Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/158

 near kinsman of the great chronicler of the next age; there he might find Bishop Glanville, the preacher of the Third Crusade, one of the learned pupils of S. Thomas, and close kinsman of the great lawyer; or if he went on to Chichester, he would fall in with the Dean Matthew, or Jordan, or Gervase, all of them members of the same company, and Herbert of Bosham in the close neighbourhood, the squire parson of the time, also a careful and admiring biographer. Going on to Winchester, he would be entertained either by the venerable Bishop Henry, whose memory was a very storehouse of history; the grandson of the Conqueror and depository of all the great traditions of the generation, the king-maker of the twelfth century, who also had his learned men around him; or by Richard of Ilchester, the confidential minister of the king, himself no mean adept in the writing of historical dispatches; Richard of Devizes is there too writing the history of his time; further on, at Salisbury, another of the eminent ministers is the dean, John of Oxford, a traveller, and lawyer and divine, a man whose very name suggests that he might have been one of the first magistri of his own University: possibly John of Salisbury might be there too, or Reginald, the bishop's son, as archdeacon or bishop, a most intelligent and travelled diplomatist. At Exeter, early in the reign, he would find Bishop Bartholomew, the famous preacher and canonist, Baldwin, the archdeacon and scholasticus, afterwards archbishop and crusader, with his brother Joseph, the poet, who attempted in an Hexameter Epic to rival the glories of Virgil, and in his lost Antiocheis to build up a poetic memorial of the First Crusade; no mean poet, although ambitious, but considered worthy to rank with the classics edited, in usum serenissimi Delphini, with Dictys of Crete and Dares of Phrygia.

But if our friend was bent northwards, we might take him at once to London and introduce him to the Dean and Chapter of S. Paul's or the great Bishop Foliot and the king's court. At S. Paul's he would meet, ten to one, not only the lord mayor, aldermen, and justices, whom the canon in residence was specially bound to entertain, but any