of Stephen. Bishop Roger, however, was one of the first to fall, when Stephen, in the fourth year of his reign (1139), made a deliberate attack on the powerful body of Churchmen by whom he had, in effect, been placed on the English throne. During a council held at Oxford in 1139, Bishop Roger and his nephew, Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, were seized on some slight pretext, and imprisoned until the former had resigned to the King his strong castles of Devizes and Sherborne, and the latter those of Newark and Glaford. Bishop Roger died in the same year, "tam mærore quam senio confectus," says Huntingdon. The tomb assigned to him, said to have been brought from Old Sarum, remains in the nave of the present cathedral. (Pt. I. § 14.)

The see remained vacant until the appointment of (1142 -1184) JOCELIN DE BAILLEUL, the opponent of Becket, by whom he was suspended during the famous proclamations at Vezelay in 1166. The Constitutions of Clarendon had been supported, and perhaps partly framed, by Bishop Jocelin; and he was to some extent instrumental in inducing Becket to give his temporary adherence to them. After the murder at Canterbury, Bishop Jocelin "purged himself of his offences" towards the Archbishop by his own oath, and by those of four compurgators, and was restored to his functions by the Cardinal Legate. In 1183 he retired to a Cistercian monastery which is not named, and died in the following year. The remarkable effigy in Salisbury Cathedral which is generally assigned to him is noticed Pt. I. § 14. The see was vacant five years until it was filled by

[A.D. 1189, trans. 1193.] HUBERT FITZ WALTER, son of a wealthy proprietor of knightly rank in Norfolk. He was educated under the celebrated Chief Justice, Ralph Glanville. As Bishop of Salisbury he accompanied Archbishop Baldwin to the Holy Land; and on the death of that prelate was nominated by Richard I., in the camp before

Acre, to the vacant archbishopric. (See CANTERBURY for a further notice of him.)

[A.D. 1194—1217.] HERBERT LE POER, or DE LA POER, Succeeded, of whom little is recorded. His relative, perhaps brother,

[A.D. 1217, trans. 1229.] RICHARD POORE, or LE POER, was the bishop who transferred the see from Old Sarum to the existing city of Salisbury. He had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester in 1215, and was removed to Sarum in 1217. The situation of Old Sarum, naturally strong, and rendered almost impregnable by its formidable lines of entrenchment, within which had risen successively the Brito-Roman, the Saxon, and the Norman towers, was in many respects inconvenient. There was a scarcity of water; and the cathedral stood so high and exposed that, according to an old tradition, "when the wind did blow they could not hear the priest say mass."

"Est ibi defectus aquæ,"

run the verses of Peter of Blois, himself a canon of Salisbury

66

sed copia cretæ

Sævit ibi ventus, sed Philomela silet."

In addition to this, after the fall of Bishop Roger, the castle of Old Sarum, which up to that time had been in the custody of the bishops, was transferred by the King to the keeping of lay castellans. The whole area within the entrenchments, one quarter of which was occupied by the cathedral and its precincts, including the bishop's hall or palace, was under their jurisdiction; and the ecclesiastics complained of suffering much insult and annoyance from the castellans and their rude soldiery. On one occasion, after a solemn procession, they were shut out from their precincts, and compelled to remain without shelter during a long winter's night. At other times, even on solemn festivals, they were refused access to their own cathedral. “What * It was never, to all appearance, their own castle, but was placed in their keeping by the Crown."

has the house of the Lord to do with castles?" continues Peter of Blois : "it is the ark of the covenant in a temple of Baalim. Either place is a prison." "Let us," he writes, "in God's name descend into the level. There are rich champaigns and fertile valleys, abounding in the fruits of the earth, and profusely watered by living streams. There is a seat for the Virgin patroness of our Church to which the whole world cannot produce a parallel'."

Accordingly, the long-expressed wishes for a removal were carried into effect by Bishop Poore. The site of the new cathedral, according to one tradition, was determined by an arrow shot from the ramparts of Old Sarum; according to another, the site was revealed to Bishop Poore in a dream by the Virgin herself. There is evidence, however, that the lay inhabitants of Old Sarum as well as the Churchmen were beginning to find the limits of the castle somewhat too narrow, and that they were already removing to new habitations in the meadow of Merryfield, or Miryfield, where three streams-the Upper Avon, the Bourne, and the Wily-unite; and where, on the festival of St. Vitalis (April 28, 1220), the first stones of the existing cathedral of Salisbury were solemnly laid by Bishop Poore. (See Pt. I. § 1.) The strong defences which at the period of the Conquest had rendered the castle of Old Sarum a desirable place of refuge, were no longer so greatly needed; and the land on which the town and cathedral were building was the actual property of the Bishop.

