BOOKS.
THE ENGLISH CHURCH AFTER THE CONQUEST.* THE Dean of Winchester's personal contribution to the History of the English Church which he is editing with Mr. W. Hunt deals with the two centuries from the Norman Con- quest to the accession of Edward L It is a period through- out which the part played by the Church in the development of the national life is of the utmost interest and importance, and Dean Stephens, we think, has succeeded in presenting its essential features, from that point of view, with satis- factory clearness and in just perspective. Despite the tragedy of the Saxon overthrow, the reign of the Conqueror cannot but be looked on as the solid inauguration of an era of new and larger and richer growth ; and in no department of the national organism was that more conspicuously the ease than in the ecclesiastical sphere. In selecting Lanfranc, then Abbot of St. Stephen's, Caen, and previously Prior of Bee, to fill the vacancy caused by the deposition of the uneanonical Saxon Archbishop Stigand, in 1070, William was making choice for the Primacy of England of a man "renowned throughout Christendom as the most learned and brilliant scholar of his time," and of high and irreproachable, if not quite saintly, character. And having made this choice, • The English Chivechfrom the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Edward L. ri-T2). By W. H. W. Stephens, Dean of Winchester. London: cmillan and Co. 'la. SI] which, indeed, seems to have been in his mind for some years before the opportunity occurred of putting it into effect, the King took the new Archbishop, as it were, into partnership with himself for the work of the elevation of the English Church from the condition of degradation into which it had sunk during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Together they devised, and the Primate carried out, with the King's support, a comprehensive scheme of reform in the adminis- trative and disciplinary practice of the Church. Monastic order, which had become much relaxed, was braced up. Clerical celibacy was enjoined at ecclesiastical Councils, and archiepiscopal authority was used for the prevention of the ordination of married men who would not put away their wives. In this respect, no doubt, William and Lanfranc went counter to what proved to be the ultimate judgment of the English people. but they were working on the lines of Church reformers of their own day. Cathedrals were splendidly re- built, or were newly founded with great magnificence in populous towns instead of in the insignificant villages which had in several cases given their names to Sees in Anglo- Saxon times.; and the principle was introduced of separa- tion between ecclesiastical Assemblies and Courts and those dealing with secular affairs and causes. Almost all the Saxon Bishops and many of the Saxon Abbots were replaced by foreigners, chiefly Normans. The dismissals were, no doubt, prompted in many cases by political even more than by ecclesiastical considerations. That was inevitable ; but the important thing to observe is that the Wing and the Primate took great pains to secure men of wisdom and holy life for the vacant Sees and Abbacies, and while they did not always succeed in that endeavour, for the most part they must be held to have pursued a vigorous and large-minded eccle- siastical policy with worthy agents. The zeal with which, under the leadership of, among others, the holy Saxon Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, the English people rallied to the support of William Rufus in 1088—before he had proved his evil quality—against an insurrection of Norman Barons may fairly be considered as an evidence of the general approval which had been secured by the conduct of affairs, in Church as well as in State, under the Conqueror. The perfect understanding which obtained between him and Lanfranc, based, as it was, on principles of equity and moderation, not only secured reform and contentment there- with at home, but preserved England from any of those conflicts with the Roman See which were shortly to become almost chronic. Unreasonable claims were re- spectfully but decisively put aside, even when they were made with the authority of so powerful and strong-willed a Pontiff as Gregory VII., and though considerable annoyance was exhibited in subsequent letters to the Archbishop from the Pope, no open breach occurred.
