Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/395

 who was consecrated in 1133, his banishment must have continued until after that date. It is probable that Osbert's disgrace was due to other causes besides his conduct with regard to the festival of the Immaculate Conception, since he acknowledges having been to some extent in fault, although complaining of the unjust severity of his sentence. In one letter (ep. xxvi., which seems to belong to this period of his life, as it contains no allusion to bis having held the office of prior) he thanks his correspondent for some assistance in money, and says that he had been too poor to pay his amanuensis or copyist regularly. He adds that although his need had been great, he had never disgraced himself by engaging in trade, but he had been supported by the generous gifts of his friends. Shortly afterwards, however, Osbert was not only restored to his monastery, but was elected prior. The date of this event appears to have been 1136. In a letter (ep. xiv.) to Æthelmær, prior of Canterbury, wno died in 1137, he calls himself prior designate. When he had held the office for five years (ep. vi.), he was sent by 'G. abbot of Westminster' (i.e. Gervase, appointed in 1141) on a mission to Pope Innocent II. His errand was partly to ootain redress for certain encroachments on the rights of the monastery, and partly to advocate the canonisation of Edward the Confessor, the great benefactor of the house. He bore with him letters of recommendation from King Stephen, from the papal legates, Alberic, bishop of Ostia, and Henry, bishop of Winchester, from the convent of St. Paul's, and from his own abbot. On the occasion of this joumev he wrote a life of Edward the Confessor, which he dedicated to the legate Alberic. An abridgment of this work, in a manuscript of the thirteenth century, exists in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ; and it was the principal source used by Æthelred of Rievaulx in his biography of Edward. iEthelred mentions that Osbert had himself been cured of a fever by appealing to the intercession of the royal saint. The pope directed that careful inquiry should be made into the alleged grievances of the abbey (ep. i.), but with regard to the other object of his mission Osbert was unsuccessful, the reply being to the effect that the canonisation of Edward would be taken into consideration when it could be shown that the demand for it was really national, and not merely local.

It is stated by some modern writers that Osbert's mission to Home was in the reign of Adrian IV, about 1158, and that he remained there until the canonisation of Edward was granted by Alexander III in 1161. There seems, however, to be no foundation for this, or for the more general statement (, Biog. Lit. Anglo-Norman period, 319) that Osbert was 'more than once' employed in missions to the papal court.

There is evidence in Osbert's letters that he was intimately deprived of his office of prior, and expelled from the monastery. The cause is nowhere distinctly stated, though in a letter to the abbot and monks we find Osbert defending himself firom a charge of having admitted Cistercian monks into the Benedictine order. In another letter to his brethren at Westminster he accuses them of having sold him, like another Joseph, into Egyptian slavery, 'but,' he adds, 'the Egyptians themselves now pay me tribute.' It is somewhat difficult to understand whether Osbert's rhetorical talk about 'exile in a foreign land,' which occurs both in the letters of this period and in those relating tohis earlier banishment, really means that he had left England, or is merely a figurative mode of referring to his absence from the monastery which he regarded as his 'own country.' The latter interpretation seems the more probable one. Osbert is said ( in Addit. MS. 19165) to have died in 1170, but no early authority is quoted for this date.

Besides the life of Edward the Confessor, Osbert wrote biographies of two other royal saints, St. Eadmund and St. Æthelberht, kings of the East Angles, and also of St. Eadburh. The life of St. Eadmund is stated by Wright to be in the Bodleian Library, but this appears to be a mistake. A Cotton manuscript (Titus, A. viii.) contains two works relating to this saint, both of which are ascribed to Osbert ; the second of these (ff. 83-151) may be really his work, but the other is a mere transcript from Abbo, with slight variations. Osberrs of St. Æthelberht, which was dedicated to Gilbert (Foliot), bishop of Hereford (consecrated 1148), is in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ; and another copy formerly existed in the library of University College, Oxford (, Cat MSS, Coll. Oxon. i. 38). The life of St. Eadburh was written on the occasion of the translation of her remains. Some extracts from it are given by Leland (Collectanea, i. 337-41) ; he does not say where the manuscript is to be found, but there is a copy in the Bodleian Library (, Misc. 114. 10).

The only writings of Osbert which have been printed are the letters included in the volume entitled 'Scriptores Monastici,' published by R. Anstruther at Brussels in 1846, and issued in the same year by the Caxton