Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/259

 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY pilgrimage as important as the shrine of St. Edmund was to the great Suffolk monastery, but his success in this attempt was small. The offerings at St. William's altar before the fourteenth century was half over had sunk to a few pence a year. The story of the martyrdom and the preposterous catalogue of miracles and wonders which were palmed upon the credulity of the multitude seem to have had no hold upon them, Thomas of Monmouth's Hfe of the boy-saint is a poor specimen of the literature to which it belongs, a book absolutely wanting in any moral element, and characterized exclusively by its appeal to the superstitious appetite in a superstitious age.^ When Bishop William died in January, 1 174, Henry II was in Normandy. He returned to England in July and on the 12th of that month he did penance at Becket's tomb at Canterbury. In August he again crossed the channel and remained away until May, 1175. Not till 26 November was the vacancy at Norwich filled up by the promotion of John of Oxford, dean of Salisbury, who was consecrated at Canterbury 14 December under the title of bishop of the East Angles. The new bishop had been conspicuous for many years as among the most consistent and astute supporters of the king in his determined efforts to resist the encroachments of the extreme papal party, which was always attempting to make the church dominant over the state in England. His name ' Oxoniensis ' is to be accounted for probably from his having been a distinguished academic lawyer at the time when under the influence of Vacarius and his disciples the schools at Oxford were rapidly acquiring reputation." We hear of him first in 11 64, when he presided over the memorable Council of Clarendon. From this time the king had no more useful adherent nor one on whose wisdom and prudence he could more implicitly rely. His elevation to the episcopate produced no change in his way of life. We find him all through the reign of Henry II either in constant attendance upon the king, acting as justice itinerant in the law-courts, or sent as ambassador again and again. He appears for many years to have been associated with Ranulph Glanville, the great jurist, and his nephew Hubert Walter, a lawyer scarcely less renowned than his uncle. He eventually became archbishop of Canterbury (a.d. 1 189— 1205). These two eminent men were both East Anglians, and both possessed considerable estates in Suffolk. The last occasion when the three are found in close connexion with one another was in the summer of 1 190, when Hubert Walter then bishop of Salisbury, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Ranulph Glanville the chief justiciar, and John of Oxford bishop of Norwich, started on the crusade to recover, if it might be so, the Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of the infidels. The archbishop and Ranulph Glanville died within a month of one another at Acre.^ John of Oxford managed to escape the risks which the others were content to run, and making his way to Rome obtained from the pope a release from his crusader's vow. A year later King Richard was captured by the duke of Austria, and ' Dr. James's chapter on The Cult and Iconography of St. JVUliam, in the introduction of Thomas of Monmouth's Life and Miracles of the saint referred to above, will be found instructive and suggestive. ' Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, ii, 462. ' The archbishop on the 19 Nov., Ranulph Glanville in Oct. 1 1 90. 2 225 29