Bishops present; Ralph of Coutances.
Death of Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances. February 3, 1093.
William and Anselm at Battle. bishops of three different provinces. There was Ralph of Chichester, bishop of the diocese, whose jurisdiction within the favoured abbey was so zealously denied by every monk of Battle.[1] There were Walkelin of Winchester, Osmund of Salisbury, John of Bath, and Gundulf of Rochester. There was the Primate's great northern enemy, William of Durham. And there too was a suffragan of Rouen, the immediate successor of one of the fierce prelates who had blessed the Conqueror's host on the morning of the great battle.[2] Geoffrey of Mowbray, Bishop and once Earl, had died a year before, and the episcopal chair of Coutances was now filled by his successor Ralph.[3] How, it may be asked, came a Norman bishop in the court, almost in the army, of a king who was about to invade Normandy? The answer is easy. The Côtentin was now again in the hands of Henry,[4] and the presence of its bishop at the court of William was a sign of the good understanding which now reigned between the two younger sons of the Conqueror. But on such a day as this all interest gathers round the two main figures in the assembly, the two of highest rank in their several orders. William the Red, strange assistant in any religious rite, seems less out of place than usual as assistant in the rite which was to dedicate the work of his father. And if prayers and offerings were to go up on that spot for those who had fallen there on the defeated as well as on the victorious side, there was no mouth in which we should more gladly put them than in the mouth of him who was the chief celebrant on that day. Anselm, standing at the head of his foreign suffragans—*
