548 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Students, Pilgrims, Papal Messengers. 



Norwegian clerks are named in the English Rolls because they figure 

 as merchants or diplomats; church business and private affairs de- 

 manded no royal writ. So we must assume that these traders and 

 envoys often had ulterior ends. For instance, John Steel, a Norwegian 

 noble, in 1225 secured a license to come to England as a merchant, 128 

 while, according to the saga, he went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, 

 and had dealings with the newly elected Archbishop of Nidaros and 

 other Norwegian priests in England. 129 A prelate who commanded 

 his own ship naturally defrayed expenses by taking a load of fish to 

 Lynn or Yarmouth, to be replaced in wheat, wine, or cloth. At the 

 same time the king entrusted him with a despatch. Accordingly, his 

 name is recorded in the Rolls, but not his church mission, — and this 

 in addition to the great silent majority to whose number we have no 

 index. 



Had we no evidence, it would still be safe to assume that Norwegians 

 came to England for study. Bishop Sigurd learned the Cistercian rules 

 at Fountains ; Archbishop Eystein may have done some reading in his 

 nine months at Bury. 130 The Rolls naturally are silent upon Norwe- 

 gian students ; what little confirmation we find must be from Scandina- 

 vian sources. About 1160 Thorlak, an # Icelander who became Bishop 

 of Skalholt, studied at Liucoln. He went abroad, says the saga, and 

 " came to Paris, and was there at school as long as he thought needful 

 to get the knowledge which he wished to get there. Thence he came 

 to England, and was at Lincoln, and there he gat, moreover, great 

 knowledge, and fraught with blessings both to himself and others." 131 

 The next bishop of Skalholt, Paul (d. 1211), a nephew of Thorlak, like- 

 wise studied in England in his youth. " He went south to England, 

 and was there at school, and got great learning there, so that there was 

 scarce any example of any man's having got so deep and so much knowl- 

 edge in the like time. And so when he came back to Iceland, he 

 surpassed all other men in his courtliness and his learning, and in mak- 

 ing of verse, and in book-lore." 132 These two accounts show the 

 respect in which English schools were held in the North. Again, in 



128 "Johannes Stel, mercator de Norwegia," Pat. Rolls, 1210-1225, p. 542. 



129 Hakonar Saga, chap. 130. 



130 Above, p. 536. 



131 Bisk. Sogur, I, 92, Thorlaks Saga, chap. 4 (Powell and Vigfusson trans., 

 in ( >rig. tslan.). 



132 Pols Saga, chap. 1 (Powell and Vigfusson trans., in Orig. Islan.). 



