directions. King Eadward gave him Wedmore; his wife, the Lady Eadgyth – remember that the proper title of the wife of a West-Saxon King was not Queen but Lady – gave him Mark and Mudgeley; William the Conqueror gave him the disputed lordships of Banwell and Winesham, and he bought Combe and lands at Litton and Wormestor or Worminster.28 He was thus able to make a good provision for his canons; you will doubtless remember that many of the places which I have just spoken of give their names to prebends in the church of Wells to this day. He also greatly increased the number of canons, but he did something more. Among the things which he complains of is that the canons of Wells before his time had no cloister or refectory. This means that they did not live in common, but lived, after the manner of English secular priests, each man in his own house. They therefore had no need of a common refectory or dining-hall, nor had they any need of a cloister. In a monastery the cloister is one of the most important parts of the building; it is the centre of everything, all the other parts gathering round it; and

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