Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/106

 Crispin were republished with additions by one of his sons. This excited a new controversy, chiefly among dissenters, which was carried on with much asperity for seven years (see, Hist. Dissenters, i. 399). His 'Works' were also republished by Dr. John Gill, minister of Carter Lane Baptist Chapel, near Tooley Street, in 1791, with notes and a brief prefatory memoir. Lancaster says that Crisps 'life was innocent and harmless of all evil. . . zealous and fervent of all good.'

 CRISPIN, GILBERT (d. 1117?), abbot of Westminster, was the grandson of Gilbert Crispin, from whom the Crispin family derived its surname (Miracula in App. ad Lanf. Opp.) The last-named Gilbert Crispin is in the ‘Histoire Littéraire’ (x. 192) identified with Gilbert, count of Brionne, the guardian of William I's childhood, and grandson of Duke Richard I of Normandy (cf., viii. c. 37, iv. c. 18). There do not seem, however, to be sufficient grounds for this identification, though the close connection of both families with the newly founded abbey of Bec, of which the Count of Brionne was the first patron, gives it some probability.

More certain is the identification of the abbot of Westminster's grandfather with the Gilbert Crispin to whom Duke Robert of Normandy (d. 1035) had given the frontier fortress of Tellières to guard against the French (, vii. c. 5). But it is possible that this Gilbert Crispin is rather the uncle than the grandfather of the abbot. From the treatise alluded to above we learn that Gilbert Crispin (so called from his short curly hair, a characteristic which was handed on to his descendants) married Gonnor, the sister ‘senioris Fulconis de Alnov.’ Of this Gilbert's three sons, Gilbert, William, and Robert, the first was made governor of Tellières; the third became a man of note at Constantinople, where he perished by Greek poison; while the second brother, the father of our Gilbert, was appointed viscount of the Vexin by Duke William. William Crispin held the castle of Melfia (Neaufle) of the duke, and was also the possessor of estates in the neighbourhood of Lisieux, a district which he never visited without calling upon Abbot Herluin of Bec. A delivery from a French ambush, which he ascribed to the efficacy of Herluin's prayers, made him a still more devoted patron of this monastery (De nobili Crispinorum genere, ap., vol. clviii.) He married Eva, a noble French lady (d. about 1089), and by her was the father of Gilbert Crispin, whom, while yet ‘in a tender age,’ he handed over to be educated by Herluin at Bec. He afterwards withdrew from the world and was made a monk by Herluin about 1077, an event which he survived only a few days (ib.; Chron. Bec, ap., p. 646).

Crispin is said to have become a perfect scholar in all the liberal arts while at Bec, whence he was called by Lanfranc to the abbey of Westminster, over which church he ruled for thirty-two years (De nob. Crisp. gen. p. 738). If we may accept the evidence of Florence of Worcester (ii. 70), he died in 1117, and according to his epitaph (quoted in ) on 6 Dec. This would serve to fix his appointment to the office in 1085 A.D., a date which agrees sufficiently well with the year of his predecessor's death, 1082, as given in the ‘Monasticon’ from Sporley (ed. 1817). On the other hand it is hard to reconcile this date with the second dedication of his ‘Disputatio’ to Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, who did not succeed to this office before 1123 A.D., unless we allow Alexander's title to be an addition of the copyist.

Crispin is said, without authority, to have ‘visited the universities of France and Italy, to have been at Rome, and to have returned by way of Germany’ (, quoted in ). It is more certain that in 1102 he caused the body of Edward the Confessor to be taken up from its tomb, and found it to be still undecayed ( ap., p. 408). At the beginning of Lent 1108 he was sent by Henry I to negotiate with Anselm about the consecration of Hugh to the abbey of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (, p. 189). According to Peter of Blois he was one of Henry's ambassadors to Theobald of Blois in 1118 (Hist. Litt. de France). Among Anselm's letters there is preserved one of congratulation to Crispin on his appointment to Westminster (L. ii. Ep. 16, ap., clviii. 1165; cf. Ep. 36, also to an Abbot Gilbert). The ‘Histoire Littéraire’ declares that Crispin was once at Mentz; but this statement seems due to a misinterpretation of the commencement of the ‘Disputatio Judæi,’ which says that the Jew in question had been brought up at Mayence, and not that the discussion took place in that town. Indeed, it is evident from the allusion