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.[1] 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.
Sees vacant in 1092.
Ralph Luffa Bishop of Chichester. 1091-1123.
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.[2] 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
- ↑ This story has no better authority than that of the Hyde writer (299); still it is, to say the least, remarkable that it should be told of William Rufus. But there is an element of fun in the tale, and the Red King may for once have preferred a joke to a bribe. The description of the three monks at all events is good; "Cum coram rege astarent pariter, et uno plura promittente, alius pluriora promitteret, rex sagaciter cuncta perscrutans, tacentem monachum tertium quid quæsivit, ille se nil omnino promittere aut dare respondit, sed ad hoc tantum venisse ut abbatem suum cum honore suscipiendo domum deduceret."
- ↑ See Stephens, Memorials of Chichester, p. 47.
