Winchester, Painted by Wilfrid BallVarley, Telford
History
Winchester, Painted by Wilfrid Ball
Varley, Telford
Winchester (England) -- Description and travel; Winchester (England) -- History; Winchester (England) -- Pictorial works
They filled the land with castles and they cruelly oppressed the
wretched folk with castle works. When the castles were made they
filled them with devils and evil men. When took they the men who
they thought any goods to have both by night and by day, churls and
women, they cast them in prison for their gold and silver, and they
tortured them with pains untellable--for never were any martyrs so
tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked
them with foul smoke--they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head
and hanged fires upon their feet.... Many thousands they killed
with hunger.... Then was corn dear and flesh, cheese and butter,
for none there was in the land.... And they said openly that Christ
slept and his saints.
Such was the anarchy, such the ruin, which weak rule had brought upon
the realm.
Prominent among the castle-builders--though not among the
oppressors--were certain of the bishops, and none more so than Bishop
Henry. The bishop’s residence at Wolvesey, the ancient seat of Alfred
and the Saxon kings, he converted into a strong Norman fortress, the
ruins of which still stand, while at Merdon (near Hursley, some five
miles from the city), at Bishop’s Waltham, and at Farnham, he reared
fortresses also. Thus Winchester became remarkable in one respect--it
had two fortress castles instead of one, a privilege it was later on to
pay dearly for.
But Bishop Henry had other schemes too. Of royal birth, reared in the
atmosphere of church ascendancy in the great and ambitious house of
Cluny, and naturally masterful in temperament, he was aiming at higher
rank and wider influence. Bishop of Winchester though he was, and Abbot
of Glastonbury--for by special papal sanction he had been allowed to
hold this valuable and influential office alike with his
bishopric--there was still the archbishopric before him, and when in
1136 this fell vacant he seemed by every natural claim to be marked out
for it; but Stephen had begun to feel his brother’s yoke growing heavy
on him, and after some long delay Bishop Henry was passed by and
Theobald, Abbot of Bec, appointed. Henry was deeply mortified; and
though the Pope soon after appointed him as Papal Legate over Archbishop
Theobald’s head, his wounded pride never forgot the affront it had
received.
Disappointed of his hopes of Canterbury he worked hard to persuade the
Pope to divide England into three provinces instead of two, with
Winchester diocese as the third archbishopric; and though not actually
successful in this, the Pope is said to have encouraged him in his
project.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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