Manners and customs; Rites and ceremonies -- Great Britain
Wymund the Saxon, as the Bishop is generally called, was incited by an
unworthy ambition to claim the crown of Scotland, then worn by David I.
Assuming the name of Malcolm Macbeth, he gave out that he was the son of
Angus, Earl of Moray, recently slain at the battle of Strickathrow, and
who was the heir of Macbeth's son and successor, Leelach. Obtaining a
number of large boats, he repeatedly attacked the neighbouring islands,
finding numerous intrepid and desperate adventurers ready to follow him
for love of adventure and plunder. He soon made his name widely known and
feared, and Somerled, Lord of the Isles, was induced to bestow upon him
the hand of his daughter, who bore him a son, Donald Macbeth. Knights and
men-at-arms were despatched to foil his invasions of the mainland, but by
availing himself of forest and mountain fastnesses, he avoided his more
powerful enemies, escaping by his boats when hard pressed. Many of the
bishops paid him black-mail, but one tough old prelate, a man after his
own heart, met him in open field, axe in hand, and smote him to the earth,
and defeated and scattered his following. Wymund escaped, however, and
soon took the field again.
Ultimately David pacified the claimant by a grant of lands, and Wymund
returned to the Isle of Man, or, according to William of Newbridge, to
the Abbey of Furness, where his severities so enraged the monks that they
fell on him, bound him, and destroyed his sight and virility. He was then
handed over to King David, who shut him up in Roxburgh Castle, but, after
some years, transferred him to Byland Abbey, where his stories of
adventure by land and sea long delighted the good fathers.
Somerled, endeavouring to maintain the claim of Wymund's son, was slain in
battle near Renfrew, by the Lord High Steward and the Earl of Angus. The
wicked and vexatious claims of Wymund were terminated in 1164 by the
capture and imprisonment of his son.
The necessities of the times justified many of the prelates in assuming
arms, and Wymund must be regarded as an exceptional character, neither
true priest nor bishop. Nevertheless several of the English bishops appear
to have been quite willing to make arms a profession, while others, as
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, combined the ecclesiastical and baronial offices,
employing both in the furtherance of their personal ambition. When the
Conqueror arrested his ambitious half-brother, it will be remembered that
he arrested him not as the churchman, but as the Earl of Kent.
Odo was a principal figure, with Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutance, at Senlac,
when the Norman Duke conquered Harold's crown; and he was held in
well-deserved reprobation for the sanguinary revenge that he exacted for
the slaying of Walcher, Bishop of Durham, and his following of a hundred
French and Flemish men-at-arms, at Gateshead, on the 14th of May, 1080.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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