Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/420

 life. He tells the story that the bishop miraculously arrested while he lived the tendency of Nicholas's hair to fall out, but that Nicholas lost all his hair in the week that the bishop died. In 1113, on the death of Thomas, Nicholas succeeded him as prior of Worcester; the monastery, although comparatively small, acquired, through Nicholas's example, fame for its zeal for learning. He died in 1124.

While at Canterbury Nicholas had made the acquaintance of Eadmer [q. v.]; subsequently he appears to have kept up a correspondence with him, and his opinion on historical matters was highly valued. In one letter from Nicholas to Eadmer (, Dunstan, p. 422) he answers a question with regard to the mother of King Edward the Martyr, and enabled Eadmer to correct Osbern of Canterbury's errors in his ‘Life of Dunstan.’ Another letter of Nicholas's to Eadmer, dated 1120, is extant ( and, Councils, ii. 202); Eadmer had recently been appointed to the see of St. Andrews, and had invited Nicholas's opinion respecting a dispute in regard to his consecration. Nicholas denied that the see of York had any claim to primacy over Scotland; and recommended his friend to secure the support of the ‘barbaric race’ of the Scots, and by the favour of the king of Scots to seek papal consecration. Nicholas was himself prepared to plead in favour of the liberty of the Scottish church at the court of Rome. Eadmer had no sympathy with the liberties of the Scottish church, and did not follow Nicholas's advice.

[William of Malmesbury's Vita Wulstani III, c. 17 in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 265; Gesta Pontificum (Rolls Ser.), p. 287; Stubbs's Dunstan (Rolls Ser.), p. 422; Haddan and Stubbs's Councils, ii. 202.]  NICHOLAS GWRGANT (d. 1183), bishop of Llandaff, succeeded Uchtryd in that see in 1148 (Brut y Tywysogion, Oxford edit. p. 315; Liber Landavensis, ed. Evans, p. 314). Some lists, indeed, interpose a Godfrey; but this is due to some confusion with Geoffrey of Monmouth, bishop of St. Asaph, who is erroneously mentioned in the ‘Brut’ as ‘Geffrei escob Llan Daf’ (p. 318). Nothing is known of the parentage of Nicholas, though Dr. Owen Pughe (Cambrian Biography) and others assume him to have been a brother of the chieftain Iestyn ap Gwrgant, who flourished about 1080; and Haddan and Stubbs (Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, i. 387, 303) conjecture that he was the son of his predecessor, Urban (bishop of Llandaff 1107–34), a conjecture which rests upon the reading ‘Nicol uab Gwrgant escob’ in one manuscript of ‘Brut y Tywysogion’ (ed. Williams, p. 176), and upon the forms ‘Worgan’ and ‘Gwrfau’ assumed by Urban's name in various editions of the same chronicle (‘Brut y Saeson’ in Myvyrian Archaiology, 2nd edit. p. 669; ‘Gwentian Brut’ in Archæologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser. x. 88). Nicholas appears to have owed his promotion to Archbishop Theobald (Letters of Gilbert Foliot, xci.: ‘opus enim manuum vestrarum ipse est et plantatio vestra’). This did not prevent him, however, from showing much independence, and, according to the Gwentian ‘Brut,’ he had much influence both with the Norman conquerors of Glamorgan and their Welsh subjects. He carried on the old boundary dispute with the Bishops of Hereford and St. David's, but with no particular success. Politically he was a supporter of Henry II against Archbishop Thomas Becket, assenting to (though not actually present at) the coronation of Prince Henry in 1170, and incurring suspension in consequence. In 1177 he was again suspended by Archbishop Richard (d. 1184) [q. v.] for abetting the monks of Malmesbury in a contest with their diocesan, the Bishop of Salisbury. He died on 4 June 1183 (Annals of Margam, Rolls edit.)

 NICHOLAS (fl. 1193?), mediæval writer, perhaps a native of Walkington, Yorkshire, entered the monastery of the Regulars at Kirkham in the same county; he was not, as has been frequently stated, a Cistercian. Bale says that he lived about 1193. He was author of ‘Nicolai Walkington de Kirkham brevis narratio de Bello inter Henricum I Regem Angliæ et Ludovicum Grossum R. Francorum; item de Bello contra Scotos quod dicitur de Standardo;’ a manuscript copy of this work, which consists of only one quarto page, written on paper during the 15th century, is Cotton MS. Titus A xix. f. 144. Nicholas has also been credited with the description of the battle of the Standard, including an account of Walter Espec, founder of Rievaulx, really written by Etheldred (1109?–1166) [q. v.], abbot of Rievaulx. Bale also attributes to Nicholas a treatise ‘De virtutibus et vitiis,’ which is not known to be extant.

[Cotton MS. Titus A xix.; Visch's Biblioth. Scriptorum S. Ordinis Cistercensis, ed. 1649, p. 206; Fabricius's Biblioth. Med. Ævi, v. 136; Pits, De Rebus Anglicis, p. 260; Tanner's Bibl.