It is painful to turn from the record, clearly and use- fully set forth by the Dean of Winchester, of what we have called the partnership for Church objects between the Con- queror and Lanfranc, with its excellent results in every direc- tion, to the story of the misery and degradation in Church as in State wrought by the oppressions and immoralities of the infamous Red King, relieved only by the lofty courage of the saintly Anselm. Few things could be more pathetic than the picture of that learned and holy man, who for months had resisted almost with desperation the pressure put upon him to accept the vacant Primacy, deserted in the presence of the brutal King by the Bishops, who had urged him to be their head. It seems hard to understand—and the Dean does not offer any explanation of what is perhaps an insoluble problem—how the Bishops assembled at the Rocking- ham Conference in February, 1095, the majority of whom must have been men appointed on account of their high character by the Conqueror and Lanfranc, can have sunk to the depth of baseness which they exhibited there, and which brought down upon them, not without justice, the com- parisons involved in the popular nicknames of Pilate, Judas, and Herod. Anselm's treatment by Henry L was quite courteous and considerate in point of manner, and it is at first sight difficult not to feel as if the latter part of that admirable prelate's archiepiscopal life had been largely wasted in going to and fro himself, and waiting for messengers to do so, between England and Rome, for the discussion of the question whether there could or could not be any relaxation of the decree of a
Lateran Council on the troublesome and technical investiture question. The Church in England sorely needed the con- tinuous presence of its head, who, being such a saint and so highly gifted as he was, might have done much to effect its redemption from the deep demoralisation which had been left by the evil example of Rufus and his Court. And yet for more than three long years Anselm remained out of the country, his flock unshepherded, because he could not fall in with what had undoubtedly been both the English and the Anglo-Norman custom in regard to the bestowal of the ring and staff by the Monarch on newly consecrated Bishops. On the whole, however, the Dean of Winchester is probably right in the view he takes of the real importance of this matter at the date when it arose :—
" The contest with Henry I.," he says, " was on behalf of ecclesiastical liberties. The question at issue which underlay the strife throughout was the same for which the Popes had been contending with the Emperors Henry IV. and V. from the days of Gregory VII. This question was whether the Church should be completely feudalised;—whether a bishop was the mere nominee of the sovereign, and became bound, when he did homage, to obedience and service, like a lay vassal. The battle was fought, as ecclesiastical contests have often been, over an out- ward custom, the practice of investiture. If the prelate received the ring and staff, the symbols of his spiritual functions, from the sovereign, it seemed at any rate as if the lay authority bestowed the bishopric itself, and as if the homage were done not merely for the temporalities of the see, but as a sign of absolute vassalage. By the surrender of investiture [as Henry I. in the end surrendered it, retaining only the homage] it was made clear once for all that this was not so. The Church was, thus far,
detached from feudalism The victory of Anselm strengthened the Church to offer that resistance to the royal power in which the clergy for more than a century to come took a leading part, and helped to secure for the nation some of its most valuable constitutional rights."
On the whole, we accept the view thus set forth, and agree that it was worth while for the nation and Church to put up with the manifold inconveniences connected with Anselm's prolonged dispute with Henry I. for the sake of advantages to later generations. We are also, on the whole, inclined to agree with what we gather to be the Dean of Winchester's new that the bitterness and strife which, even if they had not resulted ultimately in an attack on his own life, would have flowed from Becket's repudiation of the " Constitutions " of Clarendon in regard to clerical privilege, were a needlessly heavy price to pay for any benefit which the defeat of the " Constitutions " would secure. The murder of Becket no doubt secured the set-back for centuries of any limitation of clerical privilege. But that was by no means really desirable in the interests either of the Church or of the nation. And it seems quite conceivable that Dean Stephens is justified in his suggestion that if the Bishops had been led by some prelate who united moderation of temper with ability and high character, like Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of London, a reasonable compromise might have been arrived at with Henry II.
The remaining portion of the present volume is full of im- pressive illustrations of the manner in which the liberties of England, ecclesiastical and political, were cherished and
defended by a succession of high-minded and distinguished prelates. Among these illustrious names perhaps the foremost are those of St. Hugh of Lincoln, Archbishop Stephen Langton, Archbishop St. Edmund Rich, and Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. The impunity with which the fearless Bishop Hugh faced the wrath both of Henry II. and of Richard Cceur-de-Lion, after having positively refused obedience to orders of theirs which he considered at variance with the rights of his See, exemplifies in striking fasLian that dominating power of personal saintliness, even in a wild and violent age, of which other illustrations are afforded by the cases of Wulfstan and Anselm. Arch- bishop Edmund Rich, who headed the remonstrances of the Bishops against the pernicious foreign advisers of Henry III. in 1234, was of the same exalted type of character. The patriotic services of Archbishop Langton, whose name stands first on the great Charter as among the councillors advising its issue, are familiar to every Englishman. Grosseteste, the teacher and inspirer of Simon de Montfort, the brave personal witbstander both of Pope and King when they made demands contrary to established usage and sound policy, the scholar of boundless learning, the resolute reformer in diocesan administration, the wide-minded welcomer of the devout and self - sacrificing Franciscan friars, laid his country under a debt of the most diverse kinds. Dean Stephens is to be congratulated on the clearness with which, in the limited space at his disposal, he sets forth the manifold titles of such a giant as Grosseteste, and the very genuine claims, in their various degrees, of many other Churchmen of the first two centuries after the Conquest, to the grateful remembrance of Englishmen, even in our own age. A separate chapter devoted to the monastic Orders brings together in well-ordered fashion a very large amount of information, and shows the reader the remarkably steady progress of the monastic move- ment, even during the most disturbed years of the period dealt with in the present volume. As a whole, the book can- not be described as, in itself, an exactly vivid presentment of the times; but it is, we believe, thoroughly sound in its, information and just in its general conclusions, and provides in a very convenient form an abundance of help towards the realisation of one of the most critical perinds in the political and ecclesiastical history of our country.
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