It was no wonder, therefore, that the inhabitants of the region looked to him with peculiar reverence and almost fanatical love. Just as in Tibet the Grand Lama never dies, for when one religious chief pays the debt of nature, his spirit undergoes a new incarnation, so--or almost so--was each successive Bishop of St. David's regarded as the representative of the first great father, as invested with all his rights, authority, and sanctity, as having a just and inalienable claim on their hearts and on their allegiance. But now a blow had fallen on the community that was staggering. On the death of their Bishop Griffith, the church of St. David had chosen as his successor Daniel, son of a former bishop, Sulien; but the Normans had closed all avenues of egress from the peninsula, so that he might not be consecrated, unless he would consent to swear allegiance to the see of Canterbury and submission to the crown of England, and this was doggedly resisted. Menevia--another name for the St. David's headland--had undergone many vicissitudes. The church had been burnt by Danes, and its bishop and clergy massacred, but it had risen from its ruins, and a new successor in spirit, in blood, in tongue, had filled the gap. Now--suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, arrived Bernard, a Norman, who could not speak a word of Welsh, and mumbled but broken English, a man who had been hurried into Orders, the priesthood and episcopal office, all in one day, and was thrust on the Welsh by the mere will of the English King, in opposition to Canon law, common decency, and without the consent of the diocese. The ferment throughout South Wales was immense. Resentment flamed in some hearts, others were quelled with despair. It was not the clergy alone who were in consternation: all, of every class, felt that their national rights had been invaded, and that in some way they could not understand this appointment was a prelude to a great disaster. Although there had been dissensions among the princes, and strife between tribes, the Church, their religion, had been the one bond of union. There was a cessation of all discord across the sacred threshold, and clergy and people were intimately united in feeling, in interests, in belief. In the Celtic Church bishops and priests had always been allowed to marry--a prelate of St. David's had frankly erected a monument to the memory of two of his sons, which is still to be seen there. Everywhere the parochial clergy, if parochial they can be styled, where territorial limits were not defined had their wives. They were consequently woven into one with the people by the ties of blood. Nowhere was the feeling of bitterness more poignant than in the Happy Valley, where the intrusion of a stranger to the throne of David was resented almost as a sacrilege. Deep in the hearts of the people lay the resolve not to recognize the new bishop as a spiritual father, one of the ecclesiastical lineage of Dewi.