Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/415

 has come with them, and the King asks what he will give. He answers that he will not give anything; he has simply come to receive the new abbot, whoever he may be, and to take him home with all honour. Rufus at once bestows the abbey on him, as the only one of the party worthy of it. The tale is not impossible; had it been placed in Normandy and not in England, we might have even said that it was not unlikely. For we shall see, as we go on, that, from whatever cause, Rufus dealt with ecclesiastical matters in Normandy in a different spirit from that in which he dealt with them in England.

At the point which we have reached in our general story, the time of the restoration of Carlisle, two English sees only were vacant. Two had been filled during the year of the Norman campaign, and both of them by prelates of some personal mark. Ralph Luffa, Bishop of Chichester, holds a high place in the history of his own church, as the founder alike of the existing fabric and of the existing constitution of its chapter. He bears altogether so good a character that he is not likely to have come to a bishopric in the way which was usual in the days of Rufus. Did the King give him his staff in some passing better moment, like that in which he gave the staff to the worthy abbot at the nameless monastery? But the other episcopal appointment of the same