He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time of Edward.It was a kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest, when, at the assembly held at Winchester in 1070, the King's crown was placed on his head by Ermenfrid.The work of deposing English prelates and appointing foreign successors now began.The primacy of York was regularly vacant; Ealdred had died as the Danes sailed up the Humber to assault or to deliver his city.The primacy of Canterbury was to be made vacant by the deposition of Stigand.His canonical position had always been doubtful; neither Harold nor William had been crowned by him; yet William had treated him hitherto with marked courtesy, and he had consecrated at least one Norman bishop, Remigius of Dorchester.He was now deprived both of the archbishopric and of the bishopric of Winchester which he held with it, and was kept under restraint for the rest of his life.
According to foreign canonical rules the sentence may pass as just;but it marked a stage in the conquest of England when a stout-hearted Englishman was removed from the highest place in the English Church to make way for the innermost counsellor of the Conqueror.
In the Pentecostal assembly, held at Windsor, Lanfranc was appointed archbishop; his excuses were overcome by his old master Herlwin of Bec; he came to England, and on August 15, 1070 he was consecrated to the primacy.
Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies.
The see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man of high character and memorable in the local history of his see.The abbey of Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who had received the staff from the uncrowned Eadgar.It was only by rich gifts that he had turned away the wrath of William from his house.
The Fenland was perhaps already stirring, and the Abbot of Peterborough might have to act as a military commander.In this case the prelate appointed, a Norman named Turold, was accordingly more of a soldier than of a monk.From these assemblies of 1070 the series of William's ecclesiastical changes goes on.As the English bishops die or are deprived, strangers take their place.They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who became Bishop of Durham in 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine who had been largely favoured in Edward's day.At the time of William's death Wulfstan was the only Englishman who kept a bishopric.Even his deprivation had once been thought of.The story takes a legendary shape, but it throws an important light on the relations of Church and State in England.
In an assembly held in the West Minster Wulfstan is called on by William and Lanfranc to give up his staff.He refuses; he will give it back to him who gave it, and places it on the tomb of his dead master Edward.No of his enemies can move it.The sentence is recalled, and the staff yields to his touch.Edward was not yet a canonized saint; the appeal is simply from the living and foreign king to the dead and native king.This legend, growing up when Western Europe was torn in pieces by the struggle about investitures, proves better than the most authentic documents how the right which Popes denied to Emperors was taken for granted in the case of an English king.But, while the spoils of England, temporal and spiritual, were thus scattered abroad among men of the conquering race, two men at least among them refused all share in plunder which they deemed unrighteous.One gallant Norman knight, Gulbert of Hugleville, followed William through all his campaigns, but when English estates were offered as his reward, he refused to share in unrighteous gains, and went back to the lands of his fathers which he could hold with a good conscience.And one monk, Wimund of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused bishoprics and abbeys, but rebuked the Conqueror for wrong and robbery.And William bore no grudge against his censor, but, when the archbishopric of Rouen became vacant, he offered it to the man who had rebuked him.Among the worthies of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly claim a place, but a place should surely be theirs among the men whom England honours.
The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in our history.
In the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in the next reign, the plough of the English Church was for seventeen years drawn by two oxen of equal strength.By ancient English custom the Archbishop of Canterbury was the King's special counsellor, the special representative of his Church and people.Lanfranc cannot be charged with any direct oppression; yet in the hands of a stranger who had his spiritual conquest to make, the tribunitian office of former archbishops was lost in that of chief minister of the sovereign.In the first action of their joint rule, the interest of king and primate was the same.Lanfranc sought for a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority of Canterbury over the rival metropolis of York.And this fell in with William's schemes for the consolidation of the kingdom.The political motive is avowed.