Bishop Poore continued the building of his cathedral until his translation to Durham in the year 1229. He died in 1237 at his birthplace, Tarrant in Dorsetshire, where he had founded a house of Cistercian nuns. Among them his heart was interred; his body, according to the best authorities, was conveyed to Durham. In the new cathedral of Salisbury a cenotaph, with effigy, seems to have been erected to his memory. (Pt. I. § 29.)

1 Pet. Blesensis, Epist. 105.

With one striking exception, Robert Hallam, the Cardinal Bishop, who died at Constance (Bishop Beauchamp should perhaps also be mentioned), the successors of Bishop Poore up to the period of the Reformation can hardly be said to have been men of much mark or learning. Of the three who immediately followed him,

[A.D. 1229–1246.] ROBERT BINGHAM (a tomb assigned to him exists in the north choir-aisle,-Pt. I. § 38,)— [A.D. 1247-1256.] WILLIAM OF YORK, one of Henry III.'s chaplains, "legum peritus," and one of the bishops to whom the King addressed an especial remonstrance on their complaining of the simony which existed in the Church (see WINCHESTER, Bishop Ethelmar), and

[A.d. 1257–1262.] Giles of Bridport, whose very interesting tomb remains in the south choir aisle, (Pt. I. § 31,)— little is known. The works at the new cathedral were steadily continued until it was consecrated by Archbishop Boniface of Savoy, brother of Edward I.'s Queen, in 1258, during the episcopate of Bishop Giles.

[A.D. 1263-1271.] WALTER DELAWYLE is said to have founded the collegiate church of St. Edmund in Salisbury. A much mutilated effigy, assigned to him exists in the nave of the cathedral. (Pt. I. § 16.)

[A.D. 1274-1284.] ROBERT DE WICKHAMPTON,— [A.D. 1284-1286.] WALTER SCAMMEL,—

[A.D. 1287.] HENRY BRAUNDSTON who died within the year, and [A.D. 1289-1291.] WILLIAM CORNER, need only be mentioned.

[A.D. 1292-1297.] NICHOLAS LONGESPÉE, who succeeded, was the fourth and youngest son of the first Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, by his Countess Ela.

[A.D. 1297—1315.] SIMON OF GHENT was, according to Leland, a prelate of considerable learning.

[A.D. 1315-1330.] ROGER MORTIVAL was the last male heir of an ancient Leicestershire family, in which county, at Knowsley, his birthplace, he founded a collegiate esta

Wybille. Waltham.

blishment for a Warden and Fellows.

161

He was educated

at Merton College, Oxford, where the library still contains many MSS. which, as the inscriptions record, were the gift of Bishop Mortival when Archdeacon of Leicester. [A.D. 1330-1375.] ROBERT WYVILLE was, like his predecessor, a native of Leicestershire, "born," says Fuller, "of worthy and wealthy parentage, at Stanton-Wyville, in that county. At the instance of Queen Philippa, the Pope preferred him to the bishopric of Salisbury. It is hard to say whether he were more dunce or dwarf, more unlearned or unhandsome, insomuch that Walsingham tells us that, had the Pope ever seen him (as he no doubt felt him in his large fees), he would never have conferred the place or him." Bishop Wyville's ill-favouredness did not prevent his recovering for the see the castle of Sherborne and the chase of Bere, the principal events, apparently of his long episcopate, since both of them find a record on his very curious brass. (Pt. I. § 29.)

[A.D. 1375, trans. to Bath and Wells 1388.] RALPH ERGHUM, consecrated at Bruges. was not improbably of Flemish birth. [A.D. 1388-1395.] JOHN WALTHAM, "legum peritus," was Master of the Rolls in 1382; and in 1391, after his elevation to the see of Salisbury, became Lord High Treasurer. Bishop Waltham resisted the visitation of Archbishop Courtney, even after that prelate had compelled the submission of Thomas Brantyngham, Bishop of Exeter, alleging privileges of exemption obtained from Pope Boniface IX. Waltham was excommunicated by the Archbishop, and was compelled to follow the example of his brother of Exeter. By direction of the young King, Richard II., in whose favour he stood high, he was interred (not without much general dissatisfaction, says Walsingham) in Westminster Abbey, where his brass remains, adjoining the monument of Edward I.

[A.D. 1395-1407.] RICHARD MITFORD, Confessor of the m Worthies-Leicestershire.

VOL. I.-PT. I.

M