Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/411

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charge, that bishoprics and abbeys were kept vacant while the king received the profits, was not a matter of surmise or suspicion, but a matter of fact open to all men. When a prelate died, one of the king's clerks was sent to take down in writing a full account of all his possessions. All was taken into the king's hands. Sometimes the king granted out the lands for money or on military tenure, in which case the new prelate, when one was appointed, might have some difficulty in getting them back. In other cases the king kept the property in his own hands, letting it out at the highest rent that he could get, and, as his father did with the royal demesnes, at once making void his bargains if a higher price was offered. In the case of the abbeys and of those churches of secular canons where the episcopal and capitular estates were not yet separated, the king took the whole property of the church, and allowed the monks or canons only a wretched pittance. We have seen that, in one case where local gratitude has recorded that he did otherwise, it is marked as an exception to his usual practice. And, in all these doings, Flambard, as he was the deviser of the system, was its chief administrator. The vacant prelacies were put under his management; he extorted, for his own profit and for the king's, such sums both from the monks or clergy and from the tenants of the church lands that they all said that it was better to die than to live. *