Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/357

 Coutances after Lucas (1840); 'Queen Victoria receiving the Sacrament at her Coronation,' after Leslie (1840); Sir R. Peel, after Lawrence (1850); 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' after Landseer (1857); 'The Maid of the Magpie,' after Landseer (1862); 'Piper and Pair of Nutcrackers,' after Landseer (1865); 'The Strawberry Girl,' after Reynolds (1873); 'Yes or No,' after Millais (1873); 'Simplicity,' after Reynolds (1874); Lady Caroline Montague as 'Winter' after Reynolds (1875); Moretta, a Venetian girl, after Leighton (1875), and Lavinia, Countess Spencer, after Reynolds (1877); Cardinal Newman, after Lady Coleridge (1877); 'Ninette,' after Greuze (1877); 'Cherry Ripe,' after Millais (1881); and 'Pomona,'after Millais (1882).

 COUTANCES (DE CONSTANTIIS), WALTER (d. 1207), bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Rouen, is said to have been of English birth, the son of Rainfred and Gonilla; John de Schalby, in his compilation from the Lincoln records, states that he was a native of Cornwall, and to this Giraldus Cambrensis (Vita S. Remigii, cap. xxv.) adds that though called of Coutances he was sprung from the house of Corineus, the fabulous Trojan immigrant into Cornwall. Both speak of him as a liberal and accomplished man, devoted to literature, and well skilled in secular and courtly affairs. He was clerk to Henry II and his eldest son, and is styled chaplain of Blythe. His first piece of preferment was the church of Woolpit in Suffolk (, p. 35). In 1173, when Ralph of Warneville was chancellor of England, he was made vice-chancellor (, i. 367), and he was also canon and treasurer of the church of Rouen. In 1175 he was made archdeacon of Oxford, and, according to Diceto (ii. 14), held a canonry at Lincoln. While archdeacon we find him writing to Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter, on the question of dissolving illegitimate marriages (, Epist. 83), and attesting the peace of Falaise between Henry II and William king of Scotland ( i. 99). In 1176 he had an allowance of fifty marks for providing for the ambassadors of the king of Sicily on the occasion of their demanding Henry's daughter Joanna in marriage. In 1177 he went as envoy to Flanders to obtain the answer of Philip Count of Flanders as to the marriage of the daughters of his brother Matthew; and in the same year he went as ambassador to France from Normandy (ib. i. 168, 175). In 1180 he was seal-bearer to Henry II, and accounted for the proceeds of the abbeys of Wilton and Ramsay, and of the honour of Arundel, then in the king's hands, of which he had been appointed guardian. He seems to have aimed at the see of Lisieux, and according to the letters of Bishop Arnulph to have been somewhat unscrupulous in his endeavours to induce him to resign in his favour ( Epist. 107, 117). In 1182 he is mentioned in the king's will as one of those present at Waltham at the division of his property ( i. 298). On the resignation of Geoffrey Plantagenet he was elected to the see of Lincoln, and though at first objected to by Henry II because elected without his will and consent, ultimately met with no opposition, and after being ordained priest on 11 June 1183, by John bishop of Evreux, was consecrated bishop of Lincoln on 3 July 1183 at Angers by Archbishop Richard in the church of S. Laud, in the king's presence, and was enthroned on 11 Dec. He remained too short a time at Lincoln to leave any especial mark of his episcopate. He was present at the council of Westminster in 1184 when Baldwin was elected archbishop ( i. 319); and he is described as injuring the see of Lincoln by confirming to the Sempringham house of St. Katharine-without-Lincoln the churches which his predecessor Robert de Chesney had alienated from the see ( Vita S. Remigii, cap. xxv.), and leaving the see in debt to the king because he had not paid the tribute of a mantle (Vita S. Hugonis, p. 184, ed. Dimock).

In 1184, at the request of Henry II and through the intervention of Pope Lucius III, he was elected archbishop of Rouen (, p. 847), though the canons had at first elected Robert de Novo Burgo; he was enthroned on 24 Feb. 1185, little more than a year, as remarked by Diceto, since his enthronement at Lincoln. The pall was sent to him at once, by the hand of the sub-deacon Humbald. Newburgh says (iii. 8) that he hesitated for some time whether to prefer the more eminent to the richer see, but that at length ambition triumphed over the love of wealth. One of his first acts was to obtain from Henry II the union of the abbeys of St. Helier, Jersey, and that of du Vœu, Cherbourg (, ii. 133, ed. Delisle). In 1186 he went as ambassador into France; he had an interview with Philip, and after passing through Flanders landed at Dover (, ii. 43). In 1187 he was appealed to by the convent of Canterbury against the violation of their privileges by the archbishop of Canterbury, and we find him afterwards appointed one of the arbitrators