Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/412



These doings on the part of Rufus are by the writers of the time put in marked contrast with the practice of earlier kings, and especially with the practice of his own father. As the old and inborn kings had done nothing of the kind, so neither had the Conqueror from beyond sea. In their days, when an abbot or bishop died, his spiritual superior, the bishop of the diocese or the archbishop of the province, administered the estates of his church during the vacancy, bestowing the income to pious and charitable uses, and handing the estates over to the new prelate on his appointment. In later legal language, the guardian of the spiritualties was also the guardian of the temporalities. Bishoprics and abbeys were dealt with as smaller preferments have always been dealt with, as holdings in frank-almoign. The novelty lay, not in receiving the bishopric or abbey from the king, but in receiving it on the terms of a lay fief. One prelate, Odo Abbot of Chertsey, the Norman successor of the English Wulfwold, resigned his post rather than hold it on such terms. For the rest of the reign of Rufus the estates of the abbey were left in the hands of Flambard. One of the earliest among the reforms of Henry and Anselm was the restoration of Odo.

If we look more minutely into the chronology of this reign, it will appear that these long vacancies were more usual in the case of the abbeys than in that of the

had said a little earlier (1092), in nearly the same words, "Prædictus Radulphus, vir quo in malo nemo subtilior, ecclesias sibi commissas exspoliavit bonis omnibus, et divites simul et pauperes [see p. 341] ad tantam deduxit inopiam, ut mallent mori quam sub ejus vivere dominatu."]abbatiam Certesiæ."]
 * [Footnote: ordinati miseria quam laici, quod tædebat eos vitæ eorum." The annalist