Movements of William. January-February, 1095. glory of the Red King's arms.[1] At all events it must have been short, for, in the course of January and February we find him at points at a considerable distance from the Welsh border. In January he was at Cricklade in Wiltshire; in February he was at Gillingham in Dorset, near to Ælfred's monastery of Shaftesbury, and itself the scene of the election of the Confessor.[2] In both cases we hear of the King's movements through incidental notices in our ecclesiastical story. The second is part of the story of Anselm; the first does not concern Anselm himself; it forms part of the tale of the holiest of his suffragans.
Death of Wulfstan. In this month of January the soul of the last surviving English bishop, the sainted Wulfstan of Worcester, passed away. In the eyes of one annalist his death was the great event of the year, and was announced by signs and wonders in the heavens. "There was a stir among
- ↑ Flor. Wig. 1094. "Post hæc rex Willelmus iv. kal. Januarii Angliam rediit, et ut Walanos debellaret, mox exercitum in Waloniam duxit, ibique homines et equos perdidit multos." I am not at all clear that this entry in Florence is not a confusion. The Chronicle under the same year records the return of the King, and directly after sums up the Welsh warfare of the year; but it is not implied that the King took any part in it. He could not have done so before his return from Normandy, and, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of a winter campaign in itself, the incidental notices of the King's movements hardly leave time for one.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. ii. p. 9. Eadmer writes the name Illingham, a change which might easily have happened after the pattern of Ilchester (see above, p. 63) and Islip (see N. C. vol. ii. p. 15), but the g remains in use to this day. There is something very amusing in the note of Henschenius reprinted in Migne's edition of Eadmer and Anselm, col. 394; "Alia plura dominia, ut Rochingeham, Ilingeham, Sæftesburia, quæ jam ante occurrerunt, et plura secutura, potuissent designato locorum situ explicari, si operæ pretium visum esset eorum causa totas Anglici regni tabulas perlustrare, et esset qui exsoleta jam nomina, ubi requirenda sint, indicaret. Poterit postea curiosior aliquis hunc defectum supplere." Fancy a man reading his Eadmer, and not making the faintest effort to find out where any place was. But perhaps this is better than M. Croset-Mouchet, who always turns the Bishop of Exeter into a Bishop of Oxford (cf. N. C. vol. iv. p. 779), and who has a place Srewsbury, which does duty alike for the earldom of Shrewsbury and for the bishopric of Salisbury.
