Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/121

 tine office, which would terminate with the life of the pope. Anxious to place it on a firmer basis, he formed a scheme for the exaltation of his bishopric to metropolitan rank. Six sees (Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, Chichester, Hereford, and Worcester) were to be withdrawn from the province of Canterbury; a seventh suffragan was to have his see in Hyde Abbey; and the seven sees were to form a new province under him. It is doubtfully said that he went to Rome on this matter (cf. Annales de Winton, p. 53), and that in 1142 the pope actually sent him a pall (, i. 255). In Lent 1142 the legate held a council in London, in which an attempt was made to check the evils of the civil war. A canon was published forbidding any violation of the right of sanctuary in a church or churchyard or any violence to a clerk or monk under a special penalty, and declaring that the husbandman and his plough were everywhere to be as safe as though in a church. In the summer of 1143 Henry joined his brother in turning the nunnery at Wilton into a fortress to be a check on Salisbury, which was on the side of the empress. On 1 July Earl Robert fired the town and routed the king's troops, so that he and the bishop barely made good their escape.

Henry also acted with his brother in the matter of the archbishopric of York. On the death of Archbishop Thurstan in 1140 he promoted the election of his nephew Henry de Sully, then abbot of Fécamp, but the election was quashed by the pope because the abbot would not give up his monastery. Another of the legate's nephews, William Fitzherbert [q. v.], son of his sister Emma, was then chosen, and the legate sent him to Rome for confirmation. A strong party in the York chapter protested against the election. Nevertheless the legate had his will; he held a council at Winchester in September 1143, at which a bishop and two abbots took an oath that the election was free and canonical, and on the 26th he consecrated his nephew, the Archbishop of Canterbury refusing his assent. Two days previously Innocent II died, and with his death Henry's legatine commission came to an end. He set out for Rome in the hope of obtaining a renewal of it from the new pope, Celestine II. The pope, however, appointed Archbishop Theobald, and Henry spent the winter in retirement in his old monastery at Clugny. Celestine died in the following spring, and Henry went to Rome to apply for the legateship to Lucius II. The empress sent representatives to oppose. Lucius set aside the charges which they brought against him, but declined to make him legate. It is said that while he held the legatine office he introduced the custom of appeals to Rome; but the passage on which this statement is founded seems to refer to appeals to himself as legate (, p. 282). Appeals to Rome were made in earlier times, though they certainly became more frequent during the reign of Stephen (Const. Hist. iii. 349). Henry continued to uphold the right of his nephew William to the archbishopric of York, which was vigorously disputed, and after William was deposed in 1147 took him into his house and treated him as archbishop. His influence at Rome was wholly at an end, for Eugenius III and Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, favoured Archbishop Theobald, and treated the bishop's efforts in behalf of his nephew as part of the quarrel about the legation, while, as the attempt to establish William at York was bitterly opposed by the Cistercian houses in the north, Henry's policy was specially displeasing to the Cistercian pope and his great adviser. The monks of Hyde Abbey appealed to Rome against him on account of the general injuries which he had done their house and of the destruction of their cross, and Bernard upheld their cause. In 1148 Henry advised Stephen to forbid Archbishop Theobald to attend the papal council at Rheims on 21 March, and he was therefore suspended. The Count of Blois, however, interceded for him, and the sentence was relaxed on condition of his appearing at Rome within six months; this he failed to do, and was therefore under the papal sentence. Theobald returned to England, and at the king's request was reconciled to Henry, who in 1151 went to Rome, travelling in much state. At Rome he had to meet the charges brought against him by the Abbot Bernard, by the monks of Hyde, and many others. He obtained absolution, not, it is said, without payment of a large sum, and efforts were made by his friends to prevail on the pope to grant him either a legatine commission or the exemption of his see from metropolitan jurisdiction; but Eugenius refused, for it was believed, though unjustly, that he had prompted his brother against the church. Still at his request Eugenius bade Henry Murdac, who was then in possession of the see of York, absolve Hugh of Puiset, the treasurer of York and the bishop's nephew, who was doing good service for his uncle by guarding his castles in his absence. Bishop Henry purchased statuary in Italy for his house at Winchester; he had cultivated tastes and liked the society of learned men. He came back by sea with his purchases, and on his way stopped to visit the shrine of