Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward IIYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Great Britain -- History -- Anecdotes
Such is the story told a century after; and surely we may believe that,
without the miracle, the old man’s touching appeal to his dead King, and
his humility, convinced Lanfranc that it had been foul shame to think
of deposing such a man because his learning was not extensive, nor his
manners like those of the courtly Norman. Be that as it may, thenceforth
Lanfranc and Wulstan worked hand in hand, and we find the Archbishop
begging him to undertake the visitation of the diocese of Chester, which
was unsafe for the Norman prelates. One great work accomplished by the
help of Wulstan was, the putting an end to a horrible slave-trade with
Ireland, whither Saxon serfs were sold, not by Normans, but by their own
country people, who had long carried it on before the Conquest. Lanfranc
persuaded William to abolish it, but the rude Saxon slave-merchants
cared nothing for his edicts, until the Bishop of Worcester came to
Bristol, and preached against the traffic, staying a month or two at
a time, every year, till the minds of the people of Bristol were so
altered, that they not only gave up the trade, but acquired such
a horror of it that they tore out the eyes of the last person who
persisted in it.
The favor and esteem with which Wulstan was regarded did not cease, but
he was obliged to spend a life of constraint. The Archbishop made him
keep a band of armed retainers to preserve the peace of the country, and
they were new and strange companions for the old monk; but as he thought
his presence kept them from evil, he did not remain aloof, dining with
them each day in the public hall, and even while they sat long over the
wine, remaining with them, pledging them good-humoredly in a little cup,
which he pretended to taste, and ruminating on the Psalms in the midst
of their noisy mirth.
These were the days of church-building--the days of the circular arch,
round column, and zigzag moulding; of doorways whose round arch, adorned
with border after border of rich or quaint device, almost bewilder us
with the multiplicity of detail; of low square towers, and solid walls;
of that kind of architecture called Norman, but more properly a branch
of the Romanesque of Italy.
Each new Roman Bishop or Abbot thought it his business to renew his
clumsy old Saxon minster, and we have few cathedrals whose present
structure does not date from the days of the Conqueror or his sons.
Walkelyn, Bishop of Winchester, obtained a grant from William of as
much timber from Hempage Wood as could be cut in four days and nights;
whereupon Walkelyn assembled a huge company of workmen, and made such
good use of the time, that when the king passed that way, he cried out,
“Am I bewitched, or have I taken leave of my senses? Had I not a most
delectable wood in this spot?” where now only stumps were to be seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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