Vacant bishoprics.
Walkelin dies. Jan. 3, 1098.
Osmund dies. Dec. 3, 1099.
Differences between bishoprics and abbeys. bishoprics. At the time of William's death he had in his hands, besides the archbishopric of the absent Anselm, the two bishoprics of Winchester and Salisbury and eleven abbeys.[1] Of these Winchester had been vacant rather more than two years and a half, Salisbury had been vacant only eight months. And the bishoprics which were filled in his reign had mostly been vacant one, two, or at most three years, shorter times than bishoprics were often kept vacant in much later times.[2] The reason for the difference seems clear. The bishoprics, when they were filled, commonly went to the king's clerks, to Flambard himself and his fellows. The great temporal position of a bishopric was acceptable to men of this class, and they found in the king's service the means of making up a purse such as would tempt the king to end the vacancy in their favour[3]. A bishopric was therefore likely to be filled, unworthily filled doubtless, but still filled, before any very long time had passed. The abbeys, on the other hand, would have small attractions for the king's servants, who in fact, as secular clerks, could not hold them. And the men for whom such a post would have attractions, the monks of the vacant abbey or the abbots or priors of lesser houses, would not have the same means as the king's servants of making up a purse.
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1100.
- ↑ Take two cases at random with a great interval between them, the vacancy of the see of Lincoln under Henry the Second, and that of Oxford, which one might have thought hardly worth keeping vacant, under Elizabeth. Hugh Curwin (see Godwin, 405) died in 1568, and his successor John Underhill was not appointed till 1589.
- ↑ Orderic (764 A) gives a picture of the kind of men who became bishops under this system; "Sic utique capellani regis et amici præsulatus Angliæ adepti sunt, et nonnulli ex ipsis præposituras ad opprimendos inopes, sibique augendas opes nihilominus tenuerunt. . . . Plerumque leves et indocti eliguntur ad regimen ecclesiæ tenendum, non pro sanctitate vitæ vel ecclesiasticorum eruditione dogmatum liberaliumve peritia litterarum, sed nobilium pro gratia parentum et potentum favore amicorum."
