Discontent of Odo.
Influence of William of Saint-Calais. whom the Conqueror had clothed with temporal power. And foremost among them was his brother, the new King's uncle, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, now again Earl of Kent; and, according to one account, already Justiciar and chief ruler in England.[1] But whatever might be his formal position, Odo soon began to be dissatisfied with the amount of authority which he practically enjoyed. He seems to have hoped to be able to rule both his nephews and all their dominions, and, in England at least, to keep the whole administration in his own hands at least as fully as he had held it before his imprisonment. In this hope he was disappointed. The Earl of Kent was not so great a man under the younger William as he had been under the elder. The chief place in the confidence of the new King was held by another man of his own order. This was William of Saint Carilef or Saint Calais, once Prior of the house from which he took his name, and afterwards Abbot of Saint Vincent's without the walls of Le Mans.[2] He had succeeded the murdered Walcher in the see of Durham, and he had reformed his church according to the fashion of the time, by putting in monks instead of secular canons.[3] His place in the King's counsel was now high indeed. "So well did the King to the Bishop that all England went after his rede and so as he would."[4] Besides this newly
- [Footnote: cynehlaford." But the notion that Robert had any special right as the
eldest son seems not to have come into any purely English mind of that age.]*
- ↑ He appears in the list given by Henry of Huntingdon (see above, p. 19) as "justiciarius et princeps totius Angliæ." Simeon of Durham (1088) calls him "secundus rex."
- ↑ See Florence, 1081; Sim. Dun. Hist. Eccl. Dun. iv. 1.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 674.
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1088. "Swa wæll dyde se cyng be þam bisceop þæt eall Englaland færde æfter his ræde and swa swa he wolde." So Florence; "Ea tempestate rex prædictus illius, ut veri consiliarii, fruebatur prudentia; bene enim sapiebat, ejusque consiliis totius Angliæ tractabatur respublica."
