Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/352

 tired, and Henry of Huntingdon puts it that he was deposed some time in 1145. It can hardly have been so late as this if it be true, as is asserted by the French writers, that he began to build the church of the great abbey of Fontenay in the Côte d'Or in 1139. That church was consecrated with much pomp and ceremony on 22 Oct. 1147, and at the consecration it is recorded that Eborard was present. Shortly after this he assumed the habit of a Cistercian monk, and he died at Fontenay on 12 Oct. 1150.

There are some incidents in the life of this bishop, as related by the chroniclers, which are involved in the same uncertainty as everything else in his career. (i.) William of Malmesbury tells us that Eborard was archdeacon of Salisbury under Bishop Osmund, who died in 1099, and that he was miraculously cured of a severe illness by the relics of St. Aldhelm. Were there two Eborards archdeacons of Salisbury in succession, or was this early Eborard the same who afterwards became bishop of Norwich? (ii.) Henry of Huntingdon asserts that Eborard was deposed from his see for his great cruelty. The charge is supported by no other authority, and seems incredible, at least inexplicable. (iii.) It is said in the ‘Norwich Annals,’ referred to by Blomefield, that Eborard divided the archdeaconry of Suffolk into two archdeaconries, and gave one to his nephew, Walkelin. But if Walkelin was his nephew he was certainly not archdeacon of Suffolk, but of Norfolk, and in any case the names and the succession of the archdeacons in the East-Anglian diocese during the first half at least of the twelfth century are involved in so much obscurity and confusion that all attempts to explain the difficulties that meet us are baffled. (iv.) From some indications, to which Blomefield has attached perhaps too much importance, it has been assumed that the bishop was married, and left sons behind him. Even this must now be left a matter of some doubt, and the question remains an open one, probably never to be settled with certainty either one way or the other.

[Bartholomew Cotton's Hist. Angl. pp. 67, 392; Malmesbury's Gesta Pontiff. p. 429; Henry of Huntingdon, De Contemptu Mundi, p. 316; Walter of Coventry's Memor. i. 141, 148, 149, 152; Roger de Hoveden, i. 185; Eadmer's Hist. Novorum, p. 293; John of Oxenedes, p. 93; Rad. de Diceto, pref. p. xxvii (all the above in the Rolls Series); Notes and Queries, 4th ser. x. 27; Norfolk Arch. v. 41 et seq.; Corbolin's L'Abbaye de Fontenaye, p. 25, Citeaux, 1882; Blomefield's Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, iii. 473.]  EBORIUS or EBURIUS (fl. 314), bishop of Eboracum or York, is only mentioned in history as among the three bishops from the Roman province of Britain attending the important council of Arles in 314. That council was convoked by Constantine the Great with the special object of deciding the question of Cæcilianus and the Donatists. Among the bishops from ‘the Gauls’ present at the council was ‘Eborius episcopus de civitate Eboracensi, provincia Britanniæ.’ His British colleagues who are mentioned after him were ‘Restitutus, episcopus de civitate Londinensi’ and ‘Adelfius episcopus de civitate colonia Londinensium,’ the latter name being conjecturally emended into ‘Legionensium,’ i.e. Caerleon-on-Usk. ‘Sacerdos presbyter’ and ‘Arminius diaconus’ also attended the council with the three bishops. The mention of their names is the most definite piece of evidence of the existence of an organised christian church in the Roman province of Britain, and of its close dependence on the church of Gaul. It is worth noting that among the canons they subscribed was one fixing a single day for the celebration of Easter throughout the world. So that the different custom of the British church on that question had not yet arisen. The above facts are in Labbe's ‘Concilia’ (ii. 476, ed. Florence, 1759) from a Corvey MS., and Isidorus Mercator's list substantially agrees in including ‘Eburius,’ though it describes him only as ‘ex provincia Britanniæ’ (Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianæ, ed. Hinschius, p. 322). The passage is wrongly punctuated in Migne's edition (Patrol. Lat. cxxx. 379); but in Crabbe (Conc. Omnia, i. 175, ed. 1538) the reading is ‘ex provincia Bizacena, civitate Tubernicensi, Eburius episcopus.’ Tillemont conjecturally identifies Eborius with the Hibernius who joins in a synodal letter to Pope Sylvester I (, ii. 469), but this seems quite arbitrary. The similarity of name, ‘Eborius’ and ‘Eboracum,’ is perhaps a trifle suspicious; but Ivor, easily latinised into ‘Eborius,’ was a common Welsh name (Annales Cambriæ in an. 501, ‘Episcopus Ebur pausat in Christo, anno CCCL, ætatis suæ.’ MS. B. reads ‘Ywor’ for ‘Ebur’).

[Besides the references in the text, Haddan and Stubbs's Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, i. 7.]  EBSWORTH, JOSEPH (1788–1868), dramatist and musician, elder son of Joseph and Isabella Ebsworth, was born at Islington, London, on 10 Oct. 1788, and was early apprenticed to a watch-jeweller named Cornwall. He was so dexterous in minute mechanism that he was afterwards selected to reconstruct